By Mike Huckabee
February 22, 2024
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Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team!
Today, if you have a moment, leave me a comment about something you read. Comments show that we have an active community of readers.
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
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Daily Bible Verse
I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
John 16:33
Newsletter Notes
13 stories
3,128 words
Reading time: About 15 minutes
Outage
Thursday morning, users of several phone companies were hit with a major cell phone service outage. At this writing, the cause had yet to be determined. Here’s a link to more information, if you’re able to access it.
If your cell service is out, you might try to cope with the withdrawal symptoms by talking to another human being in person, if you can remember how.
Memo to Senate Republicans:
Do not DARE let Chuck Schumer get away with the unprecedented dodge of tabling the House’s impeachment of “Homeland Security Secretary” Alejandro Mayorkas and pretending it never happened. If they want to let him off the hook for the incalculable damage he’s done to public safety and national security by resolutely refusing to do his job, then they can explain why during the public trial and cast a vote on the record to do so. We are watching.
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A New Argument
Mark Levin and other legal scholars put forth a new argument against the confiscatory $355 million fine that a New York judge levied against Donald Trump. New York Attorney General Letitia James is already licking her chops at the idea of seizing his buildings and selling them, but these legal experts argue that the appeals court should vacate the ruling immediately on grounds that it violates Trump’s constitutional rights under the 8th Amendment ban on excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment.
Here are a few articles that explain the argument…
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/stalinist-370m-judgment-against-trump-vacated-immediately
If you think this doesn’t apply under the left’s “Trump has no Constitutional rights” argument, or their claim that state law is exempt, the writers point out that as recently as 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that states are subject to 8th amendment limits. It was a case in which a defendant had $1200 worth of drug paraphernalia in his $48,000 car, and the police seized his car. The SCOTUS ruled 9-0 in the defendant’s favor. If seizing a $48,000 car for a $1200 infraction was illegally excessive punishment, how can assessing a $355 million fine or seizing a multi-billion dollar piece of real estate for allegedly inflating values of properties on loans that were paid back with interest not be?
UPDATE:
Two adult suspects in the Kansas City post-Super Bowl shootings were identified, but the identity of two minors is still being kept secret.
https://www.westernjournal.com/breaking-kansas-city-shooting-suspects-identified/
Helpful Reminder
Amid all the scolding liberal media stories about George Santos being expelled from the House and Trump being fined $355 million for taking out loans and paying them back, I think it’s worthwhile to remind everyone occasionally that Democrat Bob Menendez is STILL IN THE SENATE!!!
Video of the Day!
Some instant justice as a rude car wash customer lowers the window to throw a drink at a worker. Moral: It’s not smart to tick off someone who’s holding a high-pressure water sprayer.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6347011210112
Most California Headline of the Week:
“Tesla Crashes Into Tesla, Then Crashes Into Another Tesla.”
https://insideevs.com/news/709225/multiple-tesla-evs-crash-california/
FYI: A fourth Tesla managed to stop in time and wasn’t involved. Still wondering how Elon Musk got so rich?
If the White House still can’t figure out why Americans aren’t celebrating the great economy that Bidenomics has blessed them with, this might give them a clue:
Americans haven’t been paying this big a share of their income for food in over 30 years.
The Wall Street Journal reports that while the rate of increase in inflation has come down, food is still expensive and getting more so. Last month, restaurant prices were up 5.1% from one year before, and grocery prices were 1.2% higher, and that’s on top of the much higher inflation over the previous two years. With rising costs of both food and labor, expect prices to keep going higher.
In 2022, Americans spent 11.2% of their disposable income on food, a level we haven’t seen since 1991, when the elder George Bush was in the White House. And as Prof. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit notes, Bush was a one-term President.
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Costas catches grief
Veteran sportscaster Bob Costas caught grief from the woke set last week by stating the obvious truth that allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports is crazy. He said, "It's not transphobic to say 'Let's inject some common sense here.'" He compared letting biological males who “identify” as women compete in women’s boxing to making welterweight Sugar Ray Leonard fight heavyweight Mike Tyson. Obviously, someone that outmatched is going to get seriously hurt.
And for anyone who wants to call that “transphobia,” I give you the latest example: a male (sorry, but that’s what I call someone who’s over six feet tall and has facial hair) who claimed to be female was allowed to play in a girls’ high school basketball game in Massachusetts. The opposing team’s coach forfeited the game at halftime, not just because the team with the ersatz female on it was ahead by 31-14, but because three girls on the other team had already been injured playing against him.
The school that allowed this outrage defended it by claiming that their “vision” is “that every child grows up free to create the future they want for themselves and their communities. To do this, we work to create joyful and identity-affirming schools for our students, and prioritize maintaining student and staff safety above everything else.”
That’s not “creating the future,” that’s denying reality. And I’ll bet the girls who were injured by that hulking cheater didn’t feel very safe or joyful. As women’s sports defender Riley Gaines rightly commented, “A man hitting a woman used to be called domestic abuse. Now it's called brave. Who watches this & actually thinks this is ‘compassionate, kind, and inclusive?’”
Arizona: More 2020 election talk
As we have been repeatedly assured, the 2020 Presidential election was the most secure, trustworthy election in history and any suggestions that there might have been problems with things like mail-in ballots are election denial LIES and probably Russian disinformation.
So when the Arizona Republican Party started getting reports from residents who didn’t vote in 2020 that their election records state “mail ballot counted,” that’s probably just an indication of how efficient mail-in voting is. You don’t even have to cast a ballot to have it counted!
I’m only joking, of course. Election officials assured the public that it was merely a “technical issue,” and that “fixes are in progress.” I have no reason to doubt that last part.
Honestly, when our elections and government institutions are so transparent and honest, I don’t know how anyone could possibly harbor any suspicions, although admittedly, some do…
Surprise: the FBI’s “RNC” pipe bomb story has big problems, too
We’ve previously reported that the so-called “RNC” bomb was found in a back alley right next to the adjacent Capitol Hill Club and was actually closer to it than to the RNC headquarters building, although the FBI has made “RNC bomb” part of the narrative. There’s a nice symmetry to it: DNC, RNC. Now, investigative reporters Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag are focusing on this. Is it another made-up story by the FBI, designed to give it maximum political overtones?
This is a second case of what the FBI has said was an active bomb placed the night before but with a one-hour kitchen timer attached to it. As with the DNC bomb (which really was at the DNC), the timer had 20 minutes remaining. This makes no sense if these were intended to go off.
The new piece of information is that according to an experienced security analyst who came forward with a report to Congress, the FBI has to be misrepresenting the location of the bomb allegedly found at the RNC. In a series of illustrations, he has corrected the FBI’s misleading map to show where the bomb was actually found --- practically on the other side of the Capitol Hill Club from where the FBI has maintained, much farther from the RNC.
As we reported quite a while back, the “RNC” bomb was supposedly discovered shortly before the DNC bomb, by a woman named Karlin Younger who was going back and forth to do laundry and who worked for a security contractor for the (surprise) FBI. But what we didn’t know till now is this security expert’s observation: that the way she described her reaction to the bomb was oddly worry-free, “unrealistically calm.”
More on this as it develops, which we have a feeling will be soon.
Nick Arama at REDSTATE wrote about this, too.
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/02/20/new-j6-bomb-information-n2170371
COMMENTARY: More on FBI informant Smirnov that doesn’t add up
In breaking news Tuesday evening, Alexander Smirnov, the longtime FBI informant whose alleged lies relating to Biden bribery were immortalized in that “1023” is now being said by Special Counsel David Weiss to have ties with Russian intelligence. Those ties, he says, were “involved in passing a story about Hunter Biden that has been critical to congressional Republicans’ efforts to investigate the first family.”
Actually, as we’ll get to below, it’s not so critical. But Democrats want us to believe it is. And mainstream media is running with the “Russia” theme. Note the headline on ABC NEWS…
https://abcnews.go.com/US/hunter-biden-informant-charged-lying-high-level-russian/story?id=107389985
The filing by Weiss sounds suspiciously like yet another of the intelligence community’s “Russian disinformation” tales: "Smirnov's efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues," the filing states. "What this shows is that the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020. He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”
Aside from the now-tired references to “Russian disinformation,” there’s something about this story that just isn’t right. For years, this individual was a highly-paid and utilized confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI. As recently as last summer, they were refusing to release the “1023” because, they claimed, it would compromise a valuable source. Did they still not know last summer that he had lied to them in 2017? About something so consequential?
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky said, “When asked by the committee about their confidence in the confidential human source, the FBI told the committee the [CHS] was credible and trusted.” Smirnov, he said, “had worked with the FBI for over a decade and had been paid six figures.” Of course, Smirnov was also well aware that lying to a federal agent is against the law.
So, “Did Smirnov really lie about this or not?” is just the first of the questions we have. Why did the DOJ not charge Christopher Steele with the same crime, when he seemingly committed it with his “dossier” falsely tying Trump to Russia? And why did they wait years to charge Smirnov with lying, or even just to change their tune on the matter of his reliability?
We all understood when the “1023” story broke that the notes of an FBI agent in such a report constitute raw intelligence that still requires investigation and verification. Without that next step, it wasn’t solid evidence of the Biden family’s wrongdoing, yet the media and Democrats (same thing) are now talking as if all the evidence the committee has gathered had just gone away somehow. Au contraire. Plenty of evidence is there, mostly in the form of financial records and sworn testimony.
So...drop the impeachment inquiry? Are they kidding?
It’s easy to speculate, so let’s. Perhaps Smirnov used to be a trusted source but was found out by the Russians and compromised somehow, made to pass along certain information. But why would Russia want him to pass along a story damaging to Biden, when we now have good reason to believe that Putin really did NOT want Trump in the White House due to his unpredictability. (Note: this is just the opposite of what our intelligence community was telling us.) Again, it doesn’t make sense.
FOX NEWS reports that Smirnov has been released from custody in Las Vegas after turning in his passport; he’s wearing an ankle monitor. If he disappears, the one way to find out if Burisma founder Mikola Zlochevsky really said he “paid $5 million to one Biden and $5 million to another Biden” is to hear it from Zlochevsky himself.
RELATED: President Biden’s younger brother James is set to answer questions (well, to face questions, at least) behind closed doors today for the House impeachment inquiry regarding the use of Joe’s name to generate business. (Hunter is scheduled for February 28.) As you know, former Hunter business partner Tony Bobulinski has said that President Biden “lied to the American people” about this. Questions for James will focus on those “loans” between James and Joe and how they fit into the complicated web of payments that allegedly were part of an influence-peddling and bribery scheme. Two so-called “loan repayment” checks, written in 2017 from James to the then-former Vice President --- he had just left office --- are central to this inquiry: one for $200,000 and the other for $40,000.
As Mike Davis said on FOX NEWS last night, the problem with the Biden family is that they have more than $20 million from foreign governments and other entities, distributed to every family member (well, except Hunter’s 6-year-old daughter in Arkansas), that needs to be explained. What were they selling other than Joe Biden’s name?
We’ll have a report tomorrow on James’ testimony, at least as much as can be gleaned from the press statements given after a closed-door session. Don’t expect us to take Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin seriously. Talk about an unreliable source!
ALSO RELATED: For when you have time, John D. O’Connor at PJ MEDIA has a detailed piece on how Special Counsel Hur’s “classified document” report on President Biden managed to gloss over what may be obstruction of justice by Biden and his team. Would Trump get away with this lack of documentation by those on his team going through boxes of potentially classified material? Are you kidding?
“If the scene had exonerated Biden,” O’Connor writes, “Hur would have had photos galore, common sense suggests.” But for some reason nobody on his team took out a cell phone to get even one picture of the vast pile of boxes they found.
And now it’s impossible to examine the 28 boxes that they delivered to the Archives. Under the Presidential Records Act, these documents are for the exclusive use of President Biden for the next 12 years --- and even after that, access is limited. As O’Connor reports, “We therefore must wait 12 years to investigate further whether Biden obstructed justice or used classified documents after leaving office. Of course, by then, the statute of limitations would have lapsed on these possible crimes.”
https://pjmedia.com/john-o-connor/2024/02/19/how-hurs-report-hid-bidens-obstruction-n4926571
Oh, and by the way, here’s a surprise: Special Counsel Hur has missed the deadline set by Congress to turn over the transcript of the interview with President Biden. Guess it’s subpoena time.
COMMENTARY: Fake news alert! Trump sneaker-buyer is NOT a “Russian oligarch”
As Truman Capote famously said: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
And the media hardly ever will, at least not when the story has anything to do with President Trump. If you’ve seen the story about the $9,000 purchase of a pair of Trump’s limited-edition high-top gold sneakers --- autographed, of course --- at Philadelphia’s “Sneaker Con” (yes, they have conventions for EVERYTHING), you likely saw the purchaser identified as a Russian oligarch. Obviously, the fake Trump-Russia narrative still hasn’t gone away.
The media apparently glommed on to some inaccurate report that supported the preferred narrative and repeated it like the simpleminded Greek chorus they are. Next thing you know, this man will be investigated by the FBI for (nonexistent) ties to Russian intelligence. (That’s a joke, but these days, you never know.)
As BLAZE MEDIA reported Tuesday, “Various social media users with significant followings insinuated that the sneaker game presented an opportunity for Trump and Moscow to collude.” In their stories and tweets, the purchaser of this pair of collectibles was alternately described as a “Russian oligarch,” a “Russian CEO” and a “shady Russian watch dealer.”
Here’s who he really is: Roman Sharf is a proud U.S. Army veteran and a Republican. His business is not “shady”; his company “Luxury Bazaar,” has for two decades sold pre-owned luxury watches. He came to America as a 13-year-old refugee from Ukraine when it was still part of the Soviet Union. He says his dad had four dollars in his pocket when they arrived. In a video posted on X, he also says he “busted my a-- working every dirty job under the sun to get where I am today to get to a point where I can splurge on a $9,000 pair of collectible sneakers.”
He is not pro-Russia. In fact, through his charitable organization, he says that since the war in Ukraine started, he has raised over a quarter of a million dollars in aid to Ukraine.
After being threatened with a boycott of his business, he says, “There’s not a mean tweet in the world, there’s not an IG post, there’s not a news article that’s gonna stop me from being who I am and that is a patriot of this country...”
After this experience, he laments how divided our country is but says nothing is going to stop him from being a patriot. Watch his powerful statement here:
https://twitter.com/romansharf/status/1759717137059381645?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed
Here’s the story at THE BLAZE.
I Just Wanted to Say
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