John Solomon reports at Just the News:

Long after former President Donald Trump dropped his legal challenges to the 2020 election, some courts in battleground states are beginning to declare the way widespread absentee ballots were implemented or counted violated state laws.

The latest ruling came this month in Michigan, where the State Court of Claims concluded that Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s instructions on signature verification for absentee ballots violated state law.

Benson had instructed local election clerks a month before the Nov. 3 election to start with a “presumption” that all signatures on absentee ballots were valid and only reject those that had “multiple significant and obvious” inconsistencies. Republicans and one election clerk challenged her instructions in court.

Chief Court of Claims Judge Christopher M. Murray ruled March 9 that the state Legislature did not provide such guidance in its election laws, and therefore Benson needed to promulgate a formal rule – a timely process – before imposing such a requirement. Murray told election clerks they should disregard Benson’s instructions in future elections.

“An agency must utilize formal rule-making procedures when establishing policies that ‘do not merely interpret or explain the statute or rules from which the agency derives its authority,’ but rather ‘establish the substantive standards implementing the program,'” Murray ruled.

“The guidance issued by the Secretary of State on October 6, 2020, with respect to signature-matching standards was issued in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act,” he concluded. …

In neighboring Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court handed down a significant ruling in December when the justices concluded that state and local election officials erred when they gave blanket permission allowing voters to declare themselves homebound and skip voter ID requirements in the 2020 elections.

In a case challenging the practice in Dane County, one of Wisconsin’s large urban centers around the city of Madison, the state’s highest court ruled that only those voters whose “own age, physical illness or infirmity” makes them homebound could declare themselves “indefinitely confined” and avoid complying with a requirement for photo ID.

The mere existence of a COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown orders was not sufficient under Wisconsin law for all persons to skip the voter ID requirements to seek to vote absentee, the justices ruled. …

In so doing, the court ruled that local officials like Dane County and Gov. Tony Evers did not have legal authority to exempt all voters to get an absentee ballot without an ID. Evers had issued an executive order earlier this year.

“We conclude that [Evers’] Emergency Order #12 did not render all Wisconsin electors ‘indefinitely confined’, thereby obviating the requirement of a valid photo identification to obtain an absentee ballot,” the majority ruling concluded.

The court filings indicated nearly 200,000 voters declared themselves permanently confined in the state’s spring primary, a marked rise over prior years, and even more did so in the general election. Biden won Wisconsin by just 20,000 votes.

Meanwhile in Virginia, a judge in January approved a consent decree permanently banning the acceptance of ballots without postmarks after Election Day, concluding that instructions from the Virginia Department of Elections to the contrary in 2020 had violated state law. An electoral board member in Frederick County challenged the legality of the state’s instruction and won though the ruling came after the election.

“If the return envelope has a missing postmark, the ballot shall be rendered invalid,” Frederick County Circuit Judge William W. Eldridge IV ruled in the consent decree.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, which represented electoral board member Thomas Reed called the ruling “a big win for the Rule of Law.”

“This consent decree gives Mr. Reed everything he requested – a permanent ban on accepting ballots without postmarks after Election Day and is a loss for the Virginia bureaucrats who said ballots could come in without these protections,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said.

Several more legal challenges remain in states, as well as two audits/investigations of voting machine logs that are pending in Georgia and Arizona.

Then comes this peculiar sentence (our italics):

And while there has been no proof the elections were impacted by widespread fraud, there are still significant disputes over whether rule changes and absentee ballot procedures in key swing states may have been unlawful.

How much proof is needed of fraud in how many states and counties before it is considered “widespread” enough to have a decisive impact? There seem to be mountains of proof. What manner of proof, in how many places, would clinch the case?

In addition, the Thomas More Society’s Amistad Project on election integrity is pursuing litigation over whether hundreds of millions of dollars donated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and routed to local election officials in several battleground states may have unlawfully influenced the election, according to the project’s director, Phill Kline.

“We’re expanding our litigation,” Kline told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Wednesday. “I still have suits that are active in Michigan and Georgia on this, and you’ll see us take new action in Wisconsin. And we will renew action in Pennsylvania. And, and our involvement in Arizona will take a little bit of a different tack, but will involve this. The Arizona legislature is going to do an audit and we want this within the scope.”

In other words, the election [contest] between Joe Biden and Donald Trump may be settled, but the battle over how elections will be governed – especially as it relates to absentee ballots and private funding of election clerks – has only just begun.

What is the difference between “private funding of election clerks” and bribery?

So the Democrats have acquired total power. They used every method of cheating in the elections that their criminal minds could think of, and they encouraged their supporters to use terrorism.

It all worked for them. So they won the presidency, and hold a majority in both houses of Congress. And the Supreme Court was complaisant about it, a majority of the justices refusing to hear cases challenging the constitutionality of the proceedings. (See also here and here.)

The anti-American terrorism movement, aka the New Left, has been working to this end – the securing of total power – since 1968.

Michael Anton writes at Law & Liberty:

The biological son of one of the villains of [the Weather Underground terrorist organization] Kathy Boudin [jailed for life for murder], and the adopted son of two others, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn [both now academics “in good standing”], is now the elected District Attorney of San Francisco County. …

Chesa Boudin differs from his parents, biological and adoptive, in one respect only: rather than fighting the system to inflict harm, create chaos, and do evil, he puts the system to work toward those ends. It’s not just that Boudin works to make everyday life more awful by refusing to enforce what he dismisses as mere “quality of life” (e.g., open drug use and public defecation) and “victimless” (e.g., burglary and auto theft) crimes, so that San Francisco now has the highest property crime rates and arguably the worst quality of life of any big city in the nation. Boudin is also against using the powers of his office to go after what even he is forced to admit are non-trivial offenses.

On his second day in office, the brand new radical-chic DA fired his seven most-experienced prosecutors because they were too good at their jobs. Two weeks later, he ordered his office never again to request cash bail for any offense, guaranteeing that dangerous criminals would roam the streets and that many would never face trial for their crimes. Earlier this year, a parolee plowed a stolen car into two pedestrians, killing both. The “driver”—Troy Ramon McAllister—had been arrested by the SFPD five times in the prior eight months, only to be released without charges on Boudin’s orders every single time.

As Boudin has redefined his role, it is no longer to convict criminals but to further “social justice”. He favors babying the violent with so-called “restorative justice”. It’s unclear what, exactly, “restorative justice” entails; it’s easier to say what it’s not: punishment or deterrence. Early in Boudin’s tenure, after two (nonwhite) young men assaulted an elderly man (also nonwhite) who was collecting cans to recycle, the SFPD did its job and arrested the assailants. The DA, though, declined to press charges. This pattern has since been repeated enough times—including, most recently, the homicide of an 84-year-old—that local media and the intelligentsia realize they can no longer ignore it. And so, to cope, they blame … “white supremacy” and Trump.

Boudin is hardly alone in his anti-anti-crime fervor. Indeed, we may say that the full consolidation and institutionalization of “The Sixties” is happening only now, as “prosecutors” all over America, elected with Soros money, eliminate bail, empty jails, refuse to prosecute nonviolent offenses, undercharge violent ones, replace punishment with “counseling,” and racialize enforcement (and non-enforcement), all the while vindictively hectoring the law-abiding over trivialities. In most American big cities, and in an increasing number of Blue precincts, government does not effectively protect life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. It rather works—from the same ideological zeal that inspired the Weathermen—to make people vulnerable, afraid, and miserable. …

When before has an entire ruling class sided with the forces of evil, ponying up billions to fuel the fire, all the while preening over its superior morality for supporting death and destruction? …

The answer, so far as I know, is never. The very idea is unthinkable without the mainstreaming of the Weather ideology. …  On September 11th, 2001—the very day of an event another Weather Underground terrorist could finally see clearly as “kindred” to her own activities—Ayers, close pal of a future president, was quoted in the New York Times saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

That “feeling” has infused subsequent generations—not least because of the extent to which Weather ideology was allowed to take over not just elite academia but, more sinisterly, schools of education, through which it has taught and continues to teach generations of high school students to hate their country. …

Violence helped the left assert or consolidate power over institutions throughout the land. Violence defanged law enforcement from coast to coast (“defund the police”), yielded an avalanche of public and private money (corporate America pledged more than $1.6 billion to BLM in 2020 alone), and an outpouring of official sympathy to organizations and individuals fomenting violence (the future vice president of the United States intoned last September that it was “critically important” that the riots “protests” continue). …

Most disturbing of all, 2020 may have been the first election in American history—certainly the first national one—in which violence attracted rather than repelled votes. It used to be taken as axiomatic in American politics that law-and-order issues favor Republicans. This is, apparently, no longer the case. Millions have become so convinced of their own and/or the surrounding society’s inexpungable guilt that, to assuage their consciences, must vote against order and life as a way to expiate sin.

Perhaps the supreme moment of 2020 was the sight, in Washington, D.C.’s richest and most liberal suburb, of a mass of overclass winners bowing and begging forgiveness from a group of people none of them had ever harmed. The clear—and only—visible distinction between the penitent and the righteous was demographic. Both groups fervently believe in Manichean wokeness; the only difference is that the righteous feel not guilty but aggrieved. They want revenge. This, let’s call it, Dom-Sub coalition is the heart of the modern Democratic Party, and is a direct legacy of the Weather Underground and New Left insistence that America and Americans (or to be more precise, a certainly part thereof) are irredeemably evil. …

In today’s America, capital—economic no less than political and social—is openly aligned with the hard left. It used to be wary of the left’s more radical elements, muttering empty dodges about “not condoning but understanding” violence. Now capital doesn’t merely understand violence; it underwrites it. Elite opinion, power, and money are on the side of—downright encourage—rioting, looting, arson and death, insisting that the resultant turmoil is necessary redress for past and present grievance. …

The urgent practical questions for statesman and citizen alike are: how much political violence is being committed right now? And by whom? …

The answer is obvious enough: a lot, and the left.

It is Donald Trump’s Republican Party (not the Republican Party that consistently undermined and sabotaged him) that is now the party of the American worker, has been since 2016, and continues to be. And Donald Trump’s Republican Party is the party of genuinely peaceful protest. And, of course, of freedom. His party’s peaceful protests will be called “terrorism” by the Left.

Leftism is the enemy of freedom, the destroyer of humankind. The Left will continue to call its violent “protests” – actually terrorist attacks – “peaceful”.

Leftism is terrorism.

Under the new humanitarian, antiracist, diversity-equity-inclusion administration, certain people who committed crimes are not criminals.

They would be criminals if they’d committed the crimes in the day time. But they committed them at night, so there are no charges against them.

Merrick Garland, nominated by the Biden regime to be Attorney General, was answering questions at his confirmation hearing in the Senate when he explained this novel principle of law.

Daniel Greenfield recorded the exchange:

“Let me ask you about assaults on federal property in places other than Washington, D.C. Portland, for instance,” Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said. “Do you regard assaults on federal courthouses or other federal properties as acts of domestic extremism, domestic terrorism?”

Garland said his personal view on the matter lined up with the statutory definition of terrorism.

“My own definition, which is about the same as the statutory definition, is the use of violence or threats of violence in an attempt to disrupt democratic processes,” Garland replied. “So an attack on a courthouse while in operation, trying to prevent judges from actually deciding cases, that plainly is domestic extremism, domestic terrorism.”

But Garland drew a distinction between an attack on a government property at night and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“Both are criminal but one is a core attack on our democratic institutions,” Garland added.

Greenfield goes on to quote a description of an attack on a government property at night. Because it occurred at night, it was not, according to Merrick Garland, extremist or terroristic, or a “core attack on our democratic institutions”:

“It’s scary. You open those doors out, when the crowd is shaking the fence, and … on the other side of that fence are people that want to kill you because of the job we chose to do and what we represent,” said a Deputy U.S. Marshal who has been protecting the courthouse for weeks. …

“I can’t walk outside without being in fear for my life,” he said. “I am worried for my life, every time I walk outside of the building.”

Small pods of three to four protesters dressed in black circulated in the crowd, stopping every few minutes to point green laser beams in the eyes of agents posted as lookouts on porticoes on the courthouse’s upper stories. The agents above were silhouetted against the dark sky as dozens of green laser dots and a large spotlight played on the courthouse walls, projected from the back of the crowd.

Thirty minutes later, someone fired a commercial-grade firework inside the fence. Next came a flare and then protesters began using an angle grinder to eat away at the fence. A barrage of items came whizzing into the courthouse: rocks, cans of beans, water bottles, potatoes and rubber bouncy balls that cause the agents to slip and fall.

The firework came whizzing over the fence so fast that the agent didn’t have time to move.

It exploded with a boom, leaving his hearing deadened and bloody gashes on both forearms. Stunned, with help from his cohorts, he stripped to his boxer shorts and a black T-shirt so his wounds could be examined and photographed for evidence.

He told his fellow agents he was more worried about his hearing than about the gouges and burns on his arms.

By the end of the night, five other federal agents would be injured, including another who got a concussion when he was hit in the head with a commercial-grade firework. One agent was hospitalized. Several agents have lingering vision problems from the lasers.

But the memo is in. Give these guys a pass. …

Some of the most serious charges dropped include four defendants charged with assaulting a federal officer, which is a felony. More than half of the dropped charges were “dismissed with prejudice,” which several former federal prosecutors described as extremely rare. “Dismissed with prejudice” means the case can’t be brought back to court.

Much like handing out immunity agreements to Hillary Clinton’s associates and then destroying their data, in a case in which no charges were brought.

There’s a new regime and it stands with its terrorist allies in Portland, in New York, and everywhere else. Prosecutors and law enforcement officers who stand up to them, know that they’ll be targeted by the new Biden regime. So it’s over. Just like it was with the Weathermen. The molotov cocktail lawyers will get a plea deal in New York. And slaps on the wrist or dismissals will be handed out to all the boys and girls, who will go on to academic positions and to political careers.

And also under the new humanitarian, antiracist, diversity-equity-inclusion administration, a man who committed no crime is a criminal:

Julie Kelly gives this example at American Greatness:

[Eighteen year old] Bruno Joseph Cua … sits in jail in Washington, D.C. awaiting trial for his involvement in the January 6 Capitol breach, the youngest of the nearly 300 people so far arrested under the U.S. Justice Department’s “unprecedented” investigation into the events of that day. Unlike tens of thousands of protestors who occupied the nation’s capital for months … Cua will be given no mercy. …

 For the first three weeks following his arrest, Cua languished in solitary confinement before being transported to a jail in Oklahoma City where he shared a cell with 30 other inmates. His family, like the families of dozens of January 6 defendants, has been denied the opportunity to post bail.

And there’s a chance the teen will remain behind bars until at least May when his trial is scheduled to begin. …

According to federal prosecutors, his rants on Parler make Bruno a national menace. “This small sample of public social media posts on the platform Parler by the defendant in this case evinces a full picture of who this defendant really is: a radicalized man with violent tendencies and no remorse for his participation in the violent insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol,” assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly Paschall wrote in objection to Bruno’s pretrial release.

Further, Bruno’s refusal to accept that Joe Biden fairly won the presidency is more proof he should stay in jail, prosecutors say. “The offenses committed by the defendant illuminate characteristics inconsistent with a person who could follow orders given by this Court, or indeed, any branch of the federal government. The defendant has espoused disbelief in the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election, and violently acted on that world view.” (The government, both judges and lawyers, routinely cite a defendant’s doubt about last year’s election as evidence of wrongdoing.)

The criminal case against Bruno, however, is weak.

What did he actually do? After attending the Trump rally, he walked to the Capitol among hundreds of others,  and there …

He climbed on scaffolding outside the Capitol building and went into areas he should not have entered. 

Does his conduct merit the necessity of a first-time offender spending months in jail even before he has a chance to defend himself?

Absolutely not. …

The Cua case has nothing to do with seeking justice for the melee on January 6 or appropriately prosecuting one of the participants. It has nothing to do with making sure the nation’s capital or Cua’s hometown remains safe.

It has everything to do with punishing a family who dared to show up in support of Donald Trump and dared to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

And that is why we do not believe that Bruno Cua would be treated any differently by the new humanitarian, antiracist, diversity-equity-inclusion administration if he had climbed on scaffolding outside the Capitol building and went into areas he should not have entered at night rather than in the daytime.

Nor do we believe that the rioters, arsonists, and murderers who attacked government buildings, law enforcement officers and fellow citizens at night would be treated the way Bruno Cua is being treated if they had committed their crimes in the daytime.

Merrick Garland’s real unspoken definition of terrorism is “supporting President Trump”. And it “lines up” with the definition of the new humanitarian, antiracist, diversity-equity-inclusion administration. 

The vile people now governing America long to do to Donald Trump what they are doing to Bruno Cua.

This boy is being maltreated not because of anything he has done but because they have chosen to make him a proxy for the great man he admired and supported, and they hate.

As the Catholic Church did in ages past, and Islam still does, the Left strives to bring every nation, and every last member of every nation, under its rule: a rule not of law but of lawyers, law-makers and law-breakers; bureaucrats, bankers, communication controllers, billionaires.

In America there are still tens of millions who refuse to comply, and they are being treated as heretics, infidels, and pariahs. If you are a Trump supporter, or in the least degree opposed to the Leftists who have seized the executive branch of government and now control both houses of the legislative branch, you are likely to be forced into conformity and unquestioning obedience. The means to be employed will be cutting you off from the services you need to live a normal life.

Through institutions of government and enormously powerful corporations, the heresies of patriotism, populism, anti-tribalism, individualism, and defiant defense of free speech, private property, arms bearing, and the teaching of reading writing reckoning and history to your children, will be punished.

You will be denied the services of banks, credit card companies, the internet, social media, insurance companies, the national health service, schools, universities. It will be very hard for you to find a job.

There will be degrees of deprivation. If you are a mild offender, you may be allowed some health care, for instance, and a low-paying job. If you are a grave offender – one who goes so far as to persist in speaking well of Donald Trump – you may face long imprisonment. An active attempt to reinstate him could be ruled a capital offense.

If you capitulate and submit, your life will not be easy. Your record will be held against you.

Even if you always supported the Left and voted the totalitarians into power, you will receive only the information that the rulers choose to allow you. You will have no way of knowing – unless by chance you personally witness a reported event – whether what you are being told is true or false.

Bruce Bawer writes at Front Page:

I’ve been ranting for years about the perfidy of the left. At times I’ve been accused of exaggerating. On rare occasions I feared – or hoped? – that perhaps I was exaggerating. In fact I can now see that these people are worse than I ever imagined. Worse than most of us ever imagined. …

Worse than even Donald Trump “with all his insight” imagined.

He went into office determined to clean up the swamp. He was tireless. But not tireless enough. No mere mortal could have been tireless enough. Trump had denounced the swamp in apocalyptic terms, but it proved to be even deeper and more extensive than he knew. It reached into the upper echelons of the intelligence community and the military, into cabinet departments and the judiciary.

Not only did the Democrats try to derail his campaign and then his presidency. Even people whom he appointed to White House jobs proved unreliable. Far from being too suspicious, he’d been too trusting. He’d appointed two-faced D.C. insiders. He’d trusted people who turned out to be snakes in the grass.

The news media, with very few exceptions, made it their task to thwart his progress and poison his name with a constant flow of disinformation. They said Trump had told people to drink bleach. They said he’d called neo-Nazis “good people”. They said many other outrageous things that they knew were outright lies. They relentlessly repeated the charge that he did nothing but lie, lie, lie, when in fact it was they, the media, who were constantly feeding us lies. …

When enemies of Trump, and of freedom, created violence and mayhem in cities around the country, they were whitewashed, protected, and even praised by the media, by Democratic politicians, and by police officials. In a debate with Trump, Biden said Antifa was an idea, not an organization. Congressman Jerrold Nadler called it a myth.

Meanwhile Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey gave BLM $3 million. While the leftist gangsters went unpunished, citizens who tried to protect their homes and businesses from destruction by them were arrested by the police and demonized in the media. If you tried to spread the truth about all this on social media, you were shut down by Silicon Valley bosses who said you were lying.

And then the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Republican officials in the states affected by the steal sat on their hands. State legislatures, ditto. Even the justices he’d named to the Supreme Court refused to hear Texas v. Pennsylvania, absurdly maintaining that a state didn’t have standing to challenge the conduct of a presidential election in another state.

Trump’s supporters, ever civilized, waited patiently while every possible means of stopping the steal was dutifully exhausted. When it came down to the final vote certification in Congress, an army of [between 600,000 and 2,000,000!) MAGA folk gathered peacefully in Washington to show that they had Trump’s back.

Then a tiny percentage of them foolishly entered the Capitol building. And a tiny percentage of that tiny percentage – at least some of whom seem to have been Antifa goons – caused minor damage. Most of them appear to have milled harmlessly around the building, leaving paintings and statues untouched. The contrast with the conduct of Antifa and BLM insurgents during the previous year could hardly have been more striking. …

One of those people, an Air Force veteran named Ashli Babbitt, was shot dead by a Capitol Hill policeman. She didn’t do anything to provoke the shooter. It was impossible not to think of George Floyd, the career criminal who, on May 25 of last year, died while resisting arrest after committing a crime. Floyd was black; the arresting officer was white. In the ensuing months, Floyd’s death was used to justify rioting, arson, and vandalism by Antifa and BLM agitators, none of whom ended up being killed by a cop.

But nobody’s making a martyr out of Ashli Babbitt.

I’m not saying anybody should. I’m just saying that after four years of reportage that routinely demonized Trump, sugarcoated his opponents, and cruelly mocked his supporters, and after an election that was blatantly stolen yet described in the media as eminently fair, those supporters could hardly be expected not to explode – especially since they’d seen, during the previous few months, one leftist explosion after another rewarded with praise.

But they did not explode.

On January 6, Biden, oozing faux solemnity, addressed the ongoing situation on Capitol Hill. After months of referring to Antifa and BLM thugs as “protesters”, he called the non-violent people who’d entered the Capitol a “mob” of “domestic terrorists” who, in an action bordering on “sedition”,  had made an “unprecedented assault…on the citadel of liberty….This is not dissent, it’s disorder”.

He wasn’t alone. In one voice, people who’d spent months cheering leftist violence expressed horror at the breach of the Capitol building and blamed it on Trump. Once the Capitol was secured, the planned challenges to the vote steal were scuttled and the election of Biden and Harris duly certified.

Whereupon the left – and not just the left – moved with the swiftness of lightning.

Accusing Trump of having incited the Capitol breach, [Speaker] Pelosi and [Senate minority leader] Schumer raised the possibility of using the 25^th Amendment to deny him his last few days in office …

And she absurdly introduced a proposal to impeach him for a second time, though he had only a few days more as president. .

Republicans who were never strong Trump supporters to begin with were quick to profess outrage at Trump’s purported provocation. Cabinet members Elaine Choi and Betsy DeVos quit. The Wall Street Journal called on Trump to resign. Senator Pat Toomey gave a thumbs-up to impeachment. Forbes warned companies not to hire anybody with a Trump connection.

Both Twitter and Facebook deplatformed Trump, and when he shifted from his personal Twitter account to the POTUS account, Twitter silenced that one, too. Other enemies of the left were also kicked off social media – among them Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon. Facebook ejected the WalkAway movement, in the process deleting countless heartfelt posts by ordinary citizens explaining why they’d quit the Democratic Party. YouTube took down a video by Rudy Giuliani. Amazon, Google, and Apple removed Parler, a “free-speech” alternative to Twitter and Facebook, from their app stores. The CEO of Mozilla, developer of the Firefox browser, wrote an essay entitled “We Need More than Deplatforming.”

(Yet the social-media accounts of the Chinese Communist Party and Ayatollah Khamenei remained untouched.)

Pelosi tried to get the military to stop taking orders from the President. …

She urged the Chiefs of Staff to mutiny against their commander-in-chief! (They refused.)

The director of ABC News spoke of “cleansing” the Trump movement after January 20, whatever that might mean. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who’d taken the lead in challenging the vote steal, to be expelled from the Senate. Simon & Schuster canceled Hawley’s contract for a book about cancel culture. Biden likened Cruz to Goebbels. …

There’s no intrinsic magic about America that protects it from becoming Mao’s China or Stalin’s Russia. Only utopians believe in the perfectibility of man. People are people. And some of the people who are now, or are about to be, in power in the United States would, if accorded enough power, do far more to those of us who falter in loyalty than merely take away our social-media accounts.

Indeed, as scary as the situation may be right now, one thing’s for certain: worse is on its way. The Democrats now control both houses of Congress and are about to be handed the executive branch. The totalitarian-minded elements in that party are on the ascent, backed up by Silicon Valley, the legacy media, and much of corporate America.

Bruce Bawer thinks that by “listing, arresting, and imprisoning ‘enemies of the state'” – as, he reminds us, was done in the terrible reign of Stalin, and under the brutal tyranny of Mao –

These people will overreach. Their lists will grow so long, their cancelations so widespread, that, as happened with the Reign of Terror, everyone who isn’t clinically insane will finally realize that things have gone too far and will, in one way or another, put an end to the madness.

He asks:

But how far will things have to go before that happens? How long will it take? And how many lives will be destroyed before it’s over? These, alas, are the all too sobering questions that have yet to be answered.

In the meantime, those of us who care about liberty will simply have to do our best to keep enduring the daily tsunami of evil ideology, fake news, and contempt for decent people, and to continue hoping that the true and good will yet prevail.

Much as we would like his optimism – such as it is, sorrowful and tentative – to hearten us, we are less sure that such a realization will come, or that “the true and good will yet prevail”.

What has happened seems to us to demonstrate that there is a tragic weakness in freedom and tolerance. They permit those who value neither to exploit them to gain the power to abolish them. 

The Supreme Court is about to rule on ballot “irregularities” in four battleground states, which might alter the result of the presidential election if the state legislatures have the courage to change their certification of electors.

While omitting some declarations of trust in “God”, we urgently quote Fredy Lowe, writing at Canada Free Press:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton … filed an “original jurisdiction” lawsuit on Monday (December 7, 2020), which means the case does not need to be heard at the district or state level, but goes directly to the Supreme Court. This lawsuit, that everyone is talking about (oh, with the exception of the cowards in our legacy media, that is) was filed against Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin for violating the Electors Clause of the US Constitution, by illegally changing their individual state voting rules and procedures by executive actions and/or at the state court levels. In no case were these changes made lawfully through state legislatures. The US Supreme Court has given Pennsylvania until Thursday for their rebuttal, where the outcome will be known soon.

President Trump’s personal attorney, Jay Sekulow said, “This is the most significant of the cases that have been filed … because it is completely outcome-determinative, which means that if the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of Texas, those four states named in the complaint would require their state legislatures to determine the outcome [of the election], by choosing the electors instead of the fraudulent vote counts. It’s a very significant piece of litigation …”

These four defendant states have also violated the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution by implementing unlawful voting rules and procedures without seeking the approval of their state legislators. And, last but not least, one of the key issues in the lawsuit states that the aforementioned constitutional violations led to many “voting irregularities” that resulted in fraudulent election results, which must be overturned by the legislators in the interest of preserving free and fair elections in the United States.

To many, much of what we presented here are encouraging words that the outcome of this fraudulent election will soon be determined, but they are just that—words.

It is action by the state legislators that will be urgently needed if the verdict of the Supreme Court permits it. The writer addresses them –

To the individual state legislators on the ground in each one of these four states:

Your vote will require courage!

Think first about the courage of our Lion Donald Trump who stands in the breach, seemingly alone most days, fighting against many corrupt Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who want to remove him from office, and – lest we forget – their New World Order cabal of financiers. …

There are reports from veteran legislators stating how they will be afraid to vote in favor of President Trump, which would revoke the electors set by the fake majority votes for Biden.

They fear Antifa and BLM vengeful violence against them.

Courage is contagious. Once one brave legislator takes a stand, the spines of others [may be] stiffened. …

Be the one to take a stand, knowing that [millions of] Americans who voted to reelect President Trump will be standing with you.

As President Trump often says, “We’ll see what happens.” Tomorrow.

***

More Republican-led states join the challenge –

The Western Journal reports:

The attorneys general of Missouri and Arkansas signaled their support of Texas’ lawsuit shortly after the state’s Monday filing with the Supreme Court, while the attorneys general of Louisiana and Indiana said the court should hear the Texas case.

“Election integrity is central to our republic,” Missouri Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt tweeted Tuesday. “And I will defend it at every turn. As I have in other cases — I will help lead the effort in support of Texas’ [Supreme Court] filing today. Missouri is in the fight.”

“After reviewing the motion filed by Texas in the U.S. Supreme Court, I have determined that I will support the motion in all legally appropriate manners,” Arkansas Republican Attorney General Leslie Rutledge wrote on Twitter. “The integrity of our elections is a critical part of our nation and it must be upheld.”

Alabama Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall also vowed to secure election integrity, although he said he will wait to see if the Supreme Court grants Texas’ request to bring the case against the four swing states forward before acting in an official capacity. “The unconstitutional actions and fraudulent votes in other states not only affect the citizens of those states, they affect the citizens of all states — of the entire United States,” Marshall said in a statement. “Every unlawful vote counted, or lawful vote uncounted, debases and dilutes citizens’ free exercise of the franchise.”

Louisiana refuses to be left out of the fight, and the state’s attorney general [Republican Jeffrey Landry] released a scorching statement that urged the Supreme Court to consider the Texas motion: “Louisiana citizens are damaged if elections in other states were conducted outside the confines of the Constitution while we obeyed the rules.”

Indiana Republican Attorney General-elect Todd Rokita publicly spoke of the importance of Texas’ case, which revolves around the alleged disenfranchisement of American voters: “Millions of citizens in Indiana have deep concerns regarding the conduct of the 2020 Presidential election,” Rokita said in a statement, according to the Indianapolis Star. “Deeply rooted in these concerns is the fact that some states appear to have conducted their elections with a disregard to the U.S. Constitution.”

The call for the Supreme Court to hear the lawsuit was echoed by outgoing Indiana Republican Attorney General Curtis Hill, who pleaded with the court in a statement to consider the case and to do so quickly.

While the cards may seem stacked against Texas, and by extension President Donald Trump, there’s still no guarantee as to who will sit in the Oval Office come Jan. 20.

If even more states join forces with Texas and these other conservative strongholds, this could very well be a critical legal battle in deciding the 2020 election.

***

Later same day: SEVENTEEN states have now joined Texas in the lawsuit.

Is there such a thing in the making as “the Durham Report”?

It retreats perpetually from those who thirst for it, like a mirage in a desert.

Was ever document so eagerly awaited?

Expectation of its transformative powers so trusted?

Its publication so often postponed?

Does “John Durham” actually exist? 

It has been a year and a half since Attorney General William Barr announced that he had assigned a lawyer named John Durham to conduct an investigation into the FBI’s investigation into the Democrats’ allegation that Russia had interfered in the 2016 elections to help Donald Trump win the presidency.

Why this particular man? Seems he is an arch Investigator. One might say, an investigators’ Investigator.

He has done so much investigating that one cannot after all seriously doubt that he exists.

So what is the record of his investigations? Is it very impressive that he should be appointed to investigate again and again by succeeding Attorneys General?

Well, maybe not very encouraging to those who hope that he will be the nemesis of the fraudsters who forged scurrilous “evidence” against Donald Trump.

It was this very John Durham who was  appointed in 2008 by Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate whether the CIA had destroyed the videotapes of their interrogations of terrorist prisoners detained at Guantanamo. In 2010, Durham completed his investigations but did not recommend any criminal charges. His findings in that case have never been made public.

In August 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder appointed the same John Durham to investigate whether the CIA had used torture to elicit information from Guantanamo detainees. In particular he investigated the deaths of two detainees reportedly under torture in 2011. But the investigation was closed in 2012 without any charges being filed.

To come back to this John Durham’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election: his remit was “to broadly examine the government’s collection of intelligence involving the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians”.

Seems to us there is an underlying assumption there that the Trump campaign actually did “interact” with Russians. But we know he didn’t. So that’s what Investigator John Durham will find out, right?

Oh, and our hopes were stoked up when in late October 2019 we got some exciting news of the Durham investigation. It had evolved from a  plain investigation into, we were told, a criminal investigation. How we all looked to John Durham to see that justice would be done, the forgers of “evidence” against Donald Trump exposed, their villainy laid bare for all to see in court, their due punishment pronounced. We could almost hear the sound of their cell doors being shut and locked.

And what we supposed was the first of these delights, the deep satisfaction of our need to see justice done, came with the news that an FBI attorney named Kevin Clinesmith was being charged with altering an email to make it seem that one member of Donald Trump’s campaign, Carter Page, was not a US intelligence “asset”, when he actually was. It all began to happen. Clinesmith was brought to court! He was found guilty! He was sentenced – wait. No, sorry, he wasn’t sentenced. But we are told he will be sentenced. Sure. Of course. Now for the next one.

There has not been a next one.

Oh, but the Report itself … wasn’t it about to appear? Hadn’t we been told it would be published before Labor Day? Ye-es, but the publication had been postponed. To October. Fine, fine – it will be out before the election. It will undeceive millions who have believed the “Trump interaction with Russia” lie. The truth will help the Trump campaign.

No. Sorry again. There is no plan to publish the Report before the election.

Aaaah!

So now? Nothing? A bit of news: one of those who we had reason to believe was a chief conspirator against Donald Trump, John Brennan, head of the CIA, was told by Investigator John Durham that he was not “a subject or target of a criminal investigation”.

What? If not John Brennan then who?

No one. No one did anything wrong. It was not wrong to compile a dossier full of false information extremely damaging to an elected president or to leak it to the press. It was not wrong to wiretap Trump tower in order to spy on Donald Trump himself. It was not wrong to set up an investigation to the same end, draw it out for years, let it spend tens of millions on what everyone involved knew was a wild goose chase, there never having been any interaction between Donald Trump and Russians. Nothing wrong, let alone criminal.

Only some allies and associates of Trump were found to have done terribly wicked things, like forget something they’d said under oath, so apparently contradicted themselves, so had been caught lying, and so deserved long imprisonment. To be specific, that’s what Durham’s little church of innocents did to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, as everybody knows.

So a report won’t come from John Durham, eventually, which will reveal the truth? All the truth? Now that the election is over? All won’t be revealed, all put right, at last?

No.

Post script: John Durham was also entrusted with an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. We found plenty wrong with it. (See for instance here and here.) The great Investigator found nothing wrong with it at all. Not a thing.

Millions who want to live in freedom with limited government cannot compromise with millions of big-government collectivists.

Those to whom an individual’s race is of no consequence cannot endure race quotas (euphemized now as “diversity”).

Those who want secure borders cannot share territory with those who want “open” borders (effectively no borders at all).

Those who want impartial justice and equality under the law cannot co-exist with those who want judicial discrimination on grounds of race, class, sex, or history.

Those who know that only free market capitalism makes for prosperity and wish to pursue their own economic goals unhampered by regulation will not tolerate “redistribution” of wealth,  whether by means of high taxation, state-run health care, nationalization of industries or any other government-imposed impoverishing devices on which collectivists insist.

Those who know that slight changes in climate will not endanger human life cannot endure being bludgeoned by global warming mythologists into accepting a poorer way of life “to save the planet”.

Those who want one (hospitable and expanding) culture with one official language, cannot accept multiculturalism and multilingualism being imposed on them by the others.

These are two different nations.

There is nothing to be gained for either of them by alternating administrations, each undoing what the other has done – a fruitless, weakening, wasteful procedure.

Two incompatible nations are sharing one country. Territorial division is not possible.

What can be done?

Nancy Pelosi, Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives and official leader of the campaign to destroy President Trump by impeaching him, furiously denied to a reporter that she hates Donald Trump when he asked her if she did:

“I don’t hate anybody,” responded Pelosi. “I was raised in a Catholic house. We don’t hate anybody, not anybody in the world. Don’t accuse me of hate.”

Being accused of hatred was, in Pelosi’s mind, the same as accusing her of being a bad Catholic.

“As a Catholic, I resent your using the word ‘hate’ in a sentence that addresses me,” she said. “I don’t hate anyone.”

Hatred was not part of her upbringing, she said. “I was raised in a way that is a heart full of love.”

On the contrary, she said, she always prays for the president. “I still pray for the president. I pray for the president all the time.”

How deeply reassuring for the president. (And the reporter – a rare one to provoke Speaker Pelosi! – must have felt warmly loved too.)

But in Reality, for the last four years, the Democrats, the Left everywhere, and the media have been spewing hatred of Donald Trump non-stop, night and day. They hate him.

It’s not that they merely don’t like what he stands for, what he does or how he does it. They certainly don’t, and they would be against anyone who stood for the same and did the same. But their intense hatred is plainly for the man himself.  

The hatred is totally irrational, and for those of us who much admire and like President Trump, impossible to understand. Is their hatred motivated by envy? Can they not bear it that Donald Trump is a successful businessman, a billionaire, a TV star, and on top of it all, president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world? And he has a very beautiful wife. And successful children. How dare he?

They – the politicians, the celebrities, the globalists, the socialists, the America-haters, the intersectionalists, the feminists, the environmentalists, the climate alarmists, the Antifa activists, the professors, the media hacks – hate him with a hatred that drives them to any length in their effort to destroy him. For days, weeks, months, years on end they rage against him in the House and the Senate. They make up absurd lies about him. There is no accusation, however farfetched, however unlikely, however ridiculous, however crazy, however impossible that they have not or will not level against him, over and over again.

Has there ever before been so much hate speech poured out against an elected American leader?  

No matter how much good he does for the country – and he has done a lot; no matter how competent he is – and he is highly competent; no matter how generous he is – and he is generous, even giving away his salary: they hate him, hate him, hate him. They want him thrown out of office; they want him humiliated; they want him tortured; they want him dead. 

To help them achieve his ruin, to help them advance the great cause of destroying Donald Trump, the media (most of them) lie about him. They spread misinformation, disinformation, scurrilous rumors, obscene tales, filthy smears.   

And at the same time they all – the politicians, the celebrities, the globalists, the socialists, the America-haters, the intersectionalists, the feminists, the environmentalists, the climate alarmists, the Antifa actvists, the professors, the media hacks – ceaselessly rail against “hate speech and disinformation”.

What they mean by “hate speech” is the expression of any opinion that differs from their own. And by “disinformation” they mean any contradiction, any disproof, any exposure of their lies.

They want “hate speech and disinformation” stopped. Pronto. It’s intolerable to them that people go on saying things they don’t like. It’s too provoking! People .. people … do it, go on and on doing it, in the “social media”. Freely. Saying whatever they like. No regulation. No punishment. Good grief, they behave as if the United States of America were Liberty Hall!

We quote parts of an article by Paul Bradford at American Greatness:

 Joe Biden wants to punish Facebook and Twitter so they will censor more.

Biden endorsed one of the most aggressive proposals against Big Tech last week in an interview with the New York Times. He wants to eliminate Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects tech platforms from publisher liabilities.

“Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one,” Biden said. “For [Mark] Zuckerberg [CEO of Facebook] and other platforms.”

“It should be revoked because [Facebook] is not merely an internet company,” Biden said. “It is propagating falsehoods they know to be false, and we should be setting standards not unlike the Europeans are doing relative to privacy. You guys still have editors. I’m sitting with them. Not a joke. There is no editorial impact at all on Facebook. None. None whatsoever. It’s irresponsible. It’s totally irresponsible.”

Biden also won’t rule out criminal penalties for Zuckerberg over alleged collusion with the Russian government.

Biden, it needs to be borne in mind, was vice president when Barack Obama was president and they were colluding with the Russians.

He implied the Facebook executive is selling out American democracy to foreign tyrants for cold hard cash.

Biden, it should also be borne in mind, and through him his brothers and his son and his sister and his son-in-law, corruptly raked in cold hard cash, much of it from foreign tyrants, by the million when he was vice-president. He sold his office.

Biden is particularly upset with the number of ads Trump runs on Facebook.

He sees a terrible risk that if Trump is allowed to do that, he could get himself re-elected! Why can’t Zuckerberg and the other tech giants see what danger they’re running America into?

Nearly every Democratic presidential candidate, both former and current, wants to punish tech companies for allowing “hate speech” and “disinformation” on their platforms.

Three candidates besides Biden want to target Section 230. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants to look into Section 230 to make sure “right-wing groups don’t abuse regulation to advance their agenda” and that tech platforms censor hate speech. He doesn’t call for the outright elimination of Section 230 but his meaning is plain enough.

Similarly, Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), a forgotten presidential candidate, wants to revise Section 230 to hold Big Tech accountable for “misinformation and hate speech on their platforms”.

The other candidates also want to pressure Big Tech to censor more, but haven’t specifically mentioned Section 230. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wants to break up Facebook and other tech giants as punishment for “profiting off of hate speech and disinformation campaigns”.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg says his administration would investigate and call out platforms that “traffic in hate and encourage or fail to moderate abuse and hate”. Buttigieg wants more aggressive measures to suppress ads that liberals deem to be erroneous.

Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), another former presidential candidate, also wants Big Tech punished for alleged hate speech. “We will hold social media platforms responsible for the hate infiltrating their platforms, because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy,” she told the NAACP last year.

No matter who wins the Democratic nomination, that candidate will demand more online censorship. Every major candidate sees what they call “hate speech” as something that should not be protected by the First Amendment. Every single one of them wants to use state power to push Facebook, Twitter and other platforms into only allowing liberal discourse.

In fact, in Reality – the sphere where Leftists do not like to live – conservatives are constantly being censored, suspended, rebuked, and outright banned by the Powers that govern the internet. Every one of those Powers is Left-biased. But some conservative opinion does get published to the world, and how can the Left, and especially those in it who have been raised in a way that fills their hearts with love, be expected to tolerate such a state of affairs?

Tommy Robinson’s acceptance speech when he is awarded the Free Speech prize at the Danish Parliament:

https://youtu.be/GMFWbJ9yuiw 

It’s long, but it’s a must-watch.

The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is guilty of abuse of power and conspiracy to overthrow a duly elected president.

We quote from an article (well worth reading in full) by Michael Anton at the Claremont Review.

People capable of feeling shame would not have immediately followed up the Russiagate hoax fiasco with another transparently phony—and in “substance” nearly identical—attempt to remove President Trump from office, overturn the 2016 election, and shower deplorable-Americans with contempt and hatred. But our ruling elites have no shame. …

The Democrats, the corporate-Left media (CLM), the permanent bureaucracy or “administrative state”,and the “deep state” (which is not precisely the same thing), along with a few Republicans, have “publicly voiced” many causes for removing the president—a few specific but most maddeningly, yet safely, vague.

From the beginning—that is to say, from November 9, 2016—impeachment has been a cause in search of a trigger, an occasion. The president’s enemies hoped they’d finally hit pay dirt when an anonymous “whistleblower” alleged that the president made, or attempted to make, foreign aid to Ukraine contingent on that country’s government investigating his likely 2020 challenger. Or, in other words, that Trump attempted to “collude” with a foreign power to influence an American election. …

If we are to take the current “publicly voiced” cause at face value, then we may say that the entire Washington establishment, plus most of the country’s elites, are trying to remove the president from office on the basis of an anonymous individual’s private opinion of the content of one phone call he heard about second or possibly even thirdhand. A phone call, let’s remember, of which we have extensive notes that almost, but not quite, constitute a transcript—in other words, whose content everyone in the country can examine for himself.

That the “telcon” (national security geekspeak for what people are calling the “transcript”) does not support the “publicly voiced” cause is made plain by two facts. First, you can read it yourself and see that it doesn’t say what it is alleged to say. Second, if it did say what the president’s enemies want it to say, they could just quote it verbatim, which they never do, instead of deliberately mischaracterizing it, which they always do.

Only two substantive points make the phone call at all interesting. First, President Trump very plainly wants to get to the bottom of the entire, still-obscure “election-meddling” story of 2016. That includes not just “deep state” attempts to prevent his election and to set him up for removal should the first effort fail, but also allegations of Russian hacking against American targets, including the Democratic National Committee. It appears—and the Justice Department apparently agrees—that some actors within Ukraine may have had something to do with some of this, possibly colluding … with a shady, Democrat-linked tech firm called CrowdStrike, though we as yet know nothing like the full story. Trump wants to know and asked the Ukrainian president for his help in finding out. …

The second question President Trump asked the Ukrainian president is another “publicly voiced” cause to seek his removal. That question regarded a specific instance of a well-known Washington-insider phenomenon. It is a measure of how insouciantly our elites accept and even welcome the immense corruption of our government that they raise not a single eyebrow at the phenomenon that underlay the president’s question: exactly how is it that well-connected Americans with no particular or relevant skill sets can “earn” enormous sums of money for doing, essentially, nothing? …

The “specific instance” was to do with Hunter Biden being paid an enormous sum for doing nothing but getting his dad, Obama’s Vice-President Joe Biden, to threaten to withhold funds in aid to Ukraine if its government didn’t stop investigating corruption in the firm that was … well, to put it bluntly, bribing Hunter. Joe Biden did as he was asked. President Trump wanted to have the matter investigated and said so in the phone call to a new Ukrainian leader.

Understand this plainly: Trump may well be impeached, ostensibly, for asking about this corrupt arrangement. But no one is ever impeached for engaging in it. Nor can our elites, who almost all benefit from this system one way or another, muster the integrity to do, or even say, anything against it.

Though currently central to the “publicly voiced” case, this charge is not the only one levelled [against President Trump in connection with the phone call]. It is also insinuated that the administration somehow acted improperly by not making the telcon available within the government to a wide enough range of bureaucrats. But that’s preposterous.

Such documents are inherently products of the executive branch. They may be shown to, or withheld from, absolutely anyone the president and his senior staff want. To argue anything else is to presuppose that bureaucrats whom the president doesn’t know and likely will never see somehow are entitled—have a “right”—to review anything and everything they wish. Does this sound reasonable to anyone not out to get Trump? Would you run your business this way? Or would you try to limit information—especially sensitive information—on a “need-to-know” basis? Formally, the U.S. government insists that it operates according to the latter principle, but in reality, everyone in Washington believes himself so important that he becomes indignant when not allowed to see what he believes by right he ought to see.

Then ask yourself: assuming the president and his team did try to limit access to this or other documents, why would they do that? Perhaps to prevent illegal and damaging leaks? What could possibly give rise to that concern? I dunno—maybe because this has been, and continues to be, the most leaked-against White House and administration in the history of the United States government?

When one thinks for a second about the impact this particular document has already had—the president may well be impeached over it, on the say-so of precisely such a bureaucrat from whom his team allegedly tried, but evidently failed, to withhold it—can one blame Trump or his team for trying to limit the dissemination of internal documents? A saner response is to wish they had restricted the circle even more. The detail, alleged in the press, that the “whistleblower” (more on him below) heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend, etc., does not, to say the least, suggest any kind of cover-up. …

[But] “cover-up” is the latest “publicly voiced” charge. A member of the National Security Council staff  [Lt.-Col. Vindman] alleges that he attempted to include language in the telcon that others insisted on excluding. This is held to be a very serious charge.

Here’s what they’re not telling you. The document, as noted, is not a transcript; there’s no stenographer on the line and such calls are not recorded. Several people, however, will be listening and taking notes for the express purpose of creating the telcon. These will include duty officers in the White House Situation Room, who are not necessarily—and are not expected to be—experts on the country being called; rather, they are covering the call simply because it takes place during their shifts. These duty officers, with the aid of impressive but not infallible voice recognition software, prepare a first draft of the telcon. Since neither the voice recognition software nor human notetakers can catch every word perfectly, sometimes “Inaudible” appears in brackets. But ellipses—about which much is currently being made—represent not omissions but natural pauses in the conversation. This is before we even get into the thorny issues raised by sequential translation, which is necessary for most foreign leader calls.

After the first draft of the telcon is prepared, the duty officer hands it over to the National Security Council’s (NSC’s) executive secretary (ExecSec), the office responsible for all NSC paper flow and records management (among other things). ExecSec then routes the telcon to specific individuals, whom the national security advisor has personally authorized to review it, for their “chop” or edits. The person responsible for shepherding the document through this phase of the process is the “country director”, the NSC staffer who coordinates policy and handles documents with respect to a given country or countries. The country director will, in almost all cases, have been listening to the call. He will check the draft telcon against his notes and make corrections, even as others cross-check against their own notes. These will include the relevant senior director (the country director’s boss) and others, up to and including the national security advisor.

The key takeaway here is that the country director is the not highest or final authority on the content of the call. He’s one person who heard it; others may have heard it or parts of it differently. And the country director does not have the final say over what the telcon says. He works in a chain of command and has superiors. His senior director—who presumably was also on the call—can overrule him. If other “equities” such as classification or legal issues are affected, the senior director for intelligence programs and the legal advisor can as well. Ultimately the final say falls to the national security advisor—who, in almost all cases, would also have been listening to the call.

The person alleging a cover-up, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Vindman, was, at the time, the country director for Ukraine. But the way he’s being presented—and has presented himself—is meant to convey a much grander impression. No less than the “whistleblower”, he is being sold as a patriotic, dedicated, impartial, non-partisan, career officer simply standing up for what’s right. …

But he is also, unquestionably, a mid-level officer in the U.S. Army working a mid-level staff job at the National Security Council, i.e., someone who as such has no standing even to serve as the final arbiter of a telcon, much less make policy or remove a president.

We actually don’t know what language the country director was prevented from including in the telcon, but we do know … that “the phrases do not fundamentally change lawmakers’ understanding of the call”. …

At least the country director [Vindman] was actually in the NSC chain of command and so had some standing to weigh in on the issue. This cannot be said of the so-called “whistleblower”, who of course is nothing of the sort—not as defined by law nor in any commonsense understanding. As to the former, the statute is clear: officials qualify for legal protection if they blow the whistle on activities within their own organizations and relevant to those organizations’ official duties. There is no possible way to interpret this particular “whistle” as consistent with that standard. By definition, the president’s phone call was not conducted under the auspices of the “whistleblower’s” “home agency” (reportedly the CIA) nor did it have anything to do with intelligence matters. …

The “whistleblower” reportedly wasn’t on the call and never saw the telcon. Given that several—probably at least a dozen—others were and did, why didn’t one of them lodge a complaint? One—our country director—did complain to the NSC’s top lawyer, who could find no wrongdoing. The others? Nothing. Is it possible most of them also saw no wrongdoing? …

But then the question arises: complain to whom? Neither the NSC nor its parent organization, the Executive Office of the President (EOP), have a formal whistleblower process. If one wishes to make a complaint, one has five options: complain within your chain of command, complain to the lawyers, complain to the White House chief of staff, complain to Congress, or complain to the press. Even our country director declined four of these five avenues, and all the others apparently declined them all. Why? Perhaps someone calculated that the optics would be better—more “disinterested,” less nakedly political—if the complaint came from somewhere else, a “patriotic career civil servant just doing his job”. …

The “whistleblower” was just a tool, witting or not (I’m betting on the former) to get something new going after the ignominious collapse of Russiagate. His usefulness over—indeed, his presence in the drama now counterproductive—we are instructed to forget he ever existed. …

It was a dirty plot. How did it begin? Who leaked (inaccurate) information about the phone call to “a friend” who leaked it to “a friend” who leaked it to his friend the “whistleblower”. Or was that not really how the “whistleblower” came to know about it?

Vindman, the “country director”, is the obvious suspect for the original leak: “One [who was on the call] —our country director—did complain to the NSC’s top lawyer, who could find no wrongdoing.”

Did Vindman then report the call to Adam Schiff? (Had Schiff asked him to report anything he could use against the President? Very possibly.)

If so, Schiff would need to account for the leak reaching him, and Vindman would certainly not let himself be named as the leaker. A stooge had to be found to take on the role of the leaker  a “whistleblower”.  Someone who would be “good for the optics”.

Did Schiff consult with Biden, and did Biden suggest Eric Ciaramella – who has been named on social media as the “whistleblower” – be employed in that role? Or did Vindman suggest him?

Who is Eric Ciaramella?

The Washington Examiner reports:

[Eric] Ciaramella is a career CIA analyst and was the Ukraine director on the NSC from 2016 until the summer of 2017. In October 2016, he was [Joe] Biden’s guest at a State Department banquet. …

Ciaramella could be told to say that he had heard about the call “from a friend who had heard about it from a friend” and had been shocked and appalled by what he heard.

But there would be no obvious reason why he would take his complaint to Adam Schiff. A plausible explanation for Schiff finding out about it had to be invented. 

Well, what if there happened to be someone on Schiff’s staff who knew Eric Ciaramella? 

There wasn’t, but that was a lack easily remedied.

The alleged whistleblower filed an Aug. 12 complaint with the Intelligence Community inspector general about the July 25 phone conversation between Trump and Zelensky …

 … which he “had heard about from a friend who had heard about it from a friend” …

… after meeting with a House Intelligence Committee aide on Schiff’s staff about the call …

Hey presto! Suddenly there was someone on Schiff’s staff to whom Ciaramella might reasonably confide his outrage. Who was this “aide on Schiff’s staff”?

Sean Misko, who [had] worked with alleged Ukraine whistleblower Eric Ciaramella at the NSC during the Obama and Trump administrations”, was hired by Schiff [on July 26] the day after the phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Both Ciaramella and Misko started their tenures during the Obama administration and left during the first year of the Trump administration. The Washington Examiner was told by a former senior White House official that both had a close, “bro-like” relationship while working at the NSC together.

Smell a rat? There’s a whole stinking nest of them.

Michael Anton again:

The worst charge thus far alleged against President Trump is that he attempted to make $400 million in aid to Ukraine contingent on that country’s government investigating possible corruption by the Bidens. This is the much hoped for “smoking gun,” the “quid pro quo”—as if the foreign policy of any country in history has ever been borne aloft on the gentle vapors of pure altruism. …

I don’t see it. Especially since a) no aid was actually withheld; b) no investigation was actually launched; c) the American people don’t care about Ukraine and would probably prefer to get their $400 million back; and d) they would inevitably ask: so were, in fact, Joe Biden and his son on the take from a foreign government? And if it looks like they might have been, why, exactly, was it improper for the president to ask about it?

Trump’s enemies’ answer to the last question is: because the president was asking a foreign government to investigate a political opponent for purely personal gain. Really? Is potential corruption by a former vice president—and potential future president—and his family a purely private matter, of no conceivable import or interest to the public affairs of the United States? That’s what you have to insist on to maintain that the request was improper. That’s the line we can expect the Democrat-CLM axis to flog, shamelessly and aggressively. But will a majority of Americans buy it? Especially since career officials at the Department of Justice already determined, and anti-Trump witnesses appearing before Representative Adam Schiff’s secret star chamber reluctantly conceded, that nothing Trump did or is alleged to have done was technically, you know, illegal.

And besides all that, aren’t all relations between nation-states conducted on the perpetual understanding of quid pro quo? Isn’t quid pro quo what all diplomacy is about: the exchange of envoys; the setting up of embassies and consulates; treaties? Isn’t even the giving of aid done in wistful hope for some reward (such as a supportive vote in the UN)? What is trade between countries – or, come to that, what is all trade – but a system of quid quo pro?

A system of honest, open, mutually beneficial quid pro quo is what international trade needs to be. And President Trump is working to make it so. Part of that effort may involve asking the more trustworthy leaders of foreign governments to investigate corruption, even if an American Democratic leader and his son get caught in the sweep.