Foreign influence on our elections

One of the reasons I voted for Trump — despite having misgivings about his character and some of his policy positions — was my certainty that his administration would be subjected to scrutiny in ways that the corruptocrat Clinton would never be.  So far, events seem to be proving that I was right.  The media, the opposition party, and even the party in power are all pushing back against Trump in ways that would never have occurred if HRH had been elected.  For the first time in eight years, questioning the president’s policies is no longer racist.  For at least the next four years, it will not be sexist to question the president’s policies or motives.

President Obama previously assured the nation that foreign involvement in the electoral process did not affect the outcome.  Jill Stein has admitted that her recount efforts will not alter the outcome.  Yet, consistent with my belief that a government under the lead of President Trump will be subject to the type of scrutiny reserved exclusively for white male republicans, there is now a call for an investigation into the influence of foreign powers on the election.

I agree.  Let’s peel back the curtain on this.  One of (yes one of) the questions should be what role, if any, Russian influences had on the process.  Let’s explicitly put that into the charter of the group that will be looking into this.  Let’s stick with something that works: let’s give Trey Gowdy a select committee to look into foreign influence over U.S. elections.

But let’s give him a charter to really look into this.  Before we get to the 2016 election, let’s make sure that Congressman Gowdy’s committee is able to put the 2016 election into context, shall we?  I mean, you can’t possibly object to the idea that we need to understand the historical developments that led to 2016 in order to really get to the bottom of this year’s events, right?

Charter One: Congressman Gowdy’s committee will be given subpoena power to demand documents and testimony regarding foreign online campaign contributions in the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns.  Clinton machine strategist Dick Morris famously called for an investigation into the Obama campaign when it was revealed that his campaign website did not use standard fraud prevention techniques, that a huge portion of donations were below the amount that would trigger reporting requirements to the FEC, and that a significant source of the traffic to his campaign donation website was a separate (foreign-owned) website with substantial foreign traffic.  I think it’s a very important question that should be answered: what do the IP logs of the Obama campaign donation website show?  What percentage of donors were accessing the website from foreign IP addresses?  What percentage of the credit cards being used for those small, non-traceable donations in 2008 and 2012 were issued by foreign banks?  What percentage were stored value reloadable cards that can be bought in the U.S. and used by foreign people?  Because foreign influence on U.S. elections is a major concern, right?

Charter Two: Congressman Gowdy’s committee should be given subpoena power to demand documents and testimony regarding the Obama administration’s interactions with the Russian government before and after the 2012 election.  The Obama regime’s problems with Russia in 2012 can be summarized in two vignettes.  In October 2012, Mitt Romney stated that he believed Russia was our primary geopolitical foe.  Obama, in what will likely become a trademark of his failure as a president, used a debate to mock that view, stating “The 1980’s called.  They want their foreign policy back.  The cold war’s been over for 20 years.”  Juxtaposed against this dismissive sneer is Obama just seven months earlier, when he thought he was off the record, telling Russian President Medvedev that he needed the Russians to give him time to deal with issues including European missile defense.  He assured Medvedev that “this is my last election” and that “after my election I have more flexibility.”  Medvedev replied, “I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”

Thus, in early 2012, Obama was concerned about Russia taking actions during the campaign season and he asked for them to give him time.  He specifically offered, in exchange, that he would have “flexibility” to offer the Russians after the election (because he would never run for office again.)  Medvedev said that he understood and that he would relay that message directly to Vladimir Putin.  Then, seven months later, when Romney made Russian belligerence an issue in the 2012 campaign, Obama conducted his signature dismissive move.  Of course, history has proven that, as with so many things, Romney was right and Obama was wrong.

Congressman Gowdy should vigorously investigate: (a) what information did the U.S. intelligence community (IC) have in 2012 that led Obama to believe that the Russians were planning to take action during the 2012 election; (b) what assessment has the IC made about whether those feared Russian actions were, in fact, taken in 2012, or did the Russians behave differently after being assured of “flexibility” by Obama in his hot mic moment; (c) if the Russians behaved differently after the “flexibility” moment than the IC thought they would before the “flexibility” moment, what assessment does the IC make about whether Russia’s actions were changed with an interest in either influencing the election or obtaining the very “flexibility” that Obama promised them?  Because it’s really important to be sure that foreign actors are not trying to influence elections, right?  It would be horrible if the Russians had threatened to do something disruptive during the 2012 campaign in order to extract the president’s signature supplication.  Right?

Charter Three.  Congressman Gowdy’s committee should be given the authority and power to investigate foreign government donations to the Clinton Foundation and any ties between foreign governments and the “speaking” fees paid to HRH and her husband.  Some of the topics that Congressman Gowdy should be able to investigate are: (a) why did Australia slash their donations to the Clinton Foundation just days after she lost her path to massive government power and what did the government of Australia believe they were able to buy in 2015 that they could not buy on November 9, 2016; (b) why did the government of Norway slash their donations to the Clinton foundation by about 80% immediately after Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election and what did Norway think they were buying in 2015 that was no longer for sale in November 2016; (c) what did Russia believe that they were getting when they gave Bill Clinton $500,000 for a “speech” while they were in the midst of uranium negotiations with his wife?  These are only representative questions, of course.  Congressman Gowdy should be given quite a wide berth to take this investigation wherever it might lead him.  Because it’s really important to make sure that foreign governments don’t influence U.S. elections, right?

Charter Four.  Congressman Gowdy should be given subpoena power to investigate what role, if any, foreigner Carlos Slim has over the editorial or news content of the New York Times.  Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is the largest single stockholder of the New York Times corporation.  In 2015, as HRH set about to pursue that which she believed was her rightful place in history, foreign billionaire Carlos Slim exercised his rights to claim about a 17% ownership stake in the New York Times, making him the largest single shareholder.  The New York Times not only dedicated their editorial pages to advancing the Clinton campaign, but for the first time the New York Times openly admitted that even their news organization was dedicated to HRH’s election.  This occurred, by the way, during an election where HRH campaigned on a platform that included allowing her to change the law to literally imprison the owners of corporations for criticizing her during the campaign.  This imprisonment of corporations for influencing people to vote against her would not have applied to the New York Times corporation, of course.  Congressman Gowdy should be given wide subpoena powers to investigate Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s role in any New York Times coverage of the 2016 campaign.

Charter Five: Congressman Gowdy’s committee should be given wide powers to investigate what actions were taken by — or on behalf of — foreign billionaire George Soros or any of his companies or other entities that had any impact whatsoever on the 2008, 21012, or 2016 elections.  Because it’s really important to be sure that we know what role foreigners had in influencing the election, right?  Does Soros try to influence voter turnout among US citizens living abroad?  Does Soros try to advance democratic candidates?  Does Soros encourage or influence protesters or other political expressions?

Charter Six: it is not only powerful and rich foreigners that might influence the U.S. election.  Sometimes an Army of Davids can have a significant impact on events that are larger than any one individual.  Congressman Gowdy should be given wide latitude to investigate what role, if any, foreign citizens played in the 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections.  President Trump has garnered substantial criticism for suggesting that the popular vote margin might be less than the number of non-citizens who voted for HRH.  Nobody in their right mind would suggest that not a single non-citizen vote was cast in this election.  Thus, the number of illegal non-citizen votes is some integer that is greater than or equal to 1 and less than or equal to 30 million.  If, in fact, Trump is right that the number is measured in the millions (and if that number has been consistent over the last several elections) then it is likely that no democrat has been legally elected in decades.  Let’s find out the truth.  Let’s given Congressman Gowdy the ability to fully investigate the extent of non-citizen voting, and the safeguards that are in place in every state to ensure that no non-citizens vote in presidential elections.  That will be fun.  The left is convinced (they tell us) that Trump’s concerns about non-citizen voting is absurd.  Let’s put this matter to rest forever.

Charter Seven: when Congressman Gowdy is satisfied that all of the first six charters of his committee’s mandate have been fully satisfied, he should swiftly move to investigate what role Russia played in influencing the 2016 election, via hacking, misinformation, or any other means.

It’s very important that foreign influence over our elections be investigated.  Let’s all get behind this effort.

A new feeling

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I watched a presidential election being called in favor of the person I voted for.  In every election since 1992, the winner did not get my vote.  I assumed 24 hours ago — like everyone — that Trump would not win.  I live in one of the states where there was no doubt Clinton would win the electoral votes, so when I woke up yesterday I thought about not casting a ballot.  NBC News changed my mind for me, so I owe them a debt of gratitude.

Shortly after 7:30, NBC purported to run a retrospective on the campaign.  Of course, they called it historic.  Of course, it featured both candidates.  But as the reel played out, it became clear that whoever picked the highlights of the election season (whether consciously or not) had created a hit piece on Trump and a hagiography to Clinton.  Every clip of Clinton was eloquent and was from the sliver of speeches where her shrill scolding voice seemed less grating then it normally does.  Every clip of Trump was teed up to include the most controversial phrases of the campaign, often played without context.  Conspicuously absent, for example, was Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment.  Conspicuously absent were Clinton’s coughing fits, her collapse on 9/11, any excerpt of her false Congressional testimony about her emails, etc.  Of course, none of the Trump clips were from his better speeches when he stayed on message and every clip was from his various rambling off script moments.

At the end of that retrospective, as the smug NBC talking heads sat around their New York set basking in the glory of their selected queen, I decided that I would vote against her even if my state was guaranteed to go her way.  Not as much as a token of support for him, and not even as much a vote against her.  But as a giant middle finger to the media who have abjectly failed to even try to provide news in this election cycle.

That’s the best part of the aftermath of this election for somebody like me who did not like either of these flawed candidates.  Watching the naval-gazing media scratch their heads and wonder why it is that they did not see this coming has been precious.  Seeing the media terrified that crowds of his supporters have no respect for them, after they have worked so hard to ruin whatever credibility they ever had, has been delicious.  And, in my sixth presidential election, I finally cast a vote for the person who won.

Clinton Scandal #2 – Child Advocacy

I had intended to make these entries roughly chronological, and if I had been successful in that this would either be one of the first or one of the last.  It definitely is not #2, but it’s close, so here goes.  For these kind of whoppers, I’ll try to insert them at the point in her life that she is lying about, not the time when she told the lie.  But I’ll have to retroactively fit in a few, such as her claims about being named after Edmund Hillary and being denied entry into the Marine Corps.

Anyway Hillary tells the world that:

“So, I went to work for the Children’s Defense Fund, going door-to-door in New Bedford, Mass., on behalf of children with disabilities who were denied the chance to go to school.

I remember meeting a young girl in a wheelchair on the small back porch of her house. She told me how badly she wanted to go to school — it just didn’t seem possible in those days. And I couldn’t stop thinking of my mother and what she’d gone through as a child.

Now, it’s partially true that Hillary was working at a children’s legal clinic in 1973 after she graduated fom law school   But she failed to mention that child advocacy was not exactly her first calling.  She first attempted to pass the DC bar exam and failed it.  People who want to help impoverished children in New Bedford do not take the DC bar exam.  People who take the DC bar exam want to practice law in DC.  People who fail the DC bar exam need to find things to do to pass the time while they wait to pass the Arkansas bar exam next time around, and sometimes they work in legal aid clinics to fill that gap in their resume.

So, let’s talk about the “young girl” on a back porch who “wanted to go to school” but “it just didn’t seem possible.”

Nonsense.  According to New Bedford radio host Kevin Pittman,

The Mayor of New Bedford in 1973 was a guy I happen to know, Mayor John Markey (81 years old and a lifelong Democrat now living in Dartmouth, MA). Mayor Markey is also a retired judge and a man whose credibility and character are beyond reproach. “Jack” as he is known, is eligible for both court and municipal pensions but only accepts one. All he has had to do for decades now is sign a piece of paper. He is not one to “double dip”. I called Jack and asked him a few questions about handicap services in 1973 at the New Bedford Public Schools, including wheelchair accessibility.

“I took over as Mayor in January of 1973. We had a budget for vans with drivers and provided services to students with disabilities. It was Tremblay Bus. They would pick them up and drop them off at their homes. Now, they may not have been able to go to the local neighborhood school, depending on whether or not the schools were accessible for wheelchairs and may have had to drive uptown or somewhere in the city but there were many schools then which could and did accommodate our handicapped students in wheelchairs”.

“In fact, we had a local guy (Katz) who was a paraplegic, injured in a diving accident who came to my office many times to advocate for the disabled and I actually spent an entire day in 1973 in a wheelchair to better understand the challenges they face everyday. Soon after that we were cutting out sidewalks for wheelchairs and doing things in New Bedford before the laws ever compelled us to.”

So… no.  When Hillary failed the DC bar and had to make do for a while in a legal aid clinic, New Bedford was already making education available to the “young girls” in wheelchairs sitting on the back porches of New Bedford homes by sending wheelchair accessible vans to take them from home to school and back again.

No, Hillary, you didn’t encounter a young girl who was not able to go to school.  Jack Markey had already made school accessible to all of those young girls way back while you were trying to pass the DC bar to get a job at a posh DC law firm.  Nice try.

Clinton Scandal #1 – Watergate

In 1973, one of Hillary’s first jobs was to conduct legal work for the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry into Nixon in the wake of Watergate.  According to the person in charge of that inquiry, when her employment ended, “because of a number of her unethical practices I decided that I could not recommend her for any subsequent position of public or private trust.”  In fact, her former boss, a lifelong Democrat, later expressed “regret that, when I terminated her employment on the Nixon impeachment staff, I had not reported her unethical practices to the appropriate bar associations”  That’s right: Hillary’s first job out of law school would leave her first boss so concerned about her unethical behavior that he would later “regret” not reporting her to the bar.

Hillary’s path to the Watergate investigation committee was paved by her connections to the Kennedy wing of the democrat party, specifically a leftist professor Burke Marshall and Senator Ted Kennedy himself.  According to Zeifman, “she had obtained a position on our committee staff through the political patronage of her former Yale law school professor Burke Marshall and Senator Ted Kennedy.”  Marshall, who (along with Kennedy) secured Hillary’s position on the investigating committee, was a former assistant attorney general in the Robert Kennedy Department of Justice, and was the first person Ted Kennedy called after he left Mary Jo Kopechne to die of asphyxiation at Chappaquiddick.

Hillary apparently came into the tenure on the impeachment committee with an agenda: use the proceedings to advance the Kennedy machine.  The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee was New Jersey Democrat Peter Rodino.  Rodino appointed John Doar (another Burke Marshall protege) to lead the impeachment inquiry staff, along with Hillary and a former AUSA named Bernard Nussbaum.  Nussbaum would later be Bill Clinton’s White House Counsel.  According to Zeifman, “Marshall, Doar, Nussbaum, and Rodham had two hidden objectives regarding the conduct of the impeachment proceedings.”  The first was that “in order to enhance the prospect of Senator [Ted] Kennedy or another liberal Democrat being elected president in 1976, they hoped to keep Nixon in office ‘twisting in the wind’ for as long as possible. This would prevent then-Vice President Jerry Ford from becoming President and restoring moral authority to the Republican Party.”  It was conventional wisdom in 1974 that “a liberal Democrat would have become a shoe-in for the presidency in 1976 if Nixon had been kept in office until the end of his term.”  However, senior democrats (other than the Kennedy camp) “regarded it to be in the national interest” to replace Nixon with Ford as soon as possible to put Watergate in the past.  The interest of the country over the interest of the power elite.

According to Hillary’s former boss, lifelong democrat Zeifman, her “second objective” in a strategy of delay was to avoid a Senate impeachment trial, “in which as a defense Nixon might assert that [former President John] Kennedy had authorized far worse abuses of power than Nixon’s effort to ‘cover up’ the Watergate burglary (which Nixon had not authorized or known about in advance).”  According to Zeifman, “the crimes of [former President John] Kennedy included the use of the Mafia to attempt to assassinate Castro, as well as the successful assassinations of Diem in Vietnam and Lumumba in the Congo.”

Hillary thus enters into her employment on the Judiciary committee with two objectives: protect the legacy of John F. Kennedy, and protect the political prospects of Ted Kennedy.  Her position is secured by Robert F. Kennedy appointee (and Chappaquiddick Ted’s personal attorney) Burke Marshall.

So what?  After all, any person who has spent more than a week in the nation’s capital knows that positions like Hillary’s are filled for political purposes.  So she was planted on the Watergate committee to advance the Kennedy family’s agenda.  So what?  What would lead lifelong Democrat Zeifman to decide never to give Hillary a favorable recommendation and to “regret” that he never reported her to the bar association?

Ethical failure #1: Hillary tried to change the rules mid-stream contrary to the expressed instructions of her bosses.  “At [Zeifman’s] first meeting with [Hillary] [Zeifman] told [Hillary] that Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino, House Speaker Carl Albert, Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, Parliamentarian Lou Deschler and [Zeifman] had previously all agreed that we should rely only on the then existing House Rules, and not advocate any changes.  [Zeifman] also quoted Tip O’Neill’s statement that: ‘To try to change the rules now would be politically divisive. It would be like trying to change the traditional rules of baseball before a World Series.'”

Hillary assured Zeifman that she had not drafted, and would not advocate, any such rules changes.  However, Zeifman “soon learned that she had lied.”  She “had already drafted changes, and continued to advocate them.”  In one written legal memorandum, she “advocated denying President Nixon representation by counsel.”  In so doing she ignored the fact that in the committee’s then-most-recent prior impeachment proceeding, the committee had afforded the right to counsel to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

For those who are not familiar, Douglas had been the subject of two prior impeachment efforts: once in 1953 when he had stayed the execution of communist spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and once in 1970 for perceived moral shortcomings.  The leader of the 1970 impeachment efforts was then-Congressman Gerald Ford.  Just a few years later, Congressman Ford had become Vice-president Ford.  In 1974, Democrats Zeifman, Rodino, Albert, O’Neill, and Deschler were insistent that their impeachment of Republican Nixon should follow the exact same rules as the 1970 Republican impeachment of Democrat Douglas.  Fair is fair, right?  But Hillary had other plans, and even after assuring her boss that she would not try to change the rules in mid-season, so-to-speak, she advocated exactly that.  In the end, “only a few far-left Democrats supported Hillary’s recommendations.  A majority of the committee agreed to allow President Nixon to be represented by counsel and to hold hearings with live witnesses.”

For the first time in Hillary’s adult life, we see what will become the defining trait of her character: the rules that apply to others do not apply to her if they interfere with her political ambitions.  If it would advance the political interests of her patrons, the Kennedys, she would try to deny Nixon the right to counsel, even though Republicans had given Douglas the right to counsel at his impeachment just three years earlier.

Ethical failure #2: Removing the Douglas impeachment files from a publicly accessible place.  Zeifman “had also informed Hillary that the Douglas impeachment files were available for public inspection in the committee offices.”  Recall that the very highest Democrats involved in the impeachment had been insistent that the Nixon impeachment should be conduced the same as the recent Douglas impeachment.  But Hillary, contrary to her boss’s wishes, “removed the Douglas files without my permission and carried them to the offices of the impeachment inquiry staff—where they were no longer accessible to the public.”

Ethical Failure #3: Suppression of Congressionally-funded research.  In the spring of 1974, a Republican Congressman named Charles Wiggins, along with others on the Judiciary Committee, had asked that research be conducted to determine a standard by which to measure the alleged abuses of President Nixon.  The study was, in fact, carried out by a number of law professors at government expense, and it had been completed prior to the scheduled public hearings.  But the study was not made available to the very Congressmen who had requested it, who learned of its completion only after the fact when the government-funded study was published commercially and sold in book stores.  The study, according to Democrat Congressman Rodino, had been coordinated by none other than staffer Hillary Rodham.  Despite the fact that the study was published commercially in the fall of 1974, it had been withheld from the very Republican Congressmen who had requested its preparation because Hillary “did not think the manuscript was useful in its present form.”

Zeifman wrote that “after President Nixon’s resignation, a young lawyer, who shared an office with Hillary, confided in me that he was dismayed by her erroneous legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel—as well as an unwillingness to investigate Nixon.  In my diary of August 12, 1974 I noted the following:

John Labovitz apologized to me for the fact that months ago he and Hillary had lied to me [to conceal rules changes and dilatory tactics]. Labovitz said, ‘That came from Yale.’ I said, ‘You mean Burke Marshall’ [Senator Ted Kennedy’s chief political strategist, with whom Hillary regularly consulted in violation of House rules.] Labovitz said, ‘Yes.’ His apology was significant to me, not because it was a revelation but because of his contrition.”

Hillary’s first job after law school would provide a window into her ethical deficiencies that would surface again and again.  Having obtained the position through the patronage of Chappaquiddick Ted and the very lawyer who helped Ted avoid consequences for Kopechne’s death, she set about to preserve the JKF legacy and protect Ted’s legacy by denying Nixon the rights that had been afforded to Douglas just three years earlier.  If it meant changing the rules to benefit her benefactors, so be it.  If it meant suppressing congressionally-funded research that would be published commercially just months later, so be it.  This is the Hillary Doctrine.