[Townhall] While U.S. Attorney John Durham continues his criminal investigation into FISA abuse and other misconduct at the FBI, CIA, DIA and other federal government intelligence agencies, one of Special Counsel Robert Mueller allies was just sentenced to prison.
Mark Tolson, a former FBI analyst, illegally accessed the emails of right wing activist Jack Burkman in order to protect Mueller. He admitted to doing so in federal court last week. He will serve seven days behind bars and has been ordered to pay a $500 fine.
"I did what I did to try to protect Director Mueller, who can protect himself," Tolson told U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema.
After illegally sifting through emails, Tolson attempted to leak them to the press.
"After snooping through Burkman’s account, Tolson sent screenshots of the messages and offered the password to an unspecified journalist, court filings say," POLITICO reports.
#4
Hopefully Tolson and the Durham team will be able to establish a very close working relationship. I recommend 7 days at the Jekyll Island Club Resort.
[Townhall] It turns out that 2020 Democrat presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden has no intention of testifying during a Senate impeachment trial against Donald Trump.
During a discussion with the Des Moines Register editorial board Friday, Biden said that even if he were subpoenaed for testimony, he wouldn't attend.
"The reason I wouldn't is because it's all designed to deal with Trump doing what he's done his whole life, trying to take the focus off him. The issue is not what I did, not a single person, not one, not a single person, even that thug Guiliani and his (inaudible) compatriots, have said I did anything other than my job," Biden said. "This is all about a diversion."
Biden also tried to explain why he advocated for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating gas company Burisma. At the time Burisma paid Hunter Biden $83,000 per month to sit on the board, despite having no experience in the industry.
#5
… or, during testimony, just blurt out 'thank you, Iowa / New Hampshire' and wave your hands around like you're at a rally - 100% airtight 'senility defense'.
[Hot Air] A week ago the NY Times reported that the ongoing Durham investigation was looking at former CIA Director John Brennan’s possible role in pushing the Steele dossier. Today Politico published a piece which reads like push back against the Durham investigation from the CIA:
So who are these folks expressing concern about the Durham investigation? John McLaughlin is a former CIA Deputy Director who said last month "Thank God for the deep state" when talking about the push to impeach President Trump [Notice that John Brennan is sitting next to him]:
[PJ] Judicial Watch has filed two lawsuits after the CIA and the Department of Justice (DOJ) did not respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the communications of Eric Ciaramella, a CIA employee who reportedly worked on Ukraine issues with both the Obama and Trump White Houses. Many outlets have named him as the "whistleblower" who coordinated with staffers for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) before filing a report on Trump's Ukraine call, sparking the investigation that led to the president's impeachment.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump tweeted an article claiming ‐ once again ‐ that Ciaramella was the impeachment "whistleblower."
Previous reports have shown Ciaramella worked with former Vice President Joe Biden (and attended a State Department banquet at his invitation), the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate whose son is mentioned in the Ukraine call. Ciaramella was also cited in the Mueller report. When DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz revealed horrific FBI abuses in the FISA warrants obtained to spy on members of the Trump campaign in 2016, his report drew attention to the Obama administration's targeting of political opponents in that election ‐ potentially involving Ciaramella.
[RedState] After One America News reported on an old promotional video which had surfaced on Thursday, featuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her son Paul, President Trump took the opportunity to draw attention to her son’s ties to “an energy company which does business in Ukraine.” He tweeted the OAN report with the caption, “Wow Crazy Nancy, what’s going on? This is big stuff!”
According to OAN, at the time of the video, Paul Pelosi was a board member at Viscoil and an executive at a related company, NRGLab.
[NBC] RALEIGH, N.C. ‐ Republican attempts to require photo identification to vote in North Carolina are being thwarted again by judges hearing arguments that the mandate is tainted by bias that would deter black and Latino residents.
A federal court announced that next week U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs will formally block a photo ID requirement scheduled to begin in 2020. Unless the upcoming preliminary injunction is successfully appealed, the requirement will be halted until a lawsuit filed by the state NAACP and others is resolved.
Thursday's short written notice from the federal court in Winston-Salem previewed Biggs' order because state election officials were planning to expand efforts to educate voters about the ID law within days. Although the mandate would be carried out beginning with the March 3 primary, the requirement would actually start in just a few weeks with mail-in absentee ballot filers, who also would have to provide an ID copy.
The mandate identified several types of qualifying photo IDs and allowed people lacking one to get a free ID card or to fill out a form while voting explaining their "reasonable impediment" to obtaining one.
GOP leaders in charge of the legislature have been trying for most of the decade to advance voter ID, saying that more than 30 states require it and it builds confidence in elections. Data show voter impersonation is rare, however. The voting pool ‐ currently 6.8 million registered voters ‐ is critical in a closely divided presidential battleground state where statewide races are often competitive between the major parties.
#2
Judge. Tar. Feathers. Rail. Some assembly required...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
12/28/2019 8:58 Comments ||
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#3
But your airline pilot, neusurgeon and police officers still need ID to enter secure facilities. You still need ID to get on a plane, drive or come into the courthouse. Oh, and to buy cigarettes if you don't look old enough
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/28/2019 9:03 Comments ||
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#4
What about proof of where you live? Residency matters when voting yet we are just suppose to expect honesty from the general population while voting has been expanded from one day to several weeks.
#5
Voting is too important to regulate. Orwell smiles knowingly.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/28/2019 9:41 Comments ||
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#6
1) I had to produce ID to turn in my old cable box and get a new one. The lady in front of me was black and had to cough up an ID as well.
2) Now that the Feds are doing the Real ID thing (I had to produce a birth certificate to renew my driver's license), does that have any impact on this whole issue?
#8
Voter ID requirements must be effectice; otherwise the Dems wouldn't oppose these requirements so strongly. Many Dems must not be legitimately be elected.
#11
#9 in Mexicalifornia. Yep. Last election. Next election.
Given that the federal government demands a pic id to board a plane, anyone suggesting it suppresses black and latino travel?
Real voter suppression is allowing unqualified people vote. See - MN Senate election where the margin was less than the number of unqualified felons voted
h/t Instapundit
[PJ] - Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Grow Yucca in NYC) defended ideological purity tests and railed against politicians "funded by billionaires" last weekend. Yet she herself has been funded by a billionaire ‐ none other than former coal investor and current presidential candidate Tom Steyer.
AOC made her remarks after Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Not a Woman of Color) attacked one another for private fundraisers during the Democratic debate on December 19.
"For anyone who accuses us for instituting purity tests ‐ it’s called having values," AOC declared at a rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders (S-USSR), the candidate she has endorsed for 2020. "It’s called giving a damn. It’s called having standards for your conduct to not be funded by billionaires but to be funded by the people."
For all her sermonizing about not being "funded by billionaires," AOC is herself funded by a billionaire. In the 2018 cycle, she received a $2,700 donation from environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer, who made his billions at an investment firm investing in coal.
[IsraelTimes] Former CIA agent, who is planning run for Congress, says interest in Judaism stems from discovery that her great-grandfather was a rabbi.
Valerie Plame, the outed CIA agent at the center of a George W. Bush administration scandal, said she is now the member of a synagogue in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The revelation comes as Plame is running for Congress as a Democrat, and two years after her tweet of an anti-Semitic article led to her apology and professional repercussions.
Plame told Tal Schneider, a political reporter for Globes, an Israeli business daily, that her interest in Judaism stemmed from her discovery that her great-grandfather was a rabbi who fled Ukraine at the turn of the last century.
“I’ve always been drawn to that aspect of my Jewish heritage,” Plame said in tweets with videos that Schneider posted on Friday, “so it led me to Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe.”
Plame said she was especially attracted to the temple’s social justice initiatives, and that she is a member. Schneider confirmed with members of the local Jewish community that Plame had attended some services.
Plame had mentioned her Jewish background when she launched her congressional bid in September but did not say she identified in any way as Jewish.
Figures in the Bush administration outed Plame after her then-husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson, revealed in the lead-up to the Iraq War that on a Bush administration mission he had debunked one of the major pieces of evidence that Saddam Hussein was seeking weapons of mass destruction.
In 2017, Plame apologized for retweeting an article on a white supremacist website that claimed Jews were behind a push for war between Iran and the United States. She apologized again in her interview with Schneider.
The tweet led Plame to resign from the board of Ploughshares Fund, an influential anti-war foundation.
#3
"Hi, Valerie, I'll see you at temple...
Why, sure I am! Sorry, no sample...
It's not just a figment!
I've dug up a fragment
My Rabbi declares more than ample...
And she should know, being from the old country herself... Oh, yes, we're very close. Been married for weeks now! Don't ya love what she's done with the braids?"
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/28/2019 6:04 Comments ||
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#5
Half the people at a lot of synagogues hate themselves too, Val, so no worries.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/28/2019 9:13 Comments ||
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#6
"Hanoi Jane" Fonda later claimed she got (Christian) religion and currently claims to worship Gaia... Maybe it is an old age and oncoming mortality thing for Plame and Fonda -- or Plame to fool the rubes into electing her.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.