Why is Obama Panicking Now? – The Importance of Understanding Political Surveillance In The Era of President Obama…

The Last Refuge

"Why is former President Obama calling forth all his defensive resources now?  Why did former national security advisor Susan Rice write her cya letter?  Why have republicans in congress not been willing to investigate the true origins of political surveillance?  What is the reason for so much anger, desperation and opposition from a variety of interests?

"With the release of recent transcripts and the declassification of material from within the IG report, the Carter Page FISA and Flynn documents showing FBI activity, there is a common misconception about why the intelligence apparatus began investigating the Trump campaign in the first place.  Why was Donald Trump considered a threat?

"In this outline we hope to provide some fully cited deep source material that will explain the origin; and specifically why those inside the Intelligence Community began targeting Trump and using Confidential Human Sources against campaign officials." . . . Keep reading...

Nancy Pelosi’s Daughter Celebrates Violence and Suffering Toward Political Opposition During Coronavirus Pandemic…

The Last Refuge  "Christine Pelosi is Nancy Pelosi’s daughter.   In this tweet below Ms. Pelosi celebrates the coronavirus diagnosis for Senator Rand Paul, by commending political violence carried out by a neighbor against the senator last year.  Do not look away:

[LINK]

"Apples don’t fall far from trees.  There is a reason why the far-left celebrates and embraces political violence; and cheers when their political opposition has any form of suffering. It’s a mindset our founders warned about, and carried into all political oaths of office; you might be familiar with the phrase: ..”against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

"The Pelosi family publicly exhibit a psychology adverse to the interests of peace and tranquility.  They are, quite simply, the manifestation and embodiment of the warning within the oath of office.  These are the “domestic enemies” within our nation." . . .

OPINION: As Biden Struggles, Hillary Might Be The Democrats’ ‘Nominee Of Last Resort’

AnalyzingAmerica

"Hillary Clinton could possibly step into the position of Democratic nominee should Joe Biden fail.
"According to The Hill, Establishment Democrats put forward Joe Biden because he was the “safe” candidate.
"A recent poll shows that Joe Biden appears to be failing. An Emerson College poll showed 57 percent of likely voters think President Trump will win reelection in November. The Emerson Poll also shows Trump supporters 19 points more enthusiastic about their candidate than Biden supporters.
"According to the poll, Bernie supporters are more open to voting for a third-party candidate rather than Joe Biden.
"The Biden campaign’s tepid fundraising is a red flag, in comparison to Trump’s $187 million advantage.
"On top of that, Joe Biden is in the midst of a sexual assault scandal, where his former staffer, Tara Reade came forward with claims of malfeasance.
"It’s possible that Biden chooses Clinton as his running mate, and Clinton spent the last few months she has conducted endless interviews to ramp up her consideration."

President Obama Declares “There Is No Precedent That Anybody Can Find” For The Flynn Motion [He May Want To Call Eric Holder]

While people of good faith can certainly disagree on the wisdom or basis for the Flynn motion, it is simply untrue if President Obama is claiming that there is no precedent or legal authority for the motion.

Jonathan Turley: Western Journal

Jonathan Turley  "Former President Barack Obama is being quoted from a private call that the “rule of law is at risk” after the Justice Department moved to dismiss the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Obama reportedly told members of the Obama Alumni Association that “There is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free.”  Without doubting the exhaustive search referenced by President Obama, he might have tried calling one “alum”: former Attorney General Eric Holder.  Holder moved to dismiss such a case based on prosecutorial errors in front of the very same judge, Judge Emmet Sullivan. [Notably, CNN covered the statements this morning without noting the clearly false claim over the lack of any precedent for the Flynn motion]
"The Obama statement is curious on various levels.  First, the exhaustive search may have been hampered by the fact that Flynn was never charged with perjury. He was charged with a single count of false statements to a federal investigator under 18 U.S.C. 1001. I previously wrote that the Justice Department should move to dismiss the case due to recently disclosed evidence and thus I was supportive of the decision of Attorney General Bill Barr.

"Second, there is ample precedent for this motion even though, as I noted in the column calling for this action, such dismissals are rare. " . . . 

Prof. Turley wrote this for The Hill on use of the Logan Act to prosecute Flynn:

Logan Act is the last refuge for the American prosecutorial scoundrel

Keep in mind that using the Logan Act against the incoming White House national security adviser would be not only patently unconstitutional but also positively ludicrous. There was nothing illegal in Flynn responding to diplomats upset about sanctions imposed on Russia days before the new administration. Trump himself stated that he wanted to reframe relations with Russia. The transcripts show Flynn encouraging the diplomats not to retaliate and saying that the administration would look at the situation.

And we know there are scoundrels aplenty in the Democrat Party. Recall the role of scoundrels facing Professor Turley in the Judge Kavanaugh confirmation hearings:
Constitutional Expert Testifies 'I Voted Against Trump,' Then Demolishes Impeachment

“I’m concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger,” Turley said. “I believe this impeachment not only fails to satisfy the standard of past impeachments but would create a dangerous precedent for future impeachments.”

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley.

Much more at the Tunnel Wall blog

Is this any way to "keep a republic"?

http://www.terrellaftermath.com/

Obama reveals himself as an appalling legal ignoramus  . . . "Obama verbally worried about “the rule of law” to his 3000 closest friends on the call.  This is utter projection, a nearly universal practice on the left of accusing opponents of the tactics they use. As the Journal editorialized:

We doubt Mr. Obama has even read Thursday’s Justice Department motion to drop the Flynn prosecution. If he does ever read it, he’ll find disconcerting facts that certainly do raise doubts about whether “our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk,” though not for the reasons he claims.  . . .

General Flynn, Team Obama, and You  "Justice for the president’s former national security adviser may finally be possible. But how do we make sure such prosecutorial abuses don’t happen again?"  Sebastian Gorka  
. . . "Thanks to the work of the unflappable Sidney Powell, Flynn’s new attorney, and the decision of Attorney General William Barr to release documents that the FBI had been hiding since the general was charged, in just the past few days we have learned the leadership of the bureau inherited from the Obama Administration had planned to trap Flynn in a lie and to get him arrested and/or fired.
"They were not interested in investigating a crime, but in engineering the removal of the most powerful national security official in government outside of the president.
"As the Trump adviser most experienced in national security issues who, as the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was intimately familiar with how the Obama Administration had weakened America, and who would uncover the illegal counterintelligence operation to spy on the Trump campaign, Flynn had to be removed.
"Most heinous of all, the case against Flynn was set to be closed two weeks before the 2017 inauguration because, of course, he was innocent and the uncorrupt agents who had worked the case found no evidence of “Russian collusion.” . . . More...

Obama and "The Rule of Law"

Rule of law? Since when does prosecutorial misconduct of the worst kind merit not dropping a tainted case? Bad cases based on this reason are thrown out all the time, (just ask former California prosecutor Kamala Harris, whose cases stand to be thrown out wholesale based on prosecutorial misconduct).

"Obama is panicking" by Monica Showalter   "After seeming years of silence, and plenty of billionaire vacays, President Obama is on the warpath. Here's what the Washington Post is reporting:

Former president Barack Obama shared deep worries Friday about the Justice Department’s decision to drop its prosecution of ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn, telling old aides on a call that “our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk,” according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News and confirmed by an Obama spokesperson.

Obama also appeared to slam the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster,” offering the sort of blistering criticisms he has rarely aired in public. Obama said shortly before President Trump took office that he would only weigh in on his successor’s actions when he believes “our core values may be at stake.”

"Obama was speaking to something called the "Obama Alumni Association," a real nod to the faculty lounge, but in reality, a likely flying monkey corps waiting for activation, the leaked phone call just the first step.

"Rule of law? Since when does prosecutorial misconduct of the worst kind merit not dropping a tainted case? Bad cases based on this reason are thrown out all the time, (just ask former California prosecutor Kamala Harris, whose cases stand to be thrown out wholesale based on prosecutorial misconduct). Anybody who's going to prosecute others has got to be damn clean or the system loses credibility. For Obama to 'warn' about rule of law, as if that were something he ever cared about before this, is disingenuous. It's also projecting, a typical passive-aggressive Obama maneuver to say the least. That Obama arranged for this leak, under cover of 'private conversation' is simply a joke.

"Obama, actually, is panicking." . . . More...

Adam Schiff lied about the Trump investigation — and the media let him

NY Post

"Last week, Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell forced Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff’s hand. If the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee didn’t release the transcripts of 53 interviews from the committee’s Russia collusion investigations, then he’d do it himself. The transcripts, many of them from nearly three years ago, were declassified and ready for public viewing since June.

"As the grand impresario of collusion, Schiff has filled print and broadcast media since January 2017 claiming that he has seen “more than circumstantial evidence” of a Trump-Putin conspiracy. Obviously there was none in the transcripts, or he’d have pulled back the curtain years ago. But Schiff didn’t want to hand control of the narrative to one of Trump’s most effective deputies, so on Thursday they finally went live.

"They show exactly what you’d expect them to show: None of the former Obama administration officials who took to the airwaves immediately after Trump’s election to claim collusion had any evidence of it.

" 'Here’s Obama’s director of national intelligence, and CNN analyst, James Clapper: “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.

"Former Pentagon official and now candidate for New York’s 17th Congressional District Evelyn Farkas claimed in a notorious 2017 MSNBC segment that she advised her colleagues to disseminate intelligence so that Trump could not destroy evidence of collusion. Under oath, however, she testified she “didn’t know anything” about Trump staff dealing with Russians." . . .

Gowdy Names Reporters Who Helped 'Peddle' Schiff Leaks During Russia Investigation  . . . “Let’s just start with Politico and anyone not named Rachael Bade,” Gowdy said. “She was the only reporter that I dealt with that was fair. Kyle Cheney is just an acolyte for Adam Schiff.”

He continued: “Manu Raju from CNN–Nothing Schiff wanted out, made public — no leak was too low for Manu Raju and CNN.”
. . . ""The media, not only did they not provide scrutiny over Adam Schiff, they aided and abetted him," Gowdy told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "Politico, the Hill, Washington Post, New York Times, I'll come on and even give you the reporters' names sometime. The reporters who sat there and helped Adam Schiff perpetrate this fraud, next time I'm with you I'll give you the names of the reporters."

Adam Schiff’s pathological lying heart of darkness  "Now that the wholly-fabricated case against Gen. Michael Flynn has been dismissed and the 53 transcripts of 73 witnesses who were called to testify against President Trump on Russia collusion have been released, the scope of Adam Schiff’s treachery is more clearly than ever blowing up in his face. " . . . 

. . . To be sure, Schiff has friends in high places.  His original run for Congress was underwritten by David Geffen,  Michael Ovitz and the “gay mafia” at Dreamworks.  He is aligned with George Soros and Soros’s MoveOn.org.  He has ties to Ukraine as well, in particular to Igor Pasternak under whose influence Schiff began lobbying for arms and money for Ukraine.  In November 2019, Ukraine officials launched an investigation into a $7.4 billion money laundering scheme connected to the Democrat party, Franklin Templeton and BlackRock firms, both companies in which Schiff held shares. This information and much more is from a Medium column January 24, 2020, The Power Brokers Behind Adam Schiff. "

US Rabbis Rip Biden Over Funding Palestinian Terror: ‘Every American Should Be Outraged’

United with Israel
"The Coalition for Jewish Values slammed the presidential candidate for saying if elected he would restore American aid payments to the Palestinians, which they use to pay terror salaries."

U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden (L) with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, March 10, 2010

     "The American group Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), which represents over 1,500 traditional rabbis, called on Sunday for Senator Joe Biden to back down from his statement that if elected president he would resume giving American foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, which continues to pay salaries to convicted terrorists and their families.
     "The rabbis also demanded Biden take back his claim that Israeli annexation of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria would “jeopardize a two-state solution.”
     " 'Every American should be outraged,” said Rabbi Dov Fischer, Western Regional Vice President of the CJV. “Joe Biden has just said he would break US law to do something which is also, of course, morally repugnant — to re-involve the American taxpayer in incentivizing terrorism against innocent Americans like Taylor Force and others.”
     "Force was the American veteran who was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in 2016 while in Israel as part of his MBA program. The Taylor Force Act was passed by Congress with bipartisan support in 2018 and requires the Palestinians to stop their “pay to slay” program in order to continue receiving foreign aid from the United States.
     "The Palestinian Authority has spent over $1 billion to date in cash payments to Palestinians in Israeli jails convicted of attacks against Israelis, and to the families of Palestinian terrorists killed during attacks against Israelis and other foreign nationals including Americans like Force.
     "PA President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to do so, saying that killed and imprisoned murderers are “the most sanctified” and that “If we are left with one penny, we will spend it on the families of the prisoners and martyrs.' ” . . . By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel 

"Sanctified martyrs", such as those who attacked the Fogel family  Arabs in Gaza celebrate.

Be Warned, Coronavirus Snitches: You Too May Be Snitched On; St. Louis tattlers discover their complaints about open businesses are public records.

Reason

The Reason Foundation (which publishes this site) recently released a working paper that tries to avoid these anger-inducing one-size-fits-all responses and focus instead on containing infection clusters. Patricia needs to keep herself safe, but that doesn't mean those businesses she saw needed to be closed in order to achieve that goal.

"Hundreds of St. Louis citizens who snitched to the government about businesses that defied closure orders are discovering that their messages are not confidential and their identities are subject to sunshine laws.

"As part of the effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, some city and state leaders have forced businesses they deem "nonessential" to shut down. St. Louis County encouraged people to report any such businesses that are still open via an online form.

"The county received more than 900 complaints. And the complaints, apparently, were not anonymous. Indeed, they're public records subject to the state's sunshine laws. Now people who are angry at the extent and duration of government shutdown orders are using those laws to expose the people who filed the complaints.

"KSDK, a local NBC affiliate, reported in late April that a man named Jared Totsch received a copy of these tipsters' records and shared them on Facebook. When a KDSK reporter reached out to him to point to him that these tipsters are now worried about retaliation, Totsch responded that was partly the point.

Jonathan Turley Rips Apart Obama’s ‘Leaked’ Statement About the DOJ and Flynn, and It’s Glorious

RedState  "As my colleague streiff reported earlier, a “private call” from former President Barack Obama just happened to be leaked to Michael Isikoff.

"Strange, isn’t it, how this leak parallels leaks during the Russia investigation that also went to Isikoff with information seemingly meant to undermine Donald Trump? The same reporter who was leaked to about Carter Page. Almost as if there’s a pattern there that we’re seeing once again.

"On the call that obviously was private and not at all staged to be leaked, Obama said he was concerned that the “rule of law is at risk” after what he called the unprecedented move of the Justice Department dismissing the charges against Gen. Michael Flynn.

"From Yahoo News:

“The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed — about the Justice Department dropping charges against Michael Flynn,” Obama said in a web talk with members of the Obama Alumni Association.

“And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”

"What utter gall."

"Georgetown Law School constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley had a few things to say about Obama’s remarks." .  . .

UPDATED: Elon Musk threatens to move Tesla out of California over county's stay-at-home order

"Frankly, this is the final straw," Musk said in a seemingly frustrated tweet. "Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependent on how Tesla is treated in the future." "Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA," he added.

MSN "Elon Musk threatened to move Tesla out of California Saturday over a lingering county stay-at-home order preventing the company from restarting business until June 1. On Saturday, the Tesla CEO dangled an impending lawsuit via Twitter, accusing the Alameda County health officer of infringing on Constitutional freedoms.
" 'Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately. The unelected & ignorant 'Interim Health Officer' of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense," Musk wrote.

"Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) announced on Thursday new guidance allowing factories to reopen in the state but advised that some local governments could still impose limitations. Alameda County has kept measures preventing manufacturers from returning to work, according to TechCrunch.

. . . "Tesla sent a private email to employees Thursday with plans to begin "limited operations" at its Fremont factory in Alameda County, going against the county's stay-at-home orders, according to TechCrunch. The plan reportedly would bring back nearly 30 percent of workers to the Fremont factory as early as Friday.

"Musk threatened more drastic actions Saturday after receiving pushback from the health department, even laying out plans to move the company out of the state." . . .

Hat tip to Harley Standlee, California.

Musk: Tesla will leave California  "Because of the corona pandemic, no Teslas are currently rolling off the assembly line in California. That won’t change that quickly either. CEO Elon Musk is not very enthusiastic about the California rules and announces the withdrawal of the company headquarters." . . .

Elon Musk sues, threatens to move Tesla out of California over coronavirus order shutting down Fremont factory

“ 'California and the Bay Area are demonstrating every day that we can protect public health and reopen our economy at the same time,” Jim Wunderman, President and CEO of the Bay Area Council, said in a statement. “We strongly urge Alameda County public health officials to work with Tesla and other employers in figuring out a plan that can allow them to safely resume operations sooner rather than later. We must send a strong signal to businesses and the millions of workers who have lost their jobs that the Bay Area and California are just as eager to restart our economy and get people back to work as we are to stamp out this pandemic.' ” . . .

Update: California Democrat Reacts To Tesla Lawsuit, Pullout Plan Over Coronavirus Rules: ‘F— Elon Musk’ Says the California Democrat with the blue check:

Lorena

@LorenaSGonzalez

Mama, Labor Leader turned CA Assemblywoman. Progressive #Latina Democrat.

@latinocaucus

chair, Appropriations Chair

Lorena
@LorenaSGonzalez
F*ck Elon Musk
Wait for it; here comes the race card:

Lorena

@LorenaSGonzalez

·

4h

And, the deaths from Covid-19 in California are disproportionately Latino. Our communities have been the hardest hit. By far. Maybe that’s why we take the public health officials’ warning and directions so seriously.

Flynn Was Innocent All Along: He Was Pressured to Plead Guilty

The time has come, indeed it is long overdue, to de-politicize our criminal justice system and to forbid it from becoming weaponized by either side for partisan purposes. Dropping the case against General Flynn is an important first step, but it cannot be the last if we are to restore the criminal justice system to its rightful place as a non-partisan institution of justice.

The Jewish Press

"More than a year ago I wrote that it was clear General Michael Flynn should never have pleaded guilty because he did not commit a crime. Even if he lied to the FBI, his lie was not “material.” For a lie to be a crime under federal law, it must be material to the investigation – meaning that the lies pertain to the issues being legitimately investigated. The role of the FBI is to investigate past crimes, not to create new ones. Because the FBI investigators already knew the answer to the question they asked him—whether he had spoken to the Russian Ambassador—their purpose was not to elicit new information relevant to their investigation, but rather to spring a perjury trap on him. When they asked Flynn the question, they had a recording of his conversation with the Russian, of which he was presumably unaware. So his answer was not material to the investigation because they already had the information about which they were inquiring.
"From a legal and policy point of view, encouraging the FBI to misuse its legitimate authority to investigate past crimes, solely to create future crimes is both immoral and illegal. That is why Congress added the word material to its statute.
"Because Flynn’s answers were not material to what the FBI said it was investigating –- a violation of a never-used law, the Logan Act, that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments — they did not constitute a crime.
"At the time, that argument was mocked by the usual suspects: fair-weather civil libertarians who would have supported the argument if it had been made on behalf of a liberal Democrat but who rejected it when made on behalf of a Trump Republican. They claimed there was no authority supporting this argument, despite the citation of several cases by eminent judges." . . .

Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of over 30 books, including, most recently, “The Case Against the Democrats Impeaching Trump.” Follow him on Twitter @AlanDersh or Facebook @AlanMDershowitz.