Archive for 2021

FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN HEADLEY GRANGE, HAMPSHIRE: The Top 10 Led Zeppelin Riffs Ranked (Video).

REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: Clinton Campaign Spread Alfa Bank Ruse Throughout Obama Admin to Press Trump-Russia Prob.

A Hillary Clinton campaign operation to plant a false rumor about Donald Trump setting up a “secret hotline” to Moscow through a Russian bank was much broader than known and involved multiple U.S. agencies, according to declassified documents and sources briefed on an ongoing criminal investigation of the scheme.

In addition to the FBI, the 2016 Clinton campaign tried to convince the Obama administration’s State Department, Justice Department and Central Intelligence Agency to look into the hoax, and continued pressing the issue even after Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.

The goal was to trigger federal investigative activity targeting her Republican rival and leak the damaging information to the media.

They succeeded.

Plus: “Billing the Democrat’s campaign for his work on the ‘confidential project,’ Sussmann recruited Joffe and a team of federal computer contractors to mine proprietary databases containing vast quantities of sensitive, nonpublic Internet data for possible dirt on Trump and his advisers. In a new court document filed last week, Durham revealed his team has obtained more than 80,000 pages of documents in response to grand jury subpoenas issued to more than 15 targets and witnesses, including the computer contractors. Among others receiving subpoenas: political organizations, private firms, tech companies and other entities, including a major university — Georgia Tech — which allegedly participated in the Clinton conspiracy as a Pentagon contractor. Some witnesses have been granted immunity and are cooperating with prosecutors, the sources close to the probe said.”

Also: “One would expect a CIA official to express reluctance in an investigation that would have a largely domestic focus. But as with the FBI, the Clinton campaign found eager officials to move on any such allegation. . . . Sources say it is odd that FBI headquarters continued to pursue the allegations, because internal FBI communications reveal that the bureau’s own cyber sleuths had pooh-poohed them within days of Sussmann’s briefing, RCI has learned.”

LEGAL PUN OF THE YEAR:

DON’T COUNT THOSE VIRGINIA CHICKENS JUST YET: Stella Morabito in The Federalist points to multiple reasons for skepticism about those “free and fair” election claims repeatedly being made by Virginia Democrats.

THEN: ZOMG RON DESANTIS IS GOING TO KILL EVERYONE!!!!!

NOW: Florida Reaches Lowest Case Rate in the Nation.

Plus: “In addition to cases, hospitalizations have plummeted in our state. This has been accomplished by making monoclonal antibody treatments and vaccines widely available throughout our state while protecting Floridians from government overreach.”

Flashback: Ron DeSantis has emerged as America’s awesome ‘shadow president.’ “Unlike a British shadow government, DeSantis has real executive power of his own — not in the federal government, but in his capacity as governor of America’s third most populous state. And he has been doing an excellent job of drawing contrasts between his way and the approach taken by the Biden-Harris administration.”

Related: Florida Acquires Monoclonal Antibodies From GlaxoSmithKline After Biden Administration’s Rationing.

#JOURNALISM:

The first criticism I read was “The 14 things you need to know about Trump’s letter in the Wall Street Journal” by Philip Bump in The Washington Post. From the headline, you might think you’re going to get a point-by-point fact check, but that’s not what this is. Bump’s list begins with the assertion that “The Wall Street Journal should not have published it without assessing the claims and demonstrating where they were wrong, misleading or unimportant.”

That’s not a fact “you need to know,” just an opinion about journalistic professionalism. Is there a general rule in journalism — a rule Bump’s newspaper follows — that you don’t publish accusations before you’ve independently checked them? If so, I see that rule broken every day. Maybe there’s the idea that Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election is a special case, because we need to be committed to the legitimacy of the current government and because there’s too much discord and a decent newspaper shouldn’t be roiling people up on this subject.

“We need to be committed to the legitimacy of the current government” is always a journalistic “principle” so long as the current government is controlled by Democrat. And “too much discord” is bad unless it’s promoted by leftists shouting “no justice, no peace.”

Plus: “Now that Trump’s letter is published, it’s time to do the point-by-point fact checking.”

But the Washington Post didn’t do that, did it? Why not?

Here’s Trump’s letter to the WSJ, non-paywalled. Read it for yourself.