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Monday, May 11, 2020

Listen To diGenova--And Also McCarthy

Joe diGenova gave his usual informative and entertaining interview this morning on WMAL. I was pleased that he touched on the very real "precedent" of the Obama pardon of General Cartwright. He also offered some incisive comments on Obama's central role in the whole conspiracy. In that regard he pointed out that Obama personally urged his Intel chiefs to withhold classified information purporting to concern Russia's interference in our elections from the incoming President. DiGenova characterized that as "sedition."

My supposition is that he was referring to 18 USC 2384, Seditious Conspiracy, which reads as follows--and I've bolded the portion that could arguably apply to this factual situation:

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

I think diGenova's argument is that Obama and the Intel Community were part of a conspiracy to "overthrow" the Government of the United States.

Obviously that argument has to address the meaning of "overthrow." My counter argument would be that the context appears to require that any seditious conspiracy must be a conspiracy to use physical force or--at a minimum--a credible threat to use physical force in some real sense. I believe the history of the use of our sedition laws bears out my interpretation.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that Obama was treading an exceedingly fine line. It's not much of a step from urging the violation of key intel officials' oaths of office by withholding national security information from the Commander in Chief regarding the purported actions of a hostile foreign power to the possibility of advocating mutiny in the armed forces. And that definitely would be a seditious conspiracy.


In that regard, it's also important to bear in mind diGenova's brief remarks about the FISC. He points out that both Chief Judges--Collyer and Boasberg--who have examined these matters have accused the Obama administration's intel agencies of gross violations of law. One could argue that this is, at least metaphorically, violence or "force." More on FISA below.

Andy McCarthy's interview is also quite informative. He deals with matters we've discussed here previously, especially the idea of "The Wall" between counterintelligence investigations and criminal investigations that was in place until the Patriot Act came along. McCarthy gets into the implications of tearing down that wall--something that he favored at the time but now regards as misguided.

He also makes the interesting observation that it would have been very difficult--really, impossible--for the FBI to have continued its investigation of Trump (because that's what was happening) if Trump had a "sophisticated intelligence actor like General Flynn" in place as NSA. Which, of course, raises the question: What about General McMaster, who was NSA from 2/20/17 to 4/9/18?

I was also very pleased to learn that McCarthy agrees with me regarding the FISC--the FISA court regime for handling applications under FISA. He rightly observes that the work of the FISC isn't really judicial branch work and that the FISC judges are basically at the mercy of the FBI and DoJ--the judges have no practical way of riding herd on the FBI and DoJ. Like me, McCarthy urges that oversight of this sort is properly the work of Congress, and he points out that the FBI was clearly not worried about pulling the wool over the FISC's eyes--they went back to the FISC with the same trashy Carter Page application "again, and again, and again." He concludes by stating that this type of oversight is political in nature, not judicial--which is exactly right.

Listen to both interviews HERE.

35 comments:

  1. Two things:

    1.) I thought DiGenova's remark about Obama's actions, including recent public comments, could be considered "overt acts" in support of a conspiracy that is STILL ONGOING! AS DiGenova notes elsewhere in his interview, he believes Durham/Barr are assembling a number of conspiracy cases, and while the people who are to be charged as conspirators are going to be limited (Comey and McCabe were specifically named,) he thinks that there will be a massive number of people named in the "overt acts in support thereof" that will be part of the conspiracy indictments.

    DiGenova doesn't use the term, but it sure sounds to me like he is describing UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATORS.

    2.) McCarthy mentioned something very interesting: he described how the rules for the FISA warrants are set up to inhibit rogue agents from using the CI capability under FISC to sit on a suspect until they find evidence of a crime, and then switch back to a criminal investigation. He specifically states there are too many supervisory levels for rogue agent to sneak it past them. But that implies the only way the FISC abuse in the Carter Page case could have happened is if HIGH LEVEL SUPERVISORY OFFICIALS were the ones driving the "abuse of power" bus!

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    1. That was one of the changes in FISA that the Patriot Act brought about.

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  2. Today on Fox, Andy pointed out that, with a counter-intel probe involving an incoming PoTUS and the *top Russian*, it'd be inconceivable that the Intel/ FBI brass wouldn't be telling the current PoTUS of such a probe.
    But, I can imagine, these brassers doctoring the data, to play SparkleFarts in certain directions.

    This may lead to a helluva scenario, as laid out by CTH reader Bill Durham, at https://theConservativeTreehouse.com/2020/05/10/sunday-talks-trey-Gowdy-discusses-doj-and-fbi-misconduct-in-flynn-case-it-doesnt-have-to-go-all-the-way-up-to-the-president/?replytocom=8190805#respond :

    "Gowdy is giving good advice. Durham needs to focus on Comey McCabe Brennan. Take away their **Obama shield**. **Nobody in DC** is convicting Obama Rice Yates. Go after the old **white guys**.
    A DC jury will convict Comey McCabe Brennan, if team Obama sends signals. This is the path. Get team Obama to throw Comey McCabe Brennan **under the bus**. Even Gowdy is trying to broker a deal."

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    1. Obama is golden, just sayin’

      I mean, when you got a former federal prosecutor and former Republican House Representative elected under the Tea Party banner and that investigated Benghazi giving cover, he is not going to be touched.

      - TexasDude

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    2. House members have nothing to do with it. It's Barr's call and he'll make it. I assume that he'll do as diGenova thinks and expose Obama, but not indict to avoid the precedent of indicting a former president for crimes in office. That'll have to wait for the Dems.

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    3. So not being a lawyer, I'm curious if there is something that can be done in a legal sense to name Obama and put an "asterisk" by his Presidency, just as Pelosi, Schiff, Schumer & Co did by impeaching DJT. I hate that I'm even asking the question, but I would be interested in opinions on the matter. I feel like we're at war for the future of the country and The Constitution and ALL legal measures need be considered...especially those to shame BHO.

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    4. He could be named as an unindicted co-conspirator or simply--as diGenova says--named in the overall indictment as a person who took an action to further the conspiracy.

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    5. I'm not sure what "unindicted co-conspirator" means, though. It invites the question as to why some co-conspirators are indicted and some are not. I'd like to see him indicted, and then pardoned by Trump after sweating some bullets, I think. He needs a taste of what he and his like have done to others. I'm not normally a revenge guy. But I AM an accountability guy. BHO needs to feel some real pain for turning us into the legal equivalent of a banana republic.

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    6. "It invites the question as to why some co-conspirators are indicted and some are not."

      Right, and I'm totally OK with a very public discussion of that. I'm sure Barr could explain his reasoning at length, and Obama would not come out of well. Some might well argue that the disgrace would be more effective--tar him while his subordinates rot in jail.

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  3. Please expand on McMaster, i have been wondering why they had to have Flynn to figure it out. Didnt Bannon shadow as NSA for a while?

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    1. All I know is he's dedicated Deep State and worked assiduously to eliminate Trump loyalists from the WH.

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    2. Please clarify....he's dedicated Deep State: McMaster or Bannon? Sorry for my confusion.
      BH

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    3. McMaster was one of a cabal of Ed generals that was supposed to provide adult supervision to Trump. Kelly, Mattis, and McMaster.

      My guess is Trump had a huge respect For Generals.

      I wonder who recommended McMaster...

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    4. Apparently Trump got over that pretty quickly with exposure to these guys. I heard that at cabinet meetings he used to call Mattis "Moderate Dog."

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    5. For what it’s worth, Obama got rid of a lot of top military’s brass across all military branches. The message came through loud and clear. LtGen Flynn was one that got the message till he forgot it. He then became an apostate.

      - TexasDude

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    6. McMaster made Eric Ciaramella his NSC Chief of Staff. You don't he isn't Deep State indoc'ed?

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    7. I believe McMaster, along with Mattis, was recommended by Condi Rice. McMaster turned out to be a master leaker, who brought rumorblower Eric Ciaramella very close to himself as an aide, where Ciaramella was said to “see and hear everything” that went on in McMaster’s office. McMaster was no Flynn.

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    8. Trump has taken some very bad personnel advice. Fortunately he's got some good legal people, as he has himself stated.

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    9. Regarding Trump's personnel decisions, I agree it has been a real weakness of his administration. I would also say, though, it isn't easy to find competent evangelists to fill key slots here in The Swamp that don't have a tainted background in some form as part of a previous administration (i.e. Swamp experience). Stephen Miller seems to be the exception. On Dec 2, 2018 I was watching Fox's Steve Hilton and he had this gem quote during his Swamp Watch segment: “Mr. President, if you’re sitting there fuming about why your own government is slow-walking or blocking your agenda look no further than John Boehner’s establishment sleeper, John DeStefano. You should fire him tomorrow. Or tonight even. Do it with a tweet like Rex Tillerson!” DeStefano was White House Presidential Personnel Office Director through May 2019. Seems he made, or went along with, plenty of bad decisions.

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    10. When newly elected President Donald J. Trump went to Washington, it was as an outsider. Think of the positions he had to fill and (what turned out to be) the great number of #NeverTrump Obama loyalists who still staffed numbers of key departments. A herculean task. It had to have been reasonable to follow the recommendations of, say, a Condi Rice. And there were others. Trump did not “know” the Swamp. He knows it far, far better now! Many kvetched about his keeping Jared Kushner close by. I understood it from the beginning. Someone smart whose loyalty he could trust. Jared may make missteps, but I don’t see him ever sabotaging the President. I could be wrong, but I imagine his is a fairly astute ear to the ground.

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    11. As for those who engage in being President Trump’s critics - on the television, the internet and elsewhere - Critic is the easiest job in the world. Involves only hindsight. No investment. I always liked the quotation attributed to Theodore Roosevelt about the man in the arena. I hung a nice copy of it on my office wall years ago…

      “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

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  4. And now, the MSM cannot just ignore, but they can try to downplay and frame ...

    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/acting-dni-seeks-declassify-obama-officials-involved-flynn/story?id=70624372

    “ Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has declassified a list of former Obama administration officials who were allegedly involved in the so-called “unmasking” of former national security adviser Michael Flynn in his conversations with the former Russian ambassador during the presidential transition, a senior U.S. official tells ABC News.”

    In my Navy days, this is clearing out the weather decks due to very strong seas just before the general quarters alarm goes off to man all battle stations due to hostile sightings.

    - TexasDude

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    1. Apparently the way this works is that it'll be up to Barr to decide when to release this stuff. OTOH, you have to suppose that there's a reason for the publicity--that the time will be soon. We'll see.

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  5. Readers of this blog are focusing cat-like on the laser dot of indictments. What about afterwards, and the possibility one of these actors is a flight risk? There’s a lot to Spygate that seemed improbable that’s now established fact.

    So why not, as in professional war gaming, entertain flight/defection scenarios and map out the prevention options?

    What would you do if your FBI supervisor told you a defendant has moved his financial assets overseas? What options exist for detection and prevention?

    I’d rather plan these exigencies that fixate on a red dot.

    - LM

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    1. Depends on who it is to some extent.
      While we are focused on the law and legalities at the end of the day the battleground is political. Allowing an indicted miscreant to "fly" might be cheaper and more politically damaging than a trial and a couple of years probation.
      Think of the optics for the Dem's of Adam Schiff arriving in Caracas begging for sanctuary. Pretty devastating, especially considering that the Maduro gov't would gladly turn him back to us for the reward money as soon as they had fleeced him of whatever cash he had in his wallet. Then we can still have the trial.
      This is way bigger that Snowden.
      Any country seriously providing sanctuary for these miscreants would be playing with fire. corona' or no, U.S.A. is still very much the tall dog on the block and lack of an extradition treaty doesn't preclude delivery. It just means there is no established bureaucratic mechanism in place.
      Tom S.

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    2. Brennan or Comey would shelter behind a tier one power. I get your point about letting the reprobate run, but the damage would last generations.
      Maybe we can get FISA warrants on them.

      - LM


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    3. Suspect flight from jurisdiction constructively confirms their guilt, and proves the existence of the conspiracy to even the dullest tool in the MSM toolbox, not to mention millions of registered voters...

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    4. Precisely EZ. The battleground is political.

      LM - I'm just saying if a couple of the peripheral tools are ejected from some garden spot like NORK as undesirable aliens it would make for an interesting photo op.

      The Republic can heal if the electorate can understand the source of the infection. Regardless of the means, trials or hot pursuit, the public must be brought to an understanding of how placing their trust in thoroughly mediocre grifters has brought them to the brink of permanent enslavement. I pray the damage to the Democrat/Deep State is what will last generations.

      In any case we must strive to prove de Tocqueville wrong.
      Tom S.

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    5. "trust in thoroughly *mediocre* grifters" is being far too generous to them.
      The sociopathology of most of today's Left owes so much, to what Zman describes as follows:

      "Peripheral people, who have plenty of reasons to run to the media and tell their story, have maintained a *rigid discipline*, not seen since the heyday of the Italian mafia....
      A much more serious problem is, a government overrun by *fanatical ideologues*. That may be the heart of this scandal.
      The *long march* through the institutions has been followed, by a radicalization of the institutions. The inner party now operates like a religious *cult*, rather than a political operation."
      (See http://theZman.com/wordpress/?p=20493 .)

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  6. >Trump has taken some very bad personnel advice.

    Trump stated he had no idea how bad the swamp was in his interview last week with Fox & Friends. The incompetence of the establishment, the way the establishment GOP aided and abetted anti Trump activity. And the Senate slow walked confirmations. The amount of anti Trump people that became part of the administration and the continual presence of Obama appointees sabotaging his agenda has been breath taking.

    And many qualified appointees were scared off by the scorched earth tactics used against Trump appointees, before and after confirmation. It's amazing how many Trump appointees have been forced to resign due to ethical issues, or bad decisions. Stuff that would be overlooked in an Obama Administration. What happened to Kavanaugh, the sliming of his reputation is the poster child of what has been done to Trump appointees.

    With all this, I am amazed Trump was not forced out of office, much less got anything done.

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    1. I agree. Another problem is that Trump is more of a personnel softy than his public persona suggests. He really doesn't like to fire people.

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    2. "much less got anything done".
      Yeah, but he did, e.g. vs. Baghdadi.
      I take it that this feat really boosted DJT's rep in key circles, here and abroad.

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    3. In a way the speaks well of his character. He genuinely wants people, all people, to succeed. Of all the crap stories and scandals that have been flung at him, and despite literally tens of thousands of people actively searching his life for the least flaw, I have yet to read of him intentionally crushing anyone's life or career out of vengeance, petty retribution, or just because he could.
      Tom S.

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  7. DiGenova on Howie Carr's show yesterday:

    >> https://howiecarrshow.com/2020/05/11/joe-digenova-5-11-20-hour-2/ <<

    Joe starts just before the 20 minute mark.

    One big take-away: DiGenova echoes my hypothesis that the various US attorneys that Barr has appointed (like Jensen on the Flynn case review) to look into things related to the Russia Collusion Hoax are actually assisting Durham's investigation, because the workload is so big.

    He also expanded on his previous comment that the Flynn Motion to Withdraw the case is an indictment: he states that the way it is written is exactly the way a conspiracy indictment would read, laying out the object of the conspiracy, and then listing the various overt acts committed by co-conspirators in furtherance thereof.

    He opines the overt acts will likely cover at least a dozen people (not all of whom will be indicted.)

    He also made the observation that DOJ would have never dropped the Flynn case unless Durham already had the "missing" original 302. He believes it will be used as part of the evidence (overt act) in a Conspiracy to Obstruct case.

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