2020 Election Fraud vs. 2016 Russia Collusion: Another Tale in Media Hypocrisy

Just two days after Donald J. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the race for President of the United States, The Washington Post ran a piece with the headline, “Moscow had contacts with Trump team during campaign, Russian diplomat says.” The first two paragraphs of the article state,

Russian government officials conferred with members of Donald Trump’s campaign team, a senior Russian diplomat said Thursday, a disclosure that could reopen scrutiny of the Kremlin’s role in the president-elect’s bitter race against Hillary Clinton.

The statement came from Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who said in an interview with the Interfax news agency that “there were contacts” with the Trump team.

Likewise, on the same day, Reuters reported the same, and added,

The Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a preliminary inquiry in recent months into allegations that Trump or his associates might have had questionable dealings with Russian people or businesses, but found no evidence to warrant opening a full investigation, according to sources familiar with the matter. The agency has not publicly discussed the probe.

Of course we now know that this was the beginnings of the foolish Trump-Russia-collusion narrative that was meant to end the Donald Trump presidency. Despite little more to go on than a fake dossier, liberal delusions, and a hatred of the truth (this is why they hate Trump and his supporters), for years the media shamelessly and falsely attempted to link Trump to the Russians. Gallons of ink, countless hours of television reports, millions of words, and a mountain of webpages were devoted to this evil effort.

In spite of all of this, along with an unnecessary Special Counsel investigation, Trump was exonerated. As Peter Van Buren put it,

Robert Mueller did not charge any Americans with collusion, coordination, or criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. The special counsel also considered whether members of the Trump campaign “coordinated,” a much lower standard defined as an “agreement, tacit or express,” with Russian election interference activities. They did not.

Everything—everything—else we have been told since the summer of 2016 falls, depending on your conscience and view of humanity, into the realm of lies, falsehoods, propaganda, exaggerations, political manipulation, stupid reporting, fake news, bad judgment, simple bull, or, in the best light, hasty conclusions.

Undeterred by the facts, many in the media—and thus, many like-minded Americans—still insist that Trump-Russia collusion was a real thing. Wikipedia even has an extremely lengthy page devoted to the supposed “Russian interference” in the 2016 presidential election. Hoping to capitalize on this delusion, democrats even perpetuated a baseless impeachment of President Trump.

Fast-forward to the fall of 2020 and Trump’s re-election bid. In one of the strangest and closest elections in U.S. history, and despite the existence of plenty of evidence of election fraud (much of it chronicled on my site)—which could potentially alter the results of a presidential election (an unprecedented occurrence)—the media has largely pretended that the fraud is non-existent.

Thus, they want Trump and his 70+ million supporters to shut up and go home. CBS’s Major Garrett well epitomizes the mainstream media’s views on this matter:

It goes against our history, it goes against good governance, and the longer it goes, the deeper it will create divisions in this country about what actually happened in this election, and the president and the Republicans who stand with him will have to bear the responsibility for whatever comes from that…Every sensible Republican on Capitol Hill knows that in his or her heart of hearts. And their mute testament and loyalty to the President will only serve to encourage him to resist was inevitable, the transition of power, and history will judge them harshly.

Where was Garrett and his ilk when the phony Steele dossier was being discussed for months? Where were they on the sham of an impeachment?! A sitting U.S. President was on trial in the U.S. Senate based on a proven fake scandal—in other words Major, what “actually happened” in the 2016 election was ignored by democrats and their allies—yet I don’t recall anyone at CBS concerned with democrats “bearing responsibility” for their foolish efforts, or declaring that history would judge them harshly!

There are multiple lawsuits over voter fraud, hundreds of affidavits filed detailing thousands of incidents of voter fraud, multiple accusations of suspicious vote totals involving suspect vote-counting software, and recounts in the works. Yet, team Biden seems certain that their perpetual basement dweller is indeed the President-elect. And, as was the case in the Trump-Russia collusion delusion, a like-minded media is completely content to allow this charade to continue.

As Jay D. Homnick notes, this is a bit of a gambit on the part of Biden and his presidential apologists. Homnick writes,

Will the fraud be exposed? That is not yet the question, as long as the media cries “What fraud?” alongside the Democrats. Joe Biden, the man-who-would-be-king, is proudly wearing the Emperor’s New Clothes, noticing nothing out of the ordinary, and the media does not boast a single person of courage to note aloud that the Emperor does not have any clothes at all.

This game can only be played so long. There is one lever that can force the media into noticing there is a problem, and can awaken the Biden legal team from hibernation. That is, the Georgia hand recount, due to begin today and end by November 20.

If the lawsuits and the recounts do indeed reveal fraud that attempted to change the outcome of a presidential election, team Biden and the Democrat Party won’t be the only losers. The mainstream media will be revealed to be accomplices in an unprecedented corruption. Of course, this will only add to a growing list of media malpractice that clearly reveals the mainstream American media to be what Trump has long considered them: The Enemy of the American People. It is they who deserve impeachment and removal from American society!

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith and Reason.
www.TrevorGrantThomas.com 

Trevor is the author of The Miracle and Magnificence of America

tthomas@TrevorGrantThomas.com 

Democrats and the Mueller Report: Remember What They Said

Robert Mueller is done; Trump-Russia collusion is dead; but the war on the Trump presidency rages on. As many Congressional democrats and their lackeys in the left-wing media continue to pursue their foolish dream of removing President Trump from office, it’s important to remember that swing-district democrats—whose victories gave control of the U.S. House to their party—won their elections not by promising to impeach President Trump.

In other words, all those Democrat Party chairs now promising endless investigations of the President are only in the position to do so because their swing-state comrades laid off the impeachment chatter. Or, as John Lawrence of The Hill put it the day after the Mueller report summary was released,

Democrats did not win the majority on a promise to relentlessly pursue Trump; they won because candidates for Republican seats persuaded voters, long before the Mueller report was issued, that they could be trusted to address tough issues like health care, immigration, campaign finance reform, and integrity in government. If Democrats hope to retain those seats — and a majority — in 2020, they will have to demonstrate that the voters’ confidence was not misplaced. They assuredly will not retain the hard-won majority if they are perceived as single-mindedly heading down the impeachment, or even the Mueller-Barr, rabbit hole.

Again, not only did swing-district democrats avoid or down-play talk of impeachment, they also frequently spoke of waiting on the Mueller report—as well as relying upon Mueller’s report—before deciding on whether impeachment of President Trump was indeed called for. Let us review their own words.

In September of 2018, The Washington Free Beacon reported,

Gil Cisneros (CA-39) and Katie Porter (CA-45), have generally said they support the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, and that decisions on impeachment should wait for a conclusion and report by Mueller and his team.

Lucy McBath (GA-6) said she “would not call for impeaching Trump unless there was a bad report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible Russian influence on the 2016 presidential campaigns.” Reporting on Haley Stevens (MI-11) just three weeks prior to the 2018 midterms, The Detroit News declared,

Stevens takes a wait-and-see approach on possible impeachment hearings for Trump, saying that conversation depends on the outcome of special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry. “We need to see the Mueller investigation through,” Stevens said. “I believe we need to put the country first and certainly treat anything along those lines very seriously.”

In May of 2018, the Fort-Worth Star Telegram asked 22 Texas democrats running for U.S. Congress whether they would vote to impeach President Trump. Two democrats—Lizzie Pannill Fletcher and Colin Allred—flipped seats in Texas. When asked about impeachment, Ms. Fletcher declared, “Congress must ensure that [Mueller’s] investigation is completed, and that if President Trump has committed impeachable offenses must be prepared to bring the charge.” Allred added, “We need to make sure the Mueller probe is protected and that it’s able to reach its conclusion.”

Reporting on Jennifer Wexton (VA-10) last year ABC News noted,

Wexton was also cautious when discussing Trump and possible impeachment. A former prosecutor, she said she wants special counsel Robert Mueller to continue his work and that “we need to follow the facts and we can’t rush to judgment.”

Just days from the 2018 election, New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill joined her New Jersey swing-district colleagues in calling for restraint on impeachment. She declared, “Congress should support Special Counsel Robert Muller’s investigation and allow him to finish his work.”

And so on. (I chronicle 2018 swing-district democrats on Trump, Mueller, and impeachment here.) Democrats flipped dozens of GOP-held seats because they painted themselves as rational, non-hyper-partisan candidates who would follow the facts—especially on impeachment. Now that Mueller’s report has further revealed the Trump-Russia-collusion farce for what it really was, these democrats must be held accountable to their words.

Furthermore, ever since the Mueller investigation began, there was a bi-partisan chorus of politicians telling us that the Mueller investigation should be “protected” and that Mueller must be “allowed to complete his work.” Of course, to a great extent this was because so many liberals and never-Trumpers were convinced that the end of the Mueller investigation would spell the end of the Trump administration.

Whether or not they felt that the Muller investigation would be the ultimate undoing of President Trump, many democrats put all of their impeachment eggs in the Mueller investigation basket. Leon Panetta—defense secretary and CIA director under Barack Obama and chief of staff to Bill Clinton—summed up this position well. Two months prior to the 2018 midterms, ABC News reported Panetta saying,

“I think the most important thing that the Democrats could do is to allow Bob Mueller to complete his work.” Panetta continued, “I think Bob Mueller’s work will ultimately determine whether or not there are going to be additional steps taken against the president and they ought not to get ahead of that report because that will be the key to determining what happens.”

Now that the collusion narrative has finally officially collapsed, impeachment-obsessed democrats must look elsewhere to satisfy their anti-Trump hate. Of course, as they chase this political unicorn, they only reinforce the notion that the Mueller investigation was never really about Russian collusion at all, but rather just a convenient means of undoing the results of the 2016 presidential election. In other words—as the actions of congressional democrats prove—it seems that the Mueller investigation was little more than a “witch-hunt” all along. 

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Fake Hate, Fake Collusion: All in the Name of Destroying the Trump Presidency

In more ways than one, hate-crime hoaxer Jussie Smollet is far from alone. He’s simply the latest in a long line of unhinged leftists with evil intent who are bent on destroying Donald Trump’s presidency. Be it fake hate or fake collusion, for nearly three years now, Donald Trump has been the target of an unprecedented campaign meant to end his candidacy and later, after his election as the 45th President of the United States, his presidency.

After the recent revelations of former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, there should now be no doubt as to the existence of a nefarious “Deep State.” As revealed by McCabe himself in his soon-to-be-published book, in May of 2017, angered by President Trump’s firing of his boss, then FBI director James Comey, McCabe and his like-minded cronies at the FBI and the Justice Department foolishly plotted as to how they might invoke the 25th Amendment and remove the duly elected President from office.

As former Clinton pollster and chief strategist Mark Penn recently put it,

The most egregious anti-democratic actions ever taken by the what can now fairly be called the Deep State are confirmed with the publication of fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s new book detailing how the FBI and Justice Department plotted to remove President Trump from office for firing FBI Director James Comey.

Justice Department and FBI officials spied on U.S. citizens with false warrants, gave a pass to one presidential campaign with a predetermined investigation, investigated another political campaign on the basis of no verified evidence, and illegally leaked information on investigations. They discussed wiretapping and using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove President Trump, and appointed a special counsel as a retaliatory move for Comey’s firing.

The Manhattan Institute’s Roger Kimball is right, “this plot to destroy a presidency is the most serious political scandal in our history.” Kimball notes,

[P]eople in the FBI (aided and abetted by elements in the CIA and the Obama administration) decided that they didn’t like the person who had been elected President of the United States. Their anger and frustration boiled over when the President had the temerity to fire their man, James Comey. So they plotted to get rid of him.

The FBI didn’t like the President, so they plotted to remove him from office. That is the irreducible minimum, class, that you should take away from this whole sordid lesson. Top figures in the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not approve of the President. Therefore, they took steps to destroy him. Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, several times offered to wear a wire to entrap the President.

“The most serious political scandal in our history” and, at best, most of the media yawns. At its worst, the left-wing media—of course, the vast majority of print and TV media—aided and abetted this despicable, deceitful plot. The ever-elusive Trump-Russia election collusion unicorn—like the always looming but never present global warming apocalypse—has led the left-wing media into dozens of significant falsehoods, which has led to thousands of fake media reports.

The left isn’t content merely to smother the airwaves and the internet with “Trump stole the election!” People are getting indicted, and more often than not, they are “indictments in search of a crime” as Alan Dershowitz recently put it upon the arrest of Roger Stone. As many have pointed out for nearly two years now, you need a crime to appoint a special counsel. You don’t appoint a special counsel and then hope that certain individuals will commit crimes for which they can be indicted, fined, bankrupted, or even jailed.

Yet almost every crime that has resulted in a Mueller indictment has come as the result of his investigation. Lying to investigators, tampering with witnesses, obstruction of justice—virtually all such crimes occurred after Mueller’s appointment as special counsel. Of course, this doesn’t bother men like McCabe.

As Byron York reports, “after the Comey firing, McCabe was determined to cement in place a Trump-Russia investigation that could not be stopped by the president.” What investigation—or, as York notes, “investigations”—can be stopped when the investigator is creating his own crimes? As York also points out, an excerpt from McCabe’s book declares that he wanted an “overall review” of the FBI’s Trump-Russia work.

McCabe wrote, “I want to protect the Russia investigation in such a way that whoever came after me could not just make it go away.” The ongoing Trump-Russia-collusion “investigation” proves, getting Rod Rosenstein to appoint Mueller makes McCabe look very successful in this regard.

Of course, long prior to Mueller’s appointment, Trump-haters within the FBI, such as lying McCabe, and the adulterous Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, were scheming of ways to end Trump’s presidency. As Business Insider reminds us,

• Peter Strzok, the second-highest ranking counterintelligence agent at the FBI, was involved at key junctures in the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the Trump-Russia probe.
• Strzok was reportedly the official responsible for changing language in former FBI director James Comey's statement describing Clinton's private email server use from “grossly negligent” — which could carry criminal penalties — to “extremely careless.”
• Strzok was also the FBI agent who officially signed off on the bureau's decision to launch its Russia investigation in July 2016.

Most now well know that in order to justify his investigation into the Trump campaign, Strzok relied on the infamous Steele “dossier.” As The Federalist recently noted,

[T]he so-called Steele dossier was always the impetus for the Russia investigation. But calling this a “dossier” is too generous. This is a Word document that was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, written using paid, shady, and unknown Russians. This Word document was used to spy on the opposing party’s presidential campaign, despite the fact that nothing in the document that wasn’t public information checked out. McCabe and company wanted to believe the dossier. But that’s all they ever had.

Anyone who has read the House Intelligence memo released just over a year ago now knows that:

• Christopher Steele “was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign, via the law firm Perkins Coie and research firm Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.
• Steele “maintained contact with DOJ via then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official who worked closely with Deputy Attorneys General Yates and later Rosenstein.”
• Steele admitted to Ohr that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.”
• “During this same time period, Ohr’s wife was employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump…” and Ohr’s wife’s research was “paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS.”
• McCabe testified before the House Intelligence Committee that “no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.” Yet the initial FISA application ignored or concealed Steele’s anti-trump motivations.

Of course, Strzok and others in the FBI/DOJ shared Steele’s desperation and deceit. This led to the so-called “insurance policy” that was and is the Trump-Russia-collusion investigation.

This unprecedented attempt at a political coup to unseat a U.S. President goes far beyond rogue elements in the FBI and the DOJ. As much of the above reveals, Hillary Clinton’s and the DNC’s fingerprints are all over this political travesty. But very little of the above—including what we’ve heard from McCabe these last few days—is new information. Andrew McCabe is trying to sell books, and CBS was after ratings.

Along with the collusion-deluded, impeachment-obsessed political hacks in the FBI, DOJ, DNC, and the Clinton campaign, we have the collusion-deluded, impeachment-obsessed hacks in the mainstream media. What is most telling in McCabe’s friendly 60 Minutes interview is the gross media malpractice that continues to plague us, especially with everything Trump.

As Jussie Smollet, Jim Carrey, Kathy Griffin, Ashley Judd, Amy Schumer, Madonna, Eminem, Meryl Streep, Robert de Niro, Jimmy Kimmel, Nathan Phillips, Facebook fools, Twitter trolls, and the like daily demonstrate: gross media malpractice in the name of destroying President Trump goes far beyond the left-wing news media.

Not content with making millions by merely entertaining us, and deluded by the notion that their fame has made their political opinions important, hate-filled—and hate-hoaxing—entertainers have used their celebrity to regularly attack the President and his supporters. Because of their fame, these hate merchants gain the attention of like-minded people and organizations who have control of television cameras, websites, and newspapers.

The Smollet hoax and the Covington Catholic defamation well demonstrate that these hate merchants will take nearly any opportunity—no matter how flimsy the accusations—to impugn President Trump. Thus, instead of focusing on the real unparalleled story here, the hate is further amplified, and the efforts to overthrow the results of the 2016 presidential election continue. Yet President Trump remains, and support seems steadfast. In other words, thus far, the coup has failed. Victor Davis Hanson is right, “Shame on all these failed conspirators and their abettors, and may these immoral people finally earn a long deserved legal [political] and moral reckoning.”

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com