PrairiePundit

  Washington Examiner: Durham seeks indictment against lawyer at Steele dossier-linked law firm over Alfa Bank matter: Report He seems to be working around the edges of the conspiracy against President Trump.  When is he going to bring a case against the leaders of this coups attempt who were feeding his false narrative to the FBI and DOJ and teh media? 

 Bill Gertz: U.S. intelligence officials waged a politicized campaign to undermine President Trump and his administration, and the politicization undermined American security, according to a former U.S. intelligence analyst. John A. Gentry , a former CIA analyst, stated in a journal article that former high-ranking intelligence officials were frequently used by sitting intelligence officials, to leak damaging information. Many “formers” directly or indirectly helped elect current President Biden and defeat Mr. Trump in the 2020 election. “Current and former U.S. intelligence officers in unprecedentedly large numbers politicized intelligence in their opposition to candidate and then President Donald Trump ,” Mr. Gentry stated in an article in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. “The activists consistently refused, and still refuse, to accept responsibility for the politicization or the damage it caused to intelligence and broader national security.”...

 Mackubin Thomas Owen: In my December 2017 column for the Providence Journal, I asked, not altogether rhetorically: “Is Trump the target of a coup attempt?” To the consternation of many of my friends and colleagues, I answered in the affirmative. I argued that if military officers had done to President Obama some of the things that members of the intelligence community (IC) had done to President Trump, they would have been denounced as conspirators seeking to undermine the actions of a duly elected president, and thus enemies of civilian control of the military and the Constitution itself. Commentators would have called their actions what they were: an attempted coup against a duly elected president. But there was little condemnation of the IC conspirators. Indeed, they were treated as brave, stalwart patriots putting country above politics in an effort to save the nation from the dangerous actions of an irresponsible president. They were true defenders of the national interest wh...

  Ed Morrissey: OLC memo to Barr: We wouldn't have charged Trump with obstruction even as a private citizen ... In other words, Trump’s status as president isn’t what saved him from prosecution in the end. Mueller didn’t make enough of a case for prosecution even if Trump had been a private citizen at that point, at least in the view of the OLC attorneys. Furthermore, the OLC urged Barr to make a decision on whether Trump broke the law at all, arguing that the DoJ shouldn’t be left in the position of assigning political blame but only prosecuting crimes.... ... I have long thought the special counsel ploy against Trump was an attempt to entrap him in an obstruction of justice charge since the FBI and DOJ already knew the Russian collusion hoax was a garbage allegation created by Hillary Clinton and her cohorts.  In the end, Trump's attorneys handled the situation in a way that did allow them to concoct an obstruction charge for an investigation of a non-existent collusion ca...

 Stephen Kruiser: ... Liz Cheney is a distraction. There are over seventy-four million Republican voters who feel that the future of the party must have Donald Trump as its centerpiece — either in person or in spirit. That is far and away the largest faction in the GOP. The other faction is comprised of Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and a few others who believe that the party would be more comfortable returning to its Bush-era days of being little more than a lapdog for the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the MSM. As I have stated on more than one occasion, that’s the path to permanent oblivion of Republicans. I felt for a while that the Republican resolve would be fueled by the Trump spirit going forward but then House Republicans voted to leave Cheney in a leadership position. That, of course, has just emboldened her. Cheney’s own constituents in Wyoming just expressed their displeasure with her via censure, and  her response was rather dismissive : Liz Cheney is defiant af...

 The Lid: In September 2017, four months into the Mueller investigation, the FBI interviewed Christopher Steele, the man behind the Steele Dossier, and learned it was a partisan document designed to hurt Donald Trump. Yet the investigation continued for another year and a half. On his last full day in office, President Trump announced that over the objections of the FBI, he had declassified many of the remaining documents from “Crossfire Hurricane.” The documents will be redacted to protect sources and methods. The first of those documents surrounding an interview of Christopher Steele was released to John Solomon who published them (embedded below). Dossier author Christopher Steele admitted to the FBI that he leaked the Russia collusion story during the height of the 2016 election  to help Hillary Clinton overcome her lingering email scandal and because he believed Donald Trump’s election would be bad for U.S. relations with his home country of Britain,  according to do...

 Aaron Mate: President Trump's last days in office offer a final opportunity to declassify critical information on the Russia investigation that engulfed his lone term. Already voluminous public records – including investigative reports from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Congress and the Justice Department’s inspector general – have established that Trump and his associates were targeted with a baseless Russian collusion allegation. The fraudulent claim originated with the Hillary Clinton campaign, was fueled by a torrent of false or deceptive intelligence leaks, and was improperly investigated by the FBI, potentially to the point of being criminal. Despite these disclosures, key questions remain about the origins and the spread of the conspiracy theory. And with a Biden administration set to take office and Democrats taking control of both chambers of Congress, there are no guarantees that the ongoing probe of Special Counsel John Durham will fill in the remaining gaps. Both th...

  Jonathon Turley: The author Franz Kafka once wrote, “My guiding principle is this. Guilt is never to be doubted.” Democrats suddenly appear close to adopting that standard into the Constitution as they prepare for a second impeachment of President Trump . With seeking his removal for incitement, Democrats would gut not only the impeachment standard but also free speech, all in a mad rush to remove Trump just days before his term ends. Democrats are seeking to remove Trump on the basis of his remarks to supporters before the rioting at the Capitol. Like others, I condemned those remarks as he gave them, calling them reckless and wrong. I also opposed the challenges to electoral votes in Congress. But his address does not meet the definition for incitement under the criminal code. It would be viewed as protected speech by the Supreme Court. When I testified in the impeachment hearings of Trump and Bill Clinton, I noted that an article of impeachment does not have to be based on any...

 Nick Arama: Those on the left have been accusing President Donald Trump of fomenting an insurrection because of the Capitol protest. But Trump never called for violence or a riot. But these are the same people who for four years tried to take out and undermined the duly elected president of the United States through a false Russia Collusion hoax story. These are the same people who rioted on Trump’s Inauguration Day, attacking and setting fire to thing in Washington, D.C.(By the way, all those arrested in those attacks were ultimately released without any time for their actions). These are the same people who refused to go to his election, calling him illegitimate. These are the same people who ignored attacks on federal buildings for the last several months because they were perpetrated by those on the left, ignored over 700 law enforcement officers being injured and over 32 people being killed. These are the same people who celebrated the BLM radicals at their Democrat conventio...

 Epoch Times: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he won’t support the impeachment of President Donald Trump with just more than a week to go. “If Speaker Pelosi pushed impeachment in the last days of the Trump presidency, it will do more harm than good. I’m hopeful President-elect Biden sees the damage that would be done from such action,” he said, referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Graham stated that Pelosi was “hanging by a political thread” and noted that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “lives in fear of primary from the radical left.” Graham was referring to statements made by socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) that suggested she would not rule out a run against Schumer for his seat. “Any attempt to impeach President Trump would not only be unsuccessful in the Senate but would be a dangerous precedent for the future of the presidency,” Graham, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, added. ... I think Pelosi is acting more out of...

 Fox News: As Special Counsel John Durham carries on with the investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, widening his prosecutorial team, critical questions linger over the role played by FBI informant Stefan Halper and his longtime FBI handler, Stephen Somma. Halper emerged in the middle of the firestorm in May 2018, when his identity as the secret FBI informant embroiled in Crossfire Hurricane was exposed. It cast a dark shadow on his prestigious career as a foreign policy expert, Cambridge professor, author and analyst with deep ties to intelligence figureheads and sources spawning the globe. But since then he appears to have been hidden from public view. The whereabouts of Somma, who subsequently was exposed as his handler and shared blame for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) mishaps against Trump campaign aide Carter Page, also have been unclear. Despite both Halper and Somma being poised as having played a pivotal part in the U.S. counterintell...

 Epoch Times: The Trump campaign on Sunday described a sworn affidavit from a whistleblower in  Nevada  who alleges to have witnessed people inside a Biden-Harris van opening, filling out, and resealing mail ballots. The whistleblower, who the campaign did not identify, witnessed the alleged incident while on lunch break. He said the people inside the van were using letter openers to open the ballot envelopes. Once the people became aware they were being watched, they formed a human shield around the van to purportedly cover up the activity. The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Trump campaign representative Matt Schlapp detailed the allegation during a press conference in Las Vegas on Sunday. Schlapp described other instances of potential fraud, including 9,000 ballots cast by people who have moved out of the state, two examples of ballots cast using the identities of dead people, and voter registrations issued to minors under the age of 18. Schlap...

 Thomas Lifson: "Democrats have been thinking about this for a long time…" —Tucker Carlson, November 5, 2020 I fully expect that Twitter and Facebook will suppress circulation of this blog post, but so what?  The half of the country that never strays beyond the mainstream media narrative would find it unbelievable, a fantasy of conspiracy theorizing.  After four years of their media telling them that Russia hacked the 2016 election, and Hillary claiming she was cheated, the new media-approved narrative is that any questioning of electoral fraud is an attack on democracy. Such people are a lost cause, unless (or until) crimes are proven in court and election cheaters are sentenced to prison. But for the rest of us who have eyes and brains, there is no stopping suspicion and activism in the " nasty street fight ahead ."  "Samizdat" is a word that Americans are going to be using a lot, at least until Google gets around to changing the definition that stil...

 Michael Walsh: So here we are, nearly four years to the day after  Donald Trump  was elected president of the United States and nearly four years to day plus one when the plot to remove him from office—by any means necessary—began. And, as of this writing, it appears it may finally succeed. With the corrupt and partisan media edging toward declaring  Joe Biden  the presumptive president-elect—you can practically hear the salivation—the Democrats’ long march through the institutions of the American electoral system is nearly complete. Scripted as carefully but as predictably as a run-of-the-mill Hollywood thriller, the Democrats played every card and sprung every trap on their way to achieve a media, if not genuine, victory over their hated enemy. After their surprise 2016 loss, the Democrat/Media complex relearned the importance of the Electoral College, a zero-sum game in which all the winner has to do is get to 270 votes. Despite all their complaints about ho...

 Washington Examiner: U.S. Attorney John Durham will release a report on his inquiry into the Russia investigation that will warrant indictments, according to a top Republican senator. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, insisted on Sunday that Durham's team remains very active even as his investigation has fallen out of the spotlight after it became clear in recent weeks that there would not be any more developments before Election Day. "It was Hillary Clinton in July trying to cook up a plan to link Trump to Russia in 2016. In September of 2016, she tried to attach Trump to Russia, to deal with her email problem to deflect," Graham said on Fox News to host Maria Bartiromo, referring to an  unverified Russian report on Clinton that was declassified . "We’ve learned there was Russian collusion, but it was between the Clinton campaign, and it was between Russia," the South Carolina Republican added. "Clinton and Russia, not Trump an...

 Michael Anton: As if 2020 were not insane enough already, we now have Democrats and their ruling class masters openly talking about staging a coup. You might have missed it, what with the riots, lockdowns and other daily mayhem we’re forced to endure in this, the most wretched year of my lifetime. But it’s happening. It started with the military brass quietly indicating that the troops should not follow a presidential order. They were bolstered by many former generals—including President Trump’s own first Secretary of Defense—who stated openly what the brass would only hint at. Then, as nationwide riots really got rolling in early June, the sitting Secretary of Defense himself all but publicly told the president not to invoke the Insurrection Act. His implicit message was: “Mr. President, don’t tell us to do that, because we won’t, and you know what happens after that.” All this enthused Joe Biden, who threw subtlety to the winds. The former United States Senator (for 26 years) ...

 Byron York: On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced  legislation  to create what would be called the "Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office." The bill, written by one of Pelosi's fellow Democrats, Rep. Jamie Raskin, would provide for the implementation of the 25th Amendment to remove a president deemed too incapacitated to carry out his or her responsibilities. Pelosi, of course, led the Democratic effort to impeach and remove President Trump 11 months ago. For his part, Raskin has wanted to remove Trump from the get-go. He  introduced  a 25th Amendment bill in 2017, the first year of Trump's presidency. He also took part in a Democratic effort on Jan. 6, 2017, before Trump was sworn in, to block the certification of votes for Trump in the Electoral College. On Dec. 6, 2017, Raskin joined 57 other House Democrats to vote to impeach Trump on the basis of the president's statements about Colin Kaepernick and the...

  NY Times: Taking Page From Authoritarians, Trump Turns Power of State Against Political Rivals President Trump took a step even Richard M. Nixon avoided in his most desperate days: openly ordering direct, immediate government action against specific opponents, timed to serve his re-election campaign. The Times was a co-conspirator in pushing the Russian collusion hoax and the attempt to overthrow the Trump Presidency, so it is not much of a surprise that they would do a story accusing Trump of doing what was actually done to him by Hillary Clinton and Democrat deep state operatives .  If Trump does not hold them accountable for their treasonous actions, it is pretty clear that many in the media will hope the traitors get away with their actions.  The Nixon analogy falls apart unless the media thinks his political enemies were engaged in criminal acts.   A coup attempt should never be seen as "just politics."