DeSantis’ plan for the FBI and the DOJ

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: “Kate.”]

A man with a plan:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been working for months on plans to tear down and rebuild both the Department of Justice and the FBI, consulting with experts and members of Congress to develop a “Day One” strategy to end what conservatives see as the weaponization of the justice system.

The governor has privately told advisors that he will hire and fire plenty of federal personnel, reorganize entire agencies, and execute a “disciplined” and “relentless” strategy to restore the Justice Department to a mission more in line with what the “Founding Fathers envisioned.”

But his ambitions go beyond bureaucratic restructuring. He wants to physically remove large swathes of the DOJ from the District of Columbia, including FBI headquarters, RealClearPolitics is first to report.

“We’re not going to let all this power accumulate in Washington, we’re going to break up these agencies,” DeSantis said during a private strategy session over the weekend, excerpts of which were obtained exclusively by RCP. He vowed in that call to order “some of the problematic components of the DOJ” be uprooted, reorganized, and then promptly “shipped to other parts of the country.”

To me, this highlights the difference between Trump and DeSantis, which is that DeSantis – whom some see as boring – is more of a policy nerd and is interested in the nuts and bolts of government. He proved that in Florida, where he was instrumental in spearheading a program to reform (see also this) the all-important voting system, despite cries of “racism” and “voter suppression.”

Here’s more about DeSantis’ plans for reforming the bureaucracy (please read the whole thing):

“We’ve seen throughout this country that the DOJ and the FBI are controlled by one faction of our society,” DeSantis said on the call, pointing to how those agencies were “going after pro-life activists,” wrongfully investigating parents at school board meetings “who are concerned about things like critical race theory, and forcing kids to wear masks,” and “colluding with tech companies to censor information such as what they did with the 2020 election.”

DeSantis has assembled a brain trust of academics, members of Congress, and former administration officials to draw up step-by-step blueprints for tearing the DOJ and FBI down to the studs for a rebuild…

A key feature of the emerging plan: Move fast. Don’t wait on Congress…

While the current Republican frontrunner was famous for telling celebrities, “You’re Fired” on television, the DeSantis campaign insists the governor would follow through in the Oval Office. DeSantis promised that as president, there’d be a “new sheriff in town,” one who doesn’t mind sending federal employees into early retirement…

Trump said in Iowa earlier this month that he could tame the bureaucrats who tormented his tenure “in six months.” DeSantis countered in New Hampshire that anyone making that kind of claim should be asked, “Why didn’t you do that when you had four years to try?”

I doubt this will convince many (or any) of the EverTrump group to support DeSantis. I’d be happy to be wrong about that, but time and again I have seen them counter positive news about DeSantis with suspicion for his every utterance. I think that’s a big big big mistake on their part.

And he has already shown he means what he says:

This is something of a theme for DeSantis. He fired a state attorney for failing to enforce Florida election law last year. He has already told voters he would fire Wray, the FBI director appointed by Trump and retained by Biden. He identified a new target Saturday: any DOJ employee working on a grand jury investigation caught talking to the press to undermine political opponents.

“If they’re leaking,” DeSantis said with a broad directive that could very well foreshadow his tenure if elected, “we’re going to fire people.”

Tucker: for Biden is an honorable man – so are they all, all honorable men

The New Neo Posted on by

This sort of thing is Tucker Carlson’s specialty and he’s very good at it:

Did that producer at Fox know who put the “wannabe dictator” chyron up want to quit Fox anyway, and decided he’d go out with a bang and not a whimper? He must have known he’d be out on his ear in a nanosecond as a result of that caper, but it must have felt so good to do it.

The truth hit its mark; the left is (or pretends to be) very upset at the chyron, and the WaPo is shocked, shocked!

NOTE: The title of this post is a reference to this famous speech.

California bill will add “gender affirmation” to list of elements that will determine child custody in courts

The New Neo Posted on by

A dangerous development, and perhaps something that will be spreading:

Several groups and opponents to AB 957 and other bills making it through the California Legislature stood on the Capitol grounds to voice their opposition. AB 957, in particular, concerns adding language to judicial criteria that decide custodial rights in family court.

Essentially, parents affirming their child’s chosen gender would be an extra piece of information used in making a decision about parental custody. Some other criteria involve the amount of contact a child has with a parent, the nature of the contact, and the health, welfare and safety of the child.

Opponents believe this can be weaponized, even going as far as to say that if they don’t affirm their child’s gender, they will be charged with child abuse.

“It’s already happening,” Friday explained. “It happened to me when I refused to call my daughter by a male name and use male pronouns. CPS showed up at my doorstep. The police followed.”

Parents in opposition spoke about their personal experiences in family court. Some believed that gender identity had been used against them by vindictive ex-spouses during custody battles. A big concern was that this extra line item would supersede all others in court.

“Affirming” a child’s “chosen gender” has become a sacred calling, but it’s another case of the left’s Orwellian use of language. “Affirming” means to not question the wishes of one’s own child. This is a serious invasion of parental rights, something that only a decade or so ago would have been unthinkable. Now it’s a mark of righteousness, and to not “affirm” is a mark of child abuse. But actually, it’s very often the other way around.

And “chosen gender” is another catch-phrase that when examined is merely a leftist trope. Those days, “gender” is the idea that one has a certain inner being that is often different from one’s outer being, one’s sex. And to “affirm” is to go along with the pretense that this is so. If parents don’t choose to do that, it should be their prerogative.

“Gender affirmation therapy” is another pernicious development, because it is not therapy. A mental health therapist is not there to “affirm” the choices of any client, especially a child, but to explore and ask penetrating questions and hopefully get to the heart of what’s going on. Many of these children have one or more psychological co-morbidities such being “on the spectrum,” borderline personality disorder, or sexual trauma. Gender affirmation therapy does not allow a therapist to question a client or patient’s decisions, only to affirm.

California is so predominantly Democrat/leftist that I think this bill is likely to pass. And the courts are so leftist there as well that I assume they will uphold it.

It’s now reported that patient zero for COVIID just happened to have been a scientist at the Wuhan gain-of-function lab

The New Neo Posted on by

Say “government sources”:

Sources within the US government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. All were members of the Wuhan lab suspected to have leaked the pandemic virus.

As such, not only do we know there were WIV scientists who had developed COVID-19-like illnesses in November 2019, but also that they were working with the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2, and inserting gain-of-function features unique to it.

When a source was asked how certain they were that these were the identities of the three WIV scientists who developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, we were told, “100%”…

On Saturday, The Times of London quoted an anonymous U.S. State Department investigator saying, “It has become increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation, promulgation, and cover-up of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

There seems to be little question that the virus originated in the lab, so it makes perfect sense that the first victims would have been scientists there. It always was plausible, because of the proximity of the lab to the location of the initial Wuhan outbreak. It would have been way too coincidental if the lab had not been involved.

And yet there was an incessant campaign by government, the press, and on social media to block all talk of this, and to label those who tried to even discuss that idea as a possibility as conspiracy theorists and anti-science racists.

The fallout from this catastrophe has been immense, and the destructive power of the coverup has been immense also.

Tucker Carlson on Trump and the Iraq War

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “huxley” observes:

Tucker Carlson [said]:
___________________________________

It’s been inevitable since February 16 2016. that’s the day Donald Trump made a blood enemy of the largest and most powerful organization in human history which would be the federal government.

…we can point to the precise moment that permanent Washington decided to send Donald Trump to prison. here it is it’s from the Republican candidates debate in Greenville South Carolina:

“we should have never been in Iraq; we have destabilized the Middle East. They lied, okay. They said there were weapons of mass destruction there were none and they knew there were none there were no weapons of mass destruction.”
___________________________________

[huxley adds] I agree with Tucker much of the time. But this sounds like a terrible oversimplification.

Within two years of the Iraq War’s beginning Democrats were thoroughly opposed to the Iraq War and Obama rode that horse all the way to the White House. The Deep State was more than OK with Obama.

The federal government’s problem with Trump was his populist threat to their power.

I’m in complete agreement with huxley here.

But I want to add that, in my opinion, although Tucker is good on some things he is bad on others. This time what he says is not only a “terrible oversimplification,” it’s also factually incorrect or at least very incomplete because actually Trump had been speaking out consistently against the war in Iraq long before he was running for president and long before that debate.

I know this because I wrote about it in October of 2015 for the Weekly Standard, in an article which now can be found at this link in the Washington Examiner. My piece was about Trump’s animus towards George W. Bush, whom he started excoriating for the Iraq War back in 2007 and 2008. Here’s a quote [emphasis added]:

But the sharpest of Trump’s attacks on George W. had occurred much earlier, in a series of interviews in 2007 and 2008, when neither Trump nor Jeb Bush were candidates. For example, in a 2008 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Trump advocated Bush’s impeachment, while adding how much he likes Nancy Pelosi:

“TRUMP:…It was almost — it just seemed like [Pelosi] was going to really look to impeach Bush and get him out of office, which, personally, I think would have been a wonderful thing. BLITZER: Impeaching him? TRUMP: Absolutely, for the war, for the war.”

In the same interview, Trump repeated the familiar “Bush lied about WMDs” mantra, and when Blitzer questioned whether he actually believed that, Trump repeated it:

“TRUMP:…Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true. BLITZER: Their argument is, they weren’t lying, that that was the intelligence that he was presented, and it was not as if he was just lying about it. TRUMP: I don’t believe that. BLITZER: You believe that it was a deliberate lie? TRUMP: I don’t believe it…The fact is that he lied.”

Later in the interview, Trump said that Bush “is probably the worst president in the history of the United States.” It wasn’t the first time Trump had evaluated Bush that way, either; in 2007 he had made the same charge when he agreed that Bush was the worst president in U.S. history.

But perhaps the most negative ad hominem attack Trump had ever launched against George W. Bush was in a 2008 interview in which he called Bush “evil.” In the same interview, he also criticized Bush for not talking to Iran, and praised Obama in contrast, saying that he believes Obama will lead through consensus as president, and “not be a bull run, like Bush—he just did whatever the hell he wanted.”

So the Feburary 16, 2016 debate that Tucker seems to think was some turning point or watershed moment was no such thing.

The FBI has no idea whether the Biden audio recordings about bribes exist or not

The New Neo Posted on by

The burning curiosity of the FBI regarding allegations about the Bidens knows no bounds.

From Chuck Grassley:

With respect to the 1023 shown to that House Committee [about the informant’s bribery allegations regarding Hunter and Joe Biden], from what I’ve been told by folks who’ve reviewed it, it’s filled with redactions. So, Director Wray placed redactions on a document that’s already unclassified.

More than that, the FBI made Congress review a redacted unclassified document in a classified facility. That goes to show you the disrespect the FBI has for Congress….[W]e’re kind of in a strange situation here. A classified document can be leaked to the New York Times, but an unclassified document can’t be made public to 300 million Americans…

The 1023 produced to that House Committee redacted reference that the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them. Seventeen total recordings…

So, as I’ve repeatedly asked since going public with the existence of the 1023, what, if anything, has the Justice Department and FBI done to investigate?

The Justice Department and FBI must show their work. They no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt. It’s clear that the Justice Department and FBI will use every resource to investigate candidate Trump, President Trump and former President Trump…

Special Counsel Jack Smith has used a recording against former President Trump. Well, what’s U.S. Attorney Weiss doing with respect to these alleged Joe and Hunter Biden recordings that are apparently relevant to a high-stakes bribery scheme?

In connection with this issue, we have this testimony:

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate was questioned before the Senate Judiciary Committee on a variety of subjects on Tuesday including the extension of Section 702 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Biden bribery form…

what Abbate revealed when being questioned by Blackburn should concern us all, because, in my opinion, it says everything about the bias.

Abbate admitted they redacted the information, effectively hiding it from the Committee. He claimed that the information about the recordings was “redacted to protect the source.” It just also conveniently protected the Bidens, so no one is buying that it’s all about the source.

But then he said, “I have no idea if there are voice recordings or not.”

Wait a second. Aren’t you the FBI? How long have you had this form and this information from a highly reliable confidential human source? Years? And you never tried to figure out if these recordings existed? Isn’t that supposed to be your job?

The same with the Hunter laptop. What they don’t investigate can’t hurt anyone named Biden, right?

Clinton’s drawer and Trump’s boxes

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Bauxite” writes:

On page 5 [of the Presidential Records Act] – “NARA takes legal custody of records at the end of the President’s term.” The documents can be stored in a presidential library, eventually, but the presidential library has to be “maintained by NARA.”

The exception is “personal records.” That’s the Bill Clinton sock drawer case. The court in the Clinton case held that the interview tapes were “personal records” not “presidential records.” Therefore, Clinton’s sock drawer tapes were held to be his personal property that was not subject to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Clinton case really doesn’t help Trump.

Law’s a funny thing, though. It’s not that simple.

Obviously, cases don’t need to have the exact same fact situation in order to be relevant or even controlling. Otherwise, Trump would have had to have interview tapes in his sock drawer in order to be exactly parallel to the Bill Clinton ruling. I don’t think Bauxite was asserting that the situation had to exactly match, but I do think he was implying that somehow, because certain facts were different, the same reasoning doesn’t apply.

But in order to know that, one would need to know what principle or principles were operating in each case, and why. And that – as you probably know – seems to often depend on the political outlook and legal theory of the person doing the deciding – that is, the judge or justice. It is almost always possible to argue any position. That’s what lawyers do, and a good lawyer can do it quite convincingly.

So you can find, if you do a Google search, plenty of people – all of them Democrats, ordinarily, or Trump haters – who will agree with Bauxite’s point of view and will argue it in greater detail. And you can find the opposite arguments from more conservative sources. One of them can be found here. It’s by Judicial Watch attorney Michael Bekesha:

Although the indictment against Donald Trump doesn’t cite the Presidential Records Act, the charges are predicated on the law. The indictment came about only because the government thought Mr. Trump took records that didn’t belong to him, and the government raided his house to find any such records.

This should never have happened. The Presidential Records Act allows the president to decide what records to return and what records to keep at the end of his presidency. And the National Archives and Records Administration can’t do anything about it. I know because I’m the lawyer who lost the “Clinton sock drawer” case.

I lost because Judge Jackson concluded the government’s hands were tied. Mr. Clinton took the tapes, and no one could do anything about it.

The same is true with Mr. Trump. Although he didn’t keep records in his sock drawer, he gathered newspapers, press clippings, letters, notes, cards, photographs, documents and other materials in cardboard boxes. Then Mr. Trump, like Mr. Clinton, took those boxes with him when he left office. As of noon on Jan. 20, 2021, whatever remained at the White House was presidential records. Whatever was taken by Mr. Trump wasn’t. That was the position of the Justice Department in 2010 and the ruling by Judge Jackson in 2012.

A decade later, the government should never have gone searching for potential presidential records. Nor should it have forcibly taken records from Mr. Trump. The government should lose U.S. v. Trump. If the courts decide otherwise, I want those Clinton tapes.

More here, if you can get behind the paywall.

Another way of looking at it is that the Presidential Records Act is not a criminal statute and has no criminal penalties connected with it. That’s why Trump wasn’t charged under it. No former president has ever been charged with crimes based on violations of this act, although many presidents have been known to violate it. This convention was (of course!) ended for President Trump, labeled by the left as uniquely nefarious.

Law is a funny thing, and I don’t mean funny ha-ha (although sometimes it is that as well). Its fair application rests on the good faith and objectivity of those implementing it. It was always somewhat flawed in application and probably always will be due to human nature and the impossibility of drafting “perfect” laws. But these days I see it as a great deal more flawed and even more partisan than it was back when I was in law school.

Open thread 6/14/23

The New Neo Posted on by

This is turn-of-the-century or even earlier. She’s got a corset on, and her pointe shoes are nearly unblocked. But she’s got an impressive jump with clean beats. The film part starts around 1:08:

Trump’s arraignment is an opportunity for showmanship on his part

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump has always been a fabulous showman. And so far his trial is giving him the opportunity for a lot of publicity.

He stopped at a famous Cuban restaurant in Miami right after his arraignment, saying “Food for everyone!”

Trump has long been popular with Americans who hail from Cuba or who are descended from Cuban refugees, and his welcome was warm.

As the trial goes on, I think Trump’s popularity will probably increase among Republican primary voters. As I wrote yesterday, I believe that’s one of the goals of those who engineered the trial – to encourage the nomination of Trump but hurt him with moderate voters in the general. However, depending on what facts emerge during the trial and the coverage of the proceedings, there is a possibility that more of those moderate “swing” voters will see this as an unfair and politically motivated persecution. I’m not saying that will happen, but it certainly could.

Remember that Netanyahu’s enemies charged him with bogus criminal offenses, but he was elected anyway. And yet his trial is still going on. That article I just linked was published today, and this is its astonishing last paragraph:

Netanyahu’s trial began three years ago, and according to the current schedule is slated to last for another five years, although various reports have said that the extensive witness list could be trimmed, potentially shortening the trial by a couple of years.

Excuse me but, WTF?

And we think the wheels of justice grind slow here! That Israeli trial schedule is practically a geologic time frame. Netanyahu is 73, and he isn’t getting any younger. And by the way, tomorrow is Trump’s 77th birthday. But they’re both spring chickens compared to you-know-who.