By Mike Huckabee
August 31, 2022
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee staff! Thank you for subscribing and I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter.
With gratitude,
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139:23-24 KJV
If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected].
DOJ warning whistleblowers; some bad choices for "special master"
In case you’re wondering, yes, Attorney General Merrick Garland most certainly is trying to intimidate whistleblowers. We’ll get to that, but first, here’s why he’s doing it.
The headline in the WASHINGTON TIMES reads “Allegations of political bias, widespread misconduct prompt FBI agents to call for Wray resignation.” Now that Timothy Thibault has had to leave the FBI over allegations that his political bias affected which investigations were pursued and which were scrapped, rank-and-file agents are having a hard time believing that FBI Director Christopher Wray is still in his position.
“I’m hearing from [FBI personnel] that they feel like the director has lost control of the Bureau,” said Kurt Siuzdak, a former FBI agent and attorney who represents whistleblowers at the FBI. “They’re saying, ‘How does this guy survive? He’s leaving. He’s got to leave.”
The FBI has issued a statement that’s just what you might expect them to say. Excerpt: “The men and women of the FBI work hard every day to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. All employees are held to the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct, and we expect them to focus on process, rigor, and objectivity in performance of their duties...”
Blah blah blah. We have two words for whoever wrote that: “Peter Strzok.”
I’m sure it’s true that many of the 37,000 employees at the FBI are highly professional, conscientious people. Some of those are the ones coming forward now. Siuzdak said the agents “have lost confidence in Wray. All Wray does is go in and say 'we need more training and we’re doing stuff about it,' or 'we will not tolerate it.'”
“For Wray,” he continued, “not tolerating it means he doesn’t do anything. And that’s what I think people are reacting to because at this point you need to have leadership’s stepping-up and taking charge, and there’s a complete leadership vacuum.”
This seems to be the situation at the ‘Justice’ Department as well. Recall our commentary from several days ago that cited Jonathan Turley’s column, “The Incredible Shrinking Merrick Garland.” We hypothesized that Garland’s second-in-command, Obama attorney Lisa Monaco, was actually running the DOJ.
In their disclosures to Congress, whistleblowers reportedly say that Director Wray “was often notified of the problems within the Bureau but never took action to resolve them.” You might have read here in the newsletter that one issue was the fabrication of terrorism-related cases to elevate performance statistics (and also, I would add, to make it look like domestic terrorism was a very serious problem).
Why Wray has stayed in his job is indeed a question worth looking into. One factor was that President Trump, during the investigation of the bogus Trump-Russia “collusion,” was put in a position where he couldn’t really fire anyone in the 'Justice' Department without being accused of obstruction of justice. It didn’t matter that certain people richly deserved to be fired.
And how did Wray get the job in the first place? We at “Team Huckabee” have wondered that for years. Complaints from the right about Wray invariably spark comments such as, “Well, Trump appointed him,” and, “Come on, Wray is a Republican,” as if that mattered. Do you remember that Trey Gowdy was on the short list? There were no doubt other good options as well, but NO, someone who had Trump’s ear recommended Christopher Wray so highly to him that Wray got the job. We still don’t know who that was, but after doing some digging, we found what was probably the most glowing tribute to Wray at the time he was selected, and it came from Trump’s Attorney General (who recused himself from the entire [bogus] Trump-Russia investigation) Jeff Sessions. Sessions said this, which, in retrospect, just sounds bizarre:
“Chris combines a brilliant legal mind, outstanding accomplishments, and a proven record of public service. We are fortunate that he is willing to make this personal commitment to serve his country at this important time,” Sessions said in a statement. “The President asked us to look for an FBI Director who has integrity, who understands and is committed to the rule of law, and who is dedicated to protecting the American people from crime, gangs, and terrorists. We have found our man in Chris Wray.”
Wow, that Wray guy sounds like the perfect candidate for the job, doesn’t he? The rule of law couldn’t be in better hands. Thanks, Jeff Sessions!
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/30/allegations-political-bias-widespread-misconduct-p/
With so many whistleblowers --- disgusted by the raid on Mar-A-Lago, most likely --- coming forward from the FBI and ‘Justice,’ Garland is trying to make them think twice before talking to, say, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.
Nick Arama at REDSTATE says all these tattlers might be making the Biden administration nervous, and AG Garland has issued a written order to all DOJ employees, including the FBI, not to talk to Congress. “...This is an appropriate time,” he wrote, “to reaffirm and remind all Department personnel of our existing policies regarding communications between the Justice Department and Congress….”
Ironically, he’s going to have to answer to Congress for writing this, considering he’s done nothing to inhibit the FBI from leaking to the media any ridiculous narrative –- like the “nuclear secrets at Mar-A-Lago” story –- that could conceivably damage Trump.
Garland does mention whistleblower protections in his letter, but Arama says, “Let’s be real, when you see this letter coming now, telling people not to talk to Congress, you know what’s being said here, whether they try to put a nice fig leaf on it to cover it or not. Why would this letter be going out now? The people talking to Congress are the FBI whistleblowers.”
THE EPOCH TIMES has a report on who the supposedly neutral “special master” to go through the documents seized by the FBI at Mar-A-Lago might be. This is a “premium” story, subscription-only, but I’ll summarize.
As you know, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has said she intends to appoint a special master, and a helpful group called the National Security Counselors has told her it's identified four “uniquely qualified experts” on the matter of executive privilege. Zachary Steiber at ET has found that the head of this group, Kel McClanahan, has frequently denigrated President Trump online, as in this statement from yesterday: “I don’t want to jinx it, but seriously, only Donald Trump could singlehandedly snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory by being his arrogant, narcissistic, delusional self.”
One of the four “experts” named, Heidi Kitrosser, a professor of law at Northwestern University, has been viscerally anti-Trump on social media for years. Just this month, she called Trump “an existential threat to democracy.” She has promoted the Trump-Russia Hoax, sharing a blog post from 2018 titled “Keep in Mind that Putin Manages Trump with Carrots and Sticks.” Here are some of the things she has called him:
spineless
shameless
a narcissist
cowardl
dangerously obsessed with image control
bigoted in his immigration policy
Here are some of the people she has praised:
Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney
former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe
former DOJ official Bruce Ohr
Two other “experts” on the list, Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and Mitchel Sollenberger, professor of political science at the University of Michigan—Dearborn, frequently write op-eds together, and in March, they wrote one praising Biden’s decision not to back Trump’s claim of executive privilege over documents sought by the House J6 committee.
The fourth “expert” on the list, Jonathan Shaub, assistant professor of law at the University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law, said recently that Trump’s claim of executive privilege over records held at Mar-A-Lago “just misconstrues what executive privilege is,” telling REUTERS, “The person who decides whether executive privilege [applies] is the President, so the special master would be [President Joe] Biden.”
I am not kidding. Why even bother with the extra step of appointing a special master? Just let BIDEN decide! Come to think of it, Biden's probably not any more biased against Trump than these people are.
Curious thing about the National Security Counselors: We found that among their board of advisers is Mark Zaid. If that name is familiar to you, it’s because he, with co-counsel Andrew Bakaj, represented the anonymous “whistleblower” –- later identified as Eric Ciaramella –- who came forward with that bogus complaint about the call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy during Trump’s first impeachment. Zaid claims Bakaj, formerly with the CIA, is the more political one, but still...something to ponder.
Finally, we reported yesterday that Jeremy Bash, MSNBC analyst and big-time perpetrator of the lie that the Hunter laptop was “Russian disinformation,” has been appointed by Biden to his Intelligence Advisory Board. What a joke. Here’s what law professor Jonathan Turley had to say about it…
“I Know You Are, But What Am I?”
With President Biden and other top Democrats and their pet parrots in the media shamefully calling normal, hard-working, patriotic, God-fearing Americans Nazis, “semi-fascists” and the biggest extremist threat in America, their dangerously irresponsible rhetoric is already bearing rotten fruit among their unhinged followers. Note the eerily familiar graffiti left on the vandalized offices of the Seminole County, Florida, GOP (warning: foul language, of course.) The “A” in a circle is the symbol of their brownshirt goons, Antifa. They consider anyone to the right of Stalin to be a “fascist,” so they’re eating up Biden’s slander with a big wooden spoon. It’s as if he literally gave them their marching orders.
Some Antifa goons have now even started openly carrying AR-15s to threaten anyone who might try to interfere with having drag queens perform for young children. But again: WE’RE the dangerous fascist extremists. Stephen Green at PJ Media has the video.
As Nick Arama of Redstate.com points out, the Democrats, especially Biden, should recognize how dangerous their rhetoric has become, retract it and condemn such violence – but they’re so desperate to cling onto power, they won’t. Biden has a speech scheduled for Thursday in which he should pretend to be a statesman for once and renounce this movement. But instead, he’s expected to use it to demonize MAGA people even more. It seems that he’s found a particular demographic group to blame all his problems on and is encouraging his own dark-shirted, violent followers to threaten them with violence for daring to speak up against him. To students of real history who know what “fascism” actually is, that sounds eerily familiar.
Incidentally, read Stephen Green’s entire column linked above because he has several stories you should be aware of, including his implausible but oddly believable theory that Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist secretly never left the GOP and is working undercover for the Republicans by being the worst Democratic candidate ever. Just since winning the nomination a week ago, he’s hailed Joe Biden as the greatest President in history, accused the majority of state voters who elected Ron DeSantis of having “hate in their hearts” and said he didn’t want their stinkin’ votes, and now he’s picked as a running mate Karla Hernandez-Mats.
At a time when parents are fighting back against radical left teachers’ unions and voting out high-handed school board members, Crist chose the president of a Florida teachers’ union that, to quote Green, for 12 years “covered up for a teacher who pled guilty to sexual assault of a student;” who is “such a staunch proponent of COVID-19 school closures that she had hearses drive by school board meetings in 2020 and accused parents of being ‘soldiers of faux rage;’” and who even “tweeted a cartoon comparing parents who wanted to reopen schools to slasher villains Pennywise, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Leatherface.”
There you go, Floridians. You can’t say you don’t have a clear choice in this election!
The campaign to silence the AFP Report
Wealthy leftists have an ever-expanding list of things we’re not “allowed” to talk about these days, and in addition to the usual woke “isms,” that includes anything that points out their rank hypocrisy. Their latest crusade is an attempt to silence the AFP Report. It’s a private company that compiles flight records so that the public can track any particular jet, including private jets used by politicians, celebrities, royal family members and other “eco-warriors” who like to fly all over the world to nag the rest of us to lower our CO2 emissions.
They don’t like the rest of us knowing that they take CO2-spewing private jets the way the rest of us might take Ubers, so they’re complaining that the AFP Report is a security threat to them and should be shut down. Problem is, all it does is compile flight information that’s public domain, so if they didn’t do it, any number of other people could.
I suspect the real reason they’re so upset isn’t that this exposes them to physical danger as that it exposes the truth about them.
Some are trying to spin it away, like the claim from Taylor Swift’s people that she wasn’t taking all those flights; her jet is also used by other people. Okay, are any of them also big green nags who could be flying commercial, or better yet, holding their CO2-reduction meetings on Zoom like the rest of us, instead of at five-star resorts in Switzerland?
I’ll give Taylor Swift the benefit of the doubt that she only uses her private jet for the most urgent reasons. She was famous for being apolitical until the cancel culture pressure finally got to her and she came out as a typical MSNBC-quoting, Republican-denouncing showbiz lib -- conveniently, immediately after performing the final show of her giant stadium tour.
My writers Pat and Laura attended that final show in Arlington, Texas (no, they’re not Swifties; they were given free tickets and figured they’d check it out.) They report that it was the biggest production they’d ever seen, with massive video screens, indoor fireworks, flying platforms, dance troupes, a giant inflatable snake and much more. Taylor wanted the biggest production ever seen, and she got it. Good for her.
Except that doing that required over 160 diesel-powered semi-trailer trucks just to haul the massive stage sets to various stadiums, where a crew of hundreds would spend two days assembling it. By comparison, a typical touring act might use 4-to-10 semis.
https://jalopnik.com/it-s-taylor-swift-s-birthday-so-i-m-writing-about-why-1848209421
But would fans have filled stadiums to see Taylor Swift if she just sang with a small group, or accompanied herself on a guitar? Probably, yes. How much CO2 would that have kept out of the atmosphere? I’d bet more than your family will create over at least three generations. But it was important to her, just like jetting off to all those confabs where they tell the rest of us to cut our emissions is so, so important to very self-important people like John Kerry.
So that’s fine. Keep taking your private jets to environmental conferences. It’s still a semi-free country. But don’t tell me I don’t have the right to point out your hypocrisy. That’s the deal we all agree to: You have the freedom to be a self-important jackass, and I have the freedom to point it out and laugh at you. If you want me to stop, there’s a far better solution than trying to shut down free speech: do what I do and fly commercial. Or else just yak on Zoom.
Late-night release
In a late-night release to try to control their slipping narrative, the FBI put out a laughably staged photo, showing documents labeled “Top Secret” conveniently all spread out on the floor of Mar-A-Lago so that we can see all the cover labels. Former President Trump responded in his usual hilarious Trumpian way. Do they seriously think they’re going to out-Tweet this guy?
Angry over student loans
Add oil and gas workers to the growing list of Americans angry at President Biden for expecting them to foot the bill for other people’s student loans.
The president of the Oil & Gas Workers Association called it “one more slap in the face from this Administration” to people in the fossil fuel industry, many of whom don’t have college degrees – or certainly not degrees that can’t land them a job to pay off their student loans. He said a lot of people look at oil workers as dumb or uneducated when they’re actually among the brightest minds in the country. OGWA held an internal survey and every respondent was opposed to Biden’s student loan giveaway program.
One of them, an Illinois oil worker named Ryan Shull, worked his way through community college to get a process technology degree. His opinion: "They're trying to buy as many votes as they can with taxpayer dollars, and they don't really care about the working class, they don't care. They don't even care about the students. If they truly were going to help these kids, then they would change the cause of all this debt." He added that the real hypocrisy is that the people pushing this and attacking the oil industry don’t even know how the industry works, noting that “Biden himself has never actually had a real job other than being part of government.”
I guess it’s true: oil workers ARE among the brightest minds in the country today.
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