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Tag: Socialism
Democrats: the party of "Do as I say, not as I do"
Democrats show how not to promote a free press
The Democrat press accuses Trump of suppressing the Freedom of the Press
I cannot count the times the press has accused President Trump of oppressing the members of the American press. However, finding an example of the whining required reference to an 8 January 2019 commentary at The Federalist that detailed the scaremongering by the American press on freedom of the press.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a group alleging to promote press freedom and the rights of journalists, awarded President Donald Trump the "Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom" in its "Press Oppressors" awards this week. The story was giddily retweeted across the liberal Twitterverse, because, one imagines, people actually believe it.
From there, the author (David Harsanyi) goes on to characterize the battle between the American press and President Trump as a "slap fight (between) a couple of sloshed Real Housewives." Sadly, until President Trump moved his press gatherings out to the edge of Marine One, I would have to agree with Mr. Harsanyi and say that the press got too much press out of the White House. Nonetheless, the move to the edge of Marine One happily put an end to much of the grandstanding by the press.
Additionally, I would suggest that any freedom-loving conservative read this article by Mr. Harsanyi so as to glean:
While Trump's efforts to stop Michael Wolff's fabulist "Fire and Fury" from being published are silly and counterproductive and sure to fail (update: as is his new lawsuit against Buzzfeed), he is merely accessing the legal rights that all Americans enjoy. In the meantime, Democrats, right now, support new laws that would allow the state to ban political books and documentaries. The Obama years made overturning the First Amendment via the Citizens United a tenent of its party platform. Obama, in perfect syntax, engaged in an act of norm-breaking, called out the Supreme Court publicly for upholding First Amendment. That was rhetoric, too. Few defenders of the press seemed bothered by any of it.
(Read more at The Federalist)
Although sometimes embarrassed by Trump's foibles, I still support a President who punches back
Admittedly, there are times that I wince at the words tweeted by the President; however, I appreciate this President who fights (unlike some seemingly spineless Republicans).
This is particularly accentuated since I have seen that this President has taken into consideration many of the topics that have been heavy on my heart. He has held the hope presented by the pro-life position. Moreover, he took in mind the effect the misdirected courts have had on our lives by appointing constitutionally-minded jurists. Furthermore, he removed the chains placed by previous administrations on our economy through unnecessary regulation. More to the point, he removed the mandate that we be required to kowtow to governmental meddling between me and my doctor.
And while I will not make this portion of this post into a listing of the major accomplishment of the administration, I do find it necessary to reiterate the mistrust I have in the press due to their 90% negative reporting on this President.
Democrats show how not to allow journalism
O'Rourke ejects a conservative journalist
We find by reading Breitbart that Presidential hopeful Robert Francis O'Rourke tossed a conservative journalist (Joel Pollack) out of a public meeting.
Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) has styled himself as a champion of press freedom, tweeting last October: "The press is not the enemy of the people but the best defense against tyranny."
It is now August, and with his poll numbers falling in the Democratic presidential primary, O'Rourke has decided that he is entitled to abuse members of the press who cannot be relied upon to provide favorable coverage.
O'Rourke's campaign ejected this Breitbart News reporter from a speech at Benedict College, a historically black college, on Tuesday afternoon.
This reporter was standing along the side of a lecture hall in the basement of the Henry Pinder Fine Arts Humanities Center, waiting for the event to start, together with roughly 200 students and college staff members. Other news outlets had set up cameras in the back of the room.
Several minutes after the 3:00 p.m. event had been scheduled to begin, a staff member in a Beto O'Rourke t-shirt approached this reporter and asked what outlet I represented. Upon reading the press credential on my chest, he put a hand on my shoulder and said, cheerfully, "Oh, hey. All right."
A few minutes later, before the event began, a campus police officer approached this reporter and motioned for me to accompany him to the back of the room, adding that I should bring any property I had with me. In the hallway outside, he informed me that I was to leave.
A different member of the O'Rourke campaign staff, who said his name was "Steven" and would not give a last name, said that I was being ejected because I had been "disruptive" at past events.
This reporter has covered two O'Rourke events. The first was at a protest outside a shelter for migrant teens in Homestead, Florida, in June; the second was at the College of Charleston "Bully Pulpit" lecture in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday evening. At no point was there any disruption whatsoever.
This reporter asked a question during a press gaggle on Monday evening; that was the only interaction of any kind with the candidate.
The question asked the Democratic presidential hopeful whether misquoting Trump's comments on riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 was consistent with O'Rourke's pledge to "heal" and not "inflame" divisions in this country.
Considering how the Left howled when Jimmy Acosta was barred from White House briefings, this should have made front-page news
However, unlike the spats between the White House and Jimmy Acosta, Kaitlan Collins, and others, they might have forgotten about Obama's blacklisting of Fox?
Or, more to the point, did they think that we did not notice how they encircled Acosta after he was called out for blocking a female White House staffer from taking the microphone he had repeatedly been told to relinquish? News to the Nightly News: you cannot successfully champion both the #MeToo movement and a bully of females.
Bodyguards for April Ryan rough up an invited guest photojournalist
The New York Post lets the cat out of the bag by reporting on the attack that one bodyguard of April Ryan perpetuated on a photojournalist who was trying to ply his trade.
CNN political analyst April Ryan — who has repeatedly blasted President Trump for attacking and vilifying the press — got her bodyguard to forcibly remove a journalist from an event she was speaking at in New Jersey, leading cops to charge him Monday with assault.
"This was more than just an assault on me," tweeted New Brunswick Today editor Charlie Kratovil. "This was an assault on freedom of the press."
Kratovil claims he was violently tossed from the New Jersey Parent Summit on Aug. 3 by Ryan's goon after spending two hours inside filming other guests and speakers without any problems.
Kratovil had been invited to The Heldrich Hotel, where the event was held, by a public relations firm and asked to cover it. Video posted online shows him sitting in the audience as Ryan takes the stage and starts speaking.
Moments later, her bodyguard — Joel Morris, 30, of Illinois — comes into view and is told something by Ryan. He promptly walks over to Kratovil and allegedly attempts to take his video camera.
"Put that down," Kratovil yells. "Don't you dare — put that down, sir! That's my camera!"
A tussle allegedly ensues and Morris winds up walking Kratovil out of the venue — with his arm twisted around his back, the journalist says.
"This is a personal event," Morris can be heard telling him. "You're not allowed back in."
A woman can be heard screaming at Kratovil at one point, saying: "How dare you come in here and interrupt this event like this!"
"I didn't interrupt," he fired back.
Kratovil posted a video on his Twitter page Monday, explaining how cops found "probable cause" to charge Morris with harassment, assault and theft.
"I was there to cover April Ryan's speech," Kratovil explained. "Joel Morris stole [my] camera, high-tailed it out of the room. One thing led to another, I ended up being assaulted after retrieving the camera. But now Mr. Morris is going to have to show up on Sept. 12…in Superior Court."
Kratovil added, "It's a shame that we even have to be at this point."
He read a statement from the NJ Society of Professional Journalists, saying: "It is never under any circumstances permissible for a person aggrieved at being photographed or videotaped to lay hands on the journalist, or attempt to take away the journalist's equipment."
"It is sad we have to say this, and remind people of this — and it's super sad that we have to remind another journalist of this," Kratovil said. "We are still waiting for [Ryan] to comment on this unfortunate incident…Maybe now that there's criminal charges we might hear something from her. I hope sincerely that she does comment and I hope she does condemn this. This is unacceptable…Not in our country, we have freedom of the press here."
(Read more at New York Post)
Although this started in full view of April Ryan and the bodyguard was in her employ, she denied involvement
Somehow, a person who made a name for herself by reporting on other people has surrounded herself with bodyguards and will not allow herself to be the subject of reporting.
Another phase of the killing of the Freedom of the Press: Liberals stand against the free flow of ideas
Facebook bans ads from The Epoch Times after huge pro-Trump buy
Due to the slanted reporting by NBC News in their 22 August 2019 article on the Epoch Times, it becomes evident that maybe this outlet (that liberals want to close down) merits our support.
To quote NBC (and, thence, read beyond the liberal bias to see the possible truth):
Facebook has banned The Epoch Times, a conservative news outlet that spent more money on pro-Trump Facebook advertisements than any group other than the Trump campaign, from any future advertising on the platform.
The decision follows an NBC News report that The Epoch Times had shifted its spending on Facebook in the last month, seemingly in an effort to obfuscate its connection to some $2 million worth of ads that promoted the president and conspiracy theories about his political enemies.
"Over the past year we removed accounts associated with the Epoch Times for violating our ad policies, including trying to get around our review systems," a Facebook spokesperson said. "We acted on additional accounts today and they are no longer able to advertise with us."
Facebook's decision came as a result of a review prompted by questions from NBC News. The spokesperson explained that ads must include disclaimers that accurately represent the name of the ad's sponsors.
The Epoch Times' new method of pushing the pro-Trump conspiracy ads on Facebook, which appeared under page names such as "Honest Paper" and "Pure American Journalism," allowed the organization to hide its multimillion-dollar spending on dark-money ads, in effect bypassing Facebook's political advertising transparency rules. Facebook's ban will affect only The Epoch Times' ability to buy ads; the sock-puppet pages created to host the new policy-violating ads were still live at the time of publication.
Nicholas Fouriezos, a reporter for the website OZY, tweeted about the move Thursday. It was first spotted last week by Lachlan Markay of The Daily Beast.
A recent NBC News investigation revealed how The Epoch Times had evolved from a nonprofit newspaper that carried a Chinese-American religious movement's anti-communism message into a conservative online news behemoth that embraced President Donald Trump and conspiracy content.
(Read more tripe at NBC News)
Facebook as one of the gatekeepers for the Democrat party
Nobody can deny the numerous times Facebook has acted to suppress points of view that counter the Democrat orthodoxy. When at a gathering of liberals, Mark Zuckerberg bragged that Facebook had banned pro-life ads to the platform just prior to the Irish referendum on abortion (something that at least one Spanish article corroborates).
So, how can we consider Facebook (or Google or Twitter) a unbiased platform for the digital exchange of information? Considering that it took Facebook years of anti-Semitic offenses by Louis Farrakhan to get him banned, but only months of right-wing reporting or commentary by Paul Joseph Watson, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Laura Loomer to get them banned, there is no way to trust Facebook in such a manner.
NYTwits: You're not the resistance
NYT Staffer Pleads With Newsroom: 'We're Not F**king Part Of The Resistance'
Through a 14 August 2019 article in the Daily Caller, we are told of an instance where a member of the press resisted "The Reistance."
The New York Times takes a lot of heat from the right for just existing.
But this week things turned majorly introspective at a newsroom meeting in which a staffer told his coworkers that they all need to remember that they're not part of the left-wing movement.
But this week things turned majorly introspective at a newsroom meeting in which a staffer told his coworkers that they all need to remember that they're not part of the left-wing movement.
That they even needed a reminder on this matter speaks volumes.
The meeting came after Manhattan's paper of record caught hell when editors ran — and then changed — a headline that put President Trump in a favorable light. The headline changed after the Twitterverse descended on the NYT like an angry swarm of bees.
"Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism," last Monday's headline read after Trump delivered a speech denouncing white supremacy after the recent spate of mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso killed 30 people.
Lefty Joan Walsh, a CNN contributor and longtime editor at The Nation, dramatically dropped her subscription. If you lose Joan Walsh you know you're in trouble (eye roll)
In the next edition, the NYT changed the headline to "Assailing Hate But Not Guns."
CNN media writer Oliver Darcy wrote about a newsroom town hall that happened at the behest of Executive Editor Dean Baquet last Friday.
Stating the obvious, one staffer said, "There are a lot of people that think The Times is too liberal, and when you start throwing words like that around, people will accuse us of editorializing."
Baquet didn't need his arm twisted. "It was a fucking mess," he told reporters and editors of the headline choice.
(Read more at the Daily Caller)
A headline to state the obvious: the New York Times is only objective as a mouthpiece for Democrats
Nobody can gloss over it. All pretense that there might be true objectivity at the New York Times has evaporated.
Muslim-American Journalist Says Twitter Shadow-Banned Her After Asking Ilhan Omar For An Interview
Through a 14 August 2019 article in the Daily Caller, we hear the story of Dalia Al-Aqidi, a Muslim, female journalist and refugee, who was shadow-banned from Twitter after pressing Ilhan Omar for an interview.
A Muslim-American female journalist and refugee was shadow-banned from Twitter after criticizing Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Dalia Al-Aqidi said Omar has largely refused to grant sit-down interviews to U.S. media outlets, while doing so with Al Jazeera, which is owned by the government of Qatar.
Al-Aqidi is a longtime journalist who has covered the White House and the Iraq war for Alhurra TV, a U.S.-based Arabic network, where the Chicago Tribune lauded her as the "most-watched TV reporter no one in America has seen." She has also contributed stories to the U.S. government-run Voice of America and the Saudi-government-run Alarabiya in the past. She previously fled Hussein's Iraq.
"I dared her to give me a 30 minute 1-on-1 interview. I believe we have things in common we can discuss — we're both immigrants, women, and Muslims. And from what I've seen from her she only gives interviews to Al Jazeera," Al-Aqidi told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
"Two hours later, CAIR started following me" on Twitter, she said, referring to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "So I pointed out CAIR's connection to the Muslim Brotherhood."
Soon after, it was as if Al-Aqidi didn't exist on Twitter. From her side, everything looked normal. She never received communications from Twitter notifying her of violating its terms of service, and she could log in and send tweets.
But no one could see them. When a user searches her name on Twitter, it never comes up in the autocomplete. If you type in her screen name "@dalia30," it does not come up, with Twitter instead suggesting @dalia30900915. When you search for key words that she has tweeted, her own missives are missing from the search results.
Known as a "shadow-ban," the practice of Twitter secretly preventing others from seeing someone's tweets, while misleading the user that this is not happening, is so common that a website, shadowban.eu, tests for it. It confirms that Al-Aqidi is shadow-banned.
(Read more at 14 August 2019 article in the Daily Caller)
This goes to prove that insider politics has killed journalism
Just as Dalia Al-Aqidi got shadow banned for asking questions of the untouchable Ilhan Omar, Laura Loomer got banned from Facebook shortly after reporting on Nancy Pelosi and Sharyl Attkisson left from CBS with her persistence in investigating the Obama excesses.
And Democrats present themselves as tolerant.
Democrats on race relations: Ilhan Omar demonizes all White men
Ilhan Omar suggests people should be 'more fearful of white men' than jihadists in 2018 interview
The New York Post reveals through a 25 July 2018 article how Rep. Ilhan Omar demonized all White men.
Rep. Ilhan Omar said Americans should be "more fearful of white men" when discussing the threat of "jihadist terrorism."
The Minnesota progressive was asked in a resurfaced interview with Al Jazeera from August 2018 about the rise of Islamophobia, citing the attacks that killed eight people on a Manhattan bike path in 2017 and the 2015 terror attack in San Bernardino, Calif., that killed 14.
"I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country," Omar answered.
"And so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe — Americans safe inside of this country — we should be profiling, monitoring, and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men," she continued.
Omar, a Somalia-born Democrat, along with other first-year Democratic congresswomen — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley — have been feuding with President Trump after he tweeted earlier this month that they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came."
(Read more at the New York Post)
If the Democrat press held Ilhan Omar to account …
If the Democrat press held Ilhan Omar to account for this statement (or her accusations that represenatives friendly to Israel held dual allegances or her "Some people did something" comment about 9/11 or her many anti-Semitic statements), then it might again start to set unfortunate trends.
I say "again" because the last time the Democrat press dismissed the words of a prominent Democrat, riots erupted. On another instance with that same Democrat, towns burned in support of lawlessness.
Ilhan Omar must not have believed her own advice on White men (quoted above), since she had an affair with a married White man
In yet another article, the New York Post explains how Rep. Omar has been accused of having an affair with her white, male campaign worker.
A Washington, DC, mom says her political-consultant husband left her for Rep. Ilhan Omar, according to a bombshell divorce filing obtained by The Post.
Dr. Beth Mynett says her cheating spouse, Tim Mynett, told her in April that he was having an affair with the Somali-born US representative — and that he even made a "shocking declaration of love" for the Minnesota congresswoman before he ditched his wife, alleges the filing, submitted in DC Superior Court on Tuesday.
The physician, 55, and her 38-year-old husband — who has worked for left-wing Democrats such as Omar and her Minnesota predecessor, Keith Ellison — have a 13-year-old son together.
"The parties physically separated on or about April 7, 2019, when Defendant told Plaintiff that he was romantically involved with and in love with another woman, Ilhan Omar," the court papers say.
"Defendant met Rep. Omar while working for her,'' the document states. "Although devastated by the betrayal and deceit that preceded his abrupt declaration, Plaintiff told Defendant that she loved him, and was willing to fight for the marriage.
"Defendant, however, told her that was not an option for him'' and moved out the next day, the papers say.
"It is clear to Plaintiff that her marriage to Defendant is over and that there is no hope of reconciliation,'' according to the filing.
The Mynetts lived together for six years before marrying in 2012, the filing said.
Omar — a member of "the Squad," a group of far left-leaning female freshman House members including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and two others — recently separated from her husband, according to reports.
The 37-year-old congresswoman and mom of three paid Tim Mynett and his E. Street Group approximately $230,000 through her campaign since 2018 for fundraising consulting, digital communications, internet advertising and travel expenses.
Omar was spotted enjoying time with Tim Mynett at a California restaurant in March.
(Read more at New York Post)
If Ilhan Omar were anything but a hypocrite
If Ilhan Omar were a true, principled politician, she might consider taking acts that would be best for her constituents.
If she were true to Islam, there would be no room in her life for infidelity or racism.
If she were a dedicated racist, she never would have had an affair with a White man.
With all of this said, all I can say is that she definitely is a hypocrite.
Democrat hypocrisy on personal protection
In response to the Odessa shooting, Democrats call for ineffective gun control
On Saturday, 31 August 2019, an insane man went on a shooting spree after he was fired and then pulled over for failing to signal a turn. Previously described by neighbors as "scary" and "violent," this nut called the FBI and began "incoherently rambling" after his firing. Although he had both a criminal record and had been diagnosed with a mental illness, and, therefore, failed his background check, this madman purchased a rifle by way of a private sale. By the end of his rampage, the man who won't be named here had killed seven and wounded 22 as he drove around shooting randomly before he was stopped by a policeman's bullet near a movie theater.
During the same weekend in Chicago (where gun laws are in effect), eight were killed and 26 injured during a respite from violence (this is the lowest murder rate since 2011).
Over the years, articles demonstrate that Democrats want gun protection for them, not you
Democratic Congressman: Yeah, You Don't Need Guns, But 'We Deserve' Armed Guards
The Daily Wire reports in a 23 June 2016 article on the hypocrisy of Charlie Rangel.
Democratic New York Representative Charlie Rangel, no stranger to hypocrisy, told The Daily Caller in an interview that while members of Congress "need" and "deserve" to be protected by guns, law-abiding citizens should not own guns.
(Read more at the Daily Wire)
These are the Democrats who carved special payments out that cover their Obamacare expenses
If anyone finds any bit of surprise in the fact that Congress expects armed protection even as they devise methods of disarming the people, then remember these similar situations. Remember that they exempted themselves from Obamacare. Remember that insider trading laws that apply to you do not keep Congress members from using their Congressionally-acquired information to profit.
7 Liberal Hypocrites Who Call For Gun Control While Being Protected By Guns
Townhall comments on the liberal hypocrisy that surrounds the topic of gun control.
One of the great ironies of the gun control debate is that everyone who calls for gun control still wants a man with a gun protecting him. Every governor in America has armed security. You have to go through a metal detector guarded by men with guns to get into the Capitol building. Barack Obama has hundreds of Secret Service agents carrying fully automatic weapons who protect his safety. Even run-of-the-mill Democrats who want to take guns away from everyone else will unhesitatingly pick up the phone and call the police if they feel threatened — so that a man with a gun can show up and make them safe.
But, if a man in a bad neighborhood wants a gun to make his family safe, a rape victim wants a gun to be protected, or just the average Joe wants a gun in case his life is endangered by a burglar, thug or the next Adam Lanza, these same people want to take their guns away. Pro-gun control Democrats may think we have an "upper class" that deserves to be protected with guns while it's okay if the "peons" get shot, but that goes against the core of what America is supposed to be. If your child's life is in danger, you should have every bit as much of a right and opportunity to defend his life as the Secret Service does to defend the President of the United States when he's threatened.
Unfortunately, there are some people in this country who apparently believe they're so special, so elite, so much better than the rest of the "riff-raff," that they should have a right to be protected even if you don't.
(Read the list of seven people and organizations who use guns but campaign for gun laws at Townhall)
Beyond knowing who to ignore and boycott
By knowing to avoid the print of the Journal-News and the bloviating of politicians like Nancy Pelosi or Diane Feinstein or that of celebrities like Mark Kelly, Shania Twain, Rosie O'Donnell, or Michael Moore — we can be happier when we ignore it all.
Democrats accuse the NRA of profiting from bloodshed
Ridiculous Hypocrite Celebrities Launch Dumb New Attack on NRA
Red State rightfully points out one instance of where celebrities started a hypocritical attack on the NRA.
Even as it becomes apparent that Tinseltown's celebrity set is an increasingly inconsequential political faction, they continue to hector and lecture the rest of as if they are still socially relevant and influential.
Undeterred by the fact that their overwhelming support of and assistance for Hillary Clinton in 2016 not only didn't push her over the finish, but actually contributed to her defeat, the luminary Illuminati continue to offer up their unnecessary and unwanted opinions.
Since the election the famous have led the #Resistance — resulting in zero change. They have loudly backed the Women's March, and their donning of vagina hats has provoked far more laughter than change. Celebrities have openly funded and supported the latest surge of gun control fervor following the Parkland school shooting, and the result has been an increase gun sales and a huge spike in new memberships for the NRA.
So not merely inconsequential to success for their liberal causes, but actively detrimental to it, and yet totally unaware of it.
This lack of awareness has led to a particular crowd of celebrities who, unable to ascertain the reason for rising NRA memberships and gun ownership, to concoct a plan to counteract it. Remarkable.
The formation of The NoRA Initiative is meant to be a direct salvo against the NRA. By way of introduction, this outfit crafted an open letter (PDF) to NRA President Wayne LaPierre, and it is a marvel of ignorance and misinformation, all delivered in a demeaning, condescending, angry tone. Just as you'd expect from these geniuses.
This letter — signed by a lengthy list of actors, performers, and dozens of other deeply important people — wastes no time in being an easily disregarded missive of mirth. It begins by addressing the Columbine High School shooting, and our celebrities fall on their collective faces by sentence Two. "Three of the four guns used in the shooting were legally in the possession of the shooters."
Uh, no. Sorry, Hollywood gun experts, but the two killers at Columbine — Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold — were below the age to "legally" own their firearms. The guns were purchased by another individual, and despite the claim by NoRA, the straw purchase for underage individuals was illegal.
The letter then mentions the NRA held its convention in Denver weeks later. This is another wild inaccuracy. Rather than marching in behind the tragedy, the convention had long been planned for Denver and following the shooting then President Charlton Heston canceled most of the event activities, save for his legally mandated annual speech. This was done out of respect of the victims. Then NoRA engages in more sophistry.
(Read more at Red State)
Not terrorists, but founded by pastors seeking to protect former slaves from the KKK
As I previously blogged in 2016, there are a number of Blacks who support Second Amendment rights. Still, when you compare the support that should exist for the protection of Black families against the stated support for senseless Democrat policies, there really can be no comparison.
Additionally, considering that the NRA was established by former abolitionist pastors who wanted Blacks to be able to protect their own families against the KKK (the Southern Democrat's violent tool of oppression), there should not be a debate within poor America as to whether only the rich deserve the protection of sidearms via bodyguards (refer to April Ryan above).
As evidenced by the words of the Black conservatives in the 2013 conference documented in the below two videos (both long and short versions), we have ample evidence to support the good intentions of the founders, leaders, and members of the National Rifle Association.
The O'Rourke campaign shows no control in promoting itself after the Odessa shooting
Beto O'Rourke campaign selling 'this is f—ed up' T-shirts to help gun control activists
In a 1 September 2019 USA Today article, the sickness of one Democrat campaign comes out.
Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke did not mince words when describing the deadly shooting in Midland-Odessa, Texas, that left at least seven people dead and 22 wounded.
"This is f—ed up," he said on Twitter Saturday evening and in a television interview on Sunday morning.
Later Sunday, his presidential campaign announced that the "f—ed up" quote had become a T-shirt being sold for $30 on the campaign website.
"100% of the proceeds from the sale of this item will be shared equally between Mom's Demand Action and March for Our Lives," the campaign wrote on the O'Rourke campaign website, referring to two prominent gun violence prevention groups.
According to the campaign, the shirt was printed by a union and made in the United States.
The campaign has defended O'Rourke's profanity on Twitter.
"if you're angrier about a swear word than a baby being shot in the face, consider your choices," the campaign wrote, referring to a 17-month-old girl who had been shot in the Texas shooting.
(Read more at USA Today)
News for "Beto"
What I am angry about stems from the continual attack by "Beto" on my Second Amendment rights any time he can make an emotional plea based on the acts of someone else.
Unlike "Beto," I believe that murderers should be executed (rather then babies). Unlike "Beto," I believe that the guilty should be punished, not those law-abiding citizens who have done nothing and who want to protect themselves.
Lead Democrats hypocrisy on "Climate Change"
Obama commits America to higher taxes with the Paris Climate Accord
According to a 1 June 2017 Business Insider article, Obama brought the USA into the Paris Climate Accord in order to supposedly slow the progress of global warming.
In December 2015, nearly every country, including all of the world's biggest polluters, came together in Paris and agreed to limit carbon emissions.
The Paris Agreement was designed to keep the planet from warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
It was a cornerstone of President Barack Obama's environmental legacy. Now President Donald Trump is withdrawing the US from the accord.
Here's a quick primer on the Paris Agreement.
What did the US agree to?
The Paris Agreement laid out a framework for countries to adopt clean energy and phase out fossil fuels. Each country submitted a climate-action plan laying out how it would achieve these goals.
The US's plan, which the Obama administration submitted in March 2015, set the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% by 2025. The baseline level this reduction is measured against is 2005, when the US emitted 6,132 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
(Read more at the Business Insider)
After claiming the seas would rise due to global warming, Obama buys multi-million dollar beachfront property
As discussed at PJ Media, Obama has purchased a mulit-million dollar beachfront property which would easily be wiped out by global warming, if it existed.
After the news broke that former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama are buying a $15M waterfront estate in Martha's Vineyard, some took to social media to accuse the Obamas of hypocrisy on climate change.
"If I genuinely believed in 12 years coastal areas would be under water, I wouldn't buy a $15 million mansion on…Martha's Vineyard. Call me crazy, but it doesn't seem like Obama is taking climate change all that seriously," wrote Twitter user @RantyAmyCurtis.
If I genuinely believed in 12 years coastal areas would be under water, I wouldn't by a $15 million mansion on...Ma… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Amy Curtis (@RantyAmyCurtis) August 23, 2019
Others made a similar point in reaction to the news of the Obamas purchase, which has reportedly not been finalized yet.
"If climate change is as bad as Obama said it was, why is he buying property on or near the beach?" wrote Twitter user @Huffman_Hippy.
"How about Obama pushing climate change legislation then buying a coastal mansion at Martha's vineyard?" wrote Twitter user @Mikel1618.
Twitter user @Chris_Roy wrote that the Obamas $15 million investment in a waterfront property "seems odd for a climate change alarmist believing in sea level rise and the destruction of coastal regions.Hmmm 🤔. Obviously not thinking of what he will leave his children."
(Read more at PJ Media)
This was not the first high-profile Democrat to become a climate hypocrite
Al Gore, who hit his peak during his years in the as the Vice President under Bill Clinton, told a German audience in 2008 that "the entire North polarized cap will disappear in five years." Additionally, he told American households to conserve by keeping the air conditioning and heating at uncomfortable levels (while he maintained a sprawling mansion that included an Olympic-sized, heated pool). Likewise, he encouraged America to abstain from burning gasoline while he uses a fleet of jets and gas-guzzling sedans.
More recently, AOC has been called out for jet-setting and using SUV's while advocating her drastic "Green New Deal."
Democrats on terrorism
Democrats want to both coddle and demonize terrorists
When The Atlantic pointed out the incoherence within liberal (hence, Democrat) thought on terrorists.
Shortly after three men with knives and a van spent eight minutes murdering and maiming people at random on London Bridge, one of the Democratic Party's leading voices on national security responded on Twitter. Chris Murphy began by criticizing Donald Trump for sounding the alarms. "My god," he wrote. "@POTUS has no idea that the goal of terrorists is to instill a level of fear in the public disproportionate to the actual threat." The Connecticut senator tried to put the threat in proper proportion. "Terrorism is a real threat," he acknowledged, "but remember that since 9/11, you have a greater chance of being killed by a falling object than by terrorists." Murphy then issued a five-point rebuttal to Trump's approach to terrorism. He did not issue a five-point plan for defeating falling objects.
Maybe Murphy didn't do this because falling objects are not equivalent to three men ramming and hacking people to death on London Bridge. Terrorists attack not just individuals but society, which makes mortality rates a poor measure of the danger terrorism poses. Falling objects "attack" neither. The men behind the carnage in London appear to have been inspired by ISIS, the same organization that has recently motivated young Muslim men to mow down civilians from Minya to Manchester, Berlin to Baghdad, Istanbul to Orlando, and beyond. Telling people not to be frightened by such acts—that fear is what the terrorists want—does not make those acts less frightening. Many people are scared by terrorism, despite the allegedly comforting statistics, because terrorism is scary. It's designed to be. And most people recognize that while terrorism takes various forms, one of the most virulent strains these days is extremist violence committed in the name of Islam. They distinguish, in other words, between wobbly furniture and jihadist terror.
In the raw moments after a terrorist attack, people are often looking for recognition of the horror and reassurance that they'll be kept safe, not to be told that they're overreacting or to be soothed with unconvincing arguments. Franklin Roosevelt famously told Americans during the Great Depression that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." Less famous is how he contextualized that message. He listed the country's many "dark realities"—the government deprived of revenue, families stripped of their savings, the unemployed facing the "grim problem of existence," and so on. The good news, Roosevelt said, was that these were merely "material things," and they could be regained. Before fear could be feared, it had to be reckoned with.
Murphy's reaction to the London attack captures a common line of reasoning, particularly on the left, and it recalls some of the clinical rhetoric that Barack Obama used in similar circumstances. In repeatedly resisting (with some exceptions) any language that associated terrorism with extremist interpretations of Islam, the former president provided fodder to right-wing critics who argued that he was misleading people about the nature of the problem. And in his cerebral approach to counterterrorism, Obama could come across as tone-deaf to the public mood. After attackers killed 130 people in Paris , for example, Obama scoffed at reporters' questions about whether the bloodshed would change his ISIS strategy. My colleague Jeffrey Goldberg documented what happened next on the president's overseas trip:
Air Force One departed Antalya and arrived 10 hours later in Manila. That's when the president's advisers came to understand, in the words of one official, that "everyone back home had lost their minds." Susan Rice, trying to comprehend the rising anxiety, searched her hotel television in vain for CNN, finding only the BBC and Fox News. She toggled between the two, looking for the mean, she told people on the trip.
Later, the president would say that he had failed to fully appreciate the fear many Americans were experiencing about the possibility of a Paris-style attack in the U.S. Great distance, a frantic schedule, and the jet-lag haze that envelops a globe-spanning presidential trip were working against him. But he has never believed that terrorism poses a threat to America commensurate with the fear it generates. Even during the period in 2014 when ISIS was executing its American captives in Syria, his emotions were in check. Valerie Jarrett, Obama's closest adviser, told him people were worried that the group would soon take its beheading campaign to the U.S. "They're not coming here to chop our heads off," he reassured her. Obama frequently reminds his staff that terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than handguns, car accidents, and falls in bathtubs do. Several years ago, he expressed to me his admiration for Israelis' "resilience" in the face of constant terrorism, and it is clear that he would like to see resilience replace panic in American society. Nevertheless, his advisers are fighting a constant rearguard action to keep Obama from placing terrorism in what he considers its "proper" perspective, out of concern that he will seem insensitive to the fears of the American people.
Into this emotional void stepped Donald Trump, who on terrorism is the id to Obama's ego. He rails against political correctness, portrays "radical Islamic terrorism" as a grave threat to the nation, and embodies the fearful alarmism that terrorism can provoke.
Obama's stance on terrorism also contained a contradiction. He argued that the terrorist threat was much less severe than other challenges such as climate change and gun violence. But he didn't scale back his counterterrorism policies to reflect that assessment. After criticizing the excesses of George W. Bush's war on terror, Obama launched a massive drone war against suspected terrorists in several countries. He urged the government to do more on gun violence, which is responsible for far more deaths per year in the United States than terrorism is, while simultaneously claiming that the U.S. government was right to "spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil." Either Obama never managed to invest in counterterrorism at the level he felt it deserved, or he was tacitly acknowledging that terrorism is, in fact, a big problem that statistics only partially capture.
(Read more at The Atlantic)
From these and other instances, Democrats seem to want to have their cake and eat it, too
In the event that one might review the above article (or consider how radical Islam was never mentioned during a Senate hearing on the 9/11 attacks or think about how Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have never been punished for their many anti-Semitic attacks, just remember.
San Francisco City government declares the NRA to be a terrorist organization
By reading between the lines of the New York Times, we discover the degree of disrespect doled out by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors toward the National Rifle Association.
Unsettled by recent mass shootings across the nation, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution this week declaring the National Rifle Association a domestic terrorist organization.
The resolution was introduced by Supervisor Catherine Stefani on July 30, two days after a shooting at a garlic festival in Gilroy, Calif., in which three people were killed and more than a dozen others injured.
Before the resolution was put to a vote on Tuesday, Ms. Stefani spoke about the "carnage across this country," also citing mass shootings last month in El Paso; Dayton, Ohio; and near Odessa, Tex.
Ms. Stefani said the N.R.A. conspires to limit gun violence research, restrict gun violence data sharing and block every piece of sensible gun violence prevention legislation proposed at local, state and federal levels.
"The N.R.A. exists to spread pro-gun propaganda and put weapons in the hands of those who would harm and terrorize us," Ms. Stefani said in a statement. "Nobody has done more to fan the flames of gun violence than the N.R.A."
While the resolution has no practical effect, Ms. Stefani said in an interview on Wednesday, "I firmly believe that words matter, and I think this is a step in fighting the negative impact of the N.R.A."
(Read more at the New York Times)
Consider the results of the Board of Supervisors on San Francisco
To those who might consider the words of Ms. Stefani, walk the streets of San Francisco and decide whether the NRA or the Board of Supervisors has done the most to terrorize San Francisco.
AOC and Pressley raise bail funds for Antifa members who attacked police in Boston
According to the New York Post, AOC and Pressley raised bail for Antifa.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a fellow member of "the Squad," Rep. Ayanna Pressley, vowed Saturday to contribute to a fund that is raising bail money for the 36 counterprotesters arrested at the "Straight Pride Parade" in Boston.
Nine of the counterprotesters arrested have been charged with assaulting police officers, the Boston Herald reported. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Pressley (D-Mass.) both tweeted out a link to a crowdsourcing page called The Solidarity Against Hate Legal Defense Fund, which has raised nearly $25,000 to pay bail and other legal fees of those arrested while protesting the march.
"One way to support the local LGBTQ community impacted by Boston's white supremacist parade?" Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter, sharing a link to the fund. "Contribute to the Bail Fund for the activists who put themselves on the line protecting the Boston community."
Ocasio-Cortez retweeted Pressley's initial tweet about the fund. Pressley slammed the "Straight Pride" event as an "#LGBT hate march" and asked followers to join her in making a contribution to the fund.
(Read more at the New York Post)
An answer that aligns with our founding
We can stop mass shootings without restricting Second Amendment liberties
Tom Giovanetti of the Institute for Policy Innovation argues that America need not give up its guns in response to the recent violence.
It is often said by people of all political persuasions, and certainly by my fellow conservatives, that the primary duty of the federal government is to keep us safe.
The problem is, that's not true. The founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and especially the Federalist Papers, make it clear that the primary duty of the federal government is the preservation of liberty, not safety. The Founders had very clear ideas about the trade-offs between safety and liberty, and they willingly gave up their own security in order to take a desperate shot at more political liberty.
The Founders were primarily concerned about preventing tyranny, and they correctly understood that a free people could keep themselves safe, but a safe people might not be able to keep themselves free. You could live safely in a police state or a military dictatorship, or remain subjects of King George, but you wouldn't be free.
That's why Thomas Jefferson said, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it." Americans in the tradition of the Founders don't trade liberty for safety.
But liberty and safety are not mutually exclusive. The Founders believed that a free people could, through self-organization, create the means and the institutions necessary to maintain public safety. Liberty logically precedes safety, but it doesn't preclude it.
Confronted with the horror of repeated mass shootings, proposed solutions have rushed toward restricting Second Amendment rights. But an American solution for reducing mass shootings should not focus on erosions of liberty.
On the other hand, when defenders of Second Amendment rights offer no practical solutions, they leave open the implication that liberty requires us to tolerate the occasional (or not-so-occasional) mass shooting. Not only is that a losing argument with the public in the long run, it's also not true. Americans are entitled to both liberty and safety.
And let's not get distracted by discussions about root causes. That might strike you as peculiar, but root causes are notoriously difficult to address, and government is particularly ill-equipped to do so. So what can we organize to do now to increase safety without eroding liberty?
Travel almost anywhere else in the world and you will commonly encounter armed security in public places. Somehow, uniquely in America, we see this as a bad thing. That needs to change.
In the church my family attends, we adapted after a threat. There is now armed security scattered throughout the congregation, in the sanctuary, in the lobby, and even on the platform. Air transportation obviously adapted after 9/11, with added airport security and air marshals on flights.
It's time to adapt to the era of mass shootings. Every school, every church, every large retailer and every government facility should have armed, obvious guards at all entrances. We don't need to force teachers to take up arms, we simply need ever-present, trained, armed security in schools. This is now the cost of protecting our children and of protecting the public.
(Read more at the Institute for Policy Innovation)
Consider these Bible verses
They said they just wanted a place at the table …
Liberals said they just wanted a place at the political table, but now they want to exclude anyone with whom they disagree
The latest Google blacklist includes the Daily Caller, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, The Christian Post, and so many more
OneNewsNow points out through a 15 August 2019 article how liberals at Google have directed Internet traffic away from conservative sites like Rush Limbaugh, the Daily Caller, and The Christian Post.
Silicon Valley is known as a mecca for left-wing progressives but evidence keeps growing that Big Tech really despises conservatives.
A crisis of conscience prompted Zach Vorhies, a Google senior software engineer, to go to James O'Keefe at Project Veritas – first anonymously, but now publicly – with hundreds of documents that prove the anti-conservative bias at the search engine behemoth.
Vorhies told O'Keefe that conservative news sites have become the latest target.
"This is a blacklist," he said of the targeted sites, "one of many blacklists that are at Google."
Google's influence on the Internet is staggering — it averages a couple hundred million searches per hour — but the rogue Google engineer advised that blacklisting blocks websites such as The Christian Post and The Daily Caller beneath the Google search bar.
Among other organizations targeted are The Gateway Pundit and LifeNews, and conservative talk hosts Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
Google is also playing god with the Left, too, restricting access to liberal groups such as Media Matters on the basis that it promotes only "mainstream" news organizations via its Google News service.
(Read more at OneNewsNow)
If any liberalism survives, we need to return to classic liberalism that stood on the liberal exchange of ideas
For America to survive, we must conserve our once liberal thought: a freedom of sharing information and advancement of civil liberties under the rule of law with an emphasis on economic freedom.
Google obviously does not believe enough in the persuasive power of its own side's ideas enough to promote those ideas. Rather, Google chose to blacklist political commentators, bloggers, and news organizations who seek the truth rather than cover for Democrats. Luckily, there is a whistleblower at Google and several honest news outlets available through Project Veritas and Christianity Today, who provided the blacklist.
Once you have seen the list, you might consider how Google's side includes gaffe machine Joe Biden, wild-haired Bernie, and Lie-a-watha — then you might start to understand why Google chose to undercut the competition rather than try to argue for their own side.
Although I will always forcefully advocate for Christianity, I will also fight for everyone else's freedom to err. I am following my God and my God is a gentleman who does not force Himself on the unbelieving. Unlike Google and advocates of Sharia law, I will follow God's model.
Radical Muslims said they just wanted a place at the American table, but now they want to eliminate Jews and those who do not believe in Islam
Report: Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib display more anti-Semitism
Breitbart discusses in a 17 August 2019 article an anti-Semitic cartoon shared by Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) both reportedly shared an antisemitic cartoon by an artist who participated in Iran's Holocaust denial contest on their respective Instagram accounts on Friday, according to Forward editor Batya Ungar-Sargon.
Ungar-Sargon noticed that Omar and Tlaib had each shared the image on their Instagram "stories." Both were barred from entering Israel Thursday because of their support for the "boycott, divestment, sanctions" (BDS) movement. Tlaib then applied for a humanitarian visa so she could visit her grandmother in a Palestinian village, promising not to promote boycotts of Israel while traveling there. Her request was granted, but she then turned down the offer Friday, claiming that Israel was trying to silence her.
The cartoon Omar and Tlaib reportedly shared shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his hand over Tlaib's mouth, and U.S. President Donald Trump with his hand over Omar's mouth. Both leaders are shushing the congresswomen. A Star of David — the symbol of the Jewish faith — appears in the center of the image, implying that Jews are responsible for the act of silencing.
The image is antisemitic on its face. The theme of Jews controlling world leaders, who in turn do their bidding, especially in suppressing criticism, has been a common theme in antisemitic propaganda since Nazi Germany, and remains a frequent feature of antisemitic cartoons in the Arab and Muslim world. The New York Times faced criticism for a similar antisemitic cartoon it published in its international edition in April.
Making matters worse, as Ungar-Sargon pointed out, is the fact that this particular cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, won second place at a contest held by Iran in 2006 at which contestants drew caricatures denying the Holocaust. The contest was held in response to a Danish newspaper's contest to draw images of Mohammed, which is prohibited by Islamic law, to challenge the self-censorship of Western media. Iran has promoted Holocaust denial as official policy; its president at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was notorious for his habit of denying the Holocaust.
(Read more at Breitbart)
Oof. Looks like both Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib shared this awful Carlos Latuff cartoon in Instagram stories yesterda… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) August 18, 2019
These women speak as if we don't know their history or that of Miftah
When these women complain, they seem to forget that the rest of the world has access to their own hateful comments and the history of the groups they choose to join.
Therefore, Rashida Talib, don't think that we have forgotten your call for the one-state solution (elimination of Israel). Don't think that we've forgotten your tweet accusing US representatives of dual loyalty due to their support of Israel. Despite the millions of Arab, Muslim Israelis, you claim that Israel discriminates against "darker skinned" peoples. We also remember how you get a "calming feeling" when you think of the Holocaust. Likewise, we remember your false claim that Palestinians gave Jews a "safe haven" from the Holocaust.
If bad company corrupts good morals, what will the bad company of Hamas supporters and Miftah (who proudly praised female suicide bombers and pushed the medieval blood libel). Why haven't we heard of the pride of Miftah, one of whom killed 13 Israeli children on a bus or another who killed multiple children in an Israeli pizza parlor? Since this is the group that would have led both you (Tlaib) and your friend (Omar) on your tour, why haven't we heard of this group?
When it comes to Ilhan Omar (if you want to call her that, rather than the true name that she lied about when escaping her past), then don't forget her now-deleted tweet:
Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 16, 2012
Also don't forget how she refused to back down from her first tweet and added in a response to a detractor:
Drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime is far from hating Jews. You are a hateful sad man, I pray to Allah you get the help you need and find happiness.
In February, she tweeted (but subsequently deleted) "It's all about the Benjamin's, baby" in reference to her false claim that a pro-Israel group was bribing Congress. Later, she tweeted a complaint that she should not have to "pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress or serve on committee." (To this, I would remind the woman that it is in the interest of this republic to support the only democracy in the Middle East. Additionally, we benefit from ongoing friendliness toward us — as opposed to the antagonism of Syria, Iran, and other Islamic states — and their prosperity.)
Our democracy is built on debate, Congresswoman! I should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a fo… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 03, 2019
Miftah, a terrorist-supporting group, would have sponsored Tlaib & Omar to Israel
In a 19 August 2019 OneNewsNow article, we find a few details about the group that would have sponsored the radical Muslim Congresswomen.
One fact reportedly "whitewashed" by the mainstream media in all its coverage about the trip Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) planned to Israel is that it was sponsored by an Islamic terrorism-supporting group.
The two Muslim congresswomen did not plan their trip via the conventional bipartisan route.
"The most important element of the story is the fact that two American congresswomen shunned a bipartisan congressional delegation to Israel to go on an independent trip to Israel sponsored by vicious anti-Semites," National Review reported. "Another important element of the story is that – as of [Friday] – the mainstream media have whitewashed Omar and Tlaib's vile associations."
The Washington Examiner reported that only one of seven Associated Press reports on the Omar-Tlaib Israel visit mentioned Miftah, with the six others merely calling it a Palestinian advocacy group – similar to reports by the New York Times. The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post both referred to Miftah as "a nonprofit organization headed by Palestinian lawmaker" with the latter associating it to "longtime peace negotiator Hanan Ashrawi." Reuters, ABC News and Yahoo did not mention Miftah's anti-Semitic nature and Bloomberg News omitted its mention entirely.
(Read more at OneNewsNow)
Miftah glorifies these terrorists
In a 16 August 2019 National Review article, we find some of the particulars about Miftah:
The group celebrates terrorists, including an evil woman who helped murder 13 Israeli children. In an article titled "Let Us Honor Our Own," a Miftah contributor describes Dalal Al Mughrabi as "a Palestinian fighter who was killed during a military operation against Israel in 1978" and as one of the Palestinian people's "national heroes."
The so-called "military operation" is more widely known as the "Coastal Road Massacre," a bus hijacking that resulted in the deaths of 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children.
Al Mughrabi is hardly the only terrorist Miftah celebrates. It described female suicide bomber Wafa Idrees as the "the beginning of a string of Palestinian women dedicated to sacrificing their lives for the cause." It singles out for recognition Hanadi Jaradat, a woman who blew herself up in a restaurant, killing 21 people (including four children).
The founder of Miftah herself, Ms. Ashrawi, excused jihadist violence by telling an interviewer that "you cannot somehow adopt the language of either the international community or the occupier by describing anybody who resists as terrorist."
And of course Miftah published an article asking whether Israel was a proper homeland for the Jewish people:
Under the heading "Is Israel the Only Possible Homeland for Jews?", this article questioning the appropriateness of… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) August 16, 2019
(Read more at the National Review)
Murder must never be glorified
We can never allow murder to be glorified, no matter what the Quran, Hadith, and Sira say regarding killing of unbelievers — Christians must never abandon grace when dealing with offenses against ourselves. Although I believe that we have a duty to protect the defenseless (as shown in Psalm 82:3-4; Proverbs 24:11-12 and 31:8-9; and Matthew 7:12 and 18:14 [and many other verses]) and are given liberty to protect ourselves (as shown in Luke 22:36), we must primarily be ministers of grace.
The gay community once said that they just wanted to have an equal seat at the table, but now they require everyone to agree with them
Teacher's rejection of student's gender identity prompts training
According to a 19 August 2019 article at Houston Fox affiliate KRIV, a Florida school district will require re-education of a teacher for unapproved opinions.
Teachers and staff in a Florida school district will be given additional diversity training after a high school math instructor refused to call a transgender student by her chosen gender identity.
First Coast News in Jacksonville reports that teacher Thomas Caggiano wrote in an email to the student "I will NOT refer to you with female pronouns … If this is not acceptable for you, change classes."
Caggiano wouldn't comment to the television station.
Sandalwood High School Principal Dr. Saryn Hatcher promised to "handle" it and wrote to the student that her wishes would be honored.
Duval County Public Schools spokeswoman Laureen Ricks says the teacher's behavior is inconsistent with the district's policy and expectations. She calls it a teachable moment and says staff will undergo additional diversity training.
(Read the original at Fox26)
We have to admit that we saw this coming
As early as 2006, the Huguenins of Elaine Photography were sued for not providing wedding photography to a gay couple. Soon thereafter, Baronelle Stutzman, Melissa Klein, and many other bakers found themselves in the crosshairs of the radical gay agenda for refusing to participate in gay weddings.
The ink on the Obergefell versus Hodges decision in the Supreme Court had hardly dried and so, therefore, the "right" of gays to marry had only recently been recognized when Kentucky's Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Never mind that there were numerous counties across Kentucky where marriage licenses were being handed out.
So, it comes as no surprise that teachers are being sent to re-education for not toeing the gay line.
Antifa never wanted to negotiate — they just wanted to put their opponents under the table. Now Oregon police arrest Prayer leaders
Joey Gibson, Patriot Prayer leader, turns self in to jail
Oregon Live reports in a 17 August 2019 article how Joey Gibson, a leader at Patriot Prayer, turned himself in to jail because he has been linked to a fight outside of a Portland bar.
Joey Gibson, leader of Vancouver-based right-wing group Patriot Prayer, turned himself in to the downtown Portland jail Friday in connection with charges linked to a May Day melee outside a Portland bar.
Before entering the Multnomah County Detention Center, Gibson held a news conference outside the jail drawing about two dozen people. Wearing a hat with a label that read "what goes around comes around" and a t-shirt with Bible verse "John 3:16", Gibson told spectators that he believed he was being unfairly targeted and he was innocent of engaging in or inciting any violence on May 1 outside of Cider Riot.
"I stood on a sidewalk and was assaulted numerous times," Gibson, 35, said. "This is without a doubt an attack on the First Amendment."
He also urged people to attend Saturday demonstrations in downtown Portland, to not engage in violence, and if they're arrested, to do so while in the midst of peaceful protest.
Gibson said he was on the fence on whether to attend before learning of his riot charge Thursday. He was being held in jail on $5,000 bail and released after posting bail at 3:50 p.m., jail staff said.
He is scheduled to be arraigned in court Monday.
"Patriot Prayer and their affiliates showed up, and started pepper-spraying people on our property," said Cider Riot owner Abram Goldman-Armstrong.
(Read more at Oregon Live)
A differing message from Patriot Prayer and Steven Crowder
When we go to the Patriot Prayer Facebook page, they say:
As Joey Gibson (Freedom & God activist) was walking the streets of Portland trying to get to his ride, antifa spots him. Within minutes an entire mob surrounds him. Some are polite, some are not.
Joey Gibson is being politically charged with a felony for exercising his right to stand on a public sidewalk and record people at the Antifa bar called "Cider Riot!". Cider Riot fundraises, recruits, and hosts events for Rose City Antifa and other organizations that advocate for violence against Christians and conservatives. He stood there and recorded while the bar employees and customers pepper sprayed Gibson. None of them were arrested.
See Gibson turn himself in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENCpVmh4ZfU&t=3s
See the video from that day here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmunmUuVw0Q&t=12s
Donate to legal fund here: https://gogetfunding.com/legal-fees-for-joey-gibsonpatriot…/
Footage from Stumptown matters:
From the Steven Crowder, we get the following videographic compilation of evidence:
Things that should give us pause regarding China, Hong Kong, gun control, and the Second Amendment
Chinese "paramilitary" at Hong Kong border
Reuters reports in a 14 August 2019 article that "paramilitary" forces have moved to the border of Hong Kong (in stark violation of the agreement made with Britain when Hong Kong was surrendered as a British colony).
Hong Kong braced for more mass protests over the weekend, even as China warned it could use its power to quell demonstrations and U.S. President Donald Trump urged his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to meet with the protesters to defuse weeks of tensions.
Hundreds of China's People's Armed Police (PAP) on Thursday conducted exercises at a sports stadium in Shenzhen that borders Hong Kong a day after the U.S. State Department said it was "deeply concerned" about the movements, which have prompted worries that the troops could be used to break up protests.
Trump told reporters on Thursday he did not want to see a resort to violence to quell the protests in Hong Kong and reiterated that he wanted to see China "humanely solve the problem."
"I am concerned. I wouldn't want to see a violent crackdown," Trump said, speaking in Morristown, New Jersey. "If he (Xi) sat down with the protesters – a group of representative protesters – I'd bet he'd work it out in 15 minutes. … I know it's not the kind of thing he does, but I think it wouldn't be a bad idea."
(Read more at Reuters)
Patriots, think about these things regarding the mainstream media and how they frame this conflict
In the United States of America, "paramilitary" brings up images of overweight guys in worn-out fatigues bought at the Army Surplus store. These guys likely spend some part of their weekends shooting holes in cans or putting meat on the table by hunting small game.
Truthfully, although I have never belonged to any paramilitary group, I support the overall goals of such groups. I support the freedom afforded by the Second Amendment. I support those who put in the time needed to be prepared to defend against threats against their families. Additionally, I support the patriotism and other elements of preparedness often associated with these groups.
However, the "paramilitary" that the American "news" agencies refers to seems to come equipped with hundreds of vehicles with turrets and what seem to be guns.
This should be a reason for pause.
Even though this might just be a threat against the Hong Kong protesters, these "paramilitary" forces might be deployed against people who have no guns and no body armor. These Hong Kong citizens definitely do not have military-grade rifles or side arms.
Therefore, with the power of words, the American press has equated six-wheeled tanks and armored personnel carriers with non-professional weekend warriors. Reuters wants the headline readers to believe that little threat is offered against the brave people standing up for what little rights they have left.
Think about this the next time a Democrat calls for the American people to be disarmed and the press paints a sad picture in support of the Democrat.
Trump ties China trade deal to Hong Kong protest
In a 15 August 2019 article by Fortune, Trump's tweet brings the Hong Kong protests into the China trade deal.
President Donald Trump late Wednesday seemed to conflate the protests in Hong Kong with the U.S.'s trade war with China. "Of course China wants to make a deal. Let them work humanely with Hong Kong first!" he tweeted. If Trump thought wielding the Hong Kong protests as leverage in the ongoing U.S.-China trade war would prompt concessions from Beijing, he seemed to have miscalculated—by a large margin.
Trump turned his Twitter attention to the growing unrest in Hong Kong on Wednesday, when he urged those involved to "be calm and safe" amid reports that the Chinese government was amassing troops on the border with Hong Kong. He later picked up the thread, looping the ongoing trade war into the matter.
"I know President Xi of China very well," Trump tweeted. "He is a great leader who very much has the respect of his people. He is also a good man in a 'tough business.' I have ZERO doubt that if President Xi wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem, he can do it. Personal meeting?"
Trump's decision to link the protests in Hong Kong with the trade war negotiations may have been a misstep, as it plays into China's narrative of what the demonstrations are all about. Over the past two months, Beijing has repeatedly accused the U.S. of stirring up unrest in Hong Kong in order to serve the White House's trade agenda. State media now runs news stories alleging that white foreigners attending the Hong Kong protests are actually CIA operatives instigating turmoil. The protesters themselves, meanwhile, cite demands for greater democratic freedoms as the reason for taking to the streets.
(Read more at Fortune)
Think about how President Trump introduced this narrative
Although the press seems to want to downplay this narrative, President Trump bypassed them by putting the information out in a tweet (below).
However, had the President gone to CNN or CBS to spread his message, he would have been nearly silenced.
China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Protesters
Even the New York Times recognizes in a 15 August 2019 article the measures taken by China against the Hong Kong protesters.
When a projectile struck a Hong Kong woman in the eye this week as protesters clashed with the police, China responded quickly: Its state television network reported that the woman had been injured not by one of the police's bean bag rounds, but by a protester.
The network's website went further: It posted what it said was a photo of the woman counting out cash on a Hong Kong sidewalk — insinuating, as Chinese reports have claimed before, that the protesters are merely paid provocateurs.
The assertion was more than just spin or fake news. The Communist Party exerts overwhelming control over media content inside China's so-called Great Firewall, and it is now using it as a cudgel in an information war over the protests that have convulsed Hong Kong for months.
In recent days, China has more aggressively stirred up nationalist and anti-Western sentiment using state and social media, and it has manipulated the context of images and videos to undermine the protesters. Chinese officials have begun branding the demonstrations as a prelude to terrorism.
(Read more at New York Times)
Only a few observations regarding the review of the expected at the New York Times
First, for the most part, the violent images of the Hong Kong protests have been excised from our media because they don't want to reflect badly on another socialist society (remember, Venezuela shot and killed its own unarmed citizens).
Second, this comes from the outfit (the NYTwits) that still accuses the Trump administration of treasonous acts performed in conjunction with the Russians despite the findings in the Mueller report.
Just as China has made westernization a boogeyman here, many of the New York Times articles depend on demonizing a person or groups. One prime example might be summarized as "Orange man bad." Another might be the habit at the New York Times of associating Christians with Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph.
Fourth, Google has worked with the Chinese government to suppress Internet searches within China, has blocked their Google Maps application to searches in China, and works with the Chinese military. Considering the left-leaning tendencies of Google, how might they use their findings to change elections across the globe (including in the US)?
Philadelphia shooting: Mayor calls for gun control
In a 15 August 2019 article by the BBC, several of the most common Democrat talking points on gun confiscation came out.
The mayor of Philadelphia has joined growing calls for gun control after a shootout in his city left six officers injured as they served a drug warrant.
"Our officers need help," said Mayor Jim Kenney. "They need help with keeping these weapons out of these people's hands."
A gun battle broke out between police and a gunman on Wednesday, leading to a seven-hour stand-off.
The suspect reportedly carried a semi-automatic rifle and several handguns.
Mr Kenney called out politicians for their failure to address the gun crisis and confront the National Rifle Association's powerful gun rights lobby.
"It's aggravating, it's saddening," Mr Kenney said. "If the state and federal government don't want to stand up to the NRA and some other folks, then let us police ourselves."
He added: "Our officers deserve to be protected and they don't deserve to be shot at by a guy for hours with an unlimited supply of weapons and an unlimited supply of bullets."
US President Donald Trump also weighed in on the shooting, tweeting Thursday morning that the Philadelphia shooting suspect "should never have been allowed on the streets".
"Long sentence – must get much tougher on street crime!" he wrote.
(Read more at the BBC)
Pointing out the lies and fallacies
This article focuses on the following:
- Our sympathy and respect for the Philadelphia police who were fired upon
- Our assumed respect for those who are in positions of power (such as this mayor)
- The desire of many to be within a perceived majority (that is, we would also like to be with those who "joined growing calls")
- Our assumed fear of scary-sounding weapons ("semi-automatic rifle and several handguns")
Additionally, it gives primacy to the Democrat talking points by mentioning them first and more fully. The first six paragraphs (160 words) support the Democrat line of "reasoning." Only after that is there any discussion of President Trump's suggestion of more jail time for this repeat offender (two paragraphs encompassing 37 words).
Nonetheless, the BBC does not consider the following issues with their line of reasoning:
- The shooter was a drug dealer with previous drug and gun-related convictions. It was already illegal for him to own the guns. Adding more gun laws would not have stopped this criminal from committing this crime.
- It is illegal to try to kill or attempt to kill an officer of the law. This criminal had already determined to disobey this law when he pulled together his arsenal and began firing on the police.
- Both murder and attempted murder is illegal.
- Pennsylvania and Philadelphia have gun laws that were violated by this criminal. Adding another gun law would not prevent anything.
- Gun laws have little effect on murder rates. Look at Chicago, New York, and London.
- As jihadists have taught us, planes, bombs, cars, trucks, and knives can be used when guns are not available.
Hong Kong Protesters sing the American national anthem and "Sing Hallelujah to the Lord"
Hong Kong Protesters Embrace American Flag in Fight for Freedom
Breitbart reported in a 29 July 2019 article how the US flag and national anthem have become central to the Hong Kong protests.
The American flag has become a symbol of resistance against China in the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, prominently waved throughout the city this past weekend as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the peaceful crowds.
Millions of Hong Kong residents have participated in rallies since early June against a bill proposed in the city's legislature that would have allowed China to extradite anyone present in Hong Kong by accusing him or her of breaking Chinese law. Under the "One Country, Two Systems" policy China agreed to when the U.K. handed Hong Kong over in 1997, Hong Kong must abandon any claims to sovereignty in exchange for China not imposing communist laws on the city. The protesters objected that the extradition law would violate that policy.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam claimed the bill was "dead" this month, but protesters astutely noted that lawmakers had tabled the bill, allowing them to revive it any time. Protesters are demanding that the Legislative Council withdraw the bill entirely.
(Read more at Breitbart)
Our response to the Chinese
With the protests being peaceful so far, the Hong Kong security forces have still daily cleaned blood from the streets. Therefore, I have to ask whether this will be like the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989? If it turns that direction, what can America do? What will we do?
Our response to American politicians
To put a more introspective turn on this story, what must we do to prevent this from happening in America?
For one, we must not give up our First Amendment free speech rights to a left-leaning corporation such as Google or Twitter.
Second, we must not lay down our Second Amendment rights to the feel-goodism of a red flag law.
Hong Kong Protesters Wish They Had The Second Amendment
The Daily Caller points out the obvious regarding those who stand defenseless before a Communist government.
While Americans are a major exception, most people throughout the world don't have a built-in, government-protected right to own guns.
The Second Amendment is uniquely American, and something many protesting for basic human rights would love to have. Those protesters include residents of Hong Kong, who say they are fighting the oppression of China's communist party and its new extradition law.
Some protesters have even been flying American flags to signify their desire for freedom.
(Read more and see the video at the Daily Caller)
Look at these images and listen to these sounds. Think of looking down the barrels of rifles of the Communist army. Then tell me you still want to surrender your right to own a gun.
Hong Kong protesters embrace unexpected Christian anthem: 'Sing Hallelujah to the Lord'
An 18 June 2019 Fox News article explains how a Christian hymn became a rallying cry in Hong Kong (where only 10$ of the population is Christian).
A hymn sung by Christian groups participating in the anti-extradition Hong Kong protests has caught on and become an unlikely anthem for the movement of millions in the streets.
For the past week, "Sing Hallelujah to the Lord" has been heard almost non-stop at the main protest site in front of the city's Legislative Council, and at marches and tense stand-offs with police, Reuters reported.
Although only 10 percent of the population is Christian, church groups quickly rallied after being alarmed by reports of police brutality to make a safe haven for protesters as the government said it had to crack down on "organized riots."
Touching scene in the protest: people were singing "sing hallelujah to the lord". How come this is a "riot"?… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Nathan Law 羅冠聰 (@nathanlawkc) June 13, 2019
Protesters take another form of petition against the extradition bill by singing 1 song- "Sing hallelujah to the L… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Denise Tsang (@denise_tsang) June 14, 2019
And that's how the hymn caught on.
"As religious assemblies were exempt, it could protect the protesters. It also shows that it is a peaceful protest," Edwin Chow, 19, acting president of the Hong Kong Federation of Catholic Students, told Reuters. "This was the one people picked up, as it is easy for people to follow, with a simple message and easy melody."
(Read more at Fox News)
When I first heard of this anthem being used, I did not know how a Christian anthem could come into wise use in a land where 90% of the population does not profess Christianity.
It seems that it occurred because Christians in Hong Kong were following the Bible by protecting the powerless.
While the Christian community of Hong Kong finds itself dwarfed within the community, it has been able to show love and provide protection. May God bless them.
Observations on the El Paso and Dayton shootings
Walmart shooter manifesto: a madman's rant
Drudge Report provided all of the text of the purported El Paso shooter. This way, each of us can read this piece (which has been confirmed to have been loaded by the shooter onto 8chan) and decide what parts of the "news" actually checks out.
Sat Aug 03 2019 22:31:51 ET
The Inconvenient Truth
About Me
In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion. Some people will think this statement is hypocritical because of the nearly complete ethnic and cultural destruction brought to the Native Americans by our European ancestors, but this just reinforces my point. The natives didn't take the invasion of Europeans seriously, and now what's left is just a shadow of what was. My motives for this attack are not at all personal. Actually the Hispanic community was not my target before I read The Great Replacement. This manifesto will cover the political and economic reasons behind the attack, my gear, my expectations of what response this will generate and my personal motivations and thoughts.
Political Reasons
In short, America is rotting from the inside out, and peaceful means to stop this seem to be nearly impossible. The inconvenient truth is that our leaders, both Democrat AND Republican, have been failing us for decades. They are either complacent or involved in one of the biggest betrayals of the American public in our history. The takeover of the United States government by unchecked corporations. I could write a ten page essay on all the damage these corporations have caused, but here is what is important. Due to the death of the baby boomers, the increasingly anti-immigrant rhetoric of the right and the ever increasing Hispanic population, America will soon become a one party-state. The Democrat party will own America and they know it. They have already begun the transition by pandering heavily to the Hispanic voting bloc in the 1st Democratic Debate. They intend to use open borders, free healthcare for illegals, citizenship and more to enact a political coup by importing and then legalizing millions of new voters. With policies like these, the Hispanic support for Democrats will likely become nearly unanimous in the future. The heavy Hispanic population in Texas will make us a Democrat stronghold. Losing Texas and a few other states with heavy Hispanic population to the Democrats is all it would take for them to win nearly every presidential election. Although the Republican Party is also terrible. Many factions within the Republican Party are pro-corporation. Pro-corporation = pro-immigration. But some factions within the Republican Party don't prioritize corporations over our future. So the Democrats are nearly unanimous with their support of immigration while the Republicans are divided over it. At least with Republicans, the process of mass immigration and citizenship can be greatly reduced.
Economic Reasons
In short, immigration can only be detrimental to the future of America. Continued immigration will make one of the biggest issues of our time, automation, so much worse. Some sources say that in under two decades, half of American jobs will be lost to it. Of course some people will be retrained, but most will not. So it makes no sense to keep on letting millions of illegal or legal immigrants flood into the United States, and to keep the tens of millions that are already here. Invaders who also have close to the highest birthrate of all ethnicities in America. In the near future, America will have to initiate a basic universal income to prevent widespread poverty and civil unrest as people lose their jobs. Joblessness in itself is a source of civil unrest. The less dependents on a government welfare system, the better. The lower the unemployment rate, the better. Achieving ambitions social projects like universal healthcare and UBI would become far more likely to succeed if tens of millions of dependents are removed.
Even though new migrants do the dirty work, their kids typically don't. They want to live the American Dream which is why they get college degrees and fill higher-paying skilled positions. This is why corporations lobby for even more illegal immigration even after decades of it of happening. They need to keep replenishing the low-skilled labor pool. Even as migrant children flood skilled jobs, Corporations make this worse by lobbying for even more work visas to be issued for skilled foreign workers to come here. Recently, the senate under a REPUBLICAN administration has greatly increased the number of foreign workers that will take American jobs. Remember that both Democrats and Republicans support immigration and work visas. Corporations need to keep replenishing the labor pool for both skilled and unskilled jobs to keep wages down. So Automation is a good thing as it will eliminate the need for new migrants to fill unskilled jobs. Jobs that American s can't survive on anyway. Automation can and would replace millions of low-skilled jobs if immigrants were deported. This source of competition for skilled labor from immigrants and visa holders around the world has made a very difficult situation even worse for natives as they compete in the skilled job market. To compete, people have to get better credentials by spending more time in college. It used to be that a high school degree was worth something. Now a bachelor's degree is what's recommended to be competitive in the job market. The cost of college degrees has exploded as their value has plummeted.
This has led to a generation of indebted, overqualified students filling menial, low paying and unfulfilling jobs. Of course these migrants and their children have contributed to the problem, but are not the sole cause of it.
The American lifestyle affords our citizens an incredible quality of life. However, our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heaing the destruction of our environment by shamelessly over harvesting resources. This has been a problem for decades. For example, this phenomenon is brilliantly portrayed in the decades old classic "The Lorax". Water sheds around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted. Fresh water is being polluted from farming and oil drilling operations. Consumer culture is creating thousands of tons of unnecessary plastic waste and electronic waste, and recycling to help slow this down is almost non-existent. Urban sprawl create s inefficient cities which unnecessarily destroys millions of acres of land. We even use god knows how many trees worth of paper towels just wipe water off our hands. Everything I have seen and heard in my short life has led me to believe that the average American isn't willing to change their lifestyle, even if the changes only cause a slight inconvenience. The government is unwilling to tackle these issues beyond empty promises since they are owned by corporations. Corporations that also like immigration because more people means a bigger market for their products. I just want to say that I love the people of this country, but god damn most of y'all are just too stubborn to change your lifestyle. So the next
logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.
Main gun: AK47 (WASR 10) – I realized pretty quickly that this isn't a great choice since it's the civilian version of the ak47. It's not designed to shoot rounds quickly, so it overheats massively after about 100 shots fired in quick succession. I'll have to use a heat-resistant glove to get around this.
8m3 bullet: This bullet, unlike pretty much any other 7.62×39 bullet, actually fragments like a pistol hollow point when shot out of an ak47 at the cost of penetration. Penetration is still reasonable, but not nearly as high as a normal ak47 bullet. The ak47 is definitely a bad choice without this bullet design, and may still be with it.
Other gun(if I get one): Ar15 – Pretty much any variation of this gun doesn't heat up nearly as fast as the AK47. The round of this gun isn't designed to fragment, but instead tumbles inside a target causing lethal wounding. This gun is probably better, but I wanted to explore different options. The ar15 is probably the best gun for military applications but this isn't a military application.
This will be a test of which is more lethal, either it's fragmentation or tumbling.
I didn't spend much time at all preparing for this attack. Maybe a month, probably less. I have do this before I lose my nerve. I figured that an under-prepared attack and a meh manifesto is better than no attack and no manifesto
Statistically, millions of migrants have returned to their home countries to reunite with the family they lost contact with when they moved to America. They come here as economic immigrants, not for asylum reasons. This is an encouraging sign that the Hispanic population is willing to return to their home countries if given the right incentive. An incentive that myself and many other patriotic Americans will provide. This will remove the threat of the Hispanic voting bloc which will make up for the loss of millions of baby boomers. This will also make the elites that run corporations realize that it's not in their interest to continue piss off Americans. Corporate America doesn't need to be destroyed, but just shown that they are on the wrong side of history. That if they don't bend, they will break.
Personal Reasons and Thoughts
My whole life I have been preparing for a future that currently doesn't exist. The job of my dreams will likely be automated. Hispanics will take control of the local and state government of my beloved Texas, changing policy to better suit their needs. They will turn Texas into an instrument of a political coup which will hasten the destruction of our country. The environment is getting worse by the year. If you take nothing else from this document, remember this: INACTION IS A CHOICE. I can no longer bear the shame of inaction knowing that our founding fathers have endowed me with the rights needed to save our country from the brink destruction. Our European comrades don't have the gun rights needed to repel the millions of invaders that plaque their country. They have no choice but to sit by and watch their countries burn.
America can only be destroyed from the inside-out.
If our country falls, it will be the fault of traitors. This is why I see my actions as faultless. Because this isn't an act of imperialism but an act of preservation. America is full of hypocrites who will blast my actions as the sole result of racism and hatred of other countries, despite the extensive evidence of all the problems these invaders cause and will cause. People who are hypocrites because they support imperialistic wars that have caused the loss of tens of thousands of American lives and untold numbers of civilian lives. The argument that mass murder is okay when it is state sanctioned is absurd. Our government has killed a whole lot more people for a whole lot less. Even if other non-immigrant targets would have a greater impact, I can't bring myself to kill my fellow Americans. Even the Americans that seem hell-bent on destroying our country. Even if they are shameless race mixers, massive polluters, haters of our collective values, etc. One day they will see error of their ways. Either when American patriots fail to reform our country and it collapses or when we save it. But they will see the error of their ways. I promise y'all that. I am against race mixing because it destroys genetic diversity and creates identity problems. Also because it's completely unnecessary and selfish. 2nd and 3rd generation Hispanics form interracial unions at much higher rates than average. Yet another reason to send them back.
Cultural and racial diversity is largely temporary. Cultural diversity diminishes as stronger and/or more appealing cultures overtake weaker and/or undesirable ones. Racial diversity will disappear as either race mixing or genocide will take place. But the idea of deporting or murdering all non-white Americans is horrific. Many have been here at least as long as the whites, and have done as much to build our country. The best solution to this for now would be to divide America into a confederacy of territories with at least 1 territory for each race. This physical separation would nearly eliminate race mixing and improve social unity by granting each race self-determination within their respective territory(s).
My death is likely inevitable. If I'm not killed by the police, then I'll probably be gunned down by one of the invaders. Capture in this case if far worse than dying during the shooting because I'll get the death penalty anyway. Worse still is that I would live knowing that my family despises me. This is why I'm not going to surrender even if I run out of ammo. If I'm captured, it will be because I was subdued somehow.
Remember: it is not cowardly to pick low hanging fruit. AKA Don't attack heavily guarded areas to fulfll your super soldier COD fantasy. Attack low security targets. Even though you might out gun a security guard or police man, they likely beat you in armor, training and numbers. Do not throw away your life on an unnecessarily dangerous target. If a target seems too hot, live to fight another day.
My ideology has not changed for several years. My opinions on automation, immigration, and the rest predate Trump and his campaign for president. I putting this here because some people will blame the President or certain presidential candidates for the attack. This is not the case. I know that the media will probably call me a white supremacist anyway and blame Trump's rhetoric. The media is infamous for fake news. Their reaction to this attack will likely just confirm that.
Many people think that the fight for America is already lost. They couldn't be more wrong. This is just the beginning of the fight for America and Europe.
I am honored to head the fight to reclaim my country from destruction.
A few correlations that need to be made
Just as the El Paso shooter predicted, Trump has been blamed for the shooting.
Admittedly, just as Democrats have pointed out, there are two points of commonality between this degranged madman's rants and President Trump's speeches. First, both call the events at the Southern border an invasion. But what else do you call the incursion of hundreds of thousands of uninvited invaders? Second, they both call out "fake news." Still, what else do you call a press that reports positive stories on one president 59% of the time while reporting 93% negative stories on another?
On the other hand, the following commonalities exist between the El Paso shooter and the Democrat Presidential nominees:
- Their common hate for corporations (as evidenced by the video and article on Liz Warren below).
- Their consideration of free healthcare for illegal immigrants (the madman opposes this while all of the Democrat Presidential candidates at the second debate supported it)
- Their consideration of basic universal income — something the shooter saw as an inevitability and the Democrats embrace.
- Their fixation on the environment. On one side, the shooter waxes eloquent on the environment (calling a Dr Seuss children's book a "decades old classic.") Likewise, Democrat luminary AOC befuddled us all by first stating that we only had 12 years to correct global warming, then stating that it was just a joke, allows her chief of staff to tell us the Green New Deal centered on implementing socialism, and (finally) returning to her original screed stating that we only had 12 years.
The Dayton shooter was a leftist
Heavy.com reports in an 1 August 2019 article that Conner Betts was a self-described "leftist" who supported Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren, and Antifa.
Connor Betts, the Dayton, Ohio mass shooter, was a self-described "leftist," who wrote that he would happily vote for Democrat Elizabeth Warren, praised Satan, was upset about the 2016 presidential election results, and added, "I want socialism, and i'll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding."
Betts' Twitter profile read, "he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i'm going to hell and i'm not coming back." One tweet on his page read, "Off to Midnight Mass. At least the songs are good. #athiestsonchristmas." The page handle? I am the spookster. On one selfie, he included the hashtags, "#selfie4satan #HailSatan @SatanTweeting." On the date of Republican Sen. John McCain's death, he wrote, "F*ck John McCain." He also liked tweets referencing the El Paso mass shooting in the hours before Dayton.
Twitter has now suspended the Twitter page, removing it. It was up for several hours after the mass shooting.
Politicians' statements that may have incited hatred
Maxine Waters
In a 25 June 2018 Real Clear Politics article, we see how Representative Maxine Waters said:
Already you have members of your cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants. We have protesters taking up at their house who are saying, 'No peace, no sleep. No peace, no sleep.'
When can we expect an apology from Maxine Waters? How many attacks against both Trump supporters (like the boy at a Whataburger, the shop owner mentioned below, and other instances), conservative politicians (like Ted Cruz in the restaurant, Mitch McConnell at home, and others), or the general public (like the San Diego, Garden Grove, and other cities) will occur before those on the Left ratchet down the rhetoric?
You see, I don't see the problem as being guns. I see the problem as originating in the hearts of men.
Biden suggests starting 'physical revolution' to deal with Republicans
In a 17 June 2019 article at the Daily Wire, we find out about some of Joe Biden's inner demons.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden appeared to suggest using violence against Republicans on Monday in response to a question about how he as president would deal with opposition to his agenda in the Senate from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Biden, currently the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, made the remarks at the Moral Action Congress of the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C.
MSNBC's Joy Reid asked Biden: "How would you get past either a majority Republican Senate in which Mitch McConnell was determined to kill all of these ideas or even a Mitch McConnell in the minority who repeated the consistent filibustering when you were vice president and anything that came from the Obama-Biden administration Mitch McConnell considered dead on arrival?"
"Joy, I know you're one of the ones who thinks it's naive to think we have to work together," Biden responded. "The fact of the matter is if we can't get a consensus, nothing happens except the abuse of power by the executive."
"There are certain things where it just takes a brass knuckle fight," Biden continued, later adding: "Let's start a real physical revolution if you're talking about it."
(Read more at the Daily Wire)
As I mentioned in the reply to Maxine Waters' screed, I think that the problem is in the tendency of all people to act on their baser motivations, to consider their immediate situation, and to sin.
Things do not get better when "leaders" advocate violence.
Liz Warren
Although the following Prager University video does not tell us where or when Liz Warren turned the corporations of America into boogeymen, it does show her saying:
My message is: You got things broken in your life? I'll tell you exactly why. It's because giant corporations (billionaires) have seized our government and — for decades now — they have been making that government work for a thinner and thinner slice at the top. And they do it mostly on the headlines: just a little tilt here, just a little shift there, just a little exception, until — over time — they've gotten richer and richer and richer and richer. And everybody else is left eating dirt.
As demonstrated by this little speech, Liz Warren carries at least a little in common with the El Paso shooter who so idolized her.
New York Teens react to Waters' words
Intolerance in New York
Fox 5 in New York reports that a MAGA-hat wearing shop owner was beaten by a group of teens.
A New York City art gallery owner says he was viciously beaten in Manhattan by a large group of teens for wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat.
Jahangir "John" Turan, 42, says it happened Tuesday evening on Canal Street. He was wearing the MAGA hat that he had purchased earlier in the day at Trump Tower.
"I love President Trump. I think he's doing a great job," Turan said.
He says the group of about 15 "kids" yelled "F*** Trump" and stomped on him. One of them smashed his head into a scaffold. Turan says he suffered a fracture in his cheek and a badly swollen eye. He's awaiting an eye specialist to determine if there is any permanent damage to his sight.
(Read more at Fox 5)
The Castro brothers dox Trump donors in San Antonio
CBS, USA Today, and the Washington Times tell us how one of the Castro brothers (one of whom is running for President) now finds himself being shamed for doxing.
The Washington Post reports it this way:
The 44 names Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) tweeted late Monday have at least two things in common: They're all constituents in his district, and they all donated the maximum amount to President Trump's campaign this year.
The congressman and brother of presidential hopeful Julián Castro said the people listed — including retirees, business owners and other individuals whose names are public record — were "fueling a campaign of hate."
"Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump — the owner of @BillMillerBarBQ, owner of the @HistoricPearl, realtor Phyllis Browning, etc.," Castro wrote. "Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as invaders."
Castro, who also serves as chairman for his brother's presidential campaign, spent much of Tuesday deflecting intense criticism from GOP lawmakers and others. They contended that Castro was "targeting" the listed donors by tweeting their names to his thousands of followers, a serious accusation in the aftermath of two weekend mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, that left 31 people dead and many more wounded.
One interesting thing about Joaquin's doxing of Trump voters in San Antonio was that these doxed donors included donors to the Julian and Joaquin political campaigns.
Evidence of a Pro-Obama media bias
Media Shocked by Joaquin Castro Doxxing Trump Donors; Ignored Obama Doing Same in 2012
Another Breitbart article reminds us that Obama also used intimidation of the donors to Romney's campaign.
Hackett could have added that the Obama campaign did the same in 2012 without much objection from the media, except for a few conservative journalists, such as John Nolte of Breitbart News or Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal.
As Strassel noted in her 2016 book, The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech:
It was an election year, and Obama was already going in heavy against the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. The president's reelection campaign erected a website, called "Keeping GOP Honest," and had been using it to "truth check" Republican statements. But on that April 20, it broke new territory. In a post entitled "Behind the curtain: a brief history of Romney's donors," the president's team publicly named eight private citizens who had given money to the Republican, accusing them all of being "wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records."
The site bluntly claimed that all eight men were "betting against America." They were then each singled out, subjected to slurs and allegations.
As Strassel documented at the Journal, one of those eight, Frank VanderSloot, soon found himself the target of private investigators — and the federal government:
Mr. VanderSloot has since been learning what it means to be on a presidential enemies list. Just 12 days after the attack, the Idahoan found an investigator digging to unearth his divorce records. This bloodhound—a recent employee of Senate Democrats—worked for a for-hire opposition research firm.
Now Mr. VanderSloot has been targeted by the federal government. In a letter dated June 21, he was informed that his tax records had been "selected for examination" by the Internal Revenue Service.
Two weeks after receiving the IRS letter, Mr. VanderSloot received another—this one from the Department of Labor. He was informed it would be doing an audit of workers he employs on his Idaho-based cattle ranch under the federal visa program for temporary agriculture workers.
Others, such as the voter integrity organization True the Vote, were also targeted. Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Service was also targeting conservative non-profit organizations — a fact that only became public after the election.
(Read more at Breitbart)
So, no matter how much the true believers of Saint Obama want to believe that there were no scandals within the Obama administration (despite their ignorance of Fast and Furious, the NSA scandal, the IRS being weaponized against the Tea Party, and other issues) — here is another fly in their ointment.
Hollywood steps in on the side of hateful Democrats
Leftist Netflix's 'Dear White People' Depicts Trump Supporters as KKK Members
Breitbart reports in a 7 August 2019 article how Netflix plans to depict Trump supporters in their serice Dear White People.
The race-baiting Netflix series Dear White People has debuted its third season, and this year the show portrays supporters of President Donald Trump a racists and KKK members.
In the season's third episode, Chapter III, a family of Trump voters is being given a makeover by a group of gays in a parody of the Netflix series Queer Eye called the U.S. of Gay.
The episode portrays the family as thoroughly low brow, slow-witted, and racist. They have Confederate flags posted around their home and property and have Trump signs in their yard. One member of the pro-Trump family — a bearded, bandana-wearing, bumpkin — asks if they can "make it so that only some people feel more welcome" at their home as the camera focuses in on the only black member of the gay crew. The "joke" was clearly stating that the family is racist.
(Read more at Breitbart)
Nothing to see here. Nothing but the rantings of a Leftist lunatic in full Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I mean, really. Just read the paragraph and imagine the scene the Netflix has created. This is hyperbolic racism against what they see as lower-class Whites. This doesn't deserve any more time than to jot down a note and promise to never pay for Netflix.
'Elites' Kill 'Deplorables' In New Horror Film 'The Hunt'
Breitbart reports in a 7 August 2019 article on a deplorable movie.
The Hunt is about a group of left-wing "elites" who hunt "deplorables." and is scheduled to open everywhere September 27.
More from the far-left Hollywood Reporter:
"Did anyone see what our ratfucker-in-chief just did?" one character asks early in the screenplay for The Hunt, a Universal Pictures thriller set to open Sept. 27. Another responds: "At least The Hunt's coming up. Nothing better than going out to the Manor and slaughtering a dozen deplorables."
In the aftermath of mass shootings within days of one another that shocked and traumatized the nation, Universal is re-evaluating its strategy for the certain-to-be-controversial satire. The violent, R-rated film from producer Jason Blum's Blumhouse follows a dozen MAGA types who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals.
(Read more at Breitbart)
They claim that commentary from Rush Limbaugh pushes radicals into committing murder, but movies like this (along with "news" shows like theirs and other "entertainment") does not have any effect. This doesn't pass the smell test.
Republicans react to the El Paso shooting
Texas Lt. Gov. tells Antifa to 'stay out' of El Paso after Walmart shooting
Fox News points out in a Sunday, 4 August 2019 article how Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick told Antifa to "stay out" in light of the Walmart shooting.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick explicitly warned the left-wing group Antifa against coming to the state following Saturday's mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart.
The shooting came 29 days before a scheduled visit from Antifa, which planned to conduct a "Border Resistance" militancy training tour.
"Stay out of El Paso," Patrick told Antifa during an appearance Fox News. He noted that while the group wasn't usually welcome in Texas, they especially weren't welcome after the shooting.
"Stay out of Texas, basically," Patrick said. "We don't need them coming in on Sept. 1. We didn't need them coming in before this happened."
(Read more at Fox News)
I agree with the Lt. Governor. Even if this tragic event had not happened, we would not need Antifa in the state. We need these leftist thugs even less now.
President Trump's inputs to this situation
Donald Trump mistakenly offers condolences to 'Toledo' shooting victims
Breitbart reports in a 5 August 2019 article how President Trump introduced a human factor into the equation (he screwed up).
President Donald Trump on Monday mistakenly referred to a shooting in Toledo, Ohio — instead of Dayton — in his address on a pair of mass shootings that occurred over the weekend.
"May God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo, may God protect them. May God protect all of those from Texas to Ohio. May God bless the victims and their families," the president stated in his remarks that he read from a teleprompter at the White House. It is unclear whether President Trump's prepared remarks included Toledo or if he deviated from the speech as written. He correctly referred to Dayton during other parts of his remarks.
The president misspoke toward the end of his 10-minute speech in which he offered condolences to those affected by the "barbaric slaughters" in Dayton and El Paso, Texas, and condemned "white supremacy."
"In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy," he said. "These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America, hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul."
(Read more at Breitbart)
Sorry that President Trump made this mistake; however, we are all fallen creatures and we miss the mark occasionally.
President Trump is talking about red-flag laws. Texas lawmakers have blocked those bills in the past.
The Texas Tribune points out in a 7 August 2019 article how Trump's proposed red flag laws have been opposed by Texas Republicans.
In the wake of shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, the president and Congress are discussing laws blocking access to firearms for people considered an imminent threat. But here in Texas, bills that would do that have made little traction.
President Trump called for reforms to keep guns out of the hands of "mentally unstable" people on Wednesday, addressing reporters outside of the White House as he left for visits to Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, where two mass shootings have left at least 31 people dead and dozens more injured.
This is the second time this week President Trump has brought up possible reforms to gun laws. In a speech addressing the nation on Monday, Trump called for law enforcement to do "a better job of identifying and acting on early warning signs," citing warnings to the FBI about a potential school shooting before a shooter killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida last year. Trump said that people who pose a "grave risk" should not be able to access firearms and there should be "rapid due process" for the weapons to be taken from such people who already have them.
"That is why I have called for red flag laws, also known as extreme risk protection orders," Trump said.
Red-flag laws, which in most cases allow judges to temporarily seize an individual's firearms if that person is considered an imminent threat, have faced a rough path in the Texas Legislature. At a 2018 committee hearing on gun proposals, law enforcement and gun rights advocates opposed such measures, citing worries that a progressive or unethical judge could take guns away from innocent people, or bend to the will of disgruntled family members or divorcees who may seek the order out of spite.
(Read more at The Texas Tribune)
I do not agree with the use of red flag laws. I believe that we should be held accountable for our actions and not for our potential acts.
Just as Ezekial 18:20 says The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself..
Similar cases
Armed customer likely deterred potential shooter at Mo. Walmart
A 10 August 2019 OneNewsNow article points out how an armed customer probably stopped a potential shooter at a Missouri Walmart.
In the wake of the recent Texas and Ohio mass shootings that took more than 30 lives, a "good guy with a gun" reportedly kept a man at a Walmart in Springfield, Missouri, from possibly unloading his assault rifle into unexpecting shoppers.
Exact details of the incident are still under investigation, but police arrived at the scene as a courageous bystander – an off-duty fireman holding a concealed carry permit for his firearm – was holding the threatening shooter at gunpoint and given credit for stopping the suspect – Dmitriy Andreychenko, a 20-year-old white mail – from carrying out a potential mass killing just five days after two horrific mass shootings took place across the country.
"[H]is intent was not to cause peace or comfort to anybody that was in the business," Springfield police stated about the would-be shooter, according to KOLR 10 TV. "In fact, he's lucky to be alive still, to be honest."
(Read more at OneNewsNow)
Good to hear that the good guy prevailed.
The one thing not mentioned by either the Left or Right
In all the recriminations from the left and the right, nothing has been mentioned of a primary factor shared by the more recent, non-Muslim shooters: the breakdown of the family.
Dylan Roof, the racist shooter at the Charleston church, was a product of a divorced union. Likewise, the shooter at Santa Fe and other shooters.
Although mental illness also figures in the cases of the Sutherland Springs shooter and the Parkland shooter, these might also have been effected by the breakup of the family and the destabilizing effects of the current direction of morality within our society.
Why the Right does not mention the problem
Guys (and probably gals) on my side probably do not mention this problem because of our tendency to focus on ourselves. That is, we've been offended and we want our divorce now (without thinking of the repercussions). While this may be a condition shared by all humanity, it does not excuse the creation of the problem.
Why the Left does not mention the problem
As much as the Left would like to just be all-loving and all-forgiving, there have to be standards. Not every sexual desire that pops into a human head can be justified. Additionally, breaking the natural order the way the current trends push has consequences.
What the Bible says
Put others first
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:44)
Know that the Bible requires us to protect the weak
Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:17)
Know that Christ died for us
But God demonstrates His own love toward us I that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6)
Thirteen bits of the Mueller testimony "we can't get into"
- Doug Collins: Why do you change your testimony on collusion and conspiracy?
The full transcript was extracted from NBC News (except for the transcript for Representatives Roby and Cline, who NBC ignored) and then compared to the audio provided by CSPAN.
This exchange between Representative Collins and Mr. Mueller showed how even the definitions of words within the report could be bent by the true author of the report to benefit Democrats and confuse the purported author of the report.
|In your press conference you said any testimony from your office would not go beyond our report. "We chose these words carefully. The word speaks for itself. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress." Do you stand by that statement?
|Since closing the special counsel's office in May of 2019, have you conducted any additional interviews or obtained any new information in your role as special counsel?
|In the — in the — in the wake of the report?
|Since the — since the closing of the office in May of 2019.
|And the question was, have we conducted…
|Have you conducted any new interviews, any new witnesses, anything?
|And you can confirm you're no longer special counsel, correct?
|I am no longer special counsel.
|At any time in the investigation, was your investigation curtailed or stopped or hindered?
|Were you or your team provided any questions by members of Congress (inaudible) the majority ahead of your hearing today?
|Your report states that your investigative team included 19 lawyers and approximately 40 FBI agents and analysts and accountants. Are those numbers accurate?
|Could you repeat that, please?
|Forty FBI agents, 19 lawyers, intelligence analysts and forensic accountants; are those numbers accurate? This was in your report.
|Generally, yes.
|Is it also true that you issued over 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records and 50 pin registers?
|That went a little fast for me.
|OK. In your report — I'll make this very simple — you did a lot of work, correct?
|Yes, that I agree to.
|A lot of subpoenas, a lot of pin registers…
|A lot of subpoenas.
|OK, we'll walk this really slow if we need to.
|A lot of search warrants.
|All right, a lot of search warrants, a lot of things, so you are very thorough.
|In your opinion, very thorough, you listed this out in your report, correct?
|Thank you. Is it true, the evidence gathered during your investigation — given the questions that you've just answered, is it true the evidence gathered during your investigation did not establish that the president was involved in the underlying crime related to Russian election interference as stated in Volume 1, page 7?
|We found insufficient evidence of the president's culpability.
|So that would be a yes.
|That would be a yes.
|Thank you. Isn't it true the evidence did not establish that the president or those close to him were involved in the charged (ph) Russian computer hacking or active measure conspiracies or that the president otherwise had unlawful relationships with any Russian official, Volume 2, page 76? Correct?
|I will leave the answer to our report.
|So that is a yes. Is that any (ph) true your investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with Russian government in election interference activity, Volume 1, page 2; Volume 1, page 173?
|Thank you. Yes.
|Yes. Thank you. Although your reports states, "collusion is not some (ph) specific offense," — and you said that this morning — "or a term of art in federal criminal laws, conspiracy is." In the colloquial context, are collusion and conspiracy essentially synonymous terms?
|You're going to have to repeat that for me.
|Collusion is not a specific offense or a term of art in the federal criminal law. Conspiracy is.
|In the colloquial context, known public context, collusion — collusion and conspiracy are essentially synonymous terms, correct?
|If no, on page 180 of Volume 1 of your report, you wrote, "As defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set forth in the general federal conspiracy statute, 18 USC 371."
|Yes (ph).
|You said at your May 29th press conference and here today you choose your words carefully. Are you sitting here today testifying something different than what your report states?
|Well, what I'm asking is if you can give me the citation, I can look at the citation and evaluate whether it is actually…
|OK. Let — let me just — let me clarify. You stated that you would stay within the report. I just stated your report back to you, and you said that collusion — collusion and conspiracy were not synonymous terms. That was your answer, was no.
|That's correct.
|In that, page 180 of Volume 1 of your report, it says, "As defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set forth in general conspiracy statute 18 USC 371."
|Now, you said you chose your words carefully. Are you contradicting your report right now?
|Not when I read it.
|So you would change your answer to yes, then?
|No, no — the — if you look at the language…
|I'm reading your report, sir. These are yes-or-no answers.
|(inaudible) Page 180?
|Page 180, Volume 1.
|This is from your report.
|Correct, and I — I — I — I leave it with the report.
|So the report says yes, they are synonymous.
|Hopefully, for finally, out of your own report, we can put to bed the collusion and conspiracy. One last question as we're going through: Did you ever look into other countries investigated in the Russians' interference into our election? Were other countries investigated…
|… or found knowledge that they had interference in our election?
|I'm not going to discuss other matters.
|All right. And I yield back.
- John Ratcliffe: When did the US standard change from "innocent until proven guilty?"
One place where a defendant had to be proven innocent that we could consider was Bernie Sander's honeymoon spot: good old Soviet Russia. However, since this investigation was supposed to be laser-focused on only things that would either indict or embarrass the Trump administration, then we won't mention that.
|Good morning, Director. If you'll let me quickly summarize your opening statement this morning, you said in Volume 1 on the issue of conspiracy, the special counsel determined that the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. And then in Volume 2, for reasons that you explained, the special counsel did not make a determination on whether there was an obstruction of justice crime committed by the president. Is that fair?
|Yes, sir.
|All right. Now, in explaining the special counsel did not make what you called a traditional prosecution or declination decision, the report, on the bottom of page 2, Volume 2, reads as follows: "The evidence we obtained about the president's actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." Now, I read that correctly?
|All right. Now, your report — and today, you said that at all times, the special counsel team operated under, was guided by and followed Justice Department policies and principles. So which DOJ policy or principle sets forth a legal standard that an investigated person is not exonerated if their innocence from criminal conduct is not conclusively determined?
|Can you repeat the last part of that question?
|Yeah. Which DOJ policy or principle set forth a legal standard that an investigated person is not exonerated if their innocence from criminal conduct is not conclusively determined? Where does that language come from, Director? Where is the DOJ policy that says that? Can — let me make it easier. Is…
|May — can I — I'm sorry, go ahead.
|… can you give me an example other than Donald Trump, where the Justice Department determined that an investigated person was not exonerated…
|… because their innocence was not conclusively determined?
|I cannot, but this is a unique situation.
|OK. Well, I — you can't — time is short. I've got five minutes. Let's just leave it at, you can't find it because — I'll tell you why: It doesn't exist. The special counsel's job — nowhere does it say that you were to conclusively determine Donald Trump's innocence, or that the special counsel report should determine whether or not to exonerate him. It not in any of the documents. It's not in your appointment order. It's not in the special counsel regulations. It's not in the OLC opinions. It's not in the Justice Manual. And it's not in the Principles of Federal Prosecution. Nowhere do those words appear together because, respectfully — respectfully, Director, it was not the special counsel's job to conclusively determine Donald Trump's innocence or to exonerate him. Because the bedrock principle of our justice system is a presumption of innocence. It exists for everyone. Everyone is entitled to it, including sitting presidents. And because there is a presumption of innocence, prosecutors never, ever need to conclusively determine it. Now, Director, the special counsel applied this inverted burden of proof that I can't find and you said doesn't exist anywhere in the department policies. And you used it to write a report. And the very first line of your report, the very first line of your report says, as you read this morning, it "authorizes the special counsel to provide the attorney general with a confidential report explaining the prosecution of declination decisions reached by the special counsel." That's the very first word of your report, right?
|That's correct.
|Here's the problem, Director: The special counsel didn't do that. On Volume 1, you did. On Volume 2, with respect to potential obstruction of justice, the special counsel made neither a prosecution decision or a declination decision. You made no decision. You told us this morning, and in your report, that you made no determination. So respectfully, Director, you didn't follow the special counsel regulations. It clearly says, "Write a confidential report about decisions reached." Nowhere in here does it say, "Write a report about decisions that weren't reached." You wrote 180 pages, 180 pages about decisions that weren't reached, about potential crimes that weren't charged or decided. And respectfully — respectfully, by doing that, you managed to violate every principle in the most sacred of traditions about prosecutors not offering extra-prosecutorial analysis about potential crimes that aren't charged. So Americans need to know this, as they listen to the Democrats and socialists on the other side of the aisle, as they do dramatic readings from this report: that Volume 2 of this report was not authorized under the law to be written. It was written to a legal standard that does not exist at the Justice Department. And it was written in violation of every DOJ principle about extra-prosecutorial commentary. I agree with the chairman this morning, when he said, "Donald Trump is not above the law." He's not. But he damn sure shouldn't be below the law, which is where Volume 2 of this report puts him.
- James Sensenbrenner: Why did you drag the investigation out if you started with a determination not to prosecute a sitting president?
Representative Sensenbrenner gets Mueller to recognize the fact that the investigation was dragged out beyond the point where he determined he would not prosecute the President.
|Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me begin by reading the special counsel regulations by which you were appointed. It reads, quote "At the conclusion of the special counsel's work, he or she shall provide the attorney general with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declamations decisions reached by the special counsel," is that correct?
|OK. Now when a regulation uses the words "shall provide," does it mean that the individual is in fact obligated to provide what's being demanded by the regulation or statute, meaning you don't have any wiggle room, right?
|I'd have to look more closely at the statute.
|Well, I just read it to you. OK, now Volume 2, page 1, your report boldly states, "We determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment," is that correct?
|I'm trying to find that citation, Congressman.
|Director, could you speak more directly into the microphone, please?
|Thank you.
|Well, it's Volume 2, page…
|Mr. Chairman, I'm sorry.
|Yeah, it's Volume 2, page 1. It says, "We determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment."
|That's right at the beginning. Now, since you decided under the OLC opinion that you couldn't prosecute a sitting president, meaning President Trump, why do we have all of this investigation of President Trump that the other side is talking about when you know that you weren't going to prosecute him?
|Well, you don't know where the investigation's going to lie, and OLC opinion itself says that you can continue the investigation even though you are not going to indict the president.
|OK, well if you're not going to indict the president then you just continue fishing. And that's — you know, that's my — my observation. You know, sure — sure you — sure you — my time is limited — sure you can indict other people but you can't indict the sitting president, right?
|That's true.
|OK. Now, there are 182 pages in raw evidentiary material, including hundreds of references to 302, which are interviews by the FBI for individuals who have never been cross-examined, and which did not comply with the special counsel's governing regulation to explain the prosecution or declamation decisions reached, correct?
|Where are you reading from on that?
|I'm reading from my question.(LAUGHTER)
|That — could you repeat it?
|OK. If — you have 182 pages of raw evidentiary material with hundreds of references to 302s who are — never been cross-examined, which didn't comply with the governing regulation to explain the prosecution or declaration — declination decisions reached.
|This is one of those areas which I decline to discuss…
|OK, then let… … and would direct you to the report itself for what…
|… 182 pages of it. You know, let me switch gears. Mr. Chabot and I were on this committee during the Clinton impeachment. Now, while I recognize that the independent counsel statute under which Kenneth Starr operated is different from the special counsel statute, he, in a number of occasions in his report, stated that the — "President Clinton's actions may have risen to impeachable conduct, recognizing that it is up to the House of Representatives to determine what conduct is impeachable." You never used the term "raising to impeachable conduct" for any of the 10 instances that the gentlewoman from Texas (inaudible) — did. Is it true that there's nothing in Volume 2 of the report that says that the president may have engaged in impeachable conduct?
|Well, we have (inaudible) kept in the — the center of our investigation the — our mandate. And our mandate does not go to other ways of addressing conduct, our mandate goes to what — developing the report and putting the report in to the attorney general.
|With due respect, you know, it — it seems to me, you know, that there are a couple of statements that you made, you know, that said that, "This is not for me to decide," and the implication is this is — this was for this committee to decide. Now, you didn't use the word "impeachable conduct" like Starr did. There was no statute to prevent you from using the words "impeachable conduct." And I go back to what Mr. Ratcliffe said, and that is is that even the president is innocent until proven guilty. I — my time is up.
- Steve Chabot: If you focused on the Trump Tower meeting on 9 June 2016, why didn't you focus on the Russian lawyer/Fusion GPS meetings on 8 June and 10 June?
Representative Chabot gets stonewalled by Mr. Mueller on questions as to why the Democrat-led team could not devote the same interest on the meeting on 8 and 10 June 2016 as they did on the 9 June meeting.
|Thank you. Director Mueller, my Democratic colleagues were very disappointed in your report. They were expecting you to say something along the lines of he was (ph) — why President Trump deserves to be impeached, much as Ken Starr did relative to President Clinton back about 20 years ago. Well, you didn't, so their strategy had to change. Now they allege that there's plenty of evidence in your report to impeach the president, but the American people just didn't read it. And this hearing today is their last best hope to build up some sort of groundswell across America to impeach President Trump. That's what this is really all about today. Now a few questions: On page 103 of Volume 2 of your report, when discussing the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, you referenced, quote, "the firm that produced Steele reporting," unquote. The name of that firm was Fusion GPS. Is that correct?
|And you're on page 103?
|103 (ph), that's correct, Volume 2. When you talk about the — the firm that produced the Steele reporting, the name of the firm that produced that was Fusion GPS. Is that correct?
|Yeah, I — I'm not familiar with — with that. I (inaudible)
|(inaudible) It's not — it's not a trick question, right? It was Fusion GPS. Now, Fusion GPS produced the opposition research document wide — widely known as the Steele dossier, and the owner of Fusion GPA (sic) was someone named Glenn Simpson. Are — are you familiar with…
|This is outside my purview.
|OK. Glenn Simpson was never mentioned in the 448-page Mueller report, was he?
|Well, as I — as I say, it's outside my purview and it's being handled in the department by others.
|OK. Well, he — he was not. In the 448 pages the — the owner of Fusion GPS that did the Steele dossier that started all this, he — he's not mentioned in there. Let me move on. At the same time Fusion GPS was working to collect opposition research on Donald Trump from foreign sources on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, it also was representing a Russian-based company, Probison (ph), which had been sanctioned by the U.S. government. Are you aware of that?
|It's outside my purview.
|OK, thank you. One of the key players in the — I'll go to something different. One of the key players in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was Natalia Veselnitskaya, who you described in your report as a Russian attorney who advocated for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Veselnitskaya had been working with none other than Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS since at least early 2014. Are — are you aware of that?
|Outside my purview.
|Thank you. But you didn't mention that or her connections to Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS in — in your report at all. Let — let me move on. Now, NBC News has reported the following: quote, "Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says she first received the supposedly-incriminating information she brought to Trump Tower describing alleged tax evasion and donation to Democrats from none other than Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS owner." You didn't include that in the report, and I assume you (inaudible).
|This is a matter that's being handled by others at the Department of Justice.
|OK, thank you. Now, your report spends 14 pages discussing the June 9th, 2016 Trump Tower meeting. It would be fair to say, would it not, that you spent significant resources investigating that meeting?
|Well, I'd refer you to the — the report.
|OK. And President Trump wasn't at the meeting…
|No, he was not.
|… that (ph) you're aware of (ph)? Thank you.
Now, in stark contrast to the actions of the Trump campaign, we know that the Clinton campaign did pay Fusion GPS to gather dirt on the Trump campaign, from persons associated with foreign governments. But your report doesn't mention a thing about Fusion GPS in it, and you didn't investigate Fusion GPS' connections to Russia (ph).
So let me just ask you this. Can you see that from neglecting to mention Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS' involvement with the Clinton campaign, to focusing on a brief meeting at the Trump Tower that produced nothing, to ignoring the Clinton campaign's own ties to Fusion GPS, why some view your report as a pretty one-sided attack on the president?
|Well, I'll tell you, this is still outside my purview.
|All right. And I would just note, finally, that I guess it's just by chance, by coincidence that the things left out of the report tended to be favorable to the president?
- Martha Roby: If you worked together with Attorney General Barr on the redacted report, why did you complain about the redacted report?
First, Representative Roby confirmed that Mueller did work with Attorney General Barr to redact the Mueller report. Then she asked why Mr. Mueller complained about the tone of his own work.
|Director Mueller, you just said in response to two different lines of questioning that you would refer as it relates to this firing discussion, that I would refer you to the report in the way it was characterized in the report. Importantly, the President never said, "Fire Mueller" or "End the investigation," and one does not necessitate either. McGann in fact did not resign, but stuck around for a year and half. On March 24, Attorney General William Barr informed the committee that he had received special counsel's report.– It was not until April 18 that the attorney general released the report to the congress and the public. When you submitted your report to the attorney general, did you deliver a redacted version of the report so that he would be able to release it to congress and the public without delay (pursuant to his announcement of his intention to do so during his confirmation hearing)?
|I am not getting engaged in discussion of what happened after the report was prepared.
|Had the Attorney General asked you to provide a redacted version of the report?
|We worked on the redacted versions together.
|Did he ask you for a version where the grand jury material was separated?
|I cannot get into details.
|Is it your belief that an unredacted version of the report could be released to Congress or the public?
|That's not in my purview.
|(Video and audio loss) … Rule 6c material. Why did you not take a similar action? So Congress could view this material?
|We had a process that we were operating on with the Attorney General's office.
|Are you aware of any Attorney General going to court to receive similar permission to unredact 6c material?
|I'm not aware of that being done.
|The Attorney General released the special counsel's report with minimal redactions to the public and any even lesser redacted version to Congress. Did you write the report with the expectation that it would be released publicly?
|No. We did not have tbat expectation. We wrote the report understanding that it was demanded by the statute and would go to the Attorney General for further review.
|And pursuant to the special counsel's regulations, who is the only party that must receive the charging decision resulting from the special counsels investigation?
|With regard to the President or generally?
|The Attorney General.
|At Attorney General Barr's confirmation hearing, he made it clear that he intended to release your report to the public. Do you remember how much of your report had been written at that point?
|I do not.
|Were there significant changes in tone or substance of the report made after the announcement that the report would be made available to Congress in the public?
|I can't get into that.
|During the Senate testimony of Attorney General William Barr, Senator Kamala Harris asked Mr Barr if he had looked at all the underlying evidence that the special counsel's team had gathered. He stated that he had not. So I'm gonna ask you. Did you personally review all of the underlying evidence gathered in your investigation?
|Well, to the extent that it came through the special counsel's office, yes.
|Did any single member of your team review all the underlying evidence gathered during the course of your …
|(interrupting) As as has been recited here today, substantial amount of work was done whether it be be search warrant or …
|(interrupting) My point here is that there is no one member of the team that looked at everything.
|That's what I'm trying to get at.
|(interrupting)It's fair to say that in an investigation is comprehensive is your's, it is normal that different members of the team would have reviewed different sets of documents amd few, if anyone, would have reviewed all of the underlying.
|Thank you, yes.
|How many of the approximately 500 interviews conducted by the special conference – do you attend personally?
|Very few.
|On March 27, 2019, you wrote a letter to the Attorney General essentially complaining about the media coverage of your report. You wrote (and I quote) "the summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office's work in conclusions. We communicated that concern to the Department n the morning of March 25. There is now public confusion about the critical aspects of the result of our investigation." Who wrote that March 27th letter?
|I can't get into who wrote the internal deliberations …
|But you signed it?
|What I will say is a letter stands for itself, okay?
|Why did you write a formal letter, since you had already called the Attorney General to express those concerns? Did you authorize the letters release to the media or was it leaked?
|I can't get into that. Internal deliberations.
|Did you authorize the letters release to the media or was it leaked?
|I have no knowledge on either.
|Well, you went nearly two years without a leak. Why was this letter leaked?
|I can't get into that.
|Was this letter written and leaked for the expressed purpose of attempting to change the narrative about the conclusions of your report and was anything in Attorney General Barr's letter referred to as "principled conclusions?"
Answer the question, please.
|Repeat the question.
|Was anything in attorney general bars letter referred to as the principal conclusions letter dated, March 24th innaccurate?
|I am NOT going to get into that.
- Matt Gaetz: Was the Steele dossier part of the Russian disinformation program?
Representative Gaetz probes to find why Mr. Mueller did not look to see whether the Steele dossier was part of a Russian disinformation program.
|Director Mueller, can you state with confidence that the Steele dossier was not part of Russia's disinformation campaign?
|No. I said they – my opening statement that part of the building of the case predated me by at least 10 months.
|Yes. I mean, Paul Manafort's alleged crimes regarding tax evasion predated you. You had no problem charging them, and a matter of fact, this Steele dossier predated the attorney general and he didn't have any problem answering the question when Senator Cornyn asked the attorney general the exact question I asked you, Director. The attorney general said, and I'm quoting, "no. I can't state that with confidence, and that's one of the areas I'm reviewing. I'm concerned about it and I don't think it's entirely speculative."
Now, something is not entirely speculative that it must have some factual basis, but you identify no factual basis regarding the dossier or the possibility that it was part of the Russia disinformation campaign. Now, Christopher Steele's reporting is referenced in your report. Steele reported to the FBI that senior Russian foreign ministry figures among with other – along with other Russia's told him that there was a – and I'm quoting from the Steele dossier – "extensive evidence of conspiracy between the Trump campaign team and the Kremlin."
|So here's my question. Did Russians really tell that to Christopher Steele or did he just make it all up and was he lying to the FBI?
|Let me back up a second if I could and say as I've said earlier, with regard to Steele, that's beyond my purview.
|No it is exactly your purview Director Mueller and here's why. Only one of two things is possible, right? Either Steele made this whole thing up and there were never any Russians telling him of this vast criminal conspiracy that you didn't find or Russians lied to Steele. Now if Russians were lying to Steele to undermine our confidence in our duly elected president, that would seem to be precisely your purview because you stated in your opening that the organizing principle was to fully and thoroughly investigate Russia's interference but you weren't interested in whether or not Russians were interfering through Christopher Steele and if Steele was lying then you should have charged him with lying like you charged a variety of other people. But you say nothing about this in your report.
|Well, sir…
|Meanwhile, Director, you're quite loquacious on other topics, you write 3,500 words about the June 9 meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya. You write on page 103 of your report that the president's legal team suggested and I'm quoting from your report, "that the meeting might have been a set up by individuals working with the firm that produced the Steele reporting." So I'm going to ask you a very easy question Director Mueller, on the week of June 9, who did Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya meet with more frequently, the Trump campaign or Glenn Simpson who is functionally acting as an operative for the Democratic National Committee?
|Well what I think is missing here is the fact that this is under investigation and — elsewhere…
|I get that…
|And if I could finish, sir. And if I could finish, sir. And consequently it's not within my purview, the Department of Justice and FBI should be responsive to questions on this particular issue.
|It is absurd to suggest that a operative for the democrats was meeting with this Russian lawyer the day before, the day after the Trump Tower meeting and yet that's not something you reference. Now Glenn Simpson testified under oath he had dinner with Veselnitskaya the day before and the day after this meeting with the Trump team. Do you have any basis as you sit here today to believe that Steele was lying?
|As I said before and I'll say again, it's not my purview. Others are investigating what you…
|It's not your purview to look into whether or not Steele is lying? It's not your purview to look into whether or not anti-Trump Russians are lying to Steele? And it's not your purview to look at whether or not Glenn Simpson was meeting with the Russians the day before and the day after you write 3,500 words about the Trump campaign meeting so I'm wondering how — how these decisions are guided. I look at the inspector general's report. I'm citing from page 404 of the inspector general's report. It states, "Page (ph) stated, Trump is not ever going to be president, right? Right?" Strzok replied, "No he's not. We'll stop it." Also in the inspector general's report there's someone identified as "Attorney Number 2." Attorney Number 2, this is page 419 replied, "Hell no," and then added, "viva la resistance." Attorney Number 2 in the inspector general's report and Strzok both worked on your team, didn't they?
|Pardon me, can you ask…
|They both worked on your team didn't they?
|I heard Strzok. Who else are we talking about?
|Attorney Number 2 identified in the inspector general's report.
|OK. And the question was?
|Did he work for you? The guy who said, "Viva la resistance."
|Peter — Peter Strzok worked for me for a period of time, yes.
|Yes, but so did the other guy that said, "Viva la resistance." And here's what I'm kind of noticing Director Mueller, when people associated with Trump lied, you threw the book at them. When Christopher Steele lied, nothing. And so it seems to be when Simpson met with Russians, nothing. When the Trump campaign met with Russians, 3,500 words. And maybe the reason why there are these discrepancies in what you focused on because the team was so biased…
|Time of the — time of the gentleman has expired.
|… (inaudible) resistance, pledged to stop Trump.
- Tom McClintock: Were political facts left out of your report in order to cast the President in a negative light?
Representative McClintock questions whether Mueller used political facts to cast the President in a bad light.
|Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mueller, over here. Thanks for joining us today. You had three discussions with Rod Rosenstein about your appointment as special counsel May 10, May 12, and May 13, correct?
|If you say so, I have no reason to dispute that.
|Then you met with the president on the 16th with Rod Rosenstein present. And then on the 17th, you were formally appointed as special counsel. Were you meeting with the president on the 16th with knowledge that you were under consideration for appointment of special counsel?
|I did not believe I was under consideration for counsel. The — I had served two terms as FBI director…
|We consider (ph) the answer's no.
|The answer's no.
|Gregg Jarrett describes your office as the team of partisans. And additional information's coming to light, there's a growing concern that political biased caused important facts to be omitted from your report in order to cast the president unfairly in a negative light.
For example, John Dowd, the president's lawyer, leaves a message with Michael Flynn's lawyer on November 17 in 2017 — November 2017. The edited version in your report makes it appear that he was improperly asking for confidential information, and that's all we know from your report expect that the judge in the Flynn case ordered the entire transcript released in which Dowd makes it crystal clear that's not what he was suggesting. So my question's why did you edit the transcript to hide the exculpatory part of the message?
|I will answer and I will agree (ph) with your characterization as we did anything to hide…
|Well, you omitted — you omitted it. You quoted the part where he says we need some kind of heads up just for the sake of protecting all of our interests if we can, but you omitted the portion where he says without giving up any confidential information.
|Well, I'm not going to go further in terms of discussing the…
|Well, let's go on.
|… what's — what the (ph)…
|You — you extensively discussed Konstantin Kilimnik's activities with Paul Manafort. And you described him as, quote, "A Russian/Ukrainian political consultant," and, "longtime employee of Paul Manafort, assessed by the FBI to have ties to Russian intelligence."
And again, that's all we know from your report, except we've since learned from news articles that Kilimnik was actually a U.S. State Department intelligence source, yet nowhere in your report is he so identified. Why was that fact omitted?
|I don't — I don't necessarily credit what you're saying occurred.
|Were you aware that Kilimnik was a — a… (CROSSTALK)
|I'm not going to go into the…
|…State Department source?
|… ins and outs — I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of what we had in the — in the course… (CROSSTALK)
|Did you interview…
|… in the course of our investigation.
|… did you interview Konstantin Kilimnik?
|Did you interview Konstantin Kilimnik?
|I can't go into the discussion of our investigative moves.
|And — and — and yet that is the — the — the basis of your report. Again, the problem we're having is we have to rely on your report for an accurate reflection of the evidence and we're starting to find out that's — that's not true.
For example, you — you — your report famously links Russian Internet troll farms with the Russian government. Yet, at a hearing on May 28th in the Concord Management IRA prosecution that you initiated, the judge excoriated both you and Mr. Barr for producing no evidence to support this claim. Why did you suggest Russia was responsible for the troll farms, when, in court, you've been unable to produce any evidence to support it?
|Well, I am not going to get into that any further than I — than I already have.
|But — but you — you have left the clear impression throughout the country, through your report, that it — it was the Russian government behind the troll farms. And yet, when you're called upon to provide actual evidence in court, you fail to do so.
|Well, I would again dispute your characterization of what occurred in that — in that proceeding.
|In — in — in fact, the judge considering — considered holding prosecutors in criminal contempt. She backed off, only after your hastily called press conference the next day in which you retroactively made the distinction between the Russian government and the Russia troll farms.
Did your press conference on May 29th have anything to do with the threat to hold your prosecutors in contempt the previous day for publicly misrepresenting the evidence?
|What was the question?
|The — the question is, did your May 29th press conference have anything to do with the fact that the previous day the judge threatened to hold your prosecutors in contempt for misrepresenting evidence?
|Now, the — the — the fundamental problem is — is that, as I said, we've got to take your word, your team faithfully, accurately, impartially and completely described all of the underlying evidence in the Mueller report.
And we're finding more and more instances where this just isn't the case. And it's starting to look like, you know, having desperately tried and failed to make a legal case against the president, you made a political case instead. You put it in a paper sack, lit it on fire, dropped it on our porch, rang the doorbell and ran.
|I don't think you reviewed a report that is as thorough, as fair, as consistent as the report that we have in front of us.
|Then — then why is contradictory information…
|(CROSSTALK) The time of the gentleman has expired…
|… continuing to come out?
- Guy Reschenthaler: Although our legal system is built on innocent-until-proven-guilty and the right to face our accusers, haven't you smeared the President and prevented him from facing his accusers?
Representative Reschenthaler points out how Mueller seems to have smeared the President without allowing him to face his accusers.
|Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Mueller. I'm over here, I'm sorry. Mr. Mueller, are you familiar with the now expired independent counsel statute. It's a statue under which Ken Starr was appointed.
|That Ken Starr did what? I'm sorry.
|Are you familiar with the independent counsel statute?
|Are you talking about the one we're operating under now or previous?
|No. Under which Ken Starr was appointed.
|I am not that familiar with that but I'd be happy to take your question.
|Well the Clinton Administration allowed the independent counsel statute to expire after Ken Starr's investigation. The final report requirement was a major reason why the statute was allowed to expire. Even President Clinton's A.G. Janet Reno expressed concerns about the final report requirement and I'll quote A.G. Reno. She said, "On one hand the American people have an interest in knowing the outcome of an investigation of their highest officials. On the other hand, the report requirement cuts against many of the most basic traditions and practices of American law enforcement. Under our system, we presume innocence and we value privacy. We believe that information obtained during a criminal investigation should, in most cases be made public only if there's an indictment and prosecution not any lengthy and detailed report filed after a decision has been made not to prosecute. The final report provides a forum for unfairly airing a target's dirty laundry and it also creates yet another incentive for an independent counsel to over investigate in order to justify his or her tenure and to avoid criticism that the independent counsel may have left a stone unturned."
Again, Mr. Mueller, those are A.G. Reno's words. Didn't you do exactly what A.G. Reno feared? Didn't you publish a lengthy report unfairly airing the target's dirty laundry without recommending charges?
|I disagree with that and …
|OK. Did any — did any of your witnesses …
|Can I finish?
|… have the chance to be cross examined?
|Can I just finish my answer on that?
|Quickly. My time…
|We operate under the current statute not the original statute so I'm most familiar with the current statute not the older statute.
|OK. Did any of the witnesses have a chance to be cross examined?
|Did any of the witnesses in our investigation?
|I'm going to answer that.
|Did you allow the people mentioned in your report to challenge how they were characterized?
|I'm not going to get into that.
|Given that A.G. Barr stated multiple times during his confirmation hearing that he would make as much of your report public as possible, did you write your report knowing that it would likely be shared with the public?
|Did knowing that the report could and likely would be made public, did that alter contents would you include it?
|I can't speak to that.
|Despite the expectations that your report would be released to the public, you left out significant exculpatory evidence. In other words, evidence favorable to the president correct?
|Well, I actually would disagree with you. I think we strove to put into the report exculpatory (inaudible) as well…
|(inaudible) got into that with you where he said there was — you said there was evidence you left out.
|Well, you make a choice as to what goes into a indictment.
|Isn't it true — Mr. Mueller, isn't it true that on page 1, Volume 2 you state when you're quoting the statute the obligation to either prosecute or not prosecute?
|Well, generally that is the case.
|Although most cases are not done in the context of the president.
|In this case you made a decision not to prosecute, correct?
|No. We made a decision not to decide whether to prosecute or not.
|So essentially what your report did was everything that A.G. Reno warned against?
|I can't agree with that characterization.
|OK, well what you did is you compiled a nearly 450 — you compiled nearly 450 pages of the very worst information you gathered against the target of your investigation who happens to be the President of the United States and you did this knowing that you were not going to recommend charges and that the report would be made public.
|Not true.
|Mr. Mueller, as a former officer in the United States JAG Corps I prosecuted nearly 100 terrorists in a Baghdad courtroom. I cross-examined the Butcher of Fallujah in defense of our Navy SEALS. As a civilian, I was elected a magisterial district judge in Pennsylvania, so I'm very well-versed in the American legal system. The drafting and the publication of some of the information in this report without an indictment, without prosecution frankly flies in the face of American justice and I find those facts and this entire process un-American. I yield the remainder of my time to my colleague Jim Jordan.
- Jim Jordan: When Mr Mifsud lied three times to the FBI, why didn't you charge him the way you charged people associated with the Trump campaign who lied once?
Although they charged Trump-related individuals for lying to the FBI, they did not charge the guy who started it all who lied three times to the FBI. Why is this allowed?
|Director, the FBI interviewed Joseph Mifsud on February 10th, 2017. In that interview, Mr. Mifsud lied. You point this out on page 193, Volume 1, Mifsud denied, Mifsud also falsely stated. In addition, Mifsud omitted. Three times, he lied to the FBI; yet, you didn't charge him with a crime. Why…(CROSSTALK)
|Excuse me — are…
|… Why not?
|… did you say — I'm sorry, did you say 193?
|Volume 1, 193. He lied three times, you point it out in the report, why didn't you charge him with a crime?
|I can't get into internal deliberations with regard to who or who would not be charged.
|You charged a lot of other people for making false statements. Let's remember this — let's remember this, in 2016 the FBI did something they probably haven't done before, they spied on two American citizens associated with a presidential campaign.
George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. With Carter Page they went to the FISA court, they used the now famous dossier as part of the reason they were able to get the warrant and spy on Carter Page for a better part of a year. With Mr. Papadopoulos, they didn't go to the court, they used human sources, all kinds of — from about the moment Papadopoulos joins the Trump campaign, you've got all these people all around the world starting to swirl around him, names like Halper, Downer, Mifsud, Thompson, meeting in Rome, London, all kinds of places.
The FBI even sent — even sent a lady posing as somebody else, went by the name Azmiturk (ph), even dispatched her to London to spy on Mr. Papadopoulos. In one of these meetings, Mr. Papadopoulos is talking to a foreign diplomat and he tells the diplomat Russians have dirt on Clinton. That diplomat then contacts the FBI and the FBI opens an investigation based on that fact. You point this out on page 1 of the report. July 31st, 2016 they open the investigation based on that piece of information.
Diplomat tells Papadopoulos Russians have dirt — excuse me, Papadopoulos tells the diplomat Russians have dirt on Clinton, diplomat tells the FBI. What I'm wondering is who told Papadopoulos? How'd he find out?
|I can't get into the evidentiary filings.
|Yes, you can because you wrote about it, you gave us the answer. Page 192 of the report, you tell us who told him. Joseph Mifsud, Joseph Mifsud's the guy who told Papadopoulos, the mysterious professor who lives in Rome and London, works at — teaches in two different universities.
This is the guy who told Papadopoulos he's the guy who starts it all, and when the FBI interviews him, he lies three times and yet you don't charge him with a crime. You charge Rick Gates for false statements, you charge Paul Manafort for false statements, you charge Michael Cohen with false statements, you charge Michael Flynn a three star general with false statements, but the guy who puts the country through this whole saga, starts it all for three years we've lived this now, he lies and you guys don't charge him. And I'm curious as to why.
|Well I can't get into it and it's obvious I think that we can't get into charging decisions.
|When the FBI interviewed him in February — FBI interviews him in February, when the Special Counsel's Office interviewed Mifsud, did he lie to you guys too?
|Can't get into that.
|Did you interview Mifsud?
|Can't get into that.
|Is Mifsud western intelligence or Russian intelligence?
|Can't get into that.
|A lot of things you can't get into. What's interesting, you can charge 13 Russians no one's ever heard of, no one's ever seen, no one's ever going to hear of them, no one's ever going to see them, you can charge them, you can charge all kinds of people who are around the president with false statements but the guy who launches everything, the guy who puts this whole story in motion, you can't charge him. I think that's amazing.
|I'm not certain I — I'm not certain I agree with your characterizations.
|Well I'm reading from your report, Mifsud told Papadopoulos, Papadopoulos tells the diplomat, the diplomat tells the FBI, the FBI opens the investigation July 31st, 2016.
And here we are three years later, July of 2019, the country's been put through this and the central figure who launches it all, lies to us and you guys don't hunt him down and interview him again and you don't charge him with a crime.
Now here's the good news, here's the good news, the president was falsely accused of conspiracy. The FBI does a 10 month investigation and James Comey when we deposed him a year ago told us at that point they had nothing. You do a 22-month investigation, at the end of that 22 months you find no conspiracy and what's the Democrats want to do, they want to keep investigating, they want to keep going. Maybe a better course of action, maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusations started, maybe it's to go back and actually figure out why Joseph Mifsud was lying to the FBI. And here's the good news, here's the good news, that's exactly what Bill Barr is doing. And thank goodness for that. That's exactly what the attorney general and John Durham doing, they're going to find out why we went through this three year…
|The time of the gentleman…
|…three year saga and get to the bottom of it.
- Ben Cline: How many of your team's witch-hunt tactics have been overturned on appeal?
Representative Cline rightfully asks how many of the team's tactics have been turned over on appeal.
|Thank You Mr. Chairman, Mr. Kolbe. Mr. Mueller, we've heard a lot about what you're not going to talk about today. So let's talk about something that you should be able to talk about: the law itself (the underlying obstruction statute and your creative legal analysis of the statutes in Volume 2, particularly an interpretation of 18 USC 1512 C). Section 1512 C, is an obstruction of justice statute created as part of auditing and financial regulations for public companies.
As you write on page 164 of Volume 2, this provision was added as a floor amendment in the Senate and explained as closing a certain loophole with respect to document shredding and to read the statute:
"Whoever corruptly alters destroys mutilates or conceals a record document or other object or attempts to do so with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in a fit in an official proceeding or otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding or attempts to do so shall be fined under the statue or imprisoned not more than 20 years or both."
Your analysis and application of the statute proposes to give Clause C2 a much broader interpretation than commonly used. First, your analysis proposes to read Clause C2 in isolation: reading it as a free-standing, all-encompassing provision prohibiting any act influencing a proceeding if done with an improper motive. Second, your analysis of the statute proposes to apply the sweeping prohibition to lawful acts taken by public officials exercising their discretionary powers if those acts influence a proceeding. So, Mr. Mueller, I would ask you, in analyzing the obstruction you state that you recognize that the Department of Justice and the courts have not definitively resolved these issues. Correct?
|You'd agree that not everyone in the Justice Department agreed with your legal theory of the obstruction of justice statute. Correct?
|I'm not going to be involved in the discussion on on that at this juncture.
|In fact, the Attorney General himself disagrees with your interpretation of the law, correct?
|I leave that to the Attorney General to identify.
|You would agree that prosecutors sometimes incorrectly apply the law, correct?
|I would have to agree with that one.
|… and members of your legal team, in fact, have had convictions overturned because they were based on an incorrect legal theory, correct?
|I don't know to what you advert. We've all (CROSSTALK)
|Well, in time, … (CROSSTALK)
|… in the trenches. We have all had one of those cases.
|Well, let me ask you about one in particular. One of your top prosecutors Andrew Weissman obtained a conviction against auditing firm Authur Anderson in lower court which was subsequently overturned in a unanimous Supreme Court decision that rejected the legal theory advanced by Weissman, correct?
|Well, I'm not gonna get into delve into …
|Let me read from that.
|May I just finish?
|I'm not going to be involved in a discussion on that. I will refer you to that citation that you gave at the outset for the lengthy discussion on just what you're talking about and to the extent that I have say anything to say about it. It is what we have already put into the report on that.
|I am reading from your report when discussing this section now. I'll read from the decision of the Supreme Court unanimously reversing Mr. Weissman, when he said, "Indeed, it's striking how little culpability the instructions required. For example, the jury was told that even if petitioner honestly and sincerely believed as conduct was lawful, the jury could convict. The instructions also diluted the meaning of 'corruptly' such that it covered innocent conduct."
|Let me just say …
|No. Let me move on. I have limited time. Your report takes the broadest possible reading of this provision in applying it to the president's official acts and I'm concerned about the implications of your theory for over criminalizing conduct by public officials and private citizens alike. So to emphasize how broad your theory of liability is, I want to ask you about a few examples. On October 11, 2015, during the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, President Obama said, "I don't think it posed a national security problem." And he later said "I can tell you that this is not a situation in which America's national security was endangered."
Assuming for a moment that his comments did influence the investigation, couldn't President Obama be charged under your interpretation with obstruction of justice?
|Well again, I'd refer you to the report, but let me say with Andrew Weissman is one of the more talented attorneys that we Haven't have on board.
|Well, I'll take that
|…over a period of time. He is run a number Units
|I have very little time. In August 2015, a very senior DOJ official called FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe expressing concern that FBI agents were still openly pursuing the Clinton Foundation probe. The DOJ official was apparently "very pissed off." McCabe questioned this official asking "Are you telling me I need to shut down a vallidly predicated investigation?" to which the official replied, "Of course not. This seems to be a clear example of somebody within the executive branch attempting to influence an FBI investigation." So, under your theory, couldn't that person be charged with obstruction as long as a prosecutor could come up with a potentially corrupt motive?
|I refer you to our lengthy dissertation on exactly those issues as it appears in the at the end of the report.
|Mr Mueller, I argue that it says above the Supreme Court "equal justice…"
- Greg Steube: Multiple times, you call the Steele dossier "unverified." When did you determine it was unverified? When did you become aware that the unverified Steele dossier was used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page?
Representative Steube asks Mueller why he based his investigation on what was known to be an unverified dossier.
|Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Mueller, over here. Mr. Mueller did you indeed interview for the FBI director job one day before you were appointed as Special Counsel?
|My understanding I was not applying for that job, I was asked to give my input on what it would take to do the job, which triggered the interview you're talking about.
|So you don't recall on May 16th, 2017 that you interviewed with the president regarding the FBI director job?
|I interviewed with the president and it was about…
|Regarding the FBI director job?
|…it was about the job and not about me applying for the job.
|So your statement here today is that you didn't interview to apply for the FBI director job?
|That's correct.
|So it – did you tell the vice president that the FBI director position would be the one job that you would come back to – for?
|I don't recall that one.
|You don't recall that?
|OK. Given your 22 months of investigation, tens of million dollars spent and millions of documents reviewed, did you obtain any evidence at all that any American voter changed their vote as a result of Russia's election interference?
|I'm not going to speak to that.
|You can't speak to that after 22 months of investigation, there's not any evidence in that document before us that any voter changed their vote because of their interference and I'm asking you based on all of the documents that you reviewed…
|That was – that was outside our purview.
|Russian meddling was outside your purview?
|But the impact of that meddling was undertaken by other agencies.
|OK, you stated in your opening statement that you would not get into the details of the Steele Dossier. However multiple times in Volume 2 on page 23, 27 and 28 you mentioned the unverified allegations. How long did it take you to reach the conclusion that it was unverified?
|I'm not going to speak to that.
|It's in – it's actually in your report multiple times that its unverified and you're telling me that you're not willing to tell us how you came to conclusion that it was unverified?
|When did you become aware that the unverified Steele Dossier was included in the FISA application to spy on Carter Page?
|I'm sorry, what was the – what was the question?
|When did you become aware that the unverified Steele Dossier was intended – was included in the FISA application to spy on Carter Page?
|I'm not going to speak to that.
|Your team interviewed Christopher Steele, is that correct?
|Not going to get into that. I said it – I…
|You can't – you can't – you can't tell this committee as to whether or not you interviewed Christopher Steele in a 22 month investigation with 18 lawyers?
|As I said at the outset, that is one of those – one of the investigations that is being handled by others in the Department of Justice.
|Yes but you're here testifying about this investigation today and I am asking you directly did any members of your team or did you interview Christopher Steele in the course of your investigation.
|And I am not going to answer that question, sir.
|You had two years to investigate, not once did you consider it worthy to investigate how an unverified document that was paid for by a political opponent was used to obtain a warrant to spy on the opposition political campaign. Did you do any investigation in that way (ph)?
|I do not accept your characterization of what occurred.
|What would you – what would be your characterization?
|I'm not going to speak any more to it.
|So you can't speak any more to it but you're not going to agree with my characterization? Is that correct?
|The FISA application makes reference to Source 1, who is Christopher Steele, the author of the Steele Dossier. The FISA application says nothing Sources 1's reason for conducting the research into Canada 1′ (ph) ties to Russia. Based on Source's 1 previous reporting history with FBI, whereby Source One provided reliable information to the FBI. The FBI believes Source One's reporting herein to be credible. Do you believe the FBI's representation that Source 1's reporting was credible to be accurate?
|I'm not going to answer that.
|So you're not going to respond to any of the questions regarding Christopher Steele or your interviews with him?
|Well as I said at the outset this morning, that was one of the investigations that I could not speak to.
|Well I don't understand how if you interviewed an individual on the purview of this investigation that you're testifying to us today that you've closed that investigation, how that's not within your purview to tell us about that investigation and who you interviewed.
|I have nothing to add.
|OK well the – I can guarantee that the American people want to know and I'm – and I'm very hopeful and glad that A.G. Barr is looking into this and the inspector general is looking into this because you're unwilling to answer the questions of the American people as it relates to the very basis of this investigation into the president and the very basis of this individual who you did interview, you're just refusing to answer those questions.
Can – can't the president fire the FBI director at any time without reason under the Article I of the Constitution?
|Article II.
|That's correct. Can't he also fire U.S. Special Counsel at any time without any reason?
|I believe that to be the case.
|Under Article II.
|Well hold on just a second, you said without any reason, I know the Special Counsel can be fired, but I'm not certain it extends to for whatever reasons is given.
|Well then you've testified that you weren't fired, you were able to complete your investigation in full. Is that correct?
|I'm not going to add to what I've stated before.
- Kelly Armstrong: Why did you assemble a team of 18 Democrats that included the lawyer who destroyed Hillary Clinton's mobile devices?
Here, Representative Armstrong asks Mr. Mueller why only Democrats (especially those who had formerly worked for Hillary) investigated on this team.
|Mr. Mueller, how many people did you fire – how many people on your staff did you fire during the course of the investigation?
|How many people…
|Did you fire?
|I'm not going to discuss that.
|You fired – according to inspector general's report, attorney number two was let go and we know Peter Strzok was let go, correct?
|Yes, and there may have been other persons on other issues that have been either transferred or fired.
|Peter Strzok testified before this Committee on July 12, 2018 that he was fired because you were concerned about preserving the appearance of independence. Do you agree with this testimony?
|Say that again if you could?
|He said he was fired at least partially because you were worried about – concerned about preserving the appearance of independence with the special counsel's investigation. Do you agree with that statement?
|And the statement was by whom?
|Peter Strzok at this hearing.
|I am not familiar with that.
|Did you fire him because you were worried about the appearance of independence of the investigation?
|No. He was transferred as a result of instances involving texts.
|Do you agree that – do you agree that your office did not only have an obligation to operate with independence but to operate with the appearance of independence as well?
|Absolutely. We strove to do that over the two years.
|Part of that was making certain that…
|Andrew Weissmann's one of your top attorneys?
|Did Weissmann have a role is selecting other members of your team?
|He had some role but not a major role.
|Andrew Weissmann attended Hillary Clinton's election night party. Did you know that before or after he came onto the team?
|I don't know when I found that out.
|On January 30, 2017, Weissmann wrote an email to Deputy Attorney General Yates stating, "I am so proud and in awe regarding her disobeying a direct order from the president." Did Weissmann disclose that email to you before he joined the team?
|I'm not going to talk about that.
|Is that not a conflict of interest?
|Not going to talk about that.
|Are you aware that Ms. Jeannie Rhee represented Hillary Clinton in litigation regarding personal emails originating from Clinton's time as Secretary of State?
|Did you know that before she came on the…
|Aaron Zelbley, the guy sitting next to you, represented Justin Cooper, a Clinton aide who destroyed one of Clinton's mobile devices, and you must be aware by now that six of your lawyers donated $12,000 directly to Hillary Clinton. I'm not even talking about the $49,000 they donated to other democrats, just the donations to the opponent who was the target of your investigation.
|Can I speak for a second to the hiring practices?
|We strove to hire those individuals that could do that job.
|I have been in this business for almost 25 years, and in those 25 years I have not had occasion once to ask somebody about their political affiliation. It is not done. What I care about is the capability of the individual to do the job and do the job quickly and seriously and with integrity.
|But that's what I'm saying, Mr. Mueller. This isn't just about you being able to vouch for your team. This is about knowing that the day you accepted this role you had to be aware no matter what this report concluded half of the country was going to be scheduled – skeptical of your team's findings, and that's why we have recusal laws that define bias and perceive bias for this very reason.
28 United States code 5218 (ph) specifically lists not just political conflict of interest but the appearance of political conflicts of interest. It's just simply not enough that you vouch for your team.
The interest (inaudible) demand that no perceived bias exists. I can't imagine a single prosecutor or judge that I have every appeared in front of would be comfortable with these circumstances where over half of the prosecutorial team had a direct relationship to the opponent of the person being investigated.
|Let me one other fact that I put on the table, and that is we hired 19 lawyers over the period of time. Of those 19 lawyers, 14 of them were transferred from elsewhere in the Department of Justice. Only five came from outside, so we did not have…
|And half of them had a direct relationship, political or personal, with the opponent of the person you were investigating, and that's my point. I wonder if not a single word in this entire report was change but rather the only difference was we switched Hillary Clinton and President Trump.
If Peter Strzok has texted those terrible things about Hillary Clinton instead of President Trump, if a team of lawyers worked for, donated thousands of dollars to, and went to Trump's parties instead of Clinton's, I don't think we'd be here trying to prop up an obstruction allegation.
My colleagues would have spent the last four months accusing your team of being bought and paid for by the Trump campaign and we couldn't trust a single word of this report. They would still be accusing the president of conspiracy with Russia and they would be accusing your team of aiding and embedding with that conspiracy, and with that I yield back.
- Mike Johnson: Why did your team include 14 Democrats and 0 Republicans? Why did you hire Democrat bundlers who raised $60,000 for the Hillary campaign?
Finally, Representative Johnson asked why each of the Democrats hired for Mueller's team each raised at least $60,000 for Hillary Clinton.
|Mr. Mueller, you've been asked — over here on the — on the far right, sir — you've been asked a lot of questions here today. And to be frank, you performed as most of us expected. You've stuck closely to your report and you have declined to answer many of our questions on both sides.
As the closer for the Republican side, I know you're glad to get to the close, I want to summarize the highlights of what we have heard and what we know.
You spent two years, and nearly $30 million taxpayer dollars and unlimited resources to prepare a nearly 450-page report which you describe today as very thorough. Millions of Americans today maintain genuine concerns about your work, in large part, because of the infamous and widely publicized bias of your investigating team members, which we now know included 14 Democrats and 0 Republicans.
Campaign finance reports later showed that team… (CROSSTALK)
|Can I…
|… Excuse me, it's my time. That team of Democrat investigators you hired donated more than $60,000 to the Hillary Clinton campaign and other Democratic candidates. Your team also included Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, which have been discussed today, and they had the lurid text messages that confirm they openly mocked and hated Donald Trump and his supporters, and they vowed to take him out.
Mr. Ratcliffe asked you earlier this morning, quote, "Can you give me an example, other than Donald Trump, where the Justice Department determined that an investigated person was not exonerated because their innocence was not conclusively determined?" unquote. You answered, "I cannot." Sir, that is unprecedented.
The president believed from the very beginning that you and your special counsel team had serious conflicts this is stated in the report and acknowledged by everybody. And yet, President Trump cooperated fully with the investigation. He knew he had done nothing wrong, and he encouraged all witnesses to cooperate with the investigation and produce more than 1.4 million pages of information, and allowed over 40 witnesses who are directly affiliated with the White House or his campaign.
Your report acknowledges on page 61, Volume 2 that a volume of evidence exists of the president telling many people privately, quote, "The president was concerned about the impact of the Russian investigation on his ability to govern, and to address important foreign relations issues and even matters of national security."
And on page 174, Volume 2 your report also acknowledges that the Supreme Court has held, quote, "The president's removal powers are at their zenith with respect to principal officers — that is, officers who must be appointed by the president and who report to him directly. The president's 'exclusive and illimitable power of removal' of those principal officers furthers 'the president's ability to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed,'" unquote. And that would even include the attorney general. Look, in spite of all of that, nothing ever happened to stop or impede your special counsel's investigation. Nobody was fired by the president, nothing was curtailed and the investigation continued unencumbered for 22 long months.
As you finally concluded in Volume 1, the evidence, quote, "Did not establish that the president was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference," unquote. And the evidence, quote, "did not establish that the president or those close to him were involved in any Russian conspiracies or had an unlawful relationship with any Russian official," unquote. Over those 22 long months that your investigation dragged along, the president became increasingly frustrated as many of the American people did with its effects on our country and – and his ability to govern.
He vented about this to his lawyer and his close associates and he even shared his frustrations, as we all know, on twitter. But while the president's social media accounts might have influenced some in the media or the opinion of some the American people, none of those audiences were targets or witnesses in your investigation.
The president never affected anybody's testimony. He never demanded to end the investigation or demanded that you be terminated and he never misled Congress, the DOJ or the special counsel. Those, sir, are her undisputed facts. There will be a lot of discussion I predict today and great frustration throughout the country about the fact that you wouldn't answer any questions here about the origins of this whole charade, which was the infamous Christopher Steele dossier, now proven to be totally bogus, even though it is listed and specifically referenced in your report.
But as our hearing is concluding, we apparently will get no comment on that from you. Mr. Mueller there's one primary reason why you were called here today by the democrat majority of our committee. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle just want political cover. They desperately wanted you today to tell them they should impeach the president but the one thing you have said very clearly today is that your report is complete and thorough and you completely agree with and stand by its recommendations and all of its content. Is that right?
|Mr. Mueller, one last important question. Your report does not recommend impeachment, does it?
|I'm not going to talk about recommendations.
|It does not conclude that impeachment would be appropriate here, right?
|I'm not going to talk – I'm not going to talk about that – about that issue.
|That's one of the many things you wouldn't talk about today but I think we can all draw our own conclusions. I do thank you for your service to the country and I'm glad this charade will come to an end soon and we can get back to the important business of this committee with its broad jurisdiction of so many important issues for the country. With that, I yield back.