By Mike Huckabee
June 7, 2023
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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.
Read this newsletter online here:
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.
Job 42:2
DURHAM REPORT
Durham blew it by not investigating “Russian hack” of DNC
John Durham blew it.
It’s not because the special counsel failed to get the convictions of Sussmann and Danchenko; we knew (and he knew) that in a Washington DC courtroom, the deck was stacked against him to such an extent that he would almost certainly lose. Our assumption has always been that he prosecuted those cases to get out the larger story of the Russia Hoax, and, to his eternal credit, he did that. Most of the media didn’t even cover it, though, or else distorted its findings, leading us to wonder: if the Durham Report drops in the forest and there’s no media to report it, does it make a sound?
Still, Durham did document that story for all who care to read it, present and future. And he showed conclusively that the whole thing was built on air, traceable to the “I’m with Her” Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign. He also revealed that the FBI --- and, yes, the Obama White House --- knew all along that Hillary’s campaign had been plotting to frame Trump for Russian collaboration.
No, Durham blew it by failing to take the opportunity to investigate the so-called Russian “hack” of the servers at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). As long as he was investigating the origins of the Russia Hoax, why on earth didn’t he look into what was arguably the genesis for the whole thing? The claim that Russians collaborated with Trump was all a tremendous hoax, so why should anyone believe Russians hacked the DNC? Isn’t it likely that this was just as much of a sham?
Aaron Mate of REALCLEAR COMMUNICATIONS wondered the same thing, and has dug deep into this mystery in an excellent article.
Mate writes that “Durham does not address the Clinton campaign’s equally central tie to Russiagate’s other foundational allegation: that Russia interfered in the 2016 election by hacking Democratic party severs and releasing the material through Wikileaks to help elect Trump.” And this was after unearthing new information that called the claim into question.
Durham could see that the Clinton campaign and its contractor, the cyber firm CrowdStrike, had stonewalled the FBI’s requests for critical data. Two key Clinton associates, Michael Sussmann (remember him?) and CrowdStrike president Shawn Henry, who were deeply involved in the handling of the investigation, appear to have perjured themselves before Congress, telling them the FBI never even asked for the servers.
It came out during the Sussmann trial that Sussmann was the one who had hired the (yes) Clinton-funded CrowdStrike to investigate the so-called “hack.” That was in April 2016, and in June, around the time Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele started working together to create the (yes) Clinton-funded Steele “dossier,” CrowdStrike came forward to publicly accuse Russia of hacking the Democrat servers.
Sussmann lobbied the FBI to get them to back this claim, even though they hadn’t had a chance to look at any evidence. The FBI initially declined but relented several months later, even though they STILL hadn’t had a chance to look at any evidence. According to Mate, they simply relied on CrowdStrike’s own forensics and redacted reports. Yes, redacted. For the FBI.
And this was even after Shawn Henry admitted under oath that his firm “did not have concrete evidence” that the Russians had hacked the servers.
As Mate reports in one stunning sentence: “Shawn Henry, a former close FBI colleague of Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey, made the disclosure to Congress in December 2017. Yet his testimony was kept secret throughout the entirety of the FBI’s Comey- and Mueller-overseen Russia probes, and only became public in May 2020.” Henry was also a Clinton associate.
Here’s what Mate wrote about that...in May 2020. For when you have time, this makes great reading today.
In his new piece, Mate goes on to show how both Sussmann and Henry lied under oath about the same thing, saying the FBI had not to their knowledge requested access to the servers. But the FBI did request access, and emails show they knew perfectly well about it.
Emails also show CrowdStrike’s efforts to avoid complying with the FBI’s request for on-site access. They would, “at no additional expense to anyone” because they wanted to support their “friends at the FBI,” send the Bureau “a copy of the firm’s imaging of the servers.” Wasn’t that nice of them? And never mind the request by Elvis Chan of the FBI San Francisco field office to come on-site; they talked Chan into accepting their offer to mail him the copy they had made.
While prosecuting the Sussmann case, Durham missed his opportunity to press both Sussmann and Henry on why they denied the FBI access to the servers. It might have been that their false statements to Congress were material and, therefore, criminal. (Mate contrasts this with the aggressive way false statements to Congress by Trump associates Roger Stone and Michael Cohen were prosecuted.)
Durham apparently didn’t follow up on emails he uncovered that show CrowdStrike and the Clinton campaign also ignored the FBI number-one “Priority Request,” made September 30, 2016: “Un-redacted copies of CrowdStrike reports” on both the DNC and DCCC “incidents.” (Note that they didn’t say “hacks.”) We know the FBI never got these, because the ‘Justice’ Department said so in a court filing dated May 2019.
As Mate reports, “In Senate testimony, James Trainor, then assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, recalled that he was ‘frustrated’ with the CrowdStrike report he received in late August 2016 and ‘doubted its completeness’ because Sussmann had ‘scrubbed’ it.” (!!!)
REALCLEAR INVESTIGATIONS filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the CrowdStrike reports, but were sent only the cover pages. Redacted reports were provided to the House and Senate Intel Committees but have not been released publicly. As for the unredacted CrowdStrike reports, they are in a hermetically sealed vault 10,000 feet beneath the surface of the Earth. (That might be an exaggeration, but not much of one.)
Another fact revealed in the Sussmann case (and we reported on this at the time): the Clinton lawyer personally reviewed and edited the FBI’s initial public statement on the alleged “hack” of the DNC. Amazingly, Sussmann’s input on the press releases was actually solicited, by Agent Trainor.
In their release, the FBI had called this a “possible intrusion.” That wasn’t good enough for Sussmann, who in an email said the word “possible” undermined the Clinton campaign’s messaging, which presented the Russian “hack” as established without question. Trainor took the word “possible” out and reworded it to please Sussmann!
Mate also shows that when the intel community --- in a statement approved by Obama --- first publicly blamed the Russians for a “hack,” it was still a week before CrowdStrike denied the FBI’s request for an on-site inspection of the servers. “This timing means,” he says, “that when the intelligence community made its first public attribution of Russian hacking, it had not only failed to inspect the servers, but had not even received CrowdStrke’s copies of them.” In other words, like the Russia Hoax, the story of the Russian “hack” seems to have been built on nothing.
In a detailed report two months later, the FBI and DHS pulled back a bit, using the word “likely” to describe a Russian hack, but by now the public had accepted it as fact. No doubt Hillary was well pleased.
So why in blazes didn’t Durham pursue this? As Mate writes, “Durham’s’ decision to ignore the FBI’s deference to the Hillary-funded CrowdStrike is all the more striking given his criticism of Hillary-funded sources in its search for collusion.” It’s been seven years since the so-called “hack,” and given the track record of the FBI and the Hillary campaign, there’s plenty of reason to believe this is just one more of their deceptions.
https://www.
And the mystery remains: if there was no Russian hack, how did those emails get to Wikileaks?
LEAVE ME A COMMENT, I READ THEM>>>
America the Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. We are blessed with his bounty. Take a moment to enjoy it.
Target CEO 'as dumb as a bag of rocks' amid latest controversy: Huckabee
PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS
Tim Scott goes on The View
I generally don’t comment on what’s said on “The View” because that might require me to watch it. I expect it to be a daily dose of strident DNC talking points tossed out with no rebuttal to the clapping New York studio audience, like fish guts being tossed to trained seals. And I'm seldom disappointed.
But every so often, the hosts make a comment so outrageous and/or ridiculous that it makes news, and that happened recently. After a couple of co-hosts, who are incredibly wealthy and successful black females, told viewers how America is so systemically racist that people like them just can’t succeed, Joy Behar (the token wealthy, white leftist) lectured black conservatives Sen. Tim Scott and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who both grew up decades ago in the Deep South, that they don't understand what racism is.
Even people for whom the daily screeching on “The View” has become tuneout-able background noise did a double take at that.
And so, ABC did the unthinkable for them: they actually allowed one of the black conservatives whom they’d unfairly attacked to come on the show and respond. Granted, it was still a hostile workplace, with three of the hosts obviously rearing to attack him and the one who caused this (Joy Behar) missing (she “always” takes Mondays off, but it seems that she could’ve bothered to come in this one time, since it was her jaw-dropping liberal white privilege that sparked it.)
Still, despite having the deck stacked 3-1 against him, I thought Sen. Scott did a fine job of knocking down their condescending racial division propaganda. When Sunny Hostin tried to claim that all the successful black Americans he named, including former President Obama, were somehow “exceptions” to all the systemic racism, Scott replied with what deserves to be the quote of the day:
"That is a dangerous, offensive, disgusting message to send to our young people today that the only way to succeed is by being the exception."
So many dangerous, offensive, disgusting messages are spewed on “The View” on a daily basis that hearing one called out for once is worthy of celebration!
John Sexton at Hotair.com expands on that subject, noting that America may not be a perfect colorblind utopia (and leftists are deliberately making that worse), but we are always striving to become a “more perfect union.” As he says, pretending that nothing has changed in America since 1860 or even 1960 is a cynical and destructive political tactic that worsens racial divisions and discourages young black kids from thinking they can succeed because white people are out to get them. This link also includes video of Scott’s entire segment.
Here’s some of the positive Republican response to Scott daring to enter the lefty lionesses’ den.
On the other hand, Bonchie at Redstate.com thinks it was a mistake for Scott to go on “The View,” because the media will never publicize the sharp points he made, they’ll just trumpet the bad moments, like when the audience booed him for arguing against “transitioning” minors and putting gay porn in middle schools, which should give you a good idea of the kind of people who line up to watch “The View” in person. He thinks it’s a mistake for conservatives to go on leftist shows and boost their ratings when they know they’ll just be ganged up on, talked over and ambushed.
So what do you think? Was Scott’s appearance a good idea or bad? Unlike on “The View,” I’d like to hear other people’s views.
NEWS
Mike Huckabee: This is an attempt to destroy Donald Trump
“I Know You Are But What Am I?”
Stephen Kruiser of PJ Media comments on James Comey’s interview on MSNBC with “journalist” Jen Psaki and points out that everything he said about the horrors of a “retribution presidency” if Trump is elected in 2024 is actually true right now of Biden. So he inadvertently made the case for replacing Biden with Trump.
Related Headline of the Day, from The Federalist:
“After Overseeing Weaponization of Government Against Trump, James Comey Frets Trump Could Weaponize Government.”
I feel sorry for the poor Babylon Bee writers, having to come up with something more ridiculous than what this guy actually says.
Blackrock's Mission Revealed
A 2017 video surfaced and went viral, revealing the CEO of the giant investment firm Blackrock (and his counterpart from American Express) making it clear that they see their mission as using their vast financial leverage to impose “ESG” and “DEI” racial and gender politics onto corporations and “force behaviors” that they think are correct.
https://www.westernjournal.
Sen. J.D. Vance called Blackrock’s behavior “illegal and immoral,” and Breitbart Economics editor John Carney called it “the Chinese social credit system applied at the corporate level to America.”
As one conservative on Twitter put it, these big financial firms may have the power to force behavior, but consumers have the power to force bankruptcy, so corporations might want to look at Bud Light and Target and think about who they’re serving.
Of course, it would be much easier, and avoid an economy-damaging boycott war, if our legislators would just crack down on investment firms that are shafting their stockholders by misusing their money to enforce political agendas instead of maximizing profits. If the CEO of Blackrock knew that continuing to do that would land him in a federal pen wearing an orange jumpsuit instead of a $2,000 business suit, maybe it would force his behavior into acting like a legitimate businessman rather than an Antifa thug or a CCP enforcer.
KJP: 'A Special Kind of Stupid'
Biden Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is being blasted for calling it “dangerous and unacceptable” for border states to bus some of Biden’s flood of illegal immigrants to non-border states “because you’re actually putting a lot of pressure on these states and local areas."
Of course, those states voted for Biden and declared themselves “sanctuary” states and cities, while the border states like Texas did not vote for Biden, but he expects them to absorb the full dangers and costs of the illegal alien wave he set off. I guess she thinks those border states aren’t under pressure at all.
Reaction to Jean-Pierre’s comments from conservatives was swift and fierce, with Frontiers of Freedom president George Landfrith tweeting, “It takes a special kind of stupid to say something this self-evidently absurd.” On the bright side, at least she knows she’s special.
GENDER POLITICS
"Pride Month"
The great thing about “Pride Month” is all the celebrations of the freedom to express yourself in any way you want, even if that means putting on disgusting displays of S&M gay sex practices and adult sex toys in front of children. (WARNING: Videos at links are not safe for work, children or anyone with morals or a weak stomach. But they were both filmed in public, in broad open daylight, in front of children.)
https://twitter.com/ReduxxMag/
https://twitter.com/
And the Democrats will gladly turn a drag show into a political rally for themselves.
https://www.breitbart.com/
But of course, if anyone tries to express himself at a “Pride Month” celebration by quoting the Bible, that will get him arrested. Tolerance!
https://www.westernjournal.
Megyn Kelly says no more preferred pronouns
Megyn Kelly announced that she will no longer call people by their “preferred pronouns” on her show. She says at first she saw it as harmless and didn’t want to cause offense. But she now realizes it was a “gateway drug” to genital mutilation of children. It starts with co-opting the language and the meaning of words by demanding people call them by whatever gender pronoun they want. Then they demand to use whatever bathroom or locker room they want; and then they demand to give puberty-blocking hormones and genital mutilation surgery to minors.
She has a point. As I’ve argued many times, the left has no record of success for its policies to point to, and its ideas defy common sense and biological science, so the only way they can win arguments is by constantly redefining words (“‘MAGA’ means you’re a racist fascist!” and so forth.) That’s why we don’t allow convoluted "personal pronouns" around here. It’s not only a gateway drug to genital mutilation of minors but also to the destruction of the English language.
So unless there’s more than one of you, I’m not calling you “they.” My fifth grade English grammar teacher would rise from her grave and pound my knuckles with a ruler.
Gender Stupidity
University of Cincinnati student Olivia Krolczyk is speaking out after her gender studies professor gave her a zero grade on her class essay proposal because she used the banned phrase, “biological woman.” The prof (ungrammatically) wrote, "Olivia, this is a solid proposal. However, the terms ‘biological women’ are exclusionary and are not allowed in this course as they further reinforce heteronormativity. Please reassess your topic and edit it to focus on women’s rights (not just ‘females’) and I’ll regrade." And the class syllabus said, in defiance of the First Amendment, that students can share opinions as long as they do not "cause harm to... classmates."
Three problems: (1.) Unless the professor showed her essay to the class, nobody was going to see it except her. (2.) Women’s rights are female rights. Sorry, there are no male women or female men. Apparently, gender studies professors know nothing about gender. (3.) Since it was an essay about men invading women’s sports, not using the term “biological women” meant she’d be writing about some undefined group taking over the sport of some undefined group, which makes no more sense than paying good money for a gender studies degree.
I’m happy to hear that the school agreed to let Olivia do her original essay and submit it to another professor. I’m not happy to hear that the original professor didn’t get a transfer to some institution that would be more appropriate for someone like her, such as a mental institution.
Related: Here’s a story for all the people, from that gender studies professor to the Biden Administration, who insist that “trans men” are women and men have no biological advantages over women at sports.
A team of some of the top female soccer players in the world played an exhibition game against a male team from Wales that consisted of current members, former members and guests. The game had to be stopped after two 20-minute rounds under a “mercy rule” when the male team ran up the score to an embarrassing 12-0.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/
MORE NEWS
Unsurprising News From 2020:
The Institute of Economic Affairs conducted an exhaustive meta-analysis of 22 studies of COVID pandemic lockdown policies. The conclusion: lockdowns may “represent the biggest policy mistake in modern times.”
https://www.based-politics.
Comparing the strict lockdowns in places like the US, Europe and the UK to places like Sweden where restrictions were minor and they relied on voluntary action and public education, the researchers determined that lockdowns saved only approximately 4,000 lives (they were touted as saving 2 million lives.) Some of the lockdown policies actually increased COVID mortality, while also causing painful and even lethal side consequences such as “surging drug overdoses, a youth mental health crisis, mass unemployment, huge increases in global poverty, an uptick in domestic violence, and so much more.”
The co-authors wrote that lockdowns “had negligible health effects but disastrous economic, social and political costs to society." And "the science of lockdowns is clear; the data are in: the lives saved were a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering collateral costs imposed.
Why do I suspect that our government officials will read this and reply, “Well, then we’d better start planning now so we can handle the next lockdown better!”
MORE 2020 News Here:
Tax records revealed that billionaire Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman was the funding source behind a deceptive 2020 commercial against Republican Sen. Thom Tillis. The ad was produced to look like a “breaking” TV news report on Tillis’ stance on Medicare, but it was really a political attack ad that misrepresented his position. The group behind it, Piedmont Rising, is described by the Washington Free Beacon as embracing “an emerging trend among liberal advocacy groups by launching a website designed to look like a legitimate local news outlet” but that's really just leftist propaganda.
You mean like CNN and MSNBC? No, I take that back. They don’t look like legitimate news outlets.
San Francisco continues to implode
San Francisco survived a devastating earthquake and fire, but it’s unclear if the city will survive being run by "progressive" Democrats. Amid rampant crime, homelessness and filth, with businesses and residents fleeing, now even the owners of the biggest hotel downtown, the Hilton Union Square, are forfeiting on their loan and just walking away.
https://instapundit.com/
REIT Park Hotels & Resorts is also releasing the Parc 55 Hotel. Between the two, that represents 2,900 hotel rooms and hospitality centers that aren’t bringing in enough revenue to cover the debt payment.
In a statement, REIT said, “Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges, both old and new: record high office vacancy; concerns over street conditions; lower return to office than peer cities; and a weaker than expected citywide convention calendar through 2027 that will negatively impact business and leisure demand.”
I’m sure leftists will seize on the COVID “prefer to work at home” aspect to explain this, but all of these things – the office vacancies, dangerous street conditions, lousy convention business, and yes, people not wanting to leave home to go to their offices – can be laid squarely at the feet of the city’s far left, criminal-coddling, high-taxing, drug addict- and homeless-enabling city leaders, who are leading it down the nearest sewer drain.
As Ed Driscoll points out in a related story at that link, Detroit is the standard for a failed city, with the population dropping from 1.85 million in 1950 to 630,000 today. But between 2019 and 2021, San Francisco’s population fell by 6.3%, worse than any two-year period in Detroit’s history.
I wonder how many people would have voted for San Francisco’s current government if they’d run on the slogan, “Elect us and we’ll make this city worse than Detroit!”
Video Link
Here's my appearance from earlier this week on “Fox & Friends,” talking about Mike Pence joining the GOP Presidential race and what so many commentators don’t understand about the “Evangelical vote.”
https://www.mikehuckabee.com/
RIP, SONGWRITING LEGEND CYNTHIA WEIL
By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com)
I’m sad to report that one of the great contributors to 20th century music, songwriter Cynthia Weil, died last week at 82.
If you’ve seen the Carole King stage musical “Beautiful,” you’ll remember Weil. She and husband/collaborator Barry Mann were friends and Brill Building songwriting rivals of King and Gerry Goffin.
Mann and Weil contributed dozens of classic songs to the rock/pop/soul songbook, including “On Broadway,” “Blame It on the Bossa Nova,” “Walking In The Rain,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration,” “Shades of Gray,” “Kicks,” “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” “Make Your Own Kind of Music,” “New World Coming,” “I Just Can’t Help Believing,” “Rock and Roll Lullaby,” “Here You Come Again,” “Don’t Know Much” and “Just Once.” Weill also wrote songs with other writers, including “Running With the Night” with Lionel Ritchie and “He’s So Shy” with Tom Snow for the Pointer Sisters.
Mann and Weil are in the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame, and they received the Hall’s highest honor, the Johnny Mercer Award. Mann survives his wife. They had been married since 1961. Our deepest sympathies, prayers and thanks for all the great music that will live on forever.
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