Justice Department Desperate to Conceal ‘Classified’ Records

It’s all just another campaign of deceit—with reliable assistance from the national news media—to get Trump.

by Julie Kelly for American Greatness

With one sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon spoke for the majority of Americans who no longer have faith in the nation’s top law enforcement agency. “It is also true, of course, that even-handed procedure does not demand unquestioning trust in the determinations of the Department of Justice,” she wrote in her September 15 order denying the government’s request to prevent a third-party review of allegedly “classified” documents seized by the FBI during the raid of Mar-a-Lago last month.

At issue is the validity of claims made by prosecutors that roughly 100 records taken in the unprecedented pillage of a former president’s home on August 8 have classified markings and therefore do not belong to him. The kerfuffle began earlier this year when the Justice Department acted on a criminal referral by the national archivist, who accused Trump of unlawfully keeping classified material at his home. 

Although Trump’s representatives cooperated with investigators for months, Attorney General Merrick Garland nonetheless authorized the nine-hour raid conducted by at least a dozen FBI agents resulting in the seizure of more than 11,000 pieces of evidence, including personal items such as books, medical files, tax information, apparel, and passports.

And his office has been backpedaling ever since.

The reason is that Garland’s henchmen ran into a buzzsaw named Judge Cannon. Trump filed a lawsuit seeking a court-appointed special master after requests for an impartial arbiter were denied by the government for two weeks. “The FBI and DOJ have demonstrated a willingness to treat President Trump differently than any other citizen,” Trump’s lawyers accurately argued on August 22. “[In] light of recent FBl behavior when President Trump is a part of its aim, this Court should feel obliged to demand candor and transparency, and not just ‘trust us’ assertions from DOJ.”

It appears Cannon needed little convincing. Although self-proclaimed legal “experts” mocked the lawsuit as dead-on-arrival, Cannon torched that groupthink when she announced a few days later her intent to consider Trump’s motion due to the “exceptional circumstances” of the matter. A federal prosecutor for seven years, Cannon, 40, undoubtedly watched the Justice Department’s rapid descent from a trusted government institution to a brazen enforcement arm of the Democratic Party before Trump appointed her to the bench in 2020. 

In the past few weeks, Cannon has exposed a number of errors and falsehoods related to the criminal investigation into Trump for violating the Espionage Act, obstructing justice, and concealing government property—and she’s pulled no punches when it comes to her former employer.

Her blistering September 5 order finalizing the appointment of a special master revealed that the government absconded with “personal effects without evidentiary value” and at least 500 pages of privileged communications, a trove the Justice Department downplayed as a “limited subset” of evidence. (A heavily redacted version of the search warrant gave FBI agents wide berth, allowing investigators to take anything within close proximity of papers containing so-called “classification markings.”)

Calling out a department famous for leaking damaging anti-Trump tidbits to compliant journalists and columnists, Cannon partially justified her decision based on potential harm to the former president by “improper disclosure of sensitive information” to the public. At one point during the proceedings, a prosecutor “acknowledged the unfortunate existence of leaks to the press,” Cannon wrote in a footnote

Contrary to solemn pledges the government’s process was above reproach, Cannon cited at least two occasions where a separate filter team passed along privileged material to investigators. Those errors, Cannon wrote, “yield questions about the adequacy of the filter review process.” Cannon expressed skepticism of the government’s explanation as to why it happened. “[There] is a basis on this record to question how materials passed through the screening process, further underscoring the importance of procedural safeguards and an additional layer of review.”

Indeed.

Not only did Cannon approve the appointment of a special master, she halted the Justice Department’s use of the documents in its ongoing investigation of Trump until the review is complete. But the Biden regime is pulling every trick in its broad arsenal to keep the allegedly “classified” documents under wraps. 

On the day Cannon announced Trump’s lawsuit would proceed, Avril Haines, Biden’s director of national intelligence, announced her office needed to conduct an assessment to determine whether the classified material posed a national security threat. “[Appointment] of a special master is unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests,” prosecutors warned in an August 30 filing.

Even after Cannon carved out an exception for the intelligence community’s work, the government insisted that wasn’t enough. “The Intelligence Community’s review and assessment cannot be readily segregated from the Department of Justice’s (‘DOJ’) and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (‘FBI’) activities in connection with the ongoing criminal investigation,” prosecutors wrote in a motion again seeking to conceal the allegedly classified papers from the special master. “Moreover, the government and the public are irreparably injured when a criminal investigation of matters involving risks to national security is [halted].”

To support its claim, the Justice Department submitted a six-page sworn statement by the FBI’s assistant counterintelligence chief explaining that senior Justice Department and FBI officials were responsible for both the intelligence assessment and the criminal investigation—cold comfort to anyone, Cannon included, observing this highly partisan and weaponized Justice Department.

Prosecutors then laughably informed the court that investigators needed to find out what papers were filed in empty folders labeled “classified,” another obvious stall tactic. “The FBI would be chiefly responsible for investigating what materials may have once been stored in these folders and whether they may have been lost or compromised—steps that, again, may require the use of grand jury subpoenas, search warrants, and other criminal investigative tools and could lead to evidence that would also be highly relevant to advancing the criminal investigation.”

That’s quite a slippery slope ya’ got there, Merrick Garland

The Justice Department is appealing her order while shifting the goalposts once again. Even if Trump declassified papers investigators now insist are classified, the Biden regime must perform another assessment “to understand what had been declassified and why (and who has seen it) to protect intelligence sources and methods,” prosecutors wrote in the appeal motion. 

Of course, a president has full constitutional authority to declassify whatever he wants; there is no process that allows a succeeding administration to review declassification orders of a former president. And the last person who should be trusted with such an undertaking is Haines, a former aide to disgraced CIA Director John Brennan.

Further, it isn’t just the special master that the government wants kept in the dark about the classified documents. Representative Mike Turner (R-Ohio), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview over the weekend that Garland’s office refuses to brief congressional leadership on the investigation despite numerous requests.

None of this fosters confidence in the government’s claims, nor should it. To the contrary, it appears to be another campaign of deceit waged by the Justice Department—with reliable assistance from the national news media—to get Trump.

And Cannon, to her immense credit, isn’t buying it. “The Court does not find it appropriate to accept the Government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion,” she wrote last week. Cannon also directed the special master to verify the government’s detailed list of seized evidence and obtain “sworn affidavits from Department of Justice personnel” if necessary.

With the appeal pending in a Florida court, Judge Raymond Dearie, the appointed special master, is already at work with a November 30, 2022 deadline; he will convene a meeting of both parties in New York on Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, it’s safe to assume the Justice Department will hatch some new excuse as to why Dearie and his team should not have access to the “classified” material. One can only imagine what they’ll come up with next.

X22, And we Know, and more- Sept 20

 

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Shortsighted Democrats Harm Voters—Especially Their Own

Leftists should think ahead before destroying the filibuster.

by Sean Ross Callaghan for American Greatness

A hallmark of adulthood is thinking ahead. Since the year 2000, Democrats have refused to think ahead, and it’s been the cause of the country’s most pressing problems. Although Republicans are favored to carry the coming midterms, suppose they don’t. Should Democrats gain just two more seats in the Senate and keep control of the House, leftists will think they have achieved their dream but, in truth, they will wake up into a nightmare. 

And the country will get more of the calamities shortsighted Democrats have already caused. 

Consider the contested 2020 election. Democrats started the modern practice of contesting elections. They have sought to throw out electoral votes for every Republican elected president since 2000. When 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lost to President Donald Trump, she called his win “illegitimate.” Then she helped convince two-thirds of her voters that she lost only because Russia hacked voting machines. 

Had Democrats thought ahead, they might have foreseen that Republicans would react in kind and contest the election of the next Democratic president. But Democrats didn’t care. They treated our institutions as a frustrated toddler treats an uncooperating toy. 

Consider also the seditious riots Democrats encouraged during the summer of 2020—arguably the most destructive and widespread in over half a century. At least 25 people died. Citizens pleaded for help. The White House came under attack. 

Democrats responded by calling the protests just, the police racist, and all efforts to quell the riots fascist. Joe Biden slinked into his basement. And Kamala Harris helped bail rioters out of jail. 

Had Democrats thought ahead, they might have foreseen that Republican voters would react with a protest of their own—and that it might get out of hand, just as the election protest at the Capitol did. But Democrats didn’t care. 

Shortsighted Democrats caused the country nightmares. Now, Democrats plan to cause nightmares for their own voters. To make up for the moderates fleeing a Democratic Party intoxicated on bizarre philosophies and agitating to censor and suppress those with mainstream views on race and sex, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris seek to gin up votes along their leftist flank. They are promising leftists that Democrats will break the Senate supermajority rule, also called the filibuster, to pass two laws that only leftists want: one to guarantee no-reason mail-in voting and another to guarantee no-excuse abortion up till birth. 

Leftists thinking ahead should see that the Democrats’ foolish plan will bring them only crushing defeats. 

Democrats first started banging away at the filibuster nine years ago, when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) threw a tantrum over some judges Republicans refused to vote for. Few remember the judges Reid muscled onto lower federal courts. But, everyone remembers Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett who followed. Leftists especially. 

It didn’t have to be that way. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), now the minority leader, told Reid what would happen: once Reid rolled back the filibuster for some judicial nominations, Republicans would roll it back for the rest. Reid didn’t care. Then, when McConnell led the Senate, Justice Antonin Scalia died. McConnell held Scalia’s seat open because without the filibuster, the 2016 election was to be an all-or-nothing gamble on who would pick Scalia’s successor. Trump and McConnell won. Reid had banged his toy on the floor—and it broke. 

The filibuster is now gone for judicial nominations, but it remains for ordinary legislation. That includes all the awesome power Congress can exercise. The Civil Rights Acts. The Voting Rights Act. The Social Security Act. The filibuster protects such legislation from repeal and ensures that future legislation of such importance is popular enough to garner a supermajority of votes. 

Yet, for the sake of just two ordinary bills, Democrats now promise to roll back the filibuster. McConnell already told Democrats what they’ll get instead: bills on unions, on abortion, on guns, on immigration—all written by Republicans alone. That means a wall, a ban on federal dollars going to abortion mills, a nationwide ban on abortion after some commonsense number of weeks’ gestation with an exception only for a mother’s life. All these laws would be popular enough with most Americans, but they’d be nightmares for leftists. 

And for what? Roe v. Wade might still be law today had Harry Reid thought ahead in 2013. Yet abortion—which only a tiny sliver of women ever seek—is still legal in the most dire situations in every state, most cases in most states, and all cases in several. Everyone with the right to vote can vote. Leftists have nothing to gain and everything to lose—and sooner than they may realize. In 2024, nine vulnerable Democrats are up for reelection in the Senate while at most only one Republican is, and neither Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, nor any other potential Democratic presidential nominee is likely to beat President Trump or Governor Ron DeSantis. Betting markets show a Republican being the next president. Leftist wins from breaking the filibuster will be reversed, and a cavalcade of crushing defeats will follow. 

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” Ebenezer Scrooge wailed out to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?” That’s a question leftists should ask Joe Biden and Kamala Harris about the Democrats’ childish filibuster plans. It’s a question adults should answer on November 8. 

Florida Versus Davos

The American way needs defending against a corrupt ruling class.

by  Governor  Ron  DeSantis

The following are excerpts of remarks originally given in Miami at the National Conservatism Conference in September 2022.(Full transcript HERE)

Thank you. Welcome to America and the Free State of Florida. Proud to be a refuge of sanity in a world gone mad, we’re holding down the fort. 

It’s wonderful to be here. Thank you for hosting this in the great state of Florida. We’re proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish. It’s said that our federalist system creates laboratories of democracy where different states can approach things in different ways. But I don’t think we’ve ever seen such sharp contrast between different governing philosophies as we have in the last few years. It brings to mind a debate that three of our founding fathers actually had over what was the world’s oldest profession. The debate was between Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. 

Benjamin Rush was a doctor. So Rush said, the world’s oldest profession is the physician, because Eve was cut out of Adam’s rib—so it had to be the physician. And Jefferson, as you know, designed Monticello among other things, so he said, no, the world’s oldest profession is the architect, because it was the architect who brought order out of all the chaos in the universe. And Franklin said, that’s wrong. The world’s oldest profession is the politician: who do you think created the chaos in the first place? 

And the reality is, as much as we’re proud of the great things we’ve done in Florida, you’ve had other folks, leftist politicians that have driven people away from their cities, away from their states. In fact, the last few years have witnessed a great American exodus from states and localities governed by leftist politicians. States and localities that are failing on core matters of concern for everyday Americans. These Americans have fled to states like Florida. And we’ve really served as the promised land for record numbers of people. 

Over the last few years, the statistics are startling. Since COVID, more adjusted gross income has moved into the state of Florida than has ever moved into any one state over a similar time period in American history. In fact, since COVID, the next closest state to Florida in terms of receiving adjusted gross income was the state of Texas, which is not too shabby. But Florida has seen almost four times as much adjusted gross income moving to Florida as has moved into Texas. What are the states that are hemorrhaging wealth? California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey—you know the list. 

Florida has also led the nation in net in-migration since COVID. Who has lost people? Same cast of characters. California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois. California had never lost people in the history of its statehood, up until the last couple of years, and yet you’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people flee. I can tell you, I was born and raised in the state of Florida, and I don’t ever remember seeing a California license plate growing up. Suddenly we start seeing all these California license plates showing up in Florida. Honestly, the Floridians were a little bit spooked about this, particularly my supporters, because—who are these people from California? And how are they going to vote? That was kind of the big thing. But here is why the migration has been so telling: It has had a political character to it. It’s not just, “well, I’m going to continue to believe that this is a good way to govern on the Left Coast or in New York, but I’m just going to come to Florida to get the taxes”—because we’ve always had lower taxes. That’s not anything new. There’s a whole host of other factors that attracted people to states like Florida. 

And so people will ask me, are they going to move from those deep blue states, vote like everyone votes there, and then change Florida for the worse? And here’s what’s happened. When I got elected governor in 2018 there were close to 300,000 more registered Democrats in the state of Florida than Republicans. Prior to my becoming governor, we had never had more registered Republicans than Democrats in the history of the state of Florida. Today, the latest numbers are, we now have 271,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats.

And we have registration open until the early part of October. We very well could end up going into this November’s election with 300,000 more registered Republicans than registered Democrats. And so that’s a huge sea change, five to six hundred thousand net registrations. And I think that a lot of it had to do with a certain blueprint we had here in the state of Florida. As was mentioned, part of what we’ve done is just exercise a little common sense: just because the media and the elites are saying to do something, that does not mean it’s the right thing to do. And we stood and kept our bearings about us. We also try to ground what we’re doing in core American principles. The founding principles of this country are enduring—they may apply differently at different times, when we are faced with different challenges. But those are the principles that we continue to rely on in the state of Florida. We are not afraid to buck the discredited ruling class and elites in our country. We did it during COVID, of course. But we’ve done it time and time again, across the board. And then finally, when you’re standing for what’s right, you don’t get very far—given all the things that are going on in our country—unless you’re willing to show a little backbone. Unless you’re willing to stand your ground when it gets hot in the kitchen. And we have done that time and time again…

Staring Down the Elite

When COVID hit, I had never experienced a pandemic. Probably most people here had never done that. And so I started to do research and consume data, because we were being told what to do by the White House task force, or this health bureaucrat or that. But did any of that actually make any sense? Was any of it justifiable? 

I look back at Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address. Most people remember it for his warnings about the dangers of the military industrial complex, and I think those were very smart observations. But if you read that inaugural address, he talked about this new phenomenon of the federal government funding so much scientific research. And he said, when those two things are intermingled like that, there’s a danger: public policy itself could be held captive by what he called the “scientific-technological elite.” And he rejected that as something that was acceptable. He said, A statesman’s job is not to subcontract out your leadership to a very narrow-minded elite. The job of the statesman is to harmonize all the different competing interests that are in society, weighing different values, and then coming up with the proper policy. And so my view was, we had to choose freedom over Fauci-ism in the state of Florida. 

We had to make sure that our policies weren’t excluding all these important values, just because people with a very narrow-minded view, with some credentials by their name, were telling us that those values didn’t matter.

Border Integrity, Election Integrity

We see the rule of law breaking down in cities across the country. But we also see the rule of law breaking down at the southern border between the United States and Mexico. And that is a choice that this administration has made. Joe Biden came into office and reversed President Trump’s border policies, knowing full well what the results would be. And you know the results: you have massive numbers of illegal aliens pouring across the border, record sex trafficking, record human trafficking, record drug trafficking. The fentanyl that China is making to poison our society is getting into this country through the southern border. And now the leading cause of death for people 18 to 45 is overdose from fentanyl. So it’s been a policy disaster. But it’s also been a constitutional disaster. Joe Biden took an oath to take care that the laws of this country are faithfully executed, and he is violating his oath of office.

We’ll see what happens in November. But I feel good that the Republicans are going to take the majorities in the Congress. And if they do use the power that you have, you’ve got to hold Biden accountable on the border...

Protecting Kids

One of the things I’m proudest of in the state of Florida is here we have drawn a line in the sand. And we have said that the purpose of our school system is to educate kids, not to indoctrinate kids. We have done things like ban the use of critical race theory in our K-12 schools. We’re not going to teach kids to hate each other or to hate our country with your tax dollars. That is inappropriate. 

We also, though, recognize that CRT is seeping into the corporate sector. And so we passed a bill—it’s being challenged in court but we’ll eventually win—that says employees have a right to opt out of this type of discriminatory training if some big corporation is trying to impose that on you. You do not have to self-flagellate just to keep your job. They can’t force you to affirm beliefs that you don’t have. And so it’s just a basic way to protect the workplace and to protect people’s individual conscience. And yes, we’re against CRT, we’re against distorting American history. 

But what are we for? In Florida, we’ve launched an initiative to get American civics back in our schools in a really major way. We need to be teaching kids what it means to be an American. We need to teach them about the founding principles of our country. Why the Constitution is structured the way it is, why our Bill of Rights is what it is. We need to teach them that in the American system, our rights come from God, not from the government. We need to teach them how all of those philosophies and values have animated the key moments in American history…

The True Virus

And the question is, the question is why? Why would this be happening? That’s what people will ask me, because sometimes they don’t believe it’s happening. Then when they see the evidence, it really is a jolt to say, wow, why is this happening? I think it’s happening because of the woke mind virus. I think this is ideology run amok. I think you’re seeing it all across a variety of institutions, which I think is one of the reasons why the moment we have right now is more challenging than maybe some moments that we had in the past. Because I think when Reagan came on the scene, for example, it was really big government that was to blame and big government that needed to be reeled in. Yes, we still need to do that. Don’t get me wrong. But you now have a woke mind virus that has infected all these other institutions. 

I mean, just look at corporate America. Most corporations, some of these big corporations are now exercising quasi-public power, in terms of using their economic power to change policy in this country. You just saw what the credit card companies are going to try to do with the firearms. You’ve seen big Wall Street banks collude to deny financing to companies who may be involved in combating illegal immigration, or firearms, or things that they don’t like. You look at the movement for ESG. And all ESG is, is an attempt to use corporate and economic power to impose an ideological agenda on society—an agenda that could not win at the ballot box. 

And so these Masters of the Universe, not content to line their pockets, not content to make huge profits, want to use their power to change society. They are not accountable to any electorate the last time I checked, and there’s really no way for the private sector to reel them in at this point either…

The Greatest Monuments

Another difference between Reagan’s era and today is, Reagan was famous for saying: the most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” And what he was identifying was 100% accurate. You had great-society central planners that thought they could socially engineer our economy and our way of life and make decisions for us better than we could make them for ourselves. And so that led to massive excess, it led to lots of unintended consequences. And Reagan was basically identifying that as something that was holding our economy back and holding our freedom back. He was 100% right. 

But I think the difference between then and now is, government is bigger and more powerful. But these agencies, particularly in law enforcement and national security, have been weaponized, so that they really represent the enforcement arm of one particular faction of society against the rest of us. And you do not have equal zeal with which they wield their power. People talk about the deep state like it’s some conspiracy. It’s not a conspiracy. What we have right now is the logical result of having an absence of constitutional accountability in the administrative state…

So yes, we fight because we want a better life for us, our kids and grandkids. But we also fight because we owe a debt of gratitude for those who have come before us. And we need to do justice to their sacrifice. And we would not be doing that if we were running away from the fight before us. God bless you all. Thank you so much. 

Kamala Harris Has Been Given Her Next Assignment to Fail

 Joe Cunningham reporting for RedState 

Kamala Harris has been given some key tasks by the Biden administration, and she has been a remarkable failure at them all.

From immigration czar to cheerleader for Biden, she is a mismatch of awkward laughter, dishonest statements, and zero results. She is the most unpopular politician in America – and when your competition is Donald Trump and Joe Biden, that’s saying a lot.

But now Harris is being sent out on a midterm tour to try to complete an impossible task.

Vice President Kamala Harris is ramping up campaign road trips to turn out young voters and voters of color for the midterms — stopping this week in Wisconsin and South Carolina but so far without scheduled appearances with key Democratic nominees on the ballot.

So, Harris is headed out to recruit young voters to go out and vote – a frequent Democratic tactic that almost never works.

• On Tuesday, Harris is scheduled to speak at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, S.C., her sixth visit this year to a historically black college or university.
• She will also participate in a roundtable discussion with student leaders at Claflin University that day.

That’s not all.

• She told students at the University at Buffalo in New York last week that the administration acted on clean energy legislation because “we heard you” demand that leaders “take action on the climate crisis like the crisis it is.”
• She also held a rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago last week, and recently addressed a gathering of interns and young Hill professionals at an event for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.

Now, there are two different parts to this task. The first, and most impossible, is to recruit young voters to turn out for the midterm election.

That was Bernie Sanders’ plan in 2020, and it failed miserably. Despite his popularity among young voters, particularly college students, they never actually went out to vote for him, which was part of the reason that Biden was able to win the nomination.

Recruiting young voters has also been a part of several other candidates’ plans in recent years. Younger voters showed up in higher numbers for the actual presidential election in 2020, but in primaries and midterm elections, they are historically absent. If they are relying on young voters to save Democrats right now, it’s not a good situation for Democrats.

The second part of her task is to bring voters of color back to the Democratic party. This is far more serious.

There are two issues Democrats have with voters of color. This first is the Hispanic vote. In their case, Democrats have focused too much on social/cultural issues, which most Hispanic voters disagree with, and too little on economic issues, which even the New York Times is pointing out is a major area of concern with Hispanic voters.

And while the polling is more or less a toss-up on where those voters are headed in November, the GOP has the advantage on the issues.

The other problem for Democrats is black voters, who aren’t in danger of voting for the GOP in significantly higher numbers than before but are more likely to stay home if the Democrats don’t make a good case.

Like Hispanic voters, black voters poll overwhelmingly concerned with the economy, especially on the heels of the Trump era, where black unemployment was at a record low and income was rising. Economic uncertainty and inflation have washed a lot of that away, and black voters (already more prone to stay home during midterms) may wash their hands of the party they traditionally support.

The Democrats were riding a wave of optimism toward the end of the summer as polling seemed to favor them. But the polls are shifting once again in the GOP’s favor, and while some are questioning whether it’s a wave or a trickle, it’s definitely a Republican year.

So that leaves Kamala Harris, an unpopular politician with awkward laughter and regular word salad statements, trying to recruit a bunch of voters that the Democratic party has little chance of winning over in big enough numbers to save them. Why is Biden routinely trying to set her up to fail?

Curious Article, House Republicans Planning to Investigate Chamber of Commerce?

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

An unusual article in The Intercept is noted with the following headline: “House Republicans Planning to Investigate The Chamber of Commerce if They Take Majority.”  The article is framed around the statements of an unnamed congressman, who appears –from the sourcing inference– to come from the House Judiciary Committee.

If you have followed the deep political weeds, you know the CoC is the anti-MAGA element within the America-First economic battle.  However, it is also true the CoC and the Washington DC UniParty members they feed with lobbying dollars are peas and carrots, this includes the entire republican establishment apparatus.

The republican party investigating the CoC is never going to happen.  It would be a move akin to Adam Schiff investigating the origin of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

The CoC is not only an organization made up of lobbyists for Wall Street, but the members within it are also the close personal friends of just about every influential GOP politician.

The framework for the investigation, as written in the article, surrounds the leftist Environmental Social Governance (ESG) outlook of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is factually accurate.  The CoC is indeed an organization that is ‘all-in’ to position themselves for the benefits of climate change in the corporate sphere.  If there is money to be made from ESG economics, the CoC is the lobbying firm shaping legislation toward that benefit.

However, the CoC is too entrenched with republican party apparatus to ever have their agenda challenged by the “republican” politicians in DC.  So, what exactly is going on here?  A MAGA-minded republican within the House Judiciary Committee wants to investigate the CoC?

In a way I could envision someone like Jim Jordan (Ohio) wanting to do exactly that.  However, the internal republican elements in opposition to that goal would, unfortunately, still be too strong to allow something like a congressional investigation to take place.   Therefore, the article as written is best viewed as an agenda surfacing from within the republican ranks carrying some alternative purpose.

Despite the chamber positioning, opposing ESG is a no-brainer for the conservative base.

Any and all attacks against the ESG agenda are unifying efforts that bring conservatives and MAGA-minded America First voters together.

Unfortunately, that political reality also underscores the usefulness of ESG opposition as a political tool, to the professionally republican apparatus.   If you have followed the way DeceptiCons operate, now is the time to put on your Machiavellian hat.

The MAGA movement is -like the Tea Party that triggered it- essentially, at its core, a movement based on America-First economics.  The goals and objectives of the multinational corporations are against the interests of MAGA.  Hence, most corporate-aligned republicans (the establishment, per se’) are not supportive of the national MAGA movement.  Corporate republicans are paid by the interests that MAGA supporters despise.

There is one potential 2024 candidate who has pushed back against the ESG effort, at a state level.  Putting aside the substance of the pushback, a political talking point containing a history of action against the ESG effort is an arrow in the quiver of the Florida governor.  Unfortunately, at the same time as the ESG concern has become a point of policy reference, the Florida governor is taking massive amounts of money from the same people who benefit from ESG.

So, the question becomes: with DeSantis becoming increasingly visible as a corporate republican, is the identified anti-ESG outline of the article a way to enhance the America-First bonafide’s of DeSantis, by creating a unifying economic platform position?

The anti-ESG position would be a way to deflect from being a corporate republican.  In the aggregate this approach would diminish the concern of being a purchased corporate republican by giving the illusion of alignment with America First.

(The Intercept) – REPUBLICANS PLAN TO launch a variety of investigations into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and many of its largest member corporations if they retake the majority in the House of Representatives this November. The probes, said a GOP member of Congress and multiple Republican operatives who requested anonymity to discuss plans that have yet to be made public, will marry Republicans’ newly formed hostility to the Chamber with the party’s mission to undermine the growth of the ESG investment sector.

The power of ESG — which stands for environmental, social, and governance — criteria to shape company valuations and behavior has become a major source of consternation among conservatives, who argue that companies that follow it are breaking with their fiduciary duty to maximize profits for investors.

The Chamber has infuriated Republicans by endorsing ESG criteria. “Today, for many companies, climate change and carbon emissions impact long-term value, thereby becoming a factor that retirement fund managers should take into consideration,” wrote a Chamber vice president in a typical statement in July 2020.

The congressman highlighted what he saw as the downfalls of that approach. Republicans accuse ESG advocates of using ESG criteria to punish American energy companies, only to then give an advantage to large, foreign energy companies over which the U.S. has little oversight anyways.

“How is it again that you can discourage investment in American energy when you own, or when you’re controlling board seats, of an American energy company, but you’re pushing it offshore to a Chinese energy company? Tell me you didn’t violate your fiduciary duty somehow,” said the congressman. “Then you throw that over into Judiciary [Committee hearings] and say, how do you reconcile this from an antitrust perspective? How can somebody actually be duty-of-care to the shareholders of one entity when you’re duty-of-care to the Chinese Communist Party’s-controlled energy company?”

“There is not going to be much to investigate,” said a Chamber spokesperson. “The Chamber is at the forefront of fighting the SEC climate, human capital and similar disclosures and believes fiduciaries must focus on maximizing return.” House Republicans, though, think the Chamber is having it both ways, criticizing the Securities and Exchange Commission rule but supporting the principle. (read more)

The lessons of the Tea Party being corrupted in 2011 and 2012 (collage reference below), through fraud and deceit by the republican establishment, should be the reference point for reviewing any DC centered effort to confront the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“Unite the Right” is code speak for let your guard down.  We need to remove a lot more corporate republicans before we can lower our cynical guard….

… Battered Conservative, No More!

HOT TAKES: People on Left Are Furious at Joe Biden for Declaring Pandemic Over

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

Joe Biden announced that the “pandemic is over” during his “60 Minutes” interview that aired on Sunday night.

It’s been “over” for most of us for some time.

But as I reported earlier, that throws all of his mandates and state mandates into question, not to mention the legal justification for his student loan bailout. There was speculation that he was doing it to make things sound better before the election.

It’s now causing a meltdown on the left. So it may not have helped him with those on the left who still can’t let it go.

But perhaps the saddest reaction was from the people who are still living in the lockdown mentality. Now they’re perfectly free to do so, that’s the whole point of choice, which is something that so many in government denied to many of us for so long. But this is what the government reaction has wrought — people who have been locked up for more than two years: people who haven’t gone out to eat, haven’t shopped, haven’t gone anywhere. One woman said she felt after Biden’s comments there was no hope for high-risk people like her, that she’d been left to die or be trapped in isolation. Another said she felt so hopeless. A third said that going to Walmart would feel like a vacation at this point. This is what Democratic policies have done to these people.

Some even said they regretted their vote for Biden now that he had made this statement about the virus.

Then there were the leftists telling these folks the answer was “humane communities.”

Yeah, no, I’m thinking that’s the last thing anyone needs.