How To Destroy a Country

Townhall 

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” Historian Will Durant

I don’t mean to imply, by the title of this article, that I think America is about to totally “destroy” itself. I happen to believe that the United States, in some shape, form, or fashion, will be around for a long time into the future. I don’t know what shape, form, or fashion that will be; indeed, America has already monumentally changed, since 1789, from the virtuous, limited, constitutional government (a “confederacy,” Alexander Hamilton called it), into a society with a dominant federal government that does whatever it can get away with. In effect, we have become, in a way, exactly what our Founding Fathers rebelled against.

But time changes many things, and countries are among those things. 500 years ago (1526), England existed, and had a rather autocratic king (Henry VIII). Well, England has certainly altered; it still has a king, who now has no power, but rather has an autocratic national government that has more power than Henry VIII ever dreamed of. I’m not sure Britain is in better shape now than it was under the Tudors. Countries change; a few disappear (Babylon, Assyria, Medo-Persia), but some are still around—Rome, Greece, China, Egypt. Geez, Egypt has been here for 5,000 years now. With major changes, obviously. But, still here.

And I think the United States will survive, too, though again, I don’t know what we will be like 500 years from now. I’m not a prophet. We are a powerful country (still) and powerful countries (usually) don’t disappear rapidly.

The changes come, and sometimes they are monumental. Rome is a city now, not an empire. What will America become? Your guess is as good as mine.

As per the Will Durant quote at the beginning of this column, Rome and America (will be) “conquered,” changed, first by internal forces, then (perhaps) by external ones. The barbarians were never strong enough to militarily defeat Rome until Rome first decimated itself from within. The barbarians whom the Democratic Party is trying to allow to conquer America now have only made the advancements they have made because of the self-destruction of the country’s once-powerful institutions, a self-destruction led by that Democratic Party. They want a different America, one with a totalitarian government they control. And, since 1776, they’ve gone a long way towards getting it.

So, how does a nation destroy itself? A few quotes from the past to enlighten us.

1. “If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from within.” James Madison

This is basically a reiteration of the Durant quote. Madison said it 100 years before Durant did. They were both good historians. I just wanted the reader to know that Durant did not put himself out on a limb. History teaches what he, and Mr. Madison, affirmed. We’ll destroy ourselves before the Chinese or Mexicans or anybody else does.

2. “The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations…No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.” Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson’s basic premise, in his first statement, is substantiated in his last. A nation that goes into debt to fund its government borrows from future generations, thus impoverishing them. That is a crime of prodigious proportions, and one, of course, our current government is totally guilty of. It’s obscene to the nth degree. But we, the people, have let them do it.

Debt leads to poverty, and poverty leads to submission:

3. “The Hindus will never become submissive and obedient until they are reduced to poverty.” (attributed to the Sultan of Delhi, 5 Ala-ud-din Khalji, who reigned 1296–1316)

How many Americans (and non-Americans) are currently sucking off some government teat? Dependence is submission is slavery; we must do what they tell us to if we want our scraps to continue. It isn’t “freedom” to be dependent upon the government. But it’s what the government wants. It doesn’t happen overnight:

4. “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” James Madison

The frog in the pot thing. It happens, we don’t know it’s happening, and, before we know it, our goose (frog) is cooked. We’re enslaved, and we wonder how in the world it occurred. America is in the midst of a revolution right now; the Democratic Party is seeing to that. We’ve already had two revolutions—one in 1776 that made us a free country, the second in 1861-65 that gave the federal government ultimate power in the land, a power that has continued to encroach ever since. The revolution the current Democratic Party is trying to accomplish will give the government totalitarian power—something it doesn’t have yet, but that the Marxist Democratic Party lusts for. Remember, according to Democrats, our rights come from government, not God. That is a perfect definition of totalitarian power, because any rights the government gives you, it can take away. And all of it arbitrarily.

5. “Armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.” James Madison

Can you say “Deep State” and “military-industrial complex”? RINOs are slaves to the military-industrial juggernaut, and Democrats (and most Republicans) are in bondage to the Deep State and want to see it perpetuated. Who pays for it? The American people. How? By loss of freedom. I.e., internal destruction of their once- free country.

What will America be in 2526—if the country even still exists? Well, it won’t be what it was in 1800. We destroyed that a long time ago, and we seemed determined to destroy whatever we’ve become since.

Podcast thread for Jan 3rd

 

What

A

Day!

British and French aircraft attack underground Islamic State weapons store in Syria

 

British and French aircraft have carried out a joint strike on an underground facility in Syria that had been occupied by Islamic State, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.

Guided bombs were used to target access tunnels to the site, in the mountainous region near the ancient city of Palmyra in the centre of the country, on Saturday evening.

“Initial indications are that the target was engaged successfully,” the ministry said in a statement. Typhoon FGR4 combat jets were used to bomb the target, supported by a Voyager refuelling tanker.  

 

 

The facility had probably been used to store weapons and explosives, and the surrounding area was devoid of civilians, the ministry said.

The defence secretary, John Healey, said the UK was determined to “stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies” to “stamp out any resurgence” of IS.

He thanked members of the armed forces involved in the operation “to eliminate dangerous terrorists who threaten our way of life”.

Western aircraft have been conducting patrols to stop a resurgence of the Islamist militant group that ruled parts of Syria until 2019. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/03/british-and-french-aircraft-attack-underground-isis-weapons-store-in-syria  

 

 

 

The Very Revolutionary United States Constitution

The American revolution was a revolution, but it wasn’t revolutionary; what was revolutionary was the United States Constitution.

American  Thinker 

During college one of my professors in Political Philosophy said that the only real revolutions in modern Western civilization were the French and the Russian.  He was right, but I didn’t quite get it at the time.  I do now.

While the American revolution was ostensibly a revolution, in reality it was more of a divorce where the kids kept the same parents, they just lived with their Mom.  Their Dad was still their Dad, but they didn’t have much to do with him. In contrast, the French and Russian revolutions were basically the children taking their parents out back and shooting them….

The American revolution was a revolution, but it wasn’t revolutionary. But what was revolutionary was the United States Constitution.

For the first time in history, a government was formed by a written constitution that described rights that were inherent from God (as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the constitution of most of the original 13 states) upon which the government could not impede.  What’s more, the entire thing was created for the specific purpose of limiting the power of government. This was made clear by the Bill of Rights, which—beginning with Massachusetts—became the quid pro quo for getting the Constitution ratified. And in case anyone missed the point, the last of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

That was every bit as revolutionary as the French sending King Louis XVI to the guillotine or the Bolsheviks shooting Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family in a basement.  But what’s more, unlike those other two revolutions, the American Constitution didn’t result in rivers of blood and a collapse of society.  On the contrary, it set the American experiment on its slow but methodical march to revolutionize the world and unleash the potential of man.

The American experiment worked… for almost 200 years.  Of course it didn’t work perfectly for everyone all the time, nor for some people any of the time, but for the overwhelming majority of people who have lived in the United States over the course of its existence, life has been better here than almost any other place on Earth.

But that experiment is in the process of collapsing. Why?  Simple.  Because the nation that was birthed with a constitution specifically geared toward limiting government power has metastasized into a nation where the government controls virtually everything.

Today it’s almost impossible for a person to get out of bed and go through a normal day without violating one or more laws.  Just the federal government alone, which was the government the Constitution sought to control the most, has so many laws that it itself can’t tell you how many there are. Justice Gorsuch estimates as many as 300,000.  To his credit, President Trump sees the problem.

But that is just one part of the problem.  Another, even more dire, is playing itself out on our X accounts and on TV right in front of us — except obviously, on the MSM….  I’m of course talking about the criminal enterprise that is known as what seems like the entire Somali population in America. It appears that Somalians in America have stolen almost as much money from American taxpayers as the entire GDP of Somalia itself. 

This of course comes mere months after we saw DOGE discover the USAID / NGO grift machine documenting tens of billions of taxpayer dollars going to fund countless leftist programs.  Not surprisingly, both involve Democrats… but that’s an issue for another day.

As enraging as all of this is, these treacheries are just a drop in the bucket of where America has gone off her Constitutional rails. One need to look no farther than the federal budget to understand it. Today, 70% of federal spending goes to things that did not exist when the Constitution was written.

And we’re not talking about air traffic control towers or NASA.  No, these are programs where the government basically takes taxpayer’s money and gives it to someone else. And what would those things be? Social Security, Health, Medicare, Education & Income security. (While SS is not redistribution, it is money the government demands and then controls the distribution of.) That’s fully 70% of federal funding, clocking in at a cool $4.4 trillion. A century before, domestic spending — at that time usually on roads and farm subsidies — made up less than 13% of the federal budget.  Another way of looking at this is that in 1821, federal spending made up 2.5% of America’s total GDP while today it’s in excess of 23%.

The fraud in Minnesota and via USAID are merely the most blatant examples of a system that has gone rogue.  Half of American households pay essentially no income taxes while 100 million Americans receive some sort of government assistance.  And the icing on the cake is that we’re not even spending our own money, we’re borrowing to do so, and today the national debt stands  at 100%of GDP and unfunded mandates at twice that.

Between the stultifying regulations, the income redistribution and the rampant, government sanctioned fraud dressed up like social programs, Americans have betrayed their birthright.

America became the most powerful and consequential nation in human history specifically because of her explicitly limited government. For a period of almost 200 years she stood as a beacon of freedom and hope and opportunity. 

To the outside world that illusion of greatness may remain, but the reality is, much like the French Ancien régime before the revolution, there is a cancer at its core. And that cancer is government.  Not government per se, but rather an out-of-control government that regulates too much, spends too much, and controls too much.  Our government has become a leviathan in every manner possible and its tentacles and largesse have undercut the foundation upon which the nation was founded.

With the Democrat party’s Stalinist leanings and Stasi-like practices getting too difficult for free men to tolerate, the election of Donald Trump was a requisite for averting a real revolution. But it’s not sufficient.  The America that changed the world for the better, that unleashed a level of human achievement unlike any other cannot survive as a borg, which is exactly what it has become.

If Donald Trump and the mostly useless GOP Congress really want to actually make America great again, starting in 2026 they will turn their metaphorical guns and scalpels on the government itself and begin to bring back the primary idea that made America great in the first place:  Limited government. Without that, everything else is little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and the outcome will be the same.

Fighting back against leftist language lies in 2026

This year will be a barrage of BS from the Left; these are the top 5 ways of beating them at their own game.

American  Thinker 

This year will feature a barrage of bee ess from the left because every year is like this.

Here are what they are, and my top five ways of beating them at their own game.

1. Self-labeling with positive-sounding words:

This is the left's perennial favorite in lying with language – always labelling themselves with positive-sounding words that automatically convey a false impression of compassion and probity, putting them two steps ahead whenever anyone uses them.

False impressions are created by the labels progressive, liberal, democratic, and even socialist.  After all, who can be against progress, liberty, democracy, or being social?

That is also why we need to stop playing along.

Fighting back is easy in this case – just refer to them as the far left.  This negates those positive vibes and frames them properly as the extremists in our society.

2. The 'democratic' in democratic socialism. 

We've already touched on this one, but it deserves extra treatment for this year, and with the rise of the red/green alliance and New York City's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani.  

Before the Bolsheviks began rounding people up in the middle of the night, they played a similar game to the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, calling themselves the real democrats.  The "democratic" part easily goes out the window when the system breaks down, or in more modern times, when votes can be bought with other people's money.

Fighting back means refusing to play their little label games.   Drop the false "democratic" label or refer to it as socialistic slavery.

3. Capitalism, the pejorative for economic freedom, or the free enterprise system.

Of course, while the lefties love their positive self-labelling, they equally enjoy applying pejoratives to cast freedom in the worst possible light.  This is just taking a page from their playbook.  

Back in the day, most people rightfully saw that the collectivist ideologies of the left were very similar to the point that they just referred to them as the 'isms' -- collectivism, communism, socialism, fabianism, fascism, Leninism, Maoism.

Fighting back in this case means using our own positive-sounding labels while avoiding the 'ism' grouping with that rogue's gallery of leftist ideologies.

4. Seeing 'red' and other color labels.

It used to be that red was the color of the left.  Being a Red was synonymous with being a commie, and then the colors were inexplicably switched for the year 2000 election.   Many of these pages have noticed how this has flipped the discussion on its head.   This is something that needs to be addressed, because, as usual, we of the pro-freedom right have accepted this inversion of reality for far too long:

Now we let them color us red. Republicans: Maybe you can’t stop the media’s distortion of reality, but you don’t have to indulge Democrat color dysphoria! Stop allowing yourself to be painted red -- call yourself anything else. It doesn’t even have to be a color. If you have put out your own color-coded maps, do them right. Better yet, if the Democrats won’t proudly take back the red, they should take it back anyway, whether they like it or not.

We fight back in this case with alternate labels, or we refuse to use the color of communism.

5. Global cooling; global warming; climate change and climate crisis.

When the 'threat' of global cooling didn't pan out during the 1970s, leftists switched to the 'threat' of global warming.  Except that the climate didn't cooperate, so their genius move was to go with the ever-changing weather and call any change in the climate a climate-change 'threat' and a crisis so they're covered no matter what happens. Then they throw in extra dire-sounding weather terms to push the fear porn.

Weather cold in January?  It's the 'polar vortex' and climate change, or, what we used to call 'winter'. Weather warm in July?  Wow, it's climate change again, in the summer.

Fighting back: Openly mock them by referring to the original crisis:  Global cooling, especially in the summer.

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Anyone Else Noticing the Opportunistic Rebranding?

Conservative Treehouse 

The need for control is a reaction to fear.  Suddenly, there’s a whole lot of corporate media voices rebranding themselves.  Is the worm turning, or is this just opportunistic positioning? The nature of the irrelevance behind it all has me quite amused.  Example #1 CBS:

Paramount/CBS, along with TikTok, were recently acquired by Larry and David Ellison. [NOTE: I refuse to separate the father and son into individual corporate elements, because that perspective requires a certain level of pretending that I’m incapable of.]  David Ellison recently installed Bari Weiss as CBS News Editor in Chief.  Larry and David are currently working to acquire Warner/CNN.

As the ‘great noticing’ of things continues to manifest, suddenly a lot of voices are trying to distance themselves from their corporate interests and rebranding as independent voices.

The next example is Catherine Herridge, who has a long and very visible career working for corporate media outlets, shaping stories for the corporate interest and doing yeoman’s work selling a controlled and approved narrative.

Now working within the structure of The Los Angeles Times platform, Catherine Herridge wants to share terrible stories about her experiences within the corporate media world.

Apparently, Catherine Herridge could not tell anyone about these terrible, horrible, manipulative and restrictive media rules and confines before…. because, well, she doesn’t actually explain that part; just that it was bad, very bad, but now this is better, much better….. and so before, well, it might not have been the truth, or it was shaped, modified and controlled, but now, well, the information will be true and stuff…. swear.

Gotcha. 

The rebranding effort is not targeted to Gen-X, Gen-Z, or even the Millennials born from helicopter parents; those folks have already figured out the Big Club game is rigged, and they cynically don’t even pay attention to this inauthentic corporate shapeshifting.

Nope, this specific version of rebranding is targeting an older audience, albeit a shrinking viewership of pretenders, who cling to idealism based on redemption.

Will CBS become authentic, absent of motive or intent?  That’s silly; of course they won’t.  The Ellisons bought Paramount/CBS and TikTok for a reason, no?  They’re now after Warner/CNN for a reason, no?  Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

Is Catherine Herridge suddenly the voice of truthful information, regardless of personal cost or consequence?  Again, silly beyond comprehension; especially if you have ever watched her carefully avoid anything litigious.

All of that said, watching the rebranding stuff is a little funny.

Remember, the information isn’t theirs – it’s ours.

Remember also, that with President Trump delivering the most transparent administration in history, you don’t have to wonder what he said or ask them what he said – you can just watch him say it in his own words.  Cool.

Like an information dam with too many lie-holes for repair, information control systems are collapsing, and the information control operators, domestic and foreign narrative engineers, are busy building longer snorkels to reach above the fraud.  Meanwhile, the proactive information audience has gone from buying high tech scuba gear to just moving out of the fake news flood plain.

“Wait, trust us”, they shout.

Ha, get stuffed, we’ll watch it all collapse from up here.

National MAGAlignment has moved beyond them.

2026 is off to a great start.

Cheers !

Seattle's New Mayor Joins the Left's Push to Classify Somali Fraud Investigations As 'Hate Crimes'

Townhall 

Democrats like crime and fraud, especially when the criminals and fraudsters are from the party's preferred demographic groups. There's no other way to explain it, because Democrats are fighting very hard to protect Somali fraudsters in Minnesota, Washington, and elsewhere while enacting pro-crime, pro-criminal policies like cashless bail and other "criminal justice reform" legislation.

In Minnesota, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has said the investigations and fraud allegations are "far-right propaganda" and vowed prosecutions. In Washington, Attorney General Nick Brown also threatened independent journalists, writing on X, "My office has received outreach from members of the Somali community after reports of home-based daycare providers being harassed and accused of fraud with little to no fact-checking. We are in touch with the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families regarding the claims being pushed online and the harassment reported by daycare providers. Showing up on someone’s porch, threatening, or harassing them isn’t an investigation. Neither is filming minors who may be in the home. This is unsafe and potentially dangerous behavior."

Now, newly-installed Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is joining the Left's push to undermine the First Amendment and attack journalism as a "hate crime."

"I stand with the Somali childcare providers who have experienced targeted harassment, and condemn the surveillance campaign promoted by extremist influencers," Wilson wrote on X, before directing users to the state's hate crimes website.

In a statement, Wilson wrote, "In Seattle we believe in solidarity, and our city will not tolerate anyone who is trying to intimidate, harass, or film Somali childcare providers. Such behavior is unacceptable and puts children and families at risk. Family home childcare programs are places of care, safety, and trust. They are privately operated businesses, not public spaces. And they are regulated by the government, not private individuals or groups."

No, they are taxpayer-funded businesses, and it's clear the government has no interest in regulating them and combating fraud. If the government were, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Taxpayers are owed transparency and accountability.

Why do Democrats hate that?

Wilson's statement continued, "As mayor, I will work with the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, the Department of Education and Early Learning, the Seattle Police Department and other city departments to ensure childcare providers in our city are safe, secure, and protected."

Note that there isn't even lip service to condemning the rampant fraud.

The accusation of journalists committing "hate crimes" is not lost on social media users.

"Seattle’s new mayor, Katie Wilson, accuses citizen journalists of 'HATE CRIMES' for simply exposing Somali fraud," wrote David J. Harris.

During her inauguration, the first speaker was Wilson's unemployed husband, and the second was a Somali community activist.

Journalist Cam Higby shared video of the activist's remarks. 

"As a Somali immigrant Muslim," she says, "our community knows this script very well. We have surveillance of our mosques, travel bans, and certain presidents calling us garbage. And this rhetoric doesn't stay abstract, it always filters down."

"So we see these past few weeks," she continues, "people pulling up to Somali daycares and establishments... because they believe we are inherently untrustworthy." 

Perhaps if Islamists weren't big on terror and jihad and global conquest, we wouldn't have to surveil the mosques and install travel bans. And perhaps if there wasn't proof of massive fraud, with most of the perpetrators being Somali, people wouldn't have cared.

Yet here we are.

Good luck, Seattle. Like NYC, you get the government you vote for, and according to KOMO News, a lot of Seattle residents have "major concerns" about Wilson's tenure.

Where were these people when Wilson won the election?

Israeli billionaire Shlomo Kramer Wants End to First Amendment and Anonymous Internet Users

Conservative Treehouse 

At first, I thought this video had to be a spoof because the promoted viewpoint is, well, bizarre for a westerner to say out loud.  Then I realized this guy isn’t joking – he’s deadly serious.

Billionaire Shlomo Kramer says, “I know it’s difficult to hear, but it’s time to limit the First Amendment in order to protect it.” When asked what that means, Kramer responds, “I mean that we need to control the platforms, all the social platforms. We need to stack rank the authenticity of every person that expresses themselves online and take control of what they are saying based on that ranking.”

When asked by who? “The government should do that, yes.” WATCH:

Israeli billionaire Shlomo Kramer's New Year's resolution is to eliminate America's First Amendment.

"I know it's difficult to hear, but it's time to limit the First Amendment in order to protect it." pic.twitter.com/dOmb7DuLb1

— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) January 2, 2026

This is absurd totalitarian thinking.

Every month it becomes more challenging to push back against these insufferable control agents both inside and outside government.  What Shlomo Kramer is advocating for is digital fascism, where private industry collaborates with government to control the flow of information and speech on the internet.

Get stuffed Mr. Kramer!

Here Are The Top Six Takeaways From Jack Smith’s Preposterous White-Hat Posturing

If Smith were truly committed to transparency, he would respond to Sen. Grassley’s request for information concerning the special counsel’s investigation.

The Federalist

New Year’s Eve day saw House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, release of the transcript of the Committee’s deposition of Jack Smith, the former special counsel who charged Donald Trump in two separate criminal cases in the run-up to the 2024 election. As the committee explained at the beginning of the deposition, it sought Smith’s testimony as part of its “oversight of the Biden-Harris administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department and its misuse of Federal law enforcement resources for partisan political purposes.”

While Smith spent the next several hours portraying himself and his special counsel team as apolitical, dedicated civil servants merely seeking the truth, Smith’s testimony cannot be squared with reality. Here are six times Smith proved duplicitous.

1. NO!!! Trump did not ask “local officials to find 11,000 votes.”

Visual screaming intended because the false claim that Donald Trump asked election officials to “find 11,000 votes” has been debunked for more than five years, and yet Smith repeated that lie in response to Democrats’ friendly questioning. 

“[Y]ou added something which I think was very interesting, which was a conspiracy to violate voting rights,” a representative of the minority members began, asking Smith to “expound on why you thought you had sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a conspiracy to violate the voting rights of the people.”

Smith responded: “The right to vote in a presidential election is one of the most sacred rights that America has — Americans have, and in this particular case, we had strong evidence that the defendants in this case sought to interfere with, obstruct, injure that right.”

“We had evidence, and just a couple of examples,” the former special counsel continued, “where President Trump was asking local officials to find 11,000 votes.”

However, contrary to Smith’s claim, Trump did not ask election officials “to find” him 11,000 votes — and evidence disproving the former special counsel’s testimony is there for every American to see in the form of a transcript of the January 2, 2021, telephone conversation between Trump’s legal team and the Georgia secretary of state’s office.

That transcript reveals that during that call Trump and his lawyers catalogued numerous categories of illegal votes of which they had concrete evidence, falling in some 25 categories. As Trump’s lawyer explained to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, they had filed a petition in court challenging the election outcome, but “the court is not acting on our petition. They haven’t even assigned a judge.” Because of the court’s delay in acting on Trump’s petition, his legal team asked the secretary of state’s office to investigate the problems.

As The Federalist previously explained,

[T]he transcript of the conversation confirmed Trump’s legal team told Raffensperger that it had solid evidence of illegal votes easily exceeding the official margin of Biden’s victory of 11,779. Under Georgia election law, if the ‘evidence establishe[s] that there are more illegal or irregular votes than the margin of victory, the remedy is a new election,’ which is why Trump focused on his need to find 11,800 votes throughout his conversation with Raffensperger.

Several times during the call, Trump repeated that refrain: “I have to find 12,000 votes and I have them times a lot. And therefore, I won the state.” Conversely, Trump never suggested, much less asked, Raffensperger “‘to find 11,780 votes” in his favor. To the contrary, Trump spoke of his need “to find 11,780 votes,” but only in the context of highlighting the tens of thousands of illegal votes for which his legal team had ample evidence, and while merely asking the secretary of state to review the evidence of illegal voting.

That Jack Smith would repeat the falsehood that Trump asked local officials to find 11,000 votes renders him the Fani Willis of federal prosecutors and exposes his both his bias and his complete lack of credibility.

2. NO!!! Naming alternative electors was not a fake electors conspiracy.

Visual screaming continues unabated because Smith’s testimony concerning his special counsel investigation likewise pushed a second long-debunked narrative, namely that Trump conspired to name fake electors.

Several times throughout his testimony, Smith spoke of Trump’s supposed “fake electors scheme,” for instance, claiming “the fake elector scheme was part of what I was investigating, and it ultimately became part of the charges in the case.” There were no “fake electors,” though, but rather contingent electors, selected in states in which Trump was challenging the election tallies. 

While Smith spun the selection of an alternative slate of Republican electors as a criminal conspiracy, the naming of contingent electors by Trump followed the precise approach Democrats used — successfully — in Hawaii during the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy.

In fact, the Hawaii scenario from 1960 mirrors in every material respect Trump’s selection of alternative electors. That decades-old election which pitted Kennedy, a Democrat, against Republican Richard Nixon, remained undecided for several days after voters cast their ballots, with Hawaii’s results still in doubt through mid-December. Initial returns gave Nixon a 141-vote margin of victory over Kennedy, leading to the acting governor of Hawaii, Republican James Kealoha, certifying the Republican electors on Nov. 28, 1960. But after state circuit court Judge Ronald Jamieson ordered a recount, on Dec. 19, both the Nixon and Kennedy electors met, “cast their votes for President and Vice President, and certified their own meeting and votes.”

In casting their electoral ballots for Kennedy, the three Hawaiian Democrats certified they were the “duly and legally qualified and appointed” electors for president and vice president for the state of Hawaii and that they had been “certified (as such) by the Executive.” The Hawaii electors further attested: “We hereby certify that the lists of all the votes of the state of Hawaii given for President, and of all the votes given for Vice President, are contained herein.” 

Significantly, two of the three alternative Democrat electors were retired federal judges. Additionally, in later holding Kennedy had, in fact, won the election, the state court judge stressed the importance of the Democrats naming the alternative electors which allowed Congress to count Hawaii’s electoral votes in favor of Kennedy.

By framing the alternative electors as “fake electors” and by also testifying “the fake elector scheme was part of what I was investigating, and it ultimately became part of the charges in the case,” former Special Counsel Smith again cemented the partisan nature of his investigation.

3. Given recently released information regarding one of Smith’s top deputies, the special counsel’s touting of his team’s integrity is laughable.

Another theme that cannot withstand scrutiny is Smith’s portrayal of his team as apolitical, dedicated public servants. First, Smith’s false claims about the 11,000 votes and the fake electors leave him with no credibility to vouch for the integrity of anyone on his staff. And second, his staff’s own silence over those misrepresentations, calls into question their apolitical bona-fides. 

But beyond this, the recent releases by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, concerning one of Smith’s top deputies, Ray Hulser, during Hulser’s time leading the Public Integrity Section, renders Smith’s portrayal of his team as on the side of the angels, incredible.

As I detailed last week in “Top Attorney For Special Counsel Jack Smith Previously Spiked Clinton Foundation Investigation,” according to a timeline detailing the sequence of the investigation into the Clinton Foundation, Hulser, when he headed up the Public Integrity Section, or PIN Section, refused to support an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. And then when Special Counsel John Durham asked Hulser about his reasoning, Hulser told Durham that the reporting behind the launch of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation, namely reporting from a confidential human source and Suspicious Activity Reports, involved only de minimis amounts. However, contrary to Hulser’s representation to Durham, the amounts in question in the reporting ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

Additionally, after Trump won the 2016 election and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas sought to reopen its investigation into the Clinton Foundation, Hulser provided the new U.S. attorney a highly edited “2-page FBI Timeline on the history of the investigation.” According to documents recently released by Sen. Grassley, the 2-page timeline Hulser provided the newly appointed U.S. attorney was “a stark contrast” from the unedited version of the timeline. The Office of Inspector General would later provide the U.S. attorney a 6-page unedited timeline which revealed that the abbreviated timeline Hulser had provided prosecutors “omitted ALL references to interference from DOJ and FBI leadership” into the Clinton Foundation investigation.

Hulser’s handling of the Clinton Foundation investigation, coupled with evidence that the PIN Section chief hid or misrepresented evidence to the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney — and potentially even Special Counsel John Durham — suggests Hulser was the farthest thing from an apolitical public servant. And that Smith would brand Hulser a “dedicated public servant” and “the best of us,” raises concerns over Smith’s vouching for other members of his team.

4. Hulser’s conduct also calls into question the integrity of the PIN Section, rendering Smith’s reliance on PIN unpersuasive.

Several times during his testimony, Smith sought cover for his aggressive targeting of Republicans by stressing that the PIN Section had okayed the course of action. In addition to relying on the PIN Section’s approval of the plan to subpoena members of Congress — more on that next — Smith explained the PIN Section approved him filing on the public docket a 165-page brief detailing Trump’s alleged criminal conduct a mere 32 days before the 2024 election.

Smith first claimed it was necessary for his team to file the lengthy document a mere month before the 2024 election because the Supreme Court had recently held the indictment Smith had obtained against Trump improperly alleged as criminal acts conduct for which Trump held absolute immunity. The former special counsel then claimed that to make sure his team did not violate DOJ policy concerning taking actions close-in-time to elections, his team met with the PIN Section, and they agreed with Smith’s course of conduct.

Given that Hulser once led the PIN Section, it is meaningless that the PIN Section approved Smith’s filing of a pre-election treatise on Trump’s alleged criminal conduct.

5. Smith’s justification for subpoenaing members of Congress falls flat.

Smith also relied on the PIN Section’s approval of the Special Counsel office’s decision to subpoena Republican members of Congress. However, given the recent revelations about Hulser, who once led the PIN Section, that approval should carry no weight. Further, given his past efforts to apparently spike the Clinton Foundation investigation, Hulser’s role in seeking the subpoenas proves equally troubling.

Beyond that, Smith’s justification for seeking the subpoenas was also unconvincing. Here, Smith claimed the subpoenas were necessary to confirm various communications, but he really couldn’t explain why the special counsel team could not instead ask the Republican lawmakers for permission to obtain their toll records. 

Likewise, Smith’s claimed respect for the Speech or Debate Clause rang hallow given the PIN Section’s acknowledgement of the constitutional problem with the subpoenas but found them nonetheless appropriate because there was a low “litigation risk.” In other words, since Smith was unlikely to charge the senators criminally, there was little risk that the subpoenas would be challenged based on the Speech or Debate Clause. 

Contrary to Smith’s feigned respect for the Speech or Debate clause, those facts suggest a disregard for our Constitution.

6. Smith’s calls for a public hearing ring hollow.

Throughout his testimony, which occurred behind closed doors, Smith stressed his interest in testifying in public. Democrat members of the House Judiciary Committee amplified Smith’s talking point and called for a public hearing to supposedly further transparency.

But as Sen. Grassley made clear in late October 2025, when he responded to Smith’s offer to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, it would be premature to hold such a hearing. Rather, as the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee explained, the committee is currently in the process of gathering records and needs “time to obtain and review them prior to formally calling for a hearing on this matter.”

Sen. Grassley’s approach makes eminent sense because while the House’s questioning of Smith revealed the names of some of the players and other threads that deserve pulling, without access to the internal communications of the Special Counsel’s office and other details, the Committees won’t yet know what to ask Smith.

For instance, when Smith appeared for his deposition before the House Judiciary Committee on December 17, 2025, the members apparently had not yet had time to review the details from Sen. Grassley’s December 15, 2025, release concerning Hulser. That release proved devastating to Smith’s claim that his team consisted of apolitical civil servants, and yet no one asked Smith about his top deputy’s past questionable conduct in the Clinton Foundation investigation.

Further, if Smith were truly committed to transparency, he would respond to Sen. Grassley’s request for information concerning the special counsel’s investigation. And yet, it appears the former special counsel has yet to respond to even the most basic questions, including whether Smith or his “staff use[d] any non-government devices, such as laptops, tablets, or phones, to conduct official business.”

Whether Smith cooperates with the Senate investigation remains to be seen, but the near weekly release of documents from Sen. Grassley’s office suggests transparency will come — just not the kind those who weaponized the Department of Justice against Trump and in favor of Democrats prefer.