By Mike Huckabee
May 23, 2022
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Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff! Today's newsletter includes:
- Thoughts going into Week 2: HILLARY DID IT
- Hillary DID IT. WAPO buried it in paragraph 27
- "Pandemic treaty"
- And much more...
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
1. DAILY BIBLE VERSE
Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Matthew 19:19
If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected].
2. Thoughts going into Week 2: HILLARY DID IT
As promised, here’s more perspective on what happened last week in the Michael Sussmann trial and its significance going into Week 2.
There were more witnesses called to testify on Friday than just the “stars,” former FBI General Counsel James Baker and Hillary For America chairman Robby Mook. But Mook’s revelation –- that not only was Hillary told of the phony Alfa Bank story and warned it was unverified but also that she personally gave the go-ahead --- garnered so much richly-deserved attention that we’re only now getting to the others.
Two former CIA employees testified on Friday, and they supported Special Counsel Durham’s point that Sussmann’s deception was part of a “pattern.” In other words, Sussmann didn’t just figure on lying that one time to James Baker and the FBI about not representing any clients during his visit. Months later, he told these two CIA employees the same lie.
The two, identified in court only as Kevin P. and Steve M., testified that in February 2017 –- after Trump had become President –- Sussmann came to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, and gave them two thumb drives, just as he had to Baker at the FBI back in September. Kevin P. testified that Sussmann told them he was “not representing any client.” Sussmann said the thumb drives, from a couple of unidentified “contacts,” showed a secret cyber back-channel between a Trump Organization server and one belonging to Russia-linked Alfa Bank.
Steve M. drafted a memo after their meeting, summarizing what had taken place and noting that Sussmann had been there on behalf of a client. The memo was shown to jurors. But Kevin P. edited the memo to change “client” to “contacts.” That version was also shown.
Sussmann also told them he'd taken “similar but unrelated” information to the FBI. (Never mind that the FBI had essentially dismissed his “evidence” the first day and later had found the story in the “white papers” to be unsupported by the data.)
Now-retired CIA official Mark Chadason, who’d been station chief in Europe and North Africa, also testified, saying that Sussmann had reached out to him and told him he had information relating to a matter of “national security” that he'd tried to get to them through the CIA general counsel. Chadason met with him at a Northern Virginia motel on January 31, 2017 –- again, after Trump was President –- at the request of a mutual friend. It appears that Sussmann couldn’t keep his story straight; he told Chadason he did have a client, but that his client was a Republican. Oh, and he wasn’t sure if his REPUBLICAN client would reveal himself to the CIA.
That might be an even more outrageous lie, as I’d be very surprised if “ultra-Democrat” Perkins Coie, the firm that represented both Hillary For America and the DNC, has represented any Republicans at all, EVER. (Well, maybe the Adam Kinzinger- or Liz Cheney-types, but those don't count.) No, Sussmann was just telling another version of the lie. And the lie absolutely was “material” (the magic word in a case about lying), as Baker has testified that the FBI would have subjected Sussmann’s evidence to more scrutiny if he’d told them it was from a client.
In fact, Baker testified that if he’d known Sussmann was pushing the Alfa Bank story on behalf of a client, he would’ve said, “If you’re meeting on behalf of Clinton, you shouldn’t come see me.” He told the court, “I was willing to meet with Michael alone because I had high confidence in him and trust. I think I would have made a different assessment if he said he had been appearing on behalf of a client.”
Jerry Dunleavy at the WASHINGTON EXAMINER has more of his testimony about that very important issue.
As for Chadason, when cross-examined by the defense, he said Sussmann had seemed “frustrated” that he hadn’t been able to interest the feds. Sussmann had said during their meeting that if the CIA didn’t pursue this, he’d take it to THE NEW YORK TIMES. Chadason didn’t take that as a threat, he told the jury, but as more of an act of desperation.
https://nypost.com/2022/05/20/clinton-lawyer-shopped-phony-trump-russia-data-to-cia-in-17-witnesses/
As Nick Arama at RedState reports, the Sussmann defense has tried to portray his lie as just a random “one-off,” not part of a deliberate scheme to mislead. But now we know: lying about not representing any client was part of his plan, because he did it repeatedly.
Friday, Baker said there was something else Sussmann never told the FBI: that a “white paper” he was passing along about Alfa Bank was prepared by Fusion GPS, the same company behind the Steele “dossier.” Baker said this knowledge would’ve caused him to treat the evidence differently, as it would’ve raised fears that “the FBI was being pulled into some kind of political agenda –- a political ploy.” It would have led to “serious conversations,” he said, among top leadership about “what, if anything, to do with this material and how to handle it.”
“It would have raised in my mind the concern about, ‘Wait a minute; he also does, in other matters, represent the [DNC] and the Clinton campaign,’” Baker testified. “‘Is that what’s going on here?’”
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL published an editorial on Friday called “Hillary Clinton Did It.” Subhead: “Her 2016 campaign manager says she approved a plan to plant a false Russia claim with a reporter.” The WSJ is by subscription, but even if you don’t subscribe, the link will take you to an excerpt of the “Journal Editorial Report,” featuring Kim Strassel summarizing the “depth and the breadth” of what Durham has exposed and explaining why he might have chosen not to go further with wider conspiracy charges in this DC courtroom. His primary goal, she says, is to tell the story, and he certainly has.
One’s first thought reading that headline might be, “She did it? Did what?" After all, Hillary has done so many bad things over the years. (As Monica Crowley said to Steve Hilton on THE NEXT REVOLUTION Sunday night, “Mrs. Clinton has been a dark menace on the political landscape for 40 years, so the depths of her deceit and corruption know no bounds.”) But thanks to this seemingly interminable investigation that was well worth the wait, we know she personally gave the order to frame her political opponent in 2016.
The “money paragraph” from the WSJ editorial has been thoughtfully passed along by THE DAILY CALLER. A must-read.
https://dailycaller.com/2022/05/22/wall-street-journal-russia-trump-clinton-durham/
Finally, for when you have time, it’s fun to go back and read Paul Sperry’s report from January, detailing what we knew (unofficially) then about Hillary’s role in spreading fake Trump-Russia connections. It wasn’t just the Alfa Bank hoax; it was the “dossier,” too. And Obama had been advised of this. It started as a distraction from Hillary’s own scandal and WikiLeaks’ publishing of those damaging DNC emails, which we still don’t know were a Russian hack, regardless of the Democrats’ insistence. They’ve lied so much; what makes anyone think this particular claim is true?
3. Hillary DID IT. WAPO buried it in paragraph 27
Ari Fleischer tweeted this on Sunday: “In a 33-paragraph story, the WASHINGTON POST buries in the 27th paragraph, as kind of an ordinary thing, that Hillary approved the dissemination of a ‘dirty trick’ attack to peddle to the press phony collusion info vs. Trump. This should be a feeding frenzy.”
Yes, it should be. But Fleischer is not exaggerating; WAPO did go to great lengths, literally, to bury this bombshell. We’ve linked to the piece; scroll way, way, WAY down to the very end and back up a little and you’ll see the terse, ONE-SENTENCE mention: “The campaign did decide –- and Clinton herself agreed –- to give the allegations to a reporter, he [Robby Mook] said.” Come to think it, the part about Hillary is only part of a sentence, just an aside, really. That is the fleeting consideration they devote to the fact that Hillary Clinton has been directly implicated by her own campaign manager in the most outrageous and shameful political hoax we’ve ever seen --- a monstrous lie that her political opponent was actually an agent of Russia! And never mind what this has done to divide, distract and damage our country.
This joke of a story was written by Devlin Barrett, who, according to his blurb, “writes about the FBI and the Justice Department for The Washington Post” and happens to be one of the so-called “journalists” who share the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, “for coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 election.” I am not kidding --- this same person won the Pulitzer for reporting the Russia Hoax as a real story. So burying the true story seems perversely appropriate, like a criminal burying the evidence of his own crime.
He and the other "honorees" should be made to give their ill-gotten prize back. But, gee, maybe they'll just be awarded another Pulitzer instead, this one not for doing Hillary’s bidding and spreading disinformation about her opponent but for doing Hillary's bidding and burying the real story that she wants to see die. Both awards should be given not for Reporting but for Political Hackery.
But this story won’t die –- it’s journalism that is dead. This is just a little reminder of why “we read the news, so you don’t have to!”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/05/21/sussmann-durham-fbi-clinton-times/
4. Important news
The JM Smucker Co. announced a massive recall of certain Jif Peanut Butter products due to possible salmonella contamination. To see if you have any of these products in your pantry, click on the link.
5. Supreme Court news
The Supreme Court issued some rulings on Monday, but they kept to their vow that the recent unprecedented leak of a draft decision involving Roe v. Wade would not force them to change their schedule and release it early. So that decision was not among them. I’ll have reports on the decisions that were released tomorrow.
6. "Pandemic treaty"
I’ve been getting a lot of comments wanting to know more about a “pandemic treaty” that’s being hashed out to expand the role of the World Health Organization. This really took off after Tucker Carlson blasted it last week. There are concerns that proposed changes by the Biden Administration would give the head of the WHO sweeping powers to declare pandemics and impose rights-denying measures like lockdowns on sovereign nations without their consent or even over their objections.
This is a complicated issue, so I’m going to link to a couple of stories with more details than I can provide you here. First, Breitbart explains the objections to the proposed treaty and amendments.
And this article that originally appeared in Fortune argues that those concerns are unfounded: that the WHO would only gain enhanced advisory capabilities to deal more swiftly with health emergencies, but not the power to overrule sovereign governments. They say that because “international law” isn’t really enforceable, such nations could just ignore them anyway.
This is all still in a state of flux, and no matter what the original intention, there’s a good chance that the rising scrutiny and anger will have an effect. My personal view: I certainly don’t think the WHO is deserving of being granted any kind of power over sovereign nations, elected governments or individual citizens. But on top of that, I question the wisdom of expanding their part in dealing with emergencies even in a purely advisory role.
What is there about their botched handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that has earned them the right to greater trust and responsibility? Was it their disgusting and dishonest kowtowing to the communist Chinese government? Or their dogged defense of lockdowns and school closures that have done irreparable harm while studies have since confirmed they had little to no effect on the spread of the virus? In fact, researchers have known for years that lockdowns are useless against airborne viruses. I thought the most basic rule of medicine was "First, do no harm." Here’s just one of many examples of the harm that their policies caused:
Until the WHO cleans up its act and thoroughly reforms and de-policizes itself, it doesn’t deserve more power or even more influence not backed by power. To quote the Who that I respect a lot more, we won’t get fooled again.
7. Another COVID wave
It looks as if the White House is preparing for another wave of COVID to strike coincidentally just before the midterm elections. So even though it's now in the endemic, no-worse-than-a-cold-for-most-people phase, and we're just talking about case numbers and not rising death numbers, it will still be necessary to have mass mail-in ballots and thousands of unattended drop boxes. And be sure to wear surgical gloves before you stuff a ballot (or ballots) into those boxes. For the sake of public health!
I Just Wanted to Say
Thank you for reading my newsletter.
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