this blog develops the idea that a theory of man in history can be worked out around the theme that man's self expression in culture and society is motivated by the desire to find meaning in man's existence. i proceed by summarizing seminal works that provide insights into the dynamics of this process, with the view that the culmination of this exploration was reached with god's self revelation in jesus. i'll hopefully also explore the developments that followed this event.
A day or two ago I made reference to a concept going around called "contagious vaccines." It seems we live in a world gone mad, run by mad scientists, mad eugenicists, mad financiers, mad clerics, and mad politicians. I'm sure I've left a whole bunch of madmen out, but you get the idea.
Today there's a very interesting article that goes into some detail regarding this business of "contagious vaccines" and the madness of it all:
A few days ago I suggested that the Flynn Transcripts, when released, woud be a big nothing--in the sense that there would be no revelations of things we didn't know. We all knew that Flynn did nothing wrong. Sean Davis has written a good article () about the actual content of the transcripts,
Newly released declassified transcripts of call transcripts and summaries between Flynn and Kislyak contradict key claims made against Flynn by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Davis' basic point regarding the dishonesty of Mueller is well taken. In any 1001 False Statement prosecution, the statements in question, as made by the defendant, should actually be false--what a concept, eh? Mueller stands that concept on its head. In the Flynn prosecution the actual false statements were made by the prosecutors, a prosecutorial technique spearheaded over preceding years by the likes of Mueller, Comey, and Weissmann. Example:
According to the charging documents from Mueller, Flynn allegedly falsely claimed to Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents that he did not ask Kislyak to “refrain from escalating” in response to U.S. expulsion of Russian diplomats and falsely claimed that he did not ask Kislyak to help defeat an anti-Israel resolution pending before the United Nations at the time. Mueller also claimed that Flynn lied when he said he didn’t remember Kislyak telling him that Russia would “moderate its response” to the expulsions.
The transcript of the December 29 conversation, which was cited by Mueller, does not include a request from Flynn that Russia “refrain from escalating” in response to U.S. expulsions of Russian diplomats. According to the transcript, Flynn asked Kislyak for Russia’s response to be “reciprocal” so that the U.S.–not Russia–would not be forced to escalate beyond the expulsions.
This is really shocking, even by previous liberal political standards of dishonesty. This type of behavior by prosecutors should be dealt with severely--by prosecuting the prosecutors!
At the end Davis touches on an aspect that interests me, because it deals with something that will play out in the next few days:
Earlier today Undercover Huber posted a masterful thread exposing the railroading of George Papadopoulos by Team Mueller. You can read it all here, but I want to highlight the part that really struck me, which has to do with Papadopoulos's initial appearance before a federal magistrate. This occurred the day after he was arrested at Dulles Airport, after reentering the US without the cash that had been planted on him in hopes of setting him up on a money laundering charge. It looks to me like a classic violation of the Right to Counsel.
The more you read about the Papadopoulos case the more you're impressed with how hard Team Mueller and the FBI worked at framing him. The sheer malevolence--the word UC Huber uses--is pretty stunning.
Here are those excerpts re the initial appearance:

Undercover Huber
@JohnWHuber
That sealed Court appearance in Virginia lasted 4 mins, was delayed by hrs (GP left detention for the courthouse at 08:30am, it didn't start until 03:02pm) & was presided over by only a Magistrate Judge (who then just transferred case to DC) who spelled BVGs name wrong as "Gratt”.
11:48 AM · May 24, 2020
 Papadoupolos wasn’t represented by Counsel at that initial appearance, even though he had been represented by the same Counsel (Thomas Breen and co.) since Feb 2017, who had attended multiple FBI interviews with him too. The Mag Judge wasn’t made aware of this by the SCO.

Yet GP's Counsel (Mr. Breen) had been informed of GP's arrest and spoken to GP twice the night before (see FD-302 extracts) & knew of his court appearance the next day (see extract from Politico interview) So this "obstruction" charge is really going “by the book” so far .
 The overall effect on the disorientated @GeorgePapa19 appears to have been profound. He describes in his book how he took the “serious jail time” threat seriously, fearing spending *25 years in prison.* Note: he'd never even been arrested before & had no Counsel present to help.

What GP's lawyers could've said at that initial hearing is out of scope of this thread - they could've noted GP didn't even commit those alleged crimes in "D.C" (they took place in Illinois, so the venue was wrong) & his lawyers *personally knew the obstruction charge was false*
Now here is Undercover Huber's overall conclusion, which he wrote up separately. Obviously I don't agree with UC Huber's notion that Barr and Durham are about to let Kevin Clinesmith off "scot free." Nevertheless, the narrative is compelling, and I wouldn't want to be in Clinesmith's shoes when it comes time to pay the piper.
The reason Flynn had to go was because if he once settled in as NSA he would soon discover the whole operation against Trump--not only against the campaign but the continuing operation, centered in the NSC with Obama holdovers. Flynn would have been just about the only fully professional intel specialist, and at the top of the heap he'd see it all. With Flynn gone, in point of fact, the Obama holdovers at NSC and USIC were actually able to engineer the fake impeachment.
They had to intercept @GenFlynn quickly, b/c *the NSC was ground central for the anti-Trump op.* That's what I'm not sure everyone gets yet. It had to be executed at a level above auditability. Neither CIA nor DOJ qualifies...
And once they had to brief him about all ongoing counterintelligence cases, and Flynn dug into this, he was going to INSTANTLY see what they had done.
He would’ve quickly determined they’d BLUFFED their way to a surveillance warrant approval on Carter Page by using FRAUD.
2:03 PM · May 1, 2020·Twitter Web App

J.E. Dyer
@OptimisticCon
Replying to
@OptimisticCon Only level effectively unaudited over time is *NSC.* NSC is where only real check is what POTUS will either protect or weed out. And it wasn't just records of what HAD been done. They wanted to keep it going under new admin. We know they tried w/extensions of Page FISA.... 2/3

J.E. Dyer
@OptimisticCon
Mueller SCO was same effort. Flynn wd have detected whole ball of wax; he had to go. In retrospect, planning decision on that made right around 25 Dec 2016-4 Jan 2017. Hence keeping Flynn case open & moving to (1) ICA/dossier maneuvers (2) "leak" to Ignatius & follow-ons. 3/3
Now, listen to Andy McCarthy explain it at a bit more length--best thing he's done in ages:
Durham is going for the whole ball of wax. So much more than what most people think. "Sprawling"? God help us!
UPDATE: I just finished listening to the Lou Dobbs interview of Sidney Powell. It was an extraordinary, powerful, emotionally charged presentation by Powell--speaking as forcefully and openly as she has to date. Toward the end of the interview she sets out the key dates in January, 2017:
January 4: Strzok intervenes to keep the unpredicated Flynn case open, despite the fact that the Washington Field Office has found nothing against Flynn.
January 5: Obama summons the coup plotters to the Oval Office--Susan Rice, James Comey, James Clapper, John Brennan, Sally Yates--to strategize on the way forward, specifically discussing Flynn.
January 6: Comey is dispatched to New York to intimidate Trump by telling Trump that they have dirt on him--an attempt at blackmail that Trump angrily rejected.
January 10: Clapper tells "journalist" David Ignatius at the WaPo to "take the kill shot" on Flynn.
January 12: Yates and Comey sign off on the first Carter Page FISA renewal, to continue the spying on Trump.
Kim Strassell has an excellent Twitter thread that appeared at Real Clear Politics this morning. It provides a nice, concise picture of what was done to Michael Flynn by the FBI. Importantly, and this is the part that Strassell leaves out, it was also done to Flynn by Team Mueller. In fact, all of the FBI's bad behavior would have gone unnoticed but for Team Mueller taking that ball and running with it. While being aided and abetted by Rod Rosenstein and Chris Wray.
That's not an excuse for the FBI's bad behavior, for which the entire organization deserves to be turned inside out. It's simply a recognition that this attempted coup was never just about the FBI--no matter how essential and central the FBI's role was for the past four years.
Two additional things to keep in mind going forward:
1) The FBI did not "create a crime," as Strassell and so many others like to repeat. What they did was create the appearance of a crime. Flynn did not commit a crime. To keep this illusion or appearance moving forward, the FBI and Team Mueller had to engage in repeated criminal acts of their own--lies and misrepresentations.
2) Not only did the FBI have no reason to interview Flynn, they never had any reason to have an open case on Flynn in the first place. It's in the documentation for the case opening that you'll find the false statements that they FBI later relied on to interview Flynn.
If you keep these two facts firmly in mind, you'll be able to follow where Durham is trying to go: A big picture conspiracy to deprive multiple persons--to include Donald J. Trump--of their constitutional rights. The list of bad actors varies at different stages of the conspiracy--from the 2016 Russia Hoax, to the 2017 frame job on Flynn, to setting up Team Mueller on false pretenses, to the fake impeachment. Nevertheless, there is a real continuity of actors as well. The Flynn case overlaps several of these stages and includes bad actors from all of those stages. It is a door into the heart of the conspiracy that Durham is trying to exploit.
1) A nice succinct explanation of how the grand jury process works, and why it takes time;
2) A prosecutive theory that allows for the Big Picture conspiracy narrative that I've been hoping for--a theory that gets you past the nickel/dime false statement stuff. It's a conspiracy to defraud the federal government of the faithful services of the agencies involved--the FBI, CIA, maybe DoJ.
Wikipedia has a good discussion of Honest Services Fraud, under 18 USC 1346. Here is the statute:
"For the purposes of this chapter, the term scheme or artifice to defraud includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services."
And here are some notable excerpts from Wikipedia that should give an idea of how useful this could be for Durham:
The statute has been applied by federal prosecutors in cases of public corruption
Since at least 1941, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, and prior to 1987, the courts had interpreted the mail fraud and wire fraud statutes as criminalizing not only schemes to defraud victims of money and property, but also schemes to defraud victims of intangible rights such as the "honest services" of a public official.
Honest services fraud is generally more easily proven in the public sphere than in the private, because honest services fraud by public officials can include most unethical conduct,
The statute grants jurisdiction to the federal government to prosecute local, state and federal officials. It is frequently used to fight public corruption because it is easier to prove than bribery or extortion.
Today has been an incredible Big Story day in the ongoing saga of the Russia Hoax. This morning we had Paul Sperry's revelations about James Comey's targeting of President Trump for removal for clearly political motivations--there simply was no case against Trump and everyone involved with this coup attempt knew it. This evening we have John Solomon's absolutely stunning--no other word fits--revelations of Andrew Weissmann's own corrupt attempt to frame President Trump: How Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann's offer to an oligarch could boomerang on DOJ. Let's start at the beginning.
As we all know, at the time Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel it was already well known that the FBI investigation on which the Special Counsel mandate was explicitly based (in Rod Rosenstein's authorization letter) was utterly bogus, because it was based on the already discredited Steele "dossier." The question facing Mueller and his Deputy Andrew Weissmann--whom most regard as the true head of the Mueller inquisition--was clearly: How to proceed in the face of this lack of evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of the president? One approach would be to seek to provoke Trump into a misstep that could be called "obstruction," but that would be time consuming and uncertain of success. Slogging through the Russia Hoax allegations faced the same uncertainty. What about a quick strike at Trump? Remember, the true aim was to force Trump out--whether by impeachment or resignation hardly mattered, and resignation was probably preferable because it would be quicker. But how to force the issue?
Did the impeachment question play into Trump's decision not to launch an attack on Iranian assets? The obvious answer is: Maybe yes, maybe no. However, there's a second question: Did impeachment play into Democrat calculations? While the answer remains the same--maybe yes, maybe no--my inclination is to believe that it was a significant factor. Consider this--it's a video that purports to show Chuck and Nancy in a celebratory after the meeting at the White House:
Well now we know why Chuck and Nancy were celebrating last night. They thought the Deep State had goaded Trump into war, exactly as they planned with their FF. Trump outsmarts them again! #WRWY#GreatAwakening#WWG1WGA#Qanon#MAGA#MEGA#WeThePeople
Now, it's entirely possible that Chuck and Nancy were in a celebratory mood because they agree with the likes of Pat Buchanan and Carlson Tucker that war with Iran would guarantee Trump as a one-term president. That would be understandable. However, depending on how such a war proceeded, as well as other political factors, I believe that the Dems may have believed that war with Iran could have put them in a stronger position to impeach Trump for exceeding his war powers--and to make the impeachment stick.
This morning I was bemoaning the fact that we've had little true news for some weeks, now. The heady days of document and testimony revelations appeared to be over. However, this afternoon John Solomon has come out with another blockbuster report. Right up front I want to make two quick points:
1. Solomon's report reflects and supports Rudy Giuliani's advice back in mid April of this year--going forward, we need to Pay Attention To Ukraine.
2. At the same time Solomon's report explains why patience is required, as I explained in Barr And Durham Are Focused On The CIA. The need to secure cooperation from foreign governments and their intelligence services means that Barr and Durham will need the active assistance of other persons and agencies within the US government, beginning with the POTUS himself. And their efforts will be resisted by the FBI and the CIA--the two agencies with the most to lose by the truth coming out.
That said, the opening paragraphs of Solomon's article, FBI, warned early and often that Manafort file might be fake, used it anyway, contains some of the most trenchant reporting I've seen in many months. Bear in mind, the "black cash ledger" is supposed to have been a record of payments to Paul Manafort:
When the final chapter of the Russia collusion caper is written, it is likely two seminal documents the FBI used to justify investigating Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign will turn out to be bunk.
And the behavior of FBI agents and federal prosecutors who promoted that faulty evidence may disturb us more than we now know.
George Papadopoulos is out of prison--he served 14 days back in November, a sort of joke consolation sentence for Team Mueller--and putting his time to good use. He has a book out all about his experiences with the Deep State and how he was framed as part of the attempted coup against Trump: Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump.
Fox News spoke to him, and he has some interesting things to say about his interrogation. Bear in mind that Joseph Mifsud--the "professor" he refers to--is almost certainly an FBI asset, as commenter Mike Sylwester has convincingly argued. Probably works for CIA and MI6, as well. While the "official" accounts say that Mifsud is "missing," the truth is almost certainly (see previous link, if you haven't already) that the three named intel agencies told him he needed to adopt a new identity that they would provide for him and to relocate. The point being that the Deep State--to include the British relations--didn't want Mifsud being questioned by people like HPSCI or OIG or John Huber. What? You thought it was to protect him from the Russians? LOL!
Anyway, here's the interesting part of what Papadopoulos had to tell Fox. It illustrates how the whole Team Mueller extension of the Russia Hoax worked. Recall that yesterday I quoted Mark Penn to that effect:
It’s an abuse of power without precedent. The Mueller investigation systematically went after everyone named in the Steele dossier, using the toughest possible tactics. Rather than investigate the crime, they investigated the people, finding unrelated crimes to use as leverage to squeeze out any potential drops of evidence related to collusion.
