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

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

South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been saying for months that he would hold hearings on the “Trump/Russia” investigation and FISA abuse by the FBI. I know, I know –- more hearings, lots of oratory, lots of lawyerly evasion, maybe little to come of it all. On the other hand, it might actually be pretty darn productive; the first witness scheduled is former deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Rosenstein released a statement saying how “grateful” he is to Sen. Graham for the “opportunity” to testify. I'm not kidding; he actually said that. Personally, I’m “grateful” for the “opportunity” to see this guy squirm under oath before the committee. What he has previously said under oath sounds utterly ridiculous in light of what we now know about the Carter Page FISA warrant, so this might really be amusing. I might even write up my own list of “just for fun” questions for Mr. Rosenstein.

"During my three decades of service in law enforcement,” his statement reads in part, “I learned firsthand that most local, state and federal law enforcement officers deserve the high confidence people place in them, but that even the best law enforcement officers sometimes make mistakes and that some engage in willful misconduct.” Well, he would know! Also, I’d want him to define the word “best.”

Here’s Rosenstein’s entire statement.

Recall that Rosenstein signed off on the last renewal of the FISA warrant against Carter Page, well after it was known they'd turned up no real evidence. He also wrote the “scope” memo (first and second versions) for Robert Mueller’s special counsel team, tasking Mueller in August of 2017 with investigating allegations against Carter Page (innocent), Michael Flynn (innocent), George Papadopoulos (innocent) and Paul Manafort (innocent of anything having anything to do with the campaign).

There’s yet a third Mueller “scope” memo that hasn’t been declassified yet; Rosenstein wrote it in October of 2017, long after they knew the "Trump-Russia" evidence was fiction.

No doubt Rosenstein will be asked about reports that he talked with other agents about wearing a wire into the Oval Office as part of a plan to use the 25th Amendment to get Trump removed from office. Sources told NBC NEWS that he was only “joking” about recording the President. Maybe he’ll regale us with a few more hilarious jokes while he’s under oath in Senate chambers.

Mark your calendars; the Senate’s “Oversight of the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation: Day 1” will be June 3.

Speaking of the Mueller investigation, John Dowd, President Trump’s lead attorney during that time, spoke out on Tuesday in an interview with Gregg Jarrett, saying the special counsel engineered a perjury trap for the President in the exact same way that James Comey’s FBI set a trap for then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

"Mueller’s scheme was the same one captured in the FBI set-up notes pertaining to Flynn,” Dowd told Jarrett. “They knew they had nothing, but using their official power they created and perpetuated the fraud of an investigation.”

Dowd said that his transparency with the special counsel team was turned against the President and that Trump’s legal counsel was “misled.” According to Dowd, they deliberately exploited what they knew to be untrue and discredited information (I assume he meant the Steele “dossier,” which was still kicking around after being debunked as fiction).

Stunningly, Mueller ADMITTED during a meeting with the President’s lawyers on March 5, 2018, that there was no evidence of Trump-Russia “collusion” to influence the 2016 election. But remember how they still tried to push Trump to testify? Dowd said he thought they had a “trusting” relationship with Mueller, “based on his word and handshake.” (Are you kidding me?) The special counsel had received “everything” they asked for, “including the most intimate notes of conversations.” Dowd didn’t see how there could be a “whisper” of obstruction under these circumstances.

As Mueller kept pushing for Trump to testify, Dowd realized it was a perjury trap, as this was the only thing they could possibly get. “Robert Mueller --- ‘D.C.’s great man’ --- completely and deliberately misled us in order to set up a perjury/false statement trap for POTUS," Dowd said. "It was a monstrous lie and scheme to defraud.”

This isn’t just Dowd's word; he came to the interview supplied with documents and letters supporting his accusations. Jay Sekulow, another of Trump’s lawyers, confirmed some of his accounts as well. As Jarrett says of the documents, “They paint a vivid picture of a special counsel determined to damage the President with an investigation bereft of any credible evidence.”

I hope you’ll read Jarrett’s piece in full; it goes into more detail about what Mueller was up to, particularly in trying to “get” Trump on obstruction simply for firing FBI Director James Comey. (No one has ever more richly deserved to be fired than Comey.) Mueller even said that Trump’s criticism of the special counsel might be construed as obstruction. Trump wasn’t even supposed to say anything in his own defense.

Quoting Jarrett: “Dowd felt that Mueller and his subordinates were now living in an alternate universe where their version of the law bore no resemblance to statutes, Supreme Court decisions, and accepted constitutional law.”

I hope John Durham has been talking with Dowd in his investigation of the “Russia” case. Sounds as if Dowd could tell him a thing or two about how that was really conducted. He told Jarrett he wants them all to be held to account for their corruption and dishonesty and their phony three-year investigation. NONE of them should walk, he said. “They knew there was nothing to investigate. People subverted the system of justice...It’s staggering. The lies were monstrous. It was all pretense and fraud.”

Finally, in breaking news announced Wednesday by the Justice Department, Attorney General Bill Barr has tapped Western Texas U.S. Attorney John Bash to look specifically into the issue of unmasking, as a support to the investigation being conducted by Durham.

Unmasking, when done for an appropriate reason, is not illegal, but it's a big deal, and there are many questions about why so many unmaskings took place, especially during Obama’s second term. Of course, there’s also the rapt attention that was being paid to Mike Flynn’s phone calls.

Incidentally, U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, who was assigned by Barr to review the Flynn case, told Barr that based on what we now know, he doesn’t believe that ANY ONE of the 93 U.S. attorneys in the country would have continued to prosecute Flynn. So the mystery deepens as to why Judge Emmet Sullivan so bizarrely insists on doing it.

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

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

Opening an FBI investigation into a presidential campaign is supposed to be a huge deal. If government officials are going to allege that members of a campaign --- maybe even the candidate --- are in cahoots with Russia (!), they'd better have the goods.

But a newly declassified memo (another one!) makes it clear that the Papadopoulos “evidence” used to justify “Crossfire Hurricane” was really just flimsy hearsay. They had to be looking for any pretext they could put together. Since they had no evidence of criminality, they turned to Downer’s “suggestion” that Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos might be talking with Russia on the release of Hillary’s emails. As John Solomon writes, “[Alexander] Downer had heard the information about the Russians during a bar conversation in May 2016 from Papadopoulos, who had heard it two months earlier from a European professor who had heard it from Russians allegedly.”

The investigation, he says, was opened based on a “third-hand ‘suggestion’ of wrongdoing and the thinnest of suspicions that illegal foreign lobbying had occurred.” It’s clear from the memo that the criminal basis for opening “Hurricane” was suspected violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, but the memo does not mention a single incidence of violating FARA.

Peter Strzok expressed reservations about the evidence he had, yet he pressed forward. Sometimes, as they say, you’ve “gotta go with what you got.” Strzok both drafted the memo and approved the investigation himself, keeping the memo away from interagency oversight.

Kevin Brock, former head of counterintelligence for the FBI, told Solomon, “There is nothing in the [electronic communication] that meets the traditional thresholds for opening up a [Foreign Agents Registration Act] or [counterintellgence] investigation. It appears hastily constructed.”

When asked if he would’ve approved this, Brock said, “Not in a million years. I wouldn’t have approved it as a squad supervisor, either. This would have set off alarm bells in any FBI field for not meeting our standards for a predicate.”

All this is consistent with what Robert Ray said on WITCH HUNT, a FOX NEWS special on Sunday night hosted by Gregg Jarrett. He believes the Durham investigation likely will lead to indictments of Bureau officials.

"It is a criminal investigation with grand-jury authority, and I don’t think the attorney general expects this is going to be just be left to the side of history without actual prosecutions being brought to hold those responsible accountable,” he said. “Even if no felony prosecution is ever brought as a result of this, this is a political scandal of the highest order and the American people should be paying attention.”

I would respectfully suggest to Mr. Ray that if no felony prosecution is ever brought, too many American people will NOT pay attention and it WILL be left to the side of history, thanks to media spin and leftist historians. Laws have been broken, and there must be accountability if we’re ever going to fix this.

Speaking specifically on the Flynn prosecution, Ray said he trusted Durham to get to the bottom of the mishandling of his case. Ray showed his mastery for understatement when he said, “I imagine there are people in the know who may well have knowingly withheld information from the court and from defense counsel in connection with the Michael Flynn prosecution.” Mr. Ray, we KNOW they did that. “Knowingly” is tough to prove, but we know they knew. They know we know they knew.

"If it turns out that that can be proved,” he continued, “then there are going to be referrals and potential false statements and/or perjury prosecutions to hold those, particularly those in positions of authority, accountable.”

Speaking of Flynn, a new article dropped over the weekend that shines the harsh light of truth on what was done to him. Eli Lake’s comprehensive piece in COMMENTARY magazine fleshes out the story so thoroughly that I’d say “THE RAILROADING OF MICHAEL FLYNN, How It Happened And Why It Matters” is an absolute must-read.

Still, there’s something Lake says upfront that I disagree with: that “they suspected he [Flynn] was a Russian agent.” Based on the attempts to set him up starting in 2014, I don’t think they EVER really believed it. I think it was a story they created. Anyway…

Lake writes, “According to both Rice’s memoir and a memo memorializing the meeting (dated January 20, 2017), the President stressed that everything the FBI did in this sensitive matter should be “by the book.” In fact, nothing was done by the book –- not by Obama’s deputies and not by Obama.”

We see from this article how furiously Strzok and Comey worked to keep the investigation alive through the only means they had: the ridiculously antiquated Logan Act. Rosenstein’s recently declassified scope memo authorized Mueller to investigate whether Flynn had “committed a crime or crimes by engaging in conversations with Russian officials during the period of the Trump transition.” The only crimes that could possibly have been found would’ve been either outright espionage (for which the FBI had found no evidence) or a Logan Act violation.

Lake points out what we’ve been said all along, that Flynn was not a private citizen conducting foreign policy, as is prohibited by the Logan Act, but rather acting in his official capacity as the incoming national security adviser. “The idea that Flynn was behaving illegally, let alone unethically or immorally or unconventionally, in discussing U.S. foreign policy with the Russians during the transition is beyond absurd,” he writes.

Joe Pientka had written a memo to close the original Flynn investigation but had slipped up and not actually filed it. Strzok, obviously delighted, was able to keep the case open. The only reason Pientka's memo has emerged now is that U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen completed the review Barr had ordered and declassified documents in the case. We get to read about Stefan Halper being paid as a “confidential human source” (SPY) and the concocted story of Flynn’s affair (not) with Russian-born Svetlana Lokhova, described by Lake as a “smear.” Pientka’s memo says the investigation yielded so little that senior management had recommended closing the case before even interviewing Flynn.

The whole shameful process of determining how they would set Flynn up in his White House interview is discussed in detail. Lake also explains why Flynn was NOT LYING when he said sanctions weren’t discussed. As Flynn told the DAILY CALLER, “It wasn’t about sanctions. It was about the 35 guys [Russian diplomats] who were thrown out.”

The memo said Fynn’s “false statements and omissions impeded...the FBI’s ongoing investigation.” Lake shows that “Given what we know now, those words are more of a lie than anything Flynn said to the FBI agents who interviewed him.”

This was not only injustice against Flynn but also an assault on the peaceful transition of presidential power. Shameful, and dangerous.

……………………

Postscript: Lake bookends his commentary with the story about Flynn joining in the “Lock her up! Lock her up!” chant at a Trump rally, attempting to show irony. This falls flat to me. The cases are not equivalent; we know beyond any doubt that Hillary actually did the things she was NOT prosecuted for.

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

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

Most of the media is focused on various aspects of the continuing saga of the Wuhan Coronavirus, but I think they intentionally tried to ignore the biggest political story of the year and in my lifetime. With the release of long-sought after federal documents related to the Russia collusion story, we now know with certainty what many of us suspected. At the highest levels of government-not only the FBI Director, the CIA Director, the Attorney General, the National Security Advisor, but the Vice President, the chief of staff of the President, and most likely President Obama himself, there was a concentrated, coordinated attempt to prevent the election of Donald Trump and after his election and even after his swearing in to stage what amounted to a coup d’etat against the elected President of the United States. It turns out, it wasn’t the Russians we needed to be worried about meddling in our elections—it was the highest-ranking law enforcement and intelligence officials in our land. Not foot soldiers carried away with sophomoric ambition, but those placed in leadership positions of authority to direct the full power of the United States against their President, and frankly, to strip you the voter of the integrity of your vote and destroy the entire electoral system.

I don’t say these things lightly. We now know that the decision to expose and to frame decorated Lt. General Michael Flynn, a 33 year veteran of combat was known by Vice President Biden, CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, and numerous others who knew that the clandestine efforts to entrap Flynn and destroy Donald Trump were more than unethical, but flagrantly illegal.

It was current Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell who did what should have been done 3 years ago—he declassified the documents and made them public. On the very day they were released, Joe Biden denied knowing about them on Good Morning America, but when pressed, pretended he didn’t understand the question, and admitted that he did in fact know about the efforts to “unmask” General Flynn. Now granted, given Joe Biden’s penchant for speaking in a way that sounds like chopped word salad, maybe he didn’t understand the question, but he sure did as Vice President.

Here’s what we now can say with certainly. James Clapper, John Brennan, James Comey, and others lied to Congress under oath. Congressman Adam Schiff of California, who said repeatedly that he had 100% solid evidence that President Trump colluded with Russia, was 100% lying about it. How do we know? Because not even during the $35 million Mueller witch hunt was a shred of such evidence found, and if Schiff had such, he would have produced it to the media he adores so much-or would have brought it up during the sham impeachment process. He never did, because he never HAD any evidence. Equally disgusting is that the media played right along and never demanded to see his evidence. They just repeated his outrageous lies, and ignored the truth when it slapped them in the face.

Your country has been turned upside down by being shut down over a deadly virus. But we can recover from a disease with discoveries of vaccines and cures. What we can’t recover from is having dirty rotten scoundrels elevated to the highest levels of our government, placed in positions of trust who then use your tax money to stage an attempted coup, and then to put forth a full-scale coverup by a calculated and cynical campaign of lies, misinformation, and destruction of the lives of patriots not to mention showing their contempt for the Constitution. I think the taxpayers ought to fund one more get together of those who did this. A reunion of sorts. Let’s gather them at Gitmo and give them years to reflect on their betrayal of trust and treason to their country. Yes, those are strong words. But I choose them deliberately. The damage to our great Republic is severe. And those who did it should be held accountable. And it needs to happen NOW!

Mike Huckabee

Since I want you to take some time off from the news and enjoy your weekend (particularly if you’re in a state or city where you still have the Constitutional right to leave your house and/or enjoy your weekend), I’m not going to get into the ongoing Michael Flynn case or the media’s spinning like an out-of-control merry-go-round to try to convince us that illegal unmasking of incoming White House officials is no big deal, that the illegality we’ve actually seen evidence of is just a wacky conspiracy theory, and that there’s nothing to see here, so just go back to watching MSNBC.

However…if you’d like a little reassurance that justice will at long last be served, here’s some hope from Thomas Lifson of The American Thinker. He recounts and links to more in-depth analysis by retired Naval intelligence officer J.E. Dyer, who knows how the intelligence agencies operate from the inside. She believes that the recent Flynn developments, with the dropping of charges and the unmasking of the unmaskers, is just the “camel’s nose under the tent,” a small hint of a very large scandal/prosecution that’s coming, and that federal prosecutor John Durham is building a case that he’s keeping under tight security, involving massive, long-standing abuse of the national security apparatus by the Obama White House. She believes we will discover it stretches back well before the Flynn targeting and the Trump Russian Collusion scam.

For those frustrated that anyone will ever be held to account, Lifson urges patience. He calls Dyer’s analysis “the most heartening news of the day.” Let’s hope so. We’ll know the reckoning is getting close when the media’s whistling past the graveyard becomes louder than a Led Zeppelin concert.

On a related subject, here’s a sneak peek at “Above the Law,” an upcoming book by former Trump acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker. He asserts that the growing abuse of power scandal that’s becoming known as “Obamagate” was orchestrated by his successor, Eric Holder.

Whitaker writes that Holder advocated for a “government full of Jim Comeys: government officials determining on their own what the Constitution demands, deciding which laws to prosecute and which to ignore, selectively releasing information to the media about Americans under investigation, and held accountable neither to the chief executive nor to voters.” He says that Holder built a team to stay on after he and Obama were gone, to shut down the Hillary Clinton email investigation and gin up the Trump “Russian collusion” witch hunt. Not a surprise, but it's interesting to hear it coming straight from Holder's successor.

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

Yesterday, I posted a letter from a reader theorizing that the judge in the Michael Flynn case, D.C. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, might be behaving so strangely in his courtroom because he’s under intense pressure from powerful people, especially now that Obama seems to be implicated. You can read his letter and my answer here.

Also yesterday, Margot Cleveland wrote about Judge Sullivan, in an outstanding piece called “Michael Flynn judge is destroying a man’s reputation: his own.” Cleveland has written some magnificent analyses of “Spygate” and the Flynn case, and this one is no exception.

She first briefly outlines what was done to Flynn to trap him and coerce his guilty plea, which all my readers surely know. Let’s cut to the chase: the point at which U.S. attorney Jeff Jensen has completed his independent examination of the case and the DOJ files a motion to dismiss, with prejudice, the case against Flynn. (“With prejudice” means the case cannot be taken up again.) The motion highlights the various problems with the case, which we’ve also gone through. Indeed, there was no legitimate reason for the FBI even to interview Flynn in the first place, as they already knew what he and Kislyak had talked about and he had already been investigated and cleared.

"Surely Sullivan saw the truth now!” Cleveland writes of the motion to drop the case. “Powell had been right all along. The Flynn case was the Stevens case –- the public corruption case against then-Sen. Ted Stevens that Sullivan presided over in 2008.” And Cleveland is right; the two cases really are similar, in that after Sen. Stevens was convicted by a jury on charges of corruption, new prosecutors handling the appeal discovered the original prosecutors had withheld evidence supporting Stevens’ claim of innocence.

When federal prosecutors in the Stevens case informed the court of this, the attorney general moved to dismiss the charges against Stevens with prejudice, which Judge Sullivan –- in that case –- DID. I guess the one huge difference in these cases that immediately stands out to me is that the attorney general in the Stevens case was Obama appointee Eric Holder, and the one in the Flynn case is Trump appointee William Barr. It’s possible that Sullivan is not being pressured at all but simply has it in for President Trump and his attorney general. That would explain the inconsistency. The “x” in the equation may just be that Sullivan is a partisan hack; no intimidation necessary.

Incidentally, Judge Sullivan didn’t just dismiss the Stevens case when Eric Holder said to. He went on a 14-minute tirade, chastising the prosecution for their mishandling of the case. He scolded, he fumed, he ranted. “In nearly 25 years on the bench,” he raved, “I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case.” For when you have time (it's quite long), here’s the dramatic and detailed contemporaneous account.

Judge Sullivan had for months warned prosecutors in the Stevens case about their repeated failure to turn over evidence. After the conviction and the revelation that “Brady” evidence had still been withheld, he executed Holder’s recommendation to dismiss charges and went even further, to order an inquiry into the prosecutors’ handling of the case, a rare move.

At the time, Jonathan Turley described Judge Sullivan as “smart and courteous and even-keeled. To get Judge Sullivan that irate, it takes monumental misconduct.” All right then, why did Judge Sullivan NOT treat prosecutors in the Flynn case the same way, when their misconduct has been egregious as well? And why DID he save his verbal abuse for Flynn himself, telling him he sold out his country, accusing him of things for which he hadn’t been charged and even suggesting that he was a traitor? That's not "even-keeled"; it's outrageously biased.

In the Flynn case, Judge Sullivan is not only siding with the prosecution but even, in effect, becoming a prosecutor all by himself. To that end, he has called for “outside groups” to submit “friend of the court” briefs to oppose the attorney general’s motion to drop the case. He has even enlisted retired Judge John Gleeson to write one himself, no doubt after he saw on Monday the WASHINGTON POST op-ed Gleeson had co-authored, “The Flynn case isn’t over until the judge says it’s over.” At least it shouldn’t take Sullivan long to get it; Gleeson could just hand him a copy of the op-ed he’s already written and say, “Here, use this.”

"With this later order,” Cleveland writes, “Sullivan has destroyed any possible semblance of impartiality --- and his reputation.” Though Gleeson defended him by painting Barr’s decision to drop the case as politically motivated, Cleveland says that, given the misconduct in this case, it’s not the decision but Sullivan's response to it that obviously was.

"The Sullivan who presided over the Stevens case would care about that [the coercion of Flynn and the secret “side agreement” not to prosecute Flynn’s son],” Cleveland says. “But politics and pride have destroyed that man. The long-respected jurist is now a shriveled shadow of the defender of liberty and the rights of the accused. In trying to destroy Flynn, Sullivan has instead destroyed himself.”

Whew. Cleveland has another new piece at THE FEDERALIST on what the Justice Department’s response needs to be to Judge Sullivan’s actions. “To preserve the rule of law,” she writes, “and our constitutional separation of powers, the Department of Justice has no choice now but to seek a writ of mandamus from the D.C. Circuit Court ordering the criminal charge against Flynn dismissed and reassigning the case to another judge.”

Cleveland describes a writ of mandamus as a procedural machination that allows a party to seek to force a lower court to act as required by law. It’s considered an extraordinary remedy, but she thinks it's appropriate, “as the Executive’s primacy in criminal charging decisions is long settled.” Cleveland believes that even though Judge Sullivan hasn’t yet ruled on Barr’s motion to dismiss, “his mere attempt to usurp the executive branch’s authority must be addressed.” The case must go to a different judge because Judge Sullivan, with his clear bias, “has crossed the threshold of fairness.”

(NOTE: According to Mark Levin, the legal remedy for this situation is called a "writ of prohibition," to be filed with the D.C. Circuit Court, prohibiting the lower court from acting "because it lacks jurisdiction." You lawyers can fight this one out; just use something.)

Here’s one more piece of spectacular reading to send you into the weekend. Flynn attorney Sidney Powell, who says she’s “disappointed and saddened” that the same rules don’t apply to Flynn as did to Ted Stevens, has written an open letter to President Obama in which she reacts to his (deliberately) leaked call in which he said “there is no precedent...for someone who is charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that...our basic understanding of the rule of law is at risk.”

Where to start, right? Powell's response is great. She shows Obama's observation to be “entirely false,” schools him in Law 101, shows the legal precedent for guilty pleas being vacated, and points him to further reading: WHY INNOCENT PEOPLE PLEAD GUILTY, by federal judge Jed Rakoff, a Clinton appointee. This is a magnificent smack-down.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

As more states around the nation ease up on their COVID-19 (Chinese) virus lockdowns, New York is still suffering the worst. This link is to a regularly-updated map, showing the number of deaths per million in all nations, and by US state.

You can tell by the color coding that New York stands out like a blackened tooth, with 1378 deaths per million. Even other “hot spots” such as Michigan and Louisiana are under 500 per million. Florida, whose Governor has been savaged by the media for not closing down the whole state, has 80 deaths per million. Texas has only 39 (meaning the odds of dying of the virus in Texas are over 2-1/2 times longer than the odds of winning the Pick-4 lottery.) In Montana, it’s 15; in Wyoming, 12. It’s obvious how much New York is skewing the national death figures. Yet some health officials tell us that every state must impose the same strict lockdown rules as New York indefinitely or we’ll all die.

But wait: how effective have these rules been even in New York, if it's that bad (we now know 66% of new hospitalizations are people who were sheltering-in-place)? And for all the praise being lavished on Gov. Andrew Cuomo by the media, has he really been that effective and proactive in stopping it? We’ve been told that everything Trump has done has been wrong, like what a racist he was for shutting off travel from China in January. But that saved countless lives. On the other hand, the New York Times reports that according to a new study of outbreaks around the US, New Yorkers were “the primary source of infections” in other states. A Yale epidemiologist said they now have enough data to be confident in saying that New York was the primary gateway for the virus to the rest of the country.

But when other states, such as Rhode Island, proposed quarantining New York to contain the disease, Cuomo threatened to sue them if they didn't let New Yorkers in (for the record, Rhode Island currently has 398 deaths per million residents.)

So we can add that action to the list of tragic missteps that included forcing New York nursing homes to take recovering coronavirus patients, which led to New York having the highest rate of nursing home deaths.

Having been a Governor myself, I am loath to criticize and second-guess every incorrect decision that’s made when you’re dealing with an emergency and don’t have all the data needed. But when you add up not having enough ventilators on hand to deal with any major crisis, sending virus patients to nursing homes filled with the most vulnerable group of people, and threatening lawsuits to prevent a quarantine of a deadly, highly contagious disease, I’m finding it hard to understand why so many Democrats think we should replace Trump with Cuomo. Is Biden really that bad a candidate?

But then I look at Biden and think…yeah, he is.

Mike Huckabee

Monday Fake News: On Sunday’s “Meet the Press” on NBC, Chuck Todd played a video clip that seemed to show Attorney General Bill Barr explaining the dropping of the charges against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn by saying, “Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who's writing the history." Todd then blasted Barr for his “cynicism.”

In fact, that quote was lifted wildly out of context. Barr went on to say, “I think a fair history would say it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law. It upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice." That’s the part Todd didn’t bother to show viewers, and he was appropriately roasted for his own “cynical” attempt at deceiving the public.

I’ve been watching the desperate attempts to spin the dropping of the charges against Flynn, despite clear and irrefutable evidence that he was targeted, framed, misled by his attorneys, pressured into pleading guilty and that evidence against him was altered and fabricated. The best the opposition has come up with was the claim, echoed by Rep. Gerald Nadler, that he “admitted to lying to the FBI!” Only after he’d lost his job, his reputation, his life savings, his home and the prosecutors were threatening to do the same to his son if he didn’t sign.

The Democrats’ incredibly low standard of “evidence” put me in mind of the Salem witch trials. I imagine this bit of dialogue from an upcoming play, “The Crucible II”…

Judge Nadler: “Mr. Flynn signed a sworn confession, admitting to being a witch! Buuuurn him!!”

Flynn: ”But it isn’t true! Chief Witch Hunter Mueller tortured me and forced me to sign it!”

Judge Nadler: “So you admit you signed a false sworn confession? Buuuurn him!!!”

Mike Huckabee

While combing through an 88-page transcript from the House Intelligence Committee –- the kind of thing some of us do for weekend fun during self-quarantine –- we found some very interesting things.

This unclassified but still lightly redacted and “committee sensitive” transcript documents a December 5, 2017, appearance before the committee of CrowdStrike cybersecurity expert Shawn Henry. Mr. Henry is flanked by lawyers: David C. Lashway, attorney for CrowdStrike, and Graham M. Wilson of Perkins Coie Political Law Group, attorney for...drum roll, please... the DNC and Hillary Clinton.

The hearing involves questioning by both the majority and minority committee members (unlike Adam Schiff’s shifty impeachment hearings, in which only Democrats could ask questions). The tone seems mostly friendly and casual, at least at first.

Henry starts by giving some background on himself: He was hired by the DNC on April 30 of 2016 after the apparent hacking of their servers. “I worked with Michael Sussmann [NOTE: this is the attorney for Hillary Clinton who distributed unverified anti-Trump “dirt” to the CIA], who is counsel at Perkins Coie, when I was in the FBI, in the FBI Cyber Division, probably back in the early 2000s. Michael was an attorney at the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the Department of Justice, where I knew him.” Sussman was the one who contacted Henry about helping the DNC find out what happened to their servers.

Henry’s understanding was that the FBI had gone to the DNC and notified them that they might have been hacked. This seems odd to me (how would they know?) and, given what we've learned about the FBI’s phony “Russia” ploy, raises some questions about their role in this; but as Henry tells them, this scenario happens “periodically.” In such cases, the FBI provides only intelligence and “direction,” not “remediation,” which includes a technical analysis of what happened. That would be the job for his company, CrowdStrike.

"Remediation is essentially cleaning it up,” Henry explains. “Something bad has happened. There’s been an actor. There’s malware, malicious software in an environment. Somebody has access to what’s occurring in the environment. So the remediation is cleaning out the bad stuff and putting in place infrastructure that is safe and secure.” He adds that “starting in June of 2016, we provided them the data that would have been of value to them.” That would have included “a lot of the indicators, the malware, and other pieces of code that we took off the computer network.”

Not the hardware, though. “Could they conduct their own investigation in a thorough fashion without access to the actual hardware?” asks Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah. They bat this question around a bit, with Stewart pressing him on whether it would be better for investigators to be supplied with the hardware. And he asks, “Would there be reason for not making that available that overrides the benefit of having a more conclusive investigation?” The tone of the interview has obviously changed at this point, with that exchange ending in sort of a stalemate.

So where did Henry first get the idea that it might have been the Russians? Well, not from his own investigation; Sussmann (Hillary's dirt-peddler) had told him, saying that the FBI had used a term related to the Russian government (“the Dukes”) when they contacted the contractor who had been administering the network for the DNC.

And what did Henry find? “We saw activity that we believed was consistent with activity we’d seen previously and had associated with the Russian government,” he tells the committee. “...We said that we had a high degree of confidence that it was the Russian government...it was consistent with a nation-state adversary and associated with Russian intelligence.”

Henry says that by the end of their remediation period, June 12, whoever had intruded should not have been able to do it again. But then he tells them that someone else did, in September. “There was another activity in the environment,” Henry says. “We didn’t do direct attribution back in that case. They were different tools that were not similar or consistent with what we’d seen the first time. In other words, there was a second successful breach “in an environment that...did not have our technology deployed into it.”

On page 32 of the transcript, Mr. Henry goes into a distinction between “indications” that the Russians hacked (which he had seen) and actual “evidence” of this (which he had not seen). They had INDICATORS that data was exfiltrated, but “DID NOT HAVE EVIDENCE THAT DATA WAS EXFILTRATED FROM THE DNC.” (Emphasis mine.)

I\Interestingly, Adam Schiff tries to create a timeline with the date in April that the data was “staged for exfiltration” and the end-of-April conversation George Papadopoulos had –- with someone we now know was a “confidential human source” –- about Russians being in possession of stolen DNC/Hillary emails. Now that we know what the FBI is capable of, it’s reasonable to wonder if this timing might conceivably have been part of the set-up. Could the FBI have even put those Russian “indicators” on the hard drives? What used to sound like conspiracy theory seems entirely plausible now, given what we know about the Russia hoax..

Towards the end of the session, Rep. Stewart returns to Henry’s admission that he didn’t have direct evidence that Russia actually exfiltrated data from the DNC computers. Anything cited as “evidence” was circumstantial. They saw signs the Russians had been nosing around (signs that would be very hard, Henry says, for someone else to imitate), but nothing definite to indicate they had exfiltrated the data.

And it’s possible, Henry says, that the Russians had done this before, in the months before the FBI caught wind of something unusual, and had erased the "indications" so no one would ever know. Admittedly, I’m not a cybersecurity expert, but here’s a question: if the Russians can do that, why didn’t they do it THIS time?

Finally, Henry is asked if there's any evidence that anyone besides Russia had access to the DNC servers, and he says no. But what about that later brEach, the one using "different tools"? Maybe there's no evidence about that one because they didn't even look into it.

The meeting concludes with Henry saying he stands by his assessment that the Russian government hacked the DNC. “It’s a conclusion we made,” he says. But, remember, this is still his opinion. After all this time, and all the hysterical cries of “Russia Russia Russia!,” there is no direct evidence of Russian hacking of the DNC. Recall that CrowdStrike hasn’t always been correct in blaming Russia, as they mistakenly reported that Russia had hacked Ukraine’s military equipment.

Recall also that Robert Mueller’s special counsel never attempted to interview Julian Assange about who leaked the DNC emails to him. Assange has long maintained that the emails he received were not from Russia or any government. He has also made it clear he NEVER reveals a source, but wouldn’t it be great if he’d finally help us solve the mystery once and for all? Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell is in a position to seek answers. More to come.

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

“If You Strike Me Down, I Shall Become More Powerful Than You Can Possibly Imagine” Dept: Yesterday, I told you about Dallas hair salon owner Shelley Luther, who refused to lose her business and her employees’ jobs by continuing to comply with unreasonable and unconstitutional lockdown orders. She was fined $7000 and ordered to jail for a week by Judge Eric Moye. Moye, incredibly, made it clear that she might escape jail by apologizing and admitting she was being selfish. Luther replied that it was not selfish to want to feed her kids and save her business, and she took the jail sentence rather than grovel.

I made it this local story a lead story because it didn’t take psychic powers to predict what’s happened since. Luther overnight became the national symbol of a rising American revolt against high-handed elitists with secure paychecks who mock, lecture and scold people who desperately need to get back to work to save their businesses and homes and feed their families. Judge Moye is facing a blizzard of criticism for his obliviousness in jailing a mom for going to work while Dallas County has released about 1,000 actual criminals for fear they might contract the coronavirus in jail. (Although she's reportedly being kept in isolation for protection.)

It’s no surprise that Moye has no sympathy for Ms. Luther and her employees, since he has continued to draw his six-figure salary at taxpayer expense throughout this entire lockdown. As have Nancy Pelosi and all the House Democrats who refuse to come back to work in Washington and help President Trump deal with the crisis. My modest suggestion: every official who insists that people stay home should have to go without pay until they allow Americans to work again. That might instill a sense of urgency in them.

Unfortunately, state-level officials don’t have direct power over Moye, but they’ve made it abundantly clear what they think of his appalling ruling and how it has brought so much negative attention to Texas – a state where standing up to tyranny is built into the natives’ genetic code. Both Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton blasted Moye for his judicial overreach, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick even volunteered to pay her fine and take her place in jail.

As of Thursday night, Luther was reportedly still in jail (she was taken directly to jail without even being released on appeal!), but her attorneys have filed for an intervention with the State Supreme Court. In the meantime, Luther is now a national heroine for millions of Americans who are fed up with elitist liberal officials lecturing them about being selfish for wanting to feed their families and not lose the businesses they’ve spent a lifetime building.

They see these bans being applied unequally, unfairly and with little regard for whether they actually prevent the spread of the virus. They understand the risks, but they aren’t children of a nanny state, they are adult American citizens who are responsible enough to make their own decisions about assuming risk and making smart choices to mitigate them, just as we try to avoid highway deaths by driving carefully, installing airbags and wearing seatbelts, not by cowering in our rooms for our entire lives.

To show how Luther’s stand has galvanized supporters the way the heroes of the Alamo inspired earlier generations of Texans, a GoFundMe page set up to pay her expenses and legal fees disabled donations after they leaped from $170,000 to over $500,000 in less than 24 hours. And her defiance of capricious authoritarianism is already spreading across the nation.

Officials like Texas Judges Moye and Clay Jenkins, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and others might think this crisis has greatly expanded their powers, but all it’s really done is give Americans a taste of the tyranny of petty tyrants and how quickly they'll exercise it if given half a chance, and they don’t like it at all. I suspect that Democrats who think this crisis will be a boon to them in November had better brace for another shocking Election Night'

To quote Hosea 8:7, “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”

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

True to his word to police any violations of constitutional rights in the name of coronavirus policy, Attorney General Bill Barr and the Department of Justice are siding with Kevin Wilson, pastor of Lighthouse Fellowship Church on Chincoteague Island, Virginia.

On April 5, police entered the church and informed the pastor that they were violating Gov. Ralph “Blackface” Northam’s ban on gatherings of more than 10 people. Pastor Wilson is being threatened with jail time or a fine of up to $2500. But the DOJ issued a legal filing defending the church, arguing that the church is likely to win its case, that its rights have been violated and that Virginia discriminated against churches in its lockdown order. It points out that the church was following social distancing guidelines (it holds 293 people, and there were only 16 present) and that Virginia cannot ban church services while allowing exceptions for secular organizations, such as non-retail businesses.

There are full details of the case at that link, along with the important point by the DOJ that this case has national significance because “the United States has a substantial interest in the preservation of its citizens’ fundamental right to the free exercise of religion, expressly protected by the First Amendment.” It explained that states may have the power to ban gatherings during a health emergency, but they don’t have the power to impose a higher standard on churches than they do on other organizations.

The legal filing also includes the admonition that “there is no pandemic exception to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.” Please let me know if anyone starts a GoFundMe to have that put on plaques and delivered to Democratic Governors and Mayors around the country, and I’ll happily kick in a few bucks.

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.

Mike Huckabee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Huckabee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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