Radical Democrat Chaos Continues, Possibly Including Mueller and Bill Clinton, But the Trump Agenda Rolls On

THE RADICAL DEMOCRATS ARE IN TROUBLE. It started in New York and Virginia and it's still unraveling. • • • IS THERE A DEMOCRAT AVAILABLE TO LEAD THE OLD DOMINION? There is a Republican -- Kirk Cox, the conservative Republican speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates -- who would assume the governorship IF all the chaos in the top three Democrat officeholders -- Governor Northam, Lieutenant Governor Fairfax, and Attorney General Herring -- step down. That explains why the Democrat calls for Governor Northam to resign over racist yearbook photos -- but not his comments about killing newborn babies - gotta keep the socialist left of the Democrat Party happy -- appeared to have died down. Fairfax and Herring follow Northam in the line of succession to the governorship. If all three resigned, Kirk Cox, the conservative Republican speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, would become governor. We can be sure that the Democrats do not want that to happen and will find a way to make blackface tolerable. • Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax -- who would succeed Northam if the governor were to step down -- is now pushing back against allegations that he had sexually assaulted a woman at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Fairfax released an explanation denying improper behavior, but acknowledging a sexual encounter with the woman that he said was consensual : “At no time did she express to me any discomfort or concern about our interactions, neither during that encounter nor doing the months following it, when she stayed in touch with me, nor the past fifteen years. She in no way indicated that anything that had happened between us made her uncomfortable.” Adding fuel to the Democrat fire in Virginia, Fox News First reported on Thursday morning that : "Democratic Party practically -- almost literally -- has its own Brett Kavanaugh case as a trio of scandals have left the government leadership in Virginia in chaos...In the latest bizarre twist, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax has retained the same law firm that represented now-Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was going through the confirmation process and faced decades-old sexual misconduct allegations, Fox News has learned. Meanwhile, the woman accusing Fairfax of rape, Dr. Vanessa C. Tyson...has hired the attorneys who represented Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh's accuser, who alleged that he'd thrown her onto a bed and muffled her screams at a high school party. These latest developments come amid a report that Tyson made her allegations against Fairfax known to Democratic Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia over a year ago. Fox News has not been able to confirm this report. In addition, a new scandal in Virginia politics surfaced on Wednesday. State Attorney General Mark Herring posted a lengthy statement on Wednesday admitting he, too, had donned blackface during a college party in 1980. He admitted donning a wig and brown makeup to look like a black rapper while at a party at the University of Virginia : "In 1980, when I was a 19-year-old undergraduate in college, some friends suggested we attend a party dressed like rappers we listened to at the time, like Kurtis Blow, and perform a song. It sounds ridiculous even now writing it. But because of our ignorance and glib attitudes -- and because we did not have an appreciation for the experiences and perspectives of others -- we dressed up and put on wigs and brown makeup.” • Republicans may 'rise again' in Virginia, despite the northern bedroom counties that are home to many Washington bureaucrats who tend to vote Democrat. • • • WARREN'S 2020 DREAMS MAY BE LEFT IN TRAIL OF TEARS. That's how ox News First put it on Thursday : "Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Wednesday was once again forced to apologize for claiming Native American ancestry on a 1986 registration card for the Texas state bar, and left the door open that there may be more documents out there with a similar claim....Politico reported that Warren, who apologized last Friday to the Cherokee Nation for revealing the results of a DNA test last autumn that showed just a trace amount of Native American lineage, was asked if there are any other documents where she claimed the ancestry. 'So all I know is during this time period, this is consistent with what I did because it was based on my understanding from my family's stories,' she said. 'But family stories are not the same as tribal citizenship.' Questions about Warren’s heritage date to at least 2012, and the Senator can't seem to put the controversy behind her. She had been planning to formally launch her presidential campaign on Saturday." • • • BILL CLINTON FRIEND JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S CHILD SEX CASE REOPENED. BlabberBuzz reported on Wednesday : "The Department of Justice has launched an investigation into billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s controversial plea deal from 2008, the department’s Office of Personal Responsibility announced. The announcement came in a letter Wednesday from Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd in response to letters sent by Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) inquiring into details surrounding Epstein’s sweetheart plea deal with DOJ attorneys over his sexual abuse of hundreds of underage girls. 'OPR has now opened an investigation into allegations that Department attorneys may have committed professional misconduct in the manner in which the Epstein criminal matter was resolved,' Boyd wrote in his letter to Sasse. 'OPR will thoroughly investigate the allegations of misconduct that have been raised and, consistent with its practice, will share its results with you at the conclusion of its investigation as appropriate.' Sasse released a statement confirming the announcement of the probe. 'Jeffrey Epstein is a child rapist and there’s not a single mom or dad in America who shouldn’t be horrified by the fact that he received a pathetically soft sentence,' he said. 'The victims of Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring deserve this investigation -- and so do the American people.' Epstein’s legal team, led by now Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and also including Alan Dershowitz, struck a plea deal with DOJ attorneys that resulted in him serving a 13-month sentence at the Palm Beach County Stockade, and the privilege to leave for work each day. Interestingly, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller had allowed other FBI investigations into Epstein to 'shut down' at the time of sentencing as part of the terms of the sweetheart deal." • The Miami Herald reports that last week the DOJ Inspector General said he could not take up the case because of statutory limitations. In a letter responding to Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, and other lawmakers, Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, said there were “important questions” about the resolution of the Epstein case, but lamented that allegations of misconduct relating to Justice Department attorneys’ handling of litigation or legal decisions falls outside his purview. BlabberBuzz says : "It appears that with an IG investigation ruled out, the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility is stepping up to look at this. This is long overdue. I wrote about the Miami Herald series that prompted all of this....Epstein was accused of bringing dozens of teenage girls, most of them high school students at the time, to his Florida mansion to give him sexual massages for money. Investigators were in the process of rounding up witnesses to make a case which could have landed Epstein behind bars for the rest of his life. Instead, Epstein leveraged his wealth and a dream team of attorneys and private investigators to reach a sweetheart deal with then-US Attorney Alex Acosta. • Here is how the Miami Herald reported the sweetheart deal : "Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal -- called a non-prosecution agreement -- essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records. The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to 'any potential co-conspirators’ who were also involved in Epstein’s crimes. These accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein’s various homes or on his plane. As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls -- or anyone else -- might show up in court and try to derail it." • In the DOJ re-opened case, the right terms of criminal behavior will surely be used -- the deal gave Epstein a pass by treating a 14-year-old girl as a prostitute rather than a victim of child sex-trafficking by adults; Epstein admitted to committing only one offense against one underage girl, who was labeled a prostitute, even though she was 14, which is well under the age of consent --18 in Florida. “It’s just outrageous how they minimized his crimes and devalued his victims by calling them prostitutes,’’ said Yasmin Vafa, a human rights attorney and executive director of Rights4Girls, which is working to end the sexual exploitation of girls and young women. “There is no such thing as a child prostitute. Under federal law, it’s called child sex trafficking -- whether Epstein pimped them out to others or not. It’s still a commercial sex act -- and he could have been jailed for the rest of his life under federal law,” she said. • In addition, Epstein was also known as supporter and friend of Bill Clinton. In 2016, Fox News reported that Clinton flew on Epstein’s private jet 26 times. • Bill Clinton was apparently saved once -- will he be saved twice?? • • • THE PRESIDENT TRUMP PROMISE TO BUILD A WALL ROLLS ON. On Tuesday, hours before the President gave his Satte of the Union address, TheHill reported that : "Republican Senators predict that when push comes to shove, their conference will back President Trump and turn aside any resolution from Democrats that seeks to stop his use of an emergency declaration to build a wall on the border." Republicans say Democrats will probably need five GOP votes if they are to win passage of a disapproval resolution, as Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) says he supports a national emergency declaration because it is preferable to another shutdown : “If that’s what it takes not to shut this government down again and let the courts weigh in and decide, so be it. I’m not going to deny him. Everything else has failed. We can’t seem to operate on our own very good.” That’s a high bar, GOP lawmakers say, particularly on Trump’s signature issue. And while a number of Republicans have sought to dissuade Trump from declaring a national emergency, they may not embrace a public fight on Trump’s signature issue -- which risks earning the wrath of his conservative base ahead of the 2020 election. GOP lawmakers also predict that Trump can win over some Republicans by presenting the declaration as something dictated by an urgent need at the border instead of an effort to simply circumvent Congress. The President can further bolster his argument by assuring Republicans that funding will not be reprogrammed from top-priority defense accounts, such as the military construction account, which pays for defense facilities and family housing. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) on Tuesday predicted the vast majority of his Republican colleagues will wind up backing Trump if Democrats manage to force a vote on a resolution blocking a declaration. Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) on Tuesday also said his fellow Republicans will likely fall into line." • That is important because, as Senator Cramer acknowledged, colleagues are worried about the precedent and that for some it’s a “really big deal.” But he added that the President’s power to reallocate funding is set up under the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which also gives Congress the power to terminate his decision : “The Constitution and our laws provide, the statutes provide this opportunity, provide this oversight. If he does this, it’s not my view the constitutional Republic will collapse.” With Vice President Pence providing the deciding vote in case of a 50-50 tie, Democrats would need to pick up five defectors to pass a disapproval resolution. • Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who served as White House budget director under President George W. Bush, said Trump has “about a half-dozen different options” on how to direct funding to build a border wall without express authority from Congress, including the possibility of using funds not already obligated to other priorities instead of declaring an emergency. Traditionally, reprogramming executive branch funding requires the sign-off of the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate and House appropriations subcommittees of jurisdiction, but a senior Democratic aide acknowledged that President Trump could break with precedent and go forward without such congressional approval. • The always savvy Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to say Tuesday how he would proceed if Trump declares a national emergency : “We don't know what route the president's going to take, so I'm not going to speculate on it at this point. I'm going to withhold judgment about that until we see what he does.” If the President moves forward, he will have a powerful ally in Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who argued Tuesday that the President is within his power to declare an emergency : “I believe that he’s got some standing under the Constitution to do that and also the statute. If we don’t settle and solve the problem or try to solve the problem of the border security and the President does it -- something we fail to do -- I would support the President.” • In the meantime, Politico reported on Tuesday that : "MAGA all-stars have visited the border to plot a private wall project. Steve Bannon, Kris Kobach and Erik Prince are among the backers of an improbable effort to start building a border wall without federal funding....a gathering of some of President Donald Trump’s most notorious and outspoken supporters...descended last week on the Mexican border town of McAllen, Texas. In what amounted to a kind of #MAGA field trip, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, baseball legend Curt Schilling, and former Sheriff David Clarke convened to discuss a new plan for building a wall along the southern U.S. border. Blackwater founder Erik Prince phoned in from South Africa. With Congress refusing to pony up the $5.7 billion Trump has demanded for the project, his allies now are plotting to kick things off with private money and private land. The idea, which began in December as a Florida man’s quixotic online crowdfunding campaign, is becoming something more, well, concrete. Big name Trump supporters like Bannon, a former Trump campaign and White House strategist, have flocked to the project. And they have initiated talks with the Israeli firm that constructed that country’s border fence with Gaza, the group told Politico. They expect to hold a town hall in Tucson, Arizona, as soon as Friday and to visit the border in Laredo, Texas, next week....Organizers insist they are serious about developing a large-scale infrastructure project, one that could supplement -- and trim the cost of -- Trump’s proposed federal wall. Whether they can achieve anything close to that remains an open question. 'Look, it’s evolving,' said Bannon, whose involvement in the project has not previously been reported. 'Do we have a billion dollars right now? No. But can we raise one or two hundred million dollars? No doubt about it,' added Bannon, whose compatriots have formed a nonprofit group, We Build the Wall, that grew out of the original crowd-funding campaign....About two-thirds of the 2,000-mile border, or roughly 1300 miles, is owned privately or by states, according to a 2015 Government Accountability and Oversight report, which did not offer a more detailed breakdown. Bannon said the group has identified roughly 250-400 miles of privately owned land that the project will target. After consulting with experts, including representative of the Israeli fencing firm Magal Security Systems, the group believes it can build a mile of wall for $1.5 to $2.5 million, excluding the cost of land, Kolfage said. Organizers said they plan to use traditional political fundraising methods, like direct mail and email campaigns, to get from the $20 million raised so far to the projected multi-billion-dollar cost of constructing hundreds of miles of wall. The group plans to promote the wall plan at the annual CPAC political gathering, which begins at the end of February. They are also considering following that with a bus tour and more town halls on the border, Kolfage said. From there, actual construction could be only weeks away. 'We should be turning dirt on this thing by 1 May, 1 June at the latest, according to our experts,' he said. • • • TRUMP MAY DECLARE ISIS DEFEATED. Newsmax reports that : "President Donald Trump predicted Wednesday that the Islamic State group will have lost by next week all the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria. He said the US will not relent in fighting remnants of the extremist organization despite his decision to withdraw US troops from Syria over the objections of some of his most senior national security advisors. The President told representatives of a 79-member, US-led coalition fighting IS that the militants held a tiny percentage of the vast territory they claimed as their 'caliphate.' 'It should be formally announced sometime, probably next week, that we will have 100 percent of the caliphate,' Trump said. US officials have said in recent weeks that IS has lost 99.5% of its territory and is holding on to fewer than 5 square kilometers in Syria, or less than 2 square miles, in the villages of the Middle Euphrates River Valley, where the bulk of the fighters are concentrated....Trump told coalition members meeting at the State Department that while "remnants" of the group were still dangerous, he was determined to bring U.S. troops home. He called on coalition members to step up and do their 'fair share' in the fight against terrorism....Pompeo told the coalition that the planned withdrawal 'is not a change in the mission' but a change in tactics against a group that should still be considered a menace. 'In this new era, local law enforcement and information sharing will be crucial, and our fight will not necessarily always be military-led,' he said. Trump's announcement 'is not the end of America's fight. The fight is one that we will continue to wage alongside of you.' He added : 'America will continue to lead in giving those who would destroy us no quarter.'....Pompeo called on the coalition to increase intelligence-sharing, repatriate and prosecute captured foreign fighters and accelerate stabilization efforts so IS remnants cannot reconstitute in Iraq, Syria or elsewhere. He said the fight is entering a new stage where those allied against IS must confront a 'decentralized jihad' with more than military force. Pompeo mentioned the suicide bombing claimed by IS that killed four Americans -- two service members, a Pentagon civilian and a US contractor -- in the northern Syrian town of Manbij last month. Manbij was liberated from IS control in 2016....A Defense Department watchdog report warned this week that even with the IS forces on the run, the group "is still able to coordinate offensives and counter-offensives, as well as operate as a decentralized insurgency." • • • AND -- TRUMP NEMESIS MUELLER HAS A PAST WITH FISA. On Wednesday, TheHill published an Opinion by John Solomon, the first rate political reporter who has followed the Mueller probe, providing breaking stories. Here is his latest. John Solomon reports that : "Robert Mueller, the former FBI director and current special prosecutor in the Russia case, once was hauled before the nation’s secret intelligence court to address a large number of instances in which the FBI cheated on sensitive surveillance warrants, according to evidence gathered by congressional investigators. For most of the past 16 years, Mueller’s closed-door encounter escaped public notice because of the secrecy of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). But thanks to recent testimony from a former FBI lawyer, we now have a rare window into documented abuses of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants and how the courts handled the matter. The episode is taking on new significance as Mueller moves into the final stages of his Russia probe while evidence mounts that the FBI work preceding his appointment as special prosecutor may have involved improprieties in the securing of a FISA warrant to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign. The sin that plagued the FBI two decades ago, and that now lingers over the Russia case, involves the omission of material facts by agents applying for FISA warrants in sensitive counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases. Such omissions are a serious matter at the FISC, because it is the one court in America where the accused gets no representation or chance to defend himself. And that means the FBI is obligated to disclose evidence of both guilt and innocence about the target of a FISA warrant." • Solomon reports that Trisha Anderson, who recently stepped down as the FBI’s principal deputy general counsel, told House investigators late last year in an interview that early in Mueller’s FBI tenure, nearly two decades ago, "the FISC summoned the new director to appear before the judges to address concerns about extensive cheating on FISA warrants." Anderson told Congress : "It preceded my time with the FBI but as I understood it, there was a pattern of some incidents of omission that were of concern to the FISA court that resulted in former Director Mueller actually appearing before the FISA court.” Solomon says that neither Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller at the special counsel’s office, nor FBI spokeswoman Kelsey Pietranton would comment on Anderson's testimony. But, according to Solomon : "Other sources who worked for Mueller at the time told me the court's concerns arose in 2002 and 2003 -- shortly after America was stunned by the September 11, 2001, terror attacks -- when the FISC learned the FBI had omitted material facts from FISA warrant applications in more than 75 terrorism cases that dated back to the late 1990s. Most of the omissions occurred in FBI work that pre-dated Mueller’s arrival, the sources said. But the court wanted assurances the new sheriff in town was going to stop such widespread abuses. Mueller told the court the FBI had created a new system called the Woods Procedures -- named for the FBI lawyer who drafted them -- to ensure FISA warrant applications were accurate and did not omit material information, according to Anderson’s congressional interview. 'My understanding is he committed to the court to address the problem and then that the series of reforms that we implemented, including the use of the Woods form, were the direct result of his engagement before the FISA court,' Anderson told Congress. Mueller does not appear ever to have publicly addressed his appearance before the FISC. But once, in follow-up written answers to the Senate Judiciary Committee, he acknowledged there was a period in which the FBI was caught filing inaccurate FISA warrants. 'Prior to implementation of the so-called Woods Procedures there were instances where inaccurate information was provided by FBI field offices and headquarters personnel to the Court,' Mueller wrote to senators in 2003. A declassified FISC order from 2002 gives a glimpse into how serious the omissions were : In one case the FBI failed to tell the court that the person they were seeking a FISA warrant to surveil was, in fact, one of their own informants. The court expressed concern that 'misinformation found its way into the FISA applications and remained uncorrected for more than one year despite procedures to verify the accuracy of FISA pleadings.' " • Solomon shows the relevance of this today : "Anderson’s testimony isn’t just for the history books. It has as much relevance today as when the judges first became upset with the FBI. That’s because we now know the FBI, in 2016, omitted significant information from the application for the FISA warrant that allowed it to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in hopes of finding evidence of collusion between Russia and the GOP presidential nominee’s campaign. Thanks to congressional oversight and declassified documents, we now know the FBI failed to tell the court that the primary evidence it used to support its warrant -- the so-called Steele Dossier -- was political opposition research produced on behalf of and paid for by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, in hopes of harming Trump’s election chances. We know the FBI falsely told the court in the first application warrant that it knew of no derogatory information about the Dossier author, Christopher Steele, a retired British intelligence operative who worked simultaneously as an FBI source and a Clinton campaign opposition researcher. In fact, a senior Justice Department official named Bruce Ohr warned the FBI that Steele was desperate to stop Trump from becoming President, and other evidence showed Steele had been leaking to the media in violation of FBI rules -- all derogatory evidence weighing against Steele’s credibility. Further, we’ve learned from congressional testimony of other FBI officials that the Dossier’s contents had not been corroborated by the FBI when it was used in the FISA application -- even though the Woods Procedures mentioned above required that only corroborated evidence be used in support of a warrant request. And, finally, we know from sources that the FBI had other evidence suggesting the innocence of two Trump campaign aides it targeted -- Carter Page and George Papadopoulos -- that wasn’t provided to the court. As such evidence has mounted, some Justice and FBI officials have whispered suggestions that the FBI didn’t have an obligation to disclose such information and, therefore, there were no abuses. Yet, thanks to Anderson’s recounting of the episode from 16-plus years ago, we now know the FISA judges don’t tolerate omissions of material facts and were angry enough in an earlier time to haul the FBI director into court to make their point. Anderson testified Mueller got to see that lesson up close and personal." • THE QUESTION now is whether the current FISC judges and Justice Department supervisors -- Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray among them -- care at all about the integrity of the FISA process? If they do, says Solomon; "the first step (as 2002 showed us) is to acknowledge the wrongdoing and put corrective action into place. Silence and hiding behind classified information don’t serve the American interest, just the interests of an intelligence bureaucracy that wrongly allowed itself to be used for a political dirty trick." And, Chief Justice Roberts is in charge of FISA and its court. Where is he in all this?? • • • DEAR READERS, the political upheaval in Virginia, the lies-for-position past of Senator Elizabeth Warren, the secret sweetheart deal the Obama DOJ made with Jeffrey Epstein that -- just incidentally -- also protected Bill Clinton from child sex trafficking charges. AND, so I ask again -- and every American ought to be asking the same question and demanding answers -- Is America now a police state? "Silencing" people who oppose the regime's agenda is what a police state is all about. Ask the freedom fighters in Syria. Ask the national assembly leaders in Venezuela. Ask the Cuban democrats languishing in prison hellholes in Cuba. Ask the Canadian citizen sentenced to death in China. And, because of a terrifyingly swift SWAT team sweep by the FBI, ask Roger Stone. Now, I also ask whether we Americans will sit back and do nothing while this burgeoning police state plots to take down the Republic's legitimately elected President, Donald Trump.