The FBI appears to be hiding files in the Jeffrey Epstein case...

 

File photo of Jeffrey Epstein. Fox News/DOJ photo. 

The FBI has been accused by Attorney General Pam Bondi of hiding files in the Jeffrey Epstein case. Fox News. Bondi had requested all files held by the FBI in the investigation into the Epstein trafficking network, but only received 200 files. Those files were released today, though there was little in the way of new information. Bondi said that there were thousands of pages of documents still at the FBI office in New York and that she expected them to be on her desk by tomorrow. New FBI director Kash Patel, who was confirmed eight days ago, has said that the FBI would enter a new era of transparency. 

My Comment:

Right wing folks on X are not happy about the events today. Folks wanted everything released and they wanted it released yesterday. The files that were released today were mostly old news and I haven't really heard of anything new in these files. It didn't help that Congressional republicans literally "rick rolled" folks that were looking for the files. It was not a good look and more than a few people are furious about it. 

But I also think that expectations are way too high. We actually know pretty well who was involved in the Epstein trafficking/blackmail network. Folks like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Bill Gates, Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz are well known to have to had close ties to Epstein and some of them have been directly accused of abuse. I really don't know what else folks expect to be released.

My guess is that folks are hoping that there will be new names that haven't shown up before or that there will be some major revelation that will send half the Democrats (and a few corrupt Republicans) right to prison. That isn't going to happen. There might be a few more documents in the FBI office in New York, but I would be pretty shocked if they have anything much that we don't actually already know or suspect.

The real story is that the FBI is appearing to stonewall the Attorney General. That's pretty unforgivable and the folks in charge of that decision need to be fired and fired yesterday. It's totally unacceptable to ignore a lawful order like this and they can use whatever argument they want, they don't have a leg to stand on. 

Of course even if the FBI does release these documents to Pam Bondi, that doesn't mean that the documents will be released immediately. I am guessing that the documents would have to be reviewed and some redactions, mostly relating to the identity of the victims, would have to be made. That would take at least some time.  

The real question I have is if the fact that the Epstein network will have whoever was funding and controlling it. Epstein has been a called an intelligence operative and I believe that is accurate. The real problem is that nobody released who was actually running him. Was it one of our three letter agencies? Or was it Israel, as many suspect? Such a revelation would indeed be shocking and could more than explain the reluctance to release the files. Just imagine if it was the FBI that was running the Epstein network... 

Either way though, I am not expecting too much more from the Epstein case. It's possible that some of the folks involved could be charged, and I think that's what everyone really wants. But I am not holding my breath. I am guessing that even the new files held by the FBI will end up disappointing people. 

I do think this case has become a bit of a liability for the Trump administration. Today's little stunt wasn't exactly popular. Folks wanted everything and everything now but instead we got 200 old pages of stuff we already knew. And they hyped up the release way too much to the point where folks were going to be disappointed regardless. So far much of the criticism has been leveled at Attorney General Pam Bondi and I think some of it is fair. She does seem to spend a lot of time on Fox News and folks have noticed that she hasn't released the files relating to Sean "Diddy" Combs, the JFK assassination and the MLK assassinations. At least some of the criticism of her would have been tamped down if she had released those files as well. 

The FBI issues unhinged warning about a dirty bomb attack in response to the FBI raid on Donald Trump.

 

Police speak to a woman outside of Mar-A-Lago. Fox News/Reuters.

The FBI has issued a warning about a dirty bomb attack and other violent threats against the FBI in response to their raid on Donald Trump's home at Mar-A-Lago. Fox News. The raid against Trump has proven to be extremely controversial. The bulletin released by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security claims that there has been an increase of threats since the raid, specifically citing a threat to place a dirty bomb in front of the FBI headquarters. They also note that calls for civil war and armed rebellion has increased dramatically. The bulletin also claims that there have been threats against the agents and the judge that executed the raid. There has been one incident of violence, but that violence happened on the 11th and involved an incompetent attack on an FBI field office where nobody died but the attacker. 

My Comment:

What a joke. I don't believe for a second that there is anyone trying to blow up FBI headquarters with a dirty bomb. That's not credible and the only way that could happen is if the FBI tries to do it themselves. Dirty bomb attacks are not something that an unorganized lone wolf could pull off and even a well funded and professional group would have an extreme difficulty pulling it off without the plot being revealed and disrupted. 

I don't doubt that there has been death threats against the FBI for this. The truth of the matter is that people get death threats if they do anything even remotely controversial. Given that the raid on Mar-A-Lago is the most controversial thing the FBI has done with only the Ruby Ridge and Waco massacres being in the same ballpark, it would not surprise me that people are threatening the FBI.

That isn't to say that I agree with threatening the FBI. I don't, not so much because I like the FBI, but because it's counterproductive. Not only does it accomplish any kind of reform at the FBI, it can get you a quick trip to prison. Plus they will use these threats justify continued terrible treatment of US citizens. 

So is there a threat from violence and terrorism? Yes, of course. But I think most of it remains from both the left and from Islamic terrorism. After all, we are only two years removed from the worst outbreak of political violence this country has had in years. I am of course referring to the George Floyd riots. Unlike the people on the right, hardly any of those people got properly punished. It just goes to show how biased the FBI is. They will stop out even the mildest protest from the right but they will let the left get away with burning down entire cities. 

This kind of bias is the entire problem in the first place. The FBI has shown themselves to be incredibly biased and is targeting people based on their political beliefs and not anything they actually have done. What is really bad for the FBI is that they have never been popular on the left. But now they have pissed away the last supporters they had on the right. Disdain for the "feds" was mostly outside of the Overton Window for people on the right, mostly found on the fringe. But now it's a fairly centrist and popular position.

Violence is possible of course and that is always the case. There have always been unhinged people, like presumably the guy that wasted his life attacking the FBI on the 11th. And I do think that an important line has been crossed. The right understands now that the FBI specifically and the federal government in general are not their friends.  

There are a few things that make violence, or even civil war, likely. The first is that people still have it pretty good in the United States. Even though things have gotten really bad since Biden got elected, people are still mostly able to feed their families. People still have something to lose.

Another reason is that people still think that elections could potentially fix this. This belief in elections may be rather misguided considering the absolute debacle that has been the elections since 2020. Even if you don't believe that there was widespread voter fraud, and there was, you can't argue that the elections were well run and had quick, trustworthy results. Plus, we already elected Donald Trump once and he wasn't able to get rid of the rot. A 2nd term might help things, along with a blowout in the 2022 midterms but then again it might now. Still, even then people still believe in elections and as long as that is an option I think we will probably avoid widespread violence. 

So if widespread violence is unlikely, why did the FBI send out such a stark warning? Because they know they did something unforgivable and are at real risk of being disbanded or reformed. Their only hope is to portray their critics as dangerous. 

FBI Director says China is the most dangerous and pervasive espionage threat.

FBI Director Chris Wray. Business Insider/Aspen Security Forum. 

FBI Director Chris Wray says China, not Russia, is the most pervasive and dangerous espionage threat to the United States. Business Insider. Wray, when asked about if China is a foe said, "I think China, from a counterintelligence perspective, in many ways represents the broadest, most challenging, most significant threat we face as a country".

 China is using traditional and non-traditional methods along with economic espionage as well. Wray said there are active economic espionage investigation in all 50 states. The espionage is much more pervasive than Russia's limited attacks and show a larger focus on quick results while China is acting more strategically.  

My Comment:

FBI Director Wray's comments have been widely talked about in the media but his comments on China have flown under the radar. It's fairly obvious why. These statements tend to undermine the Russia narrative that the media is focusing on (for this week at least). Instead of Russia being an existential threat they are paying second fiddle to China. 

China's threat has been well known for a long time. The Business Insider article detailed how Australia has been completely infiltrated and was effecting politics at all levels. Australia stepped up and passed anti-China laws but for the American media Russia is the bigger threat. Similar things are happening in America as well. 

To his credit President Trump has often talked about China's threat in terms of economic espionage. He has often called them out for stealing our innovations and attacking our institutions. This threat goes beyond just spying on our companies, but on our colleges and government institutions as well.

But it's not just economic espionage. More traditional espionage is happening as well. Many of China's military developments are stolen from the United States. There is a widely held belief that China's fighter Shenyang J-31 is a copy of the F-35. 

Of course neither of those things make the headlines like election interference does. Supposedly the couple of twitter accounts and facebook adds that Russia bought are the end of the world, but did China do something similar? Well nobody is talking about that possibility. I have been saying that what Russia did probably wasn't unique as many other countries, including China, have done the same thing. 

But it is possible that China is responsible for more than we realize. It is very possible that they were the ones that got John Podesta's e-mails and released them. And it is very possible that they have attempted the same kind of election interference that Russia has been accused of. My guess is that they did not favor President Trump though as he was very obviously anti-China.

Without a government investigation into what China did in 2016 or a media that is willing to investigate, the general public will never know what they did. My guess is that they probably did things on a similar level to what Russia did, which means not much at all. Indeed, it's possible that China and Russia canceled each other out so the whole thing is a moot issue.That being said, I do think the hypocrisy here is pretty ridiculous. I think there is a very good chance that China has done as much or more than Russia but we will never hear about it. 

No matter what though I think that foreign interference is the last thing we need to be worried about in our elections. Much more important is voter integrity. We need better options to protect our elections to make sure that people that are not allowed to vote can not do so. A few adds or twitter accounts are nothing compared to someone illegally voting... 

Read the Inspector General report on the FBI and DOJ handling of the Clinton e-mail case.

I haven't even begun to read this so I have little reaction to it so far. But I thought it would be helpful to post the entire document so people can read and judge for themselves. As I read more of it I may or may not post my own personal reaction to the report. Given the fact that the report is as long as a novel, I might not be able to get that post up anytime soon. Either way, here is the document! 

IG Report on FBI and DOJ Handling of Clinton Investigation by The Conservative Treehouse on Scribd

Uranium One informant testifies that Russia sent millions of dollars to lobbying firm to influence Hillary Clinton.

An FBI informant who worked with Russian nuclear companies has testified that Russia sent millions of dollars to a lobbying firm with the understanding that it would be given to Bill and Hillary Clinton in exchange for favorable political actions. The Hill. Douglass Campbell testified that Russia sent money to a lobbying firm, APCO Worldwide, because they were in position to influence Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the time. Four payments of $750,000 were sent to APCO to give to the Clinton Global Initiative (Clinton Foundation) as an effort to influence the Obama administration for the Uranium One deal and US-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation deal.

Campbell further testified that Russia was trying to create a monopoly on nuclear production and that the Russians were laughing at us for how weak we were for giving away our nuclear companies. The Uranium One deal gave the Russian mining company, Rosatom, 20% of US Uranium mining capabilities.

Hillary Clinton

My Comment:
Fairly devastating reporting from The Hill here, despite their odd obsession with giving the Democrats a chance to spin this. Of course they were going to accuse Campbell of lying and this all being some huge Russian conspiracy. Why even give them more than a paragraph? Their denials aren't important. If there was video of Hillary Clinton drowning a puppy, they would still deny it.

What is important is that this looks very obviously like play for pay. The Russians wanted control of the world Uranium supply. They couldn't do this on the up and up so they decided to fund millions of dollars to a lobbying firm. That firm gave that money to the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation was being run at the time by Bill Clinton who was the husband of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Using her position as Secretary of State, which could have torpedoed the Uranium One Deal, she instead allowed it to happen. This deal gave Russia control of 20% of our production and forced us to import our own, giving Russia the monopoly they wanted.

This is a huge deal and is likely criminal if it can be proved that Hillary Clinton took money to do the deal. Right now it's quite probable that she did indeed pay for play. Doing so domestically is a very serious crime. Doing it for a foreign power looking to increase their strategic power at the expense of America looks like treason, full stop. Giving Russia more control over the worlds uranium supply is not something the US government should do. It's not in our interest and doing so anyways seems like giving aid and comfort to the enemy to me, if Russia is indeed our enemies. 

One man's testimony isn't enough to prove that. Indeed, treason constitutionally requires the testimony of two witnesses of the criminal act. What is needed is more investigation. The FBI, who paid Campbell $50,000 for his efforts as an informant, need to continue their investigation into the Clinton's. Those investigations are going on but are in the background right now, overshadowed by the controversy at the top with the FISA mess and other major investigations.

I also have to say that there is some supreme irony here. For years now we have heard the Democrats complaining that the Russians were interfering with the election. Trump got eviscerated for having Michael Flynn talk to the Russian ambassador after the election, even though that is his job, because ANY links to Russia are seen as treason to them.

If that is the standard we are going with, than isn't this treason too? If only meeting with Russians is an impeachable offense, what is getting bribed to give them 20% of our Uranium production? Super treason?

As for me, I never bought the Russia collusion scandal. But this case sure looks like one of the 2016 candidates was, at the very least, in bed with the Russians.If true, this means that Hillary Clinton was compromised. For all her tough talk on Russia, it is very clear that all Russian had to do to control here would have been to release this information to the press. This is way more scandalous than the Steele Dossier accusations, even if they were true.

I also don't really expect Bill and Hillary Clinton to go down for this. Even though it clearly looks like they committed some serious crimes, I don't have faith in the justice system anymore. If the Clinton's have taught us anything it is there is one set of rules for the elite and another for everyone else. As much as I want to see justice served here I just don't see it happening...

A long time ago I made a prediction...

Back when the Edward Snowden NSA disclosures happened I tried to convince people that it was a huge deal. Though the NSA programs were mostly targeted overseas I worried that such a powerful system would be very dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. Indeed, intelligence can often be used as a weapon against your enemies.

I was also very worried about the man who was in charge of the country at that time. Barack Obama was never a man I trusted and even during his first campaign I knew that he was someone that was dirty and corrupt, to the point where I seriously considered voting for Hillary Clinton in the primary just to stop him. I knew back then that Clinton would have been a terrible president, but, despite her obvious flaws and failures, I felt she was the safer option.

You see, I never trusted Barack Obama. Though I was never a birther, I did think that the movement got something right. Barack Obama may have been born in America, but he is not a person I consider an American. Even back than I knew he wasn't one of us and that given power he would abuse it. His experiences as a youth were so removed from normal Americans I knew that he would never have grown to respect our government and our constitution. If there was ever anyone who would spy on his political opponents it would be Barack Obama.

It's very clear that the intelligence tools that we use to keep our country safe were in the wrong hands. The FISA memo proves that to be the case. The FBI and Justice Department lied to the FISA court and spied on candidate and president elect Trump based on a web of lies. And Obama was president when it happened.

What isn't clear yet is how far it went. I have no belief left that those people had any interest in actually conducting an investigation into to an actual crime. Though it hasn't been proven yet, at least not in a way where people could be arrested for it, my belief is that they intended to prevent Donald Trump from winning the election and failing that, preventing him from taking office or even removing him once he got in.

That's totally unacceptable but I am not shocked at all. Why? Because I knew that given the tools that we had given our intelligence agencies it would only be a matter of time before those tools would be used against us. And I figured it would happen sooner than later. I never trusted Obama and sure enough, people under his command ended up abusing the system.

I do have to say I was wrong about one thing. It wasn't the NSA that was the "black hats". Indeed, Admiral Mike Rodgers seems like the only guy in this that is clean and he did a lot to help bring the whole scandal to light. I never would have thought it would be the FBI that was corrupted. But here we are...

FISA Memo released and shows FBI and Justice department used Steele Dossier to spy on Trump campaign.

Devin Nunes (R-California). Congressional photo. 

As you are surely aware, the FISA Memo has been released. I will post it in its entirety below but first a few comments. The memo is being attacked and ignored by the mainstream media. They are essentially refusing to cover the contents of the memo and are all about attacking President Trump and congressman Devin Nunes, who wrote the memo. They aren't even denying what was in the memo and are only attacking the source. That's pretty good evidence alone that everything inside it is true. 

Also, it seems like the Democrats were lying through there teeth about the implications of the memo. There was nothing in it at all that shows any kind of inteligence gathering process. It does detail what went into the FISA court spying applications but no techniques or names were reveled other than people already in the news. They were completely lying about that. 

So what exactly is in the FISA memo? It showed that members of the FBI both lied and failed to disclose critical information to the FISA court during their applications to spy on Carter Page, a low ranking Trump adviser. Those applications used the Steele Dossier but did not disclose that the dossier was a product of oppo research bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton. They also did not disclose that Steele was incredibly biased against Donald Trump saying that he was "desperate that Trump not get elected".

Furthermore they continued to use Steele after he went to the media, which is a huge no-no for FBI informants. Steele was fired for this but his words were still used as evidence for the FISA court. Even worse, the FISA court was shown a news article from Yahoo News, which was based on info Steele gave to them! The FBI and Justice department knew that fact but concealed it from the court. 

Finally, the FBI and Justice Department lied about a link between Carter Page and George Papadopoulos that didn't exist in order to justify spying on the campaign and investigating Papadopoulos. The FBI knew that link didn't exist but the agents involved, Peter Stzork and Lisa Page, didn't appear to care due to their well documented anti-Trump bias. 

This is, quite frankly, a huge deal. The FBI and Justice Department were paying for what they knew was opposition research, written by a biased and unreliable source, to justify spying on the Trump campaign. The memo states that if they hadn't used the Steele Dossier, they would never have gotten approval to spy on Page and the Trump campaign and I am guessing that if they had told the truth about the dossier, that it was oppo research funded by the Democrats, it would have never happened. 

And if the FISA court had never approved the spying then I doubt the Mueller probe would have ever happened. It seems very clear that it is the only source for any of this and now the Mueller probe is most likely tainted, especially since Peter Stzork and Lisa Page were involved so deeply in both cases. My guess is that the Mueller probe will be wound down fairly soon. 

I also have to say that this memo flips the whole collusion theory on it's head. Instead of Trump colluding with Russia it was the FBI colluding with the Democrats, paying for a British spy to gather intel from Russian sources. There was collusion indeed, but it was all to try and discredit and destroy the Trump campaign. There needs to be an investigation into this and many of the main players need to go to jail. 

Some are saying that no actual crime has been committed here. I disagree. It's not legal for people to lie to a judge while applying for a warrant. The FBI knew or should have known that the Steele dossier was oppo research and they chose to not disclose that fact. Had that info been known, the FISA court probably would not have approved the spying. That's contempt of court and the people in charge probably should go to jail for it. 

Keep in mind though that this is only the first memo. Already Nunes says that he is working on another one detailing similar issues at the State Department. And the OIG report detailing further FBI abuses is likely coming out next month. This isn't the end all be all that some people hyped it up to be, but more information is coming out. Considering that this release shows that the FBI, Justice Department and the Democrats all colluded to try and take down Trump, the rest of the info coming out might even be worse. 

As promised, you can read the entire FISA memo below. 

FISA Memo 1 by The Conservative Treehouse on Scribd

President Trump set to release FISA memo without redactions.

President Donald Trump. Reuters. 

President Donald Trump has decided to release the FISA memo that has allegedly shown abuses by the FBI and Justice Department. Reuters. Trump could have stopped the release of the memo but will instead release it with no redactions. Democrats have gone to great lengths to try and discredit the memo up to calling for the removal of Devin Nunes, the chairmen of the House Intelligence Committee. They also claimed that the memo was edited by Donald Trump despite those edits being for grammar and two edits requested by them and the FBI. 

My Comment:

It seems very clear that the Democrats are terrified of this memo. The attacks on Nunes and the memo have gone from shrill to completely unhinged in such a short period of time. They are calling him a Russian agent and saying that Trump edited the memo to make it look worse even though the memo will be released redacted. My guess is that they are scared and have no idea what else to do. 

What are they so scared of? At the very least the memo will accuse that the FISA court used the phony Steele Dossier to justify spying on Donald Trump. Using oppo information from a campaign to justify spying on another campaign is a huge scandal. Remember, Nixon had to resign just for breaking into the DNC. The FBI did way worse than that. 

And I suspect that there is more to it. My personal theory is that the memo will show that Donald Trump was far from the only one in the 2016 election that was spied on. My guess is that all the GOP candidates and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders had been spied on. I don't think Hillary Clinton was willing to take any risks at all and no matter who it was, they were going to be spied on. I also think it's possible that they will reveal that Mitt Romney was spied on as well. 

However, it's important to note that we still don't know what is in the memo. Anything other than what I wrote in the 2nd paragraph is mere speculation. We will find out soon enough but it's important to not oversell it. Despite the absolute terror the Democrats seem to have over this memo, remember that just the original accusations would warrant that. 

I'm still not sure that memo will be released tomorrow on Friday. I must note that Trump isn't releasing the memo himself. It's going back to the House Intel Committee where they will vote on it. They will get the memo right away on Friday but they may choose to wait until next Monday to release it. 

Why? Well, a Friday release is bad timing. It probably won't be out until later at night and a lot of people could miss the news. Sure, they would have all weekend to talk about it, but given the fact that this is the weekend of the Super Bowl, people will have a ready made distraction. As frustrating as it would be to wait another weekend to see this memo, it might be the best idea. That being said I wouldn't be surprised if it is released on Friday. 

We also have to note that the memo isn't the only game in town. There is also the OIG investigation into corruption, the various leak investigations, the Hillary Clinton investigations and the investigation into Peter Stzork and Lisa Page. All of those should be coming to a conclusion soon. 

My fear is that none of these investigations will matter. The people on the left are already dismissing the memo as the "GOP" memo. They are saying that the memo is politically motivated and I fear that even if the underlying proof is released, they will still dismiss it. Even worse I fear that they hate President Donald Trump so much that even if it is conclusively proven that the Russia investigation was hopelessly tainted from the start and that he is innocent they won't care if it takes him down... 

Was Bernie Sanders blackmailed in the 2016 election?

Senator Bernie Sanders official Senate picture. 

This is not going to be a traditional post. When I originally had the idea for this, I thought it would be a good subject for a "tweetstorm" and not a actual blog post as it is mostly speculation and since it is old news. But I was left with the impression yesterday that Twitter may be throttling posts about Sanders as though I had 16,000 impressions yesterday on Twitter, only a few were for my tweets about Sanders. So a blog post it is. 

I was struck last year when Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton and campaigned with her. Clinton famously coordinated with the media and the DNC to ensure that she won the primaries which violates the rules of the party. Essentially the game was rigged against Sanders from the start. My question was what on earth would motivate someone to back up a person that cheated against you? 

The common theory is that Sanders did so for political reasons. He knew that he would have a difficult time in the senate if he didn't back Clinton because though he isn't a Democrat he still caucuses with them and works with them frequently. He also didn't like Donald Trump and wanted him to lose. For a long time I accepted those answers and, I must note, there isn't anything that disproves these interpretations. Everything that will follow is speculation.

As you may be aware of, Sanders' wife Jane is in some legal trouble. She was the president of Burlington College between 2004 and 2011. During that period she is accused of bank fraud for lying about how big the college's endowment was so they could get a lone to purchase land from the Catholic Archdioceses. That deal fell apart and she resigned, the college fell apart and she is now under FBI investigation. 

It is unclear when that investigation began. The news of the story broke long after the election was finished. What does seem clear is that people knew about the story in 2016 or even 2015. The college went bankrupt then and given how important Sanders was I am guessing oppo researchers knew that she could be charged with bank fraud. Supposedly the source of the complaint was the Vermont RNC, so if the Republicans knew about it surly the Democrats did as well.

So here is my theory. And I want to stress that this is just a theory and I can't prove any of it. But here it goes. What if Bernie Sanders was blackmailed? Everyone knew about the Burlington College story and that there was likely to be a bank fraud investigation. Everyone also knew that if Bernie Sanders had chosen to make a huge fuss of out of the primary rigging or ran as an independent it would have probably cost Hillary Clinton the election. 

What if there was a quid pro quo? The DNC or someone in the Clinton Campaign says "tough business with your wife. Be a shame if the FBI comes after her. But I bet if Clinton wins they could be convinced to back down". Probably not in so many words but Sanders gets the message anyways. He backs down and then does everything in his power to get Clinton to win because he knows if he doesn't his wife is probably going to prison and his political image will be forever tarnished. 

Of course Clinton lost and the FBI investigation continued with Jane Sanders. Clinton wasn't in power so she couldn't order the FBI to back down. Sanders is screwed now and feels betrayed since he lost a lot of credibility and got nothing for it. Perhaps that is what is inspiring him to consider a run in 2020? He may very well want revenge for this scheme. 

Is it true though? We have no way of knowing. And it really is more likely that explanation above, that he wanted Trump to lose and didn't want to anger the Democrats, is correct. Still, it was a thought I had and I wanted it written down somewhere. For what it's worth though there was a email from Robby Mook to John Podesta that got leaked to Wikileaks that said there was some kind of arrangement between Clinton and Sanders where they spoke of "leverage", but that's circumstantial evidence at best. Without any other evidence this will likely just remain speculation on my part. 

The fix is in. FBI "loses" six months of texts from anti-Trump agent on Mueller probe.

Robert Mueller. Getty/The Hill.

The FBI has lost six months worth of texts between the FBI agents fired from the Mueller probe accused of anti-Trump bias. The Hill. Agents Peter Stzork and Lisa Page have already been exposed as anti-Trump via their texts to each other and Stzork was removed from the Mueller probe because of it. The FBI claims that they lost the text messages, which were on FBI issued phones, due to “rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades.” This supposedly resulted in those text messages not being collected. 384 pages of new texts were released that were not from the critical period between December 14th, 2016 and May 17th, 2017. 

My Comment:

Unbelievable. Those texts were critical evidence in possible criminal charges for Stzork and Page. They both seem to be knee deep in the FISA memo drama that is currently engulfing Washington. The loss of those texts could be the difference for a long prison term for those two and freedom. To say this is unacceptable is a massive understatement. It doesn't matter if these texts were genuinely lost or if they were deleted on purpose, the people that are responsible for it deserve to be fired at the very least. 

Do I buy the FBI's excuse? Not really. It seems very unlikely that there would be a period of six months where phones weren't keeping data because of upgrades. I know my phone has kept every text I have sent and I am guessing the FBI phones are even harder to remove. My guess is that these texts were deleted on purpose. 

I mean I guess it is possible that the FBI lost these text messages but that seems extremely unlikely. If that was the case we would have heard about it before now. It would also have effected way more phones than just Stzork and Page. It's unclear if that happened or not, but if it had I think they would have mentioned it. 

If it can be proven that the texts were deleted on purpose it's evidence of a conspiracy within the FBI to protect Stzork and Page. It's pretty clear from their original texts released that they were against Trump and mentioned having an "insurance policy" against him. Obviously, the FBI is supposed to be politically neutral and having these high ranked agents so openly plotting against a presidential candidate is unacceptable.  

Critically the time period where these texts covered were not during the election, but during the transition and Trump's 1st few months in office. Those texts covered the time during the early days of the Mueller probe and could show obvious bias that could completely undermine the legitimacy of the probe. I don't think the Mueller probe has much credibility in the first place but it could make it so that even the most committed Democrat would have to reconsider it. 

Remember, we aren't just talking about anti-Trump bias here. The main theory is that the Clinton campaign used FISA to spy on Donald Trump without a warrant. NSA Director found out what they were doing and put a stop to it but then they transferred their information to Fusion GPS and that info was used to create the Steele Dossier, which was used in turn to get a FISA warrant, to spy on Donald Trump. Stzork and Page were knee deep in that conspiracy and this loss of data may never be recovered and we might never know what they did during the transition period. We might not know how criminal their actions were. And we might not know how far the conspiracy goes. My pet theory is that Donald Trump wasn't the only one that was spied on, with both GOP and non-Clinton Democrats under surveillance. 

This is why it is so important that everything is released as soon as possible. The FISA memo that detailed abuses of the FISA system is still held up in congress. The information in that memo, had it been released already, might have prevented this data from being deleted. As it stands right now, not releasing the memo is allowing people to create counter-narratives and hide crucial evidence. If what is known isn't released soon we may lose critical information. 

I also have to say that I am having flashbacks to Watergate. In that case the actual crime, breaking into the DNC headquarters, was serious enough. But the coverup was the real crime and what exposed the same conspiracy. I am guessing that this deletion of texts may be the same thing for the FISA scandal. 

New investigations into Hillary Clinton's e-mails and the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton. 

The Justice Department has opened a new investigation into pay to play allegations in the Clinton Foundation during Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State. The Hill. FBI agents in Little Rock have already interviewed at least one witness in the case. The probe is focused on pay to play and want to determine if payments made to the foundation were in exchange for policy at the State Department. There is also a tax investigation to determine if the foundation or its donors violated tax laws. Allegations against the Clinton Foundation aren't new and it has been investigated before but the new investigation has support from the Justice Department. 

The new investigation comes after news about Clinton's e-mail issues as well. Congressional investigators have found new irregularities and contradictions in the FBI's original e-mail investigation. The FBI found that the shear amount of classified material flowing through Clinton's server was criminal, but no charges were recommended by James Comey. 

My Comment:

Huge news on Hillary Clinton. I am very happy that these investigations are back up and running. As far as I am concerned it was long overdue and is another example of President Trump keeping his campaign promises.  Both investigations were up and running before but got shut down, likely due to political bias in the FBI and the Justice Department. It's become very clear over the past few weeks that the FBI investigation was conducted by people who supported her. Many of those same people were also involved in the Russian investigation as well. 

The e-mail investigation should be fairly easy to wrap up. James Comey laid out what Hillary Clinton did fairly well but then inexplicably recommended to not charge her. The new version of the Comey memo indicated that the FBI already has enough evidence to charge her for gross negligence and misdemeanors. A further investigation may find even more charges. 

And the investigation into e-mail scandal might hit other people besides Hillary Clinton. Her top aid, Huma Abedin, wife of disgraced pervert Anthony Weiner, may also go down for gross negligence. New news reports say that she used her personal Yahoo e-mail account and sent passwords to classified accounts to it. Her Yahoo account was then later compromised, along with everyone else's, in a pair of major hacks, exposing those passwords to the world. 

Still, the foundation investigation is much more dangerous for Clinton. The case for pay to play has already been made by several media outlets, including the New York Times, The Dally Caller and by the author of Clinton Cash. It certainly appears that Clinton gave favors in exchange for donations to her foundation. One of those was the Uranium One scandal that involved a huge donation to her foundation as in exchange for Uranium sales to Russia. 

That could be the tip of the iceberg though. There is evidence that the pay for play extended far beyond the Uranium One scandal. Russia may not have been the only country to pay for favorable decisions from the US government. American politicians, lobbyists and celebrities may be involved as well and they could get charges too. 

And of course there is a chance that some or all of the rumors about Hillary Clinton are true. Most of those accusations have been dismissed as conspiracy theories but even if 1% of them are true Clinton is in a huge amount of trouble. The accusations about human trafficking alone, if proven, would be enough to sink her forever. 

So what is likely to happen? I think that a plea deal is possible. Hillary probably wants to protect her daughter and granddaughter and a guilty plea might make the whole thing go away. It would allow her to save some face and save the country a huge media circus a trial. It would be the smartest thing for her to do. Admit guilt, take a slap on the wrists and testify against others. I am sure she knows where a lot of skeletons are buried in Washington.

Will she do it? I don't think so. Hillary Clinton's biggest sin has always been pride. She's mad enough that she will never be president and she will is very unlikely to accept the humiliation a guilty plea would entail. We might be heading for the trail of the century... 

A few thoughts on the Michael Flynn plea deal.

General Michael Flynn circa 2012. Defense Intelligence Agency photo. 

I'm a little late to the party on this one but former National Security Adviser and General Michael Flynn has plead guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts he had with Russia during the presidential transition. Critically, the indictment has nothing to do with the election, but instead covers Flynn's actions after it. The plea comes after an indictment from Robert Mueller's special counsel. Flynn has not been sentenced but the general consensus is that he won't serve much time, if any. You can read the indictment below. 

FULL TEXT | Michael Flynn Indictment by Devetta Blount on Scribd

I have a few comments. The most obvious is that Flynn's indictment had nothing to do with the so called Russian interference. Flynn was indicted for lying about talking to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition. That's right, it happened after Trump had already been elected. Furthermore it appears that this contact was authorized by the White House.

Also, keep in mind that it is standard procedure for incoming presidential officials to meet with foreign dignitaries. Indeed, it's a critical part of the transition phase. Both the new administration and the foreign governments need to know where the other side is coming from. Those that are trying to make this into a big deal seriously expect new administrations to go into it "blind", which is just absurd. Flynn didn't do anything wrong by talking to ambassador Kislyak.

What Flynn did do wrong is lying to the FBI. Why he did so is a mystery for me. His contacts with Kislyak were cleared by James Comey right before he lied to the FBI, so it makes zero sense for him to do so. My guess is that he just wanted to "muh Russia" scandal to go away and thought he could help things by lying to the FBI, as well as VP Mike Pence and apparently Donald Trump as well. That's the only way his actions make any sense, otherwise this just looks like a colossal screw up by Flynn.

I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017

 He probably pleaded guilty because he knew he screwed up and just wanted the whole situation to end. Flynn may have some problems but he is a patriot and he does care about his family. The Mueller probe was doing damage to both his country and his family so it's not surprising that he wanted it over.

There was some noise made yesterday that Flynn will testify that he was ordered to talk to Kislyak by Jared Kushner. This also makes little sense because he didn't do anything wrong by doing so. Neither did Kushner by ordering him to talk to Kislyak. Again, it's not a crime to talk to the Russians. That wasn't even true back when they were communists, why would it be true today?

Media coverage of this event has been dreadful, as expected. ABC News reported that that Flynn had been indicted for actions he took during the campaign, not during the transition period. Since that made Trump look like he did something wrong, it caused a panic and even caused the stock market to dip for a bit. They retracted it later but the damage was done.

Indeed, the reporting by ABC was so bad I wonder if it wasn't done on purpose. They knew that this indictment wasn't very important and didn't support the Russia narrative so they had to lie about it to get more attention. It's possible that they were just incompetent instead, but still, that's a huge mistake to make especially since the indictment was very clear about when this happened. And people wonder why trust in the media is at historic lows...

As for the Mueller probe, it looks like it is wrapping up. Flynn was always expected to go down, but most expected it to be for something worse than this. Indeed, even I thought that he had a chance of getting into trouble for his links to Turkey, but that didn't happen. Instead he plead guilty to lying, which was stupid, but had nothing to do with election interference. Considering how much other stuff he was accused of, it has to be a huge disappointment to the enemies of Donald Trump.

Most of the major players in the Mueller drama have already been investigated and either cleared or in Flynn and Manafort's cases, indicted. There really isn't much left to do. The only glaring example of someone not having to answer for anything is Tony Podesta. The Podesta group was knee deep in Manafort's scheme and if Tony doesn't go down with him you know that this was a politically motivated witch hunt. If he does that you know that Muller is a white hat, or at least a grey one.

Still, either way, I don't expect anymore major revelations from the Muller probe and I expect it to be done either by the end of this year or shortly into the next one. Indeed, that's what the White House itself believes the same thing, with Mueller's interviews expected to be done very soon. Far from the silver bullet that takes down Trump, it has proven to be a big nothing burger. Trump's not going down and only a few minor officials have gone down, none of which went down for anything that had to do with the election. I will be very happy when we put this all behind us.

Jeff Sessions may form a 2nd special counsel to investigate the Clintons.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The Hill/Getty. 

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is considering forming a 2nd special counsel to investigate several Clinton family issues. The Hill. The probe could cover several different issues, including the Clinton Foundation, the Uranium One scandal, the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's e-mail server and the Obama unmasking scandal. The Justice Department is already looking into these issues and more and may set up prosecution. The 2nd special council will have a different mandate from Robert Mueller's special counsel which has focused on supposed election interference. 

My Comment:

Very big news if true. And news that is likely to boost the opinions of both Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump. One of Trump supporters biggest complaints was that nothing was being done about these obvious stories of corruption and graft. Sessions went from being one of the most beloved of Trump's supporters to being one of the most disliked. Finally doing something will silence Session's biggest critics. And it will of course help Trump as well. One of his campaign promises was to "Lock Her Up". 

Why is a 2nd special counsel necessary? Well, Muller's only covers election interference. Though a special counsel can go outside of their mandate, see Paul Manafort, the Clinton and Obama administration scandals are pretty far away from his mandate. Even though Muller's investigation trended towards Clinton lackeys like John and Tony Podesta it seems that the major players aren't going down from that investigation.

A 2nd special counsel would be able to investigate these scandals. And they are all huge scandals. The Clinton Foundation was basically a giant money laundering and corruption scheme and needs to be broken up. The Uranium One scandal is a huge deal and James Comey did some pretty shady stuff as well. Worst of all was the Obama unmasking scandal that violated Trump and his family's civil rights. 

Still, we should temper our hopes. I think that we can't assume that everyone is going to go down. Former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton will almost certainly be spared. It would be unprecedented to arrest a former president and I doubt that Trump would want to sully the name of the office of President by sending two of them to prison. Much like Ford pardoned Nixon, I think that Trump will give the former POTUS's a pass. 

Other people won't be so lucky. It would be very unlikely that Hillary Clinton doesn't at least get charged with something. It might be a slap on the wrist and she probably won't serve any time but I expect her to get charged and plead guilty to something. 

James Comey is likely going down as well. His handling of the Clinton e-mail scandal was, by all accounts, horrible. It might even have been criminal and I wouldn't be surprised if he gets charged too. I also expect quite a number of Obama administration and Democratic workers to go down as well. 

I am almost expecting a big announcement tomorrow when Trump returns from Asia. There have been rumors flying for awhile now that there would be an earth shaking announcement from Trump on criminal prosecution of high ranking Democrat officials. A lot has been made of the high number of sealed indictments in Federal Court and people are trying to connect the dots. This statement from Sessions isn't quite there but it does give credence to those rumors. Time will tell if those rumors are true or not. 

Donald Trump fires embattled FBI Director James Comey.

Former FBI Director James Comey. Official FBI photo.

In a surprise move, President Donald Trump has fired embattled FBI Director James Comey. Washington Post. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recommended the firing due to Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton investigation. The memos claim that Comey was negligent when he not only commented on an investigation that was being closed, but when he also did it without approval from Justice Department officials. The firing also comes after the FBI sent a letter to congress that Comey had misled congress about the Clinton investigation. 

My Comment:

Not a whole lot of impartial sources out there that were unbiased so I was forced to use the Washington Post again. Not something I am too happy with, but these are difficult times. Pretty much all of the sources focused on the irrelevant and misleading investigation into former National Security Director Michael Flynn's accused ties to Russia and how this firing is some conspiracy theory to cover that up. As far as I am concerned that's irrelevant and stupid since the Flynn investigation is still going on and won't end with Comey being gone. And there are no connections with Russia for Trump himself. Even James Clapper says so. 

That being said, I am not surprised that Comey is gone. The public reason was outlined in the memo by Rosenstein, which can be found here. Whatever the actual motivations for the firing, you have to admit that what Comey did in the Clinton investigation was baffling and unprecedented. The FBI hasn't and shouldn't comment on investigations they are closing.

When FBI Director Comey announced that he was recommending to not charge Hillary Clinton he was already breaking with good practices. Comey essentially laid out the case for the prosecution of Hillary Clinton over her email server and then, at the last moment, said that he wasn't charging her. I remember being utterly shocked that he would release all the evidence of malpractice and then not charge her, especially when it wasn't his job to charge anyone in the first place. It was never his job to bring charges up in the first place, it was the Justice Department. 

In the end this pissed everyone off. The Republicans were furious that the FBI Director had convincingly laid out the case to prosecute Hillary Clinton and then decided to not recommend charges for her. Comey somehow argued that since Hillary Clinton didn't appear to break the law on purpose when the law states that intent does not matter at all. That isn't how the law reads and he was obviously trying to play politics with the charges.

Democrats were also angry with Comey. Though they generally more approving of Comey's handling of the Clinton investigation, they weren't happy that all of Clinton's dirty laundry into public. Still, they praised him until his 2nd announcement saying that the Clinton case was reopened. The Democrats, including Hillary Clinton herself blamed that action for the lose of the election. It's amazing how quickly the left went from liking Comey, to hating him, to liking him again.

I always thought that Comey's stance was cowardly. Instead of doing what was right, he tried to placate both the Democrats and the Republicans. That way he would keep his job no matter if Trump or Clinton won. That just pissed everyone off, and I think that it is likely that if Clinton had been elected Comey would have been fired under her as well. He tried to please everyone and that just isn't something that he could do with the Clinton investigation. 

Comey's real problem was that he was angering President Donald Trump. Trump wasn't happy with the way Comey handled the Clinton investigation either, but his real concern was that Comey wasn't doing his job. The Post article said that Trump was angry that Comey wasn't pursuing the leaks that were coming from the White House. My guess is that Comey knew who the leaker was (since everyone knows who it is, Sally Yates) and did nothing to investigate her. That and the whole "lying to congress" thing. That probably didn't help things. 

With Comey out of the way what happens next? I am thinking not much. The acting director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, is just as bad as Comey was and isn't likely to solve the problems that Comey was causing. For example, I don't see him investigating the White House leaks. It's possible that he understands that his head is the next on the chopping block and will get on the same page as President Trump, but I doubt it. 

Sooner or later though, Comey is going to be replaced and I am guessing it will be someone who will investigate the Clinton's, the Obama administration and the White House leakers. Because of that, I expect the Democrats to oppose that person in anyway that they can. I also think they will continue to make hysterical claims about the supposed connections of Trump and his inner circle with Russia. It's literally the only thing they have left, even thought the claims have completely fallen apart. 

Trump vs the Deep State

President Donald Trump. 

I've been thinking a lot about the resignation of Michael Flynn. Though Flynn made his own bed by lying to Mike Pence, it's clear that his political fate had a lot more to do with what he believed then what he actually did. His actual actions, though foolish, weren't that bad. Certainly talking to a foreign diplomat during the transition period is not a big deal, even if it is technically against the rules. Obama's administration did the same thing when he was elected, so this really isn't a big deal.

But one thing is for certain. Trump would not have gotten rid of Flynn if someone hadn't leaked the fact that he had said things he shouldn't have said to the Russian ambassador. Which brings up some questions. 

First of all, why on earth was the government listening in to Flynn's conversation? Of course, thanks to Edward Snowden, we know that the NSA listens into pretty much everything, everywhere. But the source of the leak wasn't the NSA, it was the FBI. The FBI was tapping into the Russian ambassador's phone line. There is no indication that they had a warrant to listen in on Flynn, so either they ignored the law entirely or they were spying on all of the ambassador's calls. Why would they be doing that? 

Second, why was Flynn's involvement in the phone call released? Normally when a transcript is released or even discussed, great care is taken to scrub the identity of  any US citizens, especially when there is no warrant to spy on that citizen.  That didn't happen this time and zero steps were taken to protect Flynn's identity. 

Third, it is illegal to talk to the media like this. Whoever leaked the specific accusations to the media committed a felony. It is a crime to reveal the identity of someone like this and whoever did it committed a very serious crime. 

So what does this all mean? There has been a lot of talk about the "deep state" as a concept. Basically, there is a shadow government in the United States that is immune to the change of presidents. It's the massive bureaucracy of political appointees and career officials that are in the service of globalism and not the American public. This deep state is threatened by the election of Donald Trump and are doing whatever they can to undermine and eliminate him.

I'm not sure how much of all of that is true. But I do think there are elements in the United States intelligence community and the criminal justice system that aren't answerable to anyone and are doing everything they can to undermine President Trump. Many of these people are political appointees from the Obama administration who have not yet been purged due to the fact that half of Trump's cabinet haven't been confirmed yet. The rest are Russiaphobes who desperately feared Flynn for his pro-Russia views. 

They aren't alone though. There is a large amount of people that do support the president and want him to succeed. Even in the government. Most of them are not political appointees. Some of them are genuine Trump supporters but most of them are just patriots that care more about the country than anything else. 

These two groups have been called "black hats" and "white hats" respectively. I don't know if I actually agree with those terms, but they do make some sense. It's clear to me that there is a group within in the FBI, NSA, CIA and the State Department that are trying to undermine Trump and they succeeded by getting rid of General Michael Flynn. 

It is also clear to me that they are being actively opposed and have been so since before the election. After all, it was very clear that the FBI was dumping harmful things about Hillary Clinton during the lead up to the election. This was done legally and continues to this day.

Essentially, there is a civil war in the intel community right now and it just claimed it's first public victim in Michael Flynn. What happens next though is the big question. If the deep state comes after Trump directly a lot of very bad things could happen, including both civil war and war with Russia. I don't think the millions of people who voted for Trump would accept him being removed from office. I won't say much more than that... 

As for Russia it's clear that they understand what the Russiaphobes want. They want regime change. Just like they did in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Ukraine, and what they attempted to do in Syria. Putin obviously knows this and won't accept that. It's very possible if the black hats succeed we will have war. The fact that they have already torpedoed Trump's chances at building a better relationship with Putin is not enough. They want blood and won't stop until they get it. 

The real question is what Donald Trump is going to do about it. He can't simply fire everyone because we can't tell the good guys from the bad guys and if we do fire everyone the country will be unsafe. But he can't just let these deep state people keep leaking and undermining him. That makes the country weak and unsafe as well. 

Trump's only option is to use the white hats to root out these black hat people who are more loyal to Obama or hate Russia this much. That will take time and it's very possible that more Trump appointees will fall as well. And though I think it is unlikely, it is indeed very possible that the black hats will succeed in their goal. They are trying to either remove Trump or marginalize him to the point where he can't do anything effectively. 

I don't think they will succeed though. They have a very powerful enemy in Donald Trump and he has the support of the people and the white hats. They can hurt him but they can't defeat him. Not without a lot of luck. And I think their luck has run out... 

FBI Director James Comey recommends no prosecution for Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal.

James Comey gives his statement. Associated Press

FBI Director James Comey has recommended no charges should be filed against Hillary Clinton for her e-mail scandal. New York Times. Comey claimed that Hillary Clinton was reckless with her actions, calling her "extremely careless" but also said that no prosecutor would file charges in this case. The Justice Department will likely follow Comey's recommendation and will not file charges against Hillary Clinton. Despite his recommendation Comey gave a blistering review of how Hillary Clinton recklessly exposed the secret information found on her e-mail server. He also claimed that it was possible that hostile actors, foreign or otherwise may have gotten access to Hillary Clinton's e-mails with it being impossible to determine for sure. 

My Comment:

I watched Director Comey's speech this morning and I have to say that it left me speechless. Obviously I was shocked and disappointed that Clinton wasn't going to be charged, but that wasn't the worst part. Nobody knew going into this speech how it would turn out, and though I am normally a cynic, some part of me was hoping that Clinton would be charged. For 90% of the speech I thought for sure that Clinton was going to be charged for criminal negligence. Comey really hit Hillary Clinton hard and I was really believing that she was going to be crucified by the FBI. Then, after detailing how Hillary Clinton was criminally negligent, Comey did a 180 and said that being criminally negligent wasn't enough to charge Hillary Clinton.

It was a devastating moment, made worse by the build up. And it makes very little sense legally. The laws Hillary Clinton broke do not require intent but Comey made it sound like they did. He even said that Hillary Clinton and her staff should have known better but did it anyways. Isn't that the definition of negligence? Comey was rewriting the dictionary at this point and it was clear that the fix was in. 

So what did Hillary Clinton do that was so bad? She exposed secrets, plain and simple. Comey said that it was possible that foreign governments or hostile third parties gained access to her server. Since those e-mails contained information that were classified, it could have given our enemies access to things that they should not have had access to. Without knowing what was on those e-mails it's hard to determine what the damage was, but things tend to be classified for a reason. At the very least it's possible that someone built a hell of a blackmail file against Hillary Clinton which is reason enough not to vote for her. 

And even if nobody was hurt directly, which we probably won't be able to prove, prosecuting Hillary Clinton would send a message to everyone in the government that corruption and incompetence will not be tolerated. Indeed, many people in the government have been prosecuted for less. Allowing her to get away with this sends a bad message to everyone. There will be people that follow in Hillary Clinton's example. 

Of course, even though Hillary Clinton won't be charged over her e-mails, this still hurts her chances in November. I mean the first part of James Comey's speech was a ready made attack ad for Donald Trump. He basically chose to call her criminally negligent even if he didn't decide to recommend charges. Expect to see his comments in attack ads for Trump and various GOP super-pac's for the rest of the year. 

The circumstances around this descion will also likely help Trump and hurt Clinton. People are going to have a hard time believing Comey when he said that he didn't face any outside pressure to not charge Hillary Clinton. Just a few days ago Attorney General Loretta Lynch met unofficially with Bill Clinton while in her plane. The week after, Comey decides to not press charges? Even if that meeting had noting to do with it, you have to admit that the optics look terrible. 

People are not going to be happy about this descion. It makes Hillary Clinton look like she is above the law. The speech Comey gave laid out a pretty obvious case for criminal negligence and yet he decided to not charge her. Why would that happen? The only explanation I can come up with is that he was too afraid or to loyal to the Democrats to recommend filing charges even if the evidence showed that charges should be filed. 

This plays into Donald Trump's narrative quite well. He has been saying for a long time that the government is fixed and that the Clinton's have been getting away with everything. The whole thing looks like a cover up and it would be amazing to me if this doesn't majorly hurt Hillary Clinton in the polls. Trump's been very effective at painting Hillary Clinton as a crook and this descion and Comey's comments will go a long way in confirming people's thoughts about her.

Still, the investigation into the Clinton's is not over. There is still the matter of the Clinton Foundation. Critically, Comey did not even mention the investigation into the Clinton led charity which has been accused of corruption and being a slush fund for the Clinton's. Though my hopes are not high that Comey would suddenly do his job it is possible that the information recovered in that investigation would be so damning that nobody could ignore it.

I am not holding my breath though. I have to say this entire incident has destroyed whatever little faith I had in our government. It's clear to me that there is one set of laws for the people and another for the elites. Any normal person that did what Clinton did would have been crucified for it, but because Hillary Clinton is rich and powerful she gets off. 

I don't know if Donald Trump is the man that can fix this problem. Indeed, at this point I don't know if the problem can be fixed. The rot is that deep. But what I do know is that Hillary Clinton cannot be allowed to be president. Even if every bad thing Donald Trump has been accused of is true, and I don't think that the vast majority of them are, he's still the better choice. I'd rather have a racist as president then someone as corrupt and incompetent as Hillary Clinton. I would implore everyone to vote against Hillary Clinton come November. If you can't stomach Trump, write in Sanders, or vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. But don't give her a vote. At the very least you can send a message to Clinton and people like her. Even if you can't be touched by the government, actions still have consequences. And the consequence for this scandal should be failing to get elected to president. 

Did the FBI entrap Muslims? -Yahoo/AFP

Muslims praying in New York. Yahoo/AFP

A Human Rights watch report accuses the FBI of encouraging and even paying Muslims to plan terrorist attacks. -Yahoo/AFP They looked at 27 cases from arrest to conviction and determined that half were due to sting operations and in 30% of those cases the FBI was directly involved in recruitment and planning. In some of those cases, the targets had no desire to commit terrorism until enticed by FBI undercover agent. 

My Comment:

Doesn't the FBI have enough to do without making criminals out of people who otherwise wouldn't be one? I have a real problem with entrapment. Sting operations designed to expose existing criminal conspiracies are just fine. Sting operations that create those criminal conspiracies are not ok on any level. Not only are they a violation of civil rights, they distract from investigations of actual terrorists. 

Of course, to be fair to the FBI, Humans Rights Watch is a fairly biased organization. Any group that owes its existence to finding oppression is likely to find it everywhere. I'm not saying they are wrong, just that it is always wise to consider the source before judgement. My guess is that they are right in this case but I'm also waiting for independent confirmation.