"We are witnessing a surreal collusion between the nation's former top intelligence officials and the progressive media"

In PJ Media, Victor Davis Hanson writes in part,

Former FBI Director James Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have lots of things in common.

One, they ran the nation's key intelligence and investigatory agencies under former President Barack Obama. They were deeply involved in the "Russian collusion" hoax. And they participated in the surveillance of the Trump campaign and transition.

Two, Comey, McCabe, Brennan and Clapper have all lied either under oath or in the public sphere.

In testimony before the House Judiciary and oversight Committees, there were 245 occasions on which Comey claimed he couldn't remember details or couldn't answer questions.

Three, all four of these former intelligence chiefs detest the president of the United States.

In sum, we are witnessing a surreal collusion between the nation's former top intelligence officials and the progressive media -- beyond even the nightmares of so-called conspiracy theorists.

As employees of the media, they sell their checkered government service to exonerate themselves while confirming the anti-Trump biases of their paying hosts.

Read more here.

The real collusion

What is there to move on to?

Victor Davis Hanson writes in American Greatness,

...The besmirching of Barr’s conduct is surreal. He certainly has not done anything even remotely approximating the conduct of former President Obama’s two attorneys general.

Has Barr dubbed himself the president’s “wingman” or called America a “nation of cowards,” as did former Attorney General Eric Holder?

Has Barr’s Department of Justice monitored reporters’ communications or ordered surveillance of a television journalist? Has Barr used a government jet to take his family to the Belmont Stakes horse race, as did Holder?

Has Barr met secretly on an airport tarmac with the spouse of a person his Justice Department was investigating, as did former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who had such a meeting with Bill Clinton?

The Mueller report ignored the likely illegal origins of the Christopher Steele dossier, the insertion of an FBI informant into the Trump campaign, the unlawful leaking of documents, and the conflicted testimonies of former high-level intelligence officials.

All of those things were potential felonies. All in some way yielded information that Mueller drew on in his investigation. Yet Mueller never recommended a single indictment of any of the Obama-era officials who likely broke laws.

Mueller was instead fixated on possible collusion with Russia. But it is a crime to knowingly hire a foreign national to work on a presidential campaign—in other words, to “collude.” That is exactly what the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee did when they paid British subject Christopher Steele to smear Trump.

Did Mueller argue that the possible crimes of John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe and other former government officials—lying to federal investigators, perjury, obstruction of justice, deceiving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, planting an informant into a political campaign, unmasking and leaking the identities of individuals under surveillance—were only peripheral to his investigation?

Not really. After all, Mueller indicted Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone and others for crimes that had nothing to do with collusion and were far less serious than the improper behavior of top Obama administration bureaucrats.

So what really explains the furor now directed at Barr?

One, progressives are terrified that a number of Trump’s critics—Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe—may soon be indicted. They apparently seek to preempt such indictments by attacking Barr, a seemingly no-nonsense prosecutor who will likely follow up on any criminal referrals from any inspector general that reach his desk.

Two, the 2020 progressive agenda—whether defined as the Green New Deal, a wealth tax, Medicare for All or open borders—will not compete well with Trump’s currently booming economy. Impeaching Trump for collusion and obstruction is seen by progressives as the best (or perhaps only) way to return to power. That effort so far is failing, causing even more hysteria.

Three, the Mueller investigation is over, finished after 22 months, $34 million and a 448-page, two-volume report.

There will be no indictments of Trump for either collusion or the obstruction of justice during the investigation of that non-crime. So now what?

Since late 2015, Trump, as the supposed Russian puppet or the Machiavellian obstructer of justice, was nightly cable-TV news fare. Now, such fantasies are shattered. But progressives are not willing to let the Mueller investigation rest in peace and move on with their lives.

Perhaps they feel in the political sense that there is nothing to move on to. And they are probably right.

Read more here.

Collusion between Hillary's campaign, Russians, British spy, and DOJ

In The Hill, John Solomon reports,

Hundreds of pages of previously unreported emails and memos provide the clearest evidence yet that a research firm, hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to find dirt on and defeat Donald Trump, worked early and often with the FBI, a Department of Justice (DOJ) official and the intelligence community during the 2016 presidential election and the early days of Trump's presidency.

Fusion GPS's work and its involvement with several FBI officials have been well reported.

But a close review of these new documents shows just how closely Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who reported to Obama-era Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, maintained contact with Fusion — and, in particular, its primary source, former British spy Christopher Steele — before, during and after the election.

Read more here.

Do you follow the Ajerbaijani Hit Parade as closely as CNN does?

Donald Trump Jr. is colluding with John Denver's Australian publicist from the 1980s!

Rush Limbaugh tries to figure out what is going on with the Comey/Rogers hearings

Rush Limbaugh discusses the alleged collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign.

the Democrats and the media have so stoked this story that their base believes it. And the Democrats on this committee and the Democrats in the Senate, the Democrats everywhere, are literally scared to death of the day when it will be officially announced that there was no collusion, when this Comey investigation ends and they can’t prove any collusion between Trump and the Russians.

They are scared to death of that day, of what their base is gonna do.

They need their base continuing to donate money. They need their base continuing to remain engaged, and they have used this story — that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election. They have used this story to excuse the fact that they lost. They have used this story to excuse the fact that they had a lousy candidate, to excuse the fact that she ran a lousy campaign, to excuse the fact that she’s very unlikable, to excuse the fact that they were so arrogant and condescending in assuming they were gonna win that they didn’t even really make a serious effort.

...Again, I want to remind everybody — the truth of this has not been mentioned yet — Podesta was not hacked. Podesta fell for a phishing scam. Now, you might, on a loose definition, call it a hack. But it’s not a hack in the sense that you and I think of hacks. Nobody got into Podesta’s computer. He let them in. He invited them in, unknowingly. Russia did not deal directly with WikiLeaks, Comey said. They had a cut-out, which is an intermediary. Well, who was that? WikiLeaks has insisted that they didn’t get anything from Russia, that Russia was not their source, and Comey confirmed that today.

...But I’d like to know: Who initiated the FBI’s investigation of Trump?

We’ve been hearing all along that there is one. Who initiated that, and why? When did it begin? Any Obama holdovers involved in this? Any Obama embeds in the bureaucracy involved in this? What about Clinton campaign members meeting with Russians? Is any of that being investigated? We know that a lot of people that work for the Democrats met with Russians. We know that Bill Clinton worked with a guy in Canada to basically give — well, sell to the point where the Clintons profited — a great portion of the U.S. uranium supply.
What about coordination between CNN and Hillary Clinton? What about the Democrat National Committee rigging their primary against Bernie Sanders? Is there any investigation of that? What about the investigation of the Clinton Foundation? We’re told that there was one. Well, we don’t know; nobody’s officially said so. Influence peddling to foreign countries? Obama’s ransom payments to Iran?

...There hasn’t been one, not one indication of Trump going soft on Russia, not one. Nikki Haley at the U.N. speaks out against Russia in no uncertain terms.

...The big news of these hearings is not even being reported! The big news of these hearings is that the Russians did not, could not, would not, have not, don’t know how to tamper with votes. They didn’t do it. I mean, there wasn’t even any hemming or hawing in the answers. Both Comey and Admiral Rogers definitively said in one-word answers “no” to all kinds of questions about whether or not the Russians had anything to do with votes, either the way they were cast or the way they were counted. Nope, nope, nope, nope. We even know that this Jill Stein babe, the Democrat, the Green Party candidate, whatever, she did this recount, Trump ended up getting more votes in some of these states than what he ended up with in the official count.

There is no evidence. That, to me, is the news of these hearings. But that’s not what’s being reported. That’s in fact being ignored. So if you’re Trump and you’re working with the Russians anyway, even though there’s no way to sabotage the vote, wouldn’t you go out of your way in public to scorch Putin every chance you got, scorch the Russians, instead of talking about how much you admire Putin, what a great guy Putin is, and how much you appreciate Putin complimenting you, which Trump did?

...But again, all of this, see, this is the frustrating thing, folks. The big news of the day is, no evidence whatsoever that the Russians hacked voting. No evidence whatsoever. It’s not possible. They’re not investigating whether any of that happened. It just didn’t because it couldn’t. Obama has said so. Any number of people before all this heated up the way it is said so. But that’s not the news. Because the purpose of all of this is to permanently damage Donald Trump and make it impossible for him to govern.

That’s all this is about. There’s a secondary aspect of it with the Democrats on the committee having to service their lunatic base, which has been led to believe that Russia did hack the election and that Trump was part of it. That story has been around for so long, it’s been added to for so long and it’s been amplified, they believe it now. The expectations have been raised to the point here that the truth, the Democrats are scared to death of the day their base learns that none of this happened.

Read more here.

Was there collusion between CNN's Candy Crowley and the White House?

Here is the tape in which Governor Romney and President Obama discuss Benghazi. Begin at about the 1:08 mark.



Neo-neocon writes,

this is the only time Crowley attempts to “fact-check” in real time (something I don’t think has ever been done by a moderator in a presidential debate). Why did she decide to do this?

Why did she wave the paper around at that point? Did she want people to believe she’d looked it up when she hadn’t?

Or if the answer to question #1 was that the paper was in fact a transcript, why would she have had this transcript with her? And did she even have time to look it up? How was she able to answer so quickly? If it was a transcript, why didn’t she find a quote and read it?

Jack Cashill wrote one month after the debate:

Obama did not throw the "act of terror" line away. He said it clearly and defiantly, as though he knew he could get away with it. Feigning outrage, Obama then told of how he manfully greeted the caskets as they arrived at Andrews Air Force Base and how he was offended at the very suggestion that anyone on his "team" would "play politics or mislead when we have lost four of our own."

Sensing an opening, Romney moved in for the kill over Crowley's protestations that he respond "quickly." Romney looked straight at Obama, raised his eyebrows quizzically, and asked, "You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror? It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you are saying."

Now back on his stool, Obama answered uncomfortably, "Please proceed. Please proceed, governor." Romney turned back to Crowley and said that he just wanted to get Obama's response on record. With the camera still on Romney, the TV audience heard Obama say off-camera, "Get the transcript."

The camera then moved to a wide-shot and showed Crowley waving a piece of paper. Several of my correspondents -- and, I am sure, many others -- believed that to be the transcript and wondered how Crowley just happened to have it.

"He did in fact, sir, call..." said Crowley hesitantly to Romney, "so let me call it an act of terror."

"Can you say that a little louder, Candy?" said a suddenly revived Obama while the Obama fans in the audience, Michelle included, cheered in violation of the rules.

To save whatever credibility it has, CNN needs to question Crowley regarding her role in this intervention. Why did she serve up Obama that "buck stop" question? Did he know it was coming? Did she wave the paper intentionally to give the illusion that she had the transcript in hand? And finally, how dare she add new information into a debate -- false information at that -- at so crucial a moment?

Please read more here and here.