As I explained there, the New York Times reported in August 2016 how Ukraine’s “newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau” took an interest in Donald Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort — what a coincidence! — and guess what they found? A handwritten ledger allegedly showing cash payments to Manafort. Except this was ridiculous, for several reasons, and the ledger was obviously a forgery:
Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner Konstantin Kilimnik, a regular informer for the State Department, told the U.S. government almost immediately after The New York Times wrote about the ledger in August 2016 that the document probably was fake.
Manafort “could not have possibly taken large amounts of cash across three borders. It was always a different arrangement — payments were in wire transfers to his companies, which is not a violation,” Kilimnik wrote in an email to a senior U.S. official on Aug. 22, 2016.
He added: “I have some questions about this black cash stuff, because those published records do not make sense. The timeframe doesn’t match anything related to payments made to Manafort. …It does not match my records. All fees Manafort got were wires, not cash.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and the FBI were given copies of Kilimnik’s warning, according to three sources familiar with the documents.
It’s illegal to submit, as part of an official record, evidence to a judge — for example, in seeking a warrant against Paul Manafort– which the person submitting knows to be fraudulent, or which may be fraudulent.
It can result in an actual criminal charge being filed.
So, what did Mueller and Weismann do?
They could not submit the “black cash ledger” as evidence in seeking probable cause warrants against Manafort — that could expose their own corrupt asses to federal charges.
But they were determined to jam it in there anyway. So they submitted media reports as evidence supporting the warrant, based on leaks about the likely fraudulent ledger, as part of their application. They effectively submitted the contents of the “ledger,” without submitting the ledger itself — in order to avoid having to tell the judge, straight up, that they’d been warned by several informed sources that the thing was a forgery and a sham.
So, by leaking this “Ukraine ledger” story to the New York Times, the FBI in effect manufactured “evidence” to use to get a warrant to conduct surveillance on Manafort, a pattern of misconduct very similar to what the FBI did with the infamous “Steele dossier.”
Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy noted at National Review [Sept. 26] that then-President Barack Obama’s administration asked Ukraine to investigate Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, in 2016. . . .
McCarthy notes that “the Obama administration’s law-enforcement agencies pressured their Ukrainian counterparts to revive a dormant corruption investigation of Paul Manafort” in the middle of the 2016 presidential election.
The results were soon clear: leaks about Manafort’s activities in Ukraine began to appear in the U.S. media, spun in the worst possible light. He was replaced at the Trump campaign and became a target in the phony “collusion” narrative.
McCarthy notes the glaring double standard: “When the Obama administration leans on Ukraine for help in an investigation of political opponents, the Democrats and the media say, ‘But look how corrupt Paul Manafort was!’ When the Trump administration leans on Ukraine for help in an investigation of political opponents, the Democrats and the media say, ‘Abuse of power — impeach him!’”
The whole Russian “collusion” thing was a set-up — a frame job — and Attorney General William Barr has ordered an investigation to find out what happened in 2016, which is why Democrats panicked and started this not-really-an-impeachment over the Ukraine “whistleblower.”
Republican congressional leaders accused Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Democrats of rigging the impeachment scheme after news broke that Schiff was in contact with the whistleblower before the complaint against President Donald Trump was filed.
The report from the New York Times claimed that Schiff received an “early account by the future whistleblower” days before the person filed the complaint accusing Trump of presidential misconduct.
The report seemed to be confirmed by a Schiff spokesman, who said: “Like other whistle-blowers have done before and since under Republican and Democratic-controlled committees, the whistle-blower contacted the committee for guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the jurisdiction of the intelligence community.”
Schiff said during a Sept. 17 interview on MSNBC that he did not have “direct contact” with the person who filed the complaint.
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the minority whip, was among those reacting to the news, telling a Fox News reporter that he was “deeply concerned” that the whistleblower went to Schiff’s staff instead of waiting for the CIA whistleblower process to work through its conclusion. The person, who has not been identified publicly, reportedly filed the complaint initially with the CIA.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) shared the report and wrote in a statement: “Chairman Adam Schiff just got caught orchestrating with the whistleblower before the complaint was ever filed. Democrats have rigged this process from the start.”
Keep in mind, nobody was talking about the Biden-Ukraine thing before Schiff tried to turn this “whistleblower” into an impeachment. What Schiff never expected was that Trump would react by declassifying the transcript of his phone call and releasing it so everybody could see for themselves what he’d said to the Ukrainian president. And once he did that, most people looked at the transcript and said, “What scandal?”
If it was not wrong to ask Ukraine to investigate Paul Manafort, why is it wrong to ask Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden? Oops. And once people start asking those questions, who knows what they’ll become curious about next?
Last month, I rattled the tip jar for my brother Kirby, whose health problems have kept him out of work, and over the weekend he was hospitalized. Now he’s been released and my younger brother will be bringing Kirby up here to stay with us for a while until he can get back on his feet. You can send Kirby money via PayPal. Whatever you can give — $5, $10, $20 — would be appreciated. He’s got a GoFundMe account, if you’d rather contribute that way. Thanks in advance.
For two years, Rachel Maddow’s show was about one thing: “Russia! Russia! Russia!” She hyped Robert Mueller’s investigation as the silver bullet that would slay the Trump werewolf, and when Mueller failed, Maddow’s ratings slumped and have never recovered.
Rachel Maddow was trying to get to work. She only had to get from the glass door of her doctor’s office to the tinted-windowed S.U.V. that was idling at the curb, waiting to spirit her to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, but there was a hitch. Maddow had torn three ligaments in her left ankle — fishing accident — and one of those ligaments ripped off a piece of her bone, so now she was lumbering toward the sidewalk, her foot strapped into a boot, her lanky body bent over crutches that creaked and boomed with every hit to the sidewalk. In Manhattan, this had the effect of a kind of ritualistic drumbeat, alerting every liberal within earshot to her presence.
A woman with a graying ponytail suddenly wriggled into Maddow’s path. “Rachel,” she said, extending her phone to secure a selfie for a friend in Oregon who watches her show every single night and was going to bug out when she saw this. Maddow smiled for the camera as a man in long shorts planted himself 20 feet away, holding his own phone up horizontally to film the scene. When he saw Maddow see him, he smiled and waved slowly, as if he were a proud relative capturing a milestone. Farther down the block, a woman screamed something incomprehensible in her direction. As Maddow finally neared the curb, a woman with silver hair and chunky glasses materialized at her side and said with blasé familiarity: “I don’t know what happened to you, but I just want to say I love you. Keep up the good work. Can I give you a hug?”
Maddow balanced on her good foot. She spread her crutches out to accommodate the stranger’s embrace. “What’s your name?” Maddow asked brightly, as if she had hobbled out expressly for the purposes of saying hello. “Emily,” she said. She made a perfunctory gesture toward the silent bald man next to her. “This is Ed, my ex-husband.”
“Big fan of yours,” Ed said, and he went in for a handshake, which Maddow was eager to meet until she discovered, midreach, that her ankle could not make the pivot to a second greeter. “Whoa,” Maddow said. “No twisting! Sorry!”
“Be careful with her!” Emily said to Ed, and then, as she saw Maddow breaking away and toward the car, she urgently called out: “So — so what do you think? Elizabeth Warren?”
Finally sealed in the back seat, Maddow propped up the ankle. Then she turned and said, as if I were a friend and not yet another stranger pumping her for information: “That was dangerous! Did you see my twist with Ed?” . . .
Translation: “She’s so popular! Fans mob her in the streets! She’s like The Beatles on Ed Sullivan in February 1964!”
This 400-word anecdotal lead is the scene-setter of a 6,000-word feature. For those of you who aren’t in the journalism racket, 6,000 words is about eight times longer than the standard news article. It’s a bit longer than your average chapter of a non-fiction book, and it certainly took an entire week, if not more, to write something that long. What does the New York Times pay for freelance work? A dollar a word? If so, that 400-word lead is worth about three days’ work by a $15-an-hour laborer. And you’d have to hire that $15-an-hour worker for a month and a half to pay him what Amanda Hess got for that entire 6,000-word feature.
And it’s just publicity, not journalism — this article is simply free advertising for Maddow and her book, and why? Because she’s a Democrat, MSNBC is a Democrat network, the publisher and editors of her book are Democrats, and the New York Times is a Democrat paper. So this is not ordinary free publicity, it’s partisan political propaganda.
Noting how the New York Times profile includes some rather absurd vignettes of Maddow’s adoring fandom, Ed Driscoll remarks: “If this is what ‘real life’ looks like in America’s blue regions, the Babylon Bee is really going to have to up its satire game to compete.”
Oh, Maddow’s book? It combines a hostile attack on Big Oil with a conspiracy theory about (you guessed) Russia! Russia! Russia!
According to a 2018 gathering of exorcists at the Pontifical University of Regina Apostolorum in Rome, the number of requests for exorcisms has tripled over the past decade to about 500,000.
While exorcisms are considered the preserve of the Roman Catholic Church, in recent times there has been a growing interest in Protestant circles over the practice.
In May, the Roman Catholic Church announced that they were opening up their annual exorcism course at the Pontifical University to major Christian denominations, in response to a reported rise in demonic possessions.
Six years ago, when former Rep. Anthony Weiner was caught for the second time in a “sexting” scandal, I read my teenage son the Riot Act. “Never put anything in a text message you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the New York Times!” I shouted at my son, then only 14.
As parents, we have a responsibility to warn our children about the dangers of communication technology, and I’m happy to say that so far — knock on wood — none of my kids have been implicated in any such scandals. You simply can’t be too careful about these things, when people are losing their jobs over social-media posts from years ago.
A Tennessee teenager took his own life after being outed as bisexual by classmates who bullied him, according to his family.
Channing Smith, a 16-year-old student at Coffee County Central High School in Manchester, Tennessee, died by suicide last week, leaving his family looking for answers. The family said it reached out to the teen’s friends, classmates and social media connections and found out the shocking truth.
The teen had sent sexually explicit text messages to another boy shortly before his death. The recipient shared screenshots of the private messages with a female classmate, who released them on social media, according to his family.
Smith was not out at the time and the exposed messages led to incessant cyberbullying, the family said. He allegedly told a classmate about his plans to end his life due to the bullying, but she did not report the threats.
The kid’s family has turned this into a story about “hate” (“Being gay shouldn’t be a death sentence”) but if you don’t want to be “outed,” maybe don’t be sending “sexually explicit text messages”?
Really, would it have been any better if the kid had been sending heterosexual explicit messages? That could have led to accusations of “harassment” that might have been just as damaging. There is simply nothing good that can result from talking dirty on text messages. Before cell phones, before social media, before the Internet, there was a lot of stuff people got away with because of plausible deniability.
“So-and-so said you did this.” Yeah? Well, good luck proving it, officer. I have the right to have my attorney present during questioning, and otherwise, I have nothing to say to you. Simply by exercising your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, a clever hoodlum could beat the rap on a lot of stuff, but nowadays? These stupid kids are always texting everything or blasting it out on social media, and they don’t seem to realize they’re creating evidence against themselves.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about grand larceny or sex — if it’s not something you want the whole world to know, you really shouldn’t be putting it in a text message, or an email, or any other form of communication that creates a permanent digital record.
By the way, the son I warned so strongly during the Anthony Weiner scandal? He deleted his Facebook account and has never been on Twitter.
Smart kids should consider emulating my son’s example.
An alleged anti-black hate incident at a Washington, D.C.-area middle school that media outlets tried to link to Vice President Mike Pence’s wife was a hoax, the school said Monday.
Amari Allen, 12, accused three white classmates earlier in September of pinning her down and cutting off her dreadlocks during an attack at Immanuel Christian School, a private school in Springfield, Virginia.
“They said my hair was nappy and I was ugly,” Allen, a sixth-grader, told NBC Washington in an emotional interview.
The story received national attention not just because of the attack, but also because the school has a high-profile faculty member: Karen Pence.
The second lady teaches art at the school two days a week. NBC News and other outlets highlighted Pence’s job at Immanuel, which has come under the spotlight because the school adheres to traditional Christian teachings and reserves the right to expel gay and transgender students.
