A Petty Barack Obama Refuses to Participate in Unveiling of Official White House Portrait

Article by Matt Margolis in "PJMedia":

The unveiling of presidents’ official White House portraits by their successor has been a long-held tradition—until now. Barack Obama is refusing to participate in the ceremony for the unveiling of his portrait, NBC News has learned.

“Republican presidents have done it for Democratic presidents, and vice versa,” noted NBC News. “Even when one of them ascended to the White House by defeating or sharply criticizing the other.”

True enough—Barack Obama hosted the ceremony of the unveiling of George W. Bush’s official White House portrait, despite Obama ascending to the office by being a harsh critic of the 43rd president. George W. Bush similarly hosted the ceremony of Clinton’s portrait unveiling. Bush had been a critic of Clinton’s during the 2000 campaign, promising to restore honor and dignity to the office, sullied by Clinton’s sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky. Bill Clinton hosted the ceremony for George H.W. Bush, whom he’d defeated in the 1992 election.

Obama has also broken the custom of refusing to criticize his successor publicly. His pride, however, is too big for him to participate in the ceremony during Trump’s tenure in the White House—a continuation of the rank partisanship espoused by Obama during his presidency.

Barack Obama has “no interest in participating in the post-presidency rite of passage” as Trump is in office, according to people familiar with the matter.

Obama’s involvement in the spying on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has recently come under intense scrutiny after it was revealed that he was personally aware of wiretaps of General Mike Flynn’s phone conversations. The Obama administration also initiated an investigation of alleged Trump-Russia collusion despite not having any empirical evidence that any collusion existed.

President Trump has been harshly critical of Obama, most recently calling for him to testify about his involvement is Spygate. On Monday, Trump called Obama “one of the worst Presidents in the history of our country,” an assessment that fact-checks as true.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/05/19/a-petty-barack-obama-refuses-to-participate-in-unveiling-of-official-white-house-portrait-n406965 

Media Must Report Truth Of Anti-Trump Spy Operation Before It’s Too Late For Them

As facts about the Obama administration's spying and leaking are spilling out, media have a brief window of opportunity to salvage some credibility.

Mollie Hemingway reporting for The Federalist

As new details emerge about the Obama administration’s broad spying-and-leaking campaign against the incoming Trump administration, reporters have a choice to make about whether to cover this story honestly, at long last. There is a brief window of time afforded the media to get the story right. They should take advantage of it.

Journalist Lee Smith already noted the seriousness of the problem facing legacy media after the implosion of the Russia collusion conspiracy theory they peddled. “Americans still want and need accurate information on which to base their decisions about their own lives and the path that the country should take. But neither the legacy media nor the expert class it sustains is likely to survive the post-dossier era in any recognizable form,” he wrote. “For them, Russiagate is an extinction level event.”

Many of our supposedly smart media elites are dinosaurs who are completely unaware of the asteroid headed right to them. Instead, they are doing their part in an all-hands-on-deck effort to continue pushing out Democratic talking points that got them into the mess. This week, that meant they regurgitated the Democratic claim that the Obama administration’s spying and leaking was “normal” and that to be concerned about it is nothing more than a “distraction.”

The Media Are in Too Deep

The less deft at pushing out the partisan talking point include MSNBC’s Brian Williams, who literally asked implicated former CIA chief John Brennan if he could “once and for all” explain to people who had heard about the scandal despite his corporation’s best efforts why it was no big deal. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo complained that a biased NBC News piece that itself attempted to wave away the scandal was not biased enough for his liking. The Daily Beast’s Sam Stein begged Axios not to cover the issue lest it help Trump, in the way that covering Hillary Clinton’s email scandal may have helped Trump.

Susan Glasser at the New Yorker suggested that acknowledging the Obama administration’s recorded attempts to undermine a duly elected administration through spying and leaking was a form of political agitprop. Her husband Peter Baker over at the New York Times took the same line but went with the authoritative gaslighting approach in which he suggested it was odd that Trump would want to correct the false narrative that he was a traitor to his country and replace it with the truth that he was the victim of a coordinated attack to spy on his campaign, criminally leak against him, and force him out of office. CNN’s Jake Tapper, a journalist implicated in one of the early Russia hoax stories, reported for duty to spread this partisan talking point as well.

Many of these people are simply in too deep. They’re not giving back the awards they got for peddling the false story uncritically. To do so is a level of honesty they are not currently capable of. But not everyone needs to follow them. For liberal media who want to be honest, there is plenty of ground between shouting “OBAMAGATE!” in all caps and denying the spying and leaking ever happened.

Honest Reporting Could Help Trump — and Journalism

The big problem with covering the story honestly is what Stein himself pointed out — it might help Trump and Republicans. But they should look to left-wing journalists who were able to put aside their genuine dislike of the Orange Bad Man and his co-partisans and retain their journalistic integrity. These brave reporters, including Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Tracey, managed to buck in-group journalistic and political pressure to report accurately about the political scandal.

Among the few journalists on the right who covered these issues well, there were many who weren’t particularly fond of Trump. Whether left or right or otherwise, skepticism of the intelligence community helped these reporters, certainly, but only in that they have been consistently skeptical across multiple administrations. These reporters are honest enough to say that political spying and criminal political leaking is not what our intelligence agencies should have been doing. This should not even be a debate.

A rather obvious intimidation campaign has been launched against any reporter who breaks with the groupthink on whether it’s a scandal (or even just a legitimate news story!) to spy and leak falsehoods against political opponents. The Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani alleged that merely reporting on the existence of public documents related to the spying and leaking campaign, as opposed to ignoring them, meant that CBS’ Catherine Herridge was problematic. No one could defend the journalistic merits of killing such an explosive story. These attacks on Herridge — which sadly did not result in a strong defense from her employer or colleagues — are chin music directed at everyone else who might be courageous enough to step out of the groupthink zone.

The media should know, however, that journalism’s trashed reputation is not going to go away by further suppressing the story. They’re not going to dig themselves out of their self-dug hole by taking swings at Herridge or other courageous reporters with their shovels.

It’s not even a difficult question to answer whether this story is newsworthy, but it does require a bit of courage. Journalists aren’t known for their courage so much as their belief that there is safety in crowds. Yet the world is eager to see if there are many real journalists left. No, not the types of journalists who give each other awards for peddling false narratives that the average American can see right through. But real journalists who can think critically when a spy chief or operative comes to them with a ludicrous claim about prostitutes and videotaped urination in a Moscow hotel or Jeff Sessions being a Russian spy or the key to the 2016 election result involving subliterate Facebook memes. Far too many journalists failed that test in recent years. But they have another opportunity to get it right.

Reporters are clearly kowtowing to Democrats in fear that if they win in 2020, they’ll act with vengeance against any reporter who failed to follow their dictates. It is in this light that the courage of the Taibbis and Greenwalds should be particularly noted.

Taibbi’s piece in recent days — “Democrats Have Abandoned Civil Liberties: The Blue Party’s Trump-era Embrace of Authoritarianism Isn’t Just Wrong, it’s a Fatal Political Mistake” — is worth a careful read. Vindictive punishment from Democrats is a legitimate concern, but these reporters should consider the very real possibility that the media’s obvious political campaign against Trump and Republicans will fail in 2020. Even as a face-saving measure, reporting honestly on this story could help them retain their positions from which to attack Trump and their hold on their jobs covering the next term.

The Truth Is Coming Out

It was one thing for reporters to stick with the false narrative through the disappointing conclusion of the Mueller special counsel report, in which no evidence of any American colluding with Russia could be found. They were able to make it through the embarrassing results of that report and the embarrassing performance of Mueller in the hearing about the report and were never confronted with a need for a mea culpa.

But if reporters think they can continue to ignore the very real concerns about politicization of intelligence agencies under Obama, or gaslight Americans by claiming such spying and leaking is normal and even good, they should wake up.

Unlike the Russia collusion fiction that was maintained by the Obama administration, holdouts in the Trump administration, and finally the Mueller special counsel posse, the spying and leaking campaign story is coming out with facts. Declassifications, court documents, and investigative reports have all shown the falsehood of the Russia collusion hoax and the truth of the spying scandal. More could be coming.

It was one thing to spin the Russia collusion hoax during a time of mass elite freakout. But now everyone knows it was false. The truth is an existential threat to journalists, which is why the more activist among them are scrambling to kill the story and paint it as a distraction. These reporters won book contracts, TV gigs, promotions, and political success by peddling the hoax. They truly can’t be honest about it.

But others who weren’t so complicit have a shot here. There is no getting out of this easy, so if there are any reporters who care about their reputation, much less the truth, they should get on the side of truth now.

The 40th Anniversary of the Mount St. Helens

How You Can Help Roll Back The Coronavirus Police State

Not everyone seething about the ongoing abuses by local potentates is going to file a lawsuit, but everyone can contribute to a shift in the national mood.

by Molly McCann at The Federalist

Last week, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy released a three-minute video in which he vigorously ranted against the ongoing lockdowns. Portnoy’s basic point was that the goalposts have shifted from “flatten the curve” to “find a cure.” He pointed out, in blunt and colorful language, that economic suicide in pursuit of the latter goal is insanity. His video went viral.

Portnoy is not a political figure. His anger over the economic crisis and sense that, having done our best to slow the spread, we have the right to take a risk to survive, resonates with a lot of normal people.

One of Portnoy’s repeated questions throughout the video was, “When did this happen?” When did we go from flattening the curve to tanking our economy, our livelihoods, and our futures? (Language warning in the video below.)

Last night on Tucker Carlson, Andrew Napolitano offered a related reflection when he described a free state as “one where the laws are written to uphold personal liberties,” while the definition of a police state is “one where the laws are written, legitimately or not, to uphold what the government wants.” He went on to note that there has been a transition in America that has not been gradual: “In a period of six weeks we have gone from a free state . . . to a police state.”

Alarming as it is, Napolitano is right. While COVID-19 is an obviously serious and frightening virus, our leaders (and many fellow Americans) seem oblivious to the destruction we are self-inflicting on our economy and on millions of American lives.

The bureaucrats and local would-be dictators concocting their various plans to protect us all from each other have to be relieved of their power or the police state will be permanent. So how did we get here, and how do we reclaim our liberty and the right to take risks to survive?

We got here because, as a nation, we agreed to the lockdowns in the first place. In late March and early April, as the virus was spreading in densely populated American cities and horror stories were pouring out of Lombardy, Italy, the mood among Americans shifted. Lockdowns started in coastal states where the threat felt most immediate, and swept the nation shortly thereafter.

The lockdowns happened because the national mood favored the lockdowns. Politicians knew they could call on their emergency powers and impose the restrictions because they would not meet resistance. Collectively, we consented.

Do not underestimate the power of a national mood. Wars have been won and lost based not on the military might of a nation so much as the will of its people to either prevail or to fold.

Nowhere is the spirit of a people more a force to be reckoned with than in America, where freedom and individual autonomy are part of our DNA. This invisible force is a very real influence in politics, and many constitutional abuses have never been attempted over the years, not because they were unconstitutional, but because politicians and leaders understood the actions would not be tolerated. In some sense, we are free because we choose to be free.

We did consent to the lockdowns and now are suffering under the insanity that has flowed from them—economic suicide and petty local laws that serve no purpose other than to nanny us into submission. So how do we muscle out of our bind? How do we return from the police state we have become to the land of liberty that we enjoyed a mere three months ago?

One answer is certainly that we must enforce our constitutional rights by challenging the myriad overreaches in court. That is a critically important effort and just the type of pushback I have applauded for many weeks now. But, in tandem to that effort, and really prior to it, we have to shift the mood again.

Not everyone seething about the ongoing abuses by local potentates is going to file a lawsuit, but everyone can contribute to a shift in the national mood. When people honestly express to others their opposition to continued lockdowns, the sentiment spreads and the “mood” strengthens.

Portnoy’s video went viral not just because he is a popular guy; it went viral because it gave voice to people who weren’t sure their gut reactions were “acceptable” and to people who felt encouraged by seeing someone with whom they identified step up and voice opposition.

We all need to step up and speak out. Everyone has a zone of influence, large or small, and when you speak, you add to a critical growing momentum.

We lose freedom ultimately because we let bad people take it from us. Freedom is not taken by force only; it is often taken slowly and quietly, with our foolish consent that is given by silence.

America was not founded to be a police or nanny state. It flourished because it was the land of the free and the home of the brave. It grew to greatness because people were willing to take risks to survive and succeed.

The will of the American people is not just a political platitude, it is a tangible and powerful force for freedom when properly activated. If we want to roll back the abuses—if we want to break the police state and reclaim our livelihoods, futures, and political autonomy—we all have to affirmatively contribute to a new national mood.

How Blind Faith In Scientific Expertise Wrecked The Economy

One British scientist, a severely flawed model, and a thousand braying imbeciles on social media ordering everyone to ‘have faith in science’ led to the next economic crisis.

Sumantra Maitra writing for The Federalist

Greta Thunberg, of all people, was asked to opine about coronavirus for a CNN panel in the latest episode of our bizarre purgatory. Everyone can imagine what she said: “People are starting to realize that we are actually depending on science and that we need to listen to scientists and experts.”

This is the perfect representation of the Twitter take artist: totally out of her element, with banal and worthless takes, but still trying to be provocative and relevant. In the late 1930s she would have reminded us there’s a global scientific consensus that intelligence can be measured by skull shape and different parts of brains have different emotional locators.

The phrase “settled science” is a classic oxymoron. There can never be science that is settled, and science cannot or should not be the only determinant of policy, especially on things related to the economic direction of the planet.

This is important due to two observable phenomena. One, this pandemic has highlighted how much of our public and social media are full of mindless drones. Two, it has highlighted just how much of our scientific consensus is flawed, and still worshipped as if it consists of matters of faith instead of evidence.

Consider the first one. One of the most important noticeable recent phenomena has been the mushrooming of take artists. They are not scientists, or qualified in matters of economics, history, strategy, or policy. They are random individuals whose sole purpose is to remind us that we should have faith in “science and data.”

Obviously, they don’t understand having “faith” in science is in itself a fallacy of scientism. Scientism is a faith in the idea that all social problems have only one answer, through the process of science. It is a fallacy because scientists are humans and have their own biases, as well as flawed methodologies, which is why science is constantly scrutinized and measured alongside historical and economic questions.

Scientism elevates science to the point of a religion, thereby defeating the whole purpose of scientific inquiry. Nevertheless, these prophets of scientism run all over the internet, telling us that nothing else matters, because “SCIENCE!”

Now, in normal times, that would not have been a serious issue, and these groups of people would be ignored as curious imbeciles trying to find an audience. Unfortunately, in the middle of a pandemic, it turned deadly. These people had faith in predictions that turned out to be flawed.

I am of course talking about our fornicating nerd, the British scientist Neil Ferguson, whose model has been the bedrock of the Anglo-American lockdown. It is his Imperial College modelling that predicted a genocidal amount of deaths and a severe crisis unless a total lockdown was implemented, even when rival models, like one from Oxford University, predicted otherwise.

Now, it is understandable why politicians panic. Not one wants to be blamed for inaction, especially in the early days when Italians’ socialized health care was collapsing with coronavirus patients. The model predicted more than half a million deaths in the United Kingdom only if no lockdown was initiated. Criticism of that model was censored.

Yet as it turns out, the model was severely flawed. The model’s software was 13 years old, with a program that predicted at random. Adding on to the fact is that new records are coming out of this particular scientist of a history of failed predictions.

“In 2001 the Imperial College team’s modelling led to the culling of 6 million livestock and was criticised by epidemiological experts as severely flawed. In various years in the early 2000s Ferguson predicted up to 136,000 deaths from mad cow disease, 200 million from bird flu and 65,000 from swine flu. The final death toll in each case was in the hundreds,” note biologist Matt Ridley and Member of Parliament David Davis. “In this case, when a Swedish team applied the modified model that Imperial put into the public domain to Sweden’s strategy, it predicted 40,000 deaths by May 1 – 15 times too high.”

So, there we have it. A flawed code by someone who clearly prefers to flatten some curves, a history of monstrously wrong predictions, a loss of nerve by politicians, and a gaggle of cultist Septa Unellas shaming everyone for not following herd mindset and groupthink to doom.

One can only hope that this pandemic permanently damages the prevalent “scientism” and the talking point that we should just let “SCIENCE AND DATA!” dictate all policy, ignoring history and economics. Science is one of several important inputs when crafting policy, but it does not tell you what the policy should be.

Science can tell you how to save lives, but not why they should or shouldn’t be saved, or at what other costs. A knowledge of history and a sense of economics can. And there are always trade-offs in policy.

Shutdowns aren’t sustainable. Unless one wishes to permanently close down society, a level of herd immunity is needed. Consider that there might not be a vaccine anytime, and no matter how much one continues to “trace-and-test,” there’s always a chance of infection. In South Korea, for example, a light lockdown release resulted in 70 percent of visitors infected in one nightclub. Most are minor and manageable, but this highlighted that infections will happen whether we want it or not.

A virus has to infect around 60-70 percent of the physically fit population for herd immunity to be achieved. It will be either soon, or in three to five years if we stay panicked and closed. More people would eventually die of job losses, suicide, and despair. A significant delay to reopen will cost more lives: “Because of its virulence, widespread and the many asymptomatic cases it causes, Covid-19 cannot be contained in the long run, and so all countries will eventually reach herd immunity. To think otherwise is naive and dangerous.”

A repeated cycle of relaxation-tightening for years would likely produce the same number of deaths in the end as shielded herd immunity would produce now, whilst producing many extra deaths from other causes as well as damaging social welfare. Upper-middle-class hysteria led to this class-war situation. If the threat of radical social upheavals and anarchy due to joblessness does not keep a person up at night, he shouldn’t call himself a conservative.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis Slams CDC For Inaccurate Reporting On COVID Deaths

Chrissy Clark reporting for The Federalist

Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis is pushing back against data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), disputing how the agency counts death from COVID-19.

According to the CDC, anyone who tested positive for the coronavirus during their time of death is counted as a COVID-19 death. Polis claims people want to know who died directly from coronavirus instead of those who happened to test positive after another cause of death.

Polis joined Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday after reports found 300 fewer people died in Colorado from the coronavirus than initially reported.

“One of the reasons we wanted to make sure we reported it out in a better way is to inspire confidence so that it wouldn’t be politicized, Chris. These are deaths that should not be politicized,” Polis said.

Polis explained how the CDC counts death by coronavirus in a different way than the state of Colorado. 

“The CDC criteria include anyone who has died with COVID-19. What the people of Colorado, the people of the country, want to know how many people died of COVID-19. In our state about 900 have died from COVID-19 on their death certificate or from the attending physician. 1,100 have died with it. Those 200 in the middle might have been a contributing factor, but it wasn’t deemed the sole factor or the only factor in their death,” Polis said.

Trump praised Colorado for its reopening when Polis visited the White House last week.

“You’re both doing an excellent job, and it’s an honor to have you at the White House,” Trump said to both Polis and Republican North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

Unlike other Democratic governors, Polis has been relatively gracious of Trump’s efforts in combating the coronavirus. On Fox News Sunday, Polis said he will work with any president to ensure his state can reopen safely and the economy can thrive.

“I happen to be a Democrat. But, what I’ve said is he’s the President we have. I owe it to the people of my state who elected me to work with any president to really make sure we can save lives, get our economy going in our state,” Polis said. “We’re proud to be getting our economy going in a reasonably safe way. Stores have been open for a couple of weeks now in most areas in our state. We’re doing this thoughtfully, we’re doing this carefully, we value our partnership with the federal government. There’s a time for elections, there’s a time for politics, this isn’t it. It’s a time for managing the crisis together and I’m doing my best to get it done.”

President Trump speaks on supporting farmers, ranchers and the food supply chain -

President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the White House on supporting America's farmers, ranchers and food supply chain amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Devin Nunes Discusses AG Barr Remarks About President Obama and Joe Biden

House Intel Committee ranking member Devin Nunes appears on Fox News to discuss the remarks earlier in the day where AG Bill Barr does not foresee any criminal investigation of President Obama or Vice-President Joe Biden.

Rep. Nunes again refers to the buckets of intelligence that would help outline everything that has taken place. Bucket-1 DOJ/FBI activity prior to July 31, 2016. Bucket-2 DOJ/FBI activity between July 31, 2016 and the inauguration. Bucket-3 everything that takes place after the Trump inauguration, to include the Mueller investigation.

The bottom line is we need full transparency and a complete declassification of the underlying documents that were redacted and hidden to protect the prior behavior.

Trump Derangement Syndrome Has Introduced Impeachment 2.0

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist

After spending the months preceding the global pandemic in a futile impeachment attempt, House Democrats are now again trying to impeach President Donald Trump.

The lower chamber majority told the Supreme Court on Monday that they are in the middle of an “ongoing presidential impeachment investigation” that requires redacted information from the grand-jury proceedings that were part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s two-and-a-half-year probe.

Since Trump was finally acquitted of two articles of impeachment in February, Democrats have expressed a desire to try again, requesting that the nation’s highest court grant them classified material that they have pledged not to leak under “special protocols.”

“The [House Judiciary] Committee’s investigation did not cease with the conclusion of the impeachment trial,” Democrats wrote to the court. “If this material reveals new evidence supporting the conclusion that President Trump committed impeachable offenses that are not covered by the articles adopted by the House, the committee will proceed accordingly — including, if necessary, by considering whether to recommend new articles of impeachment.”

The focus on information from the Mueller probe comes more than a year after the independent special counsel wrapped up his investigation with unlimited resources that exonerated the president on charges of Russian collusion and obstruction of justice for firing FBI Director James Comey.

Even after the Mueller investigation — which enjoyed wall-to-wall coverage from legacy media —  revealed claims that members of the Trump campaign, including the president himself, were acting as Russian agents as nothing more than a wild conspiracy theory, Democrats are moving forward with another impeachment inquiry anyway.

The latest effort comes three months after the collapse of their attempt to impeach Trump over a phone call with the Ukrainian president, and in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression amid the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. As of last week, more than 36 millionAmericans had filed for unemployment, reaching record-high levels of joblessness nearing 15 percent. Meanwhile, the virus has led to the death of more than 90,000 Americans, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.

Here’s Why Judge Sullivan Can’t Legally Punish Michael Flynn For ‘Perjury’

Sullivan should not embark on any contempt proceeding against Flynn. 

Doing so would be a misuse of his contempt power.

Leslie McAdoo Gordon writing for The Federalist

Stunning developments in the criminal case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn exploded onto the national scene the past two weeks. First, the government moved to dismiss the case, a one-count plea for allegedly making false statements to the FBI.

Then the trial judge, Emmet Sullivan, issued an order permitting people and groups claiming to have an interest in the matter to file briefs about whether he should grant the government’s motion. Further, Sullivan appointed a retired federal judge, John Gleeson, to act as amicus curiae (friend of the court) to present opposing arguments to the government’s motion.

Much has been and will be written about these developments, but somewhat lost in the uproar they’ve caused is the second portion of the order appointing Gleeson, which directs him to advise Sullivan on whether he should issue a show-cause order to Flynn for criminal contempt for perjury.

I can save Gleeson the trouble. The controlling legal authority from the Supreme Court holds that contempt power cannot be used to punish people for making statements, even under oath, that the judge deems false.

Why Did Flynn Plead Guilty?

When Flynn pleaded guilty, and again when he was originally scheduled to be sentenced by Sullivan, he acknowledged under oath that he was guilty of making false statements to the FBI agents who questioned him about his telephone conversation with the Russian ambassador. He made these statements, however, while he was represented by counsel who had an apparent conflict of interest and before the government disclosed that the FBI lacked a legitimate reason to question him about the telephone call.

More recently, after Flynn obtained new counsel, he moved to withdraw his guilty plea and submitted a declaration stating that he was innocent of the crime. The potential discrepancy between that declaration and his earlier statements appears to be the basis for Sullivan flagging the perjury issue.

Flynn may well have legitimate defenses to any charge for perjury that might be brought against him, such as reliance on conflicted counsel and ignorance of the defect in the FBI’s interview of him, which render any statement he made legally immaterial. Of more interest is whether Sullivan has a legal basis to explore these issues in a contempt proceeding.

Sullivan Lacks Authority to Charge Flynn with Perjury

A court issues a show-cause order for contempt as a prelude to possibly punishing a person for alleged misconduct. It describes the misconduct and requires the person to defend against that allegation. It is similar to an indictment except the court, rather than a prosecutor, initiates it. The person receiving a show-cause order must appear and defend the accusation but has certain due process rights, such as the right to notice, the right to counsel, and the right to present a defense.

Sullivan has not yet issued a show-cause order to Flynn, but he has directed Gleeson to advise him as to whether he should do so. The answer is absolutely not, because Sullivan lacks the authority to sanction Flynn for perjury.

Under the separation of powers established by the Constitution, criminal charges are brought by the executive branch and adjudicated by the judiciary. Thus, any actual prosecution of Flynn under federal statutes for perjury would have to be brought by the Department of Justice.

Courts are, however, permitted to initiate prosecutions for criminal contempt of court. Contempt is behavior that disobeys, offends, or disrespects a court’s authority or dignity. It can occur directly in court, or indirectly when it happens outside the judge’s presence. Judges have the authority to summarily punish contempt committed in their presence in certain instances.

The federal criminal code specifically recognizes a court’s contempt authority. Section 401 of the federal criminal code provides that a federal court can punish contempt of its authority, consisting of misbehavior in its presence that obstructs the administration of justice.

Rule 42 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure governs contempt proceedings. It provides that, generally, a person charged with contempt shall be given notice of the charge, a prosecutor shall be appointed, and a trial shall occur to adjudicate the charge. If the potential punishment exceeds 180 days, the defendant also has a right to a jury trial.

Precedent Cuts Against Seeking a Contempt Proceeding

But the Supreme Court decided 100 years ago in a case called Ex parte Hudgings that perjury does not constitute contempt of court under Section 401. In that case, a judge held a witness in criminal contempt for giving what in the judge’s view was perjured testimony.

The Supreme Court held that to convict the witness of contempt for alleged perjury, “there must be added to the essential elements of perjury … the further element of obstruction to the court in the performance of its duty.” It voided the contempt conviction because “the punishment was imposed for the supposed perjury alone without reference to any circumstance or condition giving it an obstructive effect.”

The D.C. Circuit, which sits over Sullivan, has reinforced the Hudgings
limitation and emphasized that “actual, not theoretical, obstruction is the test, and that any claimed obstruction must be proven precisely.” That decision, called In re Brown, involved a person who falsely claimed to be, and acted as, an attorney in a criminal proceeding before the court. The D.C. Circuit ruled that this conduct, however fraudulent, had not obstructed the proceeding.

Flynn’s statements in connection with his plea did not obstruct the court in the performance of its duty. Thus, they simply cannot constitute contempt of court under long-standing precedent. Sullivan should therefore not embark on any contempt proceeding. Doing so would be a misuse of his contempt power.

Lindsey Graham Schedules Committee Business Hearing to Consider Scheduling Subpoena Authorization Hearing

We are nearing the end of the beginning of the end, as Senator Lindsey Graham announces a request for a senate hearing to consider scheduling another senate hearing to consider the possible subpoenas for witnesses to appear at a later senate hearing over potential testimony at a possible senate hearing or deposition thereafter.

WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today announced that the Committee would debateand vote on a subpoena authorization related to the FISA abuse investigation and oversight of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Graham’s subpoena authorization covers a number of documents, communications and testimony from witnesses, including James Comey, Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, John Brennan, Sally Yates, and others.

The subpoena authorization will be first listed on the agenda for the Committee’s executive business meeting on May 21, 2020. The Committee is expected to vote on the subpoena authorization at its June 4, 2020 executive business meeting. (read more)

The hearing to consider a hearing surrounds subpoenas for a hearing involving 53 witness hearings and potential depositions:

Trisha Anderson, Brian Auten, James Baker, William Barr, Dana Boente, Jennifer Boone, John Brennan, James Clapper, Kevin Clinesmith, James Comey, Patrick Conlon, Michael Dempsey, Stuart Evans, Tashina Gauhar, Carl Ghattas, Curtis Heide, Kathleen Kavalec, David Laufman, Stephen Laycock, Jacob Lew, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe, Mary McCord, Denis McDonough, Arthur McGlynn, Jonathan Moffa, Sally Moyer, Mike Neufield, Sean Newell, Victoria Nuland, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Stephanie L. O’Sullivan, Lisa Page, Joseph Pientka, John Podesta, Samantha Power, E.W. “Bill” Priestap, Sarah Raskin, Steve Ricchetti, Susan Rice, Rod Rosenstein, Gabriel Sanz-Rexach, Nathan Sheets, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Glenn Simpson, Steve Somma, Peter Strzok, Michael Sussman, Adam Szubin, Jonathan Winer, Christopher Wray, and Sally Yates.

The hearing to consider the scheduling for a hearing to authorize those 53 depositions will take place on May 24th.

Depending on the outcome of that hearing; a hearing scheduled for June 4th may be authorized.

If the hearing to schedule the hearing is successful, the June 4th hearing will authorize the additional hearings later this summer where testimony may be conducted if the witnesses do not fight the subpoenas.

53 witness testimonials,  likely closed-door depositions, over the senate calendar should cover three or four months of Judiciary Committee work; likely July through October.

If all goes according to plan… Once the witness depositions are concluded; and overlaying the holiday recess; the committee will then reassemble in early 2021 to debate the findings from the testimony over an approximately six month period.  At the conclusion of the staff debate on language to describe the committee findings (spring 2021); the committee may generate a report a few months later (summer/fall 2021).

McConnell Appoints Marco Rubio as Acting Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman

Against the backdrop of all things DC swamp, this move was entirely predictable.  No-one takes over as chair of the SSCI without senate leadership having (blackmail) material on the appointee to have full control over their activity.  Marco Rubio is fully compromised.

Today Mitch McConnell announces that Senator Marco Rubio will replace Richard Burr as chairman of the notoriously corrupt Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI):

MITCH McCONNELL – “I am glad to announce that Senator Marco Rubio has accepted my invitation to serve as Acting Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“The senior senator for Florida is a talented and experienced Senate leader with expertise in foreign affairs and national security matters. Senator Rubio was the natural choice for this temporary assignment on the basis of accumulated committee service. His proven leadership on pertinent issues only made the decision easier.

“Senator Rubio has spent a decade as a leading member on the Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees. His care for our nation’s security, advocacy for our values and interests, and vigilance toward threats have earned a national reputation. On subjects ranging from China and Russia to Iran and North Korea to tyranny and unrest in our own hemisphere, Senator Rubio has been on the case for years.

“By and large, our nation’s intelligence professionals are dedicated, hard-working men and women who counter foreign threats and keep Americans safe. They deserve all the resources and support Congress can provide. But as recent years have made painfully clear with respect to federal law enforcement, we also need proactive leadership from within and thorough oversight from Congress to keep partisan bias and political interference out of these sensitive activities.

“I appreciate the Acting Chairman’s commitment to lead on all these fronts during this temporary assignment — to help ensure the intelligence community stays ahead of our adversaries, out of politics, and out of the press.” (link)

To understand numerous layers within the overall dynamic it is important to remember Rubio was a never-Trumper.  Nikki Haley, Trey Gowdy and Marco Rubio formed the trio of GOPe advocates to defend the interests of the deep state during campaign 2016.  The original opposition research into Trump by Fusion-GPS came as an outcome of Rubio supporters initiating and funding the research.  That effort evolved into the Steele Dossier after team Rubio dropped funding in March 2016; and the Clinton campaign took over.

There has long been an open secret within DC that Rubio was a compromised individual and there was/is a considerable amount of blackmail material known about him.

As a result of the FBI investigation into SSCI leaks by security director James Wolfe, covert communications in the spring of 2017 between SSCI Vice-Chair Mark Warner and Christopher Steele were discovered.

Six months after Warner was conspiring with Christopher Steele… (in October of 2017), the FBI questioned Senator Warner’s staff and requested the messaging information.

Mark Warner’s efforts with Chris Steele were February through May 2017.  Warner waited until he was caught, then told the committee about his “no paper trail” attempts to coordinate with Steele in October 2017.  The contacts and text messages were later made public in February 2018.

As soon as the covert SSCI communications surfaced (Feb ’18); which were part of the overall committee effort to remove President Trump; chairman Richard Burr and Marco Rubio provided cover by claiming Warner was honest with them in October 2017.

Senator Warner only came forward after he was caught in the Wolfe leak investigation.

The committee was notified in October 2017, yet not a single member of the SSCI (R or D) demanded Vice-Chairman Mark Warner make an immediate, full and public disclosure of the VERY SERIOUS conflict he engaged in.  Instead the committee waited until after the covert communication was public in February 2018 and then Burr and Rubio defended Warner.

The SSCI is the enabler for a weaponized intelligence apparatus.  McConnell appointing Marco Rubio to the position of acting chair of the committee is simply more swamp defensive positioning.

That’s the larger backdrop to frame this recent tweet by President Trump:

When you peel back all of the layers of the ‘remove trump’ effort; and when you overlay those efforts in individual pieces to see the ramifications in 2020; it is clear one of the biggest scandals continues to revolve around the SSCI and the failure of the DOJ to prosecute James Wolfe for the leak.

Once the Dept. of Justice Wolfe decision was made… it set into action a chain of events that continues to go forward to today.  It’s like the old saying about once you tell a lie you have to tell another lie to cover the original lie; and then another lie to cover the lie about the original lie; and the sequence continues….

The COVID Lockdown Ends When ‘We The People’ Withdraw Our Consent

The power of government comes from the people; or as we say in the U.S. “from the consent of the governed.”  When the people lead, the politicians are forced to follow.

Without implied consent the municipal or state government has no power.  None.

As a result, the lock-downs end when the majority of 

We The People no longer give our consent.

How do We The People retract our consent? We simply refuse to comply.

When the majority of people simply refuse to comply with unilateral dictates, and laugh in the faces of those who attempt to enforce them, the government no longer has power.

If one person refuses to comply government can, and likely will, intervene. However, if tens of thousands rebuke these unconstitutional decrees, there isn’t a damn thing govt can  do to stop it… and they know it. This is why some state governors are quickly starting to retract or modify their dictates.

A non-compliant snowball becomes an unstoppable freedom avalanche.

Local, regional and state officials know they can control the behavior of an individual. If one barber shop opens, the owner becomes a target. However, those officials also know they cannot control the behavior of the majority. If every barber shop and beauty salon in town opens… there is absolutely nothing the government can do about it.

If one restaurant and/or bar opens, the state can target the owner. But if every bar and restaurant in town opens; and if everyone ignores and dispatches the silly dictates of the local, regional or state officials; there isn’t a damned thing they can do about it.

The power of the local, regional or state authority comes from the expressed consent of the people. As soon as the majority of people deny that consent, those officials and state authoritarians lose all of their power.

Yes, it really is that simple.

Those who construct the systems of control need to weaponize fear.  Fear of arrest; fear of losing a business; fear of losing liberty or financial security.  Local, regional and state officials rely on fear.  As soon as the people are no longer fearful, the control ends.

The overwhelming majority of dictates around COVID-19 mitigation are not laws. There was no debate; no input from representative government; and no option for the public to weigh-in on the decisions.

All unilateral rules are arbitrary, and despite many proclamations to the contrary, they rely upon voluntary compliance.  As soon as citizens no longer voluntarily comply, the term of the rules has expired.  If masks are so effective then why didn’t government give masks to prisoners, instead of releasing the inmates?

Liberty is inherent.

The removal of liberty requires consent.

Additionally, if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice. So choose wisely.

Remember that; and think about it.

Sit in a circle today; sit in a cattle-car tomorrow.