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PowerLine -> From the Carlos Danger files + Power Line’s Top Posts of 2017

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Daily Digest

From the Carlos Danger files

A New Year’s Eve Miscellany

The Times diversion

Power Line’s Top Posts of 2017

Papadopoulos or the dossier?

From the Carlos Danger files

Posted: 31 Dec 2017 02:17 PM PST

(Paul Mirengoff)The indispensable Judicial Watch, after protracted litigation in federal court, has forced the State Department to begin releasing Huma Abedin’s work-related documents that were found on Anthony Weiner’s personal computer. The documents were provided to the State Department by the FBI, which reviewed them as part of its investigation of the Hillary Clinton email server scandal. The first public release of these documents came on Friday, December 31.

Judicial Watch confirms that the documents include classified information from Hillary Clinton’s email server. Not only that, but at least four of these documents were marked “classified.”

You probably recall that Team Clinton tried to defend Hillary’s mishandling of classified information by arguing that the information was not marked classified at the time the document was produced and when it was sent or received. But this argument, never a strong one, doesn’t apply to at least four of the documents that Abedin shuffled over to her husband’s computer. In addition, as Jazz Shaw points out, by sending this material to Weiner, Abedin put it outside the reach of the government.

Shaw also raises the question of whether Abedin lied to the FBI during its investigation:

[B]oth Abedin and Cheryl Mills were called in by the FBI and told them that they didn’t even know about the existence of the secret server. And that was in 2016. But here we have evidence from 2010 of Abedin forwarding classified documents from the secret server to an account called “Anthony Campaign” which is presumably the email account on her husband’s laptop. So doesn’t that mean that she (and possibly Mills) lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation during their probe of the case?

He adds:

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how people who lie to the FBI are in a lot of trouble and could face jail time, even if the subject of the conversation they lied about wasn’t illegal. In this instance we’re talking about a clearly illegal act, specifically sending obviously marked classified State Department documents to a private laptop controlled by someone without a security clearance.

If lying to the FBI is such a big deal, aren’t we being a bit selective in prosecution if somebody isn’t indicted over this? Or does the fact that Clinton and Abedin are no longer in the mix for a national political office mean that we simply don’t bother?

I think the answers to the two questions are “yes” and “yes.”

A New Year’s Eve Miscellany

Posted: 31 Dec 2017 09:59 AM PST

(Steven Hayward)A few closeout observations before the first bottle of champagne:

• The top story of the year: Trump is still President! Lots of folks on the left and in the media were certain he’d be gone by June. Worse news for the left: he’s gaining strength. Worstest news for the left: The Russia collusion angle is coming up dry, and he isn’t going to be impeached.

Related, from CNN no less:

Gallup: Hillary Clinton’s favorability rating hits new low

(CNN)More than a year after the 2016 presidential election, former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s favorability rating has dropped to a new low, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday.

The poll showed 36% of respondents rated Clinton favorably compared to 61% who rated her unfavorably, which is a new high for that measure. Gallup said this beat out her previous low of 38% at the outset of the general election last year and in 1992 when she was not yet a household name.

Gallup’s poll marked a five-point drop in the former secretary of state’s favorability rating since June, when a poll of national adults showed 41% rated her favorably.

Still not tired of winning? Okay, then take this, from the Washington Post:

How the Trump era is changing the federal bureaucracy

Nearly a year into his takeover of Washington, President Trump has made a significant down payment on his campaign pledge to shrink the federal bureaucracy, a shift long sought by conservatives that could eventually bring the workforce down to levels not seen in decades. . .

“Morale has never been lower,” said Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 federal workers at more than 30 agencies. “Government is making itself a lot less attractive as an employer.”

Sometimes you just have to take the sweet with the sweet.

• A sign of the times?

The new security measures planned for the Brandenburg Gate party come amid concerns about sexual assaults. . .

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend the New Year’s Eve party in Berlin on Sunday and security will be strict. Large bags, such as rucksacks, and alcoholic drinks will be banned at the Brandenburg Gate.

Gosh, from the sound of this headline Berlin must be like New York City back in the pre-Guiliani era. What’s behind this? The BBC semi-explains:

A large number of assaults and robberies targeting women at Cologne’s New Year’s Eve celebrations two years ago horrified Germany. Hundreds of women reported being attacked by gangs of men with migrant backgrounds.

What kind of “migrant backgrounds” I wonder?

Sweden’s Socialist minister admits: We made a mistake accepting so many refugees

The Swedish finance minister, Magdalena Andersson, in a Friday interview for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter said that Sweden made a mistake by accepting thousands of asylum seekers in 2015. It is the first such statement of the politician from the ruling Sweden’s Socialist Working Party, whose coalition government together with the Green Party, welcomed over 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015.

Chaser:

• Winston Churchill describing bitcoin perhaps:

I know those people who think they can coin the moonlight into silver and mint the sunshine into gold, are always running about with some of these plans for getting rich quickly and securing wealth without having to work for it. (From his 1909 campaign book, The People’s Rights.)

• Woo-hoo! We’re number 29! Power Line came in ranked 29th in the PJ Media ranking of the Top 50 Conservative Websites for 2017.

• Isn’t this a clear violation of the 8th Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause:

The Times diversion

Posted: 31 Dec 2017 08:07 AM PST

(Scott Johnson)In collusion news today, the New York Times has devoted six reporters to producing the “news” that the previously obscure Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos lies at the heart of the putative case. Their story is “How the Russia inquiry began: A campaign aide, drinks and talk of political dirt.” Paul wrote about it last night here.

I think the story is ludicrous on its face. The Times has served as a prime purveyor of the Trump/Russia hysteria. Yet reality has deflated it. Now the Times returns to pump it up. The names have changed, but the song remains the same.

The Times has lost the thread on its preferred narrative. Indeed, attention has turned to the Steele/Trump dossier and the apparent wrongdoing related to it. The authorities inside the Obama administration who took advantage of it seek to cover their tracks. The deeply felt needs of the Times and its collaborators are consummated in today’s big story.

Who helped the Times concoct its story today? We have come to expect the usually guarded law enforcement and intelligence sources who cannot be identified because the information is classified and they weren’t authorized to talk about it.

Today’s story is not quite so forthcoming. The six Times reporters disclose only that they relied on “interviews.” Well, not just interviews. Late in the story “current and former officials familiar with the debate” appear. The Times story also relies on “previously undisclosed documents.”

The Times story states: “A team of F.B.I. agents traveled to Europe to interview Mr. Steele in early October 2016. Mr. Steele had shown some of his findings to an F.B.I. agent in Rome three months earlier [coincidentally, at the time the investigation started], but that information was not part of the justification to start a counterintelligence inquiry, American officials said.”

With whom did the Times conduct the interviews? What were the circumstances? Who contacted whom? How can this story have remained dormant until today? The Times doesn’t say.

What are the “previously undisclosed documents”? The Times doesn’t say it directly, but the documents do not demonstrate how the counterintelligence investigation started. They do not establish the story’s thesis.

How can any informed observer take this seriously? We await the disclosure of genuine evidence rather than obvious spin. We don’t have nearly enough information to arrive at a definitive judgment. We must keep our minds open until we are privy to it. In time I may be proved wrong. Yet I don’t think it is rash to say that this Times story is some kind of a joke.

Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel puts it this way in response to Obama hack Tommy Vietor’s demand that she correct her column on the Steele dossier (“one of the dirtiest tricks in U.S. political history”). To borrow the Clinton campaign slogan, I’m with her.

Sure–when the NYT provides any proof (or names, or sources or anything other than anonymous assertion) for its claims. Funny that the FBI cooks up this story right at the point that the House is demanding to see the documents that will show what really happened. https://t.co/cR8iT1XVDP

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 30, 2017

Power Line’s Top Posts of 2017

Posted: 31 Dec 2017 07:42 AM PST

(John Hinderaker)“Top” means most widely read, of course, not best or most influential. Still, it is fun to look back and see what posts got the most attention from our readers in 2017.

The year’s most-read post, with 150,933 views, was Proof that James Comey Misled the Senate Intelligence Committee, which I wrote on June 10. It was inevitable, I suppose, that many of our top posts related to the storm of controversy surrounding the 2016 election, the Clinton campaign’s collusion with Russia and the FBI via Fusion GPS, the firing of James Comey, Bob Mueller’s investigation, and so on. This post exposed James Comey as a liar.

You should read (or re-read) the whole thing, but briefly, Comey told the Intelligence Committee that his relationship with President Trump was different from his relationships with prior presidents, because Trump is uniquely dishonest. Comey told the committee:

COMEY: … When I was deputy attorney general, I had one one-on-one meeting with President Bush about a very important and difficult national security matter.

I didn’t write a memo documenting that conversation either — sent a quick e-mail to my staff to let them know there was something going on, but I didn’t feel, with President Bush, the need to document it in that way, again (ph), because of — the combination of those factors just wasn’t present with either President Bush or President Obama.

WARNER: I — I think that is very significant.

Significant? Maybe, but it was a lie. A sharp-eyed reader pointed us to the book Angler, an attack on Dick Cheney, which revealed that Comey actually documented his rather famous conversation with President Bush with a memo that included pages of supposedly verbatim dialogue. When it comes to covering his rear end, Comey is a consummate denizen of the Washington swamp. Likewise when it comes to lying to Congress.

Collectively, Steve’s most popular posts are no doubt The Week In Pictures series, which probably garnered a total of around 1,500,000 views in 2017. But his most-read individual post this year was The Millenial Job Interview, a hilarious but all too true video, which Steve posted on November 27. It continues to get views via social media. Here it is, once more:

Paul’s top post was also a recent one, Panic at the Washington Post, published on Christmas Day. The post documents WaPo’s growing hysteria over the fact that Mueller’s investigation is falling apart, and instead, attention is increasingly focused on the real scandal, which implicates, among others, the FBI.

The Washington Post is worried. The lead headline in today’s paper edition reads: “Mueller criticism grows to a clamor — FBI Conspiracy Claim Takes Hold — Driven by activists, GOP lawmakers, Trump tweets.”

Turnabout is fair play. Last year around this time, an honest newspaper could easily have written: “Trump criticism grows to a clamor — Russia Collusion Takes Hold — Driven by activists, Democratic lawmakers, leaks.” *** The FBI reportedly offered money to Christoper Steele to continue his work on the anti-Trump dossier (in testimony before Congress Rod Rosenstein refused to say whether the FBI paid or offered to pay for the dossier). The FBI may well have used information in the dossier to secure approval of surveillance efforts from the FISA court.

The FBI also helped push the dossier into the public’s consciousness. Its general counsel, James Baker, reportedly told reporter David Corn about the dossier, thus enabling Corn to write about it just before the election. And FBI director Comey briefed president-elect Trump on the dossier, which led to publication of its contents by BuzzFeed.

We also know about the quest of Peter Strzok, a high-level FBI man, for an “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency.

But let’s return to the Washington Post’s story about growing criticism of Mueller. The three distressed Post writers are less than fully open when it comes to informing readers what — other than activists, GOP lawmakers, and Trump tweets — is causing criticism of Mueller to grow to a clamor.

They acknowledge that it has something to do with Strzok’s role as Mueller’s former top investigator. However, they do their best to make Strzok seem innocuous.

Read the whole thing, please.

Scott’s most-read 2017 post was Six Seconds to Live, published on October 26. The post includes an excerpt from a 2010 speech by General John Kelly in which he pays tribute to the heroism of two Marines who were killed in a suicide attack in Afghanistan:

What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” The two Marines had about five seconds left to live. *** [T]he recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live. *** For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing nonstop, the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. *** The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty—into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.

As it happens, these four posts offer a pretty good cross-section of what we do here at Power Line–and have done, every day, since May 2002. It may not be amiss to mention that our traffic hit an all-time high in 2017, with more visits and page views than at any time in the past. That is a sign, of course, of the level of interest in the Trump administration and events of the day among our readers.

So: Happy New Year, and may 2018 be even bigger.

Papadopoulos or the dossier?

Posted: 30 Dec 2017 05:09 PM PST

(Paul Mirengoff)The New York Times reports that the impetus for the FBI’s investigation of suspected collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was not the anti-Trump dossier, but rather statements made by George Papadopoulos. He was the young Trump campaign staffer who later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

According to the Times, after a heavy night of drinking, Papadopoulos told Australia’s top diplomat in Britain that Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton. Two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online (none of which, by the way, rose to the level of “dirt” on Hillary), Australian officials passed the information about Papadopoulos to their American officials. This information supposedly led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired.

I assume the Times’ report was fed to it by current and/or former FBI officials and/or others in the Obama administration with an interest in dismissing the role of the dossier. This doesn’t mean the story is false. It may well be true.

However, Byron York raises some important questions:

(1) If Papadopoulos actions drove FBI probe, why wait til nearly Feb 2017 to interview him? If done to keep probe quiet before election, why wait more than two months after vote?

(2) When did officials brief Congress about Papadopoulos? They briefed Congress about Carter Page in late summer 2016.

(3) Did officials seek a surveillance warrant on Papadopoulos? They reportedly got one on Carter Page in summer 2016. Did they try to get one on Papadopoulos? If not, why not?

Byron adds that he’s not saying Papadopoulos played no role in the FBI’s decision to investigate. However, he questions whether the aide’s role was as central in starting FBI probe in July 2016 as the Times and its sources want us to believe.

It’s also important to remember that the question of whether the dossier prompted, or helped lead to, the FBI investigation is separate from the question of what role the dossier played when the Justice Department obtained a warrant from the FISA court to engage in electronic surveillance of members of Trump’s team.

PowerLine -> From the Carlos Danger files + Power Line’s Top Posts of 2017 PowerLine -> From the Carlos Danger files + Power Line’s Top Posts of 2017 Daily Digest…

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