Grassley and Nunes Stand Tall as ProgDem Wall Begins to Crack under the Weight of Fake Collusion and Obstruction Charges

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS ALL ABOUT PRESIDENT TRUMP VS THE PROGDEM SWAMP. • • • The Swamp Creatures are working feverishly to rid themselves of President Trump, the only check on their elite status in Washington. A CABAL OF SENATORS SEEKS TO THWART THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT. In covering just the tip of the iceberg, the Daily Caller reported on Sunday that "a group of Democrat Senators and one Republican called for a legislative check on President Donald Trump’s ability to fire special counsel Robert Mueller in the wake of reports that Trump considered the move over the summer." The "one Republican" is the increasingly Swampish Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who seems to be filling in for John McCain in his level of vindictiveness and disloyalty to his party and his party's President. The current gang of Swamp Creatures have called for votes on a bill that would require a panel of three judges to approve before the President could fire any special counsel. Their position isn't new, but it seems to be driven now by a report of the New York Times last Thursday that Trump ordered Mueller’s firing in June but recanted after White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to resign. GOP Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said : "If these latest reports are true, it seems to me that they show the President listened to good advice from his advisors." Grassley of Iowa, who has jurisdiction over any special counsel bill as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Friday : “Based on his statements from the last couple weeks, he and his lawyers appear to be cooperating with Mueller.” Graham’s bill, which he co-authored with Democrat Senator Corey Booker of New Jersey, competes with a similar bill, drafted by GOP Senator Thom Thillis of North Carolina -- what is it with these Carolina Republicans -- that seeks to preserve executive power by granting a fired special counsel the right to appeal the President’s decision before a panel of judges. But, Grassley has said he will only consider one of the bills in committee and lawmakers have not yet agreed on the chosen legislation. • News of Trump’s alleged desire to fire Mueller -- goodness knows he has plenty of reasons to do it -- seems to be tied to the latest ProgDem spin for getting rid of President Trump -- since the "collusion" with Russia idea of Hillary and the DNC is going nowhere fast, the latest attack strategy is to go after President Trump for "obstructing justice" by suggesting that he might fire former FBI Director James Comey, and now Mueller. • It is rubbish from the get-go because the Constitution gives the President the absolute power to fire any executive branch official he sees fit to fire -- after being fired, Comey even agreed under oath that a President has that right. • So, this gang of Swamp Creatures is trying an end run to get Congress to illegally amend the Constitution legislatively in order to constrain the absolute right it gives the President over his executive branch personnel. • President Trump got it right -- when he heard about the New York Times article while he was in Davos, he simply called it “fake news.” • • • HILLARY AND PODESTA UNDERTHE GUN WITH CONGRESS. Zero Hedge reported on Saturday that : "GOP Congressional investigators have written six letters to individuals or entities involved or thought to be involved in the funding, creation or distribution of the salacious and unverified 'Trump-Russia Dossier' believed to have been inappropriately used by the FBI, DOJ and Obama Administration in an effort to undermine Donald Trump as both a candidate and President of the United States." • Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham -- will Senator Graham please decide which side he's on and stay put -- wrote six Judiciary Committee letters requesting information from John Podesta, Donna Brazille, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Robbie Mook, the DNC, and Hillary For America Chief Strategist Joel Benenson. • Why? The DNC and Hillary Clinton’s PAC was revealed by the Washington Post to have paid opposition research firm Fusion GPS for the creation of a dossier that would be harmful to then-candidate Donald Trump. Fusion DPS then went to the Russians for help in the form of commissioning former UK spy Christopher Steele to assemble the "Russian Dossier" that turned out to be a series of memos relying largely on Russian government sources to make allegations against Trump and his team. Court filings suggest that Fusion GPS also worked with disgraced DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and hired Ohr's CIA-linked wife Nellie Ohr, to assist in the smear campaign against Trump. Bruce Ohr was demoted from his senior DOJ position after it was revealed that he met with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson as well as Christopher Steele and then tried to cover it up. Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, denied under oath to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he knew about the Dossier’s funding, while Clinton’s former spokesman, Brian Fallon, told CNN that Hillary likely had no idea who paid for it either. Current and past leaders of the DNC, including Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, also denied knowledge of the Dossier’s funding. Right !!! Podesta met with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson the day after the Trump-Russia Dossier was published by Buzzfeed News. • The Grassley-Graham Senate Judiciary Committee letters state : "In October 2017, the Washington Post reported that Hillary for America and the Democratic National Committee had funded, via Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele’s creation of a series of memos relying largely on Russian government sources to make allegations against Donald Trump and his associates. A letter from the law firm Perkins Coie acknowledged that, '[t]o assist in its representation of the DNC and Hillary for America,' Perkins Coie engaged Fusion GPS in April of 2016, and that 'the engagement concluded prior to the November 2016 presidential election.' The Committee has been investigating the FBI’ s relationship with Christopher Steele during this time his work was funded by Hillary for America and the DNC. The scope of our review includes the extent to which the FBI may have relied on information relayed by Mr. Steele in seeking judicial authorization for surveillance of individuals associated with Mr. Trump. It also includes whether any applications that may have been made [to the FISA court] for permission for such surveillance fully and accurately disclosed : (1) the source of Fusion GPS’s and Mr. Steele’s funding; (2) the degree to which his claims were or were not verified; (3) the motivations of Mr. Steele, his clients, and his sources; and (4) representations about their contacts with the press." • The letter then lists twelve questions -- the last being a request for all communications between a list of 40 individuals or entities -- including Christopher Steele, Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, Glenn Simpson and former CIA Director John Brennan. The six recipients of letters have two weeks to comply with the following requests [insert "Hillary for America" or "DNC" as appropriate] : "1. Prior to the Washington Post ‘s article in October of 2017, were you anyone else at Hillary for America aware of Mr. Steele’s efforts on behalf of the Clinton campaign to compile and distribute allegations about Mr. Trump and the Russian government? If so, when and how did you first learn of his activities on the campaign’s behalf? Please provide all related documents. 2. Did you or anyone else at Hillary for America receive copies of any of the memoranda comprising Mr. Steele’s Dossier prior to its publication by Buzzfeed in January of 2017? If so, how and when? Please provide all related documents. 3. Regardless of whether you or your associates received copies of the actual memoranda, did you or anyone else at Hillary for America otherwise receive information contained in the Dossier prior to Buzzfeed publishing the Dossier in January of 2017? If so, how and when? Please provide all related documents. 4. Did you or anyone else at Hillary for America receive other memoranda written or forwarded by Mr. Steele regarding Mr. Trump and his associates that were not published as part of the Buzzfeed Dossier? If so, how and when? Please provide all related documents. 5. Did you or anyone else at Hillary for America distribute outside of the organization any o f the Dossier memoranda, information contained therein, or other information obtained by Mr. Steele? If so, please list who distributed the information, what was distributed, and to whom it was distributed. Please provide all related documents. 6. Did you or anyone else at Hillary for America communicate with any government officials – whether in the executive, legislative or judicial branches -- regarding the Dossier memoranda, information contained therein, or other information obtained by Mr. Steele? If so, please list the parties involved in the communication, the content of the communication, and the date and means of the communication. Please provide all related documents. References such as “anyone at Hillary for America” include all of Hillary for America’s officers, employees, contractors, subcontractors, advisors, volunteers, and, of course, Secretary Clinton herself. 7. Did you or anyone else at Hillary for America instruct, request, suggest, or imply that any individuals should pass along information to Mr. Steele or his intermediaries? Please provide all related documents. 8. Did you or anyone else at Hillary for America communicate with members of the press regarding the Dossier memoranda, information contained therein, or other information obtained by Mr. Steele? If so, please list the parties involved in the communication, the content of the communication, and the date and means of the communication. Please provide all related documents. 9. Did you or anyone else at Hillary for America inform Secretary Clinton of Mr. Steele’s efforts, whether by name or not, or of the allegations he was spreading? If so, who and when? Please provide all related documents. 10. Were you or anyone else at Hillary for America aware of Mr. Steele’s contacts with the FBI or other government agencies prior to the 2016 election? If so, who? When and how did you or they become aware? Please provide all related documents. 11. Did you or anyone else at Hillary for America encourage, whether directly or through intermediaries, Mr. Steele to initiate or continue contacts with the FBI or other government agencies? If so, who and when? Please provide all related documents. 12. For the period from March 2016 through January 2017, please provide all communications to, from, copying, or relating to: Fusion GPS; Bean LLC; Glenn Simpson; Mary Jacoby; Peter Fritsch; Tom Catan; Jason Felch; Neil King; David Michaels; Taylor Sears; Patrick Corcoran; Laura Sego; Jay Bagwell; Erica Castro; Nellie Ohr; Rinat Akhmetshin; Ed Lieberman; Edward Baumgartner; Orbis Business Intelligence Limited; Orbis Business International Limited; Walsingham Training Limited; Walsingham Partners Limited; Christopher Steele; Christopher Burrows; Sir Andrew Wood, Paul Hauser; Oleg Deripaska; Cody Shearer; Sidney Blumenthal; Jon Winer; Kathleen Kavalec; Victoria Nuland; Daniel Jones; Bruce Ohr; Peter Strzok; Andrew McCabe; James Baker; Sally Yates; Loretta Lynch; John Brennan." • Those questions encompass the entire issue set surrounding the Russia Dossier and whether the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign participated in any way in an effort to win the 2106 election by using the FBI and/or the DOJ to open an investigation into the Fake Trump-Russia "collusion" and by fraudulently inducing them to use the Dossier to illegally obtain FISA warrants to enable them to illegally surveill Trump and his team for political purposes. • The Grassley-Graham requests are far-reaching but closely tied to the issue and we should see a lot of squirming and efforts to limit the Senate Judiciary Committee's requests, including stonewalling and refusing to honor eventual subpeonas. Senatro Grassley faces a tough uphill battle with Hillary, the DNC and the Deep State at the FBI and DOJ who are complicit in their illegality. • • • TRUMP MUST NOT TESTIFY UNDER OATH FOR MUELLER, HIS STAFF OR ANYONE ELSE. This brings us to the second part of the current ProgDem effort to somehow "prove" that President Trump "obstructed justice" in the firing of Comey and Flynn, as well as in his alleged desire to fire Mueller. • President Trump has expressed his willingness to answer special counsel Mueller's questions under oath because, as he said last Wednesday : "There's no collusion. There's no obstruction. There's no obstruction whatsoever." The President said he's "looking forward" to answering questions under oath in Mueller's investigation of alleged Russia collusion in the 2016 presidential election. However, it is unclear whether the President would agree to an interview by Mueller's team. As WND reported last week, Mueller’s latest move "indicates the special counsel may be aiming to build a case against the President accusing him of obstruction of justice." Mueller’s team is hoping to get answers both in a face-to-face interview and in a written statement, according to the Washington Post. Trump’s lawyers are allegedly negotiating the terms of the interview. Meanwhile, more than 20 White House personnel have voluntarily given interviews to Mueller's investigators, Fox News has learned. A personal attorney for President Trump also told Fox News that the White House turned over more than 20,000 pages of records to investigators, calling the level of cooperation and transparency "unprecedented." It certainly is "unprecedented" and it may also be dangerously naive. • Roger Stone calls Trump's willingness to answer questions under oath a "suicide mission," warning that Trump shouldn't meet with Mueller, let alone put himself under oath. • Rush Limbaugh was just as vociferous in his warnings. Limbaugh said last Wednesday that special counsel Mueller is determined to question President Trump over his firing of former FBI Director James Comey and former national security advisor Michael Flynn. Limbaugh has a dire warning for the President : “Don’t do it!...It’s just a perjury trap. I don’t care what format. I don’t care what circumstance. Don’t do it. There’s nothing to gain. Especially if they’re off the ‘collusion’ business, there’s nothing to gain by talking to Mueller.” Limbaugh explained that if Mueller is actually seeking to show that Trump obstructed justice, that may be an indicator that the original “collusion” allegation is dead on arrival. Limbaugh explained : “If that’s true, it indicates that Mueller is on to the obstruction portion of the investigation and may have set aside the collusion angle, meaning the allegation that Trump colluded with Putin to steal the election from Hillary. Now, unless the media is purposely misleading here, it would seem to be that if that’s what Mueller wants to talk to Trump about and not collusion...it would make sense. There wasn’t any!...Everybody knows that the whole gambit of the Trump Dossier and Trump stealing the election by working with the Russians, there was never anything to that. It was an attempt. They did their best to make it a real thing.” Limbaugh again warned Trump : "It seems to me that this is a process crime/perjury trap. And if I were Trump’s lawyers, I wouldn’t let him get anywhere near this! In the first place, Trump improvises as he goes. You know, if the interview is just with Trump and his lawyers in a relaxed setting with Mueller and his anti-Trump investigators, that’s one thing. But if it’s a grand jury appearance, which I don’t think it is yet...then Trump’s lawyers can’t go in there. You tell one little lie [or as is likely in Flynn's case, you recall minor facts differently at different times or at odds with what somebody else has said under oath that has already been proved by the Mueller staff]...and you are done. You’re under oath, and you have no assistance. You have no aides. You have nobody in there that can help you. You have nobody in there to tell the prosecutor he can’t ask the question, ’cause the prosecutor owns the grand jury. So, no, you don’t do that....If it’s just an interview in somebody’s office and you have Mueller and a couple of his investigators and Trump and his lawyer -- even if the session is not formally under oath, they can still circle back and get you for lying to them, if they think that you have...if you agree to this kind of a sitdown." Concerning the Comey / Flynn firing, Limbaugh said : "So Mueller wants to ask Trump why he fired Comey and why he fired Flynn. You can see what kind of trap this is. Trump doesn’t owe anybody an explanation on this. But there are still people who think that they can force one out of him. I would also reject the offer, if it’s made -- which I don’t think it would be. But there’s a possibility that Trump’s lawyers could say, “You know, we’ll do this, but we want it in writing. You submit your questions in writing, and then we’ll answer them in writing. And while some people think that would be the best way to go because there’s no pressure...you have the questions in front of you, and then you write your answers down and you review them. You edit them, and you don’t submit them until you are fully, fully confident that what you want to say and what you don’t want to say is in your answer. The problem, again, in my layman’s view of this, is those written answers -- whoever writes them -- are, for legal purposes, written by Donald Trump. And anything he writes down can then be used as a springboard for any other avenue or branch of the investigation....If Trump’s gonna do this, they had better get some really serious limitations on scope, on time. They can try to set the parameters." Finally, Limbaugh ended : "I just think it’s a rotten idea. It’s just a perjury trap, and this is the benefit of the doubt, but even if Mueller’s not setting it up as a perjury trap, it still is one.' • • • THE CONSTITUTION IS AT PLAY. It is not just about President Trump, no matter how important that is. It is the Republic and the Constitution that are in play. What worries me most is the off-the-cuff remark President Trump made to a reporter who yelled a question at him about talking to Mueller under oath as the President passed by. Trump said he would love to and added -- and this is what worries me -- he added that Hillary never testified under oath. That is fatal pride, the hubris of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, at work. President Trump suggesting he will do something that Hillary refused to do, i.e., step into the lion's den under oath. IT IS WRONG. This is not about a macho willingness to testify under oath. It is about the future of the Trump presidency, and it is about the future of the constitutional Office of the President. It is about the whittling away of the Constitution's separation of powers -- the power specifically of the President to control his or her own executive branch. It is also about using federal law enforcement agencies as a mechanism to win an election as is done in despotic regimes -- it is about whether a political candidate, in this case Hillary Clinton, can collude with or use the FBI and DOJ to illegally open an investigation of a political opponent and then use the investigation to fraudulantly obtain surveillance warrants to collect information and leak it to a willing media in order to destroy that political opponent. • • • DEAR READERS, it is very clear that Mueller’s team has no evidence that the 2016 presidential election was rigged, or that Trump knew about some effort to rig it and worked with the Russians. If such evidence existed, President Trump would already be immersed in an impeachment or criminal investigation. • The entire Mueller probe smells of partisan politics carried out at the highest levels of law enforcement in order to protect and advance the Progressive socialist Hillary Clinton, the politician that Mueller, the Deep State, and the ProgDems prefer over the conservative Donald Trump whom they fear. IT smells of banana republic co-opting of the legal system for political gain. It smells of an FBI seriously compromised by the Progressive elites. It smells of Big Brother political spying. And, it reeks of corruption and financial self-preference by those who are supposed to be sworn officers of the constitutional government they are corrupting. • We know there was collusion between the Hillary campaign and the Russians by means of Fusion GPS and the Perkins Coie law firm. There are now legitimate demands for a second special counsel to investigate Mueller. That is just how corrupt this entire ProgDem / Deep State smear campaign has become. • And the Deep State wall surrounding Mueller is beginning to show cracks. The New York Post reported on Monday that the classified memo which the House Intelligence Committee is preparing to declassify and release will show that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein okayed an application shortly after taking office last year to monitor former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. The DOJ -- after President Trump was sworn in -- extended surveillance on Carter Page, believing that he was acting as a Russian agent, the New York Times reported late Sunday, citing people familiar with the memo’s contents. The document faulted the FBI and the DOJ for failing to completely explain to the intelligence court judge in seeking the warrant that they were relying on information supplied by Christopher Steele, who compiled the disputed Russia Dossier that contains unsubstantiated claims about Trump’s ties to Russia, the NYT said. Research for the Dossier had been paid for by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. A number of top DOJ officials can approve such surveillance but the responsibility usually falls to the deputy attorney general, according to the NYT. White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told the NYT that Trump wants “transparency throughout this process. Based on numerous news reports, top officials at the F.B.I. have engaged in conduct that shows bias against President Trump and bias for Hillary Clinton. While President Trump has the utmost respect and support for the rank-and-file members of the FBI, the anti-Trump bias at the top levels that appear to have existed is troubling.” The White House and some Republican lawmakers are calling for the memo to be declassified and released to the public to show how the agencies are biased against the President. FBI Director Christopher Wray viewed the memo Sunday on Capitol Hill, as reported by Fox News’ Catherine Herridge. • And, Fox News reported later on Monday that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has been "removed" from the bureau. Acting FBI director Andrew McCabe ahd announced plans to retire in 2018. A source confirmed to Fox News that McCabe is taking “terminal leave” -- effectively taking vacation until he reaches his planned retirement in a matter of weeks. So, he will not be reporting to work at the FBI anymore. The move was first reported by NBC News. Republicans have questioned McCabe’s ties to the Democratic Party, and have heavily criticized his wife, when she ran as a Democrat for a Virginia Senate seat in 2015, taking a reported $700,000 in financial help from a PAC tied to longtime Clinton family ally Terry McAuliffe while McCabe was investigating Hillary. McCabe never reported the contributions, as required. Trump tweeted in December : “How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?” McCabe has also been mentioned in connection with several other controversies. The Daily Beast reported that a GOP memo alleging government surveillance abuse named McCabe, along with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and ex-FBI boss James Comey. Republicans also want to know what McCabe knew about the virulently anti-Trump text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two FBI officials deeply involved in the Trump investigation, including one message on August 15, 2016, that seemed to reference an “insurance policy” against Trump winning the 2016 election : “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office -- that there’s no way he gets elected -- but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.” Some lawmakers think "Andy" was a reference to McCabe. • Last week, American Thinker published an article titled "The Sinking of the FBI" by William F. Marshall, an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, the private sector, and the non-profit sector for over 30 yearsn and presently a senior investigator for Judicial Watch. Marshall writes : "J. Edgar Hoover must be turning in his grave at what is happening to his venerable FBI. Then again, given Hoover's own proclivities to abuse his powers as the director of that agency, perhaps the predicament in which the bureau finds itself is a natural stage of evolution on an arc of governmental hubris. It's increasingly clear that the FBI is taking on water at an accelerating rate as new revelations come, fast and furious, in the political scandals engulfing Washington. This week, for example, we see two adolescent-minded senior FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, involved in virtually all aspects of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation and the Donald Trump "Russian collusion" (or is it "obstruction of justice" now?) investigation, acting like hormone-fueled high school lovers, discussing a "secret society" of Trump-haters one day after President Trump's remarkable election. We learned of this only because two patriotic congressmen, representatives Trey Gowdy and John Ratcliffe, former federal prosecutors both, revealed this stunning exchange to Fox News. Was the "secret society" a tongue-in-cheek reference? Given the mind-boggling behavior of the top echelons at the FBI and DOJ these days, one can't be too sure." Marshall's description of today's FBI is striking : "The keel of the USS Federal Bureau of Investigation is starting to rise out of the water, like the RMS Titanic about 30 minutes after striking the iceberg. One can almost hear the bodies of top law enforcement bureaucrats crashing against each other, like so much china on a dying vessel sinking under the waves, as the embattled organization faces exposure after exposure of truly outrageous and un-American, if not illegal, conduct....The tragic reality is that this apotheosis of American law enforcement, this symbol of truth, justice, and the American way, has become so corrupt, so politicized, and so diametrically opposed to its mission because of its recent actions that nothing short of its reconstitution is required -- much as the KGB was reconstituted following the collapse of the Soviet Union. (I never thought I would be drawing any sort of comparison between the FBI and the KGB, but those are the unfortunate circumstances in which we find ourselves.)" • As I have said often, Americans should be frightened of what is happening at the FBI and the DOJ and everywhere the Deep State is active. William Marshall is blunt about it : "What we are seeing today at the highest levels of our government should frighten all Americans. As I laid out in detail in a recent interview for Judicial Watch, discussing the role of Fusion GPS, its interactions with the FBI, and Fusion founder Glenn Simpson's testimony before a Senate committee, the evidence is rapidly emerging that senior officials in our government, most likely up to and including then-President of the United States Barack Obama, worked in concert to illicitly, and possibly criminally, derail the candidacy of the opposition party's presidential candidate using fabricated information (or, as former FBI director James Comey described it, "salacious and unverified") obtained by a private investigations firm from an enemy of the United States: Russia. Even worse, once that effort to derail that candidacy failed and that candidate, Donald Trump, was elected, those same individuals used the same manufactured evidence as the basis to launch an investigation, employing the vast authority and technical resources of the United States government, whose ultimate goal, I believe, is to impeach and remove that duly elected President." Marshall calls what is going on by its correct name : "That, ladies and gentlemen, is a coup d'état. Merriam-Webster defines a coup d'état as a 'a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics.' While the Hillary-FBI-DOJ-Fusion GPS cabal was not a violent coup, to be sure, it was certainly a decisive exercise of force in politics when it used, as has been reported, a fraud on the court to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on members of the opposing party's presidential campaign....It required the subversion and corruption of numerous governmental agencies, not just the FBI -- to effect: the Department of Justice and the National Security Agency to be sure, and possibly the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and other agencies as well. I do not say this lightly....I care deeply about this country, the Constitution, and the rule of law. The American people need to wake up and understand the gravity of what is shaping up to be nothing short of an attempt to overthrow their government. The sinking of the FBI may be the least of our worries." • The American Republic is facing a crisis of unequaled proportions. We all need to be vigilant and supportive of the President as he fights for us and for the constitutional rule of law. And, we need a President Trump and legal team who understand fully the enormity of the crisis and put the safety of the Constitution and the security of the Republic before every and all possible personal considerations, including the desire for transparency and cooperation by talking to special counsel Mueller under oath. I feel sure President Trump understands all of this. What he must now do is turn that understanding into a carefully crafted plan to save us all.