More on Durham, the FBI, and Clinton vs. Trump; from Andrew C. McCarthy and Jonathan Turley

The New Neo Posted on by

Turley is correct:

“Raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated.” Those words from the Durham Report summed up one of the most damning investigations in the Justice Department’s history.

In the 305-page report released Monday, special counsel John Durham concluded that the Trump-Russia investigation was launched without a required minimal level of evidence and shattered a host of departmental standards. Let that sink in: The Justice Department — as well as the media that covered it — effectively shut down a duly elected presidency, based on what turned out to be a politically engineered hoax.

That would make anyone angry. Really angry. Trump-level angry.

The fact is, in this instance, Donald Trump was correct when he said he was the target of a political hitjob funded by the Clinton campaign and maintained by virtually every media outlet. There is a word for that: disinformation…

In the end, it is not a crime to be unethical or incompetent, so no charges will be filed as a result of the report. Durham clearly hopes that the belated transparency provided by his report will produce greater future accountability. That may be the only naive aspect of his findings.

Of course, the FBI promptly issued a statement that it has — once more — reformed itself in light of its failures. But who really believes this is unlikely to occur again?

Turley points out that the Hunter laptop story has been lied about by the same people, and there’s really no end in sight:

Thus, Durham was left throwing haymakers in an empty political boxing ring — and those who perpetrated this scandal on the nation are left to carry on making money on books, speeches, TV commentary and lectures about political or electoral ethics. The media, meanwhile, is offering little more than a shoulder-shrug and more spin.

If anyone needs any reminder, Turley is not on the right and does not like Trump. But he’s usually fair in what he writes.

Andrew C. McCarthy is on the right but can’t stand Trump. When Russiagate began, he thought that people in the FBI and DOJ were going to be straight-shooters. But several years ago the scales dropped from his eyes, at least regarding Russiagate. Now he writes:

Among the most troubling conclusions in special counsel John Durham’s Russiagate report is that the FBI — even as it relied on Clinton-campaign-funded opposition research against Donald Trump that it failed to verify — ignored strongly supported intelligence that Hillary Clinton was intentionally smearing Trump as a Putin puppet.

To my mind, Durham is being too kind.

Perusing the report, I find it impossible to draw any other conclusion than that the FBI, and the Obama administration more broadly, did not ignore the intelligence about Clinton’s strategy but rather that the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of the United States government knowingly abetted Clinton’s implementation of the strategy….

Clearly, there was a Clinton campaign strategy to frame Trump. Yet the most sensible interpretation of the evidence Durham has amassed is not that the FBI, in evaluating its collusion evidence, failed to weigh intercepted Russian intelligence about that strategy. It is that the FBI was well aware of Clinton’s strategy, fully expected Clinton to be the next president, and helped implement the strategy, regardless of what Russian spies may or may not have thought about it…

The FBI knowingly treated Clinton with kid gloves. FBI lawyer Lisa Page warned the bureau’s senior intelligence investigator, Peter Strzok, to tread lightly in interviewing Clinton about the email scandal — fearful that, upon winning the election, Clinton would otherwise be vengeful against the FBI…

Durham documents that President Obama, Vice President Biden, top intelligence officials, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI director Comey were fully briefed by CIA director John Brennan on Russia’s assessment of Clinton’s plan to frame Trump.

McCarthy’s take on the FBI’s motive is interesting. Perhaps it’s even true. The idea is that the FBI wanted to curry favor with the next president, who would of course be Hillary Clinton.

But I don’t think that’s it, or at best it’s only a small part of it. For example, if they had thought Trump was going to be elected, would they have supported him and gone against her? I very strongly doubt it. I think their hatred of Trump and support of Clinton was motivated by two things. The first was their ideological kinship with Clinton. The second was Trump’s “drain the swamp” threat. They are part of the swamp, and he represented a direct threat to their power. And power is the name of the game.

Rudy Giuliani sued for sexual harassment and nonpayment of wages

The New Neo Posted on by

I get tired of writing “no surprise here” – but no surprise here, especially after the Jean Carroll win against Trump:

Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City and attorney for former President Donald Trump, is being sued in a lawsuit seeking $10 million in damages by a former employee accusing him of “sexual assault and harassment, wage theft, and other misconduct.”

The 70-page complaint was filed in a New York Court on Monday by Noelle Dunphy, who was hired by Giuliani in January 2019 to work on the business development side for his firm. The complaint features sensitive allegations of sexual assault.

“He made clear that satisfying his sexual demands —which came virtually anytime, anywhere— was an absolute requirement of her employment and of his legal representation,” the complaint reads. It also says the he demanded “that she work naked, in a bikini, or in short shorts with an American flag on them that he bought for her.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Giuliani said he “unequivocally denies the allegations raised by Ms. Dunphy.”

There are many more salacious details in that link, including alcoholism and the fact that she recorded him making racist and other damaging comments, and that he said he could sell Trump pardons. If all this is true – which is certainly possible – Giuliani was, among other things, stupid to allow himself to be so vulnerable to this sort of lawsuit. He apparently was going through a divorce at the time; not that that’s an excuse.

But is it true? And what sort of evidence will she offer? Not that a New York jury will care, but I certainly care about the quality of the evidence.

And if her allegations are true, was she hired knowing that sex was part of the deal? Would that matter? She says he owes her two million dollars pay for two years of this – is that an enforceable contract, if she’s telling the truth? Of course, she’s also asking for more money in damages.

And if he badmouths her, I predict she will add on defamation charges a la Carroll.

Here we also learn the following:

“Mayor Rudy Giuliani unequivocally denies the allegations raised by Ms. Dunphy and every news outlet covering this story must include the fact that an ex-partner accused her of being, ‘an escort that fleeces wealthy men,’” Giuliani spokesman Ted Goodman said in a statement to Rolling Stone.

Giuliani’s spokesman is referencing a previous domestic abuse case involving Dunphy. In a 2015 lawsuit, she accused a partner of raping her and violently abusing her. That lawsuit ended with a judge ordering Dunphy’s partner to pay her $10,000.

I expect more lawsuits of this type (against people on the right, that is) in New York and other blue venues.

The Durham Report: in the eye of the beholder

The New Neo Posted on by

People on the right who have been following Russiagate since the start have long been aware of most of the allegations in the Durham Report. People on the left either don’t care about them, don’t believe them, or applaud them because they think it’s just fine to cut down every law in the land to get after the devil Republicans and especially the devil Trump.

And that’s the biggest problem of all. If most of the people in this country were united in support of the basic principle that the actions of government agencies such as the FBI and DOJ, as described in the Report, were and are unconscionable, then something could be done about it. Or, they might not have occurred in the first place, because the perpetrators would know there would be consequences if their activities were discovered.

But for quite some time they’e known that, as long as they’re trying to destroy Republicans, they’ll be safe from punishment and probably will even be rewarded. And the MSM that cloaked itself in righteous nobility for its role in bringing down the Republican Richard Nixon because of Watergate will cooperate in the protection and exoneration of the guilty ones now, because they are on the same side as the MSM.

Plus, when government lawyers and operatives do this sort of thing, they are careful to make it very hard to prove an actual crime with intent. That was part of what Durham was up against. What about impeachment? But many are not in office anymore, and at any rate there would never be the votes for Senate conviction. Obstructing an election? Perhaps. But who would prosecute them – Merrick Garland?

The coverage of the Durham Report is quite comprehensive on the right. On the left, it’s minimized, ignored, or subject to goalpost-moving, as I wrote yesterday. Here are some of the articles on the right; there are plenty more: this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.

Justice cannot be served unless there are enough people who demand it. There can’t be enough people demanding it if the press continually lies or hides the truth, the education system doesn’t teach people the importance of following the law no matter what your political persuasion, and the left engages in an ends-justifies-means quest for permanent power.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s an example of leftist denial in response to the story.]

The Durham report is out

The New Neo Posted on by

And here it is.

Now, you may be forgiven for ironically asking, “Durham who?” Not that you’ve forgotten him, but that you’ve lost any sense that anything in this report will matter in any real sense in terms of consequences. And if you feel that way, I have to say I share that very same judgment about the effect this will have.

However, here’s Steven Hayward writing about it:

…[E]ven the mainstream media can’t conceal or disguise the blows Durham delivers at the FBI…

It will take a while to get through the 306-page report, but in the meantime, here are a few of the early headlines:

CNN:

Special counsel John Durham concludes FBI never should have launched full Trump-Russia probe…

The Washington Post:

Durham report sharply criticizes FBI’s 2016 probe of Trump campaign…

The New York Times:

In Final Report, Trump-Era Special Counsel Denounces Russia Investigation.

Hayward provides quotes from each article. Here’s one from the Times which illustrates the way the MSM has decided to handle the report so that no Democrat pays a particle of attention to it:

Mr. Durham’s 306-page report appeared to show little substantial new information about the F.B.I.’s handling of the Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, and it failed to produce the kinds of blockbuster revelations impugning the bureau that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies had once suggested that Mr. Durham would find.

Why would we need something new? There’s enough old stuff to fully implicate the FBI in nefarious activity. Plus, what’s the definition of “blockbuster” according to the Times? Are there any allegations about wrongdoing by the FBI against Trump that they’d consider worthy of censure or outrage or prosecution? Absolutely not.

Jonathan Turley on the MSM, American’s state media

The New Neo Posted on by

Turley observes:

This week, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) tried to do the impossible. After he and his colleagues presented a labyrinth of LLC shell companies and accounts used to funnel as much as $10 million to Biden family members, Donalds tried to induce the press to show some interest in the massive corruption scandal. “For those in the press, this easy pickings & Pulitzer-level stuff right here,” he pleaded.

The response was virtually immediate. Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving funds from corrupt figures in Romania, China and other countries, The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined “Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.”

The NY Times did the same thing, as Turley points out.

There is no end to the creativity of the MSM. They can do this in their sleep at this point, they are so practiced at it.

More:

The brilliance of the Biden team was that it invested the media in this scandal at the outset by burying the laptop story as “Russian disinformation” before the election. That was, of course, false, but it took two years for most major media outlets to admit that the laptop was authentic.

But the media then ignored what was on that “authentic laptop.” Hundreds of emails detailed potentially criminal conduct and raw influence peddling in foreign countries.

When media outlets such as the New York Post confirmed the emails, the media then insisted that there was no corroboration of the influence peddling payments and no clear proof of criminal conduct. It entirely ignored the obvious corruption itself.

Now that the House has released corroboration in actual money transfers linking many in the Biden family, the media is insisting that this is no scandal because there is no direct proof of payments to Joe Biden.

Let’s continue to move those goalposts!

The MSM is counting on the ignorance and stupidity of the American public. As Turley points out:

The whole purpose of influence peddling is to use family members as shields for corrupt officials. Instead of making a direct payment to a politician, which could be seen as a bribe, you can give millions to his or her spouse or children.

Moreover, these emails include references to Joe Biden getting a 10 percent cut of one Chinese deal. It also shows Biden associates warning not to use Joe Biden’s name but to employ code names like “the Big Guy.” At the same time, the president and the first lady are referenced as benefiting from offices and receiving payments from Hunter.

Turley gets to the heart of his message here:

The coverage this week has all the markings of a state media. The consistent spin. The almost universal lack of details. The absurd distinctions.

It is the blindside of our First Amendment, which addresses the classic use of state authority to coerce and control media. It does not address a circumstance in which most of the media will maintain an official line by consent rather than coercion.

I have one disagreement with Turley, which is that the MSM is not a state media, it’s a party media. When a Democrat is in office, the MSM blocks anything bad about that person and the Democratic Party, and tries to turn it around to make Republicans look bad. But when a Republican is in office, it is the opposite. So the MSM swings back and forth between supporting the administration and working to undermine it, depending on which party is in power.

In the USSR, the newspapers were state media because only one party, the Communist Party, was allowed to be in power. In the US, there is still ostensibly the possibility of the right gaining power, so we have this back-and-forth by the media depending on who is in power. Make no mistake about it, though; the goal is to cement the power of the left so that the right can never win again. At that point, the MSM will become the voluntary state media.

Biden stirs up racial fears – again

The New Neo Posted on by

I continue to be astounded at the fact that Joe Biden is considered by much of America to be a kindly old guy, despite his history of bile (and stupidity, but that’s another issue). One of his many specialties is trying to stir up racial fear in black people, a tactic that was honed under his mentor Barack Obama.

Biden’s commencement speech this past weekend at Howard University was a prime example, and I predict he will continue to hammer home on this same theme during his entire 2024 campaign.

Recall that he kicked off his 2020 campaign by repeating the lie about what Trump said at Charlottesville about “good people on both sides,” with Biden stating that Trump was talking about white supremacists as one of those sides (rather than the group Trump was actually referring to, people who didn’t want Confederate statues torn down or removed). Biden repeated that lie yesterday in his speech at Howard, followed by his usual remarks about representing and defending the “soul of the nation.”

But on the best days, enough of us have the guts and the hearts to st- — to stand up for the best in us. To choose love over hate, unity over disunion, progress over retreat. To stand up against the poison of white supremacy, as I did in my Inaugural Address — to single it out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy…

We can finally resolve those ongoing questions about who we are as a nation. That puts strength of our diversity at the center of American life. A future that celebrates and learns from history. A future for all Americans. A future I see you leading. And I’m not, again, exaggerating. You are going to be leading it.

Again, let’s be clear: There are those who don’t see you and don’t want this future. There are those who demonize and pit people against one another. And there are those who do anything and everything, no matter how desperate or immoral, to hold onto power. And that’s never going to be an easy battle.

But I know this: The oldest, most sinister forces may believe they’ll determine America’s future, but they are wrong. (Applause.) We will determine America’s future. You will determine America’s future. And that’s not hyperbole.

Biden links Trump to white supremacy and casts it as a force that is incredibly strong, implying that the right represents that force. Biden did something similar back in 2012 with his “chains” speech, long before Trump’s campaign and presidency. To refresh your memory:

Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday told a diverse crowd here, including many African-Americans, that presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney would “put you all back in chains” by unshackling Wall Street.

“He’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules – unchain Wall Street!” Biden said. Then he added, “They’re going to put you all back in chains” with their economic and regulatory policies.

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said Biden’s comments “are not acceptable in our political discourse and demonstrate yet again that the Obama campaign will say and do anything to win this election. President Obama should tell the American people whether he agrees with Joe Biden’s comments.”

Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

The Democratic Party needs the votes of black people as a united and nearly unanimous bloc. In recent years, they have received those votes, and Biden is determined that that will continue. Representing the right as full of white supremacists who want black people out of power or even dead is central to the Democrats’ message, and Biden will continue to deliver it.

Happy Mother’s Day!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited repeat of my traditional Mother’s Day post. It was written while my mother was still alive.]

Okay, who are these three dark beauties?

A hint: one of them is one of the very first pictures you’ve ever seen on this blog of neo, sans apple. Not that you’d recognize me, of course. Even my own mother might not recognize me from this photo.

My own mother, you say? Of course she would. Ah, but she’s here too, looking a bit different than she does today—Mother’s Day—at ninety-eight years of age. Just a bit; maybe her own mother wouldn’t recognize her, either.

Her own mother? She’s the one who’s all dressed up, with longer hair than the rest of us.

The photo of my grandmother was taken in the 1880’s; the one of my mother in the teens of the twentieth century; and the one of me, of course, in the 1950s.

Heredity, ain’t it great? My mother and grandmother are both sitting for formal portraits at a professional photographer’s studio, but by the time I came around amateur snapshots were easy to take with a smallish Brownie camera. My mother is sitting on the knee of her own grandfather, my grandmother’s father, a dapper gentleman who was always very well-turned out. I’m next to my older brother, who’s reading a book to me but is cropped out of this photo. My grandmother sits alone in all her finery.

We all not only resemble each other greatly in our features and coloring, but in our solemnity. My mother’s and grandmother’s seriousness is probably explained by the strange and formal setting; mine is due to my concentration on the book, which was Peter Pan (my brother was only pretending to read it, since he couldn’t read yet, but I didn’t know that at the time). My mother’s resemblance to me is enhanced by our similar hairdos (or lack thereof), although hers was short because it hadn’t really grown in yet, and mine was short because she purposely kept it that way (easier to deal with).

My grandmother not only has the pretty ruffled dress and the long flowing locks, but if you look really closely you can see a tiny earring dangling from her earlobe. When I was young, she showed me her baby earrings; several miniature, delicate pairs. It astounded me that they’d actually pierced a baby’s ears (and that my grandmother had let the holes close up later on, and couldn’t wear pierced earrings any more), whereas I had to fight for the right to have mine done in my early teens.

I’m not sure what my mother’s wearing; some sort of baby smock. But I know what I have on: my brother’s hand-me-down pajamas, and I was none too happy about it, of that you can be sure.

So, a very happy Mother’s Day to you all! What would mothers be without babies…and mothers…and babies….and mothers….?

Songs of love lost

The New Neo Posted on by

Love is the biggest topic in pop songs. Love gained, love lost, love betrayed, love regained, love yearned for, love rejected. But did you ever notice that there’s a dearth of popular songs about the death of a loved person? Comparatively speaking, anyway (I’m leaving out opera, which I imagine deals with the subject more often.)

The closest I could come to remembering such a pop song was “Wish You Were Here” by the Bee Gees, dedicated to their brother Andy after he died. But the lyrics mention “dealing with a heart of stone” and otherwise imply the possibility of a living person still out there. Then there are the teeny-bopper songs of my youth like “Teen Angel,” that describe the death of a boyfriend or girlfriend who’s very very young, rather than the far more universal situation in which the loved person dies later in life, when fully grown or even elderly.

Because I was drawing a blank, I looked it up – and found this list. Although not all of them actually are about a loved one’s death, most are – but I’d never heard of the majority of them before.

I’m not sure what it means. Maybe it just means that most people prefer to listen to pop songs about love lost in ways other than death. Or that pop music appeals mostly to the young.

Interview with a gender clinic whistleblower

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve certainly read a lot and heard a lot about the destructive results that occur all too often with the fast-tracked medical treatment of minor children who identify as trans in clinics that practice “gender-affirming” care. Even so, this was a disturbing interview with a whistleblower who used to work in one of those clinics. The whole thing is actually worth watching, but it’s extremely long and so I’ve cued up two short excerpts that I found especially unsettling.

I am utterly against medical treatment for these children, and I believe this is a form of child abuse. I plan to write more on the subject, but this will do it for today.

What will happen to Daniel Penny? And what should have happened to Jordan Neely?

The New Neo Posted on by

In case you somehow missed the story, Penny is the man who has been arrested and charged with second degree manslaughter for subduing a raving Jordan Neely on the New York subway, and whose chokehold (that word is continually used but rarely defined and explained) appears to have caused Neely’s death. Penny is white and Neely was black. If it had been otherwise, this case would never have received the attention it’s gotten.

There is so much unknown about this case that it’s hard to speak intelligently on the subject – not that that stops most people from airing very strong opinions on the guilt and innocence of the parties. We have conflicting testimony about what Neely was saying and doing prior to Penny’s actions. We don’t know much about so-called chokeholds and what they’re intended to do versus their risks. Apparently, Neely didn’t die on the scene; he died in the hospital later on. We don’t know if Neely had ingested drugs, and if so, what type and how much.

We do know that Neely had a long rap sheet that included an unprovoked assault in which he injured an elderly woman by punching her in the face, and an attempt to kidnap a 7-year-old child, and he also had punched an elderly man. One might question why these acts – he was convicted of the punching – didn’t generate enough jail time to keep him in custody. Here’s the apparent answer:

Neely was ultimately charged with assaulting Baltazar [the elderly man] and the case was eventually adjudicated, but the result was sealed, the NY Daily News reported.

Two years after the assault on Baltazar, Neely was once again arrested for punching a 67-year-old female in the face as she exited the New York City Subway system. Neely pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 months in an alternative-to-incarceration program that he could complete in order to get the charges reduced and face no jail time.

But, at the time of his death, Neely had a warrant out for his arrest when he skipped a court date to check up on Neely’s progress in the program.

That’s quite a system.

Of course, it’s not easy to know just what to do with people such as Neely who actually do seem to be suffering from mental illness and commit criminal acts of the sort he favored. We used to lock them up in mental hospitals (or prisons) and sometimes throw away the key. Those days are long gone, and re-instituting them long-term would be quite the civil liberties problem. It would also be extremely expensive. In other words, it’s not going to be happening.

I’ve seen scads of articles saying that the mental health system failed Neely. But that ignores the fact that many many homeless people are suffering from mental health and substance abuse problems that are resistant to treatment, and that many also will not cooperate with treatment. It’s not like mental health professionals have some panacea that’s being cruelly withheld. And even cities that have thrown tons of money at the problem – such as, just to take one example, San Francisco – find it is incredibly difficult to make any more than a tiny dent in it.

Meanwhile, people who ride the subways are at the mercy of those who might be both crazy and violent and willing to perpetrate violence. Whatever Neely was doing that day, it is very clear that he fit all those categories in the past and potentially at the time Penny subdued him. Both Penny and others on that subway car probably were picking up on many cues to that effect. Must they wait till they are attacked before they do something? How much warning is enough warning? How much force is appropriate force, and how perfect does a person have to be in applying that force?

I wish I could say that the trial will be a good opportunity to explore such issues objectively and come to the right conclusion, but I very very much doubt it. The incident already been sensationalized and twisted by the usual suspects.

NOTE: This New Yorker article has a pretty good discussion of the difficulties of dealing with the chronically mental ill, such as Neely.