Good evening! Today's Evening Edition includes:

• Daily Bible Verse
• FBI releases SETH RICH documents, heavily redacted
• Pat Reeder: Oscars 2021: What The Heck Was That?!?
• "Welcome Packets" Along The Border
• Supreme Court To Take Up Major Second Amendment Case
• Last Democrats Standing
• Reader Writes...
• America The Beautiful

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee

BIBLE VERSE OF THE DAY 

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

John 1:12 KJV

FBI releases SETH RICH documents, heavily redacted

By Mike Huckabee

In the early hours of July 16, 2016, a DNC staffer named Seth Rich was shot and killed while walking home on a Washington, DC, street. His murder remains unsolved, but was reported as an attempted robbery that turned deadly. Nothing was taken from the scene.

Stories after his homicide suggesting Rich had leaked internal DNC documents to Wikileaks were condemned by his family as conspiracy theory. Threats of litigation from the family led to a media “hands-off.” The FBI denied they were investigating. The story just...went away.

I don’t know why –- or by whom –- Seth Rich was killed. It might have been a robbery; people die in armed robberies, though not typically shot twice in the back. But the question lingers as to whether or not he was involved in the transfer of DNC emails to Wikileaks.

Finally, though, the FBI has produced 68 documents (out of 576 they identified) relating to Rich’s death. In fact, we have our old friend Peter Strzok forwarding memos to Lisa Page. But most pages are so heavily redacted that it’s hard to know what they’re even talking about. We tried to make sense out of this.

Question: if redactions are supposed to be done for security reasons, why would the investigation of a local robbery/homicide be so thoroughly redacted? And why would the FBI even be involved?

Though identities of both sender and recipient are redacted, we were able to glean some information from the first memo: that Julian Assange had apparently said in an overseas interview that Rich was Wikileaks’ source for the DNC emails and that Wikileaks was offering $20,000 for information regarding Rich’s death. “...We anticipate additional press coverage on this matter,” it says.

Scroll down to read more, and you’ll see mostly empty rectangles. Try to read what interviewee Richard Gates said. Or Jason Fishbein. (In 2019, Paul Sperry wrote about the fish, big and small, caught in the FBI’s net.)

The next person isn’t identified at all. Then there’s documentation of an interview with Paul Manafort about Roger Stone that was more about whether Stone had had advance knowledge of the leaked John Podesta emails. Then there’s something about “Guccifer2” implying in an article that HE had hacked the DNC servers.

Then there’s a whole lot more heavily redacted material, followed by in interview with Jerome Corsi. Ah, finally something about Rich: “Corsi advised that he knew Seth Rich had been killed at 4:30AM on July 10, 2016. The circumstances surrounding Rich’s death were suspicious to Corsi. Specifically, he wanted to know where Rich’s laptop went. Corsi then explained there had been speculation as to whether or not Rich had actually stolen the emails from the DNC, rather than them having been hacked.”

Here’s more from the same memo: “[Redacted] also thought Rich stole the emails from the DNC and believed the British and John Brennan were behind the Fusion GPS dossier.”

Very interesting. WHO thought that? Corsi?

There’s a copy of a Michael Isikoff article from February 20, 2020, about former California Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher visiting Julian Assange at the Ecuadoran Embassy in August 2017 and telling him President Trump would pardon him if he turned over information showing the Russians were not the ones who hacked the DNC. “In a phone interview with Yahoo News,” Isikoff wrote, “Rohrabacher said his goal during the meeting was to find proof for a widely debunked conspiracy theory: that Wikileaks’ real source for the DNC emails was not Russian intelligence agents, as U.S. officials have since concluded, but former DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered on the streets of Washington in July 2016 in what police believe was a botched robbery.”

Surely Mr. Isikoff knows there’s no proof Russian intelligence hacked the DNC emails, and Julian Assange himself has flatly said the Russians didn’t do it. In fact, he said it wasn’t “state actors” at all. The thought that Seth Rich might have done an inside job at the DNC hasn’t been “debunked.” It might be true or false. And the motive for his homicide has never been determined.

The FBI papers include the memo of an interview with Rohrabacher, but don’t expect to see any details, because it’s completely redacted.

Now, this looks promising: a page from October 2018 that reads, “On 5/30/2018, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary For America (HFA) provided the FBI with digital evidence in furtherance of this investigation. Due to size limitations, original production will be maintained on a DVD in a physical 1A.” There’s also the cover letter from law firm Perkins Coie.

All right! Where’s the DVD? Do we get to know what they turned over? Was there a forensic investigation? Could an expert tell whether the files were hacked from the outside or leaked from the inside?

We don’t know.

Here’s a tidbit from an interview with Richard Gates: “Gates said there was also an inside job theory about how the emails were obtained fueled by the death of Seth Rich [Note: Seth Conrad Rich was an employee of the DNC who was fatally shot in Washington, DC, on 7/10/2016.] Gates said he was never present at any talks suggesting the campaign push the inside job theory. The Trump campaign team also thought the Democrats were pushing the Russia narrative.”

Scroll down through more blank space, and there actually is something quite interesting that the “Winston Smith” in the redaction department of the Ministry of Truth appears to have missed. It seems to be from an electronic communication, sender’s and recipient’s names redacted, and reads, “Given [redacted redacted redacted], it is conceivable that an individual or group would want to pay for his death.”

Given WHAT?

There’s also a three-page summary of the Seth Rich homicide case. “Prior to the homicide,” it says, “RICH worked for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in Washington, DC, in the outreach to college students. RICH used Information Technology in his work at DNC.”

He certainly did. Rich's job title was “voter expansion data director.”

According to the file, Rich was shot twice in the back but not yet dead when police found him. The report also gets into custody of his laptop, but much is redacted. Apparently the FBI was in possession of it.

“[Redacted] AUSA [redacted] are aware of how sensitive this matter is and how much attention the homicide of RICH received in the media. AUSA [redacted] prepared a number of memorandums to document various misinformation and conspiracies surrounding RICH’s homicide.”

("AUSA" stands for "assistant U.S. attorney.")

After that, page after page is redacted.

According to THE EPOCH TIMES, in a “premium” report, these materials were released in response to a lawsuit filed by Texan Brian Huddleston. His attorney, Ty Clevenger, zeroed in on the statement about someone possibly “wanting to pay for his [Rich’s] death,” saying, “That doesn’t sound like a random street robbery.”

He also expressed concern that it’s not known whether anything was deleted from Rich’s laptop. He’ll ask the judge to demand unredacted versions of the documents. But even with all the redactions, Clevenger said, “their whole narrative is falling apart.”

Pat Reeder: Oscars 2021: What The Heck Was That?!?

By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com)

Ordinarily, we might not even cover this because, seriously, who cares? But since it’s the #1 trending topic on Google, someone must be vaguely interested, so it falls to me to deal with it.

First of all, I am a lifelong movie buff, and having had COVID early on, Laura and I go see movies on the big screen to support our local theaters. However, since most of what’s come out lately has been garbage, we mostly see Fathom Events/TCM revivals of older films, from that bygone era before good stories, interesting characters and well-written scripts were replaced with political lectures and CGI explosions. The best movie we saw in a theater in 2020 was “The Maltese Falcon,” but it wasn’t nominated last night.

We did see “Mank” (a movie made solely for people like me, who actually know the history of the making of “Citizen Kane,” so why wasn’t it more accurate?), “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and last night’s Best Picture winner, “Nomadland” in theaters. All very well-acted, albeit depressing, “Nomadland” especially. Have the concession stand sprinkle some Prozac over your popcorn.

With so few well-known pictures nominated, I expect this to be the lowest-rated Oscars ever (at least until next year), but not simply for that reason. The Oscars used to be a celebration of great movies, featuring glamorous stars you never saw anywhere but the movies. Now, with social media, we can’t get away from these people, constantly hectoring us with their inane political opinions and showing us their naked bodies, even if nobody wants to see them. The show used to be hosted by wits like Billy Crystal, Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. Now, nobody hosts for fear that telling a joke will offend some dweeb on Twitter and end a career. With the reduced size of the venue due to COVID, the lack of a host or any humor, the scarcity of exciting movie clips and more leftist PC specifying than an episode of “The View” with guest star Don Lemon, it was as dull as an endless Employee of the Year vegan banquet for a particularly woke nonprofit.

And it threatens to get even more insufferable and pointless, thanks to the new “diversity” rules that will create a bunch of identity group boxes that films have to check for cast and crew to qualify for a nomination. To me, if someone makes one of the best films of the year, it should be nominated, whether it’s got an all-white cast and crew, or all-black or all Asian, or how many lesbian trans Tahitians worked on the catering. Picking a "Best" anything is always subjective, but now they’re adding the extra asterisk of “Best Picture Among Those Left Over After We Filtered Out All The Irrelevant Identity Politics Requirements.” Sadly, honoring a movie just for being the best movie would be rewarding merit, and meritocracy is a white supremacist construct.

Hilariously enough, even after all this diversity virtue-signaling, the top acting awards went to an older white lady (Frances McDormand on her third win) and a much older, really white dude (Sir Anthony Hopkins, his sixth nomination and second win; at 83, he’s now the oldest Best Actor winner ever.) In “The Father,” Hopkins played a man with creeping dementia, and he was at home asleep in bed when he won, so it was a lot like watching a CNN townhall with Joe Biden.

The biggest shock of the evening was the loss of Chadwick Boseman for “Ma Rainey.” It was a great performance and because of his untimely death from colon cancer, it was Hollywood’s last chance to honor the “Black Panther” star. Some people must’ve lost a lot of money in Vegas on that one.

One of the few moments of levity came from Best Supporting Actress winner, Korean actress Yuh Jung Youn, who used her time to joke about how Westerners mispronounce her name, to point out to her kids how hard their mother works, and to flirt with presenter Brad Pitt. She should give lessons to the others on how to make an entertaining acceptance speech.

It was also nice to see that the Best Documentary Award that too often goes to leftwing propaganda creators like Michael Moore went to the excellent and touching, “My Octopus Teacher.” Maybe the octopus voting bloc stuffed the ballot boxes with all eight arms. I’ll bet the octopus teacher is glad she actually showed up to work last year.

The whole thing ended abruptly when the expected honoring of Boseman (the acting awards were moved to the end for some reason) was derailed by the surprise win of Hopkins, who wasn’t even there. The home audience would have been baffled about what just happened if anyone had still been awake by that time.

The one tradition that still survives is the blatant Hollywood hypocrisy. As always, they routed the homeless from the area to bring in a massive armed police presence and a security wall to protect the stars as they lectured us about how bad cops, guns and security walls are. They all wore their COVID masks outside, but took them off inside because if your face is on camera, the virus can’t infect you. And in between lectures about not objectifying women, we got to see so many plunging necklines that I thought at times it was the Golden Globes Awards.

Well, that’s enough on this. If you actually want to know more, here’s the Fox New write-up…

And the amusing live blog from Redstate.com (They say they watched it so you don’t have to. Wonder where they came up with that line?...

But trust me, you’d be a lot better off watching “The Maltese Falcon.”

PS – Least surprising news of the day.

"Welcome Packets" Along The Border

By Mike Huckabee

Despite being put “in charge” of cleaning up President Biden’s giant mess at the border, Vice President Kamala Harris has yet to come near the border (when she visited New Hampshire on Friday, Republicans greeted her with signs reading, “Wrong border!”) But you can’t say she doesn’t at least have a presence at the border.

The New York Post reported Saturday that among the items in “welcome packets” given to unaccompanied minors (and I guess they’re now admitting they’re openly welcoming them) is a children’s book written by Harris called “Superheroes Are Everywhere.” It’s written in English, so it’s not certain if any of the kids can even read it.

It’s also not certain how the books got into the welcome packets. A White House official told Fox News that Harris wasn’t aware it was being distributed to illegal migrant children. The Washington Examiner said it was “part of a citywide donation effort to collect books and toys for the children.” So maybe a lot of them were remaindered.

The book is filled with stories from Harris' own life, including a timeline of her career achievements and colorful drawings of her at various ages, including a cartoon rendition of her on the cover. Some might find this narcissistic, but on the plus side, it might be as close as all those kids crammed into the detention centers will ever get to actually seeing Kamala Harris.

If you saw the fantastic but heart-wrenching movie “Unplanned,” then you know Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood clinic director who became a pro-life activist after seeing the horrific reality of abortion firsthand. She’s written an intriguing op-ed, offering her theory for why Harris is avoiding the border, and it’s directly related to her radical pro-abortion activism.

Two Reasons To Feel Sympathy For What Today's Police Officers Have To Deal With

By Mike Huckabee

The push is on to do away with policing, or to at least make the job of police officers far more dangerous. But the “progressives” pushing it from safely inside their gated communities and secure apartment buildings are having a hard time coming up with something to replace it other than criminal anarchy.

This must-read article rounds up some of the more hilarious-if-they-weren’t-actually-serious suggestions on how cops should handle violent suspects who resist arrest without shooting them or using physical force. Just to give you a preview of the fantasy world in which they live, two of the suggestions are to yell, “Drop the weapon!” or to poke at them with long sticks. Maybe the cops should try threatening them with a banana, like in the famous Monty Python sketch.

If that doesn’t make you feel sympathy for what today’s police officers have to deal with, imagine being the Michigan state troopers who rushed to the scene of a vehicle rolled over in a ditch, reportedly due to drunk driving. They were allegedly treated to a threatening diatribe from the driver, Democratic State Rep. Jewell Jones (his vanity plate read, “ELECTED”), profanely and drunkenly threatening that he would take their badge numbers and call Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on them.

Jones reportedly said, “It’s not going to be good for you, I run y’all budget, bro.” The police report said he tested at twice the legal limit and had a loaded Glock in the vehicle. Could you handle that with some soothing words or a long stick? As it happened, the cops had to subdue Joes by forcing him to the ground, using a stun gun on him twice and pepper-spraying him before they could finally wrangle him into custody.

Jones faces up to two years if convicted of the charges against him, but in the most telling sentence of this story, it’s noted that “Michigan House leaders have not reached any decisions about whether Jones will face discipline.” Ask your boss if you would face discipline if you did that. Better yet, don’t. If you’re not a Democrat politician, even a suggestion that you might behave like that could harm your career.

Supreme Court To Take Up Major Second Amendment Case

By Mike Huckabee

The Supreme Court announced that in the next session, it will take up the first major Second Amendment rights case in over a decade.

It involves a challenge to a New York law restricting people from carrying concealed handguns in public for self-defense. The state rejected the plaintiffs’ applications for a license to carry, claiming they hadn’t demonstrated a “special need” to have a gun for self-defense that would distinguish them from the general public. The argument is that the Second Amendment applies to the entire general public, and it shouldn’t be necessary to demonstrate a “special need” to exercise your Constitutional rights.

This will bear close watching, with conservatives hoping the court will finally clarify the limits on state and local gun laws, and liberals hoping they’ll roll back the limits.

Last Democrats Standing

By Mike Huckabee

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the Democrat “swing” vote in the Senate, repeated on Sunday that he will not vote to end the filibuster. He also wants the non-infrastructure spending taken out of Biden’s “infrastructure” bill, and for Democrats and Republicans to work out a genuinely bipartisan bill.

As Nick Arama at Redstate.com points out, the fury at Manchin from fellow Democrats shows that he, and possibly Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, are just about the last Democrats standing who are trying to bring their Party to its senses instead of blowing up the system to impose a radical agenda on the entire country.

A Reader Writes Back... 

Your title "The Left is wildly misinformed" should be "The Left is intentionally misinformed." They are misinformed because of the propaganda machine, formerly known as the "free press," is trying to get all Americans to accept their Marxist plans for our country. Fortunately, only the Leftists believe their propaganda. The rest of us do not. Thank you for keeping us informed about the truth of what is happening in our country.

Inspirational Americans

America's history is full of inspirational people.  Our "Inspirational Americans" series will profile 32 of them.  Today's inspirational American is George S. Patton.

"Urge all of your men to pray, not alone in church, but everywhere. Pray when driving. Pray when fighting. Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night and pray by day. Pray for the cessation of immoderate rains, for good weather for Battle.Pray for the defeat of our wicked enemy whose banner is injustice and whose good is oppression. Pray for victory. Pray for our Army, and Pray for Peace. We must march together, all out for God."

- George Patton

To learn more about George Patton, go here>>>