President Trump and Judge Kavanaugh - Victims of America's Moral Malaise

THERE IS OTHER NEWS. The Judge Kavanaugh story is sucking up a lot of the available oxygen. But, the other Monday news -- created, I think, by the ProgDem media as one more way to irritate President Trump into acting against his own best interests -- was about the supposed imminent firing of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. • • • THE NYT ALLEGATIONS ABOUT ROSENSTEIN. The story began last Friday when the New York Times reported that Rosenstein considered rallying Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution and offered to wear a wire to record his conversations with the President. Rosenstein has denied that he considered such actions, saying the NYT article "is inaccurate and factually incorrect. I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this : Based on my personal dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.” Follow-up reports have indicated that he was being sarcastic when bringing up the secret recording. • On Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, told "Fox News Sunday" that there is a “bureaucratic coup” being uncovered following last week's NYT report that Rosenstein discussed trying to oust President Trump. Graham said that Trump should not fire the top Justice Department official unless he believes Rosenstein is lying : "He said he did not do the things alleged, but there is a bureaucratic coup against President Trump being discovered here. Before the election, the people in question tried to taint the election, tip it to [Hillary] Clinton’s favor. After the election, they’re trying to undermine the President.” Senator Graham cited former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, former FBI agent Peter Stzrok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page’s actions as evidence of government officials trying to undermine Trump, saying : “They tried to destroy this President. If Rosenstein is involved, he should be fired. If he is not involved, leave him alone...There's a bureaucratic coup going on at the Department of Justice and the FBI and somebody needs to look at it.” • • • TRUMP AND ROSENSTEIN WILL MEET. TheHill said on Monday that : "Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein faces a high-stakes meeting on Thursday with President Trump that may determine his future as the Department of Justice official charged with overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The White House punctuated hours of speculation about Rosenstein’s future by revealing that Trump and the No. 2 Justice Department official on Monday had an 'extended conversation to discuss the recent news stories' and would meet in person on Thursday." • Conflicting reports at midday on Monday said Rosenstein was either resigning or expecting to be fired as he met at the White House with chief of staff John Kelly. TheHill reported that : "Cable news showed Rosenstein getting into an SUV for the ride, while social media watched with breathless anticipation. The visit ended anticlimactically, with Rosenstein attending another White House meeting that had previously been scheduled -- and with the mystery of his fate punted to Thursday, when Trump will be back in Washington after his trip to New York for annual meetings at the United Nations." • President Trump told reporters on Monday : “We’ll be determining what’s going on. We want to have transparency, we want to have openness, and I look forward to meeting with Rod at that time.” In an interview with Geraldo Rivera that aired early Monday, Trump said he did not have "all the facts" about the reports, but said he would make a "determination" about the deputy attorney general's future. “I don’t want to comment on it until I’ve got all the facts. I haven’t gotten all the facts," Trump said. "We will make a determination." • If Rosenstein resigns or is removed, it would put a new official in charge of the Russia investigation at a key moment, opening Trump up to charges that he is trying to quash the probe. Democrats were quick on Monday to compare events to “The Saturday Night Massacre,” when several DOJ officials resigned after then-President Nixon ordered the firing of a special prosecutor. Representative Jerrold Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN : “This is the next step in a slowly evolving, slow-motion ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ in which the President is getting rid of all the people who were involved in initiating or carrying out the investigation of obstruction of justice by him.” Some Republicans have also expressed concern. Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Maine Republican, tweeted that she is “very concerned” over the prospect of Rosenstein being fired or forced to resign. But, allies of the President say he should be fired if he really wanted to wear a wire to gather information on Trump. Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg said : “People have been fired for much less. You should at some point face consequences for your actions and this is simply the last straw.” Represnetative Jim Jordan, who has been critical of Rosenstein, is calling on him to testify before Congress about the allegations in the New York Times report. • Rosenstein has overseen Mueller’s investigation for 16 months as it has moved away from the initial mandate to investigate the possibility of Trump campaign 'collusion' with Russia in the 2016 election -- it has become a general search for business and personal items that could be used to impeach the President or jail his senior campaign staff for acts unrelated to the campaign. Rosenstein has served as acting attorney general with respect to the Mueller probe because Jeff Sessions recused himself from all DOJ matters related to Russia soon after being confirmed as Attorney General early in 2017. And, as far as the public knows, Rosenstein has placed no mandate-directed limits on Mueller's search for ways to destroy Trump and his presidency. Should Rosenstein resign or be fired, Solicitor General Noel Francisco would be next in line to oversee the investigation. • On Monday, Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, suggested there should be a “timeout” in the Mueller investigation should Rosenstein be removed : “I think it’s really important that there be a step back taken here, and a review, and I think it’s a review that has to be thorough and complete, and a review that has to include an investigation of what has transpired." • If Rosenstein resigned as deputy attorney general, President Trump would be able to install an acting replacement without Senate confirmation because of the Vacancies Act, although that official would not be able to also act as acting attorney general overseeing the Russia investigation. If Trump decides to fire Rosenstein, the Act does not say whether Trump can appoint an acting replacement. In any event, firing Rosenstein would also open up Trump to charges of obstruction, which Mueller is currently investigating as part of his sprawling probe. Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, told TheHill : “Folks will argue that, [but] I think the President would have a nonfrivolous argument that Rosenstein was fired for cause.” • • • OBAMA DOJ / FBI WAS LEAKING TO THE MEDIA TO CONNECT TRUMP AND RUSSIA. Liberty Headlines reported on Monday about a statement issued by North Carolina GOP Representative Mark Meadows, House Freedom Caucus founder and member of the House Oversight Committee. Meadows' statement concerned the current state of the Justice Department : "Whether or not the latest reports on Rod Rosenstein are true, one thing is clear: what is happening at the Department of Justice is a travesty. The total lack of transparency and accountability among senior FBI and DOJ officials has devolved into a constant wheel of behind-the-scenes gamesmanship, with anonymous leaks left and right, each seeking to create their own narrative and save face with the public. Under Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions, the Department of Justice has had just as much of a transparency problem as it did even under Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch -- the bar for which is extremely low. This is disastrous, and it needs to end now. It does not serve the President well, and far more importantly, does not serve the American people well. Today’s report once again underscores the desperate need for transparency at the DOJ. It is time release the documents. Declassify everything. Stop the games and show Americans the truth about what has gone on at the DOJ and FBI. If they have nothing to hide, it is time for them to act like it." • The Daily Caller wrote last week that : "Newly released emails, memos and text messages show FBI officials at odds with the CIA’s assessment [under Brennan] that Vladimir Putin interfered with the 2016 presidential election. The IC report was released in January of 2017 and claimed all 16 intel agencies (later corrected to only 4 agencies) agreed that Putin meddled in the 2016 presidential election to help elect Donald Trump. Newly obtained FBI memos reveal the bureau was at odds with the Intelligence Community’s assessment on Trump-Russia, says investigative journalist Sara Carter." • Here is Sara Carter's statement : "In newly obtained emails, bureau officials noted there was not enough intelligence to support the January 2017 findings by the CIA which concluded Vladimir Putin meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump, according to a numerous documents and text messages obtained by SaraACarter.com. However, while Strzok, Comey and others were disputing the findings of former CIA Director John Brennan and former DNI Director James Clapper behind closed doors, the public perception was that the FBI agreed with the intelligence community’s assessment, as noted in news reports in late 2016 and early 2017. Strzok, however, was a double-edged sword. Although he believed there wasn’t sufficient evidence to prove Russia wanted Trump in office, text messages suggest he was still intent on proving that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow. And while Comey also disagreed with the conclusion of the intelligence assessment, he -- like Strzok -- believed the unverified Dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, should have been part of the Intelligence Community Assessment titled 'Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections.' There is no dispute that the Kremlin meddled in the elections, but the suggestion that it did so to aid Trump set off a wave of controversy for the past several years." • This raises the question why the DOJ permitted the FBI -- that didn’t believe there was enough intel to support the notion that Putin meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump -- to launch an investigation with the full power of the FBI based on an unverified Dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton. According to Carter, Strzok sent an email to the FBI press office stating : “We did not have information to differentiate what their ultimate goal was.” He noted that Comey gave the Senate Intelligence Committee the same answer, saying : “In other words, the activity is one-sided and clear but we can’t say the sole and primary purpose was specifically intended to help someone, hurt someone else or undermine the process. The reality is all three." Strzok emails reveal that he even stated that some people in Obama’s intel agencies may have “partisan axes to grind” : “He, like us, is concerned with oversharing. Doesn’t want Clapper giving CR cuts to WH (White House). All political just show our hand and potentially makes enemies.” [It is not certain what Strzok means by ‘CR’ in this text.] Lisa PAge responded to Strzok : “Yeah, but keep in mind we were going to put that in the doc on Friday, with potentially larger distribution than just the dni [Director of National Intelligence Clapper]." Strzok responded : "The question is should we, particularly to the entirety of the lame duck usic [US Intelligence Community] with partisan axes to grind.” • Other text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page show they were plotting a ‘media leak strategy‘ and congratulating each other after left-wing outlets published their leaks. Legal Insurrection's Mary Chastain says : "THIS is collusion. Representative Mark Meadows announced on Monday that his office received new text messages between former FBI agent Peter Strozk and his mistress Lisa Page that show 'an apparent systemic culture of media leaking by high-ranking officials at FBI and DOJ related to ongoing investigations.' ” THEREFORE, says Chastain, the DOJ and FBI "teamed up to release harmful information to the media about President Donald Trump last year right before special counsel Robert Mueller began his Russia-Trump probe. This is what collusion looks like. Someone point Mueller to this story." • Mary Chastain also wrote on September 12 that : "On the day Strzok texted to Page about people 'leaking like mad,' the media published reports 'that US intelligence officials said they were convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved, and approved Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential election.' A few days before he sent the text, the New York Times published an article that claimed 'senior [Obama] administration officials' believe that Russian hackers aimed to help then-candidate Donald Trump win in November 2016. These latest texts appear to back up the claims made by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) on Monday and Tuesday. His office reviewed texts from Strzok and Page that show 'an apparent systemic culture of media leaking by high-ranking officials at FBI and DOJ related to ongoing investigations.' ” • American Thinker Editor Thomas Lifson wrote on September 14 : "The former US attorney for the District of Columbia, Joe DiGenova, knows what he is talking about when it comes to legal liability, and he has the guts to lay out in straight talk what really happened with the conspiracy to swing a Presidential election, cover up the effort, and take out a duly elected President. Last night, on Sean Hannity's show, he explained the fate awaiting not just the Strzok-Page lovebirds, but a range of officials, including James Comey." The five minute video is available at < https://caching.grabien.com/c/streams/0458/9-rVSEh1StQgCfdFGMXAqQ/1537068158/458057.mp4?key=9-rVSEh1StQgCfdFGMXAqQ >. • Joe Di Genova told Hannity : "Here’s what we do now. We know from the text revealed by Strzok and Page yesterday that we now are at a different place. The walls are closing in, but they are not closing in on the President. They are closing in on the FBI and the Department of Justice under President Obama. Those text messages by Strzok and Page, which reveal an illegal media strategy to illegally and criminally released FISA warrant information and name a US Citizen, whose information they gave to “The New York Times” is a criminal offense. And by mentioning Carter Page, they have now created massive civil liability for everybody involved in revealing Carter Page’s name. Including themselves, James Baker, the former FBI general general counsel...everybody in the chain of command, the reporters for “The New York Times” have no privileges now. They also can be sued by Carter Page. Because although they may have been legally able to accept information, by publishing it, they revealed classified information that smeared Carter Page. Mr. Page will be a very wealthy man." When Hannity asked about FBI Director James Comey, Di Genova answered : "They are all involved, they are going down. And people don’t like to think about this, but James Comey, Strzok, McCabe, they are all going down on the FISA warrant stuff. That is not even in question." • Silvio Canto wrote on American Thinker last week : "What more do we need to learn? We just learned from Sara Carter that FBI agents were talking about 'leaks' to the media : The text messages suggest that Strzok, along with his paramour, former FBI Attorney Lisa Page, had been in contact with reporters from both newspapers. Strzok specifically mentioned two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times writer Michael Schmidt [in] his text message to Page. Strzok wrote, 'Also, apparently Times is angry with us about the WP (Washington Post) scoop and earlier discussion we had about the Schmidt piece that had so many inaccuracies. Too much to detail here, but I told Mike (redacted) and Andy they need to understand we were absolutely dealing in good faith with them,' Strzok texted to Page on April 14, 2017. 'The FISA one, coupled with the Guardian piece from yesterday.'....According to several US officials who spoke to this news outlet, 'Mike' mentioned in Strzok's text message is Mike Kortan, the former FBI assistant director for public affairs who retired in February. 'Andy' was in reference to former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. McCabe was fired earlier this year after it was revealed in DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report that said he lied to investigators and leaked information to the media. Talk about something gone wrong!" Silvio Canto's conclusion is direct : "For 22 months, we've witnessed a meltdown on the other side about the election of Donald Trump. At first, I thought that it was political passions or just irrational liberals behaving irrationally. Today, I think we are watching a bunch of people who know that the investigation is getting closer and closer to the Obama White House." • Another set of Strzok-Page emails showed cooperation with CNN -- knowledge of the Comey-Trump briefing was leaked to CNN, CNN printed the story, Strzok wanted to use it as a pretext to interview people in the Trump-Russia investigation, and weeks later George Papadopoulos became ensnared in their investigation. • All of this suggests that there was an ongoing and pervasive collusion between Obama's intelligence agencies and the mainstream media to defeat, and then smear Donald Trump after he had won the election. Representative Mark Meadows pointed out that messages, sent the day before and after two damaging articles about former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, raise “grave concerns regarding an apparent systematic culture of media leaking by high-ranking officials at the FBI and DOJ related to ongoing investigations.” The texts show “a coordinated effort on the part of the FBI and DOJ to release information in the public domain potentially harmful to President Donald Trump’s administration.“ TeaParty.org wrote on September 14 that Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan and Freedom Caucus founder Mark Meadows told Sean Hannity : "The latest text messages from the anti-Trump officials show how they were feeding anti-Trump articles to the press. The newly released documents obtained by the House Oversight Committee reveal Deep State operatives Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were discussing a strategy to leak unverified information to the media in an effort to damage President Trump. Jordan told Stuart Varney earlier today that one liberal reporter had 13 different sources from within the FBI feeding him information. On Wednesday night, Mark Meadows told Sean Congress knows the identities of the far left media hacks working with the Deep State to take down President Trump. Representative Mark Meadows : 'There are dozens of other documents that will support the fact that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page had ongoing relationships with multiple reporters and that they were feeding them information to spin a narrative against this President...We know that James Comey leaked, we know that Andrew McCabe leaked, we know that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page leaked. We also know that the reporters who they leaked to know that they leaked. And look we got names. We also have the reporters’ names.' " The Hannity-Meadows-Jordan video is available at : < https://youtu.be/xyGEfKH3saM >. • • • DEAR READERS, President Trump’s decision to meet Rosenstein on Thursday provides a spectacular day at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump will meet with the official who appointed and oversees the Mueller probe. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Senators on the Judiciary Committee will hear testimony from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing him of sexual misconduct. • Is this the beginning of the end for the Progressive Democrat cabal seeking the overthrow of the duly elected US President? Or is it just one more day in the Swamp? Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hit Democrats and their 11th hour “me too” ambush from the Senate floor Monday afternoon in a fiery speech, saying the resistance has become a smear campaign aided and abetted by members of the US Senate. Senator McConnell also said that Kavanaugh will be voted on the Senate Floor -- up or down on the Senate floor. McConnell characterized the latest Kavanaugh allegations as “another orchestrated hit.” The video of McConnell's speech is available at : < https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/1044306787871207424 >. • The anti-Trump leaking by ProgDems goes on, even in the halls of the US Senate. The ranking Democrat member of the Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein, sat on the letter Christine Ford delivered to Senate Democrats for several weeks only to have it leaked to the media at the 11th hour to create a firestorm in an effort to derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation. • Watching Judge Kavanaugh and his wife talk to Martha McCallum on Fox News Monday evening, it was hard not to feel my heart breaking for this man and his family. Character assassination is never pretty to watch. In Europe, it is a specialty of French politics -- but the opposition waits until a French president has left office to dish dirt and find something that can justify the opening of a legal procedure against him. The excpetion -- and it may be a sign of what is coming in Europe -- is the case of François Fillon, the conservative candidate in the last French presidential election, who was hounded until he withdrew, over allegations that he had misstated his financial accounting and filings. The case drags on today. America is better than that. We do not resort to personal villification, smears, and lies to defeat our opponents. We do it at the ballot box. But, as in France, perhaps this is a vestige of an earlier epoch when politics had a character more on keeping with the polite society it represented. • It must take a terrible moral void to deliberately set out to destroy another person. The conservative outrage over the attempt to destroy Judge Kavanaugh is more than politics. It reflects the anguish we have over the moral and ethical state of American politics today. That a man so removed from the rough-and-tumble of politics, so Christian in his life, so humble about his brilliance as a constitutional jurist can become Swamp bait simply because he was appointed by the President the ProDems have already villified with lies and unconstitutional actions in league with their propagandist media is deeply offensive and troubling to those of us who still have souls that can be 'troubled' by anything that goes on in public life today. The malaise is rotting the sinews of our society. It is contaminating our children. It is making of our body politic a wasteland where ethics and responsibility for one's acts is replaced by winning at any cost -- lies, cheating, double-dealing -- they are the surface symptoms. Underneath it is the smell of putrid flesh whose spiritual and moral latticework have vanished. • We cannot say that we have not been warned. In the 18th century, Founder and President John Adams told us : "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Edward Gibbon warned us in the same century by describing the decay of the Roman Empire : "The five marks of the Roman decaying culture : Concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth; Obsession with sex and perversions of sex; Art becomes freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original; Widening disparity between very rich and very poor; Increased demand to live off the state.” As early as the 15th century Machiavelli noted : "There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt." In our times, General MacArthur told us directly and clearly : "History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster." And, the father of modern conservatism, Russell Kirk, told us : "Moral decay first hampers and then strangles honest government, regular commerce, and even the ability to take genuine pleasure in the goods of this world. Compulsion is applied from above as self-discipline relaxes below, and the last liberties expire under the weight of a unitary state....Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary that divided good from evil is overthrown; kings and nations are guided by chance and none can say where are the natural limits of despotism and the bound of license." • Is it too late for America to regain its moral signposts? Are Americans too worldly to return to church or synagogue? Do Americans who reject religion have the force of character to find a moral code of conduct that guides their lives? Between 68% and 80% of Americans believe in God, depending on how the question is asked. That is a start. For now, President Trump and Judge Kavanaugh are both the victims of America's moral malaise.