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Some Evidence That Barr Is Doing His Job After All
In the last few days, while the Department of Justice did shred with redactions the court-ordered Special Counsel Memo declassifications, certain other actions have come to light:
- AG Barr went to Italy last week on official business. The Dems opined he was running away from the Impeachment/Ukraine Collusion committee hearings, but alas a much better explanation was that he was in Italy to investigate the activities of one Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese diplomat with ties to Italian intelligence, and a key figure in the lead up to the Russian Collusion Hoax / CounterIntelligence Investigation / Special Counsel investigation frauds.
- In a WSJ op-ed Monday, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey via a post by Roger Simon at PJ Media “Mukasey OpEd should strike Fear in the Democrats”:
True, much media and political effort has gone into sometimes close and often willful parsing of President Trump’s July 25 conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky —ironic when you consider Mr. Trump’s well-known linguistic promiscuity—not to mention the celebrated whistleblower complaint, which contains no firsthand information. Little notice has been given, however, to another document lying in plain sight: a Justice Department press release issued the day the conversation transcript became public.
That Justice Department statement makes explicit that the president never spoke with Attorney General William Barr “about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former Vice President Biden or his son” or asked him to contact Ukraine “on this or any other matter,” and that the attorney general has not communicated at all with Ukraine. It also contains the following morsel: “A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating. [Bold mine]
The number of countries includes the U. K. and Italy, the latter of which was just visited by one William Barr.
So what’s going on? More from Mukasey:
Published in General“The definitive answer to the obvious question—what’s that about?—is known only to Mr. Durham and his colleagues. But publicly available reports, including by Andrew McCarthy in his new book, “Ball of Collusion,” suggest that during the 2016 campaign the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to get evidence from Ukrainian government officials against Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, to pressure him into cooperating against Mr. Trump. When you grope through the miasma of Slavic names and follow the daisy chain of related people and entities, it appears that Ukrainian officials who backed the Clinton campaign provided information that generated the investigation of Mr. Manafort—acts that one Ukrainian court has said violated Ukrainian law and “led to interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine as a state.””
I have little sympathy for Manafort but it is obvious that he was no more corrupt than a slew of Democrat ex-officials like Gregg Craig, let off last week by the proverbial DC jury, and the Podesta brothers.
I do have sympathy for Manafort, in that he was singled out and given the full weight of the Federal Governments highly selective, scorched earth, prosecutorial treatment because the corrupt Weissmann Special Counsel incorrectly held out hope Manafort had some dirt on Trump.
Weissmann had exactly zero interest in the Manafort tax evasion, FARA, and other process crimes. Weissmann was bracing Manafort for dirt on Trump. Manafort was jailed in solitary confinement for white collar tax evasion, and FARA crimes while violent criminals routinely receive more lenient pretrial treatment.
Was lobbyist DC insider wheeler dealer Manafort guilty of the above white collar crimes …. yes …. he plead guilty to the charges.
Could many other wheeler dealer DC lobbyists insiders withstand the Weissmann proctological exam given to Manafort and come out unscathed ….. I doubt it.
I’ll believe in justice, when I see justice.
It is interesting how what Manafort is criminal. But Biden and Son is just peachy keen.
One of the reasons I am a life time Democrat is because of how many things are illegal if you are not.
I do like the concept of avoiding any investigation, criminal or otherwise, by simply running for public office against an incumbent administration.
If law enforcement begins an investigation, the alleged “dirty” political challenger simply claims the entire “matter in question” has been looked into with no wrong doing found, then the challenger announces any investigation is politically motivated with the incumbent administration abusing it’s police powers.
But again, this strategy can only work with the compliance of the Fourth Estate, thus making this strategy inoperable for the (R)’s.
A nice summary of the motives behind all this hysteria,
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/09/four-theories-of-impeachment.php
1.The Democratic 2020 president field is unbelievably weak.
2.Would a protracted and bitter impeachment cause the economy to wobble in time to help Democrats?
3.This is really about tying up the Senate to prevent Trump from confirming a successor to Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
4.This is payback for the Clinton impeachment
5.Why doesn’t Warren go after Joe Biden with the Hunter Biden material?
That was a bonus point.
I choose all four
The economy is going to crash before the election. That is a given. Look for the Fed to start raising interest rates early 2020.
6. Ratchet up the noise around Trump impeachment so that people will lose interest, tune out, and not care about the forthcoming IG report.
Put not your faith in man.
I doubt there will be anything with a lasting impact and no criminal prosecutions.
Not if the feckless, mother@#$%&*&%$#@! republicans will wake the hell up! Where are you guys??
Sen. Graham, of all people, has been reasonably out front on this stuff saying the Democrats have been pretty shady on this stuff.
Manafort is a world class sleaze, on a par with the Clintons. He’s not a run of the mill sleaze. I’ve got no sympathy for him either. I just wish more people of his ilk could share his cell.
Did Hunter Biden uphold the provisions of FARA that Manafort is serving time for? I do not think so. BTW, is Weissman still working on the prosecutions and being paid by US taxpayers, i.e. Mike Flynn and Roger Stone?
I in no way mean to suggest Manafort is not whatever pejorative you choose to attach to Manafort, but I do disagree that Manafort is unique in his professional business dealings(ie: “He’s not a run of the mill sleaze”). There are many like him or worse not doing prison time and who never will.
My larger point is the Weissmann Special Counsel only took a particular interest in this particular “sleaze” because Weissman made the huge miscalculation that Manafort had dirt on Trump. Manafort would have been better off if he actually did have dirt on Trump to give to Weissmann, but because Manafort had zero useful Trump dirt, now Manafort is a 70 year old man doing 7 and a half years in the Federal penitentiary.
Doesn’t Graham v2.0 make you wonder about McCain’s influence? I’m so glad that malignant force is gone.
When Trump gets reelected one of his first acts should be a commutation for Manafort
Maybe, but not before the full pardon for Michael Flynn.
Eager: “Sen. Graham, of all people, has been reasonably out front on this stuff saying the Democrats have been pretty shady on this stuff. “
From Conservative Tree House: “Curiously on Monday night, Sean Hannity asked Graham if he believed the U.K., Italy and Australia participated in a covert scheme with U.S. intelligence to subvert U.S. laws and target the Trump campaign? Graham’s response was a little surprising:…”I don’t know, but I know we’re going to find out about that in two weeks.”
Graham seems to know something- as perhaps he should as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It would be really great if something substantial came out within two weeks from the Justice Department that finally spoke the truth about the Russian Hoax.
What I would really like is for AG Barr to interview Julian Assange. Julian, because he received the hacked DNC files- surely knows where they came from- which is likely from Seth Rich and his brother. If it can be verified that Seth Rich hacked the DNC, the Counterintelligence Probe falls completely apart and with it the Special Counsel. That assertion if true raises some much more serious questions that need to be asked like why wasn’t the Seth Rich connection ever investigated by the Counterintelligence Probe or the Special Counsel and worst of all for the Democrats – who did what to Seth Rich and what do they know?
Some people are waiting for the IG Horowitz report. Don’t hold your breath. It has come out that Horowitz was a Democrat donor, and that his wife was/is a high profile consultant to the Democrats. As a result he has been accused of pulling his punches. Gee, What a surprise! But yet again, his appointment raises serious issues of why he was appointed in the first place when he had apparently such serious conflict of interest issues.
Horowitz was appointed in 2012. That he’s associated with the Democrats should not be a surprise. I’d be satisfied if his report is comprehensive. I expect there will be some referrals, but decisions about prosecution are up to the DoJ, not its IG.
As I’d opined before, I don’t expect much from any investigation. Life is messy, motives are mixed and justice is rarely as satisfying as anticipated.
Expect the worst, pray for the best.
I think Flynn’s plea is about to be vacated for prosecutorial misconduct. Sydney Powell is the lawyer he should have had. Ditto for Papadopolous. I did a lot of expert witness stuff in med-mal cases. It taught me how critical the skill of the lawyer is. I got one defense case that involved a man dying of a perforated ulcer. The surgeon waited too long to make the diagnosis. I told the defense lawyer that I could only testify that the care was standard until 3 PM. After that, it was negligence. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me as his expert as I would have to testify, if asked about the treatment after 3 PM.
He replied, “Don’t worry. He is not smart enough to ask that question. And that is how it went.
Graham is another example of how despicable the behavior of Burr the Senate Intell committee chair. Warner has him wrapped around his finger.
It seems to me the entire investigation into the nefarious doings of various agencies and the beginnings of the Russia debacle is being handled ineptly. AG Barr should have publicly announced a blue-ribbon commission populated with a few prominent Trump people but backed up by the justice department to investigate the origins of improperly spying on a presidential campaign. Instead, it has taken place behind the scenes resulting in a total misinterpretation of its legitimacy.
I concur on why he was targeted. I still think he was on the extraordinary side in the grifting olympics. Not unique, but not run of the mill either.
Attorneys General are not charged with setting up blue ribbon commissions. That’s simply outside his remit. They’re charged with investigating crimes. The very best thing he could have done is charge serious, smart, dedicated, capable prosecutors to get to the bottom of it and by all accounts, that’s what he’s done.
That’s the trick: If you keep a low profile off in the background and fly under the radar, you skate.
Becoming campaign manager for Trump, even worse, Trump actually winning the 2016 election, put Manafort squared up in the kill zone with nowhere to find cover.
I stand corrected as I thought it was the DOJ. According to a quick Google search, LBJ created the Warren Commission by executive order to get to the bottom of the JFK assassination, and I had something like that in mind. The only reason I suggested it to begin with is it seems the press is confusing a legitimate inquiry into an illegitimate use of the government to weaken a political candidate as opposed to Trump just trying to get dirt on a political opponent.
More evidence that Barr is doing his job, ( from Sundance at CTH):
“When reports first surfaced that AG Bill Barr had traveled to Italy recently, we surmised the trip was likely related to Joseph Mifsud; specifically related to an audio-taped deposition that Mifsud gave to Italian police about being a western intelligence asset who was enlisted by the CIA (Brennan) to run a covert intelligence operation against the Donald Trump campaign in 2016.
If accurate, well, there’s the motive for the latest “CIA whistle-blower” approach.”
The Daily Beast is now reporting that Bill Barr’s visit to Italy was exactly for that reason:
“It is unknown whether Barr and Durham actually interviewed Mr. Mifsud in person. Some say yes, some say no.”
The really good news, is that Barr and Durham are actually either interviewing people of interest or listening to their interviews unlike IG Horowitz who couldn’t be bothered with the facts of the case.