PrairiePundit

Sean Davis: BREAKING: FBI Closed Flynn Case, Dubbed ‘Crossfire Razor,’ In Early 2017, Until Strzok Ordered It To Stay Open After it found zero evidence that Michael Flynn broke any laws or was acting as a traitor to America, the FBI closed its case against Flynn, until fired former FBI agent Peter Strzok ordered the case to stay open. Strzok has some explaining to do.  So does Muller and his staff of Democrat zealots. It turns out that Comey and McCabe were behind the reopening of the case .  Was someone pushing Comey's button to keep the case going?  I would be curious to ask him whether he as acting at the behest of Obama or someone from his administration.  Obama seemed to have a real bee in his bonnet about Flynn.

Allahpundit: ... Wanting a guy fired for displaying a modicum of intellectual integrity is extremely on-brand for 2020. Hayes stands accused of the crime of believing that #MeToo allegations against a powerful politician are newsworthy even when that politician’s not a Republican. He looks guilty to me . MSNBC host Chris Hayes sparked backlash from the left when he became the first primetime host on the network to cover a former aide’s sexual assault allegations against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, with the hashtag #FireChrisHayes trending on Twitter. The “All-In” host welcomed New York magazine’s Rebecca Traister to his program Wednesday night after she penned an essay, titled “The Biden Trap,” that critical of the former vice president for not addressing Tara Reade’s allegations in any interviews, thereby leaving Democratic women supporting his candidacy to answer questions about the allegations for him… “What this is creating is a kind of a perfe...

Katie Pavlich: ... "The documents I've seen so far in addition to the ones you have in your hands now are even more stunning. It's just absolutely appalling what these agents and then the Special Counsel operation did to General Flynn. It's abuse of their authority at every turn," Powell said. "These documents weren't easily discovered. The emails have been in the FBI the whole time but the handwritten notes, as I understand it, may not have been. We still do not know who the author of those is. They're devastating evidence of lengths they were willing to go to dsiregard all prior protocols, all prior rules, their standard practice in other cases to warn of 1001 violation. All of that. None of that applied to General Flynn. They only had special violations of every protocol known for him because they were determined to take him out." ... Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy broke down the new documents and said it's clear FBI agent...

Red States: Since the coronavirus outbreak, Americans’ view of China’s Communist Party has turned decidedly negative. According to a new Pew Research Center poll, 66 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of China. For comparison, in 2017, only 47 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view towards China. Although there are many possible reasons behind this sudden shift in public opinion, it is more than likely that China’s abysmal response to the outbreak in Wuhan is the primary driver. Why? Because, from the very beginning of the outbreak, China’s Communist Party has engaged in a coverup, which has put the rest of the world in jeopardy. ... This highlights one of the current curiosities about polling.  Biden favors warmer relations with China and Trump has been as tough on China as the people in this poll seem too.  In another poll, roughly the same percentage of people support stopping immigration while people are out of work because of the pandemic.  Tr...

Sean Davis: Multiple congressional committees approached Michael Flynn’s original defense counsel to raise the prospect of immunity in exchange for Flynn’s congressional testimony but were spurned, multiple sources familiar with the interactions told The Federalist. After Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to federal investigators, representatives of multiple congressional committees with oversight responsibility for national security matters asked Flynn’s lawyers if Flynn would testify before Congress in exchange for a congressional grant of immunity. Robert Kelner, Flynn’s attorney at the time, immediately dismissed the overtures, sources told The Federalist. During one conversation, Kelner allegedly responded that in situations like the one facing Flynn, the prosecution essentially “owns” the defendant and added that he would be unlikely to pursue congressional testimony without the approval of former Spygate Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office. Flynn was not ...

Breitbart: A 2008 column in the far-left magazine CounterPunch accusing Joe Biden of “loutish sexual advances” in the U.S. Senate has become a lightning rod in the debate over Biden and his former staffer Tara Reade’s allegation of sexual assault in 1993. The article, written by the late Alexander Cockburn, lamented then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s choice of Biden as a running mate in August 2008. Biden, in Cockburn’s view, was an empty and worthless swamp creature, a D.C. insider chosen purely to improve Obama’s electoral odds who would ultimately stifle any progressive agenda for the candidate of “Hope and Change.” Yet just five paragraphs in, Cockburn made an aside about Biden’s character that accused him of harassing women who worked in the Senate, even while he was supposedly grieving over his wife’s death: Biden is a notorious flapjaw. His vanity deludes him into believing that every word that drops from his mouth is minted in the golden currency of Pericles. V...

Washington Free Beacon: Joe Biden (Still) Hasn’t Faced A Single Question on Sexual Assault Allegations 5 weeks, 19 interviews, and 142 questions with no mention of sexual assault claim Nor have any of the women being considered for the Vice President slot by Biden.  Some of those women were very outspoken during the Kavanaugh hearings.  It just goes to show what that show was all about.  It was an excuse to attack a nominee because he might overturn the terrible Roe v. Wade decision.   We now know that for Democrats "women are to be believed" only one they are accusing Republicans.  When Democrats are fighting for the right to kill babies there is no restraint or decency in their attacks. The reason these women are now backing Biden is that they believe he will be a pro-abortion President and nominate people for the courts who are pro-abortion.

Daily Wire: While at the White House on Tuesday, sitting alongside President Donald Trump, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida ripped into the media for their failing, dire predictions of his novel coronavirus response. Gov. DeSantis was lambasted in the media for weeks for refusing to implement a draconian statewide lockdown, though Florida is outperforming states across the nation when it comes to slowing the spread of the China-originated virus. Asked about criticism that he’s face for not implementing a full shutdown early on, DeSantis let the media have it. “What have the results been?” he rhetorically asked, according to Fox News. “You look at some of the most draconian orders that have been issued in some of these states and compare Florida in terms of our hospitalizations per 100,000, in terms of our fatalities per 100,000.” “I mean, you go from D.C., Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, you name it. Flor...

Fox News: Explosive new internal FBI documents unsealed Wednesday show that top bureau officials discussed their motivations for interviewing then-national security adviser Michael Flynn in the White House in January 2017 -- and openly questioned if their "goal" was "to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired." The handwritten notes -- written by the FBI's former head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap after a meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Fox News is told -- further suggested that agents planned in the alternative to get Flynn "to admit to breaking the Logan Act." The Logan Act is an obscure statute that has never been used in a criminal prosecution; enacted in 1799 in an era before telephones, it was intended to prevent individuals from falsely claiming to represent the United States government abroad. "What is our goal?" one of the notes read. "Truth/A...

Tom Kuntz: The New York Times is widely admired for owning up to its errors. In addition to the corrections it runs each day, it has a tradition of publishing extensive Editor’s Notes and even full-length investigations when it has determined that flawed reporting misled readers and botched the rough first draft of history. Since 2000, these have included lengthy reassessments of its reporting on whether a Chinese American scientist, Wen Ho Lee, had collaborated with the Chinese; the false stories filed by a troubled black reporter, Jayson Blair, and articles regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. During the last few years the Times has published two other sets of deeply flawed articles that also demand such extended corrections: “The 1619 Project” and its Trump-Russia coverage. It is a sign of how much the Times, and mainstream journalism in general, have changed that it appears highly unlikely the “paper of record” will correct the record. To the contrary, the 1619 Pr...

John Solomon: Steele reveals he believes Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice knew about his anti-Trump research Rice denies former British spy's account, which comes in a novel litigation by three Russian businessman suing over Britain's data laws. Solomon extensively reviews Steele's testimony in a Brith court in a case brought by three of the Russians he named in his dossier.  As the headline discloses Susan Rice disputes what Steele says about her role in his work.

Erin Davis Valdez: Harvard law professor against home schooling forgets to check her class privilege Valdez explains how she and her three siblings were schooled in their family trailer home and went on to success in college. Three of my grandchildren were homeschooled and also found success.  The youngest just got 1230 on the SAT and is now attending a school that gives her college credits for her work even though she is a junior.  They also socialized with both the 4H program and two of them competed in the national championship shooting sports competition on the winning team.  They also participated in the Navy sea cadet program and have attended summer programs at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Washington Post: Mass layoffs begin in cities and states, threatening education, sanitation, health and safety Local governments have started laying off or furloughing thousands of workers. The numbers are likely to grow in the absence of federal aid. The real long term answer is to lift the lockdown and allow people to go back to work so that they will generate sufficient tax revenue to pay for government services.  The position of the Democrats and the media on keeping the lockdown is absurd.  We know who the vulnerable people are and we can protect them without shutting down commerce.  It looks like Democrats and their media cohorts are rooting for depression rather than a recovery.

NY Times: ‘Life Has to Go On’: How Sweden Has Faced the Virus Without a Lockdown The country was an outlier in Europe, trusting its people to voluntarily follow the protocols. Many haven’t, but it does not seem to have hurt them. This is significant evidence that Democrats and their media cohorts are wrong about the dangers of reopening for business.  There is also evidence in the US that the most vulnerable can be protected better while those not vulnerable go about their lives and engage in commerce.  What should be clear from the US experience is that it is a mistake to force nursing homes to take in coronavirus patients.   In fact, such patients should be immediately removed from nursing homes.

George Neumayr: Say what you want about the Trump kids, none of them have been found with a crack pipe on them. The same can’t be said for Hunter Biden. I picked up the New York Post yesterday morning and found an informative reprint from The Intercept by Ryan Grim, who details Hunter’s dirtbaggery, including this revealing tidbit: “One particularly out-of-control bender, which included a crack pipe found in a rental car, took place while Biden was making $50,000 a month serving on the board of [the Ukrainian company] Burisma.” Therein lies one of the obvious motives for his shameless cashing in on his last name. For years he has had a very expensive drug habit. Drugs aren’t cheap, and neither are loose women — two of Hunter’s favorite pastimes. Earlier this year, Hunter got hit with a paternity suit by a woman in Arkansas. Then there are his Ashley Madison troubles: Hunter’s name turned up in its subscriber data after the dating site for adulterers got hacked. Popped, Hunter tri...

Andrea Widburg: Biden's sexual assault problem gets worse, and he seems more senile than ever ... Michelle Goldberg, a New York Times writer known for using different standards for Biden and Kavanaugh , says the new evidence is a "nightmare" — not because a woman suffered at Biden's hands, but because it hurts Biden's chances at the White House.... ... Goldberg is frightened, but the Washington Post is still valiantly spinning, this time claiming that these new facts are merely partisan amplification of “efforts” to “question” Biden’s behavior.... ... What does amplify the problem is that someone remembered a video from last year in which Kamala Harris said she believes those Biden accusers who complained about unwanted touching. Scratch her off Biden's list of possible female choices for vice president. Maybe Biden can expand his explorations by looking at so-called transgender women. So far, though, Biden's response to the allegation has simp...

Breitbart: A majority of Americans want all immigration to the United States halted in the midst of the Chinese coronavirus crisis, a new poll reveals. Last week, President Trump signed an executive order slowing green card processing for less than ten percent of the 1.2 million legal immigrants annually admitted to the U.S. In addition to these annual legal immigrant admissions are millions of foreign nationals who can still arrive on foreign visa worker programs, student visas, tourist visas, and special immigrant visas — all of which have continued despite more than 26 million Americans now unemployed. The latest Washington Post/University of Maryland poll finds that Americans, by a majority, want all immigration to the U.S. halted. When asked “Would you support or oppose temporarily blocking nearly all immigration into the United States during the coronavirus outbreak?” about 65 percent of Americans said they favored such a policy. Only 34 percent opposed an immigration m...

Victor Davis Hanson: ... Why not return to the earlier Trump paradigm, especially in our new age of Skype and Zoom, to include reporters from the heartland and rural America, who would give some balance in their concerns beyond those of the New York and Washington corridor? Indeed, perhaps outsiders, reporting from different states, might even offer more light than heat about how the nation assesses, and wishes to help, the Eastern Seaboard? Cannot there be a stable of 20–30 or so reporters from Salt Lake City, Bakersfield, Des Moines, El Paso, and Biloxi, some of whom in each conference can pose questions that will probably be different from those of the Washington press corps — itself an increasingly ossified concept in a post-viral and remote brave new world? It is in the interest of the nation as well as the president to diversify the press conferences, shorten them, keep them to tight schedules — and to not let them become monotonously hijacked by those with little if any e...

Washington Examiner: B ritish ex-spy Christopher Steele testified he met with Democratic lawyers during the 2016 presidential election, and one provided him with now-debunked claims about alleged Trump-Russia collusion as he compiled his dossier. Steele, a former MI6 agent whose salacious and unverified dossier was used by the FBI in its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act targeting of Trump campaign associate Carter Page, discussed his meetings with two lawyers tied to Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee during a deposition in a British court in mid-March, according to a transcript  obtained  by the  Daily Caller . Michael Sussman and Marc Elias, two top lawyers for the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Clinton campaign and the DNC, played an even more significant role in the Trump-Russia investigation than previously known. Steele testified Sussman provided him with claims about Alfa Bank’s purported ties to Russian P...

Washington Examiner: Fox News host Tucker Carlson sounded the alarm regarding what he described as the increasingly authoritarian response of those in power to the coronavirus pandemic. Carlson opened the Tuesday episode of  Tucker Carlson Tonight  revisiting a viral video of Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, two California physicians who publicly questioned the efficacy of widespread lockdown orders and also revealed the pressure some doctors are facing to inflate the number of COVID-19 deaths. "They recited pages of government statistics and then interpreted them in light of their own long clinical experience as doctors," Carlson said. "At one point, they noted that the newly adjusted death rate in their state of California, which is much lower than anyone expected it to be, and asked if government officials there should change their policies based on this new science." [  Related :  'Reckless and untested musings': Doctors who recommended li...

Setting Flynn free from this prosecution should only be the beginning.  Those responsible for this travesty of justice should also be brought to justice.

The Hill: President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday evening, using the Defense Production Act (DPA) to order meat processing plants to stay open and designating them as critical infrastructure. The order will apply to all meat processing plants in the U.S. in an effort to prevent further disruptions to the food supply. Trump signaled he would sign this order earlier on Tuesday following estimates that meat production capacity nationwide could be reduced by as much as 80 percent. “It is important that processors of beef, pork, and poultry ("meat and poultry") in the food supply chain continue operating and fulfilling orders to ensure a continued supply of protein for Americans. However, outbreaks of COVID-19 among workers at some processing facilities have led to the reduction in some of those facilities' production capacity,” the president wrote in the order. He said that actions in the states have led to closures of processing plants but those closure...

Washington Examiner: House and Senate Democrats are escalating calls for an historic federal bailout of state and local governments coping with significant revenue losses due to the coronavirus outbreak. The price tag for the aid Democrats propose is massive: $500 billion for state governments plus “a very big figure,” for municipalities, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters Tuesday. And there’s more: Pelosi said lawmakers may seek a $200 billion increase in Medicaid spending. Congress last month passed legislation providing $150 billion in federal aid to states. A separate measure Congress passed earlier in March provided a temporary 6.2% increase in federal Medicaid spending. “And now we need more,” Pelosi said Tuesday in a press call that featured union workers who could face layoffs due to underfunded states and municipalities. House Democrats likely have the support within their own party to pass a big spending bill that includes many of their wi...

AP/Fuel Fix: With a barrel of crude oil costing less than a New York pizza, many U.S. shale producers are being pushed to the brink of bankruptcy and experts are wondering when, and if, the oil industry will recover. The price of benchmark U.S. crude oil closed at $12.34 a barrel Tuesday. At the start of the year, the price was around $60. Demand for oil has been decimated by the coronavirus pandemic, especially as shelter-in-place orders reverberated around the globe. “International travel, certainly by air, has essentially ceased, and that’s shocking,” said Jim Burkhard, vice president, IHS Markit. The Energy Information Administration expects jet fuel use to fall 34% in the second quarter. In addition, the agency expects gasoline use to drop by 25% from April to June as drivers stay home instead of hitting the road during warmer weather. Oil prices were declining even before the pandemic hit as producers flooded the market with more oil than the world could use. Now, as de...

It takes 500 times the landmass to produce as much energy with solar as it does to the equivalent amount of energy from natural gas. There is more.

Epoch Times: Tens of millions of mail-in ballots went missing between 2012 and 2018, according to federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) reports. While there’s no evidence any of the 28.3 million unaccounted for ballots were used fraudulently, their sheer volume gives weight to concerns about election integrity, particularly as calls mount for more widespread use of vote-by-mail options amid the pandemic. The drive to expand mail balloting options during the outbreak has emerged as the centerpiece of a growing political fight ahead of November’s election. President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers have challenged the idea of expanding vote-by-mail, arguing it is vulnerable to fraud. Democrats, and voting rights groups, say it is a way to protect voters from the deadly CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus , commonly known as novel coronavirus. They say a failure to guarantee that option amid a pandemic will disenfranchise millions of Americans. “Putting the election in the h...

Red States: Joe Biden Gets Asked About Hunter Biden, Good Luck Trying to Translate His Answer ... "My son's business dealings [in China] were not anything what everybody that he's talking about, not even remotely, number one." ... Hunh?

NY Post: President Trump on Tuesday suggested that new federal payments to help states deal with the coronavirus pandemic could depend on whether or not they were home to sanctuary cities. “If it is COVID related, we can talk about it. We want things including sanctuary city adjustments,” the president said during an event in the East Room of the White House. “I don’t even think they are popular even by radical left, because people are being protected that shouldn’t be protected and bad things are happening with sanctuary cities,” Trump continued at the event, which also showcased small business owners who’d benefited from the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program. “It is one of the things we think about. If we are going to do something for states, they will want something having to do with sanctuary cities and other different points that we can discuss a little later on.” Trump has frequently railed against sanctuary cities, which generally decline to coopera...

Andrew McCarthy: ‘Why was the FBI investigating General Flynn?” That is a question I posed more than three years ago, in the days immediately after President Trump fired Michael Flynn — fleetingly, his first national-security adviser — in February 2017. There was never a good answer to that question. That has always been a big problem for the current and former government officials whose actions in the blatantly politicized probes of the Trump campaign and its surrogates are currently under investigation by the Justice Department. The question and the lack of a satisfactory answer are likewise at the root of stunning disclosures the Justice Department has just made to Flynn and his legal team. Even when the government is doing the right thing, you can rest assured that Friday-afternoon information dumps (here, in the middle of a pandemic) are apt to contain news humiliating for the officials involved. So it was that last Friday night, the DOJ provided some so-called Brady mater...