By Mike Huckabee
November 21, 2021
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By Mike Huckabee
Good morning! Here are the top stories from this week that I think you will want to read. Topics include:
- Biden Administration Policies
- Hillary Clinton's Involvement In The Russia Hoax
- Russia Hoax Indictments
- Project Veritas Raid
THE LATEST
1. BAD NEWS: BEHIND THE SCENES, THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IS BUSY:
INTERNAL DRAFT HHS MEMO TARGETS RELIGIOUS LIBERTY:
Fox News has obtained an internal draft memo from the Department of Health and Human Services showing that HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra is planning to roll back Trump-era protections of religious liberty rights. That includes revoking the authority of the Office of Civil Rights to prevent violations of religious liberty.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hhs-ocr-memo-rfra-trump-religious-liberty
The memo, supposedly from OCR to Becerra, expresses concerns that Trump might have expanded OCR’s authority too much. And I truly believe that a government agency would complain about being given too much power.
During his confirmation hearings, Becerra swore to Congress that he would protect religious liberty. But his predecessor as HHS Secretary, Roger Severino, said, "HHS centralized authority over religious freedom claims because the laws weren’t being enforced and because that’s how we enforce every other civil right. Without dedicated staff responsible for investigating religious freedom complaints, HHS will return to trampling people’s rights as before — just ask the Little Sisters of the Poor…Because Becerra was twice found to have violated conscience protection laws by OCR, he has no business deciding its religious freedom authorities given his massive conflict of interest. Becerra told Congress that he values religious freedom and that nothing will change with OCR concerning enforcement. His actions since then prove that he lied, and this move would put an exclamation point on his anti-religious hostility."
The big question remains: why would anyone who voted to confirm Becerra believe that a man who, as California Attorney General, tried to railroad undercover journalists into prison on 15 felony charges just for exposing the truth about Planned Parenthood, give a flip about protecting anyone’s civil rights?
FBI WHISTLEBLOWER: GARLAND STILL PLANS TO TARGET PARENTS AS DOMESTIC TERRORISTS:
The House Judiciary Committee released an email Tuesday provided by an FBI whistleblower, showing that the agency’s Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions are pressing forward with keeping tabs on parents who speak up against school boards and other officials. They’ve even created the threat tag EDUOFFICIALS to track instances of such “threats.”
The email acknowledges that this tracking of angry parents as domestic terrorist threats is in response to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s outrageous letter calling for such a thing – a letter written in response to a letter from the National School Boards Association that we now know was created in coordination with Biden Administration officials. Megan Fox at PJ Media examined the alleged threats cited in it and found that none were legitimate, and the NSBA apologized for the letter.
So far, 11 states have withdrawn from the NSBA and 26 have distanced themselves from it. Yet despite all that, plus Garland's denial to Congress that concerned parents will be monitored as domestic terrorists, this email confirms that that’s precisely what the FBI is doing.
Inescapable conclusions: Merrick Garland is a politicized hack and a bald-faced liar (possibly perjurer); and Americans need to elect politicians who will not only remove him from office, but clean out the FBI and DOJ like the snake pits we’ve discovered them to be.
THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST:
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was in the Senate Tuesday, where Republican Sen. Mike Lee grilled him like a cheap steak over why the Biden Administration is forcing a vaccine mandate on law-abiding citizens that threatens to sideline an untold number of Border Patrol agents while not enforcing any vaccine mandate on the thousands of illegal immigrants who are streaming across the border.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/11/17/mike-leemayorkas-vax-mandate-n2599182
Related: Speaking of all the things this Administration is doing to Build Back Illegal Immigration Better, someone just noticed that hidden away on page 1,647 (!) of Biden’s $1.75 trillion “Build Back Better” spending plan is a line to eliminate the need for a Social Security number to apply for child tax credits. A researcher for the Center for Immigration Studies told Fox News that that could result in the government giving an extra $2.3 billion in payouts to illegal immigrants.
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2. SOLOMON: DURHAM'S INDICTMENTS SHOW HILLARY "WAS IN UP TO HER NECK":
That’s what investigative reporter John Solomon told FOX NEWS’ Maria Bartiromo on this week’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
In fact, if you saw our reports last week about new developments in the Special Counsel investigation, Bartiromo’s interviews with both Solomon and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe will serve as a great summary and follow-up. (And if you didn’t see them, these interviews will help catch you up.) Here’s the link to that episode; Bartiromo’s coverage of the Durham probe starts about 17 minutes in.
https://www.fox.com/watch/1d8b670ef3da2a619b2f20ee00351f82/
Solomon, who told Maria the Danchenko indictment shows the Trump-Russia investigation was built on “lie upon lie upon lie,” has a new report at JUST THE NEWS in which he shifts to Durham’s look at top FBI officials.
According to Solomon, Durham has two “buckets” of evidence he’s assembling, one implicating the Clinton campaign and the other involving top intel personnel and their willingness to mislead with falsified evidence in their pursuit of Trump. He told Bartiromo that “many other [intel] people are being examined at this moment.”
“There’s no doubt there’s activity inside the grand jury right now,” he said, “aimed at looking at top level officials at the FBI.” Red flags were raised on the Steele “dossier” as early as August of 2016 but were obviously set aside. A month later, the CIA tied it to the Clinton campaign, but sent their report on this to...Peter Strzok. The FBI even had a spreadsheet indicating all the dossier’s impossible or uncorroborated claims.
Solomon says the latest criminal indictment, that of Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source Igor Danchenko --- alleged to have made false statements five times to the FBI --- is just as much an indictment of the FBI as it is of him. The FBI should have seen the serious flaws in the “dossier” even though Danchenko didn’t tell them about getting the material from Clinton ally Charles Dolan.
Incidentally, Dolan wasn’t Danchenko’s only named sub-source. One of the others, “Sub-source #4,” Alexey Sergeyevich Dundich, claims Danchenko “framed” him as a sub-source “to add credibility to his low-quality work.”
“My impression is that Mr. Danchenko fabricated the information published in the Dossier to make quick money,” he declared. “It is apparent to me that the Dossier is a deliberate fraud and a collection of idle rumors.”
But if the “dossier” was so obviously bogus, why didn’t then-FBI Director James Comey, deputy Director Andrew McCabe and lead “Crossfire Hurricane” investigator Peter Strzok dismiss it as such? They clearly knew it was a hoax. As retired FBI intelligence chief Kevin Brock says, “The fact pattern that John Durham is methodically establishing shows what James Comey and Andrew McCabe likely knew from Day One, that the Steele ‘dossier’ was politically-driven nonsense at the behest of the Clinton campaign. “And yet they knowingly ran with its false information to obtain legal process against an American citizen. They defrauded not just a federal court, they defrauded the FBI and the American people.”
He went on to say that this has destroyed trust in the FBI. “As Comey cashes his royalty checks from a book and a movie, where do everyday, working FBI agents go to get the Bureau’s reputation back? The damage done by Comey, McCabe and others to the trust that Americans have traditionally placed in the FBI is incalculable.”
Indeed, as the depth of this deceit becomes increasingly evident, there will no doubt be calls to dismantle the FBI and completely start over. I would say the person most qualified –- and motivated –- to restructure the intel bureaucracy might be none other than Mike Flynn. Now THAT would be justice.
I would also add that, in exploiting this fakery after Trump became President, it was THEY at the Justice Department –- as opposed to Trump supporters –- who were involved in a coup, ultimately engineered by Hillary Clinton and her allies. I hope this is where Durham is headed.
One defense the FBI will likely try, to defend itself against charges of corruption, is that this happened because of incompetent people at the top, but that doesn’t wash. As Solomon points out, one FBI official, Kevin Clinesmith, has already admitted doctoring a piece of evidence that was used to get the Carter Page warrant. And these people are highly skilled at protecting themselves legally. Recall that Comey even gave up his security clearance so he wouldn’t be able to testify about classified matters. Not so incompetent when it comes to covering his backside.
Former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes has known about the Clinton connection for years now. “We already knew the Steele ‘dossier’ was orchestrated and funded by the Democrats, and now we know that a Democrat operative, who’d been a registered Russian agent and was closely linked to Kremlin officials, served as a direct source for the dossier’s fabrications, he told JUST THE NEWS in a reference to Charles Dolan. “As I’ve said for years, the only people who colluded with Russians were the Democrats.”
As for Peter Strzok, he went on MSNBC Thursday and actually denied to Rachel Maddow that there was ever an FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, which is a blatant lie. (I assume he’d justify this statement by saying Carter Page was no longer with the Trump campaign when they got the warrant against him; this is a dodge that is easily dismantled.) He said that what “certain far-right commentators” are saying about that is “nonsense.”
Solomon just smiled and shook his head at this, saying that Strzok’s own original statement that started the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation was that they were “looking at whether individuals associated with the Trump campaign were coordinating or conspiring with Russia.” The Trump campaign was mentioned a dozen times in the first FISA application, submitted in October of 2016 at the height of the campaign.
“He was lying the other night,” Solomon said. “There’s no other way to say it politely.”
Sara Carter, in an appearance this weekend on Steve Hilton’s FOX NEWS show THE NEXT REVOLUTION, brought up a couple of interesting facts we didn’t know about Fiona Hill, a star witness in Trump Impeachment #1. Not only did she introduce Igor Danchenko to Christopher Steele, but she also introduced Clinton crony Charles Dolan to Danchenko. All of these connections appear to center around the solidly anti-Trump “think-tank” the Brookings Institution, headed by big-time Clinton ally Strobe Talbott. Also, Hill was working closely at the time with H. R. McMaster, the person who replaced Michael Flynn as Trump’s new national security adviser after the FBI set Flynn up and destroyed his career. It seems that practically every day, there’s another puzzle piece or two to put in place.
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3. ANITICPATING MORE INDICTMENTS IN THE TRUMP-RUSSIA HOAX:
So, after three indictments and counting, will there be big-time accountability as a result of John Durham’s investigation of the Russia Hoax? It depends on who’s talking.
The NEW YORK POST ran a superb, richly detailed editorial last week that starts by condemning most of the media for their lack of coverage now that the special counsel is finally speaking. Of course, it comes as no surprise that most media are ignoring the story coming out of his grand jury. The POST reveals the whole sordid story of how the media covered the “dossier” that was peddled to them by Christopher Steele and others. For when you have time, this is recommended reading, and also good to pass along to those you know who are just now becoming aware of what we’ve all known for years.
The media eagerly pushed a bogus “dossier,” but they avoided revealing the connections between it and Hillary’s campaign or doing anything on their own to try to discredit it, as real journalists would be bound to do. Instead, they lapped it up like a cat with a bowl of cream. For that, THE NEW YORK TIMES and the WASHINGTON POST won the Pulitzer Prize. There might not be jail cells for these “journalists,” but they should at least have to give the Pulitzer back!
Or make them give it to the NY POST. Here, the POST has clearly outlined the relationships among major players Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko and Charles Dolan. Be glad that a few major news outlets such as the POST are not only reporting what we think of as “old news,” but are doing so in a clear, methodical way that makes the complex simple. We know that one strategy the left uses for cover is to make sure its scandals are too complicated or “inside” for most people to follow. They also delay, delay, delay so that stories BECOME “old news,” and then they say, “Hey, it’s time to move on!” Um, we’ve not moving on from this.
So, the NY POST has indicted the media, not literally in a court of law but as a matter of public shaming. What about actual indictments, the kind that can lead to convictions and jail sentences? I hesitate even to link to the latest commentary by Andrew C. McCarthy, as I think he might have just been in a pessimistic frame of mind last week and will put you in one, too. The theme for his piece might be that “abuse of power is not criminal.” To that we say that, yes, sometimes it isn’t, but sometimes it sure is.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/durham-indictments-collusion-case-direction-andrew-mccarthy
It’s true that what Durham knows and what he can prove in court are two different things. But at this point, Durham doesn’t really have to prove every last word in the "dossier" is false; we’ve already seen enough evidence about this for any reasonable person to conclude it was made up. As for who is responsible at the top for directing this outrageous scheme, we still don’t know everything Durham has. He sure seems to be zeroing in on the Clinton people. So even though McCarthy literally wrote the book on the Russia Hoax (BALL OF COLLUSION; highly recommended), we think he might be trying to forecast too far ahead. There’s more material yet to be declassified, and it might go a long way towards satisfying McCarthy.
In fact, last week, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Maria Bartiromo there were over 1,000 documents from the Durham investigation that haven’t yet been declassified, and some of the intelligence relates directly to criminal activity that could be the basis for “further indictments.” He reminded us that a grand jury is saying that what happened with the Steele “dossier” is criminal in nature, and he anticipates that various people involved in exploiting it will be in legal jeopardy.
Kash Patel, lead investigator for former House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, spoke with Maria this Sunday and specifically implicated Fiona Hill as one who could face criminal charges for lying to Congress in October of 2019 when she said, “I have no knowledge whatsoever of how he developed that dossier. None. I just want to state that.” Heck, she counts herself among Christopher Steele’s close friends and introduced him to Igor Danchenko. She also introduced Danchenko to big-time Clinton ally and Trump-Russia fabulist Charles Dolan, who provided fake stories for the “dossier.”
Fiona Hill serves as the connection between the Steele operation and the Democrat Party, Patel said. “John Durham’s on that case,” he said; “I think we’re gonna get there.”
Patel broke down three areas of criminality that Durham has been looking at, describing them as three points of a triangle and represented by the three criminal indictments that have been handed down so far. Michael Sussmann, at the top of this triangle, represents the indictment of the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC, Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS, “funneling tens of millions of dollars to perpetuate the biggest fraud in the history of the FBI.” FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith represents one of the bottom two points, representing the FBI’s role in lying to a federal court by doctoring a document about Carter Page to get a warrant under false pretenses. The other point is the indictment of Danchenko, whose own words discredit the phony “dossier.”
“He’s got a long way to go,” Patel says of Durham. But he’s glad to see that Durham is finally getting information from the FBI that had been intentionally withheld from the House Intel Committee.
Former FBI deputy director Andy McCabe appears to have played a central role. “All roads lead to Andy McCabe,” Patel said. Recall that McCabe was caught in three lies by Inspector General Horowitz during the internal investigation and seemed to have skated, but we’ll see. Patel insisted that a mid-level official such as Clinesmith couldn’t have pulled off “the greatest political scandal in history” by himself. It would have been “virtually impossible.” He was directed by his supervisors, and this would not have happened without the deputy director of the FBI knowing about it, and almost certainly colleagues Peter Strzok and Lisa Page as well.
Bartiromo pointed out that “those who abused power are now in power,” notably Jake Sullivan, who was Hillary’s foreign policy adviser and is now President Biden’s national security adviser. Recall that Sullivan is the operative who broke the fake Alfa Bank story, which Hillary herself retweeted and falsely described as a discovery by computer scientists, when it was actually phonied-up by some helpful university techies. And now there he is in the catbird seat –- inside the White House.
Patel sees that “what the American public so desperately need” is accountability. “And I think that’s where this road is going, and [where] John Durham’s taking us,” he said. “So stay tuned; I think we’re only 60 to 70 percent of the way there.”
Former Georgia congressman Doug Collins is quite optimistic as well. He’s got a new book coming out on the whole scandal, called THE CLOCK AND THE CALENDAR, which comes out this week. We’ll add it to our stack.
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4. RAID ON PROJECT VERITAS "IS A SCANDAL OF EPIC PROPORTIONS"
When the story broke about Project Veritas employees and founder James O’Keefe being raided by the FBI Saturday morning in a purported search for Ashley Biden’s diary, our first question was, “Did they take the electronics?”
Sure enough, the diary search seems to have been a pretext, at least in part, to take the electronics.
The FBI found privileged communications between Project Veritas and their attorney from several years ago, with PV asking for legal opinions regarding their journalistic activities. It seems the Bureau leaked these to THE NEW YORK TIMES, which apparently is illegal –- yes, even when the FBI does it, but since when have they cared? –- and the NYT reported on it, which as far as we know also is illegal.
Oh, and it gets shadier. The NYT happens to be in litigation with Project Veritas or a story they did in 2020 about a PV video alleging voter fraud in Minnesota. Wonder if they saw any attorney-client communications about that?
Adam Goldman and Mark Mazzetti wrote a piece for Thursday’s NYT called “Project Veritas and the Line Between Journalism and Political Spying,” which they say shows “how the conservative group worked with lawyers to gauge how far its deceptive reporting practices could go before running afoul of federal laws.”
So, let me get this straight. Reporters discuss with their attorneys on how to get information for their stories without breaking the law. Stop the presses!!
Ironically, the one who might have run afoul of the law is THE NEW YORK TIMES, as it has written about communications covered by attorney-client privilege. The materials are a series of memos written several years ago by Project Veritas attorney Benjamin Barr about how to do things such as mask identity and infiltrate groups without breaking federal law. This is actually the style of undercover reporting that investigative journalists used to do all the time; you know this if you watched 60 MINUTES and other prime time news shows in their long-ago heyday.
“The documents give new insight into the workings of the group,” the NYT story says, “at a time when it faces potential legal peril in the diary investigation –- and has signaled that its defense will rely in part on casting itself as a journalistic organization protected by the First Amendment.”
Note to the NYT: Project Veritas is a journalistic organization protected by the First Amendment.
And being a journalistic organization, they chose not to do a story on Ashley Biden’s diary because they couldn’t confirm it was hers. NATIONAL FILE published 112 pages of it, in October 2020, but Project Veritas left it alone.
“Most news organizations consult regularly with lawyers,” the NYT story says, “but some of Project Veritas’ questions for its legal team demonstrate an interest in using tactics that test the boundaries of legality and are outside of mainstream reporting techniques.”
So, whatever they thought they might need to do to get a story, they were running by their attorneys first to make sure it was LEGAL and didn’t interfere with national security. Hey, NYT (and FBI), there is nothing wrong with “demonstrating an interest.” And according to James O’Keefe and his lawyer Paul Calli, who appeared in an interview with Sean Hannity, they DID nothing wrong. This would imply denial of one of the allegations in the search warrant, transporting stolen goods [the diary] across state lines.
“Mr. O’Keefe likes to describe himself as a crusading journalist exposing wrongdoing, targeting liberal groups and Democrat politicians,” says the NYT.
Note to the NYT: That’s exactly what O'Keefe is. And thank God for that, as the mainstream media aren’t interested in doing the job. They show a remarkable lack of curiosity, especially when it comes to wrongdoings within their own party.
In their story, Goldman and Mazzetti admit that they passed along some of these Project Veritas memos to Bill Grueskin, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, formerly with the WALL STREET JOURNAL and BLOOMBERG NEWS. He said that these memos provided “pretty good advice” but that “the undercover nature of Project Veritas’ work was more problematic.”
Did this expert think it might be “problematic” that he was reading privileged attorney-client legal advice?
“Every newsroom I’ve ever worked in has basically said undercover journalism was unacceptable,” Grueskin said. On the contrary, we used to see a lot of this type of sting, with shaky undercover cameras inside purses and such. That was long before cameras were virtually everywhere, as they are now. Why do I get the feeling that the real objection to Project Veritas is not their tactics but their targets?
Project Veritas issued a statement saying it “stands behind these legal memos and is proud of the exhaustive work it does to ensure each of its journalism investigations complies with all applicable laws” and that their work “reflects Project Veritas’ dedication to the First Amendment, which protects the right to gather information, including about those in power.”
James O’Keefe got himself an outstanding attorney, Harmeet Dhillon, and she appeared on Tucker Carlson’s FOX NEWS show Thursday evening with a shocking story about how the FBI conducted their raid. She said they showed up at his door with “a battering ram,” “threw him out into the hallway,” put him “in handcuffs” and “took his phones.”
She said he had a lot of privileged information on his phones, including communication with “by my count, four dozen different lawyers over the years.” She can’t say with certainty how these NYT reporters got the information, but “can say that they got it in a way that is illegal and unethical.
She described this as a situation in which either the U.S. Attorney’s office or the FBI was tipping off the NYT to each of the raids on Project Veritas’ current and former employees. “We know that because minutes after these raids occurred, we got calls from THE NEW YORK TIMES,” she said. She described the story they ran as “a hit piece.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything this low from THE NEW YORK TIMES before, to publish people’s private legal communications,” she said. She then said what we'd concluded independently: “All it proves is that Project Veritas is an honest and thoughtful journalistic organization that sought legal advice” before running with their stories. We would add that perhaps THE NEW YORK TIMES could do a better job of that.
Finally, the FBI may have found a treasure trove of private stuff on those phones besides the attorney-client material. Dhillon said there was confidential source information, “including sources in the Biden administration and in corporate America.” There was also donor information, which is protected by the First Amendment. So why did the FBI take those phones? Still think all they were after was that diary?
On Thursday, Project Veritas was able to get a federal judge to order the FBI and the Southern District of New York to stop looking at the phones. But that sure sounds like locking the barn door after the horse is gone.
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