Mike Huckabee

When Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell finally succeeded in obtaining the “Brady” (exculpatory) material she’d been requesting from the FBI for many months, the question arose: Where was FBI Director Christopher Wray while these documents were being withheld from Flynn’s defense?

Wray had to know this was going on. If we “outsiders” knew, he knew. It’s become obvious that if Trump wanted a real reformer to take the helm at the FBI, he didn’t have one in Wray. How disappointed the President must be. But, as I reported last week, Wray has a history at the FBI that raises both eyebrows –- this isn’t the first time he’s “supervised” FBI personnel, the same group of low-lifes abusing their power. He didn’t do anything about it then, either.

As Trey Gowdy said on Monday to Sean Hannity, “The FBI is not in charge of hiring and firing directors of national intelligence [Flynn’s former job]. The FBI is not in charge –- it’s not their job to see what they can get away with [a reference to James Comey]...You’re supposed to investigate crime, not create crime.”

It was only after Attorney General Bill Barr appointed U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen to review Flynn’s case that those exculpatory documents were finally released to Flynn’s defense. Wray apparently had nothing to do with getting this done, and he’s been there two years. It should have happened when Powell first requested the material, period.

In his latest column, John Solomon reminds us of the time Chris Wray issued a statement rebuking California Rep. Devin Nunes, then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, for his memo concluding that Wray’s predecessor, James Comey, abused the FISA process to spy on Trump’s campaign. “We have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” Wray said. Two years later, Nunes and his memo were vindicated; what on earth was Wray talking about?

"The problems exposed during the Russia case started with the Comey regime, but have stretched into Wray’s watch,” Solomon observes. FBI officials have declined comment on the Flynn materials but tell Solomon that they’ve referred all FBI employees involved in the “Russia” FISAs for disciplinary action (okay, sure), and that they’ve implemented more than 40 reforms to the FISA process. No word on whether Wray had much to do with that.

Republican legislators have grave reservations about Wray’s ability to reform the FBI. Here’s another excellent write-up by Elizabeth Vaughn at RedState; it includes key quotes from Solomon’s piece and also observes that if Wray remains, the real reformers such as Barr will have to “simply work around him, as they did last week.” Barr has been granted full access to all documents by Trump and can just take what he needs, she says, with Wray being “little more than a placeholder.” (Better than an Eric Holder, I suppose, but Wray needs to go.)

Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mike Johnson of Louisiana sent a letter on Monday to Wray demanding all documents relating to the FBI’s operation against Flynn, and also interviews with Bill Priestap (Peter Strzok’s boss, and the author of those handwritten notes questioning the motive behind the Flynn “ambush” interview) and Joe Pientka (the other Flynn questioner, besides Strzok).

"The American people continue to learn troubling details about the politicization and misconduct at the highest levels of the FBI during the Obama-Biden Administration,” they wrote. “Even more concerning, we continue to learn these new details from litigation and investigations –- NOT FROM YOU. [Emphasis mine; you have to love that they said this.] It is well past time that you show the leadership necessary to bring the FBI past the abuses of the Obama-Biden era.”

"Produce all documents and communications between or among the FBI and other executive branch agencies, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT [again, emphasis mine], for the period December 1, 2016, to January 20, 2017 [Obama’s last day in office], referring or relating to LTG Michael Flynn’s December 30, 2016, conversation with Sergey Kislyak...explain when you personally learned of the FBI’s misconduct with respect to FTG Flynn.”

I’ve linked to the letter, which is quite masterful. The first part lays out all the ways in which the FBI mis-conducted itself, and it’s stunning to see line after line of the malfeasance that by now we know took place. It presents the whole timeline, starting with Flynn’s phone call to Kislyak on December 30, 2016; to the field office’s closing of the Flynn “Russia” case on January 4, 2017, after finding NOTHING and Strzok’s intervention to keep it open; to the big Oval Office meeting on January 5; and on and on with everything the FBI did to coerce Flynn’s guilty plea, finally obtained on December 1, 2017.

The second part is a list of demands, to be provided “as soon as possible but no later than May 18, 2020...We trust you will respond expeditiously and completely.”

Today’s “Wray buffet” would not be complete without the dessert cart, and today’s offering is another sweet column by Margot Cleveland at THE FEDERALIST, about what the newly-released documents say about the Michael Flynn case. In “Your Guide To The Obama Administration’s Hit On Michael Flynn,” not only will she bring you up to speed on the case if you’re not there –- including the new evidence of the “secret side deal” the FBI made with Flynn not to prosecute his son –- but she also introduces a brilliant point. In essence, it’s this:

As Cleveland points out, the Supreme Court has ruled that to be criminal, Flynn’s “lie” had to be material; that is, capable of influencing an investigation. She then asks, “How could Flynn’s statements have influenced the FBI, given that the FBI knew exactly what Flynn said to the Russian ambassador before the agents interviewed him?” Also, as of Thursday, we’ve known that on January 4, 2017, the FBI field office sent documentation to close “Crossfire Razor” with no derogatory evidence found, concluding Flynn “was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger Crossfire Hurricane umbrella case.” Twenty minutes later, Strzok sent a message to an unknown agent saying not to close out the Flynn investigation yet, as the “7th floor” was involved.

The point: As recently unsealed documents show that the FBI already had all the communications and had decided to close the case anyway, we know the only reason to keep it open was as a pretext to interrogate Flynn. So the interrogation itself was not “material” to the case. They had no legitimate investigative purpose for questioning Flynn, so what he said in answer to their questions was NOT MATERIAL.

Cleveland goes on to describe how the 302 (FBI notes) of the interview with Flynn was re-written by Strzok and Page. Recall that the original 302 has mysteriously gone missing. It’s very important to get that, and also to hear from Joe Pientka, the “other” agent who questioned Flynn. Of course, both the 302 and the in-person Pientka interview are on the list of demands sent by Reps. Jordan and Johnson to Chris Wray, but I’ll bet they end up coming from...well, somebody else besides Wray.

Mike Huckabee

Whether it’s about the Chinese coronavirus, the Russia hoax or anything else in the news, there’s so much “information” floating around in the media that it’s almost impossible to know what’s true. Yet, trust me, there are millions of people plugged into THE NEW YORK TIMES, the WASHINGTON POST, CNN, late-night “comedy” shows and Facebook memes who believe they are extremely well-informed, always right, and much smarter than you. It doesn’t even do any good to talk to them.

Check out Scott Adams for an analysis of how the mind works to reject facts that don’t support one’s narrative. We all do this to some extent, as it’s human nature, but some do it a LOT more than others; it’s called “confirmation bias.”

To a large extent I blame the reporters, who should show enough intellectual curiosity and humility to look for ways to disprove their own opinions and their own “facts” before they unleash them on the public. My theory is that they’re afraid to look, afraid of being proven wrong, like the atheist who subconsciously is terrified to expose himself to religion and perhaps be compelled to change his mind, or, conversely, the believer who is terrified to expose himself to anything outside the walls of his church. Political ideology and/or party identification can be just as powerful a self-imposed limitation.

It’s extremely anxiety-producing to be proven wrong. For if you’re wrong about one thing, who knows what else you’re wrong about? For example, if you live in an imaginary world where Trump is always wrong, and everybody you know and respect believes Trump is always wrong, it will knock you sideways to have to admit he was right about even one tiny thing. So when it does turn out Trump was right about something, the apology is never made and the mistake never acknowledged, let alone corrected. The misinformation lives on in the Internet, forever, co-existing with the truth.

I’ve just described the liberal, Trump-hating mindset, but online rumors and “fake news” come from both left and right. About a week ago, my staff came across an email, circulated by some on the right, claiming that the father of John Kerry’s son-in-law is a mullah in Iran. Now, whether this is true or not, we could tell you plenty about John Kerry that would make anyone in his right mind want to keep him far from the seat of power. (Fortunately, he now is, but questions have arisen about his family’s relationship with Hunter Biden and the Biden family business dealings. That's for another time.)

Anyway, we were curious about that story and decided to look into it. There are some basic facts we can put together: Kerry’s son-in-law is named Behrouz Nahed; he goes by the first name Brian. He is a neurosurgeon. According to TRUE PUNDIT, he is an Iranian national. They also say that, according to some reports, his best man at his 2009 wedding to Vanessa Kerry, also a doctor, was the son of Muhammad Javid Zarif, Irans’ Minister of Foreign Affairs. Zarif was Kerry’s counterpart in negotiations for the Iran deal. Whoa.

BUT, the best man story is challenged in a piece from 2015 in THE HILL, which also says Dr. Nahed is an American citizen, born in America. Somebody’s wrong. The preponderance of the evidence would suggest it’s TRUE PUNDIT that is wrong, and that Nahed was born in New York.

Even a conservative website like THE BLAZE has debunked the “best man” rumor.

STILL, even though Muhammad Javid Zarif’s son was apparently not best man for Kerry’s son-in-law, there’s something else we found on TruthOrFiction.com that is every bit as concerning, at least to us: Kerry himself did already have a longstanding personal relationship with Zarif that predated the talks for the Iranian nuclear deal. This relationship is detailed in a 2012 book by Hoorman Majd. I do wonder about that; it is just too close for comfort.

A piece from 2013 in the DAILY CALLER goes into some detail about Dr. Nahed, who has “extensive family ties” in Iran. “Since its inception,” the story reads, “the FBI has vetted U.S. officials involved in national security, and it generally won’t grant clearances to individuals who are married to nationals of an enemy nation or have family members living in that country, for fear of divided loyalties, or, more simply, blackmail.”

Both of Dr. Nahed’s parents reportedly live in Los Angeles. His father is a pulmonologist. But shortly after Vanessa and Behrouz tied the knot, they reportedly went to Iran to visit the other relatives who live there.

Though Nahed’s father is not a mullah, the family and social connections still create such an obvious conflict of interest that Kerry should never have been involved in negotiations with Iran. I would think the conflict is so great that he should never have been approved for any cabinet-level position, let alone Secretary of State. The DAILY CALLER piece goes into just some of the problems with this.

Here’s another really good commentary, also from 2013.

So, after looking at numerous sources, we’d say this rumor is “iffy.” The central claim is not true –- Vanessa Kerry’s husband Behrouz Nahed is not the son of a mullah. His parents are physicians who work in California. And we don’t know for sure about the identify of Nahed’s best man, though we’ve seen no evidence that his father is the Iranian minister of foreign affairs. (This would not be surprising, however, given that Kerry and the Iranian minister had a social relationship.) But regardless of who the best man was, the family and social connections should have posed a huge problem for Kerry in his bid to be Secretary of State. Heck, we even turned up something else that would have been worthy of exploring: Kerry's previously existing personal relationship, going back a decade, with the Iranian minister of foreign affairs, the man with whom he was negotiating on behalf of the United States (or supposedly on our behalf)!

I don’t know why these online rumors have to be so exaggerated when the truth is plenty bad enough. “Fact-checkers” often don’t deal with the underlying truth when it’s so easy simply to debunk the exaggerated claim, generating headlines like this…

(We tend not to use FactCheck.org around here; too often we find ourselves fact-checking the fact-checkers. There’s only so much time in the day to be pushing boulders uphill.)

It’s the same with rumors about COVID-19. What we’re learning about its origins –- almost certainly from within the biolab in Wuhan –- and the PRC’s deadly deceit is so disturbing that there’s no need to exaggerate it into an even wilder story. Let’s stick to the facts as we learn them. We want to remain a solid, trusted source for truth; we would certainly report the wilder story, but only if and when the facts supported it.

We'd never even heard this rumor about Kerry and his Iranian son-in-law till now, which just goes to show how the media have covered for the former Secretary of State and exercised a shameless double standard. Imagine the uproar if, say, Jared Kushner were, say, Russian, and there were rumors that his best man was the son of some high-up Russian state official? The screaming would never stop.

Mike Huckabee

Last night, President Trump answered questions from the public in a townhall on Fox News. You can watch it online here.

If you’d like a quicker recap, here is a written account of the townhall.

And here are a few highlights: Trump said he fears the US death toll from the COVID-19 (Chinese) coronavirus could reach 80 to 100,000, a rise from his previous estimate of 60,000, but still far below the initial prediction of 2.2 million that was cited as a reason to shut down the economy. He also predicted that a vaccine would be available sooner than predicted, possibly by the end of the year, and said of the virus, “It’s going to pass.” He generally backed the efforts of Governors to reopen their own states on the timetables they see fit. He also predicted that the US would no longer be reliant on China for its antibiotics without two years.

Trump said China misled the world, that he believes they made a horrible mistake and didn’t want to admit it; and that the World Health Organization is “China-centric,” they do whatever China wants, and have been “a disaster” and “missed every single call.”

And when asked why he can’t be more diplomatic with the media, he said he appreciates the sentiment, but he believes he’s treated worse by the media than any President in history. He said he stands up there to take questions, but instead of getting normal questions, he gets hit with “the most horrible, horrendous, biased questions” from a media that exhibits “anger and hatred,” and that 95 percent of them are hostile and “might as well be in the Democratic Party.”

Since Sunday was the UN’s “World Press Freedom Day,” media outlets compared Trump’s description of the press to a Twitter thread by Joe Biden (or more likely one of his campaign staffers) criticizing Trump for attacking “the independence of journalists,” and swearing that in a Biden White House, there would be mutual respect and “no bullying of the media from the press room podium or by tweet.”

Of course, that’s an easy promise to make when you know that the media will never treat you with the open disdain, hostility and disrespect that they show for Trump. It’s especially hilarious that he praised the “independence of journalists.” How independent are journalists who do nothing but regurgitate DNC talking points? We have many fine independent journalists, like Sara Carter and John Solomon, who were derided by the journalistic clique for years because they dared to question the accepted media narratives on issues like “Russian collusion” or the framing of Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn. Now we’re learning that they were right all along, and the self-styled “independent journalists” were nothing but house organs of the Democratic Party, about as objective as the Phillip Morris company newsletter.

I’m sure Joe Biden would not show hostility to the press because after all, how likely are they to show hostility to him? He was credibly accused of sexual assault, and they didn’t even bring up the subject. He was captured on video bragging about using US aid to extort the government of Ukraine and they covered for him. And when was the last time you saw a serious investigation of Hunter and Joe Biden’s ties to China in the mainstream press? Seems like that would be a timely and newsworthy subject right about now.

I have no doubt Biden would be very nice to the press (he might even give them a back rub.) After all, why be mean to people who are doing your PR work for you for free?

If you’d like a reminder of why the only people who love and respect our current news media are the Democrats they support, Victor Davis Hanson has compiled an excellent look back at some journalistic lowlights of the past few years.