After 675 days, an enormous amount of manpower and resources, the Attorney General’s office reported today that the Special Counsel found no evidence of collusion in the 2016 election. The Department of Justice also found no evidence of obstruction of justice concerning the investigation.
The Mueller investigation will go down in history as one of the widest ranging and most expensive Special Counsel investigations ever.
o The total reported cost of the Special Counsel’s investigation through September 2018 was $25,215,853.00.
o The cost per day of the investigation through Mueller’s latest expense report, September 30th, 2018, was $50, 230.00 dollars per day, making it the second most expensive investigation in the history of the Special Counsel’s office.
o The Special Counsel’s office had at least 19 attorneys on staff, 12 more attorneys than the Starr investigation had upon commencing operations in 1994.
o After intensive investigations in Congress, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees along with the Senate Judiciary Committee all found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
o Since May 2017, these Congressional committees held at least 28 hearings and interviewed more than 100 individuals related to their investigations into the 2016 election.
o A combined 31 Congressmen are lawyers that sit on these committees.
o Total committee funding during the 115th Congress for the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees was at least $41 million.
o The combined focus of the Special Counsel’s investigation, Congressional investigations, and the focus of the media, made the 2016 Russia investigation one of the broadest and most widely scrutinized investigations in history.
o Over the past two years, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC reported extensively on the Russia Investigation, writing over 8,500 articles on the Mueller Investigation, or nearly 13 articles per day.
o Combined, Congress and the Special Counsel’s office interviewed more than 600 witnesses on the Russia Investigation.
o Between the Special Counsel’s Office and Congress, at least 50 lawyers worked on the investigation.
o To put these numbers in perspective:
o With the $25,215,853 million dollars spent by the Special Counsel’s Office, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) could attend Harvard Law School for the next 263 years.
o The combined number of attorneys in the Special Counsel’s team and lawyers serving on the Congressional Committees would make the 19th largest law firm in the state of Virginia.
o The Washington Post has written 192 more stories concerning the Russia Investigation than they have regarding the Administration’s defeat of ISIS.
o The New York Times has written 644 more stories concerning the Russia investigation than stories on the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
o CNN has written 906 more stories concerning the Russia Investigation than stories on the Trump Administration’s tax cuts for the middle class.
o MSNBC has written 4,202 total stories mentioning the Mueller investigation.
Justice Unserved: Jussie Smollett could have caused dangerous racial tensions and even riots as Chicago’s police spent countless hours and thousands of dollars investigating the hoax. This is the kind of action that MUST be punished and an example made of those who stoke public discourse. A civil society demands justice for those who recklessly abuse our system of law.
This is NOT a political question and should NOT be swept under the proverbial rug. In order for the rule of law to matter in our society, all have to abide by those rules. They hypocrisy of the left is even more disgusting and on display than ever before.
60 Plus Weekly Newsreel: A great, short and easy to listen summary of the week’s news in a short video who just don’t want to read it all:) Please enjoy and share with friends.
-Saul Anuzis
Collusiongate, RIP
Collusiongate is now history. The announcement late Friday afternoon that special counsel Robert Mueller had completed his investigation and Attorney General William Barr’s four-page letter released Sunday made it clear: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.â€
This is not what you expected if you’ve been watching CNN or MSNBC or reading the New York Times or the Washington Post these past two years. Their viewers and readers have been savoring the prospect of Donald Trump being frog-marched out of the White House, on his way to prison, with the smirk wiped off his face.
Now it’s clear that’s not going to happen. The House isn’t going to impeach and the Senate isn’t going to remove. Trump’s fate will instead be decided by the voters in 2020. Perhaps his exoneration — not too strong a word — will improve his surprisingly stable poll numbers. Or perhaps not. Certainly he will have greater credibility any time he charges the press with spreading “fake news.â€
Autopsy of a Dead Coup
The illegal effort to destroy the 2016 Trump campaign by Hillary Clinton campaign’s use of funds to create, disseminate among court media, and then salt among high Obama administration officials, a fabricated, opposition smear dossier failed.
So has the second special prosecutor phase of the coup to abort the Trump presidency failed. There are many elements to what in time likely will become recognized as the greatest scandal in American political history, marking the first occasion in which U.S. government bureaucrats sought to overturn an election and to remove a sitting U.S. president.
Preparing the Battlefield
No palace coup can take place without the perception of popular anger at a president.
The deep state is by nature cowardly. It does not move unless it feels it can disguise its subterranean efforts or that, if revealed, those efforts will be seen as popular and necessary—as expressed in tell-all book titles such as fired FBI Directors James Comey’s Higher Loyalty or in disgraced Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s psychodramatic The Threat.
‘Mother of all migrant caravans’ forming in Honduras as Trump threatens again to shut US-Mexico border
Mexico’s interior minister has warned that “the mother of all migrant caravans†is gathering in Honduras, as President Donald Trump again threatened to seal the US-Mexican border.
Olga Sanchez-Cordero said the caravan, forming in the Central American nation, was 20,000-strong. Another caravan of roughly 2,500 migrants is currently heading north.
Mexican officials announced that the government is was seeking to set up a “containment” belt of federal forces across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which is the narrowest part of the country’s south and the easiest to control.
The governments of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and the United States on Thursday announced they had agreed to a series of measures, including joint police work, improved border security, and efforts to deter international crime and curb “irregular migration.”
Trump has more female senior advisers than last three administrations
President Trump has seven women currently serving as senior White House advisers — more than any of his three predecessors.
At the same time in their presidencies, Barack Obama had five; George W. Bush three, and Bill Clinton five.
The report, in the Washington Examiner, notes that presidents who served before Clinton appointed so few women to top jobs that Trump’s record may be higher than that of any chief executive in history.
Trump’s appointees are: White House press secretary Sarah Sanders; counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway; CIA Director Gina Haspel; Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen; senior adviser Ivanka Trump (the president’s daughter); Director of Legislative Affairs Shahira Knight, and Director of Strategic Communications Mercedes Schlapp.
The president had an eighth until last December, when UN Ambassador Nikki Haley resigned.
Here’s the Conservative Plan to Improve Health Care
President Donald Trump said, shortly after his Justice Department announced it views Obamacare as unconstitutional, “The Republican Party will soon be known as the party of health care. You watch.†But that met with sneering from some. CNN, for instance, published an article headlined “Trump says GOP will be the party of health care but provides no plan.â€
In fact, though, conservatives have been working on this issue—and do have a plan. We’re reprinting an article we originally published last fall to highlight the Health Care Choices Proposal.
A proposal to repeal Obamacare entitlements and replace them with grants to states would reduce premiums for individual coverage by as much as 32 percent, according to an analysis by the Center for Health and Economy.
The Health Care Choices Proposal also would modestly reduce the deficit, increase the number of people with private health insurance, and cut Medicaid spending, according to Center for Health and Economy.
The Democrat Game: Expand the Court. Pack the Court. Secure Power for Generations .. “Elections,†the man once said, “have consequences.â€
In 2016, the need to fill a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court was a consequence foremost in the minds of voters. That the pick ended up being made by Donald Trump’s and not Hillary Rodham Clinton helped stoke the partisan rancor that has the country divided and beleaguered.
A Clinton pick would have turned the court to the left for the first time in decades. Trump’s first nominee preserved the originalist wing of the court. His second appointment solidified it. And the voters apparently approve. Pollster Scott Rasmussen recently found 61 percent of voters approve of the way the court is doing its job. The high level of confidence, he says, tracks back at least as far as August 2018, and 59 percent of those surveyed think the court’s power is at about the right level.
Chief Justice John Roberts, whom some conservatives regard as the weakest of the adherents to originalism currently on the court, has been accused of making compromises on legal points to protect the court’s reputation. The Rasmussen numbers suggest the strategy’s worked, at least to this point. Still, as Roberts’ deciding vote to uphold the constitutionality of the tax/penalty piece of Obamacare illuminates, the court’s power to decide legislative disputes is now firmly entrenched in the American system. This may not have been the founder’s intent, but the court now has the last word on controversial matters that many continue to argue should be settled in and by the legislature.
Right now, with the court stacked five to four against for the foreseeable future, the Left is up in arms. Seeking a fix, several candidates running for the Democratic presidential nomination have embraced the idea of expanding the size of the Supreme Court, formerly an obscure idea emanating from the academy. “Plain and simple, the Democrats are seeking to get through legislation what they couldn’t achieve at the ballot box,†says Brad Blakeman, a former Bush White House staffer. “They are seeking to add judges, not fill vacancies, which is totally subverting the system.â€
Want to Stop Russia from Invading the Baltic States? Turn Poland Into a Military Powerhouse.
Want to stop Russia from invading the Baltic States? Then bolster Poland’s military strength, and beef up U.S. troops in Poland.
That’s the message of a new report on how NATO can defend its Eastern European border.
“A future, more capable Polish military backed by a more robust U.S. forward presence in Poland could also foster the confidence needed for Warsaw to support the defense of NATO member territory located beyond its borders,†says the study, titled “Strengthening the Defense of NATO’s Eastern Frontier,†by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
‘Get Serious and Stop Rewarding Illegal Immigration,’ Border Patrol Agent Says to Congress
Border Patrol Agent Hector Garza told Fox News that Congress needs to “get serious and stop rewarding illegal immigration.†His comments follow one of the busiest weeks in Texas immigration history that saw nearly 1,700 migrants illegally cross the border in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in a single day.
“We have lost the ability to know who or what is coming across the border,†Agent Garza told Fox & Friends during an interview on Thursday morning. The agent spoke to Fox News in his capacity as Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council.
“If you live in a poor country like those in Central America and you make your way into the United States knowing that you are going to be released into the United States,†Garza stated, “why wouldn’t these people come? That’s why Congress needs to get serious about this — they need to change the laws so that people are not encouraged to come into the United States (illegally).â€
Garza’s comments come during a week where Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector apprehended nearly 1,700 migrants in a single day, Breitbart News reported. Border Patrol officials said the apprehensions represented the largest single-day total for the sector since 2014.
Hungary Builds Border Fence, Illegal Immigration Drops By 99{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9}
Hungary has defied George Soros and proved the European Union wrong, solving the illegal immigration crisis in their country with one simple move — building a border fence to protect their unique culture and sovereignty from invaders.
With Washington stalled on the debate over Trump’s border wall, Hungary is proving that border walls are very effective at successfully ending illegal immigration and securing borders.
Hungary’s border fence, which was completed in 2015 despite facing opposition from the European Union, George Soros and Angela Merkel, has proved incredibly successful, cutting the number of illegal immigrants from 391,000 in 2015 to just 1,184 in 2017.
Hungary has been at the forefront of the immigration debate in the EU, and has continually defied the European Union’s orders to open its borders to millions of Muslim migrants from Africa and the Middle East.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has vowed to fight against George Soros’ open borders ideology. Orban, a proud nationalist, has declared that his government will “put Hungary first†and will steadfastly refuse to bow to pressure to accept millions of migrants.
Federal Agencies Admit To $1.2 Trillion In Improper Payments Since 2004
Since 2004, twenty large federal agencies admit paying out an astonishing $1.2 trillion in improper payments. That amounts to more than one-quarter of President Trump’s proposed $4.7 trillion budget for 2020. Last year, these improper payments totaled $140 billion – that’s about $12 billion per month.
But what exactly is an improper payment? Federal law defines the term as “payments made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason.â€
In other words, there’s a lack of basic in-house financial controls within the largest federal agencies. When people or companies receive money they don’t deserve, it erodes our trust in government, our economy and government’s ability to finance everything from defense to health care.
Improper payments in health care are especially troubling. In 2011, when President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, Congress vowed to help pay for it by rooting out waste, fraud, corruption and taxpayer abuse from the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
It never happened.
In fact, the improper payments within these programs soared from $64 billion in 2012 to $85 billion today.
China’s Social Credit System – It’s Coming to the United States
In 2015, a 16-year-old student from Jiangsu, China, tried to board a train. She couldn’t even purchase a ticket.
The student, Zhong Pei, tried enrolling in classes at her university. But she was not allowed to do that either.
Zhong had committed a serious crime: She was guilty of being related to someone else. Her father had killed two people and died in a car accident. So the Chinese government blacklisted her as “dishonest.â€
It took her four months before she was able to overturn the decision and go to her university. China’s Social Credit System – America’s New Nightmare?
Wow: Chicago Drops All Charges Against Hate Crime Hoaxer Jussie Smollett, Cops ‘Furious’
In a stunning turn of events, Chicago officials have dropped all 16 felony charges against Jussie Smollett, the former Empire star who evidence shows staged a ‘hate crime’ against himself earlier this year. The decision was made by the office of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who recused herself from the case after text and email exchanges with a powerful ally of Smollett’s family were revealed. Foxx’s team has now abruptly ended the state’s prosecution of the disgraced actor. Here’s their stated reasoning:
“After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollet’s volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his bond to the City of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition & appropriate resolution…â€
They’re effectively conceding his guilt, but letting him off with “time served” (it’s unclear whether he’s actually done the community service in question) and a tiny forfeited bond. A judge has also agreed to seal all the relevant records in the case, a stunning development that isn’t getting enough attention. In response, Smollett’s attorneys issued a mind-bending celebratory statement, reiterating the ludicrous claim that their client is an innocent victim who was attacked by unknown assailants. How can this be spun as a just outcome if the criminal is maintaining his farcical lies?
50+ Journalists, Politicians, Celebrities, and Grifters Who Peddled the Russia Collusion Hoax
In 2016, corrupt Democrat partisans both in and out of government, along with their allies in the media, were desperate to stop the Trump juggernaut and used every tool at their disposal to do it. The effort started with opposition research funded by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Then several versions of former British spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier were delivered to the FBI, each from a different messenger: the late Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), Mother Jones reporter David Corn, and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson.
Then the FBI counterintelligence investigation began and subsequent FISA warrants were secured, citing a Yahoo News article that was based on the sketchy dossier. Finally, Mueller was called in to finish the job in May of 2017 and hopefully deliver the death blow to the new president.
But “Mueller Time” arrived, and it didn’t deliver the coup de grace to President Trump that Democrats and their allies in the media were hoping for. In fact, it did the opposite. It has delivered the coup de grace to Trump’s nemesis — the Russia-obsessed media. How many Americans are now looking at the media with a mixture of pity, disgust, and suspicion after being forced to listen to them caterwauling about Russia! Russia! Russia! for three long years? And how many Americans who believed every word of it are now having trouble processing the “disappointing” truth that our president is not “Putin’s Puppet”?
