Mike Huckabee

There are a few celebrities in the news these days for making profane, threatening tweets against the President. I usually ignore these stories because I have enough kids and grandkids to know that if you reward bad behavior, you get more of it; and these spoiled children are desperately seeking attention. The worst punishment you can mete out to them isn’t criticism, it’s ignoring them. So instead of rewarding them with undeserved attention, I thought I’d shine a spotlight on a few celebrities who are using their fame to make a positive difference.

First, how about a hand for Matthew McConaughey? He’s the spokesman for Lincoln Motors, and he convinced them to donate 110,000 face masks to rural hospitals and first responders in his home state of Texas. Then he loaded up his pickup, and he and his wife Camilla Alves hit the road to deliver them personally. Allright, allright, allright!...

Celebrity chef Guy Fieri is part of an effort to provide free meals for front line health care workers and first responders at Santa Clara, California, hospitals. One day, he not only helped make and hand out 1200 boxed lunches, he put a personal thank-you note inside each one.

Last month, country superstar Brad Paisley opened a grocery store in Nashville for people struggling to feed their families. It’s just like a regular grocery, except the food is free. It even delivers to the elderly. Brad has also launched an online song series with music stars performing to thank health care workers, and he recently recorded a personal thank-you for the nurses of Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Finally, a big Huck’s Hero salute to a celebrity who does more for veterans than just about anyone I know, Gary Sinese. His foundation is donating 20,000 meals to health care workers at VA medical centers around the nation.

I’m happy to give these celebrities some recognition because what they did was meant to help others, not to get themselves publicity. Social media might be a lot more civil if all media outlets would simply adopt the same policy of not giving attention to people who only do things to get attention.

Mike Huckabee

Today, President Trump reportedly plans to issue an as-yet undisclosed executive order aimed at ending political bias in the “fact-checking” and censoring of conservative posts on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

This has been brewing for a long time, but it came to a head when Twitter, for the first time, branded one of Trump’s tweets as substantially false and linked to CNN and Washington Post articles “debunking” it. Problem was, the tweet was about mail-in voting being an invitation to voter fraud, something that’s been widely established around the country, even as liberal media outlets continue to don blindfolds and deny it exists, in the same way that social media giants deny that bias exists in their ranks, no matter how obvious it is or how many former employees blow the whistle about it.

For instance, take a look at the past comments of Twitter’s “Head of Site Integrity,” the person tasked with insuring that posts are “just the facts, ma’am,” with no political partisanship:

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook tried to distance his company from this stench, saying, "We have a different policy than, I think, Twitter on this. I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online. Private companies probably shouldn't be, especially these platform companies, shouldn't be in the position of doing that."

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wasn’t thrilled with that, responding: "Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that’s me. Please leave our employees out of this. We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make. This does not make us an 'arbiter of truth.' Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions."

First of all, I think criticizing an employee is fair game when that employee’s job is to prevent partisanship on Twitter and his history of radical leftwing partisanship on Twitter includes denigrating “flyover country” for electing a “racist tangerine” and putting “actual Nazis in the White House.” Seriously, did NOBODY else apply for that job?

Secondly, the problem arose when these social media platforms started yielding to the left’s demands to brand anything that they disagree with as a “lie.” I’m hard pressed to think of a single leftist policy of the past hundred years that hasn’t been a complete disaster, but I don’t accuse them of lying when they claim they work. I just assume they’re deluded and say, “Bless their hearts.”

These platforms have grown into the equivalent of America’s town square, a place where free speech should reign supreme. But they’ve been threatened with lawsuits because of what users post on them. They’ve enjoyed legal immunity because they’re classified as a "platform" (merely a conduit for other people’s comments), not a “publisher” (which implies that they control what is or isn’t posted.) Publishers can be sued. This is why they need to back off the editing and censoring of posts if they don’t want to worry about losing their immunity from lawsuits.

On the other hand, in our lawsuit-happy world, if Trump declares them publishers, that will practically force them to start exerting even more control over speech on all sides. They’ll no longer let radical leftists post threats against people they disagree with, but they’ll also edit and censor any remotely “controversial” posts by conservatives. That could easily include many of Trump’s own tweets.

As much as I hate the one-sided politics of the social media giants, I’d hate to see them replaced with even heavier censorship of both sides. How about returning to the idea of the Internet as the 21st century version of the Founders’ vision of a free marketplace of ideas, where bad ideas weren’t declared bad by self-appointed gatekeepers but by the wisdom of the people in shooting them full of holes and discarding them?

Now, I hope I don’t get banned from Facebook and Twitter for using the phrase “shooting them full of holes.”

Mike Huckabee

While the New York Times and other liberal media outlets are ghoulishly marking the 100,000th US death from the COVID-19 (Chinese) coronavirus and attempting to blame them on all President Trump (is he also responsible for all the deaths in other nations from the same worldwide pandemic unleashed by China?), questions are being raised about whether that number is remotely reliable.

There have already been criticisms that a number of deaths attributed to the virus were just people who happened to be carrying the virus, even if they died of something else and just picked up the virus when they were brought to the hospital. Some whistleblowers have also claimed that because of extra funding for those handling virus cases, there’s a financial incentive to label a death as being from COVID-19, even if it wasn’t, or if the victim had multiple co-morbidities such as old age, heart disease, diabetes or obesity. But this is definitely taking it too far.

A study by the Freedom Foundation of the official COVID-19 death toll from the Washington State Department of Health found that 82% of deaths “list some variation of ‘COVID-19’ in one of the causes of death” on the death certificate; 5% of the death certificates do not list COVID-19 as a cause of death, but as a “significant condition contributing to death;” and 13% involve persons who “had previously tested positive for COVID-19 but did not have the virus listed anywhere on their death certificate as either causing or contributing to death.”

Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee assailed the report as “dangerous,” “disgusting” and “malarkey” (man, Democrats love that word!) He also accused the Freedom Foundation of “fanning these conspiracy claims from the planet Pluto” and not caring about lives lost to the virus, even though the numbers came straight from his own Health Department.

And a spokeswoman for the DOH (or “D’oh!” as Homer Simpson would appropriately say) admitted that five people on the virus death list appear to have actually died from gunshot wounds. Oh, well, liberals blame of all those on Trump, too.

On the subject of malarkey that endangers public health, here’s another study showing that because of all the endless lockdowns and canceling of “non-essential” non-coronavirus medical procedures ordered by liberal Governors such as Inslee, nearly half of Americans have delayed getting needed medical care. This has resulted in serious outcomes, such as suffering strokes or heart attacks at home.

Maybe people should claim they’re having a heart attack because of the coronavirus, and then they’d actually be able to get into a hospital.

Mike Huckabee

I hope you’ll join me in praying for peace, order and clear thinking to be restored in Minneapolis. Protests over the death of a black man named George Floyd erupted last night into arson and looting. Here are some details of what’s going on in Minneapolis:

This is a fast-breaking story, so keep an eye on the news for updates. By way of background, this began when police got a call about someone trying to pass a counterfeit bill. They detained Floyd, who reportedly matched the description. A citizen captured disturbing cell phone video that later went viral, apparently showing an officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for almost eight minutes until he became unresponsive. He later died in a local hospital. That officer and three others with him were fired, and there are widespread calls for charges to be filed. Local police and the FBI are investigating.

Rather than waiting for justice to be done, protesters decided to make a horrible situation worse by erupting into violence and looting of local businesses. Now, armed vigilantes are getting involved to protect the businesses and homes. And radical activist groups are using Floyd’s death to fan the flames of racial hatred, calling for attacks on all white people. I believe there is a term for blaming the actions of an individual on everyone who shares the same skin color: “Racism.” Isn’t that what these groups claim to oppose?

Mike Huckabee

More Michael Flynn news? Yes, and I hope I don’t have to tell you how important this ongoing story is. I know it's frustrating to you that the information continues to come to us in dribs and drabs, because it is to me. But this story, from its beginning –- as far back as 2014 –- is emblematic of a law enforcement/intel bureaucracy gone horribly wrong. I hope you’ll bear with me, as we’re finally getting to the most important part of all: discovering how involved President Obama was in this travesty of “justice.” Deductive reasoning tells us he knew all about it; evidence starting to come in now likely will show he was running it.

And John Solomon has done it again. He’s examined more text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, these from January 3, 2017. That date falls just the day before FBI investigators informed Strzok that they were ready to close the case against Flynn, having found precisely nothing, and just two days before the big Oval Office meeting with Obama, Biden, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Yates and Rice. It was 17 days before President-elect Trump would take office.

In these texts, Strrok and Page are discussing the White House attempting to obtain some Flynn transcripts. They know the investigation has turned up nothing on Flynn, and there has been concern from...someone...that the White House will politicize the transcripts, that they will be “politically weaponized.” Given what we know, and with the timing of the text exchange –- just after Strzok has had a conversation with Priestap –- it seems probable that it was Priestap who has expressed this concern. Apparently, Priestap is concerned that James Clapper will share the conversations with President Obama.

"He, like us, is concerned with oversharing,” Strzok texts Page. “Doesn’t want Clapper giving CR cuts [“Crossfire Razor,” meaning Flynn; “cuts” meaning excerpts from phone calls] to WH. All political, just shows our hand and potentially makes enemies.”

ALL POLITICAL..JUST SHOWS OUR HAND??

Strzok later texts Page: “The question [presumably from Priestap] is should we [provide them], particularly to the entirety of the lame duck [U.S. Intelligence Community] with partisan axes to grind.”

PARTISAN AXES TO GRIND??

Then Strzok and Page talk about Presidential Daily Briefings, and that’s where this gets really interesting and shows how much more we need to find out. “Did you follow the drama of the PDB last week?” Strzok texts Page. “Yup, don’t know how it ended though,” Page responds. “”They didn’t include any of it,” Strzok texts, and Bill [Priestap] didn’t want to dissent.” Page answers, “Wow, Bill should make sure Andy [McCabe] knows about [this] since he was consulted numerous times about whether to include the reporting.”

Solomon says he's had these texts since September 2018; apparently he couldn’t publicize them because they hadn't been declassified. In the meantime, however, he's had “interviews with officials familiar with the conversations,” so what sounds cryptic to us is probably well understood by him. Here are the texts themselves.

The investigations going on now are trying to determine whether Obama’s longstanding distaste for Flynn, which we’ve detailed here, influenced the FBI’s decision to reject the recommendation by its own agent, Joe Pientka, to shut down the Flynn investigation in early January 2017 and instead work up a plan to set him up to “lie” to the FBI. Solomon says that one investigator “with direct knowledge” told him that “the evidence connecting President Obama to the Flynn operation is getting stronger.”

According to that investigator, “The Bureau knew it did not have evidence to justify that Flynn was either a criminal or counterintelligence threat and should have shut the case down. But the perception that Obama and his team would not be happy with that outcome may have driven the FBI to keep the probe open without justification and to pivot to an interview that left some agents worried involved entrapment or a perjury trap.”

As Solomon said to Sean Hannity Tuesday night, “It gives us a state of mind that the White House was driving the Flynn decisions in this very critical time leading up to…Trump taking office.”

Also on Tuesday, acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell turned the office over to new DNI John Ratcliffe, just after declassifying MORE phone calls between then-national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. It’ll be up to Ratcliffe if and how soon the transcripts of those calls will be made public.

According to a FOX NEWS report Tuesday night, a senior intelligence official said that key documents will provide “a very significant understanding of how intelligence was manipulated to support the launch of the Russia investigation.” Much more to come on that.

Also, Andrew C. McCarthy has a must-read column about Judge Emmet Sullivan and the role politics is playing right now to deprive Flynn of his due process rights.

As McCarthy told Shannon Bream on FOX NEWS Tuesday night, “I think the problem Judge Sullivan has is the same problem a lot of people analyzing this have, which is that the political dimension of it has in some ways, I think, paralyzed people’s way to look at what is really a very simple legal equation.”

As McCarthy explains, only the Justice Department --- the prosecution, which is part of the Executive Branch --- has the power either to open a case or to continue it. “A judge has no power to force the government either to bring charges or to continue charges."

Bream read from the Fokker case, which has been cited as precedent by Flynn attorney Sidney Powell: “It has long been settled that the Judiciary generally lacks authority to second-guess those Executive determinations, much less to impose its own charging preferences.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

The judge was given an opportunity to fix this; the three-judge appeals panel gave him 10 days. He still could do this, but considering that he has dug in and hired his own attorney, it doesn’t seem likely.

Finally, Margot Cleveland has another great column on Judge Sullivan, also focusing on the politics. She does say it’s appropriate for a judge to hire a lawyer in a mandamus petition such as this. (McCarthy, in contrast, called Sullivan's decision to do this “jaw-dropping,” and Powell has raised numerous questions about it, particularly about who is paying the lawyer.) But Cleveland reveals something new about Sullivan’s choice of attorney, Beth Wilkinson: she happens to be the lawyer who represented Hillary Clinton during the FBI’s “investigation” of her mishandling of classified information in 2016. Hey, it’s real cozy down there in the swamp.

Mike Huckabee

As Paul Manafort is now confined under house arrest instead of in a prison cell because of COVID-19 –- he’s definitely at high risk for a “negative outcome” (death) –- we’re learning about something very shocking that was done in his case by prosecutors.

The Special Counsel’s Office told Judge Beryl Howell a “fake FISA warrant” story to give the impression that it was in the national interest to violate Manafort’s attorney-client privilege. The goal: to compel testimony from Manafort’s attorneys to incriminate their client --- and also, it was fervently hoped --- to help them reach the ultimate target, President Trump.

But as it turns out, that story was a lie; there never was a FISA warrant on Manafort. CNN was wrong (surprise, surprise!) when they too-conveniently reported in 2017 that the government had applied for a FISA warrant to spy on Manafort, just as they had Carter Page, and that they’d already been surveilling him because of national security concerns. Not only was this a fake story to the judge, but it was a fake story to the media as well, and CNN was only too happy to cooperate. It would sure be nice to know who leaked it.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz states in his report that not only did the FBI not seek a FISA warrant on Manafort in the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation, but they never even “seriously considered” getting one. Horowitz has repeated this under oath as well.

According to “Undercover Huber” --- sounds conspiratorial but is actually a great source --- whoever leaked the story to CNN was trying to create a narrative that since Manafort had a FISA (remember, he didn’t), there was probable cause to believe he was an agent of a foreign power.

They even came up with a phony “on-again, off-again” timeline to their supposed surveillance, to show a gap around the time of the Trump Tower meeting n which the “real” collusion might have happened. Crafty.

Recall that they got quite showy about this hokum, conducting a dawn raid on Manafort's house and searching a storage unit. It was all just drama, as it was with Roger Stone.

Rod Rosenstein’s “scope” memo on Manafort, written on August 2, 2017, authorized the Special Counsel’s Office to investigate him for potential “collusion” with Russia and also for “payments he received from the Ukrainian government.” Both of these probes were based on lies, as the allegations of “collusion” came from the fake Steele “dossier” and the allegations of payments from Ukraine came from the fake “black book” of cash payments that didn’t happen.

Then --- and here’s where it gets amazingly bad --- on August 18, the Special Counsel’s Office issued a subpoena to MANAFORT’S ATTORNEY to to TESTIFY AGAINST HIS OWN CLIENT before the Grand Jury. Manfort’s attorney refused, of course, and so the Special Counsel did what lawyers in any kangaroo court would do and filed a motion to compel testimony. They really, really wanted that attorney’s testimony, as they needed to get Manafort on FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) violations and considered his testimony essential.

As Huber wrote: “On October 2, 2017, Judge Howell ruled against Manafort (in a non-public sealed opinion), ultimately piercing Attorney/Client privilege and forcing his lawyer to testify against him about the preparation of those FARA filings. Big win for the SCO [Special Counsel’s Office].”

There was never any national security issue related to the charges under which Manafort was prosecuted: some white-collar stuff and false FARA filings. Huber has explained that the real reason for the fake FISA story on Manafort was to set a “tone” that would help implicate President Trump. He also shows how these ruthless tactics even helped influence Michael Flynn’s attorneys to advise him to plead guilty, as THEY saw what was happening and certainly wouldn’t want to be dragged before the Grand Jury as Manafort’s attorneys were. The way to make that threat go away was to get Flynn to take the plea.

Huber comments that such an aggressive approach might have been justified had there been any real threat to national security, but, again, that claim was just a cover. All made up.

The people who did this are bad, folks. The Manafort story clearly shows what can happen when overzealous prosecutors don’t have any actual evidence. Sometimes they’ll just make it up, lie through their teeth. They have “six ways from Sunday” for getting at you. Add political motivation to the mix, as was clearly the case here, and it's banana republic time. Media outlets such as CNN are happy to aid and abet. And in this case, our own law enforcement bureaucracy was willing to trash the justice system, even attorney-client privilege, if it helped them in their strategy to take down President Trump.

Mike Huckabee

After the long Memorial Day weekend, there’s so much news about the Michael Flynn case that we needed a second commentary for the overflow.

First of all, you must be aware by now that Flynn’s name in the conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak wasn't masked in the first place --- we’ve talked about the fact that it couldn’t have been because there was no unmasking request for the day of that call --- but there’s more:

President Obama himself ordered the surveillance.

He must have. As Dan Bongino has pointed out, we know this because (here's the new part) Andrew McCabe, right in his own book, says he was ordered by the Presidential Daily Brief staff to find that phone call. Flynn’s call with Kislyak didn’t just happen to be caught in the routine surveillance on the ambassador. It wasn’t just “incidental.” In Bongino’s words, “Flynn was hunted down and targeted by the Obama administration, period.”

That's why Flynn's name wasn't masked in that particular phone call. So, does that mean it was legal to leak Flynn’s name? Heck, no. Andrew McCarthy has pointed out that, oh, by the way, the leak to the media is STILL A FELONY, as the surveilled conversation was classified. It doesn’t matter if Flynn’s name was intended to be hidden or not.

In other news, Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell is no doubt heartened by the action taken by the D.C. Court of Appeals. In what Margot Cleveland calls “a rare move,” a three-judge panel has ordered Judge (“Judge”) Emmet Sullivan to respond to Powell’s petition for a writ of mandamus.

This is an appeal to the appellate court to order Judge Sullivan to dismiss the criminal charge against Flynn. A writ of mandamus is rarely granted, so Cleveland says that for the panel to order the judge to respond, rather than just denying the petition as is usually done, is a good sign. And they issued the order expeditiously, in just two days. Likewise, they're expecting Sullivan to answer promptly, giving him just 10 days to respond. So Powell’s petition isn’t just languishing on somebody’s desk.

There’s legal precedent to dismiss the case against Flynn: the Fokker case, in which the court held that “decisions to dismiss pending criminal charges --- no less than decisions to initiate charges and to identify which charges to bring –- lie squarely within the ken of prosecutorial discretion.” In this case, that would be the attorney general’s office.

Another good sign: the panel did not order the government to respond, simply allowing the DOJ to respond at its own discretion, or not at all. Apparently, these judges don’t see the necessity of hearing additional arguments from the government.

The fine source “Undercover Huber” has identified the three judges on the panel: Karen Henderson, a Reagan-Bush appointee; Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee; and Neomi Rao, nominated by Trump to take Brett Kavanaugh’s place on the D.C. Circuit Court when Kavanaugh went to the Supreme Court. Powell does not see politics playing into this decision too much, as Sullivan’s refusal to dismiss the charge is “in violation of clear precedent from the circuit and Supreme Court.”

Cleveland agrees with Powell that “The Department of Justice should weigh in and soon because this case is no longer just about Flynn. It is about separation of powers and the executive branch. Unfortunately, it is also now about Judge Sullivan.”

Funny she should say that. The latest weirdness from Judge Sullivan is that he has gone out and hired himself a lawyer.

In a highly unusual step, Judge Sullivan has lawyered up, with Beth Wilkinson, reportedly “a go-to for high-profile officials in difficult situations.” It’s hard to know what role politics might play; Wilkinson represented Brett Kavanaugh while he was fighting sexual misconduct allegations on his way to Supreme Court confirmation. On the other hand, she’s also a close friend of Obama “fixer” Kathryn Ruemmler.

Flynn’s attorneys are arguing that Judge Sullivan “has no authority to adopt the role of prosecutor or change the issues in the case.” As they observe, “This is an umpire who has decided to steal public attention from the players and focus it on himself. He wants to pitch, bat, run bases and play shortstop. In truth, he is way out in left field.”

I think with that metaphor, Flynn’s lawyers hit it out of the park. It’s hard to know why Sullivan is SO bent on prosecuting Flynn. Maybe he’s just a political hack, but at this point his behavior is downright pathological. Why is he so “dug in,” and what does he need an attorney for? Once again, when something doesn’t seem to make sense, it’s because there’s a piece we don’t have. There’s something going on with Judge Sullivan that we...just don’t know.

Mike Huckabee

JOE BIDEN'S RACIAL FEARMONGERING

Joe Biden is once again backpedaling from another old-school-style racist comment. This time, he told the radio show “The Breakfast Club,” “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

This is nothing new: Joe has quite a record of these kinds of Grandpa Simpson statements that embarrass the whole family. Like saying that Obama was the first black candidate to be clean and articulate, or that you can’t go into a 7-11 unless you have a slight Indian accent. Just as with all the #MeToo activists jettisoning their principles to rally around Biden, black liberals are expected to come rushing to the rescue and explain why they still support Joe and it’s really Trump’s fault, anyway. The L.A. Times did it, as did Atlantic magazine writer Jemele Hill, who claimed it was “clearly a joke” (racist jokes are okay now?), plus “it was accurate” (so blacks really are allowed to hold only liberal views?), and of course the real story is "TRUMP BAD!"

I’m sure this will be spun like a top until everyone is so dizzy, at least a few people actually believe that rubbish. It’s happened before. I recently had to do a Google search for Biden’s notorious 2012 election comment to a predominately black audience that the Republicans “want to put y’all back in chains.” (Historical fact: The Democrats were the party of slavery, and the Republican Party was founded to end slavery – and did. Yes, Lincoln was a Republican, no matter what the media tell you. Also, George Wallace was a Democrat.)

But I digress…

I found that the historical revisionists had been working away like magic shoemaker elves and had somehow rewritten that story so that Biden wasn’t indulging in racial fearmongering. Heavens, no! He was actually talking to a “diverse crowd” and referring to the Republicans wanting to metaphorically put people back into the shackles of Wall Street bankers. Because when a guy from Delaware talks about Wall Street, he always uses the word “y’all.” That’s some real Ice Capades-level spinning!

Of all of Joe’s foot-in-mouth racial moments, that one and this most recent one are probably the most disturbing because they don’t just repeat racist stereotypes. They also drag in false political tropes, all in an effort to intimidate black people into giving up their rights to speak freely or think for themselves. They send a message, reinforced by the media, that of course, Republicans are racist, and if you don’t vote for the same awful leftist policies that have been harming African-Americans for generations – from lousy inner-city public schools you’re not allowed to leave to economic policies that depress job creation and wages – then you’re an Uncle Tom and a traitor to your face.

Fortunately, I think the effectiveness of that kind of intellectual terrorism is finally starting to crumble. You can see it all around, from the #WalkAway movement to the rising black support for Trump in polls to the recent story of black Democratic Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones. He nearly resigned after being hit with a torrent of threats and hate messages for saying he endorsed Trump’s reelection because of his success at creating jobs and his backing of criminal sentencing reform. But he decided to fight back against liberal intimidation tactics. I interviewed him on “Huckabee” on TBN. You can watch that here.

African-American Republican Sen. Tim Scott also had some choice words for Biden and his defenders.

Comments such as Biden’s are insulting both to African-Americans and to Republicans because they perpetuate slanderous falsehoods about both groups. I grew up in the South in the ‘60s, I saw real racism, and I was repulsed by it. I was inspired by the Rev. Martin Luther King to stand up against it. As a pastor, I refused to allow segregationists to have sway over my church, and as a Governor, I reached out to the black communities of Arkansas. They were skeptical at first (imagine what they’d heard!), but they eventually realized I meant it. When I ran for reelection, I was proud to receive the highest share of the black vote that any Republican had received since Reconstruction days. I don’t relate any of this to brag, just to show that being a Republican does not mean being a racist.

For the record, as a conservative, Christian Republican, here are a few things I believe:

That we are all children of God, created in His image, which means that racism is a repugnant sin against God because it means calling some people inferior simply because of the way the Lord created them…

That all babies of all races are precious from the moment of their creation and their lives deserve protection from the abortion lobby, which has targeted and been especially deadly for African-American babies…

That every person deserves a shot at earning the American Dream through their own study, hard work, and initiative, not through those in authority picking winners and losers…

That the goal of school policy should be providing every child with the best possible education, and that parents should be allowed to decide whether that means public, private, church, or home school. There is nothing sacred about teachers’ unions or the public school “system.” The only sacred priority should be the children…

That the Bill of Rights and the legal due process rights that flow from it must be protected for every person of every race -- particularly the Second Amendment, which allowed black people to protect themselves from racist threats at a time when official authorities refused to do so…

That every individual has a right to think freely, express their thoughts freely, and debate those ideas openly, without fear of retribution, intimidation, or slander.

If you are black and agree with those things, then you don’t owe your vote to anyone just because they threaten to call you a traitor to your race if you refuse to support people who oppose your own principles.

CRICKETS

If you wonder why the media fixated so much on something so dumb as whether President Trump wore a facemask when touring the Ford plant in Michigan, maybe it’s because it gave them something to talk about other than what he actually said there. And what he said was that churches are essential, he wants them to reopen and has talked to the CDC about that, and that blue state Governors who target churches and keep them closed will risk him overriding their rules.

Liberal reporters blasted him for leaving decisions up to Governors and not exercising more federal authority, so I assume they’ll be applauding him for this, right? Right?...Is that crickets I hear?...

IMPORTANT BULLETIN

If you’re not burned out on hearing about the railroading of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, here’s an important bulletin: the US Court of Appeals for DC has given Flynn’s judge, Emmet Sullivan, 10 days to respond to attorney Sidney Powell’s emergency request for a writ of mandamus, ordering Sullivan to dismiss the case, since the DOJ has already withdrawn the charges.

This gives Sullivan just 10 days to think up some solid legal grounds for why he should be allowed to continue acting as both Flynn’s judge and prosecutor, and calling for illegal amicus briefs to help him think up new things to charge Flynn with. Sorry, “I was appointed by Bill Clinton” doesn’t count.

In a related story, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and campaign manager Paul Manafort, 70, have been released from prison to home confinement to protect them from contracting the coronavirus. I’m surprised Democrats didn’t suggest putting Manafort in solitary confinement.

INTERESTING HISTORY

This article gives a lengthy and interesting history of the efforts to insure that the UN protects the right to life of unborn children around the world.

What sparked its writing was the news that the US is calling on the UN to remove abortion provisions from its global coronavirus emergency plan. Why that should ever have been included is as much a mystery as why a blue state governor would keep abortion clinics open while telling people that vaccinations, tooth fillings, chemotherapy or biopsies are “non-essential” medical services. If you’re trying to convince us that you’re only exercising extra-constitutional powers because it’s necessary to save human lives, then don’t use them to kill pre-born babies.

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

Mike Huckabee

On the day John Ratcliffe was finally approved as Director of National Intelligence –- by a completely partisan vote –- the Michael Flynn story got even crazier.

First --- and this has received no press till now --- British ex-spy Christopher Steele, author of the fictional anti-Trump “dossier” paid for by Hillary’s campaign and the DNC, was offered money by the FBI to collect intelligence on Flynn. (Who needs Fusion GPS to pay a spy when you have the Federal Bureau of Intrusion to do it?) This happened in a meeting on October 3, 2016, in “an unnamed European city,” according to Chuck Ross at the DAILY CALLER. In addition to “significant” compensation for his spying, Steele was paid $15,000 in expenses for his trip to this city. Nice work if you can get it, especially if your "intelligence” is garbage.

That’s right, Steele was getting paid by EVERYONE. I wish I knew his secret.

This new information seems significant in light of a fake story that was being peddled about an affair between Flynn and a Russian woman. This rumor was completely unfounded, and, as described in Lee Smith’s great book THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT, was originally set up at an event near Cambridge University much earlier, in 2014. Obama and his team had had it in for Flynn from the start, mostly due to his intense disapproval of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal and also his intention to audit and streamline the intel bureaucracy. For one thing, Flynn was planning to audit the Office of Net Assessment, which was paying “confidential human source” (SPY) Stefan Halper to do...well, whatever it was they were really paying him to do.

Ross reports, “It is not clear how and when Steele came across the rumor, or if it was the result of the FBI asking him to look into Flynn.” But actually, we do know this rumor predates Steele’s October 3 meeting. It had already been planted and was ripe for the picking.

This “new” story comes right out of Inspector General Horowitz’s report, released last December. We learn from the IG that the FBI offered to pay Steele “significantly” to collect information in three separate “buckets” that were part of Crossfire Hurricane, all to establish a relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia. According to the IG report, an FBI agent provided Steele with a “general overview” of Crossfire Hurricane, which was still ongoing, including information on the “small analytical effort” (!) they had undertaken on Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.

In fact, according to the IG report, some FBI agents thought Steele had been told too much about Crossfire Hurricane.

As Ross reports, we didn’t really know until now about Steele’s investigation of Flynn; we knew about 17 memos that covered Trump (oh yes), Page, Manafort and Michael Cohen. But in just the last few weeks, a couple of documents on Flynn have surfaced:

First, a House Intelligence Committee transcript of the testimony of John McCain associate David Kramer refers to his belief that Flynn had had an affair with a Russian woman in the U.K.

Second, an FBI memo from January 4, 2017, says a “confidential human source” told the Bureau the woman had been present at an event Flynn attended in 2014 while he was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. This has to be the event described in THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT; if you’ve read the book, you know the woman is Svetlana Lokhova, who, as Ross relates, became the target of a “whisper campaign” about an affair with Flynn. The gossip was that she had left the event with Flynn, but Lokhova’s husband says he personally picked her up that night. Anyway, this is how long the Obama administration and FBI have been trying to compromise Flynn.

Something else that just emerged about the Flynn case makes me think it might blow wide open. With thanks to Dan Bongino for pointing this out, President Obama’s “fixer,” former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, is now attorney for...(drum roll please)...Susan Rice. Rice is under scrutiny now for her January 20, 2016, email “note to self” on her way out the White House door, the one that described an Oval Office meeting attended by Obama, Yates, Clapper, Comey, Brennan and (yes) Biden.

Ruemmler wrote in a just-released February 23, 2018, letter to Sens. Grassley, Feinstein, Graham and Whitehouse that Rice had written that memo to herself on advice of White House counsel, "given the importance and sensitivity of the subject matter.” She told them Rice hadn’t done it sooner because “that was the first opportunity she had to do so.” (Ah, of course it was.) How is it even possible to accurately memorialize a meeting that took place almost three weeks earlier? Unless, of course, your goal isn’t to accurately memorialize it, but to CYA, or C somebody’s A.

Curiously, when Rice was asked during a 2018 congressional inquiry whether she was aware of Comey’s investigation of Flynn, she said no, not until Comey testified. Given the nature of the January 2017 meeting as related by Sally Yates, it’s impossible to believe Rice. It’s hard to believe this serial liar about anything.

Bongino recommended this WASHINGTON EXAMINER story as a good example of the kind of thing Kathryn Ruemmler, as former Obama White House counsel, has been involved in as a “fixer.” Here we see her working in tandem with DNC attorneys to defend against a lawsuit by Carter Page, saying, unbelievably, that “the allegedly defamatory statements” against Page in the dossier “were substantially true” and “are capable of an innocent construction.” On what planet?

Flynn’s deputy national security adviser K. T. McFarland (whom I would guess has the best inside story of anyone), says that nothing about Rice’s email makes sense.

She told Shannon Bream at FOX NEWS that “it was an odd thing to do.” Why would you do this, she reasoned, unless you thought “somebody was potentially going to come after the fact and see that they’ve done something wrong.” Rice was making it look as though whatever they were doing was done “by the book.” What book is that, ESPIONAGE FOR DUMMIES?

McFarland said something else really interesting in light of Obama’s team debating whether they should include Flynn on classified “Russia” briefings. During a briefing three weeks prior, she said, “every other topic was mentioned,” including North Korea, China and ISIS, “but they didn’t mention anything about Russia and yet they knew, at that point, that they were about to sanction Russia for election interference.”

In other words, they had already been keeping Flynn out of the loop.

Stay tuned; much more to come. According to Sara Carter and John Solomon, Friday will bring more about the unmasking of Americans by the Obama regime, particularly John Brennan’s CIA.

Mike Huckabee

CHURCH BURNING

This is the most disgusting and disturbing story of the day. It appears that some intolerant thug decided to burn down a Mississippi church for standing up for its First Amendment rights. Just as with people who defend keeping abortion clinics open while closing other hospitals, it appears that some people are so blinded by their own partisanship that they’ll happily kill or commit arson in the name of “protecting public safety.” Authorities are offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever did this.

This is still in the early investigative stages, so I’ll refrain from saying more about the crime and the motives until we know for sure (we do live in an age of lies and hoaxes.) But I hope you’ll join me in praying for the members of the First Pentecostal Church of Holly Springs.

Here are some comments condemning this horrific act from Gov. Tate Reeves.

WHERE DOES YOUR STATE STAND

Over three dozen states are loosening coronavirus restrictions today. To see where your state stands, check out this state-by-state update list.

In blue states, many people are still suffering from draconian and unconstitutional lockdown rules that have no end in sight. Fortunately, they are winning an increasing number of court victories against officials who are abusing their powers.

Also, Americans are in luck: Congressional Democrats have a solution for helping us get over the pandemic crisis. Release detained illegal aliens, halt immigration enforcement and give taxpayer money to illegal immigrants. Say, weren’t those their policies before there even was a COVID-19 virus? I definitely recall them wanting to halt immigration enforcement when Trump shut down travel from China. That would’ve worked out well.

MORE DEM VOTE FRAUD

Say, you know that vote fraud that Democrats insist never happens? Well, it happened again. A former Democratic election judge in Philadelphia just pleaded guilty to stuffing ballot boxes in primary elections between 2014 and 2016. He did it the old-fashioned way: by standing in the voting booth and voting over and over as fast as he could whenever nobody was looking. Sometimes, the old school, low-tech ways are the best.

In his defense, he claimed he did it because an unnamed Democratic political consultant paid him bribes of $300 to $5,000 per election. So the good news is that we’ve found a Democrat who still believes in capitalism.

4300

While the major media outlets continue to praise New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s response to the COVID-19 (Chinese) coronavirus crisis, we still continue to learn more all the time about how deadly his poor decisions actually were. For instance, it was just revealed that over 4300 recovering coronavirus patients were sent to New York nursing homes, where, like more than five battalions of Typhoid Mary’s, they infected the most vulnerable people before that idiotic order was finally reversed.

Despite this, Cuomo continues to be treated with kid gloves by the media, particularly when he’s interviewed by his kid brother on CNN, who seems to think that a probing question is asking if the testing swabs were too small for his big nose.

But speaking of covering noses, here’s what the media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) consider to be a real top priority story. Question: Do I have to wear a face mask if I’m holding my nose while I watch the news?

CORPUS CHRISTI

UPDATE: The shooting at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas, was breaking yesterday as we were on deadline, but we know now that it was most likely terrorist-related. The shooter was originally described as an “Arab male,” but identified posthumously by the media as Adam Alsahli, a Syrian-born US citizen living in Corpus Christi. Police and the FBI are hunting for a second “person of interest” who might also be involved.

The attack could have been much worse if it weren’t for the swift and heroic actions of a female security guard who saw Alsahli trying to speed his car through the gate and engaged him in a gun fight. She was shot in the chest but fortunately was wearing body armor, suffered only minor injuries, and is already out of the hospital. Alsahli reportedly careened into a road block and was fatally shot by other security personnel who arrived quickly.

Here is more on the story, including some of Alsahi’s social media posts. He also reportedly shared his radical Islamic jihadist ideology with the shooter in the December deadly mass shooting at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, which was also recently classified as terrorism.

Again, this is a fast-breaking story, so keep an eye on the news for the latest developments. Pray for an end to these hate-inspired attacks. And join me in sending a big Huck’s Hero salute, get-well prayers and thanks to that brave and fast-thinking female security guard, whose name has yet to be released.

UPDATE/CORRECTION!

President Trump said Michigan’s Secretary of State was illegally sending mail-in ballots to every voter, but she says they were only sent applications for mail-in ballots, and argues that that’s not illegal because it isn’t partisan, since they went to everyone.

Duly noted, although inviting over 7 million people to apply for mail-in ballots still opens the door for enough mail-in ballots to be sent out to tip an election with fraud. And here’s the latest of a likely never-ending series of responses to the Democrats’ claim that vote fraud doesn’t exist, and that opposing mail-in voting just means you want to suppress turnout in traditional Democratic districts (like cemeteries.)

Remember, Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats are demanding that we institute mail-in voting nationwide if unemployed workers and dying businesses are ever to get any more coronavirus aid. Maybe we should let her know what we think about that by writing it in letters and mailing them to her and hoping they all arrive.

$100k+ SOCIALISTS

It’s been reported that according to internal surveys, nearly a third of members of the Democratic Socialists of America make over $100,000 a year.

That’s nothing: I could name a “Democratic” socialist who makes over $170,000 a year plus lavish benefits and won’t even pay her taxes.

CHINA LIED

Wait, are you saying that China lied to us about the true number and severity of its coronavirus cases? And they’re actually much worse off than America? Well, knock me over with a feather!

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Sharon K.

05/08/2020 10:35 AM

Thank you for your use of common sense as you bring us the news of the moment. You are the calm in this storm of falsehoods.

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Tracey P.

05/08/2020 10:03 AM

Governor Huckabee,

Thank you for your newsletter. It helps to bring a sane perspective in the chaos.

Lois Anne M.

05/08/2020 10:02 AM

Another fantastic newsletter; thank you!!!!!!!

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Even L.

05/08/2020 08:46 AM

Another spot-on commentary Governor.

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Larry W.

05/08/2020 06:06 AM

That was good, Governor. Keep the fire in your belly - it inspires the rest of us!

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Shelley J.

05/08/2020 03:17 AM

Thank you for the superb detail which is very fulfilling to read. God Bless America!

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LeAnn K.

05/08/2020 02:05 AM

I'm so thankful for your daily posting. It's the only place I get a sane view of the mess we are in. And somehow the daily bible verus fits exactly what I need to hear.

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Cathy M.

05/08/2020 01:41 AM

I look forward to reading the Evening Edition every night. It kind of sums up the day. I especially love the scripture at the end. God's Word gives us hope! Thanks and Blessings!

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Allegra G K.

05/07/2020 11:49 PM

Thanks for the big laugh. I was feeling a little down tonight...

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Deborah W.

05/07/2020 08:34 PM

LOVE this newsletter! Thank you sir!

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James D. Jr

05/07/2020 07:38 PM

Thanks Mike & Staff.

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William A.

05/07/2020 07:26 PM

Wow! Just got my first Evening Edition. Great reading! Can't wait for next one!

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Wanda M.

05/12/2020 02:25 PM

Mike, I read your articles but I don’t comment each time, but you’re right on each time! God Bless you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Jan J.

05/12/2020 12:34 PM

This is complicated and can be confusing, especially given the skewed versions the media puts out, so thank you for clarity!

RECEIVE MY EVENING EDITION NEWSLETTER.  SIGNUP TODAY!

Mike Huckabee

There’s something odd about the transcript of Michael Flynn’s December 29, 2016, phone call with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the one that apparently contained some mention of sanctions. There’s no unmasking request that corresponds to that call.

What?

Believe it or not, in the list of unmasking requests passed along to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson by acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, who assures them it is complete, there is no request on December 29. There are quite a few BEFORE December 29, and we can’t tell just from the list what transcripts they involved, but the dates tell us they couldn’t possibly have been for the Kislyak call because it hadn’t happened yet.

Everyone and his dog seemed to want Flynn’s name unmasked on December 14-15-16, and on December 28 there’s a request by the U.S. ambassador to Turkey (huh?) Then it gets quiet till January 5, 2017, which is the date of that big Oval Office meeting and also the day White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough calls for Flynn’s name to be unmasked. There are still more calls for unmasking after that, including on January 17, when Vice President Joe Biden did it.

But since Obama and James Comey were already aware of the December 29 “sanctions” call between Flynn and Kislyak on January 5 –- we know this from Sally Yates’ testimony –- how did they get Flynn’s name? In fact, we know Andrew McCabe knew about the call on January 3, because that’s when he briefed Mary McCord of the DOJ’s National Security Division. ALL the unmaskings on this list took place either before that call took place or after the Oval Office meeting. It’s a mystery.

Dan Bongino talked about this in his Friday podcast but I wanted to do a little research before coming to any conclusions. On Saturday, Andrew C. McCarthy offered his own take, which is that Flynn’s name must have been gathered in some other way that had not masked his name in the first place. The call would have been intercepted, he said, “under an intelligence program not subject to the masking rules, probably by the CIA or a friendly foreign spy service acting in a nod-and-wink arrangement with our intelligence community.

McCarthy explains how intelligence collection under FISA is supposed to work. There are actually two kinds: the “traditional” FISA warrant, which is the targeted monitoring of a suspected clandestine operative of a foreign power inside the U.S. (which can INCIDENTALLY intercept the communications of Americans who happen to talk to him/her); and the “Section 702” version, which targets non-Americans outside the U.S. (which can also INCIDENTALLY intercept the communications of Americans).

Both kinds of FISA transcripts are subject to what they call minimization procedures, which is the masking of the names of those whose communications are incidentally intercepted. Their names are replaced with the generic designation “U.S. Person.” Unmasking the name of an American is a BIG DEAL, McCarthy says, as “foreign intelligence must never be used as a pretext for spying on Americans.” (I’ll pause here for laughter.)

It’s been assumed that Kislyak was routinely subjected to “traditional” FISA monitoring, and perhaps “702” monitoring when he was abroad. Both of those would have called for Flynn’s name to be masked.

McCarthy postulates that for this phone call Flynn was being spied on by the CIA, which is not subject to FISA law because its intelligence operations are conducted outside the United States. Guess what? Flynn was not in the United States on December 29. He was in the Dominican Republic for a brief vacation. We don’t know where Kislyak was, but it’s very likely he was in Russia, as Washington was shut down for the holiday and in Russia they celebrate Christmas on January 7.

McCarthy makes a compelling case, consistent with claims he made in his book BALL OF COLLUSION, that Flynn was being monitored either directly by the CIA or by “a friendly foreign intelligence service.” He makes it clear that, yes, all the unmasking that was done on Flynn was truly scandalous but that now we’re seeing another dirty layer of spying and sabotage that was thrown at Trump’s campaign and incoming administration. This has got to be exposed for what it was so it NEVER happens in America again. And all those involved need to pay dearly for what they did.

Mike Huckabee

From reader Lindsay K:

Following this case some, I kept feeling like Judge Sullivan was exercising some caution after Sidney Powell took over the case. He was a central figure in her book, LICENSE TO LIE, I believe. And so I felt he was exercising caution to not be accused of bias.

But after [he made] a poor judgment call in December regarding this case because he was misled by the prosecution, I can't begin to understand why he would open himself up to this same group of thugs and bullies. So now, my working theory is, since Obama is implicated, there is some awful pressure on him and he's caving. I can't see why else someone would dismiss sound reason for some unconstitutional, unprecedented ploy otherwise.

From the Gov:

Thanks for writing, Lindsay. You bring up a couple of very interesting points. First, it’s true that Sidney Powell made Judge Sullivan sort of the “judicial hero” (her words) in the book LICENSE TO LIE. (Bet she won't be doing that again!) So perhaps he overcompensated for the reason you state. WAY overcompensated.

Your second point, as to how baffling his behavior is now –- he seems to be acting not only as judge but as prosecuting attorney –- does, naturally, cause observers to develop “working theories” as you have. Why is he so desperate, increasingly so, to drag out the case that he ignores the law, precedent and exculpatory evidence and, incredibly, has to bring in "outside groups" and even another judge to help him justify the unjustifiable?

I think you’ve hit on something when you say the pressure on Judge Sullivan, especially now that Obama is implicated, must be awful. As Chuck Schumer has said, the intel community has “six ways from Sunday” to get back at you. That power, presumably, could just as easily be applied to a U.S. District Court judge as to anyone else, say, a former national security adviser being openly railroaded in federal court. That’s not to say that this is what happened, but it’s what COULD happen.

There are various crafty ways to apply pressure through direct or implied threats (or rewards) –-- I’m sure we can all think of some of them. The fact that we are even entertaining the possibility of this kind of intimidation shows how far the reputation of the FBI has fallen. Obama’s intel community seems capable of just about anything these days. What we know is the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

As I’ve said many times, when something absolutely defies all logic and common sense, it means there’s something about it we don’t know. That seems to be the case here. It's the "x" in the equation. We may never know what it is, but something is likely going on behind the scenes that, if we knew it, would cause the puzzling Judge Sullivan scenario to make perfect sense.

Mike Huckabee

It didn’t take long. Yesterday, the names of those who’d called for the unmasking of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s name were made public, and they were mostly the usual suspects --- and more, to total about two dozen. Of course, then-FBI Director James Comey and then-CIA Director John Brennan are there, from even before Flynn and Sergey Kislyak had “the” phone call they were all so interested in.

Though presidential candidate Joe Biden said Tuesday from his basement that he knew nothing” about the investigation of Flynn and then –- later in the same interview, with George Stephanopoulos –- admitted he “was aware” of the investigation but nothing more, it turns out he personally had requested the unmasking of Flynn’s name. And when did he do that? January 12, the very day that David Ignatius at the WASHINGTON POST published a column not only mentioning the call with Kislyak but talking about the Logan Act. Seems Biden was a wee bit more involved in the case than he’s let on.

Of course, there will be jokes and possibly even serious comments about Biden actually not being able to remember this. What does it tell you about your candidate when your defense for his lying is to call attention to his obvious mental decline?

Keep in mind, it’s not against the law for officials to request the unmasking of a name. But to do it for political purposes, which would certainly include leaking to the media --- that is very much illegal. And, boy, was this political. Somebody leaked it to WAPO, and that might have been part of a conspiracy by a number of these people. If it were being done for legitimate national security purposes, it wouldn’t have leaked. Besides, there was never any evidence that Flynn was involved inappropriately with Russia. So, please, Mr. Durham, throw the book at them. I’d be happy to file an “amicus” brief on why this needs to happen.

Goodness, there was soooooo much interest in Flynn’s phone conversations, and, yes, it predated the Kislyak call of December 28, 2016, that prompted so much attention from the FBI. We know Obama had wanted him gone for years, for reasons we’ve elaborated, and the intel community seems to have been trying to set him up since 2014. Here are a few more highlights from all the unmasking that was done on Flynn’s calls:

Kislyak called Flynn on December 28 and spoke to him about a U.N. Security Council resolution to condemn Israel (not surprisingly, coordinated by President Obama). On THAT DAY, U.N. ambassador Samantha Power made an unmasking request on the transcript. This wasn’t the only time she’d called for the unmasking of Flynn’s name, either; it was the sixth. In fact, she was the very first person to request an unmasking on Flynn, on November 30, 2016, which was ten days after Trump named him national security adviser. (Imagine how crazy it must have made this whole crew to know Flynn would be serving Trump as his national security adviser!)

When Power was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee in October of 2017, she got a Biden-style brain freeze and said, “I have no recollection of making a request related to General Flynn.”

On December 28, which was after Obama announced new sanctions on Russia for “election meddling” --- blustering a lot and sending the Russian diplomats packing --- Kislyak contacted Flynn again. On THAT DAY, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made an unmasking request on the transcript. This was one of three such requests made on Flynn’s name by Clapper.

When Clapper was asked by Sen. Chuck Grassley on May 8, 2017, if he had ever made any unmasking requests of “Mr. Trump, his associates or any member of Congress,” Clapper took a loooooong pause and finally said, “Um...yes…in one case I did, that I specifically recall, but I can’t discuss it any further than that.”

Of course, we all know about the January 5 meeting in which Obama surprised Sally Yates with his knowledge of the Flynn surveillance and the particular call between Flynn and Kislyak. According to her own testimony, she stood there while Obama and Comey chatted about it and as Comey brought up the possible violation of the Logan Act. On THAT DAY, after the meeting, Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, made on unmasking request for Flynn’s name from that transcript.

Kyle Smith has a great commentary at NATIONAL REVIEW on the way these people abused their power.

As for D.C. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s joke of a courtroom, here’s a great opinion piece posted at ZeroHedge that will give you the bizarre backstory on his rulings and contradictory statements in this case and also tell you about his latest big idea: to appoint retired Judge John Gleeson to write an amicus brief “to present arguments in opposition to the government’s motion to dismiss.” That’s right, Sullivan wants to argue against the attorney general’s decision to drop the case. It gets worse: the brief is also to “address whether the Court should issue an order to show cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury,” presumably because he pleaded guilty when he wasn’t.

The other day, we made a joke about how this Spanish Inquisition-like reasoning makes Flynn guilty either way: either he’s guilty because he pleaded guilty (“Burn him!”), or he’s guilty because he says he’s not guilty (“Burn him!”). This actually is being done to him.

So why did Sullivan pick Judge Gleeson, a litigator perhaps best known for being the lead prosecutor in the murder and racketeering case against mob bosses John Gotti and Victor Orena? We looked at his bio page on the website for his law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton, and saw that in 2008, he wrote a paper for Hofstra Law Review called “The Sentencing Commission and Prosecutorial Discretion: The Role of Courts in Policing Sentencing Bargains,” and various others having to do with sentencing and, by inference, guilty pleas. (Might make some illuminating weekend reading if we can find them!) As you know, Judge Sullivan had already announced he’s soliciting amicus briefs from any outside groups who want to make arguments against dropping Flynn’s case.

But maybe he chose Gleeson because of something this judge has very recently written. Thanks to Laura Ingraham for turning this up, from Monday’s WASHINGTON POST, written by John Gleeson, David O’Neil and Marshall Miller. Headline: “The Flynn Case Isn’t Over Until The Judge Says It’s Over.” I think we already know what his amicus brief is going to say. Sol Wisenberg, appearing on her show, says Gleeson is wrong and cited case law. His theory is that Judge Sullivan is trying to force President Trump to issue a pardon if he wants Flynn to go free, “and that’s not right.”

If anyone should write an “amicus” brief on this case, it’s Alan Dershowitz, who wrote this just a few days before Judge Sullivan’s latest stunt.

Or perhaps Andrew C. McCarthy, who wrote this for Wednesday’s NATIONAL REVIEW.

Mike Huckabee

D.C. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has been in no hurry to dispense with the Michael Flynn case, and I’m sorry to report it’s not over yet.

Observers thought he might go ahead and dismiss the case early this week, but it was not to be. Tuesday evening, he “indefinitely postponed” any ruling. It’s not enough for him that the Department of Justice has had it reviewed by an outside U.S. attorney and recommended dropping it; Sullivan is inviting OUTSIDE GROUPS, no doubt with their own political agendas, to file amicus (“friend of the court”) briefs, to let them all come forward and make a case against Flynn’s exoneration.

That doesn’t sound like justice to me –- just the opposite. Although conservative groups may also file briefs, this ruling by Judge Sullivan will turn the case into a total political circus. The left will organize like crazy to deluge the court with condemnations of Flynn. (“He lied! He pleaded guilty!”) That is not how decisions of guilt or innocence should be made. Flynn should never have been questioned by the FBI in the first place, as investigators had found nothing, and after four years of this atrocity, Flynn deserves much better. I hate to say it, but he deserves a better JUDGE. Investigative reporter Sean Davis agrees.

Here’s the full story at FOX NEWS, updated to say that an ethics complaint is being filed against Judge Sullivan by independent journalist Michael Cernovich, because the judge has previously refused to let groups file pro-Flynn amicus briefs. Cernovich says the judge is “acting as a politician, not a judge.” I’ll second that motion.

In other (better) Flynn news, we know as of Tuesday evening at least part of what was in the mysterious satchel that acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell hand-delivered to the Justice Department last week. As Ed Henry reported on FOX NEWS, the contents were one of several batches being declassified and brought over and may explain the pre-emptive strikes in recent days by President Obama and former intel officials. The bag contains a list of the former Obama administration officials who targeted Flynn and unmasked him in classified transcripts of recorded conversations, including those with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

This could be illegal, and the leak of his name to the Washington Post was undeniably illegal. Flynn’s name had been redacted because, as an American citizen, he has certain legal rights to privacy. (I’ll wait while you fall to the floor, helpless with laughter.)

Seriously, leaking unmasked information and/or using it for political gain is against federal law. Well, unless Obama –- or James Comey, on behalf of Obama –- told you to do it. I’m only half kidding.

Grenell has declassified the names of those who unmasked Flynn’s identity between Election Day 2016 and Inauguration Day 2017. This was an intense period for the “Trump/Russia” investigators, especially January; we’ve all seen the timeline. In particular, Obama held an Oval Office confab on January 5 and afterwards discussed the Flynn recordings with Comey and Sally Yates.

Attorney General Bill Barr has recommended dropping the case against Flynn, and U.S. Attorney John Durham is reportedly looking at the unmasking and leaking to see if prosecutions are warranted. Those who want the names of the unmaskers will have to wait a while; according to Sarah Carter, they will be made public, but Grenell and Barr will “work through this and decide who is best to release the names.”

Of course, the HUGE question is this: how did Obama come to be so very well informed of the Flynn surveillance and his call with Kislyak? By January 5, he knew all about it, to Yates’ great surprise. Maybe we’ll know soon; sources tell Ed Henry that Grenell has “four or five” other batches of intel coming, and that “it could get sticky for [former CIA Director] John Brennan in particular.”

Apparently Brennan knew something that contradicted the chosen narrative that Russia wanted to help Trump win. It was that Russia actually wanted HILLARY to win, because she was “a known quantity” and “more malleable” than a wild-card businessman like Trump.

ASIDE: Isn’t this what we’ve been saying all along? Given all we know, it defies logic to say Russia backed Donald Trump, as the fictional Steele “dossier” claimed. Good heavens, look at what Hillary did for them –- how can anyone be surprised that Putin wanted her in the White House after she approved the deal that led to their owning 20 percent of America’s uranium supply? She might as well have been their lobbyist. Plus, there's no telling what they might have had on her to use as blackmail. No, Russia was “WITH HER."

Recall that our nation’s 17 (17!) intel agencies put together an “Intelligence Community Assessment” that concluded Russia had tried to damage Hillary and help Trump win in 2016. Evidence that Brennan suppressed intel saying Russia wanted Hillary is reportedly part of what Grenell is in the process of sending over. Even though Brennan had to be aware of the political origins of the “dossier,” he pushed hard for it to be included in the assessment, and he got his way, at least partly; a “dossier” summary was included.

So far, this all seems like old news to us –- and likely to you, too –- as we’ve followed investigative reporters who had excellent sources and were reporting on this for years, mostly into a vacuum. The important thing now is that we’re finally seeing evidence, not just what “sources say.” It’s all true. The reporters who’ve been worthy of our attention all along were not just way out ahead of the pack, but also right. Unlike the “journalists” so wedded to their anti-Trump narrative that they ignore anything that challenges it, we want most of all to be correct. If we’re not, we’ll say so. But so far, we are. Correct, that is.

Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsay Graham has been saying for months that he would seek testimony from Obama officials about the Russia investigation, issuing subpoenas if necessary. He wants to hear specifically about that January 5 meeting and the unmasking. As he told Sean Hannity Tuesday night, he wants to know if unmasking was “used as a political weapon.” He also wants to know “why Sally Yates didn’t know about the Flynn investigation but President Obama did.” And he wants Grenell to go ahead and release the names of the unmaskers.

The fact that the national security adviser for an incoming President was surveilled by the outgoing administration –- possibly the outgoing President –- is truly stunning. “If I ever find that the intelligence community is unmasking my phone calls to foreign leaders where I discuss foreign policy as a United States senator, heads will roll,” Graham said.

But the Senate has no prosecutorial power; that has to come from the Justice Department. The Senate can have hearings if they want to, but justice is in the hands of Durham and Barr, who must know this is the worst scandal in American government, possibly ever.

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

While looking for some background information on former FBI Director James Comey, I happened to click on a link that took me to a 2003 profile of him in NEW YORK magazine. How interesting –- I love to look back at contemporaneous observations, in this case from the days following 9/11 and the introduction of the Patriot Act.

The thrust of the piece seems to be that Comey is just a “good guy” who can’t really be pigeonholed politically, and in 2003, that uncomplicated picture might have been adequate to describe him. There was a lot I learned about him, though, including events surrounding the deeply tragic loss of his 9-day-old son from an infection that could easily have been treated at the hospital.

Comey always seems to have been obsessed with moral introspection –- not sure when he picked up the nickname “Cardinal Comey” –- but the impression given in the article is also that of someone who didn’t want to be too public about it, or about his work in general. The future FBI director made it clear to the interviewer that he thought Rudy Giuliani, for example, was too much of an attention-seeker for his taste, much more of a show-boater than he himself could ever be. In that respect, the James Comey we see now appears to have changed a great deal from the man being profiled in 2003, in that today he has no problem with being bathed in the glow of worshipful anti-Trump media attention, which can always be counted on to provide a forum for all his self-indulgent lecturing and posturing and criticizing and condescending and tweeting and famously bragging about going around established procedures because, hey, he thought he could get away with it.

And in light of what we know today about what Comey did to ruin the life and career of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn –- bringing up the Logan Act to President Obama as part of the plan to railroad Flynn over a phone conversation that was a perfectly appropriate part of his new job as Trump’s new national security adviser –- one paragraph in particular leaped out at me:

"When Comey arrives in Washington next month to become interim deputy attorney general (his appointment is subject to confirmation hearings), the Patriot Act’s provisions will be among his main weapons. ‘Filling in this spot is a big...deal. Especially on the terrorism side,’ says a senior staff member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. ‘...Now that the Patriot Act powers are in place,’ the staffer says, ‘the cast of characters --- the people who are really going to implement them --- really matters. A PROSECUTOR WITH THESE TOOLS CAN RUIN SOMEBODY’S LIFE. [Emphasis mine.] Comey comes in with a reputation as a pretty good professional. We’ll see.”

And now, seventeen years later, we have seen.

Another eye-popper, offered by a colleague of Comey’s: “Whenever a new prosecutor started working in the U.S. Attorney’s office, Comey would tell him, ‘Don’t you ever say something you don’t completely believe. I’m not even talking about shades of gray. If you don’t 100 percent believe it, don’t you dare say it. That’s why being a prosecutor is so great: You don’t have to make arguments you don’t believe in.’”

Where to start? When it came to going after Trump and his campaign associates and bringing down Michael Flynn, Comey was painting with more shades of gray than an HGTV house-flipper. Recall that he was one of several officials who signed phony FISA warrant applications, swearing that they contained only “verified” information when they all knew otherwise. And in 2018, he told Rachel Maddow of MSNBC that the FISA process is “incredibly rigorous” and claimed that Republicans’ criticism of the Carter Page FISA warrant application was “a political deal” that was “not based in substance or law.”

That’s 100 percent SOMETHING, all right, but I won't use that language here. I'll just say that the former director of the FBI is a real piece of work. Under Comey’s watch, and with his blessing, the media were presented with a phony “dossier” and a phony story about the resulting “Trump/Russia” investigation, from beginning to end. It was based on nothing, it found nothing, but it told us everything we need to know about the caliber of leadership at the FBI.

If you want to see a master prevaricator at work, just check out this interview Comey gave to Chris Wallace on FOX NEWS after the release of the Horowitz report. He sort-of got away with it at the time, but the internet is forever, and we know so much more now about what really was going on at the FBI. Even so, I’d be willing to bet that in his own mind, he’s still always 100 percent truthful, 100 percent virtuous, a model of goodity and purity for the ages. And if he has to BELIEVE the sky is green and the grass is blue to make other people believe it and still be able to look at himself in the mirror, by golly, he will.

From the archives, here’s that 2003 profile of Comey.

Mike Huckabee

Californians have voted further and further left for years. As they have, they’ve watched their borders be erased, illegal alien criminals being welcomed and released from jail (first because ICE wanted to deport them, and now because they might get sick if they stayed in jail, so they have to release them to rob and kill law-abiding citizens.) They’ve watched their taxes and gas prices (due to taxes) skyrocket even as the homeless population exploded and public sanitation became so bad that parks and sidewalks were covered in feces and drug needles and ancient diseases such as typhus made a return. Affordable housing is impossible to find, and small business owners are fleeing to other states. Some areas, such as Silicon Valley, have reverted to the era of feudalism, with the wealthy tech lords protected by security walls and armed guards in their castles (while denouncing security walls and guns for anyone else), as the surfs who work for them shelter in tiny dwellings or in their cars.

Not content with driving out the middle class and small business owners, the leftist leaders passed AB-5, which is killing the growing gig economy (in the name of “helping the workers,” naturally), making it impossible for contract workers from Uber drivers to club musicians to make a living.

And then came the coronavirus, which gave leftist power mongers their long-dreamed-of excuse to “fundamentally transform” society by ordering everyone to just stay home and live off government handouts, no matter how painful or irrational that may be (someone pointed out that leftists want to arrest Americans who go to work to feed their families, but not illegal immigrants because they just want to work to feed their families.) They have now gone so far than even some of the tech titans are starting to cry foul. Like electric car pioneer Elon Musk, who has had enough of the endless lockdown policy.

Musk called the lockdown that’s shuttered his Tesla factory in Fremont “the last straw.” He says he’s filing a lawsuit against the county and plans to move his HQ and future programs to Texas and Nevada, and he might have to close the Fremont plant, depending on how they are treated. He noted that Tesla is the last carmaker left in California. No surprise there.

And how did California officials react to this news? Did they reexamine their policies? Did they try to convince Musk that they could be reasonable, and he should keep his plant in California? Are you kidding? Of course not! San Diego Rep. Lorena Gonzalez, author of the disastrous AB-5 bill, responded by sending a profane tweet cursing Musk (warning: foul language at the link, the kind responsible adults don’t use in public forums.)

Musk offered a perfect reply, but his ultimate reply will come if and when he takes his thousands of jobs and joins the stampede out of California. Let us hope this is the “last straw,” the one that finally convinces Californians to come out of their homes, go to the polls and throw these lunatics out of office, so that they can discover what it feels like not to have a job or be able to pay their rent.

Mike Huckabee

Most people have tried to follow the guidelines to stay home and be cautious, but as the forecasts for the impact have proven to be grossly over-estimated, the only people who seem to want this to continue are certain elected officials who like telling people what to do.

I’ve been to some countries with authoritarian governments that govern with a brutal iron hand. I’ve always appreciated that as a citizen of the United States of America, I had guaranteed civil liberties and clearly defined rights that would be protected. Even if I actually committed a crime and the entire thing was captured from 6 angles on video, I was still presumed innocent until PROVEN guilty by a jury of my peers and I would be entitled to legal representation and due process. We’ve all been rankled by criminals who did horrible things, but who were protected by the very law that we hoped would put them in prison and away from our communities where they did real damage to the innocent. Then came the pandemic, and with it forced closure of businesses, events, and public places, and even forced demands to wear masks and refrain from even visiting our own relatives. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, my beloved America is starting to look like some of the truly horrible and abusive places I have visited and couldn’t wait to get out of.

This week, a hair salon owner in Dallas was actually put in handcuffs and taken to jail because she refused to apologize to a power-hungry judicial tyrant who gets to wear a robe at taxpayer expense. Her crime was not just that she chose to open her salon so that her employees could earn a living and feed their families. She was jailed because she refused to say the magic words ordered by the judge that she was selfish for allowing her employees to earn money to pay their rent, buy groceries, and pay their bills. The judge gets his paycheck by the way, and it’s a good one—over $150,000 a year. Meanwhile in Washington, members of the Nancy Pelosi-led House refused to return to Washington or to engage in session via online meetings because they didn’t think it was safe. They are fine with YOU driving a truck, working in a hospital or nursing home, answering calls as a firefighter or policeman, or stocking the shelves at your local supermarket. But they’re not going to work. But they are getting paid anyway. And YOU are paying them.

Then it hit me. Want to end the most ridiculous and dictatorial aspects of the shutdown? It’s simple. Whatever level of government orders a shutdown for others, its members should cease being paid until those under the shutdown can return to work. If your business can’t open and YOU can’t earn a living, then your mayor, your county officials, your governor or your Congress who shuts you down shouldn’t take one penny of pay until YOU can. You know what will happen? Those orders will get relaxed. Then it will be up to you whether you feel safe venturing out and opening your business or patronizing a business. It’s called freedom.

We’re Americans and we ought to act like it. And the people who were elected to serve us need to start treating us like Americans with fundamental civil liberties instead of like 1st graders who are told when it’s appropriate to go to the restroom and to line up for a trip to the lunchroom so we can eat what someone else has decided is good for us.

So to mayors, governors, county officials and members of Congress as well as the appointed and employed government officials I say this: Since you’re a public servant and the people you work for AREN’T getting paid, stop collecting YOUR paycheck until they get theirs.

You won’t see out of control judges putting hair stylists in jail for not saying the right words. As I said last week-I fear that I MIGHT get a virus. I fear even more that I will lose the liberties that make being an American unique. I’ve visited some police states. I don’t want to live in one.

Mike Huckabee

Monday, I told you about what we discovered deep within the 88-page transcript of a House Intel Committee interview with CrowdStrike cybersecurity expert Shawn Henry. As it turns out, others such as Dan Bongino and Tucker Carlson picked up on that same piece of news and did commentaries as well. It’s a huge story that, sadly, most of the media will bury under a pile of Barr-bashing and scary coronavirus stories. Really, though, this story is arguably the scariest one of all, because it shows our country has spent the past several years in the grip of a different kind of contagion: mass hysteria.

Mr. Henry’s testimony, hidden for three years, reveals that the lie Democrats have told since 2016 goes beyond the phony assertion that there is evidence Trump was in cahoots with Vladimir Putin while running for President. They also lied when they said there was evidence of the Russian government trying to hurt Hillary by hacking DNC emails. According to Henry, the one in charge of CrowdStrike’s investigation, they found no direct evidence, only “indications” and assumptions. (I mentioned in my earlier commentary that they are known to have made mistakes before when attributing computer hacks to Russia.) But a Russian hack fits the narrative. When Henry was brought in by Clinton lawyer and helpful dirt-disher Michael Sussmann to handle the “remediation," it was Sussmann who told him the FBI had already found “indications” that caused them to suspect the Russian government, essentially handing Henry the client’s preferred narrative on a silver platter.

RELATED READING: With "Russia Hoax" exposed, it's time to look at CrowdStrike

The fact is, we don’t know if Russia hacked the emails of the DNC and John Podesta, head of Hillary’s campaign. Maybe they did; maybe somebody else did. But there is no EVIDENCE that they did, although California Rep. Adam Schiff has been talking about the “evidence” every chance he got. This is a dangerous man --- and I don’t mean only if you get between him and a TV camera. Over and over, he has claimed there is "evidence in plain sight” about Russian “collusion” with the Trump team.

It is an abominable lie. But he tells it so often, he must be using Lenin's strategy of “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” I have my own version to offer Mr. Schiff: “A lie told often enough just makes you that much more of a dirty liar.”

To stick to his fake story while still maintaining he’s telling the truth, Schiff is trying to claim the “evidence in plain sight” is the Trump Tower meeting. Yeah, that’s the ticket! We all know that meeting took place. It involved Trump campaign people and some Russians. So, all right: “collusion!”

But not so fast. In April, John Solomon uncovered evidence about that meeting that shows it to have been downright inconsequential. Some FBI memos concerning the Trump Tower meeting had been released, specifically the July 12, 2017, interview with Anatoli Samochornov, a trusted translator for the State Department, and Solomon found that they provided a great deal of exculpatory material that Mueller’s team had conveniently left out of their final report.

In Solomon’s words, “Samochornov’s eyewitness account entirely debunks the media’s narrative." We now can see the FBI agent’s '302' notes on Samochornov, in which the translator “concurred with Donald Trump Jr.’s accounts of the meeting.”

Recall that at the time of this interview, the media were going crazy about the Trump Tower meeting, hoping it might be THE piece of “collusion” evidence. Imagine: we had Don Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort lured to a meeting by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskya by the promise of “dirt” on Hillary! They ridiculed Don Jr.’s account that the meeting was really about a Russian lobbying campaign to change adoption practices under a human rights law called the Magnitsky Act.

Veselnitskya had hired Samochornov to be her translator for her legal work, and he was present at the Trump Tower meeting in that capacity. While he was being interviewed by the FBI, they wrote this: “Samochornov could not speak about other occasions, but said there was no discussion about dirt on Hillary Clinton. Samochornov did not think Hillary Clinton was mentioned by name at the meeting. Samochornov had not heard Veselnitskya say anything about having ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton. Veselnitskya did not offer any materials during the meeting and no papers were exchanged.”

So, it really was about the Magnitsky Act. In fact, most of the presentation was done by an American lobbyist, according to the translator. It was brief, as people had a campaign to run.

NONE of this information appeared in the final special counsel report. A Senate staffer involved in the Russia investigation told John Solomon, “The omission from the Mueller report leaves a distorted picture that has been allowed to persist for more than two years. We are looking into the circumstances of the editing of that report and why DOJ allowed such investigations and false public narratives to carry on in the face of significant evidence of innocence.”

So they DON’T have evidence of collusion, but they lie and say they do. They DO have evidence of innocence, but they lie by omission and leave it out. This farce has gone on long enough. Thankfully, acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell is calling for the release of more and more long-withheld evidence that, sure enough, is turning out to be exculpatory. And no amount of spinning by Schiff --- or even Obama, who’s desperate now to keep the lid on his own role in the plot to take down Trump --- will stop us from calling a lie a lie.

Liking the idea of getting dirt on one’s political opponent is not wrong. In this case, though, there was no “collusion” with Russians to get it. The only “collusion” we’ve seen was in the Hillary camp, when they paid for “dirt” from Russians.

Speaking of Obama’s role, Mollie Hemingway at THE FEDERALIST has a great piece on what was done to target Michael Flynn and also to hide classified information from the incoming Trump team. We’ve covered most of the details, but she lays them all out in a revealing timeline. Highly recommended.

Mike Huckabee

It always defied logic to think President Obama wasn’t in the loop when it came to the “Trump/Russia” investigation and the targeting of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. And now, a just-released document confirms that he was. This knowledge comes from an unexpected source, then-deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, in the “302” notes from her interview with the FBI during the special counsel investigation. These notes were filed by the Justice Department on Wednesday with Sidney Powell’s motion to dismiss charges against Flynn.

The plot turns on that now-infamous January 5, 2017, meeting in the Oval Office. President-elect Donald Trump would be taking office on January 20, and Flynn would be “ambushed” at his new White House digs on January 24. On January 4, the day before the White House meeting, FBI investigators had notified top FBI officials that they were dropping the Flynn investigation, as nothing incriminating (“derogatory”) had been found. Having the target turn up clean seems like an excellent reason for closing a case, but FBI official Peter Strzok had immediately notified them to keep it open, as the “7th Floor” –- Director Comey and other top-tier officials –- was involved.

The only reason Strzok would’ve had to keep the case open was so they could connive their way into a surprise interview with Flynn, challenge his memory of something they already knew, and get him to “lie” about something that was absolutely in his purview to do, Logan Act or no Logan Act. The whole idea of him “lying” to them was a joke, as he knew from his experience in intel that any phone conversation with a foreign ambassador would’ve been recorded.

Anyway, according to Sally Yates’ “302,” Obama called her and Comey over during the January Oval Office meeting to discuss Flynn’s phone conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. OBAMA brought it up. Obviously, he already knew something about this; Yates was surprised by the turn of the conversation. “Obama started by saying he had ‘learned of the information about Flynn’ and his conversation with Kislyak about sanctions,” the “302” read. “Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter (plausible deniability?), but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information.”

Keep in mind that Obama detests Flynn, who as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency had been a vocal opponent of his Iran policy and, in particular, of his “baby,” the misguided Iran nuclear deal. Obama advised President-elect Trump to be on guard against two things: North Korea and Michael Flynn (!). Here's the story from May of 2017.

According to Yates, it was Comey who told Obama about the Logan Act, an anachronistic law from 1799 (before telephones) that prohibits American private citizens from opposing current foreign affairs policies. It’s been on the books all this time but has NEVER been used to successfully prosecute. And Flynn wasn’t a private citizen --- he was the incoming national security adviser, for gosh sake, and this was the transition for President-elect Trump. I doubt these points came up in the conversation, though.

It’s already been established through the handwritten notes of Bill Priestap that the FBI was talking about getting Flynn to admit to violating that law.

Yates told the FBI that she wasn’t aware of the Kislyak call or the Logan Act discussions that had taken place within the FBI. She said she thought it might be a “technical violation” of the Logan Act (translation: a ridiculous stretch) during the presidential transition, but that the FBI “was more eager to pursue prosecution initially.”

Yates said Comey agreed that if the Kislyak call fell during the Obama administration --- and, technically, it did --- he would notify the White House chief of staff. But it says in her “302” that “the FBI said at some point that notification would mess up an ongoing investigation, but Yates said it was not always clear what exactly the FBI was doing to investigate Flynn.” Comey kept his plan close to the vest.

In fact, it was only AFTER the two agents Strzok and Pientka went to Flynn’s West Wing office to question him that Comey called Yates to tell her about it. According to her “302,” she was very “frustrated” about this. “She felt a decision to conduct an interview with Flynn should have been coordinated with [the Department of Justice].” She said the Flynn interview was “problematic” because White House counsel should have been notified. Indeed. But we’ve known for a long time that Comey went around them anyway; he bragged about it later and said he thought he could get away with doing that. It was a gross abuse of power.

But the Obama White House has been touched by this now.

By the way, Biden was in the Oval Office meeting, too. It would be good to question him, but he can probably be counted on to forget there even was a meeting. I don't mean saying “I don’t recall” while under oath, but literally NOT REMEMBERING it happened.

We can already see the frantic spinning on the left. Thursday, Jerrold Nadler, impeachment-mad chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, tweeted, “This is outrageous! Flynn PLEADED GUILTY to lying to investigators. The evidence against him is overwhelming. Now, a politicized DOJ is dropping the case. The decision to overrule the special counsel is without precedent and warrants an immediate explanation.” In Nadler World, the evidence that Flynn was set up and coerced to plead guilty simply doesn't exist. With few exceptions, that evidence won’t exist in Media World, either.

But there's much more to come, and only so much spinning even the most vicious Trump-hater can do. (What’s coming today and next week is said to be even more conclusive.) Thursday, there were additional “Spygate” revelations, these about Adam Schiff’s House Impeachment Committee –- I mean, House Intelligence Committee –- with transcripts that undercut the Democrats’ narrative of a legitimate “Russia” investigation. Thanks to acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, Schiff had to release thousands of declassified transcripts from the “Russia” investigation showing that, more than a year into it, FBI and intel officials could offer nothing in the way of specific proof of “collusion” with Moscow. All they offered were rambling explanations.

Sen. Chuck Grassley believes there will be prosecutions.

Here’s one huge revelation from Thursday: Hillary/DNC attorney Michael Sussman of Perkins Coie acknowledged under questioning by Republican staff (of course) that in February of 2017, he shared “dirt” he had gotten on the Trump organization’s possible ties to Russia WITH THE CIA. So the CIA was getting its anti-Trump rumors directly from a Clinton lawyer. SEE, IT ALWAYS GOES BACK TO HILLARY. Sussman wouldn’t say where he got the dirt, just that it came “from a client.” Probably Glenn Simpson and/or Chris Steele.

Schiff wrote a laughable preface to the material, saying, “The transcripts released today richly detail evidence of the Trump campaign’s efforts to invite, make use of, and cover up Russia’s help in the 2016 presidential election.” Actually, they do just the opposite.

Here’s John Solomon with all the details. This is great.

And here’s some great weekend reading, from Gregg Jarrett.

Mike Huckabee

Last week, I reminded you of the old term that communist regimes like China and the USSR used to describe wealthy leftists who parroted their propaganda in the West. That term was “useful idiots.” Now, in turn, this story has reminded me of it.

On the other hand, kudos to Miley Cyrus, who admitted she has no clue what the pandemic is like for people who are really suffering from the lockdown. She said the privileged lives of celebrities may be on pause, but "I am comfortable in my space and able to put food on my table and financially stable, and that's just not the story for a lot of people." She said some of her famous friends are hesitant to come on her Instagram talk show because “it almost doesn't feel right for celebrities to share our experience. Because it just doesn't compare."

Good for her for recognizing that. It’s funny how well-heeled liberals who love to accuse other people of exercising too much “privilege” are so blind to their own in this instance. Despite her claim of being clueless, I suspect that Miley Cyrus actually is a lot wiser on this particular issue than many mayors, judges and even Governors I could name.

Mike Huckabee

A MUST-READ UPDATE: After the following commentary appeared in yesterday’s Evening Edition, a magnificent op-ed by James A. Gagliano was posted at the WASHINGTON EXAMINER. The headline says it all: “Michael Flynn was railroaded by Comey’s FBI.” Gagliano concludes that Flynn definitely was set up –- as opposed to Hillary, who got special treatment –- and that this absolutely was driven by politics. His piece sums up just about everything we’ve discussed here and notes other serious problems with the FBI’s activities as well, such as Lisa Page’s involvement in re-writing Flynn’s 302 (interview notes) when she wasn’t even present at the interview.

"Careful examination of fresh facts,” he says, “related to Flynn pleading guilty to Title 18 U.S. Code 1001 (lying to a federal agent) provides an eye-popping and clear-cut case of investigative inconsistencies and partisan political bias.”

Oh, and who is James A. Gagliano? He’s someone who knows all about how things are supposed to be done at the FBI, having worked there for 25 years. He’s now an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John’s University and a member of the board of directors of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. In addition, he’s a law enforcement analyst for the folks at CNN, who probably won’t be inviting him to any cocktail parties after they’ve read this.

And now, since he's a law enforcement analyst, I just hope he'll tell us what has to happen to put some people behind bars for what they did to an innocent American who served his country for over 30 years.

ORIGINAL COMMENTARY: Recent developments in the Michael Flynn case have led to the release, in just over a week, of a massive amount of “Brady” material that had been withheld literally for years. Flynn attorney Sidney Powell says there's more to come. Believe it or not, there are so many exculpatory documents that, if laid end-to-end, they would reach all the way to...the door of the White House Oval Office.

Figuratively speaking, of course, but I am not kidding. You won’t read about this in very many places, but when we put two and two together, it’s obvious that President Obama HAD to know all about “Crossfire Razor,” as well as the umbrella investigation “Crossfire Hurricane,” and was, in fact, quite aware of the Flynn take-down. It's ridiculous to conclude otherwise.

We already knew he had some pretty strong reasons for wanting Flynn out. We knew he didn’t appreciate Flynn’s vocal opposition to his Iran nuclear agreement and hated the thought that Flynn would help Trump dismantle it. Flynn thought it was a terrible deal and had not kept his opinion to himself. The Iran deal and Obamacare were supposed to be the twin stars in Obama’s Legacy Crown. Obama saw Flynn as a major threat.

We also knew that the intelligence community didn’t appreciate Flynn’s plan to streamline the bureaucracy and give the military greater independence in the field, without relying on the CIA, which he thought just slowed them down on the battlefield.

And we knew that military officials didn’t appreciate Flynn’s desire to get their administration “leaner and meaner.” He was a foe of duplication and waste. He was advocating --- horror of horrors --- audits of the Department of Defense and the Pentagon. (Why, we might have found out what Stefan Halper was really being paid to do and what kind of expense account he had.)

These reasons already seemed like enough for “the swamp” to want to take Flynn down. But Andrew C. McCarthy has just offered another reason, the biggest one yet, a reason so obvious to me now that if it were a snake, it would’ve bitten me. Come to think of it, the scenario he describes is full of snakes.

As a preface, let me say that McCarthy is convinced the sneaky “ambush” interview of Flynn had not been long in the works. Emails from January 21 and 22 (Trump was sworn in on January 20) show that they didn’t start out with the surprise perjury trap plan. They needed a way to set Flynn up without giving the White House any notice about the meeting, and this was really the only alternative they had. As Bill Priestap said in his notes, get him to admit to a violation (of the Logan Act??), or get him to lie, so they can prosecute or see him fired. But the interview appears to have been sort of a last-ditch idea, because with Trump about to take office, THEY HAD TO GET RID OF FLYNN RIGHT AWAY.

And the interview had to just come out of nowhere. If they had approached the White House with a request to interview Flynn, the way they were supposed to, the White House could have turned them down. That’s why Comey was so stealthy about it –- he didn’t even officially inform acting Attorney General Sally Yates, because then she would have been obligated to alert White House attorney Don McGahn. This interview was their silver bullet against Flynn, and they HAD to make it count.

So, to the point: why was it so critical that they get Flynn out immediately? It goes much further than the reasons stated above. Simple: it was so the phony “Trump/Russia” investigation would be able to continue into Trump’s presidency. (There are varying opinions regarding what constitutes “treason,” but this sure fits mine.) Flynn was one of Trump’s few allies in his new administration, and, being an experienced member of the intel community himself, he would have found out about the bogus investigation quickly and put a stop to it.

When Comey gave that self-satisfied interview about sending “a couple of guys over,” he made it sound as if, hey, he just did it because of the chaos in the new administration and because he could get away with it. That's not the truth. He did it because they HAD to get this session with Flynn to trap him right away, and they couldn’t risk the Trump White House saying no, or saying maybe in a few weeks, or saying okay but they’d send a lawyer or two to sit in.

As McCarthy says, “Michael Flynn was not the objective. He was the obstacle.” The FBI’s real objective was, he says, “first formed in collaboration with Obama administration officials. Recall the January 5 Oval Office meeting to brief President Obama on Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election. Comey, Brennan, Clapper and Mike Rogers were there to brief the group. The guest list included President Obama, Vice President Biden, national security adviser (and Flynn’s predecessor) Susan Rice, and acting Attorney General Sally Yates.

To put this meeting into perspective, here’s what McCarthy wrote about it in February of 2018.

Importantly, the Trump Tower meeting that ended with a briefing for Trump from Comey about salacious stories in the Steele “dossier” would take place the following day. By that time, the original FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign was set to expire in a couple of weeks, just as Trump was taking office. So the Obama administration would have to figure out how to renew that while Obama was still in. The officials at the January Oval Office meeting needed to keep an investigation going on someone who was about to be sworn in as President.

We all know the January 20 Susan Rice email to herself that says Obama wanted everything done “by the book.” But there’s more of even greater significance that isn’t as widely quoted, and it speaks to their need to keep a GREAT BIG SECRET from the incoming President: “President Obama says he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.” And she closes with Obama’s instruction to Comey to inform him “if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team.”

Such as, perhaps, an incoming national security adviser who was caught lying about conversations with Russian officials? There you go, the perfect excuse not to share classified information! In one move, they’d get rid of Flynn before he could find out anything AND justify keeping the new President in the dark about the ongoing investigation. At Obama’s direction.

Anyway, the picture is clear now. If you don’t know what a “soft coup” looks like, I’d say it looks exactly like the picture painted by McCarthy after he’s connected all the dots.

Mike Huckabee

In breaking news, the long-awaited August 2, 2017, memo from then-deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein outlining the scope of the Mueller special counsel investigation has been declassified (well, partially), and it’s almost unimaginably bad. No wonder it was kept under wraps for so long.

We’ll have more to say about this on Monday, but for your weekend reading pleasure, Sean Davis at THE FEDERALIST brings the details to you.

Thanks to Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina for his repeated requests that finally led to the document’s release to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the Justice Department. It shows that Rosenstein essentially turned Mueller loose to look far beyond whatever dealings with Russia his targets might or might not have had.

In other words, the scope was pretty much unlimited. Mueller was tasked with investigating “1) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and 2) any matters that arose or may arise directly from that investigation.”

"The legal foundation for Mueller’s appointment is crumbling,” Graham said Wednesday night. “I supported the Mueller investigation because I didn’t know [that there was no foundation]. Now I know why Mueller didn’t find anything.” It’s true that Mueller's team never did find any evidence to link any associate of the Trump campaign with Russia’s election interference. OF COURSE he didn't --- there was never any legitimate reason to be looking at that in the first place.

To provide his “foundation” and justify the authorization of a special counsel, Rosenstein pulled from the bogus Christopher Steele “dossier,” which had been funded, through sneaky channels, by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC (same thing), including unsupported claims about Paul Manafort and Carter Page. This was after the “7th Floor” at the FBI knew the problems with the “dossier” and with Steele as a source. Inescapable conclusion: they didn’t give a flying fig about whether the junk “dossier” was true as long as it gave them a pretense to go after the President.

Rosenstein ordered Mueller to investigate allegations that Page “committed a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.” Keep in mind, by this time they had already been spying on him for months and had found nothing to justify this. As you know, there has never been any evidence that Page was working with Russia, and he has never been charged with anything at all.

Rosenstein’s memo casts a wide net; it includes not only Page and Manafort but also Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and one other mystery person whose name is still redacted. (We don't know for sure, but does anyone think it ISN'T President Trump? Who else would still have his name redacted?)

Rosenstein targeted Flynn for activities that, though perfectly appropriate for an incoming national security adviser, could be tied, however ludicrously, to the Logan Act, which dates from 1799 and under which no one has ever been successfully prosecuted. He also targeted Papadopoulos, alleging that he was a secret, unregistered foreign agent of...not Russia, but Israel.

As Sean Davis reports, what is now evident from this memo is that Rep. Davin Nunes of California was correct when he said Rosenstein had used the fictitious Steele “dossier” to justify and direct Mueller’s special counsel probe. What do you know --- Nunes turns out to be right again!

This incredible overreach should be an embarrassment to the FBI. Again, we’ll have much more Monday. In the meantime, here’s some solid reporting from Gregg Re at FOX NEWS, who says the memo “makes clear that Rosenstein didn’t hesitate to explicitly authorize a deep-dive criminal probe into the Trump team that extended well beyond Russian interference efforts.”

"Collusion is not a U.S. crime,” Re explains, “meaning Mueller had a broad mandate to investigate essentially any foreign involvement by these officials in search of some criminal activity. In other words, a fishing expedition. They were going in search of crimes. Contrast this with the way Hillary and her Bleachbit-happy campaign people were treated.

There’s still a giant block of copy in the memo that remains redacted. According to Re, “speculation has swirled” about whether it has to do with investigating President Trump. (Remember, one of the names of the people to be investigated is still redacted.) Message to Bill Barr, who can declassify anything he wants: LET'S SEE IT ALL.

Mike Huckabee

Shelley Luther, the Dallas hair salon owner who reopened her salon despite a shutdown order from Democratic county judge Clay Jenkins, was fined $7000 and sentenced to a week in jail for ripping up a cease-and-desist order and defying a temporary restraining order. (I’ll just make note in passing that across America, Democrat officials are letting real criminals out of jail because they might catch the virus there, and putting citizens who just want to work into jail where they might catch the virus because they didn’t do enough to keep from catching the virus. This is liberal logic in a nutshell, with the emphasis, as always, on “nut.”)

Luther argued that her salon was on the verge of bankruptcy, she had to make money to feed her kids and keep her home, and she was about to have to fire all her stylists. She also pointed out that she was following stricter safety guidelines than stores like Walmart that were allowed to stay open, and that hair salons are experts in maintaining sanitary conditions.

Judge Eric Moye, who wrote the restraining order, told her that if she apologized and shut down her salon, he might consider only fining her “in lieu of the incarceration which you’ve demonstrated that you have so clearly earned.” But she refused, replying, “Feeding my kids is not selfish. If you think the law is more important than kids getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision, but I am not going to shut the salon.”

The fine will cost her $500 a day until the salon is legally allowed to reopen, which under the new guidelines from Gov. Greg Abbott is this Friday. Ironically, Luther will be much more likely to contract the virus in jail, where 248 cases have been identified, than at her salon.

Judge Moye told Luther that the “rule of law cannot and does not operate when individuals take it upon themselves to decide” what they can and cannot do. I would remind the judge that the “rule of law” requires laws to be passed by elected representatives of the people, not conjured up by judges in defiance of citizens' constitutional rights.

Ms Luther may end up going to jail, but if so, it could be a Nelson Mandela-style Pyrrhic victory for the state. This case has received nationwide attention, with Luther becoming a symbol of the “Get back to work” movement. A GoFundMe account to pay her fine, bills and legal fees has racked up nearly $170,000 in donations as of this morning.

The judges who think they can intimidate Texans with threats of fines and jail don’t know much about their own state, or the Constitution. They could actually learn a thing or two from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Tuesday, that court heard arguments in a challenge by the Wisconsin legislature to state officials’ authority to impose a lockdown. This is what Justice Rebecca Bradley asked:

“Where in the Constitution did the people of Wisconsin confer authority on a single, unelected cabinet secretary to compel almost 6 million people to stay at home, close their businesses and face imprisonment if they don’t comply… Isn’t it the very definition of tyranny?”

Memo to President Trump: I think we’ve just found your next Supreme Court nominee.

Mike Huckabee

Hold on! So you mean there’s a downside to being a government snitch? Who knew?!

After ordering “non-essential” businesses to shut down, St. Louis County created an online form that encouraged people to rat on any businesses they saw that dared to open. More than 900 people filed complaints, but the county didn’t publicize the fact that the form was an official county record, which means it’s public information.

A man named Jared Totsch got a copy and posted it on Facebook, exposing the names of all the snitches, who are now worried about retaliation. To which he replied, "I'd call it poetic justice, instant Karma, a dose of their own medicine. What goes around, comes around. They are now experiencing the same pain that they themselves helped to inflict on those they filed complaints against."

One of the people was interviewed by a local TV station, and she complained that she and two other people in her home have auto-immune issues and were frustrated by seeing lines outside stores that should have been closed. Understandable, but if you’re in a high-risk category, you would have to take more precautions anyway, like not standing in those lines. And the people who ran the businesses, as well as the people who obviously needed their services enough to stand in those lines, were probably more than frustrated by being told to just shut up and go bankrupt.

At this point, nobody should be taking unnecessary risks, but that doesn’t mean that every business must shut down indefinitely while we all hide inside plastic bubbles like the young John Travolta. As Issac Newton pointed out long ago, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If the government doesn’t want radical, aggressive, irresponsible reactions to its policies, then it needs to stop imposing radical, aggressive, irresponsible policies.

Mike Huckabee

Continuing in its grand tradition of handing out journalism prizes to the New York Times for whitewashing the horrors of communism in the 1930s and to the Times and the Washington Post for their in-depth coverage of the “Russian collusion” scandal that turned out to be a combination hoax/attempted coup, the Pulitzer Prize Committee has once again disgraced itself. The Pulitzer Prize for an Essay was given to the author of a New York Times piece that falsely claimed that the main impetus for the American Revolution and the birth of America was preserving slavery, which helped birth the Times’ repugnant “1619 Project” to replace history with anti-American propaganda in schools.

It was a lie so slanderous to the Founders that it sparked the creation of “1776,” a project to refute it founded by prominent African-Americans historians, scholars and writers.

No offense to some of the other Pulitzer winners, whom I’m sure did good work, but when it comes to anything political, it’s obvious that the prize is, to steal a line from former Vice President John Nance Garner, “not worth a bucket of warm spit” (and that’s more actual American history than you’ll learn from the 1619 Project.)

In fact, if you’d like to win a Pulitzer Prize of your own, I have a suggestion for where you can probably find one.

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

STILL think this hasn't been planned for a long time? One way or another, Michelle Obama's place on the ticket was going to be arranged. It's time for a few more articles like this.

The piece I'm linking to has a brand new reason why Biden should pick her: Since everybody knows she doesn't want to be in politics (right), his ability to convince her to do it will tell voters he has the persuasive power to be a leader! (See, this way, if she changes her mind, it won't be because she's wishy-washy or disingenuous but because Biden's such an incredibly persuasive guy.) The irony: if Michelle is on the ticket, it will be with the goal of making HER the leader.