Senate Republicans Mobilizing To Confront China, Including Investigations, Sanctions And ‘Seizure Of Chinese Government Assets’

 

 

Article by Henry Rodgers in "The Daily Caller":   

Several Senate Republicans are mobilizing plans to confront China for its delay, cover up and suppression of critical information in the lead up to the global coronavirus pandemic, the Daily Caller has learned. Options on the table even include “authorizing U.S. courts to seize Chinese government assets” once an investigation “determine[s] the damages China owes the US — and the world.”           Chinese leader Xi Jinping personally asked the World Health Organization (WHO) to delay the release of information regarding its coronavirus outbreak, German intelligence reported. Xi met with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Jan. 21 to request that he withhold information and delay the declaration of a global pandemic, according to German magazine Der Spiegel’s report, published May 8.

“We now know that leaders at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party actively hid the coronavirus outbreak from the world, silencing those who tried to sound the alarm, prevent a global pandemic, and save lives,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told the Daily Caller. “Next week, I will introduce the Ending Chinese Medical Censorship and Cover Ups Act of 2020, just one of the legislative steps I am taking to hold the Chinese officials involved in medical censorship directly accountable.” 

 

The bill Cruz mentioned would impose targeted and heavy sanctions on those who were involved in the delay of the critical information and would also:

• “Prohibit, limit, or penalize the exercise of freedom of expression or assembly by citizens of the People’s Republic of China, including prohibitions, limitations, or penalties related to the use of social media;
• Penalize citizens of the People’s Republic of China for the public dissemination of accurate e epidemiological information, including information related to emerging diseases or pathogens; or

• Limit access to print, broadcast, digital, or social media.”
•  

Montana Sen. Steve Daines agrees with Cruz.

“The Chinese communist government must be held accountable for their reckless cover up of the coronavirus outbreak,” Daines told the Daily Caller. “I have been working on a number of bills to hold their feet to the fire and I will continue fighting to ensure we put maximum pressure on China.” 

Daines has also consistently criticized China, sending a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in early April calling for an investigation into China’s role in the coronavirus outbreak.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told the Daily Caller that “the United States should lead an international investigation to determine exactly how the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] enabled the coronavirus’ transformation from a local outbreak into a global pandemic. And the investigation should determine the damages China owes the US — and the world.”

Hawley then mentioned that America should “use every measure available to hold Beijing accountable.”

“That includes empowering American victims to sue the Chinese government and authorizing U.S. courts to seize Chinese government assets. And it means using whatever other means necessary to make sure the CCP pays its victims for the pain and hardship they’ve suffered as a result of its lies and deceit,” Hawley continued.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott told the Daily Caller that “the United States is battling a New Cold War with Communist China, and the Chinese Communist Party has decided to use the Coronavirus to their advantage.”

“The scale of devastation caused by Communist China will one day be realized, but we must all take action NOW to hold them responsible and financially liable for the damage they’ve caused,” Scott continued. “I’m working with my colleagues on legislation to hold China accountable, and I encourage every American to stand up and put American interests first by buying American-made products when possible.”

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio shared his concerns with the Daily Caller, agreeing with the other senators that China covered up critical information in regards to the coronavirus. Rubio also said one way to hold China accountable is to move the U.S. supply chains in order to depend less on China.

“The Chinese Communist Party covered up the outbreak of the virus, forcefully silenced medical professionals like the late Dr. Li Wenliang, lied about the number of infections, and withheld information about the virus from the global community,” Rubio said. “The one way to hold China accountable is to do what we should have been doing long ago – moving our supply chains and means of production in order to reduce our dependence on China.” 

“Growing evidence that China failed to act as a responsible member of the global community strengthens the case for sanctions and other penalties,” Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith told the Daily Caller. “I think it also helps those of us who believe President Trump and Congress should act to hold China and the WHO accountable for acts or inactions that led to the COVID-19 pandemic.” 

Meanwhile, Republicans in the House of Representatives announced a task force Thursday to look into China’s alleged cover-up and mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. 

 “One, to get to the bottom of what happened, we need to know about the origins of COVID-19, how this happened so we can stop it from ever happening again. We will be having high level classified briefings to get to the truth about what happened and hold China and the Chinese Communist Party accountable for what they did. We do know it came out of Wuhan.”

The Senate is back in session and is working with the White House on passing more legislation in an attempt to help combat the coronavirus and American workers struggling across the country.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/14/senate-republicans-china-world-health-organization-covid-19-coronavirus-delay-censorship-silence-suppress/

Did Obama's UN Ambassador Samantha Power Commit Perjury Regarding the Flynn Unmasking?

 
Article written by Matt Margolis in "PJMedia":

On Wednesday, acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell released the list of Obama administration officials who sought to “unmask” the identity of Michael Flynn during Trump’s presidential transition.

On the top of the list was Obama’s former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who made at least seven requests between November 30, 2016, and January 11, 2017.

Despite making seven requests during this period, two of them on the same day, Power testified under oath that she had “no recollection” of ever making any unmasking requests of Flynn.
Here is a portion of the transcript of Power’s testimony:

MR. SCHIFF: Well, let me then ask you about, sort of, maybe the gravamen of how this came about. And I think it came about over a concern about the leaking of Mike Flynn’s name.

Now, the White House has publicly acknowledged that they had to let him go because he didn’t disclose a conversation he had with the Russian Ambassador on the subject of sanctions.

None of the reports that l’ve seen that will be related to you or you’ll be asked about today concern the conversation with Mike Flynn and the Russian Ambassador.

So, to your knowledge, did you ever make [redacted]

MS. POWER: I don’t recall making such a request. I want to just again stress, though, that any time a U.S. person or entity’s name came to nie disclosed or annotated or where I requested it and it came back, I never discussed it with another member of the human race.

So, you know, I don’t recall making such a request. I wasn’t tabulating when and whether I was making requests. I wasn’t thinking about this practice in the fraught way in which we are discussing it. But, certainly, I have nothing to do with the leaking of names that were deminimized in whatever process occurred –

MR. SCHIFF: And I just want to be clear that there’s no indication you ever made a request or that there necessarily was even a report on that subject. But I did want to get you on the record on that, because at the end of the day that’s sort of where this came from.

MS. POWER: Yes. I have no recollection of making a request related to General Flynn.

MR. SCHIFF: Okay. And I take it you never leaked Mr. Flynn’s name in any way, General Flynn’s name?

MS. POWER: I have never leaked classified information. I have never leaked names that have come back to me in this highly compartmented process. I have, in fact, never leaked, even unclassified information.

Samantha Power’s testimony was released last week. Unmasking an American citizen’s identity is not illegal if you have the proper clearance, but leaking that information is.

In 2017, Fox News reported that Samantha Power “was ‘unmasking’ at such a rapid pace in the final months of the Obama administration that she averaged more than one request for every working day in 2016 – and even sought information in the days leading up to President Trump’s inauguration.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, then-FBI Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan then-Director for National Intelligence James Clapper, and Obama’s Chief of Staff Denis McDonough we’re also on the list of officials who made unmasking requests. Like Powers, Biden also previously denied having any knowledge of the investigation or the Flynn unmasking, though he didn’t testify to this point under oath.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/05/14/did-obamas-u-n-ambassador-samantha-power-commit-perjury-regarding-the-flynn-unmasking-n391741

Neurosurgeon Says Face Masks Pose Serious Risk to Healthy People

 
Article by Megan Fox in "PJMedia":

Every Karen on Facebook is shaming her neighbors for not wearing a face mask. We are being told by governors that if we don’t wear them we are selfish, horrible human beings with no souls who want Grandma to die a horrible death. Police are tackling people who don’t wear them properly in the subway. Grocery stores are throwing maskless people out and denying them service. But now, there’s another doctor weighing in—besides Dr. Fauci, bonafide sex god and ruler of us all, who also said face masks are largely security theater and of no use to the healthy. Dr. Russell Blaylock, a neurologist, has written an editorial addressing healthy people wearing masks to protect themselves from COVID-19 and his advice is: don’t.

First, Blaylock says, there is no scientific evidence that it is effective against COVID-19 transmission. Pro-science people should care about this.

As for the scientific support for the use of face mask, a recent careful examination of the literature, in which 17 of the best studies were analyzed, concluded that, “ None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.”¹   Keep in mind, no studies have been done to demonstrate that either a cloth mask or the N95 mask has any effect on transmission of the COVID-19 virus. Any recommendations, therefore, have to be based on studies of influenza virus transmission. And, as you have seen, there is no conclusive evidence of their efficiency in controlling flu virus transmission.
It is also instructive to know that until recently, the CDC did not recommend wearing a face mask or covering of any kind, unless a person was known to be infected, that is, until recently. Non-infected people need not wear a mask. When a person has TB we have them wear a mask, not the entire community of non-infected. The recommendations by the CDC and the WHO are not based on any studies of this virus and have never been used to contain any other virus pandemic or epidemic in history.

Beyond the lack of scientific data to support wearing a mask as a deterrent to a virus, Blaylock says the more pressing concern is what can and will happen to the wearer.

Now that we have established that there is no scientific evidence necessitating the wearing of a face mask for prevention, are there dangers to wearing a face mask, especially for long periods? Several studies have indeed found significant problems with wearing such a mask. This can vary from headaches, to increased airway resistance, carbon dioxide accumulation, to hypoxia, all the way to serious life-threatening complications.

There are studies to back that claim up.

In one such study, researchers surveyed 212 healthcare workers (47 males and 165 females) asking about presence of headaches with N95 mask use, duration of the headaches, type of headaches and if the person had preexisting headaches.²
They found that about a third of the workers developed headaches with use of the mask, most had preexisting headaches that were worsened by the mask wearing, and 60% required pain medications for relief. As to the cause of the headaches, while straps and pressure from the mask could be causative, the bulk of the evidence points toward hypoxia and/or hypercapnia as the cause. That is, a reduction in blood oxygenation (hypoxia) or an elevation in blood C02 (hypercapnia). It is known that the N95 mask, if worn for hours, can reduce blood oxygenation as much as 20%, which can lead to a loss of consciousness, as happened to the hapless fellow driving around alone in his car wearing an N95 mask, causing him to pass out, and to crash his car and sustain injuries. I am sure that we have several cases of elderly individuals or any person with poor lung function passing out, hitting their head. This, of course, can lead to death.
A more recent study involving 159 healthcare workers aged 21 to 35 years of age found that 81% developed headaches from wearing a face mask.³   Some had pre-existing headaches that were precipitated by the masks. All felt like the headaches affected their work performance.

Blaylock says studies have also shown that face masks impair oxygen intake dramatically leading to serious problems.

The importance of these findings is that a drop in oxygen levels (hypoxia) is associated with an impairment in immunity. Studies have shown that hypoxia can inhibit the type of main immune cells used to fight viral infections called the CD4+ T-lymphocyte. This occurs because the hypoxia increases the level of a compound called hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), which inhibits T-lymphocytes and stimulates a powerful immune inhibitor cell called the Tregs. . This sets the stage for contracting any infection, including COVID-19 and making the consequences of that infection much graver. In essence, your mask may very well put you at an increased risk of infections and if so, having a much worse outcome.^5,6,7

In other words, if you wear a face mask and contract some sickness, you will not be able to fight it off as effectively as if you had normal blood oxygen levels. The mask could make you sicker. It could also create a “deadly cytokine storm” in some.

There is another danger to wearing these masks on a daily basis, especially if worn for several hours. When a person is infected with a respiratory virus, they will expel some of the virus with each breath. If they are wearing a mask, especially an N95 mask or other tightly fitting mask, they will be constantly rebreathing the viruses, raising the concentration of the virus in the lungs and the nasal passages. We know that people who have the worst reactions to the coronavirus have the highest concentrations of the virus early on. And this leads to the deadly cytokine storm in a selected number.

How about cancer, heart attacks and strokes? Blaylock says face masks make all of them worse.

People with cancer, especially if the cancer has spread, will be at a further risk from prolonged hypoxia as the cancer grows best in a microenvironment that is low in oxygen. Low oxygen also promotes inflammation which can promote the growth, invasion and spread of cancers.^8,9  Repeated episodes of hypoxia has been proposed as a significant factor in atherosclerosis and hence increases all cardiovascular (heart attacks) and cerebrovascular (strokes) diseases.¹⁰

If that’s not bad enough, how would you like COVID-19 in your brain?

It gets even more frightening. Newer evidence suggests that in some cases the virus can enter the brain. In most instances it enters the brain by way of the olfactory nerves (smell nerves), which connect directly with the area of the brain dealing with recent memory and memory consolidation. By wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain.

Why is it that we only listen to dire predictions from Dr. Fauci and we don’t consult other experts in the field of medicine? Is Anthony Fauci the only qualified person to talk about this virus?

Furthermore, if he is, he agrees with Dr. Blaylock that only sick people should wear them and he said so on 60 Minutes. So why aren’t we listening to him?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2020/05/14/neurosurgeon-says-face-masks-pose-serious-risk-to-healthy-people-n392431 

That 'Woman Governor' in Michigan Is at It Again

 
Article by Rick Moran in "PJMedia":

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is once again looking to demonize her political opponents, accusing them of being racists and Nazis for opposing her stay-at-home policies.

Demonstrators will gather at the state capitol building in Lansing on Thursday to show their displeasure at their governor’s arrogant, high-handed response to the coronavirus pandemic. There will be confederate flags present. There is also likely to be signage accusing her of being a Nazi.

Gretch the Wretch doesn’t like that.

NBCNews:

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Wednesday that armed protests at the state’s Capitol over her stay-at-home order have “been really political rallies where people come with Confederate flags and Nazi symbolism and calling for violence,” adding that if they continue, they could lengthen the state’s social distancing restrictions.

“I do think that the fact of the matter is these protests, in a perverse way, make it likelier that we’re going to have to stay in a stay-at-home posture,” Whitmer said on ABC’s “The View.”

Why? What medical, scientific, or logical reason would there be to lengthen the shutdown just because people are showing their dislike for your policies? Apparently, some demonstrators aren’t wearing masks and are not practicing social distancing. I’d like to see the models showing a spike in infections solely because of the protests.

And just who is “calling for violence”? Asking to make it legal to leave your house is not a declaration of war, governor.

But Whitmer’s hysteria is growing as evidenced by her increasingly incoherent ranting.

“This is not appropriate in a global pandemic, but it’s certainly not an exercise of democratic principles where we have free speech,” Whitmer said. “This is calls to violence. This is racist and misogynistic. And I ask that everyone who has a platform uses it to call on people to observe the best practices promulgated by the CDC and to stop encouraging this behavior, because it only makes it that much more precarious for us to try to re-engage our economy, which is what everyone says they want us to be able to do.”

Huh? It’s “not appropriate” to exercise free speech during a pandemic? It’s “racist and misogynistic” and “calls to violence” to peacefully gather and make one’s feelings known?

There are no “calls to violence” except in the fevered imaginations of panty-wetters like Whitmer who think that anyone who carries a gun should be locked up.

Asked about the threats, Whitmer said: “I would be not truthful if I said it did not bother me. It certainly does.” She noted that the Capitol building in Lansing “is one of the few capitols in the country” where people can come “bearing arms, and what we saw last week and anticipate seeing tomorrow is those arms being used to intimidate others, being brandished in a way to strike fear into others, and that is not legal activity.”

Whitmer said social distancing guidelines would be enforced at the protest.

How do you “brandish” a firearm “in a way to strike fear in others…”? The only “brandishing” being done is in the paranoid fantasies of Whitmer and other anti-gun advocates who see even unloaded firearms as a threat.

Whitmer is acting like a classic liberal, standing on the battlements waving a bloody shirt. She is using all the right code words to activate the left — “racist,” “misogynistic,” “calls to violence,” and “Nazis.” She can’t argue the merits of her orders so she’s left with calling those who disagree with her names.

Michigan will be open for business one way or another.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/14/whitmer-threatens-to-lengthen-lockdown-because-of-armed-protests-n391746

Flynn 'unmaskers' – here's what happened and what it means

Fred Fleitz analysis for Fox News

The list released Wednesday by acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell of top Obama officials who asked to “unmask” former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s name from NSA reporting is the latest bombshell in the story of how the Obama administration weaponized intelligence to undermine and destroy the incoming Trump administration.

But it also suggests this conspiracy began earlier and was much broader than previously believed.

By releasing this list, Grenell did a great service to his country to protect the principle of the peaceful transfer of power. But the intelligence community needs to release much more information to get to the bottom of this conspiracy. This should include information on the content of the NSA reports and which officials made unmasking requests of them.

Intelligence officials also need to provide a broader list of all unmasking requests made by senior Obama officials during this time period because it is likely that other Trump campaign and transition officials also were targeted.

Names of U.S. citizens mentioned in U.S. intelligence reports, often NSA communications intercepts, are blacked out (minimized) because, under U.S. law, America’s foreign intelligence services are normally not permitted to spy on U.S. citizens. Although senior U.S. officials are permitted to ask for the identity of a blacked-out name in an intelligence report (an unmasking request), such requests are unusual and the requestor must have a “need to know” the identity of the U.S. person to understand the foreign intelligence information or assess its importance.

When the request is approved, the unmasked identity is released only to the person who requested it, not to everyone who might have seen the original version of the report.

For example, during my time at the State Department from 2001-2006, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage made about 100 demasking requests. Then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton only made 10.

The list released today is of 39 top Obama officials who made 53 requests to unmask Lt. Gen. Flynn’s name from intelligence reports between election day (Nov. 8, 2016) and Jan. 31, 2017.  While many of the requesters were Obama political appointees who resigned by Jan. 20, 2017, some were career officers at CIA, the Pentagon and other agencies.

The most stunning thing about this list is that the vast majority of these requests were dated between Dec. 14 and 16, which was before Flynn’s Dec. 29 phone call to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. An NSA intercept of this phone call was the basis of the Jan. 24, 2017, FBI interview with Flynn when two FBI agents used this intercept to entrap Flynn into lying about the call.

FBI Director James Comey broke protocol by not informing White House lawyers that he planned to send FBI agents to meet with Flynn. The FBI agents discouraged Flynn from having a lawyer present and didn’t read him anything like the Miranda warning.

Flynn was targeted for unmasking at least two weeks before the Dec. 29 phone call. ...  This may indicate Flynn and other Trump transition officials were being targeted for unmasking as part of a fishing expedition to find dirt on them to undermine Trump’s presidency. 

Flynn did not make any phone calls during this period to Kisylak until Dec. 22, 2016. He did meet with Kislyak on Dec. 1 at Trump Tower in New York. This may mean the unmasked mid-December intelligence that mentioned Flynn could have been a phone conversation by Kislyak with someone else. It also could have involved some matter involving Flynn, possibly with another country.

This means Flynn was targeted for unmasking at least two weeks before the Dec. 29 phone call and the vast majority of these unmasking requests did not include intercepted conversations of Flynn having allegedly inappropriate conversations with Kislyak. This may indicate Flynn and other Trump transition officials were being targeted for unmasking as part of a fishing expedition to find dirt on them to undermine Trump’s presidency.

In addition, there were only seven unmasking requests by seven officials after the Dec. 29 Flynn-Kislyak phone call – by Vice President Biden, then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Obama Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and other career officials. Since the information in this intercept leaked to the press, these seven officials are suspects for this criminal act.

Other significant observations: U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power made the most unmasking requests for Flynn’s name – seven. Clapper made three. No one else made more than two.  Power, who reportedly made an astounding 260 demasking requests during her time as U.N. ambassador, testified in 2017 that most of these requests were made in her name but she did not request this information. I believe Power and assume someone at the NSC, who was not authorized access to demasking information, made these requests in her name. The intelligence community needs to disclose who this person was.

Also interesting is the cluster of requests to demask Flynn’s name by Biden and others between Jan. 7 and Jan. 12, 2017, and the timing of these requests.

On Jan. 5, Biden, Comey, Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates met with Obama. In the meeting, Obama appeared to direct these officials to withhold Russia-related intelligence from the incoming Trump administration.

The next day, President-elect Trump received a misleading and incomplete briefing on the fraudulent Steele Dossier and Russian meddling in the 2016 election by Clapper, Comey, Brennan, and NSA Director Mike Rogers.

Over the next few days, there were seven high-level requests for Flynn’s name to be unmasked from NSA reporting. My guess is that this was not a coincidence and that a single intelligence official or NSC staff member suggested that these senior officials ask to see this information as part of a larger effort to target Flynn. The intelligence report in question probably concerned Flynn’s Dec. 29 phone call with Kislyak and would be used to entrap Flynn by the FBI on Jan. 24.

The lists of requesters to unmask Flynn’s name from intelligence reports after the 2016 election is not a smoking gun, but it does strongly suggest some coordinated effort by senior Obama officials to get target Flynn and undermine the incoming Trump administration.

Senator Rand Paul Reacts to Obama Officials Unmasking and Leaking Trump Transition Team Communications

A few points on the unmasking before Rand Paul response.  First, the release today is only what the Obama team did regarding unmasking General Flynn.  As Devin Nunes previously outlined, there are many more Trump transition team members who were unmasked as the Obama team conducted surveillance on the incoming administration.

Second, the NSA “reports” are related to actual transcripts, emails and text messages of communication; not just various intelligence interpretations of those communications.

As Senator Rand Paul shares, the effort of the Obama and Biden administration to unmask their political opposition during the transition; and then use widespread distribution and leaks to the media to push a specific one-sided view; is the weaponization of the intelligence apparatus to target political opposition.  That’s the major issue:

Again, a reminder, these reports surround only NSA intercepts. Simultaneous to this there was an ongoing FBI counterintelligence operation using FISA surveillance (Carter Page) and non-fisa targeted FBI surveillance of Michael Flynn.

More Than 2/3 Of Americans Blame China For Wuhan Virus

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist

A new survey unveiled Wednesday reveals more than two-thirds of Americans blame China for the global pandemic over the novel Wuhan coronavirus.

The poll, conducted by the non-profit human rights organization Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) with YouGov, also show roughly two-thirds of the public seeing China as an adversarial competitor amid the health crisis. Only 6 percent reported viewing China as an ally.

Seventy-one percent say China should be “penalized” for its role in epidemic, with 41 percent of this subgroup believing there should be some kind of international sanctions, 33 percent supporting additional tariffs on Chinese goods, and 32 percent wanting the United States to refuse interest on Chinese-held federal bonds.

“We sensed a rising skepticism of China’s claims regarding coronavirus, but it wasn’t until this poll that we saw the full extent by which a majority of Americans directly blame the Chinese government,” said VOC executive director Marion Smith. “The Chinese Communist Party’s lack of transparency, lapses in communication, and spread of misinformation rapidly escalated the spread of the virus and hindered preventative measures on a global scale.”

Since the start of the epidemic that international government officials say originated from a Wuhan lab, China has refused to act in good faith after failing to control the initial outbreak while suppressing whistleblowers raising the alarm over the virus’ severity.

Once the virus inevitably escaped China, the communist regime has lied about every aspect of the new disease, from underreporting cases to hiding critical information from global public health officials scrambling to treat the rapidly spreading pathogen. With a strong grip on the World Health Organization (WHO), the communist regime even coerced the world’s supposed premier public health institution into misleading the globe over how the virus spreads.

As of Tuesday evening, more than 4.2 million infections have been reported worldwide with nearly 300,000 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, and that’s excluding the bulk of unreported cases from the East Asian superpower where the virus originated.

China’s conduct with the complicit WHO has pushed tensions between Washington and Beijing to new heights. Senate lawmakers launched a probe into China’s actions, while President Donald Trump has halted federal funding for the global health institution. House Republicans have also called for an investigation into China and the WHO’s response to the crisis.

President Trump to visit Lehigh Valley Thursday with focus on medical, COVID-19 testing stockpiles

UPPER MACUNGIE, Pennsylvania (WPVI) -- President Donald Trump will visit the battleground state of Pennsylvania to tour a distribution center of medical and surgical products for healthcare facilities, including personal protective equipment in the fight against the coronavirus.

Trump's visit Thursday is to a warehouse of Virginia-based Owens and Minor in suburban Allentown.


The Trump administration is preparing a new nationwide initiative to bolster U.S. manufacturing of critical medical supplies like N95 masks and ventilators that have been in dangerously short supply, senior administration officials tell ABC News.

Under the effort, the Health and Human Services Department would take the lead on monitoring hospital shelves and ordering enough supplies to last 90 days.
 The focus would be minimizing reliance on production overseas by keeping production lines at U.S. factories "warm."
 Trump's visit also comes on the heels of remarks on Twitter where he expressed dissatisfaction in Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's handling of reopening the state.

https://6abc.com/politics/trump-to-visit-lehigh-valley-thursday/6181456/

Judge Sullivan’s Bad Judgment

Can Flynn be sentenced when prosecutors say there was no crime?

by The Editorial Board of Wall Street Journal

If the prosecution and defense both want to drop a case, can a federal judge refuse and sentence the defendant anyway? The easy call should be no, which makes all the more bizarre federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision Tuesday to invite outside briefs in the Michael Flynn case.

Judge Sullivan refused to grant the Justice Department’s request to drop the prosecution, and thus Mr. Flynn’s guilty plea, after Justice discovered that exculpatory evidence had been denied to the defense. The judge invited comment from people outside the case, which amounts to the de facto outsourcing of the prosecution to partisan legal analysts who want Mr. Flynn to hang because he worked for President Trump. 

One such band calls itself the Watergate Prosecutors, who include Nick Akerman. When Donald Trump Jr. released emails relating to a meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower, Mr. Akerman declared him guilty of “outright treason.” As special counsel Robert Mueller’s report showed, that Trump Tower meeting amounted to nothing. 

Judge Sullivan doesn’t normally ask others to write his decisions, so what’s the point in this case? This isn’t a Supreme Court argument seeking competing points of view. The competition here is between defense and prosecution, and they both now agree.

This is a criminal case subject to normal rules of evidence that were clearly violated by Mr. Mueller’s prosecutorial team. Our friends at the New York Sun speculate that Judge Sullivan may want to keep the prosecution going for months so a Biden Justice Department could revive it. We hope that’s wrong, though we do recall that Judge Sullivan some months back in open court asked prosecutors if Mr. Flynn might have been charged with “treason.”

One issue here is the role of a judge in the U.S. system, which is to adjudicate cases and controversies, not to supplant the prosecutorial duty of the executive branch. There’s also the matter of simple fairness. Mr. Flynn has endured three years of public trial because he was caught up in the Russia collusion allegations that turned out to be based on nothing more than Russian disinformation.

Justice now says Mr. Flynn’s statements to the FBI weren’t criminal because the interview lacked any investigative legal basis, and in any case the agents at the time said they didn’t believe he was lying. Is it serving the cause of justice to keep Mr. Flynn hanging for many more months so partisan op-ed writers can influence Judge Sullivan’s thinking?

Judge Sullivan’s judgment is all the more disappointing because he has enjoyed a reputation for holding prosecutors accountable for their obligation to turn over Brady material—evidence that could be exculpatory—to the defense. If Judge Sullivan insists on Mr. Flynn’s continued prosecution even as prosecutors conclude the facts don’t support it, he will likely to be overturned on appeal. 

The path to serving justice for Mr. Flynn and maintaining Judge Sullivan’s reputation for holding prosecutors accountable all point to a ruling that drops all charges against Mr. Flynn—with prejudice, so this travesty of a case is ended once and for all.

Predicted Blue Wave Crashes In Wisconsin, California Special Elections

The media has tried to convince voters of Trump's failure for many years, but have thus far been unable to do so. Tuesday's special elections show we should hold off on the "Blue Wave" and "Trump can't win" narratives.

Mollie Hemingway reporting for The Federalist

It was just two days ago that ABC News’ election forecaster FiveThirtyEight suggested “Two Special Elections On Tuesday Could Hint At Another Blue Wave In 2020.”

The case made by Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich was simple: Supposedly Americans strongly prefer Biden and Democrats over Trump and Republicans, and they are particularly upset with Trump and other Republicans’ attempts to reopen the country as the global Coronavirus pandemic rages.

“On Tuesday, we’ll get a taste of whether Democrats’ electoral advantage on paper will hold up in practice, as California and Wisconsin hold special elections for two vacant congressional seats. The main event is in the California 25th Congressional District, a bellwether seat in the north Los Angeles suburbs, where both parties see a chance to add to their ranks in the House. But if Democrats are also competitive in the quickly reddening, rural Wisconsin 7th Congressional District, it could signal another blue wave in the fall,” they argued.

The contest in California’s 25th Congressional District was an open battle for a seat vacated by Katie Hill after the married representative got in trouble with Democratic leadership for intimate relations with some of her staff members. The House had just passed rules forbidding such relationships. She won her seat by nine points in 2018 in a district Hillary Clinton won by seven points. Wisconsin’s blue collar-heavy 7th Congressional District went for Obama by eight points in 2008, but now favors Republicans such as Trump. Trump won the district by some 20 points in 2016, when Republican Sean Duffy won re-election with 62 percent of the vote. Even as a very popular incumbent, Duffy’s support ticked down to 60 percent in 2018. The FiveThirtyEight fellas reminded readers that Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin lost the district by five points in 2018, and Democrat-favored Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice-elect Jill Karofsky lost it by 6 points last month. Suspecting a Republican victory might be eked out, they said to pay special attention to margins.

“Still, pay attention to the final margin, both here and in California. When a party consistently overperforms its usual partisan baseline in special elections, it bodes well for that party in the general election as well. So even a narrow loss by [Democrat Tricia] Zunker, if paired with a comfortable [Democrat Christy] Smith win, would add to the evidence that another Democratic wave is building.”

Well, the results are in and Republicans won both seats. And not by small margins. In Wisconsin, Republican Tom Tiffany beat Zunker by 14.4 points.

In California, with some precincts still reporting, Mike Garcia is currently winning his election by 12 points. According to Dave Wasserman, it’s the first time the GOP has picked up a seat in the state since 1998.

As Alex Berenson, a skeptic of the government-mandated economic shutdown, asked, “But Democrats are the party of lockdowns, and voters love lockdowns, amirite?”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, similarly tweeted:

How do we jibe these results with the pre-election media spin? There are a few factors to look at. The most obvious one is that members of the Resistance– whether official Democrat Party leaders or the unofficial ones who dominate legacy media — are hoping that Trump’s handling of the global pandemic can be spun into a Trump-specific “Katrina” debacle. They’ve been trying to convince sufficient voters of Trump’s failure for many years, but have thus far been unable to do so.

The media spin against Trump’s handling of the global pandemic is not data-driven or reality-based so much as emotive. The media could be harshly critical of Democrat New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose decisions regarding public transportation and nursing homes wreaked tragic results in his state. Instead, they have uniformly praised him. After criticizing Trump for overreacting to the coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China, by enacting a travel ban, they then said he didn’t do enough. Their latest spin is that he is prioritizing the private sector too much by encouraging a reopening of the economy. Whatever the ever-changing charge, the topline argument remains the same. Trump’s handling is so poor, they say, that many Republicans will suffer in November.

What’s weird about this narrative is that the underlying data do not support it. Trump’s approval during this unrelenting media assault has not gone up, but neither has it gone down. And he remains more popular than Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The promised Blue Wave special election victories turned instead into Republican victories.

Privately, all this narrative spin in the face of facts might relate to what many people know but are worried about admitting publicly. Democrats have a lot going for them headed into November — legacy media support being a huge structural advantage worth countless dollars and voters — but they’re holding a weak hand with their nominee Biden and know that they’re in trouble. Since Trump won, Democratic strategists and other anti-Trump activists have known that the key to preventing a Trump re-election is to peel off enough Republican and independent voters to hand a Democrat a victory.

The Russia collusion hoax didn’t do it, not even with all the resources and support given to the Democrats working in the Robert Mueller Special Counsel probe. The Ukraine impeachment effort was so silly and such a waste of valuable time that the only Republican in the country to fall for it was the emotionally invested NeverTrump senator Sen. Mitt Romney, R-UT. For years, Democratic strategists inside and outside the media have worried that a strong economy would help Trump win re-election. The global pandemic may harm that advantage, they may have reasonably surmised.

The media and others may be hysterical right now, though, because even at the pinnacle of their heightened anti-Trump offensive, polls show him doing fine.

Take a CNN poll that just came out, supposedly showing Biden beating Trump by five points. It is being spun, of course, as excellent news for Biden. But Biden was supposedly trouncing Trump by as much as 11 points in recent months, according to the same CNN polling. Since CNN last polled, it and other media outlets have done nothing but run pieces claiming Trump is a lunatic forcing innocent Americans to ingest bleach. And yet his standing improves? Even worse for Democrats, the CNN poll shows Trump doing well in key battle ground states.

Surely in the midst of this round-the-clock negative coverage of Trump, pollsters should be able to find double digit leads like the ones they put forth last year. In late October, NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll had Biden up 9, ABC News/Washington Post had him up by 17, and Fox News claimed he would beat Trump by 12 points. Why isn’t Biden doing better than that in the midst of the media’s uniform criticism of his opponent?

Democrats may be in trouble. Their polls show Biden slipping, he hasn’t even begun to experience the rigors of a legitimate campaign, and Democrats can’t easily replace Biden so long as Bernie Sanders and his supporters continue to exist. And all while even CNN admits that Trump’s 49 percent job approval is “matching the highest it’s ever been” and betting markets are favoring Trumpso much that Axios was recently forced to admit it.

None of this is to say that there won’t be a Blue Wave on election day or that Biden won’t win. We’ll have a poll on election day, just like we had polls yesterday in California and Wisconsin. We’ll see what happens. What we do know is that if the media were telling an even remotely accurate story about the political situation thus far, there is no way those two Republicans would have won. So let’s hold off on the “Blue Wave” and “Trump can’t win” narratives.

And as for the talking point that Tuesday’s results would be a sign of what’s to come for Democrats, Republicans may hope so.

Don’t Shrug at Obama’s Michael Flynn Scandal

It sure seems like an unconscionable attempt 
to take out a political enemy with state power.

by Kyle Smith at National Review 

How would President Obama be reacting to the collapse of 

the case against Michael Flynn if Flynn were a black teen?

Picture a racist white FBI agent who hates a black student and became enraged when that teen publicly insulted one of the agent’s close friends. Say the FBI sends two guys over to the teen’s house, claiming it suspects him of being involved in drug trafficking, and starts asking the kid questions in hopes that the kid will lie.

Suppose the FBI does not read the kid his rights before questioning him. Suppose the FBI discourages the kid from hiring a lawyer and tells the kid its investigation is friendly, not an effort to incriminate him. Suppose further that the FBI, after grilling the kid, still doesn’t think he lied (but merely that he forgot details of things he’d been asked about). Suppose the FBI then dragged out the case so long that the kid rang up $5 million in legal bills, then threatened to arrest the kid’s mother. Suppose the FBI withheld exculpatory evidence from the kid’s lawyers and agreed to leave the kid’s mother alone if he pleaded guilty — but didn’t tell the judge about this side deal.

If the teen finally pleaded guilty to a single count of making false statements, would Obama then say, “Aha! Justice is served! The kid admits being guilty!”? If the prosecutors, years later, finally dropped the case against the kid, would Obama say, “You begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk” because he thought the kid deserved everything that had happened to him?

All of the above is pretty much exactly what happened to Michael Flynn. Except the team that went after Michael Flynn didn’t hate him because of racial difference; they hated him because of political difference. The personal insult Flynn delivered was when he publicly went after Hillary Clinton, leading the cries to “Lock her up” at the Republican National Convention. The FBI did indeed fail to advise Flynn that they were targeting him rather than seeking information about phone calls with the Russian ambassador that they had already listened to. They discouraged him from having a lawyer present and didn’t read him anything like the Miranda warning. They did indeed pour so much trouble on Flynn that he amassed some $5 million in legal bills (and had to put his house up for sale). They didn’t initially think that he had lied, but merely had a faulty memory. Instead of threatening his mother, the FBI threatened to indict his son, and someone leaked this to the media so that Flynn’s son’s reputation would be damaged in any event. And the FBI did indeed withhold exculpatory evidence from Flynn’s lawyers.

The effort to nail Flynn fell under the heading of counterintelligence rather than a criminal case, but either way the state must have a legitimate suspicion of underlying wrongdoing before it can start harassing someone. The Obama administration did not have a legitimate basis for going after Flynn, and it’s obvious they didn’t because of two words that are the political equivalent of “That’s what she said” — an old punchline called the Logan Act.

No one has ever been convicted under the Logan Act because the Logan Act is pure bushwa. Everyone in politics knows this. Everyone who merely follows politics from the outside knows this. I know this, and I never spent a day in law school. Do you seriously think lawyer and former FBI director James Comey didn’t know this, or former constitutional law lecturer and president Barack Obama didn’t know this? The discussion between the two of them in the White House on January 5, 2017, about going after Flynn under the Logan Act because he talked to the Russian ambassador does not pass the laugh test. When someone says, “Let’s indict someone under the Logan Act,” he might as well be saying, “Let’s indict someone under the Abracadabra Act.” If the Logan Act were a functioning law, someone would have been convicted under it at some point in the 200 years since it was passed. And Jane Fonda, Dennis Rodman, Jimmy Carter, and John Kerry all would have been busted under it. Moreover, all of these people, unlike Michael Flynn, were not the incoming national-security adviser whose job it is to do things like talk to the Russian ambassador. Constitutional-law professor Jonathan Turley notes, “The use of the Logan Act against the incoming national security adviser would have been not only patently unconstitutional but positively ludicrous.”

A country that respects “the rule of law” has to respect the rule of having a good reason to go after somebody. If there’s no legitimate cause to suspect the target of anything, the state could come after anybody for any reason — because an investigator is racist, sexist, hates Latinos, hates gays, or just has a personal vendetta. The “rule of law” is meaningless if the state sets about nailing somebody on a phony pretext, hoping that the process of investigation will cause some crime such as perjury or obstruction to occur. It’s a terrible affront to “the rule of law” when the law is misused to target an innocent black teenager. But the affront is much worse when it’s a high-ranking public official who gets targeted. The attack on Flynn was an attempt to delegitimize and undercut the lawfully elected Trump administration to aid the prospects of the Democratic Party. This attempt was extremely successful; the Democrats’ media arm, otherwise known as the media, spent nearly three years promoting the bogus theory that the administration and/or Trump himself had carried out illegal acts of collusion with the Russians.

Our political press is remarkably incurious about tracing the chain of motives when it comes to questionable doings by Democrats, but suspecting Obama of being behind the persecution of Michael Flynn is pretty easy when you remember the backstory of these two men’s relationship. Flynn, a registered Democrat, had worked for President Obama as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency for two years, Obama fired him, then Flynn publicly shamed Obama by blasting his ISIS strategy and saying his Iran Deal was terrible. Recall that Obama ran the tightest ship of any president in modern history, demanding and receiving the utmost level of loyalty: Essentially no major leakers damaged his presidency. No one close to him ever published a tell-all memoir undermining him. Then Flynn came along. Obama must have been incensed to see his former official tearing him apart on Fox News, then going full MAGA with his histrionics at the Republican convention, where Flynn was the only major Obama-administration turncoat to speak on Trump’s behalf, and gave perhaps the nastiest speech of the entire affair.

It irked Obama that Flynn might wind up on top, with a plum position in the Trump administration. But Obama couldn’t undermine Flynn by starting a PR campaign against him, because the position of national-security adviser doesn’t require cabinet confirmation. So Obama tried to talk Trump out of hiring Flynn. It must have been painful for Obama to beg for a favor from his worst enemy in order to sabotage another enemy, so he couched the request as friendly advice, as though Obama had any friendly feelings toward Trump. When this failed, Obama’s mind perhaps turned to finding a backdoor means of taking out Flynn.

Did Obama break any laws? Maybe not. Was he part of an unconscionable effort to weaponize the police powers of the state against a political enemy? It sure looks that way. How else do you explain that Comey and Obama just casually discussed using the obviously phony pretext of the Logan Act for going after Flynn in the January 5, 2017, meeting while Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general, sat there in amazement that her own supposed underling, Comey, would cook up something so obviously bogus and politically explosive as this case without telling her?

Put it this way: Knowing of Obama’s interest in these matters, is it plausible that the FBI acted as it did without his approval? If the media were one-tenth as interested in Obama scandals as they are in those relating to Trump, it would be shouting from the rooftops that the real Russia-collusion scandal was the effort to gin up a fake scandal to either damage Trump politically or take him out. As it is, most of the media’s response to the Flynn-Obama debacle has been boredom, shrugging and whataboutism: As Brian Stelter groused on CNN, right-wingers are “treating the Michael Flynn story like it’s a bigger deal than the deaths of 2,000 Americans a day.” You’d think someone who works at a 24/7 media company would understand that more than one story can be hugely important.

“It’s Much Worse Than This” – The Entire Trump Transition Was Under Surveillance

First things first: ♦Understand Obama’s Surveillance Operation HERE.  ♦Michael Flynn wasn’t under a FISA (Title-1) HERE …. that’s the background.

Devin Nunes appears with Lou Dobbs to discuss the recent list of Obama-era officials who unmasked NSA intercepts of Michael Flynn talking to foreign government officials.  Rep. Nunes reminds the audience that Flynn is only one person within a much larger group of Trump transition team members who were under surveillance by Team Obama.

March 27, 2017, then House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Devin Nunes, held a brief press conference and stated he was provided intelligence reports brought to him by unnamed sources including ‘significant information’ about President-Elect Trump and his transition team.

These reports included unmaskings of President Trump campaign officials; and included Donald Trump himself…. You know what that means:

1.) …”On numerous occasions the [Obama] intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.”

2.) “Details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration; details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”

3.) “Third, I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition members were unmasked.”

4.) “Fourth and finally, I want to be clear; none of this surveillance was related to Russia, or the investigation of Russian activities, or of the Trump team.

“The House Intelligence Committee will thoroughly investigate surveillance and its subsequent dissemination, to determine a few things here that I want to read off:”

• “Who was aware of it?”
• “Why it was not disclosed to congress?”
• “Who requested and authorized the additional unmasking?”
• “Whether anyone directed the intelligence community to focus on Trump associates?”
• “And whether any laws, regulations or procedures were violated?”

“I have asked the Directors of the FBI, NSA and CIA to expeditiously comply with my March 15th letter -that you all received a couple of weeks ago- and to provide a full account of these surveillance activities.”