By Mike Huckabee
June 5, 2022
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Good morning! Here are the top stories from this week that I think you will want to read:
- The “Protect Our Kids Act”
- Where does the special counsel go from here?
- The “racist anti-racist” movement
- Our theory: Sussmann trial was a "loss leader" for Durham
- The reign of terror and error by transgender activists might finally be coming to an end
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.
Jeremiah 29:12
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The “Protect Our Kids Act”
This article was originally published on June 2nd.
The House Judiciary Committee will hold an emergency meeting today to put together a bill that will reportedly include eight new gun control measures. It includes “proposals to raise the minimum age for purchasing a semi-automatic weapon from 18 to 21, ban ‘high capacity magazines,’ establish a registry for bump stocks and more.” True to form, it’s not called the “Gun Control Omnibus Act” but the “Protect Our Kids Act.” So when you hear that term, you’ll know what it actually is.
Never let it be said that we don’t listen to all sides of an issue. Here’s an op-ed by Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, detailing what he says are some small changes that could be made to gun laws and increasing support for mental health that could help reduce gun violence and prevent school shootings and that members of both parties could agree on.
https://www.foxnews.com/
I invite you to read what he has to say and tell us in the comments whether you would be willing to compromise on such measures, whether you think they would help, and why or why not.
For more, here’s Derek Hunter of Townhall.com analyzing a New York Times editorial demanding more gun control and explaining the holes in their thinking.
In his inimitable way, Kurt Schlichter explains that the problem isn’t a lack of gun laws, it’s a shortage of duty and accountability.
Finally, the uncle of one of the young victims of the Uvalde school shooting spoke out against people using their family’s name to promote more anti-gun laws. He said their own family are responsible gun owners, and they believe enhanced security at schools is a far better solution.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/
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Where does the special counsel go from here?
This article was originally published on June 2nd.
Don’t let anyone tell you that Special Counsel John Durham might as well pack it up after his loss in court Tuesday in the Sussmann case. That’s the mainstream media narrative –- at the conclusion of a trial they deliberately ignored –- and since when has a mainstream media narrative been true?
Former Attorney General Bill Barr appeared on “Jesse Watters Primetime” Wednesday night to comment on the Durham investigation in light of Michael Sussmann’s acquittal. Here’s the big take-away from that interview:
“No one’s more frustrated than the law enforcement people who are trying to uphold the law and trying to uphold one standard of the law –- and there’s not; there are two standards of the law, and we’ve had this struggle with that. And people have done, I think, a very good job trying to develop this case in the face of very strong headwinds. And part of this operation is to try to get the real story out. I’ve said from the beginning...if we can get convictions, if they’re achievable, then John Durham will achieve them. But...the other aspect of this is to get the story out, and I think the Danchenko prosecution [relative to the ‘dossier’] is gonna further amplify these themes and the role that the FBI leadership played in this, which is increasingly looking fishy and inexplicable.”
The prospect that the “dossier” was Russian disinformation fed through the Hillary campaign was “very real,” Barr said, and never looked into by special counsel Robert Mueller, Barr said, “even though he had all the relevant facts.”
Barr said he disagreed with Andrew McCarthy about the case being “lost or mismanaged” because of Durham painting the FBI as being ‘duped.’ (If you read what we said yesterday, you know we’re more in line with Barr than McCarthy on this.) “He didn’t. What I think he skillfully did,” Barr continued, “was focus on the clearest violation of the law that didn’t require him to prove even...[a] much more onerous case of the bad faith of the FBI at this stage. That would’ve been a Herculean case...[with a] high degree of difficulty compared to what he was doing.”
Durham didn’t say the FBI were ‘duped’ –- he “treated them as neutral, and let the facts speak for themselves,” Barr said. And the materiality of the lie told to the FBI, Barr thought, was clear. But this is a case that has to be built “painstakingly.” It would have been “a very hard case to prove, at this stage,” that the FBI “are bad guys,” he said. “Especially in front of a DC jury.”
NOTE that Barr has twice used the qualifier “at this stage,” implying that down the road, given what the investigation has revealed at that point, it might not be so hard to make the case.
“Complicated cases like this take a long time to build,” Barr concluded. “They occur step-by-step, and in secret. People don’t like that. But if they want people punished, that’s what it takes. If they want the facts of what happened, you can get it that much more quickly; you can give people immunity, and then require them to provide evidence. So, if you want the facts, if you want a report, that can be done fairly quickly. But if you want scalps, that takes time.”
If it’s true great minds think alike, I should congratulate the former attorney general for echoing essentially what we said here after the Sussmann verdict was read. The points to keep in mind are these:
– It’s true: there really are two systems of justice, and that is now painfully clear.
– Besides getting convictions if possible, Durham’s larger purpose is to get the full story out.
-- The next trial (Danchenko, involving the Steele “dossier”) will continue doing that.
-- The case did NOT hinge on the FBI being duped. Durham meant to let the facts show their behavior to be “fishy and inexplicable.” (In this courtroom, there would have been an acquittal either way.)
-- One big question to be answered is why the Mueller investigation tiptoed around known facts.
– The case Durham is building is very complicated and will take a long time.
– Durham is after big scalps. Don’t worry; this trial was just to sharpen the cleaver a little.
So, where does the investigation go from here? THE EPOCH TIMES has an excellent piece on that. (Writer Hans Mahncke does agree with McCarthy that Durham was pushing the “overarching” narrative that the FBI was duped; again, we saw that a bit differently.) Of course, there’s Danchenko and the “dossier” --- that trial is scheduled for October --- but there are other private actors such as the infamous Marc Elias, Fusion GPS co-founders Peter Fritsch and Glenn Simpson, and, of course, Rodney Joffe –- who was NOT granted immunity.
There was testimony in the Sussmann trial suggesting that Joffe had a role in analyzing the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC emails in May 2016. “If Joffe was involved in shaping the narrative of the alleged hacking,” Mahncke writes, “it would cast yet more doubt on the flimsy but prevailing conclusion that the Russian government was responsible.”
Let’s hope and pray that Durham is headed in that direction. It might even be the Holy Grail. The so-called “Russian hack” story laid the foundation for the whole Trump-Russia Hoax, yet there’s no evidence, at least that has been made public, that the DNC server was hacked by the Russians. The FBI accepted that explanation from the DNC without even examining their hard drive, which is in the possession of a company called CrowdStrike.
https://thescotfree.com/opinion/who-is-john-durham-targeting-next/
Mahncke points out that if Durham has more serious charges in mind for Joffe, he’s not hemmed in by the statute of limitations. For lying to the FBI, it’s only five years (and the allegations are from 2016), but for major fraud against the United States, it’s seven years.
Of course, there are also the “fishy” government actors such as the FBI’s Peter Strzok, Andy McCabe and Director James Comey. They seem like much slipperier fish to catch, but we now have evidence from this trial that the people on the 7th Floor were “fired up” about the Alfa Bank server and demanded a full investigation even though they had no credible evidence.
Jake Sullivan is another possible target. One fact, however, complicates Durham’s look at some government actors and shows how incestuous Washington DC is: Attorney General Merrick Garland’s counsel, Margaret Goodlander, is married to...Sullivan, who was helping spread the fake Alfa Bank narrative with Hillary and is now working in the Biden White House. For Durham, every day must feel like going to work in a mine field.
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The “racist anti-racist” movement
This article was originally published on June 2nd.
I often refer to modern so-called “anti-racist” efforts as the “racist anti-racist” movement. That’s not a partisan pejorative. I honestly believe that the left, under the guise of fighting racism, is actually attempting to divide Americans, foment hatred and suspicion of other races, and bring back the vile days of officially-enforced segregation and judging people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. Why do I think that? Because they just keep telling us over and over.
Here’s the latest example: Under the cloak of “equity,” some schools are now instituting race-based grading. The latest example is in Oak Park, Illinois, but as the linked story reports, it’s a growing trend that started in San Diego and like exotic diseases, wildfires and most awful leftist ideas, started spreading eastward from California.
The Illinois plan is typical of leftist policies in that it comes couched in fuzzy four-dollar words to hide its toxicity. It’s called “Transformative Education Professional Development and Grading.” It claims that “traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap” through “outdated practices” and “unconscious biases” like letting “non-academic factors” such as student behavior and whether a student shows up to class interfere with teacher evaluation of students. Things like showing up late, misbehaving in class or handing in work late cannot reduce a student’s overall class grade.
While the Illinois plan doesn’t mention any particular race that this is supposed to benefit, it does condemn the traditional system it’s replacing as a “race-based grading system,” so it’s pretty clear what the insulting thinking is behind this. It used to be called “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” but now it’s called “equity.”
This should be abhorrent to people of all races. I do have to say, though, that I admire the one teacher quoted who was brave enough to question what this will do to students. She noted that she has a job where she’s expected to show up on time, do the work and behave professionally. This system will not prepare students for what they’re going to encounter when they leave school and join the real world.
But it is a truly “transformative” system if you want students to be so poorly prepared for the work world that they’re transformed into permanent dependents of the state. I get the feeling that’s the “equity” they’d like to impose on all of us.
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Our theory: Sussmann trial was a "loss leader" for Durham
This article was published on June 1st.
By now, you know that Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann was found not guilty of lying to the FBI, even though he did.
In his statement after the trial, Sussmann said he didn’t lie to the FBI. But that was a lie, too. Special Counsel John Durham had absolute proof, in the form of a Perkins Coie billing record and a text to then-FBI general counsel James Baker saying that Sussmann wasn’t meeting with him on behalf of clients when he really was. But the judge used a technicality to let jurors weigh that second piece of evidence minimally, as it had been handed over to Durham by Baker after the statute of limitations had lapsed. Once Sussmann couldn’t be charged for THAT lie –- the one in the text –- Baker happened to remember some texts, including that one. Isn’t it funny how a lapsed statute of limitations can jog someone’s memory?
So it appears Baker and Sussmann were on the same team. Baker helped Sussmann, and so did the judge, who worked like a champ to keep Durham’s evidence out of the courtroom.
Nick Arama discusses the judge’s ruling on Sussmann’s text message here. He also reviews what Durham managed to expose about Hillary and her campaign, noting there is more to come.
Durham surely knew by the time the jury had been seated --- maybe even by the assignment of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee with huge ties to the Democrat Party and the DOJ --- that his chances of getting a conviction in this Washington DC court were nil. Heck, he probably knew it all along, but he had his reasons for pursuing it. Those who insist Durham’s defeat is some kind of “black mark” against his investigation are missing the important stuff.
Durham has exposed what Hillary and her campaign did, which went well beyond the “political dirty trick” of peddling a fake story to the media. They reinforced their fake story by also peddling it to the FBI to push for an investigation. In other words, they went to federal law enforcement under false pretenses to frame a political opponent, and THAT, if you or I did it, would be very serious indeed.
But this jury treated it like nothing. This is evident because the jury forewoman, who doesn’t give her name, has spoken to the media. And now we can see she went beyond the scope of what she was there to determine, concluding that the case shouldn’t have been prosecuted at all. “There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI,” she told the media.
Oh, REALLY?? What if, say, a Republican attorney for the Trump campaign had gone to a Republican-appointed FBI official with a fake story about Hillary Clinton a few days before the 2016 election, and had flat-out lied and said he wasn’t representing Trump? (Not that anyone would need to peddle a fake story about Hillary; there were enough real scandals about her.) Do you think this solid-Democrat Washington DC jury would just blow that off?
Of course not. They’d call it the crime of the century. They’d say this attorney was working with Russians. They’d blame him for Hillary’s loss. They’d call him an ultra-MAGA deplorable, an insurrectionist, destroyer of institutions, election-interferer. Their quick verdict would be Guilty, Guilty, Guilty. They might not even need any hard evidence, just an accusation by the Democrat special counsel. And that lawyer would be off to jail.
Of course, the judge made it a lot easier for the jury to think this was nothing, as he largely kept Durham’s evidence of the “joint venture” (broader conspiracy) out of the courtroom.
As Jonathan Turley tweeted: “Telling a lie to the FBI was the entire basis for the prosecution. It was the jury’s job to determine the fact of such a lie and its materiality.” As in, ONLY THAT. Turley noted that such a bias, if expressed during jury selection, would have led to this woman being challenged by the prosecution.
And Durham surely would’ve challenged her, but recall that Judge Cooper actually refused his challenge of some members of the jury pool who ended up on the jury.
The kicker: This woman insisted after the trial that politics had not been a factor.
Throughout the past two weeks, we’ve discussed the various factors that people are pointing to now in the post mortem. As Andrew C. McCarthy told FOX News Thursday evening, “In order to figure out this case, I think you really have to make up your mind about what the FBI is. Are they ‘a dupe’ or are they a willing collaborator? Durham has staked his investigation on the notion that they’re a dupe. You have to prove, for materiality purposes in a false statements trial, that the ‘duped’ party actually was fooled. And I think the evidence here was pretty strong that...they weren’t fooled at all by it. They fully knew that they were getting political information from a partisan source. And a lot of what they did was designed to conceal the fact that they knew that.”
All true. But that’s what we think Durham was really in that courtroom to show. Again, he had to know he would lose the Sussmann case, given the judge and jury. We believe this case was, to Durham, a “loss leader.” As you probably know, that’s a term in retail that describes a store selling one item, such as milk, at a loss, just to get people into the store. Similarly, the Sussmann case had to be a loss for Durham, but look at what it accomplished for the investigation as a whole!
In that observation, we are more in line with what Margot Cleveland says in her analysis from Tuesday. “...For all posterity,” she writes, Clinton’s fingerprints will be seen covering the worst political scandal of our country’s history.”
Here’s what she wrote just prior to the jury’s verdict, which, of course, she expected.
"...Measuring Durham’s performance by the outcome in United States v. Sussmann would be a mistake,” she said. “...It would ignore the valuable information exposed related to the broader Spygate scandal. Using that gauge as a measure, the special counsel’s office succeeded wildly.”
Her piece is a must-read. It’s infuriating to see how much was made of the Alfa Bank story and the whole Trump-Russia Hoax, considering that it was all based on NOTHING. It became an industry, a make-work program for lawyers. Years wasted, hundreds of attorneys and investigators, many millions of dollars, people’s lives ruined (Michael Flynn, to name one), and the country divided, all over a fake story.
“Justice” became a joke. As Charles Lipson wrote for SPECTATOR, “Despite Sussmann’s not-guilty verdict, his trial revealed the rank odor of Washington politics. It suffuses our courts, our law enforcement bureaucracy, and the mainstream media. It reeks of insider dealing and extreme partisan bias. That stench should alarm anyone concerned about America’s ability to govern democratically.”
This is what the special counsel has exposed, and will continue to expose. Thank you, Mr. Durham.
https://spectatorworld.com/
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More for Durham –- CAN WE BE SHOCKED ANYMORE?
As long as we’re talking about the stench of Washington politics, especially as it centers around Hillary Clinton and Perkins Coie, there’s a related story –- just breaking –- that the special counsel will want to look into, if he isn’t doing so already:
Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Jim Jordan of Ohio received an FBI whistleblower contact about the existence of an actual FBI workspace inside DNC and Hillary law firm Perkins Coie, complete with a portal to the FBI database. In response to a letter sent to them by Gaetz and Jordan, Perkins Coie reportedly admitted they have been hosting this "secure work environment" since 2012.
That’s right, the premiere Democrat law firm –- and, by extension, Hillary Clinton –- had a portal right into the FBI databases. If this is what it looks like, it takes what Hillary was doing as First Lady in the White House with individuals' raw FBI data (remember her mysterious White House “personnel” officer Craig Livingstone?) to a whole new level.
Fast-forward to 2022. “The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation,” writes Sundance at CONSERVATIVE TREEHOUSE, who has long suspected the existence of something like this. Here are the details.
He says that the record of non-compliant searches shows “the same people were continually being tracked, searched and surveilled by querying the FBI database over time.” The scale and scope of these unlawful searches, going back to 2012, was noticed by FISA presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer. And 2012 happens to be the year Perkins Coie first started operating the FBI portal. Also, the dates in the report from Gaetz and Jordan about Perkins Coie are “in direct alignment,” he says, with Collyer’s report on unlawful searches..
He sees this as “having the potential to be extremely explosive.”
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America The Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. To learn more about Kobuk Valley National Park, visit its website here.
The reign of terror and error by transgender activists might finally be coming to an end
This article was published on June 1st.
The reign of terror and error by transgender activists might finally be coming to an end, judging by several news stories that all came in over the weekend. First, another top executive at Netflix defended Dave Chappelle's and Ricky Gervais' right to make jokes about trans people as a free speech issue, just as comedians make jokes about anyone else, despite the furious calls for boycotts and censorship and the hyperbolic claims that joking about the excesses of trans activists will cause people to die.
https://news.yahoo.com/netflix-says-standing-dave-chappelle-171600618.html
Even some members of the trans community are speaking up in defense of Gervais, saying that he’s not attacking trans people, he’s speaking truth to power about the excesses of trans activists. One trans journalist wrote, “Trans activist ideology has run unchecked for too long, and it is time to call it to account."
“Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling has also refused to knuckle under to the cancel crowd and continues to speak out in defense of women (as Gervais would say, the old-fashioned kind, with wombs.) She was attacked for tweeting a news story about terrified women inmates at a New Jersey prison where officials are housing violent male felons who claim to “identify” as women. But HBO is still seeking a new creative deal with her.
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1530576557839994882
And then the most surprising and possibly portentous pushback of all: the New York Times actually ran a story Sunday on the trans takeover of women’s sports that not only fairly presented the concerns of female athletes (who came across as much more sympathetic than the selfish “#MeFirst” attitudes of the trans activists they quoted), it actually included comments from doctors. These experts who have medical degrees (and I assume, eyes) said that swimmer Lia Thomas does have an unfair advantage because going through puberty as a male confers physical advantages that a year or even four years of testosterone-lowering hormones cannot reverse.
Of course, irrefutable biological facts aren’t enough to stop Thomas, who now wants to compete against women in the Olympics, where officials are still easily cowed by accusations of transphobia.
Sister Toldjah at Redstate.com sees all these things as hopeful signs that the tide of public opinion is finally turning against the tidal wave of radical transgender insanity that’s engulfed society over the past two years. Or at least that people are finally growing spines.
I think the trans people who are defending Ricky Gervais are right: these radical activists are doing them more harm than good. They say they just want to be accepted to live their lives like anyone else, but the radicals are insisting that they be treated as a special class, with the right to never be called out no matter how unreasonable they are, to never be laughed at (as we all are at times), and to have the power to destroy anyone who criticizes them.
They claim to be a poor oppressed minority and say that any criticism of them is “punching down,” even as they’re the ones crushing other people. News flash: When people are cowering in fear that you’ll glare their way and destroy their lives, careers and reputations just because they told a joke you don’t like, you aren’t a powerless underdog. You’re that monstrous child who sent people to the cornfield on “The Twilight Zone.”
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