Sperry: Durham Investigation Expands To Team Mueller

That's what Paul Sperry tweeted while I was otherwise occupied:

Paul Sperry
@paulsperry

BREAKING: Durham has interviewed several of the FBI investigators who worked on Mueller's team during his 2017-2018 inquiry, further suggesting Durham's probe may be expanding into the activities of the Special Counsel's office.

8:42 PM · Feb 18, 2020

To which I say: Duh! Could there be any "news" less surprising?

Sidney Powell On Lack Of Predication In Flynn Case

Today, Michael Flynn's lead attorney, Sidney Powell filed

MR. FLYNN’S REPLY IN SUPPORT OF HIS MOTION TODISMISS FOR EGREGIOUS GOVERNMENT MISCONDUCT

I think we've all heard enough about government misconduct in this case, so what I'm going to do is paste in the first part, Section A, of the Reply. In Section A Powell stresses the total lack of predication for any investigation of Flynn at all. I'd dearly love to see this issue addressed forthrightly, because to me it's a fundamental due process issue. Most likely, if any ruling goes in Flynn's favor, this issue will be glossed over. I'm not aware of any precedent by which lack of predication itself could lead to dismissal, but in these political prosecutions the time has come. The opportunity for abuse is just too great and the standard that the government uses is just too vague. Read Section A and see what you think. I'd love to see Barr act on this, because he has addressed this problem in the past. No doubt he's trying to go step by step, but to me the government misconduct in even opening a case is very clear. I've inserted "SSA Joe Pientka" in place of "SSA 1.'

The part on predication doesn't begin until the end of Page 7. In the leadup to that, though, Powell makes an excellent point regarding the failure of the government to turn over information about the attendance of Pientka at a security briefing for Trump and Flynn. In the context, that fact was clearly Brady material--i.e., it was information that added force to the reported view of the interviewing agents that Flynn was being truthful and lacked an intention to lie. The whole point of Pientka's attendance at the meeting was to develop a familiarity with Flynn's personality for the purpose of later assessing his truthfulness.

Finally, I've included the entirety of this section because of the outrageousness that it documents.

UPDATED: Mini-Mike, Bernie, and PC

If there's one thing that came through loud and clear from the I Believe Weissmann post, it's the anxiety for Election 2020 that many conservatives feel. Let's take a look at some of the dynamics on the Dem side that I believe are working against them--and working for Trump. And the Republican party if they're willing to accept the lessons that Trump has been laying out for all who have eyes to see.

Mini-Mike is, for the moment, the great hope of a certain element in the Dem party--big money, anti-Bernie. His biggest impact so far seems to be in pricing other Dem candidates out of the race--except for Bernie, who has the resources to go all the way. But the weaknesses of Mini-Mike as a candidate are becoming ever more apparent. His lack of knowledge of America-beyond-the-Hudson is painfully apparent. His lack of concern for a huge sector of the US economy (agriculture) is remarkable. And then there's his unique ability to offend virtually every significant demographic in the Dem party--not every segment, but most. His "kill it" comment certainly makes Trump look refined in his attitudes toward women. Then, too, one wonders what Ruth Bader Ginsburg fans think of Mini-Mike's idea of cutting off health care to oldies who get cancer?

Now AmThinker has a nice article that highlights another aspect of Mini-Mike that's sure to alienate the entire US working class and much of the middle class that feels threatened by foreign labor market competition:

Bloomberg’s China Conflict of Interest 

Would a President Bloomberg with so many ties to a potentially desperate and belligerent China, and subject to potential extortion, act in the best interest of the United States?

A few excerpts make the problem exceedingly clear:

But along with Bloomberg comes his de facto business partner and long-time close ally: China, ...  

... in 2013 Bloomberg News was caught in a scandal when it killed news stories revealing corruption related to Xi Jinping’s family members, prompting various reporters and editors to resign. It turned out that Bloomberg News leadership told the editors that stories about the families of politburo members were off limits. 

... 

As Josh Rogin of the Washington Post points out, among the ways Michael Bloomberg and his company Bloomberg LP make a considerable amount of money in China is not only through the extraordinarily profitable licensing of its financial software but via its massive Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index.  Bloomberg LP is helping finance Chinese companies by sending billions of U.S. investor dollars into the Chinese bond market.

In 2019, the index began a 20-month plan to support 364 Chinese firms by directing an estimated $150 Billion into their bond offerings, including 159 controlled directly by the Chinese government. Bloomberg, along with other Wall Street firms, is effectively supporting the Chinese government’s human rights abuses, their resistance to Donald Trump’s efforts to rein in Chinese trade exploitation and espionage, all the while exposing American investors to increased risk in a nation that habitually obfuscates its economic statistics and manipulates its currency.

...   

The myriad conflicts of interest that Donald Trump has been falsely accused of over the past four years pale by comparison to the actual potential conflicts of Michael Bloomberg, particularly in regard to America’s primary global adversary, China.   Further, on a daily basis new stories emerge concerning his tyrannical management style, egocentrism, racial insensitivity and overt sexism -- all factors that should be determinative in disqualifying anyone for a major political party presidential nomination. 

Nonetheless, the Ruling Class, desperate to rid themselves of the dual existential threat to their hegemony, Donald Trump and his America First Movement and Bernie Sanders and his Democratic Socialism, are coalescing behind Michael Bloomberg. He is willing to buy not only the American Presidency but the Ruling Class’s loyalty and endorsements. And many are willing to sell. If there was any doubt that power and money motivate the American Ruling Class, thanks to Michael Bloomberg, that doubt will now been put to bed.

The picture that emerges is so absurd from the standpoint of Mini-Mike fielding a serious run for the Dem nomination that some are speculating that Mini-Mike's real role is to clear the field for a "moderate" Dem--whether Hillary or someone else. Anybody but Bernie! It sounds crazy, but then Impeachment Theater was pretty darned crazy too, putting the likes of Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler forward to the nation as the face of the Dems. Tom Luongo has a piece today at Zerohedge in which he tries to make the case that Mini-Mike is trying to clear the way for Hillary--or possibly a Hillary surrogate: Mike Bloomberg: Trojan Horse For Clintonista Revival.

Wall St. buys the Dem party, then buys Election 2020? Sounds nuts, but ...

As for Bernie.

A week or so ago I mentioned that I had a recollection that a not insignificant portion of Bernie primary voters had crossed over to Trump in 2016. Commenter Bebe dug up a reference for that thought--a Newsweek article from August, 2017, that takes a fairly deep dive into the post election data. The author obviously has an agenda--elections have a lot of moving parts, so they're rarely this cut and dried--but it's a real thing: BERNIE SANDERS VOTERS HELPED TRUMP WIN AND HERE'S PROOF.

It turns out that my recollection was not off. Fully 12% of "Sanders voters" crossed over and voted for Trump. What's going on here?

Well, it turns out that those "Sanders voters" who voted for Trump in the general election were a special subset of "Sanders voters." What I mean is, the Sanders vote contained a fairly large percentage of voters who were essentially protest voters. These were voters--both Republican and Democrat--who were disgusted with the way things had been going in the country and were looking for an alternative. When Trump emerged as a viable alternative for protest voters, many of them naturally gravitated toward Trump. And away from Hillary--who only got 75% of the so-called "Sanders voters." You can see in the chart below that the Trump voters and those who voted "other" were in fact anything but solid Dem in orientation:

less than 10 percent considered themselves strong Democrats, while less than 50 percent even leaned Democrat.

Trump found them. And my guess is that those voters are pretty happy with the results. They will not be voting Dem in 2020. That's very bad news for the Dems in general, and not just Bernie, because those voters made a real difference:

Sanders -> Trump voters…

WI: 51k
MI: 47k
PA: 116k 

Trump win margin… 

WI: 22k
MI: 10k
PA: 44k 

WI: 9% of Sanders voters voted for Trump.
MI: 8% of Sanders voters voted for Trump.
PA: 16% of Sanders voters voted for Trump.

On to the PC factor!

Eric Kaufmann, a professor of Political Science, has a pretty perceptive article out: Why the Left Is Losing. Basically, he's saying that Progressive ideology--which is adhered to by only about 8% of the population--has taken over the Dem party and boxed it in to positions that are anathema to the much of the rest of the population (that last link will give you data on that). Key to that is the complex of issues that revolve around immigration. The dynamics of this are playing out not only in the US but in Europe as well, rendering the Left unelectable in much of the West because they've alienated normal people but can't stop doing it. Sound like anything you've seen or experienced?

The mainstream Left is in serious trouble in the West. In the December 2019 election, the UK’s Labour Party was trounced by Boris Johnson’s Conservatives 365-203 in seats, and 44-32 percent in the popular vote. This was the worst result for Labour since 1935. 

Yet, as Matthew Goodwin recently noted on Twitter, the most recent election was also the worst result ever for the French Socialist Party of Benoît Hamon, and for the Left in Italy and the Netherlands. It was the second-worst performance since 1949 for the German Social Democrats, the worst finish for the Austrian Social Democrats since 1945, and the worst for the Finnish socialists since 1962. In Sweden, the Social Democrats sunk to their lowest level since 1908. This is more than a coincidence. 

Cultural Realignment 

Underlying the trend is a wider realignment of politics away from the economic conflicts of the 20th century toward the cultural battles of the 21st. Instead of just talking about state redistribution versus free markets, elections increasingly revolve around questions of immigration, national identity, and domestic security. This disadvantages the Left. 

Why? Because, as David Goodhart remarked in an interview, it’s easier for right-wing parties to move left on economics than for left-wing parties to move right on culture. 

That is, left-wing parties cannot move to the vote-rich zone of most electorates where the median voter—typically somewhat conservative on culture and centre-left on economics—resides. Conservatives can do so more easily as they are less beholden to libertarian economic orthodoxy than left-wing parties are to progressive cultural values. 

Identity politics and multiculturalism are central motivating forces for the highly-educated activists who have dominated left-wing parties since the ’68 generation rose to prominence. These ideas tend to be considerably less popular than the Left’s economic offer, hence the bind the Left finds itself in.

Remember, "Identity politics and multiculturalism are central motivating forces for the highly-educated activists"--who make up about 8% of the population. They have big mouths and the MSM is theirs, but normal people tend to look askance at them.

Kaufmann then goes on to try to explain why Leftist PC is so much more rigid than anything comparable on the Right. The important thing is the result:

The rise of identity politics stanched discussion of the cultural anxieties of many white working-class voters, who instead find themselves the object of scorn for their apparently retrograde social attitudes. ... 

The result of the new cultural realignment has been to upend the class composition of the main parties. ... In Britain, for instance, a majority of manual working-class voters plumped for Labour between 1945 and 1975. Even after that date, at least 40 percent voted for the party, with over half backing Tony Blair’s New Labour in the 1997 election. Since then, however, Labour’s support within the white working-class has fallen relentlessly, dropping to only 20 percent among such voters by 2015. 

... It appears that Conservative voters are now more working-class than Labour’s, something unthinkable in 1945 or even 1995.

Trump showed the way. The question is, can GOPer politicians internalize these lessons?

There's plenty more, so follow the link if you're interested.

UPDATE: Some people are trying to talk up Amy. Here's the take of a smart liberal: Chastising Amy #20: So you want to address the 'challenges of our time'?

In her triumphant speech after a strong third place finish in New Hampshire, new MSM darling Amy Klobuchar said this: 

America deserves a president who's gonna take on the challenges of our time: Climate change and affordable education and college, immigration reform, justice and democracy and, yes, bringing down the cost of health care 

... 

But look at her list:. Those are the big challenges?

I'm one of the people who thinks ... that Trump was elected because of deep, often unstated misgivings about where the country and its culture were going under its mainstream, state-of-the-art bipartisan political leadership. These issues go way beyond the simple whites-becoming-a-minority worries emphasized by the press. The status quo, even a status quo that was successful by its own terms (e.g. a bigger economy), wasn't working for many Americans. 

Are Klobuchar's issues the ones that might have been giving voters that sense of anxiety in 2016 -- or now, in 2020 even when jobs and GDP numbers are good? Or are they a bunch of topics you might staple together if you were running a standard, maybe-good-enough-to-win-the-nomination moderate campaign? Let’s see.

UPDATED: I Believe Andrew Weissmann

There are currently two narratives making the rounds about AG Bill Barr. Both portray Barr as a bit of an evil genius, but from distinctively different perspectives.

The first narrative is put forward by former Mueller consigliere, Andrew Weissmann:

One of Robert Mueller's former top prosecutors said the outside prosecutor picked to review the case against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is a ruse to investigate President Trump's perceived enemies. 

Andrew Weissmann, a former Justice Department official who was known as Mueller's "pit bull" during the Russia investigation, said the Justice Department swapped out the "loser case" of Andrew McCabe, who escaped criminal charges on Friday for allegedly lying to investigators about authorizing media disclosures, for a fresh one targeting top former FBI officials, including McCabe, led by Jeffrey Jensen, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. 

"All they did was swapped out a loser case for starting an investigation that is going to be of Comey, McCabe, Pete Strzok," Weissmann told MSNBC host Chuck Todd. 

All three officials were involved in the investigation into the Trump 2016 campaign's alleged ties to Russia, which Trump and his allies have called a "witch hunt." Mueller, who took over the inquiry after FBI Director James Comey was fired in May 2017, found no criminal conspiracy when the investigation ended last year. 

Attorney General William Barr picked Jensen, the top federal prosecutor in St. Louis, to work alongside the Flynn case's lead prosecutor Brandon Van Grack one month after the former Trump national security adviser filed to withdraw his guilty plea in Mueller's investigation. 

... Barr is also under intense scrutiny for U.S. Attorney John Durham's inquiry into the origins of the Russia investigation, which critics claim is meant to discredit Mueller's work.

Recommended Reads For Presidents Day: The Use Of Prosecutors

Two recommended reads that provide additional insights into the way the office of prosecutor fits into the progressive scheme for societal and political transformation. The two, of course, go hand in hand.

First, Andrew McCarthy weighs in:

UPDATED: On Career Prosecutors

Yesterday commenter Cassander recounted his personal experiences in law school, basically at the same time I was in law school--the mid seventies, for those of you who can remember those heady post-Watergate days. The comment is too long to reproduce in its entirety, but Cassander recounts the views a famous Constitutional Law professor sought to inculcate (I think that's the right word) in his students:

And so he exhorted us credulous students…don’t mind that stupid legislature…The U.S. Congress…elected by small-minded farmers, union members, rednecks, businessmen, and little people…disproportionately empowered by the federal system. In effect, never mind what the Framers’ wrote…Our legislative process…the rightness of our civilization… is paralyzed by democracy…but don’t fear! You…the elite, the up and coming elite…the best of the best…you lawyers…you Columbia lawyers…can make needed change which otherwise would not occur using the power of your intelligence.  

He went on: You can use the court system and sympathetic judges and a malleable Constitution to achieve what we cannot achieve in the legislature. I’m sure a large number of my classmates sitting in the room thirstily drank the kool-aid he was serving. How empowering! Certainly Ruth Bader Ginsburg (on the faculty at the time) did. In all likelihood my classmate Eric Holder was in the room. In all likelihood my classmate Scooter Libby was in the room.  

Wechsler told us in no uncertain terms that the smart people (as measured, I guess by grades and board scores sufficiently high to be admitted to Columbia Law School and its peer schools) should rule the country because we know better. It seemed all innocent and idealistic then. 

 I responded:

Another part of making the necessary changes is removing the people who disagree with the really smart people from positions of influence. That's where creative prosecutors come into play. In league with compliant LE.

 Those of you who have read Lee Smith's The Plot Against the President will be aware that in Chapter 15, Dirty Cops, Smith was kind enough to quote my views at some length, especially regarding the process by which the FBI over the past few decades was to a significant degree co-opted by leftist political activists--not in all its daily activities, but in politically sensitive cases. This co-optation was accomplished by greatly expanding the role of just those types of lawyers that Cassander describes in their student days. We see the results in the Lisa Pages, Comeys, Bakers, Trisha Andersons, and all the rest we're now familiar with from the Russia Hoax.

Today at PJ Media J. Christian Adams has an informative article along similar lines, on how our two tier "justice" or "just for us" system works, especially in DC. To give you some idea on where Adams is coming from, how he knows what he's talking about, this is his brief bio:

J. Christian Adams is an election lawyer who served in the Voting Rights Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. His New York Times bestselling book is Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department (Regnery).  His website is www.electionlawcenter.com. Follow him on Twitter @electionlawctr.

And here are some excerpts to give you a taste for the rest of the article:

Is Bezos Trying To Mend Fences With Trump?

How else do you explain the Bezos Post running with this story:

Mike Bloomberg for years has battled women’sallegations of profane, sexist comments

Just one example of Mini MIke's level of class that the article offers:

Several lawsuits have been filed over the years alleging that women were discriminated against at Bloomberg’s business-information company, including a case brought by a federal agency and one filed by a former employee, who blamed Bloomberg for creating a culture of sexual harassment and degradation.

The most high-profile case was from a former saleswoman. She sued Bloomberg personally as well as his company, alleging workplace discrimination. She alleged Bloomberg told her to “kill it” when he learned she was pregnant. Bloomberg has denied her allegation under oath, and he reached a confidential settlement with the saleswoman.

The Washington Post interviewed a former Bloomberg employee, David Zielenziger, who said he witnessed the conversation with the saleswoman. Zielenziger, who said he had not previously spoken publicly about the matter, said Bloomberg’s behavior toward the woman was “outrageous. I understood why she took offense.”

Well, here's another example:

Garrison alleged that Bloomberg berated female employees who got pregnant. “What the hell did you do a thing like that for?” Bloomberg allegedly told one pregnant employee. On another occasion, the lawsuit said, Bloomberg berated a female employee who had trouble finding a nanny. “It’s a f------ baby! . . . All you need is some black who doesn’t have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building.”

Anyone else get the impression that this won't help Mini Mike's presidential aspirations?

Since, as the article says, this has been going on for years, the article is commensurately lengthy.

Lou Dobbs Talks To John Solomon Re Unequal Justice

Another interesting interview--it's about 8 minutes long. Dobbs is upset with our Two Tier "justice" system. He calls it a justice system and a "just for us" system. He's upset with what he sees as the slow pace of the Barr DoJ, discusses the McCabe case, Flynn, and Lindsey Graham's claim that he wants to interview witnesses to the Russia Hoax.

Solomon acknowledges the systemic problems and expands on some of these cases, but he also tries to push back and suggest that progress will be made.

The truth of the matter is, in my view, that Barr probably understands all this but for various reasons feels unable to speak openly about the issues.

No answers offered, but frank discussion:

Two-Tiered System. @jsolomonReports says there are “two systems of justice,” one for Republicans and one for radical Dems and Deep State officials. #MAGA #AmericaFirst #Dobbs pic.twitter.com/J310NUOkbQ

— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) February 15, 2020

Here's a good Twitter exchange that's on point with the video--"SCO" = Special Counsel Office = Team Mueller. For those not really into this stuff, Orin Kerr is a very high profile law prof and legal blogger:

I would have thought a lawyer would be able to see that the extreme prosecutions by the SCO have created this problem, which is the very real - & justifiable - perception that justice isn’t equal in this country because it depends on the political party to which you belong. https://t.co/mha51mPcSD

— Leslie McAdoo Gordon (@McAdooGordon) February 15, 2020

McCabe knows--John Cardillo:

Maybe McCabe isn’t out of the woods, knows it, and is trying to get in front of it.
Quote Tweet

The Hill
@thehill

Andrew McCabe: "[Trump's] a vindictive guy and I fully expect that he'll continue to hound me and my family."

Correction: It'll be John Durham and other prosecutors hounding him.

Lee Smith's Good Interview Re Info Sharing, McCabe

Author Lee Smith, The Plot Against The President, did a good interview on Fox last night regarding Eric Felton's bombshell article about the FBI doing "info/intel sharing" with Chris Steele and Fusion GPS.

Smith phrases things very well in the interview. For example, he points out the middleman "liaison" role of Chris Steele and how that sheds light on the FBI's role in the Russia Hoax vis a vis the Clinton campaign. The fact that the information flow was bi-directional means that not only was the Clinton campaign (Fusion GPS) sharing with the FBI and the FBI was using that oppo research to target Trump. But that bi-directional flow also means that the FBI was sharing with the Clinton campaign (Fusion GPS, again). Steele, in effect, becomes the FBI liaison to the Clinton campaign. And, as we saw yesterday, the FBI knew that that's what they were doing.

Smith also lets drop that Peter Strzok and Bill Priestap, High Bureau Officials as I put it yesterday, were involved in the intel sharing with Steele. Yesterday I suspected that when Horowitz referred to a "Section Chief" that would logically be Strzok. Smith, with better sources, has apparently nailed it down that the Section Chief in question was, in fact, Strzok.

Smith also appears to agree with me that the purpose of the information flow to Steele from the FBI was so that Steele could use that information to feed "source information" back to the FBI for use in the FBI application. We've seen similar information laundering operations involving media accounts, in which leaks to the media were presented by the FBI to the FISA court as independent corroborating information.

All of this goes toward proving and fleshing out the Big Picture conspiracy of the Russia Hoax--a conspiracy that involved key players at the top of the FBI, State, CIA, DoJ, the White House, and the Clinton campaign.

At the end of the interview a very important point is made regarding Andrew McCabe's excuses re the FISA applications, in which McCabe tries to push the blame off on the field agents, when in fact the whole Russia Hoax operation--as Felten documents--was very closely held at FBIHQ:

I know there was some news about the non-prosecution of McCabe, but if you think McCabe is out of the woods on this one he's got another think coming, because between Barr and Durham and the things that are going on at the Department of Justice, this show is not yet over.

Watch it--you'll be glad you did:

UPDATED: Barr Opens Investigation Of Flynn Case

The Department of Justice has tapped an outside prosecutor to review the case of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. That prosecutor is Jeff Jensen, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri.

Reporter Carol Lee at NBC News has an article that, despite a heavy serving of anti-Trump and anti-Barr polemics, offers some insight. She focuses on the aspect of the case that early on drew my attention--the lack of any reasonable predication for investigating Flynn's perfectly normal contacts with the Russian ambassador. In other words, her focus is on the actual interview of Flynn by Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka:

Justice Department opens inquiry into FBI interview at heart of Flynn's guilty plea

Lee also does some digging into the significance of having a prosecutor conducting this "review." Remember how Durham launched a "review" of the Russia Hoax? Yeah, that turned out to be a criminal investigation--which is what prosecutors do. OIG does reviews.

I've edited out the polemical parts because I assume that Barr can justify everything he's doing. Excerpts:

Information Sharing Is Great!

The whole principle behind the notion of "information sharing" is the common sense idea that two heads are better than one. All concerned parties get together, share what they know on a given subject, bat the facts around to come up with analysis and ideas for what action to take. "Brainstorming." It works in business, it works in the law, it works in daily life, and it works in the Intel Community.

For example, you bring analysts from different intel agencies together under the direction of John Brennan, they brainstorm ideas, and then Peter Strzok writes up the Intel Community Assessment the way John Brennan wanted it from the beginning. Then they foist the ICA on 1) an unsuspecting public, and 2) a cynical and witting political establishment. What a concept! What could go wrong? Well, Donald Trump, Devin Nunes, Bill Barr, John Durham, an aroused American public.

Eric Felten has a wonderful article on intel sharing today at Real Clear Investigations, and you need to read it all: How an FBI Team in Rome Gave Steele Highly Guarded Secrets. Wait a minute, you say? The FBI shared "highly guarded secrets" with a private citizen of a Foreign Power? That can't be right--that can't be approved! Information sharing is all fine and good, but there have to be some restrictions when it comes to "highly guarded secrets," right?

Indeed there are, but they only apply to chumps like you and me. Certainly not to High Bureau Officials. And so Felten chronicles--it's all there, buried deep inside Michael Horowitz's FISA Dossier--how the FBI shared "highly guarded secrets" with Christopher Steele, knowing full well that he was working for the Clinton campaign.

One's first reaction is bound to be: Should I laugh or cry? Is the US lead Counterintelligence agency being exposed as the Keystone Kops of the Intel Community? But rest easy. There was a very good reason for the FBI to share its "highly guarded secrets" with Steele. To understand why, you need to understand the context of the meeting at which so much of the sharing went on.

As you'll see when you read Felten, the meeting in question took place in Rome. It took place on October 3, 2016. The FBI had, by that time, received most of Steele's "information", but they needed more. In light of that, consider the timing for the Rome meeting. The date of October 3, 2016, means two things: The meeting took place after the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened, but before the Carter Page FISA was applied for. So, what kind of information was provided to Steele? This kind of information:

Tom Fitton And Lou Dobbs Discuss Barr's Beef With Trump

I'll be out of pocket a major part of the day, starting soon, but will enable comments upon return.

Yesterday I expressed understanding for AG Bill Barr's complaint about, at the least, the timing of President Trump's tweet re the sentencing memo in the Roger Stone case. At the same time, I noted the unreasonability of Barr failing to recognize that cases like the Stone case arose in a political environment to serve a political purpose. I maintained that the solution to these systemic problems with our "justice" system will not come about without political input--which is what President Trump brings to the table. Certainly we don't want the POTUS and the AG stepping on each others toes, but a blanket request or demand that the POTUS stop tweeting about problems affecting DoJ simply isn't reasonable. Barr needed to say something in the circumstances, but he should have made his complaint more specific and should also have addressed the problem of prosecutorial misconduct.

We can all appreciate the dedication Bill Barr has brought to the Herculean job he has taken on--and I have no doubt whatsoever that Donald Trump appreciates it just as much as he says he does. We can also understand that overnight results aren't in the cards and that Barr can't do it on his own--he was let down in a shameful way by Tim Shea, his handpicked USA in DC. But Barr probably needs to learn a bit from Trump, and be far more open about the systemic abuses that have continued on his watch, albeit despite his best efforts.

With that, I offer a stimulating discussion that touches on some of the above points in a passionate but informed way--Tom Fitton: "The Justice Dept. Is in Crisis. It's Not Because of Donald Trump Complaining About It":