Spokin’ Joe is wheely spiteful

Miranda Devine

How convenient for Joe Biden that he is far from scrutiny on an extended vacation in a borrowed mansion in a secluded community on Kiawah Island, SC, the very week his attorney general unleashed a political firestorm by authorizing the FBI raid on the home of their shared nemesis, Donald Trump.

But the president couldn’t help a little subtle gloating as he rode a bike on the beach past the waiting media, flashing a cheery smile.

Asked about his vacation, he replied: “I’m enjoying it a great deal. I’ve been on the phone a lot, monitoring news reports.” Yes, you can bet he is monitoring the news, with relish.

If there is one defining adjective for Biden’s presidency, it probably is spite. His consuming hatred for “the former guy”, whose name he often can’t bring himself to utter, is palpable. He makes no secret of the fact that he despises Trump voters, too, all 74,223,369 of them…

If only Biden had been the unifying president he promised he would be, and shown a little grace in victory, commended Trump for Operation Warp Speed, perhaps, not spitefully unwound all his policies, not branded half the country “white supremacists” and “domestic terrorists” in his inaugural speech…

Joe’s failure to unify

He might have lowered the temperature on Trump derangement and set a more generous-spirited tone befitting a generous-spirited nation. If only Biden had been the empathetic moderate that he pretended to be during the election campaign, we wouldn’t be at the perilous moment we are at today…

For them, Aug. 8, 2022, is a day that will live in infamy.

It’s not Trump radicalizing these people; he was their release valve. It is Biden and his politicized Department of Justice and FBI, who have broken every norm by sending 30 FBI agents to the home of a former president to search his house and ransack his wife’s closet.

No matter Trump’s flaws, the legal argument over whether or not he had used his presidential authority to declassify the documents seized by the FBI last Monday iand no discernible reason has emerged for the cack-handed urgency.

We’ve had a flurry of leaks from the DOJ and the White House in an attempt at post-facto justification for this precedent-setting law enforcement overreach. It’s nuclear secrets.

But we’ve seen this playbook before. The Russia hoax, two impeachments, Alpha Bank, the Steele Dossier, Carter Page, the FBI lovebirds, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, Michael Avenatti, Adam Schiff, and on and on relentlessly. So, forgive us for being skeptical. When the same top Obama administration officialswho ran the Russia hoax are they are up to their old tricks?

Mar-a-Lago was like throwing a match on a “tinderbox”, says Terry Turchie, former deputy assistant director of the FBI Counterterrorism division.

“This is going to spiral out of control,” he says. “I think we are going to have a lot of trouble with people [who] are so upset. There is 1% of people we have to worry about that will react by going out and being violent and that will bring the full force of the government down on them —I wonder if that’s deliberate.”

Turchie, who captured the Unabomber and retired from the FBI in April 2001, says his “worst fear” is a major terrorist attack on an American city when the FBI has taken its eye off the ball.

“With the combination of reemergent alliances between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, [with] al Qaeda spreading in Africa and roving bands of terrorists in Afghanistan, [with] a porous border where people can pour across, there could be a dirty nuclear bomb going off in an American city and we would have no idea who is doing it.”

He points out that the FBI has no idea how to find the 75 people (“probably more like 575”) on the terror watchlist who have come across the southern border.

“We’re in one of those terrible times, in a tinderbox atmosphere where we could see a [simultaneous] rise of domestic terrorism and international terrorism. “That is a terrible mix. You don’t want to go into that with an FBI that is highly politicized.”

The Bureau is ‘broken’

The FBI is unrecognizable since he joined in 1972, Turchie says, when agents were blue-collar crime fighters, rather than privileged Ivy Leaguers with ideological baggage. “The FBI as I knew it has collapsed. Discipline has broken down and it has become nothing more than a police agency for the Democratic Party.”

Today the FBI has lost that spirit of independence and Turchie doubts it will ever contradict the wishes of the Biden administration, no matter how wrong-headed and politically partisan.

Mar-a-Lago is the tragic proof.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/14/joe-biden-is-really-spiteful/

World’s fastest airliner ‘Overture’ to usher in new era of supersonic travel

The world hasn’t seen commercial supersonic travel in nearly 20 years since the Concorde was retired in 2003, but all that is about to change with the development of a new, environmentally friendly airliner.

Meet Overture – the world’s fastest airliner that was developed by Denver-based Boom Supersonic. With 26 million hours of designing and testing, Overture will run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) as it flies at Mach 1.7 over the ocean, shuttling between 68-80 passengers up to nearly 5,000 miles.

The updated design features four engines that will keep weight and temperature balanced, which will also lower the size requirements of the wing-mounted engines.

Boom says that smaller engines will lower the thrust requirements for each one. And the lower the thrust – the quieter they will run. “With no afterburners and buzz-free engines, Overture’s takeoffs will blend in with existing long-haul fleets, resulting in a quieter experience for both passengers and airport communities,” Boom said on its website.

The signature sonic boom people hear when an aircraft goes supersonic can rattle nerves and windows. But unlike the Concorde, Overture’s sonic boom would be heard over the ocean as to not disturb people on the ground.

Net zero carbon and SAF

Overture’s engines will run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel as it flies at Mach 1.7. Boom says the environmental impacts of Overture were taken into consideration when designing the new airliner, and that will aid the company in its journey to achieving net zero carbon by 2025.

“Environmental performance is being considered in all aspects of Overture, from design and production to flight and end-of-life recycling,” Boom said on its website. “The engineering team prioritizes circularity by repurposing used tooling, recycling components on the shop floor and leveraging additive manufacturing techniques that result in less manufacturing waste and lighter, more fuel-efficient products.”

In its design, Overture will incorporate lighter, stronger and thermally stable carbon composite materials into most of its construction. A lighter aircraft will make the airliner more fuel efficient, making it more sustainable for the environment.

What is SAF?

Another environmentally friendly aspect of Overture is the use of sustainable aviation fuel. SAF delivers the same performance as conventional jet fuel but with a significantly smaller carbon footprint. The fuel comprises different types of sustainable resources, such as used cooking oil and animal fat waste, to name a few.

Fuselage and gull-wing design

Overture has been optimized for speed, safety and sustainability. Overture’s fuselage has a larger diameter in the front of the aircraft and a smaller diameter toward the back, which minimizes drag and maximizes its fuel efficiency as it cruises at supersonic speeds. In addition, Boom says the gull-wing design will allow the air to flow smoothly around and over the aircraft.

That will enhance the airplane’s supersonic flight ability while remaining efficient at slower speeds. Boom says the benefit of the design of the wing and its ability to fly slower means higher overall safety as it will take off and land at slower speeds.

Travel times

So far, Boom says two airlines and the United States Air Force have signed on to purchase Overture airlines. United Airlines says it will buy 15 aircraft once safety, operating and safety requirements are met, with options to purchase 35 more.

Japan Airlines has also said it will buy the airliners and has pre-ordered 20. In addition, Boom and the United States Air Force are currently developing custom Overture configurations for government transportation.

So, how long will it take to get to popular international destinations?

New York City to London:

Current travel time: Approximately 7 hours

Overture travel time: 3 hours 30 minutes

Los Angeles to Sydney:

Current travel time: Approximately 15 hours

Overture travel time: 8 hours

At that speed, a flight between New York City and London was about 3 hours.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/14/worlds-fastest-airliner-overture-to-usher-in-era-of-supersonic-travel/

Fmr DNI Ratcliffe: FBI, DOJ Have Become the Enforcement Arm of the Democratic Party

Jeff Poor14 Aug 2022

During an appearance on FNC’s “Sunday Night in America,” former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe criticized the apparent double standard that is applied to Democrats and Republicans in investigations.

Ratcliffe argued that given that double standard, the takeaway is that the Department of Justice and the FBI were the “enforcement arm of the Democratic Party.”

“I have to imagine you and Jimmy, and I were among millions of Americans that were choking back disbelief when Attorney General Merrick Garland was talking about how the Department of Justice and FBI were committed to the even-handed application of the law to everyone, including Donald Trump, when the FBI and Department of Justice, so clearly as Jimmy pointed out, don’t have clean hands on this matter,” he said. “You mentioned Jim Comey – you have an FBI director who has admitted that Donald Trump was treated differently under the law than Barack Obama and Democrats.”

“Remember you had an FBI director in Jim Comey – you talk about disparity of treatment, wrote an exoneration memo two months before he interviewed Hillary Clinton, knowing that Hillary Clinton had dozens of classified, sensitive compartmented information in her possession before other witnesses were interviewed, and wrote a memo clearing her,” Ratcliffe continued. “That very same FBI director Jim Comey, on his book tour, admitted I did things to Donald Trump that I never did on Barack Obama or would have tried. So, think about that, an FBI director who is admitting I applied the law unevenly, I applied my authority unevenly because it was Donald Trump and Republicans.”

“And to that point, that FBI director, having cleared Clinton before he ever talked to her, opened an investigation into Donald Trump’s afternoon, after he learned that the Russia collusion allegations were actually created by Hillary Clinton and then went so far as to lie on the FISA court and verify a dossier he knew to be fake to continue spying on the Trump campaign,” he added. “So, the American people, unfortunately, see that when it comes to Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, that the past six years we have an FBI and Department of Justice that have literally become the enforcement arm of the Democratic Party.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/08/14/fmr-dni-ratcliffe-fbi-doj-have-become-the-enforcement-arm-of-the-democratic-party/

15 Aug, 2022 11:41

HomeRussia & FSU

Zaporozhye official explains why inspectors can’t reach nuclear plant

The UN doesn’t want IAEA monitors to confirm Kiev was shelling the power plant, says local administration

Members of the UN are blocking a visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP)so they can avoid confirming Kiev shelled the Russian-controlled facility, local official Vladimir Rogov told RT in an interview on Monday.

Rogov, a member of the Zaporozhye military-civil administration, insisted that the ZNPP is always prepared to welcome the atomic energy watchdog, which has repeatedly expressed a desire to visit the facility, but noted that the UN has “directly started to block the possibility of an IAEA inspection.”

The official suggested that if the agency does visit the plant, it would be forced to conclude that it had been shelled by Kiev’s forces. “It is obvious, it’s all been documented, and not only that, it’s also well known who is being supplied with American guided missiles. Obviously, not Russia, but the Zelensky regime.”

The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant - the largest in Europe - has repeatedly come under attack over the past few weeks. While none of the reactors have so far been struck, the shelling has partially damaged a nearby thermal power plant as well as equipment used to cool the nuclear reactors.

Moscow has accused Ukraine of using rockets, artillery and drones to attack the ZNPP and has described Kiev’s actions as “nuclear terrorism” and holding the whole of Europe hostage.

Rogov stated that Western countries have “completely lost their instinct of self-preservation” in an economic, geopolitical and ecological sense, as a disaster at the ZNPP would spell trouble for European countries first and foremost.

"Nevertheless, we do not hear a single adequate statement, not a single voice of reason, either from Germany or from France,"he noted.

Kiev, meanwhile, has denied responsibility for shelling the plant and insists that it is Russia that has been targeting it in a plot to discredit Ukraine. The US State Department has taken Zelensky’s side and has called for a withdrawal of Russian forces from the area and the creation of a demilitarized zone around the plant.

While that solution has been supported by the UN and the EU, Rogov insists that the West should instead be working to establish a ceasefire there. Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has pointed out that if Russian forces were to leave the power plant it would be vulnerable to action by Kiev.

“Those who propose the withdrawal of Russian troops should be aware of the consequences that this object will be left without protection and can be used by Kiev and nationalist groups for the most monstrous provocations,” said the Russian ambassador, stressing that Moscow does not use nuclear facilities for military purposes.

https://www.rt.com/russia/560858-un-blocking-iaea-zaporozhye-inspection/

>>17396942

Faggots always making up names for themselves, and lying constantly

Records Suggest A Bureaucrat Hack's Gripe Spurred Trump Raid

Margot Cleveland

1 of 4/5

Last week’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home represented the culmination of a criminal investigation pushed by a partisan bureaucrat who called January 6, 2021, the “absolute worst” day of his life. And while since last Monday, the country has focused on the FBI’s raid of Trump’s personal residence, seeing that as the crossing of the Rubicon, the die was cast this spring when the DOJ went to the grand jury about Trump’s presidential records.

Reporting by the New York Times and Washington Post — some from months ago — when pieced together and considered in tandem with past practices related to presidential and other governmental records, reveals this reality. The relevant reporting started no later than February of this year, when the Washington Post brokethe news that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) confirmed in a statement, issued by the then-archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero, that in January of 2022 NARA had retrieved from Mar-a-Lago 15 boxes of presidential records, which according to sources included items such as mementos, gifts, and letters. NARA added that Trump representatives were “continuing to search” for additional records.

Months later, in interviewing the then-recently retired Ferriero, the Washington Post detailed the origins of the retrieval of the 15 boxes. At the conclusion of Trump’s presidency, the Post reported, Ferriero “was told by the White House Office of Records Management about a group of boxes in the White House residence that should go to the Archives.”

“As we were moving materials from the White House just before the inauguration, those boxes hadn’t shown up yet,” Ferriero said. The retired archivist then explained how he remembered “watching the Trumps leave the White House and getting off in the helicopter that day, and someone carrying a white banker box, and saying to myself, ‘What the hell’s in that box?’” According to Ferriero, “that began a whole process of trying to determine whether any records had not been turned over to the Archives.”

During the spring of 2021, NARA reportedly“discovered some high-profile documents missing, such as correspondence with North Korean’s leader Kim Jong Un, that Trump once described as ‘love letters,’” the letter President Barack Obama had left for Trump, and a map of Hurricane Dorian that had been altered with a black marker by Trump. And according to Ferriero’s congressional testimony, NARA “began talking with Trump’s people right after they left office” about “presidential records.”

Here, an aside is necessary to understand the concept of “presidential records” and NARA’s involvement.

The Presidential Records Act Provides the Backstory

The Presidential Records Act provides that documents created or received by the president or his immediate staff, such as memos, letters, notes, emails, and other written communications, related to a president’s official duties, constitute “presidential records” and must be preserved. The act further declares that the United States shall “retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.” And at the conclusion of a president’s term in office, the “Archivist of the United States” “assumes responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records.”

In contrast, “personal records” remain the property of the outgoing president and include diaries, journals, or personal notes “not prepared or utilized for, or circulated or communicated in the course of, transacting Government business.” Likewise, “materials relating to private political associations” or “relating exclusively to the President’s own election to the office of the Presidency” and not related to the duties of the president, qualify as personal records and not “Presidential Records.”

NARA maintained that letters with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and other documents qualified as “presidential records” that the United States owned. And by working with Trump representatives, NARA arranged to retrieve from Mar-a-Lago 15 boxes of presidential papers in January of 2022.

The Leaks Begin — And So Does the Witch Hunt

As noted above, Ferriero confirmed for the press in February 2022 that the 15 boxes of material had been retrieved by the NARA. Then in a February 10, 2022, article, the Post reported two significant leaks: first, that within the material returned to NARA were documents marked as classified, and second, that “archives officials asked the Justice Department to look into the matter…”

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/15/from-bureaucrat-hack-to-grand-jury-witch-hunt-the-dojs-trump-raid-smells-like-spygate/

Records Suggest A Bureaucrat Hack's Gripe

Part 2 of 4/5

By March 2022, NARA was reportedly in “‘consultation’ with the Justice Department,” and by April 7, 2022, according to leaks to the Post, the DOJ had launched an investigation into Trump related to the 15 boxes of material retrieved by NARA. Another DOJ leaker reportedly told Newsweek that in late April 2022, “a federal grand jury began deliberating whether there was a violation of the Presidential Records Act or whether President Trump unlawfully possessed national security information,” and that “the grand jury concluded that there had been a violation of the law.”

Further leaks revealed that the DOJ by springtime had issued a subpoena to Trump purporting to seek “additional documents that it believed may have been in his possession.” The grand jury reportedly also issued subpoenas to obtain “surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, including views from outside the storage room” where Trump has stored documents from his presidency.

According to the New York Times, in response to the grand jury subpoena, a top counterintelligence official for the Justice Department met with Trump’s lawyers on June 3 at Mar-a-Largo and reportedly “left with additional material marked classified.” Leakers also claimed, in the latest of the ever-changing justifications for the raid, that around the same time as the visit to Trump’s Florida home, one of his lawyers provided a declaration “attesting that all the material marked classified in the boxes had been turned over.” Then, after a “confidential human source” reportedly told the FBI that Trump continued to hide classified documents, even providing “the location of those documents,” according to “two senior government officials,” the DOJ moved to obtain the search warrant.

‘Classified’ Is a Red Herring

Shortly after news broke of the raid, and as the public backlash to the apparent political targeting of a former president of the United States began to swell, DOJ leakers took to their PR teams at the New York Times and Washington Post to spin the search as a drastic response to a dire problem: Trump’s supposed possession of documents about nuclear secrets.

“Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation,” ran the Washington Post’s lead in its coverage of the developing story. The New York Times repeated the storyline, claiming Trump was seeking to “deflect attention from reports that the classified documents he had kept in his Florida home might have contained materials related to nuclear weapons…”

Rather than prompt the public’s concern, however, the country, whose memory of the Times and Post’s peddling of the Russia-collusion hoax remained fresh, ridiculed the posited justification — that Trump had stolen nuclear secrets — for the raid. The focus of coverage, nonetheless, remained on the supposed “classified” nature of the materials stored at Mar-a-Lago, especially after the release of the inventory list that documented the seizing of classified documents.

Trump and his defenders countered these claims by stressing that as president, he had declassified all of the documents he had removed from the White House — something within his constitutional authority as the commander-in-chief. However, a close look at the search warrant reveals the “classification” question is a red herring: None of the three criminal statutes relied upon by the DOJ to justify the search required the material sought to be classified.

The Criminal Codes in the Search Warrant Don’t Care About Classification Status

Specifically, the search warrant specified that the “property to be seized” included “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 793, 2017, or 1591.” Material need not be classified to fall within any of those criminal code provisions.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/15/from-bureaucrat-hack-to-grand-jury-witch-hunt-the-dojs-trump-raid-smells-like-spygate/

Records Suggest A Bureaucrat Hack's Gripe

Part 3 of 4/5

Rather, for instance, under Section 793, also called the Espionage Act, it is a crime for a person with “unauthorized possession of” documents or information “relating to the national defense,” that the possessor “has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation,” to “willfully retain[] the same and fail[] to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it.” Documents and information could be “related to the national defense” without being “classified,” and an intelligence community desperate to convict Trump of something could easily frame the material as providing an “advantage” to a foreign nation. Further, given the Presidential Records Act, Trump arguably has “unauthorized possession” of the material, although if it is a copy the issue is dicier.

The second statute cited, Section 2017, criminalizes the removal, destruction, or concealing of government records, which would include presidential papers, and again that provision of the criminal code does not require the documents to be classified. And the third statute, Section 1591, addresses “Obstruction of Justice,” but before moving there, the warrant’s reference to Section 2017, read in light of the leakers’ comments, proves informative to understand the latest targeting of Trump.

Newsweek’s “exclusive” report on the supposed confidential human source that prompted the search of Mar-a-Lago claimed that “the road to the raid began a year-and-a-half ago, when in the transition from the Trump administration to that of President Joe Biden, there were immediate questions raised by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as to whether the presidential records turned over to the federal agency for historical preservation were complete or not.”

Leakers Gave Away the Game

The DOJ leaker reportedly told Newsweek that NARA “believe[ed] that the former White House was stonewalling and continued to possess unauthorized material” and that the National Archive then, earlier this year, “asked the Justice Department to investigate.” The same leaker claimed a grand jury had “concluded that there had been a violation of the law.” Further, according to Newsweek and its “intelligence source,” “the affidavit to obtain the search warrant” “contained abundant and persuasive detail that Trump continued to possess the relevant records in violation of federal law, and that investigators had sufficient information to prove that those records were located at Mar-a-Lago — including the detail that they were contained in a specific safe in a specific room.”

Putting aside for a moment the DOJ’s reliance on “Obstruction of Justice,” this leak reveals the raid of Mar-a-Lago resulted from the criminal investigation into Trump’s compliance with the Presidential Records Act, prompted by NARA under the leadership of then-Archivist Ferriero. And for three reasons, Americans can safely conclude the DOJ’s launching of a criminal investigation — and its use of a grand jury — to target former president Trump was a political witch hunt.

First, NARA handled its discovery of Hillary Clinton’s violation of the equivalent “Federal Records Act” vastly differently. In September of 2015, in response to questions from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, about the former secretary of state’s use of a non-governmental email account, Ferriero informed Grassley of NARA’s normal response to allegations of “unauthorized destruction or removal of federal records.” “NARA will write a letter to the agency asking it to report back to NARA within 30 days and open a case file on the matter.” At that point, NARA and the agency would work together to recover any missing documents or to reconstruct them if needed.

NARA then explained that upon learning of Clinton’s use of a non-governmental email account in March 2015, it “immediately acted In accordance with our regulations by sending a letter to the State Department, setting off the process described above.” Significantly, while noting that the use of the non-government email may result in a separate DOJ investigation, in the case of Clinton, “NARA has not Initiated an ‘Investigation’ of Secretary Clinton’s email practices; rather, as noted above, we have been communicating with the State Department on this matter, and are deferring to the State Department’s review (and any other agencies conducting Investigations).”

In contrast, in the case of Trump, NARA referred the matter of documents stamped “classified” to the DOJ, which promptly opened an investigation into Trump and used a grand jury to subpoena Trump and others.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/15/from-bureaucrat-hack-to-grand-jury-witch-hunt-the-dojs-trump-raid-smells-like-spygate/

Records Suggest A Bureaucrat Hack's Gripe

Part 4 of 4/5

Numerous public statements by Ferriero, who at the time of the referral to the DOJ served as the country’s archivist, suggest a partisan goal underlying the referral. First was Ferriero’s bizarre overreaction to “watching the Trumps leaving the White House and getting off in the helicopter” while someone was “carrying a white banker box.” “What the hell’s in that box?,” Ferriero claimed he asked himself.

Then there was Ferriero’s admission that he decided to retire at the end of April 2020 “because he is worried about the political future.” “It’s important to me, that this administration replace me,” Ferriero said, adding, “I’m concerned about what’s going to happen in 2024. I don’t want it left to … the unknowns of the presidential election.”

That’s quite a strange statement for an archivist to make, suggesting as it does that politics matter in the performance of his role.

Third, Ferriero’s comments during a post-retirement interview discussing Jan. 6, suggest he holds an anti-Trump bias. “On his office television, David S. Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, had watched outgoing President Donald Trump whip up the right-wing crowd near the White House,” the Post reported. Ferriero said he recalled watching “this angry mob … really angry, angry people” and thinking to himself, “if these people realize what’s in this building they’re passing, we’re at risk here.” The former archivist called January 6, 2021, “the worst day of his tenure as the keeper of the nation’s collective memory,” and “the worst day of my life” — “the absolute worst.”

It is not merely NARA’s referral to the DOJ and Ferriero’s apparent bias that suggests a political motive, however: It is the reality that even if the documents were classified, Trump has the right to access them and NARA could have worked with the former president to set up a secure location for his presidential papers, which is precisely what Ferriero and the NARA did with Barack Obama.

In 2016, before President Obama left office, he rented a private facility in Hoffman Estates to serve as a storage place for his presidential papers, and by October of 2016, while he was still in office, shipments of artifacts from his presidency began arriving at the suburban Chicago storage facility. A year later, the Chicago Tribune reported that after the National Archives and Records Administration had worked with the former Democrat president to shiphis documents to the Chicago suburb, where they were stored and kept secured, Obama decided not to retain a paper archive at his presidential museum, “meaning they would be shipped back to Washington once a decision [was] made on where to keep them permanently.”

The Obama documents — both classified and unclassified — remained in Hoffman Estates well into 2018, as evidenced by a letter of intent executed between Ferriero on behalf of the National Archives Trust Fund and the Obama Foundation. Among other things, the letter of intent memorialized the Obama Foundation’s agreement to “transfer up to three million three hundred thousand dollars($3,300,000)to the National Archives Trust Fund (NATF) to support the move of classified and unclassified Obama Presidential records and artifacts from Hoffman Estates to NARA-controlled facilities that conform to the agency’s archival storage standards for such records and artifacts.”

The only difference between the Hoffman Estates’ storage of the Obama presidential records that began in 2016 and the Mar-a-Lago storage of Trump’s presidential records was that the documents were technically within the possession of NARA. But even though the documents were legally the property of NARA, Obama still had the right to access the records, including the classified documents.

So if upon receiving the 15 boxes of documents back from Trump, NARA had legitimate concerns about the security of Mar-a-Lago — a strange worry to hold given that the Secret Service must safeguard the location to protect Trump and his family — a bureaucracy committed to the country and safeguarding her artifacts would have worked to arrange for the documents to be preserved under the auspices of NARA control in a location chosen by Trump, as it had done with Obama.

It’s the Grand Jury, Stupid

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/15/from-bureaucrat-hack-to-grand-jury-witch-hunt-the-dojs-trump-raid-smells-like-spygate/

Records Suggest A Bureaucrat Hack's Gripe

Part 5 of 4/5

But the presidential records were never the concern; nor were the documents with classified markings, which remained secured along with the Trump family. The goal was always to get Trump, which is why NARA referred the matter to the DOJ, which then used a grand jury to investigate the former president of the United States. And once the grand jury began the case, under the apparent auspices of a violation of the Presidential Records Act — if the sources are believed — the DOJ teed up the possibility of an “Obstruction of Justice” charge for anything less than full cooperation in the mind of the FBI.

Whether Trump’s lawyer signed a declaration that inaccurately claimed Trump had no documents marked as classified is unknown. If so, it would appear an obstruction charge will be forthcoming, but then so will a fight over whether Trump’s lawyer meant Trump had not retained any “classified” documents since they had all been declassified and the marking just not fixed. Or maybe that’s all the declaration stated — that Trump did not possess any classified documents.

An Espionage Act charge would likewise face a high hurdle given the DOJ would need to establish that Trump had “reason to believe” the national defense information “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” Further, to the extent the Biden administration would seek to charge Trump with mishandling classified material, that theory would fail given Trump’s absolute declassification authority.

That leaves (at least at this point — the creativity of the deep state remains untapped) Section 2017, which criminalizes the removal, destruction, or concealing of government records. But Trump did not remove the records and likely did not designate the records for shipment by GSA. And even if he did, Section 2017 seeks to protect government property, and if what Trump possessed consisted of mere copies of government records, there should be no violation of this criminal provision.

Given these problems with the underlying legal theories, targeting a political enemy and former president of the United States with a search warrant represents an unforgivable lapse in judgment. And as for the claim that the DOJ needed to recover these vital national security documents, the shifting stories spread by leakers suggest this rationale is simply a pretext.

After all, within the course of one week, the justification for the search went from “nuclear secrets” to classified documents, to videos suggesting the documents were not secure, to videos suggesting the Trump team was serendipitously moving the documents, to a confidential human source claiming Trump continued to possess presidential records, to a supposed lie by Trump’s attorney that there were no documents present at Mar-a-Lago marked classified.

No matter the excuse provided for the raid, however, the reality remains that the Biden administration launched an unnecessary grand jury criminal investigation into Trump based on a referral from a partisan archivist. And all Americans of goodwill see the obvious difference in the government’s treatment of Clinton, Obama, and Trump, proving the purpose of the investigation was “to get” Trump and not the documents.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/15/from-bureaucrat-hack-to-grand-jury-witch-hunt-the-dojs-trump-raid-smells-like-spygate/

The FBI Is Now the Federal Bureau of Intimidation

Part 1 of 2

Nothing symbolizes the decline of the American republic better than the weaponization of justice that we saw last week when the FBI raided the home of former President Trump.

And nothing better represents the divide that now exists between Democrats and Republicans than the fact that some people still have faith in the FBI.

Aren’t they paying attention? Heck, that's like a citizen of the old Soviet Union saying they had faith in the KGB – yeah, to crush dissent and lock up opponents of the regime in a Siberian gulag.

The evidence is overwhelming. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now the Federal Bureau of Intimidation. Or more appropriately, the Federal Intimidation Bureau, whose acronym would spell out FIB, as in the Big Lie. Face it, nothing the FBI has said for the last six years since they joined with the Democratic Party to invent the Russia collusion hoax can be taken seriously.

Is there any need to go through the whole laundry list of lies and fabrications that the FBI, with the aid and comfort of the Justice Department, has foisted on the American public?

You can start with the extraordinary 2016 press conference when FBI Director James Comey detailed crimes committed by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton related to her improper use of a private email account to store classified material. Moments after saying she had broken the law, Comey announced with a straight face that “no reasonable prosecutor” would ever bring a case against her. Yeah, because she was a Democrat!

A couple months later, Comey set up President Trump’s National Security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, by sending agents to interview him about his supposed contacts with Russians.

“What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?" wrote Bill Priestap in a memo before the interview. Priestap was counterintelligence director at the FBI, and it became evident later that the agency’s goal was indeed to get him fired – and more importantly to get Trump impeached, fired, humiliated, you name it.

Comey himself admitted that the FBI targeted Flynn and chose not to approach him through the White House legal counsel, but informally with a direct phone call to arrange an interview. As Comey later told a reporter, it was “something I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more … organized administration.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/08/15/the_fbi_is_now_the_federal_bureau_of_intimidation_148044.html

The FBI Is Now the Federal Bureau of Intimidation

Part 2 of 2

What about the FBI’s abuse of Carter Page and George Papadopoulos? The agency made up evidence in support of subpoenas, FISA warrants, whatever it took to get the desired result. What about the FBI and Department of Justice targeting parents at school boards as “domestic terrorists” because they demanded that their elected representatives actually represent them? What about the unilateral rescission of executive privilege and attorney-client privilege wherever it would have protected President Trump and his advisers?

The purpose of all of this activity, along with the raid at Mar-a-Lago, was to intimidate not just Trump, but also his supporters. Anyone other than Donald Trump would have given up long ago. Who could possibly withstand the power of the state marshaled against you for six long years – through multiple FBI investigations, through two impeachments, through relentless persecution of your children and your friends and family?

Finally, what about the double standard that allows Democrats and their government allies to go unpunished for a multitude of sins? Notwithstanding Attorney General Merrick Garland’s feigned indignation on behalf of the bureau, what about the FBI agents who lied repeatedly during the Trump-Russia investigation, sometimes under oath. Even more stunning has been the FBI’s monumental failure to investigate presidential son Hunter Biden, even though it received his laptop with extensive incriminating evidence of criminal activity in 2019.

Even when the laptop was made public during the 2020 presidential election, the FBI stood silent and thus gave tacit approval to the cynical Democratic Party talking point that the laptop was somehow a GOP dirty trick. It would be interesting to know if the FBI had anything to do with the letter signed by 51 national security experts, falsely claiming that the laptop was “Russian disinformation”! Maybe, like Comey before him, FBI Director Chris Wray thought he could “get away with it.”

That is certainly the only explanation for the raid on the president’s personal residence. It was not appropriate. It was not reasonable. It had no precedent. The FBI claims that the pre-dawn raid by more than 30 armed agents was for the purpose of collecting presidential papers that the National Archive wanted. The Washington Post says that Trump reportedly had documents with nuclear secrets on them, and the legacy media went ballistic with the story. But wait a minute, isn’t that the same Washington Post that won a Pulitzer Prize for collaborating with the FBI to invent the Russia collusion hoax?

Don’t believe a word from either the Washington Post or the FBI. Trump had been cooperating with the National Archive and had already turned over 15 boxes of documents, all of which he could have made a claim to legally possess. If they wanted papers turned over, they could have gone through Trump’s lawyers. No, they wanted the spectacle. They wanted the sizzle. They wanted the headlines.

This wasn’t about the rule of law; it was about the rule of the schoolyard. Bullies get what they want through force and intimidation, and there is no reason for any of us to believe that the raid had any purpose other than to intimidate Donald Trump into backing down from his plans to run for president in 2024.

Essentially what the FBI was saying is “We know where you live, and we aren’t afraid to come for you.” They even rifled through Melania Trump’s closet, as if she might have been hiding top-secret documents in her hat box. When do we find out they also spent an hour sorting through her lingerie?

This is sickening, no matter how much MSNBC and the Washington Post want you to think you can still trust the FBI. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me over and over and over again, and I must be a Democrat.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/08/15/the_fbi_is_now_the_federal_bureau_of_intimidation_148044.html

>>17397616

Yeah dollars misppelled as Dollaes

https://twitter.com/JohnBasham/status/1559130222468923392?s=20&t=-IjCUeijA2HQeYiaQ3mhBQ