(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In a state that Hillary Clinton carried by only 136,386 votes four years ago, current Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders may have just tossed out 91,000.
Sanders told a local Denver station that those working in the fossil-fuels energy sector, including oil and natural gas, should be ready to transition if he is elected president.
He claimed, however, that their career changes would somehow be subsidized at taxpayer expense, without offering specific proposals as to how he would achieve this while also investing trillions in alternative energy and other expensive promises.
“Those workers are not my enemy,” Sanders claimed. “It’s not their fault that climate change is threatening the planet.”
He promised to spend billions more to provide them with five years of income, job retraining, education and health care.
“We’re not going to push them aside,” Sanders said. “We’re going to protect them.”
Sanders also struggled to provided strong defenses of other policies, including his Medicare for All proposal, which two prominent Colorado Democrats—Sen. Michael Bennet and former Gov. John Hickenlooper—have both come out against.
Both flirted with presidential runs themselves, and Hickenlooper is currently running to unseat Republican Sen. Cory Gardner.
“You’ve given me the names of two people who don’t support it,” Sanders said. “You haven’t told me about the polling that says that the overwhelming majority of Democrats do support it. … This is a system that cannot be defended.”
Many fear that Sanders’s uncompromising, hardline stance not only could cost Democrats a shot at the Oval Office, but also could weaken their hand in efforts to reclaim the Senate and defend their House majority.
But Sanders shrugged off questions about his electability and dodged concerns over whether his risky proposals put him outside the mainstream.
“Well, then you’re talking about obviously a very, very dangerous moment in American history,” Sanders said. “I believe that we are going to defeat President Trump and I believe there is an excellent chance that I will be the next President of the United States.”
‘The only people truly shocked by Obama’s victory, which was predicted by the polls and the various data models, was the Romney campaign…’
Mitt Romney/PHOTO: Gage Skidmore (CC)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In and op-ed for Politico, former Obama strategist Dan Pfeiffer slapped down the Left’s latest “folk hero,” Sen. Mitt Romney, by reminding his Democratic audience how badly the former GOP nominee botched the 2012 election.
“Rather than obsess over 2016, Democrats should focus on 2012—the last year a challenger took on an incumbent,” Pfeiffer wrote.
“There are more parallels than you’d think: Barack Obama was a president hugely unpopular with the opposing party, but the economy on the upswing; the Republicans had a big field and took a while to coalesce around a consensus choice,” he said.
Pfeiffer’s comparison, of course, drew upon an array of popular Democratic tropes, such as the false equivalency between Obama’s stagnant economy and Trump’s booming bull-market—a talking point Democrats have signaled that they hope to pivot toward in the post-impeachment fallout.
It notably brushes under the rug the disparity in Obama’s fawning media coverage and Trump’s hostile media coverage, with Pfeiffer even absurdly suggesting that left-wing operative Nate Silver had condemned Obama’s chances on the cover of the New York Times Magazine with a tantalizingly titled love-letter to the Democratic incumbent, “Is Obama Toast?”
“It is early, and almost no matter what, the election will be a losable one for Republicans,” Silver qualified. “But Obama’s position is tenuous enough that it might not be a winnable one for him.”
Pfeiffer also dubiously claimed that voters were put off by “Romney’s far-right positions” when, in reality it was an enthusiasm gap among conservatives that likely undid him.
Despite the obvious spin, Pfeiffer’s analysis drew several conclusions that even Trump himself might be inclined to endorse, not the least of which was that Romney is a loser.
“[H]is campaign misread and misplayed the election in ways that the Democrats desperately need to pay attention to now,” Pfeiffer said.
Pfeiffer offered three primary words of advice for the current crop of Democrats who, like 2012 Republicans, are mired in an extended primary battle that has done little for their bigger-picture objectives.
Do not make this election solely about Donald Trump.
Like 2012 Republicans, many Democrats are currently terrified that the eventual candidate will be one much farther to the Left, ideologically, than the party’s base.
However, he said, the candidate still must be able to sell himself on his own merits and not simply hope to be the winner by default.
“This was a fundamental misunderstanding of the contours of a modern presidential campaign and a fatal strategic error,” Pfeiffer said.
“Romney left a vacuum of information that the Obama campaign, and other Democratic groups, were more than happy to fill” with their own narratives about the opposing candidate, he noted.
Find ways to frame this economy on your own terms.
Democrats have struggled with Trump’s economic success, alternately trying to re-frame his economy as a failure and to take credit for it themselves.
Pfeiffer noted that the same was true in 2012, where Obama deflected from the tangible economic failures of his first term by focusing instead on a more abstract message.
“Instead of an up-or-down vote based on the unemployment rate or weak growth, the Obama campaign turned a question of economic performance into one of economic fairness by focusing on how Romney’s policies favored the wealthy over the middle and working class,” Pfeiffer said.
In essence, whether the goal is to deflect from Republican’s policy successes or Democrats’ policy failures, the message is the same: You didn’t build that.
“Like Romney, Trump wants to make the race about macro-economic indicators, and so Democrats need to make it about people’s personal interaction with the economy,” Pfeiffer said.
Get out of the liberal Twitter bubble.
Pfeiffer accused Romney of misreading the national Zeitgeist.
“The only people truly shocked by Obama’s victory, which was predicted by the polls and the various data models, was the Romney campaign,” he said. “They had been mainlining the anti-Obama propaganda from Fox News and others for years and therefore had lost touch with how voters saw Obama.”
In reality, Romney was more flummoxed by his opponent’s unscrupulous ability to spin his failures into Republican liabilities, giving voters who did not see the no particular reason to change course.
Although Romney destroyed the sitting president with facts on the debate stage, it boiled down to a cult of personality and charisma, which was a losing proposition for the milquetoast ex-Massachusetts governor.
Not surprisingly, Pfeiffer’s own actions speak volumes louder than his words. Ignoring his own advice, he uses every opportunity to snipe at Trump and to reinforce the conventional wisdom of the Left’s echo chamber by claiming Trump to be scandal-laden and unqualified.
But his observations hold true that Democrats must be in attack mode and not reactive mode. As Republicans found in 2012, the worst sort of candidate is one who concedes the low ground in order to take the high road.
‘Bernie’s proposals to raise taxes on almost everyone is not something the Lowcountry wants and not something I’d ever support…’
Joe Cunningham / IMAGE: Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) One of the most politically vulnerable Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives predictably disavowed socialist primary front-runner Bernie Sanders.
Joe Cunningham, D-SC, was one of several congressional Democrats to flip Republican districts during the 2018 election.
Along with House Democratic Whip James Clyburn (a much celebrated icon of the black community), Cunningham is currently one of only two Democrats in the Palmetto State’s congressional delegation.
After winning the seat once occupied by NeverTrump Republican Mark Sanford—the state’s disgraced ex-governor, who lost his re-election in the primary—Cunningham has seemed to be even more supportive of Trump than his GOP predecessor.
Although Cunningham declined to make an endorsement for the upcoming South Carolina primary on Feb. 29, he made clear the candidate—or candidates—he was not supporting.
““South Carolinians don’t want socialism,” Cunningham said, according to Charleston’s The Post and Courier.
“We want to know how you are going to get things done and how you are going to pay for them,” he continued. “Bernie’s proposals to raise taxes on almost everyone is not something the Lowcountry wants and not something I’d ever support.”
Cunningham likely had his own political survival in mind as much as anything.
Vulnerable Democrats nationwide have expressed alarm that a Sanders nomination could lead moderate Democrats to sit-out the election, assuring a Trump victory while also potentially returning the House GOP to majority control.
Evoking his district’s heritage as site of the first shots fired during the Civil War, Cunningham pledged to “defend our Lowcountry values of opportunity, pragmatism and common sense.”
But tapping into another Democratic anxiety—or for supporters of a dark-horse candidate, perhaps a wish—Cunningham also hinted that even if Bernie were to win the most pledged delegates, the party might block his nomination.
Some have speculated that a split decision between the far-left Vermont senator and other candidates—including former mayors Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg, and former Vice President Joe Biden—could result in a brokered convention in which elite super-delegates play an outsize role in the final selection.
Then again, as with impeachment, Cunningham may have simply been trying to duck an uncomfortable no-win hypothetical when asked if he would support Bernie as the eventual nominee.
“Bernie Sanders will not be the nominee,” he replied.
‘This is not a luxury. This is medicine; this is health care…’
Pete Buttigieg / IMAGE: CNN via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Once again, fake “moderate” Democratic primary candidate Pete Buttigieg proved that his policy positions are far more extreme than radicals like former President Barack Obama and 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton.
With two of the nominating contests wrapped and the Nevada caucus fast approaching this week, Buttigieg is neck-and-neck with socialist-leaning Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. The former South Bend, Ind., mayor has the slight edge in declared delegates.
With little record to run on, Buttigieg has framed himself as a centrist alternative to Sanders, touting—among other things—his status as a military veteran. However, his stated positions from the outset have been extreme beyond anything ever witnessed in U.S. political history.
Among them, Buttigieg recently confirmed, was his support for offering taxpayer-subsidized healthcare to “underserved” populations, including illegal immigrants and members of the LGBT community who would exploit it for controversial procedures like gender-reassignment surgery.
“I know that all the sizzle in the debate right now is about Medicare for all versus the alternatives,” Buttigieg said during a “fireside chat” sponsored by Planned Parenthood in Henderson, Nevada, just south of Las Vegas.
” … And of course, I think my plan is the best plan,” Buttigieg continued. “But, it doesn’t so much matter if you’re covered if you can’t get access.”
He said his plan—which he describes as government-run Medicare for the willing, in contrast to Sanders’s mandatory Medicare for All—would designate health-care workers in underserved areas who specialize in “physical or mental health care needs” as a public service and make them eligible for loan forgiveness.
“One thing that will be core to the plan that I’m creating is to ensure that Medicare will launch its plan that robustly supports, reimburses, and funds that care and can tell the difference when there is an area that’s underserved and incentivize more to be serving there,” Buttigieg said.
Buttigieg implied that “underserved” was a euphemistic stand-in for areas where there were large populations of illegal immigrants. But not only would he cover their doctors’ personal expenses on the taxpayer dole—Buttigieg also pledged tax funds to cover the medical costs of the illegals themselves.
“As you know, in the Affordable Care Act, one of the many missing pieces that it has is that the exchanges are not available to the undocumented,” he said. “I would change that.”
He said he also would roll-back Trump-administration policies that blocked military personnel and incarcerated prisoners from receiving tax-funded sex-changes.
“This is not a luxury,” said Buttigieg, who is gay. “This is medicine; this is health care.”
‘We were stunned, because from our understanding this has never been done before…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Senate Democrats bitterly decried foul play amid accusations that a GOP-funded political-action committee in North Carolina was helping bolster a weak, left-wing opponent to take on Sen. Thom Tillis, R-NC, in the November election.
However, their own Senate Majority PAC attempted a similar tactic in several 2018 races, and they likely have engaged systematically in similar efforts to weaken the opposition for much longer.
According to Politico, the Faith and Power PAC, a Republican-linked organization, ran a $2 million ad campaign on behalf of progressive Democratic candidate Erica Smith, a state senator seeking the nomination for U.S. Senate in what left-wing political watchers have termed one of November’s major tossup elections.
“Who’s the Democrat for U.S. Senate endorsed by progressives and unions?” it begins.
Fake Outrage
The ad seemed to be directed at Smith’s primary opponent, Cal Cunningham, who has sought to run as a “moderate” Democrat and political outsider in the quest to unseat the incumbent Tillis.
Despite the accuracy of the ad, Smith quickly denounced it after its source was disclosed as a likely Republican-backed effort.
“We were stunned, because from our understanding this has never been done before,” Smith told Raleigh’s CBS 17.
Although liberals like disgraced former Sen. John Edwards have previously succeeded in North Carolina, Democrats nationally are taking no chances on running a politically risky radical, who also happens to be an African–American female.
Democrats hope population shifts in the once solid-red Tar Heel State will help it trend blue, giving them one of four seat flips needed to reclaim the Senate majority (or three if they win the presidential election).
But other Democratic women and candidates of color have likewise fared poorly in the primary season as voters on the Left seem to be split between the socialist-supporting “Bernie Bro” contingent, establishment-friendly Joe Biden and billionaire “outsider” Michael Bloomberg, all white males.
Tim Kaine/IMAGE: Face the Nation via Youtube
Democratic senators claimed that running an ad touting Smith’s positions was nothing short of outrageous.
“It’s so brazen and obvious. … They recognize that Cunningham is a strong candidate, and they’re worried about holding onto that seat,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told Politico. “When Republicans are weighing in for somebody, they’ve made the judgment that they’re worried about Cal, and they’re not worried about her.”
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., claimed that Republicans were “known for voter suppression and playing games with voters, and they are taking it to new heights here.”
Playing Games
The statement conveniently ignores Democrats’ long record of doing precisely that at both the state and national level.
Politico, for instance, noted two races—in West Virginia and Missouri—in which Democrat-backed PACs sought to interfere with the Republican races.
Although the article didn’t elaborate, one of these, no doubt, was the left-wing efforts during the 2018 election to advance controversial coal-mining CEO Don Blankenship to oppose incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin in West Virginia.
Joe Manchin / IMAGE: MSNBC via Youtube
Blankenship, the former head of Massey Energy Company, had been found guilty in 2015 of conspiring to willfully violate mine safety and health standards in the wake of a 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners. He served a year in prison for the scandal.
But the Duty and Country PAC, which shared the same address as the Democratic Senate Majority PAC, had spent millions targeting his two viable opponents in an effort to elevate the embattled Blankenship.
Among the few donors publicly identified in the mysterious PAC supporting Blankenship’s run was Booth Goodwin, the partisan former U.S. attorney who had prosecuted Blankenship, according to the Daily Beast.
To the great people of West Virginia we have, together, a really great chance to keep making a big difference. Problem is, Don Blankenship, currently running for Senate, can’t win the General Election in your State…No way! Remember Alabama. Vote Rep. Jenkins or A.G. Morrisey!
Of course, Trump himself is widely considered to have been the beneficiary of similar efforts during his 2016 primary race, when members of the media, quick to dismiss him as the weakest candidate in the field to take on Democrat Hillary Clinton, ensured through disproportionate coverage that he ride the wave of momentum to the nomination, only to rue their decision in the general election.
It was not immediately clear which Missouri race Politico made reference to, although the contentious 2018 fight to unseat Democrat incumbent Claire McCaskill led to considerable GOP infighting, as well as waves of dark money from all sides.
One likely culprit for Democrat backing may have been former libertarian presidential candidate Austin Petersen, a conspiracy theorist who went from routinely attacking Trump during the 2016 race to wholeheartedly embracing him in 2018.
While Missouri is widely regarded as being more “moderate” than the national electorate, Petersen ran to the extreme right, garnering controversy—and a Facebook ban—for a promotional giveaway of an AR-15 rifle.
Missouri’s then-state Attorney General Josh Hawley ultimately prevailed in both the primary and general election, becoming one of Trump’s closest Senate allies during the recent impeachment debacle.
State-Level Shenanigans
At the state level, North Carolina Democrats also feigned indignation.
“My gut tells me North Carolinians have a really strong BS meter. And this is triggering it,” said Cal Cunningham, the Democratic senate candidate running against Erica Smith from a more conservative vantage point.
While the pro-Smith ad positively espoused her connection with labor unions, MaryBe McMillan, president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO, objected to it as well.
“It’scertainly made it more challenging to have over $2 million dumped into an ad buy against Cal Cunningham and what looks to be an attempt by Republicans to sway the primary,” McMillan complained, according to Politico. “It’s just unfortunate that it’s going to mean spending more resources.”
Chris Anglin/PHOTO: Facebook
But Democrats notoriously held themselves to a different standard in a 2018 election for the state Supreme Court. Just before the filing deadline, a longtime Democrat attorney, Chris Anglin, switched parties and ran as a Republican in an effort to sow confusion, banking on misinformed voters who might trust the white, male candidate at the top of the ticket to be the more conservative jurist.
Incumbent conservative Justice Barbara Jackson ultimately lost her re-election due to the split ticket, which gave radical left-wing activist Anita Earls the edge to defeat Jackson with a plurality.
Republicans—including Tillis and fellow incumbent GOP Sen. Richard Burr, rolled their eyes at the left’s ploy to throw a pity-party for the inexperienced Cunningham and cast him as the victim of nefarious strategizing.
Some noted that Cunningham, likewise, has benefited from a mysterious dark-money PAC, known as “Carolina Blue.”
Despite his inexperience in politics, Cunningham ultimately gained the favor of national Democrats—including Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-NY—by pledging his willingness to sit in a windowless basement and make fundraising calls rather than hitting the road to outline his own personal vision.
“Schumer has funded 100 percent of the Cunningham campaign,” Burr said. “Why would they complain if somebody else funded the opponent?”
‘The security steps that were taken made it difficult for an even technologically apt person to log in…’
Shadow app / IMAGE: CBS News
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) The Democratic National Committee was “intimately involved” in the production and use of the failed Shadow app that led to catastrophic caucus failures, according to Yahoo News.
The report followed multiple complaints leveled at the Iowa Democratic Party by the DNC—complaints the state affiliate found frustrating given the role DNC Chairman Tom Perez played throughout the entire process.
Multiple documents showed that Perez had an agreement with Shadow, the software company that developed the app used by the Iowa Democratic Party, Yahoo News reported.
One contract stipulates that Shadow “agrees to work with DNC Services Corporation/Democratic National Committee (‘DNC’) on an on-going basis as [Shadow] develops the software.” And another states that Shadow must provide the DNC “continual access” to the software’s design and operation.
The DNC’s involvement made the app worse, according to one source.
“[The DNC] had a lot of thoughts and feelings on how this app was supposed to function and I think there was advice that was given that led to the difficulties you saw on caucus night with people being able to log in,” the source explained. “The security steps that were taken made it difficult for an even technologically apt person to log in.”
The DNC, however, claims they “only provided security assistance.”
As soon as the app malfunctioned on the night of the primary, the DNC tried to distance itself from Shadow and deflect blame onto the Iowa Democratic Party. Perez called for a recanvass and openly criticized the state party’s leaders on Twitter, leading party state chairman Troy Price to submit his resignation.
But as Yahoo News explained, the DNC’s connections to Shadow “demonstrated that the DNC should have had the opportunity to foresee some of the problems.”
‘Last night on CNN, Bernie Sanders called me a political hack. That’s exactly who the f— I am!’
James Carville / IMAGE: MSNBC via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) After Democratic strategist James Carville raised concerns about Sen. Bernie Sanders’s electability, the presidential candidate called Carville a “hack.”
Carville’s response was simple: “At least I’m not a communist.”
Carville, a longtime Clinton ally and former campaign manager, has repeatedly sounded the alarm about Sanders’s campaign, arguing that his radical policies would only help President Donald Trump win reelection in November.
He also criticized Sanders’s online fandom, which he referred to as “a cult.”
Sanders returned the fire during an interview with CNN on Wednesday: “James, in all due respect, is a political hack,” Sanders said.
“We are taking on Trump, the Republican establishment, Carville and the Democratic establishment,” Sanders continued. “But at the end of the day, the grassroots movement that we are putting together — of young people, of working people, of people of color—want real change.”
Carville dismissed Sanders’s criticism.
“Last night on CNN, Bernie Sanders called me a political hack,” Carville said. “That’s exactly who the f— I am! I am a political hack! I am not an ideologue. I am not a purist. He thinks it’s a pejorative. I kind of like it! At least I’m not a communist.”
Trump has also referred to Sanders as a “communist.”
“I think he’s a communist. I mean, you know, look, I think of communism when I think of Bernie,” Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity. “Now, you could say socialist, but didn’t he get married in Moscow?”
Sanders has denied the label, but back in 1972, he admitted he had no problem being associated with communism.
“I don’t mind people coming up and calling me a communist,” Sanders, then a gubernatorial protest candidate for the socialist Liberty Union Party, said during a campaign pitch in Vermont.
‘I love Joe Biden as a person, he is a really decent man … but I have a conscience very clear right now. And I have a duty…’
Joe Biden / IMAGE: Late Show with Stephen Colbert
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Former Vice President Joe Biden, the erstwhile Democratic primary front-runner, said he doesn’t “know what happened” to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, calling Graham’s push to investigate his son, Hunter Biden, a “disappointment.”
Graham announced this week that the Department of Justice would allow the Senate to begin reviewing information collected by former federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine.
“Questions about the conflict of interest regarding Hunter Biden in Ukraine need to be asked,” Graham said in a statement.
Joe Biden told “The View” in an appearance on Thursday that he and Graham used to be friends, so Graham’s sudden vendetta against his son doesn’t add up.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said, “Because the way he dealt with the attacks on John [McCain] after he passed away … I don’t know what happened.”
“I don’t know what happened.”
Joe Biden discusses his past friendship with Sen. Lindsey Graham and calls it a “disappointment” that the senator is supporting an investigation into his son, Hunter Biden: “Some things you have to do aren’t worth the job.” https://t.co/2Y3udLFCSBpic.twitter.com/xRvo7lFQ1b
Asked if Graham’s investigation could be apart of a reelection strategy, Biden said, “I think that’s it but it even surprises me.”
“Look, some things you have to do aren’t worth the job,” Biden explained. “I have to admit it’s a disappointment, but it is what it is and there’s nothing there. This is all to try make it sound like Trump had some rationale for doing what he did.”
“My conscience is clear,” Graham said last year. “I love Joe Biden as a person, he is a really decent man, he’s had a lot of tragedy in his life, but I have a conscience very clear right now. And I have a duty.”
Media no longer reporting that there is ‘no evidence’ of Bidens’ misconduct…
Hunter and Joe Biden / IMAGE: Donald J Trump via Youtube
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) In their failed attempt to remove President Donald Trump from office, Democrats seem to have hurt one of their own: presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden.
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll shows that a majority of Americans believe that Hunter Biden‘s position on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma, while Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s pointman for Ukraine, was inappropriate, Politico reported.
Of about 2,000 people interviewed, 52 percent said the younger Biden’s sinecure was inappropriate, while 57 percent agreed that it is a “scandal.”
Only 18 percent of respondents said the situation was appropriate, while 19 percent said it wasn’t a scandal.
But 40 percent of Americans polled, a plurality, said Biden’s corrupt dealings in Ukraine would not affect their vote, compared with 31 percent who said the quid pro quo made them less likely to vote for Biden.
Somehow, 8 percent of respondents said Hunter Biden’s squishy seat on Burisma’s board made them more likely to vote for the elder Biden.
While Democrats brushed off the scandal, 57 percent of independent voters said the Bidens’ corruption is a scandal, and only 15 percent of independents definitively said that it is not a scandal. Politico, The Hill, and other mainstream media outlets have changed their tone regarding the Bidens’ illicit dealings in Ukraine.
Rather than reporting, as they had during the impeachment trial, that there is “no evidence of corruption” or that it is a “debunked conspiracy theory,” they are now reporting that there is “no evidence showing that Hunter Biden or Joe Biden broke any laws.”
Many Trump defenders, themselves, noted during his impeachment trial—for actions allegedly paralleling the pressure campaign that Joe Biden waged to force Ukraine to fire its investigating prosecutor—that “abuse of power” is not a statutorily defined crime.
Administrative-state bureaucrats testified during the impeachment trial that Biden was acting in accordance with the inter-agency consensus and the international community—which is newspeak for the deep-state’s agenda—when he bribed Ukraine’s president to fire the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma.
Regardless of whether the Biden scandal—one of several involving his family’s use of his position to advance their personal financial gain—rose to the level of criminal conduct, Biden’s fourth- and fifth-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively, signal that even Democratic primary voters may see his unethical conduct—and the refusal to face any accountability for it—as disqualifying him from holding higher office.
‘Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A. … had a preconceived notion about Russia … and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture…’
John Brennan / IMAGE: MSNBC via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) New reports confirm the long-held suspicions that disgraced former CIA Director John Brennan is among those being investigated by federal prosecutor John Durham‘s Justice Department probe into the role corrupt intelligence operatives played in the Russia hoax against President Donald Trump.
“Questions asked by Mr. Durham … suggest that Mr. Durham may have come to view with suspicion several clashes between analysts at different intelligence agencies over who could see each other’s highly sensitive secrets,” The New York Times reported.
Brennan—a partisan hack who lost his security clearance for making inappropriate comments about the president in 2018—has been exposed previously for several instances of lying to Congress and leaking classified information while in his official capacity.
Among those he likely colluded with to propel the fraudulent Russia collusion narrative through selective leaks was The New York Times, which reported on the recent developments by insinuating that the ongoing DOJ investigation was designed to target Trump’s political adversaries.
“Since his election, President Trump has attacked the intelligence agencies that concluded that Russia secretly tried to help him win, fostering a narrative that they sought to delegitimize his victory,” claimed the overtly biased Times piece attempting to lay cover for Brennan—and possibly for itself.
Contrary to the article’s claims, Brennan long maintained that there was overt collusion between Trump and Russia, and the Times unquestionably obliged his libelous attacks until they were discredited by the Mueller Report.
“[Trump] has long promoted the investigation by John H. Durham … as a potential pathway to proving that a deep-state cabal conspired against him,” it claimed derisively.
The reporting echoed the debunked Ukraine theories advanced by House Democrats that Trump sought to damage political rival Joe Biden by calling on Ukraine’s new president to re-open corruption investigations involving Biden and his son Hunter.
Both falsely framed narratives preclude the possibility of corruption and malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration, despite a preponderance of evidence already showing their abuse of power in both circumstances.
“Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A. … had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result—and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal,” said the Times.
John Durham / PHOTO: U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut via Facebook
The Durham investigation began last May, shortly after the report by special counsel Robert Mueller determined that there was no evidence to support the theories—long reported by the Times and treated as fact by partisan members of the political Left—that Trump colluded with Russia.
Durham’s investigation, now in its ninth month, is known to have been to several key sites in Europe, where his staff interviewed former intelligence assets who helped to plant and spread the Russian collusion claims during the 2016 election.
In October, the DOJ announced that the probe had become a criminal investigation, similar to the Mueller probe that preceded it, with the power to empanel a grand jury and indict.
Durham entered into the investigation with sterling credentials as someone with experience investigating internal corruption.
Yet, the Times suggested that despite his decades of experience investigating the intelligence community, Durham had a fundamental “misunderstanding of how the intelligence community functions.”
The article then attempted to cast aspersions on him and the Justice Department, suggesting that it was Trump—rather than Obama—who had weaponized the law agencies to do his political bidding.
“Mr. Durham’s questioning is certain to add to accusations that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies, like Mr. Brennan, who has been an outspoken critic of the president,” claimed the Times.
However, the intensifying pre-emptive offensive may suggest that Durham has struck a nerve.
Brennan made an appearance Thursday on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” echoing the same talking points as the Times article.
“It clearly, I think, is another indication that Donald Trump is using the Department of Justice to go after his enemies any way he can,” he claimed.
Likewise, CNN head Jeffrey Toobin, an avowed Trump-basher, sought to attack what he claimed, according to Mediaite, was Trump’s ‘grotesque’ score-settling in a separate criminal investigation related to former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
CNN hired McCabe as an analyst shortly before the criminal investigation against him was announced.
As with many of the “facts” springing from his network, Toobin’s accusations were quickly disproven when the Justice Department announced Friday that it was dropping the McCabe investigation.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., wrote to McCabe’s lawyers “that, after careful consideration, the Government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client, Andrew G. McCabe, arising from the referral” made by the Inspector General’s office to investigate his behavior.
Despite the decision, it remains possible that McCabe also will be implicated in Durham’s findings, which are broader in scope than what Inspector General Michael Horowitz was tasked with investigating.
Contrary to exonerating him, in fact, the decision to drop McCabe’s charges in the IG probe may clear the path for further criminal indictments from Durham.
