The Corruption of Democrat Party Socialism Raises Its Ugly Head in the Chicago Smollett Case

NONSENSE VERSE CAN TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT THE SMOLLETT FIASCO. "The Walrus and the Carpenter" is a narrative nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll for his book Through the Looking-Glass, published in 1871. The poem is recited by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice. Walking upon a beach one night when both sun and moon are visible, the Walrus and Carpenter come upon an offshore bed of oysters. Groups of four are called up -- all are young oysters because the old, wise oysters were too smart to fall for the Walrus's fake charm. But, the young oysters left their home underwater and came ashore, following the Walrus. "The Walrus and the Carpenter Walked on a mile or so, And then they rested on a rock Conveniently low : And all the little Oysters stood And waited in a row. 'The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'To talk of many things : Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing-wax -- Of cabbages -- and kings -- And why the sea is boiling hot -- And whether pigs have wings.' ” Once the fat little oysters settled down on shore to listen to the Walrus, the Walrus and the Carpenter ate them. • The Chicago Democrat machine has been luring little Chicagoans to their lair for a century. Jussie Smollett is just the latest. But, he got the grandiose idea that he could independently help the machine that produced him by creating his own story to lure young Chicagoans. However, he got it all wrong, so the machine ate him -- or ate his story. That has been happening for a century, too. But, this time, America may be poised to punish both Jussie Smollett and the Chicago Democrat machine that ate his story. • • • SOMEBODY KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED IN CHICAGO ON JANUARY 29. American Thinker's great Patricia McCarthy wrote on Friday : "Jussie Smollett : Who will have the courage to step up and tell the truth?" Patricia McCarthy gives us hte facts in an orderly and breif manner : "Jussie Smollett faked a racist, homophobic attack upon his person on January 29, 2019 that was obviously false from the outset. It did not take the beleaguered Chicago police long to get to the truth thanks to the sheer stupidity of Smollett and his two accomplices. The three men could be seen on surveillance video numerous times as they went about their plan. His two pals quickly gave up their side of the story; Smollett had hired them to fake a lynching (they are on video buying the rope), instructed them to pour bleach on him and to sort of punch him in the face. He sustained very little discernible physical damage." • A simple enough story of a fake crime. As McCarhty says : "Hardly anyone believed his story, but, predictably, the usual suspects in Congress and among the leftist public jumped on board to decry our racist, homophobic nation. Smollett sweetened the social justice pot by claiming that his attackers were white, wearing MAGA hats at 2:00 A.M. in below-20-degree weather in a very nice neighborhood. In particular, there were Cory Booker and Kamala Harris; the two of them were sponsoring an anti-lynching bill, even though lynching has effectively been illegal in America for at least a hundred years. Harris's bill got a vote on February 14 and passed. Hmmm." • Smollett is, states McCarthy : "an actor, black and gay, and was then appearing on the television show Empire. He comes from a radical activist family so is of course friends with the Obamas and their crowd. Michelle's former chief of staff, Tina Tchen, contacted Chicago AG Kim Foxx to intervene on Smollett's behalf. (Foxx claims that Kamala Harris is her mentor.) Foxx apparently tried to get the local FBI to take over the case; this was Tchen's suggestion. Clearly, they both thought the local FBI would do Smollett's bidding." BUT, says McCarthy : "...the evidence was overwhelming. Smollett was provably as guilty as guilty can be....Smollett was charged with sixteen felony counts and released for the ten thousand dollars cash of the hundred-thousand-dollar bail. Getting to that point had taken hundreds of man-hours from the Chicago police. Then, miracle of miracles, Smollett was suddenly cleared of the crimes, his record both sealed and expunged. Foxx, who had recused herself, in fact had not done so officially. That he was cleared has rocked Chicago, long considered the most corrupt city in America. This is such a breach of the law that no one but a few of Smollett's actor and writer friends supports this turn of events. He will not be returning to his acting job on Empire -- so say his producers (maybe). And the man is so arrogant that he is demanding apologies from the police and the mayor, Rahm Emanuel, who is hardly an example of truth, honor, and the American way. The mayor is sending Smollett a bill for $130K, a fraction of the cost to the city of the hoax." • • • WHY WOULD ANYONE PERPETRATE SUCH A HOAX ? It was stupid as an idea. It was stupidly carried out with a $3000 check as payment and under the eye of multiple surveillance cameras. Patricia McCarthy says : "At first, the rumor was that he wanted to raise his profile in order to get more money from the Empire producers. Not smart -- raise your profile by pretending to be a victim. But then victimhood is the favored status of leftists; it is practically a college course on any given campus in the country. Victimology 101: How to exploit your minority status!" • The more interesting question is this -- Jussie Smollett's execution of the hoax was so clumsy and stupid that one has to wonder if somebody else was involved. McCarthy suggests : "Did Smollett think of this hustle on his own, or was he put up to it? He does not impress as particularly intelligent, so it is not much of a leap to wonder. Did whoever conceived of this dumb plot also get him out of the serious legal jeopardy in which he then found himself? What if Kamala Harris, pal of Kim Foxx and Smollett, invented the plan to boost support for her anti-lynching bill? Smollett delights in the scam and incriminates the two pals he paid to participate. They perform the show like three ten-years-olds but get caught because the plan was so poorly executed. Are there emails, texts? Bet there are. Perhaps someone is so scared that he called in the big guns : the Obamas. Or perhaps Smollett thinks he has leverage over one or more of the principals involved in the plot. Did he threaten someone with revealing what he knows?....As Roger Simon wrote, Smollett will forever have a cloud over his head as the symbol of unequal justice. The rich do enjoy the privilege their wealth and fame yield, as the college admissions scam has proven. Someone who knows the whole truth of this despicable crime will come forward. Someone will leak the truth of it all. The question is, how long will it take, and who will it be?" • • • THE LEGAL TRAVESTY PLAYED OUT IN CHICAGO. Fox News reported last Tuesday that Jussie Smollett pleaded not guilty to 16 counts of disorderly conduct "stemming from the alleged hate crime hoax" BUT the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office "will not be prosecuting Jussie Smollett....The judge granted a nolle pros, which essentially means that the case has been dropped and that he will no longer be prosecuted for the alleged crime. It’s unclear at this time why the court decided not to proceed with prosecution....The next court date was scheduled for April 17. However, Smollett was brought in for an emergency court session in which the judge ruled the case against him would be dropped. Doubt was cast on the open and shut nature of the case when Fraternal Order of Police President Kevin Graham wrote the Justice Department following reports that Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx asked Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson to let the FBI investigate Smollett's allegations that he was attacked by two masked men after the former chief of staff to former first lady Michelle Obama informed Foxx that Smollett's family had concerns about the probe. Smollett attorneys Tina Glandian and Patricia Brown Holmes said in a statement that Smollett's record 'has been wiped clean.' " • The Daily Caller also published a report last Tuesday that stated : "The state’s attorney’s office said in a statement Tuesday it dropped the charges '[a]fter reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollett’s volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his bond to the City of Chicago.' The office added in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation that Smollett’s charges 'would not have been dropped' had he not forfeited his $10,000 bond and agreed to do community service. 'There is no deal. The state dismissed the charges,' one of his attorneys, Patricia Brown Holmes, said. 'We are very anxious for Jussie to get on with his career and his life, and to move forward.' Judge Steven Watkins ordered Smollett’s court file to be sealed immediately after the charges were dropped, according to the Chicago Tribune." • In its Tuesday report, the Daily Caller wrote : "First Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph Magats, the prosecutor who reportedly made the final decision to drop Smollett’s charges, said he stood behind the Chicago Police Department’s investigation. 'We stand behind the CPD investigation done in this case, we stand behind the approval of charges in this case,' Magats told the Sun-Times. 'They did a fantastic job. The fact there was an alternative disposition in this case is not and should not be viewed as some kind of admission there was something wrong with the case, or something wrong with the investigation that the Chicago Police did.' Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who said the case against Smollett was 'rock solid,' was reportedly 'furious' after learning of the decision to drop the actor’s charges during a police academy graduation ceremony. The abrupt decision to drop all charges against Smollett was 'a kick in the gut,' said Ed Wodnicki, the police commander who oversaw the investigation into the actor. 'We wasted time and effort on a reported serious, serious crime, to get to the point that it’s a lie? I want reimbursement. I’m a citizen in the city of Chicago. I want my money back,' Wodnicki said, noting that the $10,000 bond that Smollett forfeited 'doesn’t come close' to the cost incurred to investigate the case." • • • EVEN CHICAGO COULDN'T STOMACH IT. Fox News reported separately on Tuesday that : "Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his city's police force Tuesday afternoon, denouncing prosecutors for dropping charges against Empire star Jussie Smollett and slamming the episode as a 'whitewash of justice.' " • On Thursday, the Smollett case took another twist when the City of Chicago sent a letter to Smollett demanding $130K in reimbursement for police overtime : "Please submit a money order or certified cashier's check payable to 'City of Chicago'...within seven days of the date of this letter.' pic.twitter.com/qQd1Iz0hJw— Andrea Berry (@andreacberry) March 28, 2019." • Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson and Emanuel said, as quoted by Fox News, that they were "not only furious with the outcome of Tuesday's surprise hearing but also blindsided by the decision itself, with the officials only learning Smollett wouldn't face charges for allegedly faking a hate crime at the same time the public found out. 'Where is the accountability in the system? You cannot have -- because of a person's position -- one set of rules applies to them and another set of rules apply to everyone else,' Emanuel said. 'Our officers did hard work day in and day out, countless hours working to unwind what actually happened that night. The city saw its reputation dragged through the mud...It's not just the officers' work, but the work of the grand jury that made a decision based on only a sliver of the evidence [presented]. Because of the judge's decision, none of that evidence will ever be made public....[This case] sends a clear message that if you're in a position of influence and power you'll be treated one way and if you're not you'll be treated another way.' " • • • ILLINOIS PROSECUTORS BAR ASSOCIATION HITS FOXX. Townhall reported on Friday that : "Yesterday witnessed the publication of an extraordinary rebuke of Chicago State's Attorney Kim Foxx by the national association representing district attorneys, in which her conduct in the Smollett case was was picked apart piece by piece. That scathing statement certainly constitutes an embarrassment and a professional black eye for Ms. Foxx, but it doesn't necessary present a legal problem for her. A separate memo from the Illinois Bar Association of Prosecutors (IPBA) could be a different story. One damning assertion after another : "The Illinois Prosecutors Bar Association serves as the voice for nearly 1,000 front line prosecutors across the State who work tirelessly towards the pursuit of justice. The events of the past few days regarding the Cook County State’s Attorney’s handling of the Jussie Smollett case is not condoned by the IPBA, nor is it representative of the honest ethical work prosecutors provide to the citizens of the State of Illinois on a daily basis. The manner in which this case was dismissed was abnormal and unfamiliar to those who practice law in criminal courthouses across the State. Prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges alike do not recognize the arrangement Mr. Smollett received. Even more problematic, the State’s Attorney and her representatives have fundamentally misled the public on the law and circumstances surrounding the dismissal." • The IPBA, says Townhall, "goes out of its way not to condone Foxx's work, calling it inconsistent with 'honest, ethical work.' Then comes their summary of how Foxx 'fundamentally misled' the public : 'When an elected State’s Attorney recuses herself from a prosecution, Illinois law provides that the court shall appoint a special prosecutor. See 55 ILCS 5/3-9008(a-15). Typically, the special prosecutor is a neighboring State’s Attorney, the Attorney General, or the State Appellate Prosecutor. Here, the State’s Attorney kept the case within her office and thus never actually recused herself as a matter of law. Additionally, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office falsely informed the public that the uncontested sealing of the criminal court case was 'mandatory' under Illinois law. This statement is not accurate...The appearance of impropriety here is compounded by the fact that this case was not on the regularly scheduled court call, the public had no reasonable notice or opportunity to view these proceedings, and the dismissal was done abruptly at what has been called an 'emergency' hearing. To date, the nature of the purported emergency has not been publicly disclosed. The sealing of a court case immediately following a hearing where there was no reasonable notice or opportunity for the public to attend is a matter of grave public concern and undermines the very foundation of our public court system.' " • Townhall states : "This was clearly written before it was revealed that Foxx lied about her recusal, too. Finally, putting an even finer point on Foxx's claim about how the disposition of this case was nothing out of the ordinary (remember, her office sent around an email begging for examples to help buttress this dubious notion), the IPBA rips that talking point apart : 'The State’s Attorney has claimed this arrangement is 'available to all defendants' and 'not a new or unusual practice.' There has even been an implication it was done in accordance with a statutory diversion program. These statements are plainly misleading and inaccurate. This action was highly unusual, not a statutory diversion program, and not in accordance with well accepted practices of State’s Attorney initiated diversionary programs. The IPBA supports diversion programs, and recognizes the many benefits they provide to the community, the defendant and to the prosecuting agency. Central to any diversion program, however, is that the defendant must accept responsibility. To be clear here, this simply was not a deferred prosecution. Prosecutors must be held to the highest standard of legal ethics in the pursuit of justice. The actions of the Cook County State’s Attorney have fallen woefully short of this expectation. Through the repeated misleading and deceptive statements to the public on Illinois law and circumstances surrounding the Smollett dismissal, the State’s Attorney has failed in her most fundamental ethical obligations to the public. The IPBA condemns these actions.' " • Townhall caooed the IPBA condemnation "Devastating. Could sanctions be on the way? Were laws broken in pursuit of this disgraceful resolution? An independent investigation is needed. Meanwhile, where does Foxx go from here, having been publicly upbraided by both the state and national associations of her peers?" • As for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who tried to paint himself patriotic and justice-loving, it is important to remember that he blames Donald Trump's 'toxic environment' for Jussie Smollett. Of course, this is almost as stupid as Smollett's act itself. Townhall put it in the right frame : "...if this is the game Emanuel wants to play, there's a decent case to be made that anti-Trump hysterics are more responsible for this 'environment' than anyone else. Smollett was pandering to that group, and their credulous brethren in the national press, with his false, self-serving accusations, smearing Trump supporters in the process. Blaming any of that on Trump is a partisan non-sequitur." • • • WAS MICHELLE INVOLVED?? Last Tuesday, BlabberBuzz's Andy Grimm wrote : "Just days after Jussie Smollett told Chicago police he had fought off a pair of attackers who targeted him in an apparent hate crime, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx tried to convince Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson to turn the investigation over to the FBI. Foxx’s call to Johnson came after an influential supporter of the Empire actor reached out to Foxx personally : Tina Tchen, a Chicago attorney and former chief of staff for former First Lady Michelle Obama, according to emails and text messages provided by Foxx to the Chicago Sun-Times in response to a public records request. Tchen passed Foxx’s number to a relative of the actor, and the ensuing conversations with the family member was cited by Foxx last month as the reason she recused herself from Smollett’s prosecution as the actor faces disorderly conduct charges for allegedly making a false police report. Text messages show Tchen contacted Foxx on February 1, three days after Smollett said he was jumped by two men as he walked home from a sandwich shop near his Streeterville home. Tchen texted Foxx to set up an early morning phone call. 'I wanted to give you a call on behalf of Jussie Smollett and family who I know. They have concerns about the investigation,' Tchen wrote in a text sent before 5 a.m., seeking to set up a call with Foxx before Tchen left on an 8 a.m. flight to New York. 'They have concerns about the investigation.' A few hours later, Foxx received a text from a relative of Smollett, who said she’d received the number from Tchen. In an interview with the Sun-Times this week, Foxx said that the family member expressed concerns about leaked information about the investigation -- information that media outlets attributed to 'police sources.' 'They had no doubt about the quality of the investigation, but believed that the FBI would have a tighter lid on the information,' said Foxx, adding that Johnson initially seemed receptive to the idea of turning the case over the FBI. Foxx said she has made similar calls to the chief in cases involving lower-profile victims....The conversations with Smollett’s relative took place during the period of the investigation when Smollett was considered the victim of a hate crime, not a suspect in a hoax, Foxx said. Her decision to recuse herself was based on the conversations with the family member, which included information about Smollett. An email included with the records requested by the Sun-Times shows Foxx’s chief ethics officer sent a message to top staff announcing Foxx had recused herself from the case on February 13 -- about a week before Smollett was charged, and the same date as her last text message and calls with Smollett’s relative. Foxx spokesman Robert Foley announced that the top prosecutor had recused herself and turned the case over to her top deputy, Joseph Magats, on February 19, without explaining the reason why. The next day, Foley elaborated in a statement to reporters that Foxx 'had conversations with a family member of Jussie Smollett about the incident and their concerns, and facilitated a connection to the Chicago Police Department who were investigating the incident.' " • Townhall reported that: "Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the FBI was involved from the start of the investigation, as is the case in most possible hate crime investigations, but there was never a discussion of the CPD giving up the case to federal investigators. The department confirmed last week that there is an ongoing internal investigation of the unnamed sources who gave the press information.' " • The text messages, according to Townhall, show that "Foxx told both Tchen and Smollett’s relative that Foxx had reached out to Johnson personally about handing the investigation off to the FBI. 'Spoke to the superintendent earlier. He is going to make the ask. Trying to figure out logistics. I’ll keep you posted,' Foxx wrote the relative that evening. 'OMG this would be a huge victory,' the relative texted in reply. In an email message to Tchen sent the same day, Foxx wrote : 'Spoke to the Superintendent Johnson. I convinced him to reach out to FBI to ask that they take over the investigation. He is reaching out now and will get to me shortly.' ” • Tina Tchen, a Chicago attorney and former chief of staff for former First Lady Michelle Obama, according to emails and text messages provided by Foxx to the Sun-Times in response to a public records request. • American Thinker editor Thomas Lifson asked on Wednesday : "Jussie Smollett walks. Cui bono? — who benefits? : "What could possibly explain this stunning cave-in? My colleague Monica Showalter is undoubtedly correct in writing that this is how the elites, the ruling class, protect their own. In this case, it's the socialist class that rules Chicago and much of blue-state America. And M. Catharine Evans is correct that this sort of contempt for the truth is straight out of Marxist dogma, which Jussie imbibed along with milk from his mother. But that still leaves the question of why now. To my eyes, the most obvious immediate effect was to drive from the headlines the Mueller Report's exoneration of President Trump from any charge of collusion, and therefore the Democrats' and media's complicity in perpetrating a catastrophically damaging hoax. The involvement of Tina Tchen, formerly Michelle Obama's top aide and currently helping the scandal-ridden Southern Poverty Law Center find some means of salvaging its survival in the wake of scandals proving its utter moral bankruptcy, makes me think perhaps the fine hand of the Obamas is involved." • "Cui bono?" Lifson's answer is this : "The person with the most to lose from sustained attention to the Russia hoax is the 44th president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. It is virtually inconceivable to me that Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and James Comey acted without guidance from the POTUS in launching their "counter-intelligence" spying on the Trump campaign. Don't forget : "On September 2, 2016 -- just weeks away from election day -- Ms. Page texted Mr. Strzok, her lover, about preparing a report for then-FBI Director James B. Comey because 'potus wants to know everything we're doing.' Despite spending millions of dollars on buying a mansion in Washington, DC, with Valerie Jarrett in residence with him and Michelle, Barack Obama has been notably and uncharacteristically silent. I suspect he is worried about his role in launching the greatest political scandal in American history more than anything else. He hasn't even posted his brackets for the NCAA basketball tournament." • Thomas Lifson dug into Chicago politics : "Perhaps this apparent civil war among Chicago Democrats will yield some light on what's really going on beneath the surface. CBS Chicago reports : 'CBS News has learned that lawyers with the Chicago police department are trying to determine if they can legally release evidence in the investigation of Jussie Smollett despite a judge sealing the case. State prosecutors cleared the Empire actor of all 16 felony counts filed against him just over two weeks ago for allegedly lying to police about being the target of a hate crime attack. And, if Kass is correct in predicting a lawsuit by Jussie against the police, those records may have be to be unsealed in order for the CPD to defend itself. All eyes now turn to the US attorney's office in Chicago, where mail fraud and terroristic threat charges may still be leveled against Smollett. The postal inspectors -- Don't laugh! They are a highly respected, dedicated police agency that takes its mandate very seriously. -- have a mission-critical stake in making sure that highly publicized offenses like this don't go unpunished. Bad as the federal bureaucracies may be, they don't approach the levels of corruption in Cook County and Chicago." • • • PRESIDENT TRUMP SPOKE OUT FOR AMERICA. Fox News reported that President Trump announced Thursday that the FBI and Justice Department will review the “outrageous” decision to drop charges in the Jussie Smollett case. The President, stated Fox News, "weighed in as controversy mounted in Chicago and across the country over the abrupt dismissal of the charges that the Empire actor faked a hate crime, amid widespread speculation over what happened behind the scenes that led to the deal with Cook County prosecutors." The President tweeted : "FBI & DOJ to review the outrageous Jussie Smollett case in Chicago. It is an embarrassment to our Nation!" • Thomas Lifson, in another Americxan Thinker article on Friday, quoted Heather Mac Donald, a well-known American political commentator, essayist, attorney and journalist, who explains the ideological predispositions that led Foxx to take this course of action : "Foxx is a leading figure in the recent national wave of progressive local prosecutors who came to power by playing race politics. She campaigned on the Critical Race Theory credo that the criminal-justice system is endemically biased. She inveighed against the so-called school-to-prison pipeline and promised to reduce racial disparities in prosecutions. Last month, she dismissed aggravated battery charges against a 16-year-old student who had attacked two Chicago police officers; the Chicago police union argued that her dismissal of the charges fit a pattern of favoring offenders over police officers. Foxx operates in a cultural milieu that holds that the fact that a hate crime is a hoax is less important than the fact that it could have been true. Prosecuting Smollett could have sent another black man to prison. Is there a race-based system of justice here?" • Lifson goes on to suggest : "I suspect that Foxx was talked into believing that with the presumed support of the Obamas -- whose former close associate Tina Tchen first intervened with Foxx to save Jussie's bacon -- the narrative could be sold, and questions could be avoided with the usual techniques of citing her own authority, secret technicalities, sealed records, sympathy for the victim Jussie, and ultimately crying racism. Foxx was so stupid (and perhaps a little star-struck) that she did not predict the vehement opposition of Rahm Emanuel and police superintendent Eddie Johnson. I wonder if any mention was made to her of the award from the NAACP that Jussie was scheduled to receive -- if only he were free to travel to California. It is all going to fall apart. The FBI and DoJ are investigating, and Rahm Emanuel has demanded that Jussie pay the costs of investigating his false claim." • • • DEAR READERS, it is rare that the prosecutorial handling of a case is so blatantly wrong. Lloyd Marcus wrote in American Thinker on Saturday : "Smollett paid the two guys he hired to stage his bogus attack with a $3000 check. Closed circuit TV caught Smollett's hired attackers buying the MAGA caps and other materials needed to stage the fake hate crime. Smollett intended for his fake attack to be videoed on cc TV. Thank God the camera in the area Smollett selected malfunctioned. Had Smollett been successful, fake news media would have gleefully aired the video 24/7, probably igniting massive race riots and violence on Trump supporters. After Kim Foxx dropped all charges, Smollett addressed the media, outrageously lying and presenting himself as a victim of police corruption. Smollett said, 'I have been truthful and consistent on every single level since day one. I would not be my mother's son if I was capable of one drop of what I've been accused of.' " • As is so often the case when the issue involves race in America, Marcus forthrightly wrote : "Does this guy think we are idiots? Dude, you lied about being attacked. Idiotically, you paid your fake attackers with a check. There is video of them buying the props. And yet, Smollett has the audacity to sell the lie that he is yet another innocent black man abused by racist police. Sadly, I suspect most of fake news media will help to sell Smollett's lie, which sets up our brave men and women in blue for more assassinations by Black Lives Matter disciples. Many have forgotten the ambush of uniformed Texas Deputy Darren Goforth who was shot multiple times in the back while pumping gas. Deputy Goforth's black assassin was inspired by Black Lives Matter. Forty-seven-year old Deputy Goforth left behind his wife Kathleen, his 12-year-old daughter Ava and his 5-year-old son Ryan. Do you remember NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu who were ambushed and killed while eating lunch in their police car? The enraged black shooter said his motivation was revenge for cops supposedly murdering blacks. Officer Ramos' 13-year-old son Jaden posted the following on Facebook. 'Today I had to say bye to my father. He was their for me everyday of my life, he was the best father I could ask for. It's horrible that someone gets shot dead just for being a police officer. Everyone says they hate cops but they are the people that they call for help. I will always love you and I will never forget you. RIP Dad.' I could go on and on with examples of police ambushed and assassinated because of the evil politically motivated lie that cops routinely abuse and murder blacks. Democrats nurture this heinous lie because it keeps blacks voting for Democrats to protect them from nonexistent massive police and white American racism. So here is race-baiter Jussie Smollett all over national media, disgustingly claiming he is a hero for civil rights. Please excuse me while I barf. This evil man sought to generate more hate and violence on Trump voters who courageously wear MAGA caps." • We agree with Lloyd Marcus when he says : "All charges were dropped against Smollett because his insidious hoax furthers the leftist agenda to demonize police, President Trump, and Trump voters. From Hillary Clinton's serial lawbreaking to Obama, the FBI, the DoJ and others silent coup against an elected President, the Deep State feels free to break laws to remove Trump from office. Allowing Deep State operatives to feel emboldened to freely break laws to get rid of Trump is extremely dangerous as we move toward the 2020 presidential election. We must not allow Deep State operatives to be above the law." • Lloyd Marcus ends by saying "I pray that Senator Lindsey Graham will follow through with his promise to investigate all the arrogant corrupt players in the Deep State's 679-day bogus Trump-colluded-with-Russia investigation." • America has the finest judicial system in the world. We must not let a mob of radical marxist socialists who have hijacked the Democrat Party and destroyed it also destroy America's judicial system by applying socialist-marxist elitism to it -- you know what I refer to : police who seek not equality before the law but protection for their political bosses; courts that do political leaders' bidding; judges appointed to defend not a Constitution but one political regime's agenda. It leads inevitably to security police who round up political opponents for show trials and courts that sentence the opponents to death or detention in a gulag. These Anti-Americans, as we labeled them in Saturday's blog, have no place in our Republic's political life, and certainly not in our legal system. • "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things : Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing-wax -- Of cabbages -- and kings." And of Democrats who are destroying America through corruption and socialist elitism.

President Trump Takes a Victory Lap, Radical Democrats Prevent Border Security, and Biden Wants to Scrap the American Judicial System

PRESIDENT TRUMP GAVE A STEMWINDER OF A SPEECH IN GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN, ON THURSDAY. The President finally was able to vent about the two-year ordeal the Obama Deep State and Democrats put him through. • • • THE "COLLUSION DELUSION" IS OVER. Fox News reported on the Grand Rapids rally, calling it Trump's "fiery first rally since Mueller vindication." Fox said : "President Trump took the stage before a boisterous full house at the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Thursday night -- and proceeded to tear into Democrats and the FBI as unintelligent "frauds" who tried desperately to undermine the results of the 2016 election. 'The Democrats have to now decide whether they will continue defrauding the public with ridiculous bullsh--,' Trump said to thunderous applause, '-- partisan investigations, or whether they will apologize to the American people." A Fox News video of a part of the President's speech is available at < http://video.foxnews.com/v/6019621639001 >. • The President said : "I have a better education than them, I'm smarter than them, I went to the best schools; they didn't. Much more beautiful house, much more beautiful apartment. Much more beautiful everything. And I'm President and they're not." • It warms the heart to hear Donald Trump let loose again, as he did before the Deep State began its cabal to destroy him. The President even addressed protesters outside the arena and Progressives in general, asking : "What do you think of their signs, 'Resist?' What the hell? Let's get something done." • Get something done is what America is waiting for, and Americans know that President Trump is the man who can do it. He talked about the border crisis and vowed to "close the damn border" unless Mexico halts two new caravans he said have been approaching the United States rapidly. Trump also took on fraudulent asylum applicants, saying Progressive lawyers often coach them in a "big fat con job" to claim they've feared for their lives when they make it to the border. The economy, Trump said to roaring, long cheers, "is roaring, the ISIS caliphate is defeated 100 percent, and after three years of lies and smears and slander, the Russia hoax is finally dead. The collusion delusion is over....The single greatest political hoax in the history of our country. And guess what? We won." • Fox News said : "Trump predicted that the former DOJ and FBI officials who pushed the collusion theory and authorized secret surveillance warrants against members of his campaign -- whom he incidentally called 'major losers' -- would soon have 'big problems.' " • And, I hope Adam Schiff can take as much heat as he has dished out for the last two years, because President Trump is hot on his trail, characterizing the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee as "little pencil-neck Adam Schiff, who has the smallest, thinnest neck I've ever seen," and someone who is "not a long-ball hitter." Schiff, D-Calif., wrote Fox News, "who fiercely pushed collusion claims, has vowed to continue investigating Trump despite Mueller's findings -- even as Republicans have called for his resignation." • Fox also reported that President Trump's rally : "prompted thousands of supporters to line the streets hours beforehand in a festive atmosphere that included vendors selling 'Make America Great Again' hats and holding supportive signs. The evening was something of a homecoming : Trump became the first Republican in over two decades to win Michigan in the 2016 presidential election, edging out Hillary Clinton thanks, in part, to his decision to cap off his campaign with a final rally in Grand Rapids shortly after midnight on Election Day. 'This is our Independence Day,' Trump told roaring attendees then. Thursday night's event, though, was a mixture of homecoming and all-out victory parade, in the wake of Mueller's conclusions. Enthusiastic fans -- including many who stood by Trump amid a torrent of unproven allegations that he conspired with Russia to sway the 2016 election -- began to encircle the Van Andel Arena as early as 3:30 a.m. Trump relived the Election Day rally on Thursday, telling the crowd that he got home at 4 a.m. in the morning and told Melania Trump that he had an 'incredible crowd' late into the evening and thought, 'How the hell can I lose Michigan? And guess what: We didn't lose Michigan.' Trump also dropped what he called 'breaking news' for locals, promising, 'I'm going to get full funding of $300 million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which you've been trying to get for over 30 years. It's time.'....Retired cabinet maker Ron Smith, 51, was one of the supporters who arrived to Thursday's rally early. He told the Detroit News outside the arena that although 'Republicans in Congress are trying to put stumbling blocks in his path,' nevertheless, 'Donald Trump comes in here and gets stuff done.' ” • The President also called out Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat doctor turned politician who seemed to endorse the practice of killing some infants after birth earlier this year. President Trump said : "In recent months, the Democrat Party has also been aggressively pushing extreme late-term abortion, allowing children to be ripped from their mother’s womb up until the moment of birth. In Virginia, the governor stated he would even allow a newborn baby to be executed." • Before he left for Grand Rapids, the President told reporters at the White House : "The Special Olympics will be funded. I just told my people, I want to fund the Special Olympics and I just authorized a funding of the Special Olympics. I've been to the Special Olympics. I think it's incredible and I just authorized a funding. I heard about it this morning. I have overridden my people. We're funding the Special Olympics." • Republicans have maintained, according to Fox News, that President Trump has a good chance to win Michigan again in 2020, although changing demographics could present some headwinds. In November, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer defeated a Trump-backed candidate to claim the state's governorship. [BUT] Brian "Boomer" Patrick, communications director for GOP Michigan Representative Bill Huizenga, told Fox : "Democrats are in a pickle and they put themselves here by trumpeting the investigation. All the eggs were in one basket on the Mueller report." • At the end of the rally, Trump told the Michigan audience : "the Democrats took the people of Michigan for granted. With us, you will never be forgotten again." • • • THE PRESIDENT IS RIGHT -- "CLOSE THE DAMN BORDER." BlabberBuzz published an article by Karen Townsend on Wednesday titled "Border Crisis At Near System-Wide Meltdown - Numbers Are Jaw Dropping." Townsend wrote : "The crisis at our southern border is real and it is getting worse. While Democrats continue to stick their heads in the sand and call it a manufactured crisis for political reasons, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen now says we no longer have a national crisis on our hands, we are approaching 'a near system-wide meltdown.' 'Make no mistake-- our border crisis has gone from a national emergency to a near system-wide meltdown. We must be able to secure our borders AND protect vulnerable populations fleeing persecution. But we can’t do this effectively without action to fix our laws.— Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen (@SecNielsen) March 27, 2019." • Townsend said : "This Wednesday morning tweet from Secretary Nielsen follows up on a couple of articles I’ve read in the last few days. NBC News reports that the number of daily attempts by illegal aliens to cross over the border has reached a level not seen since 2006. The numbers have increased to well above 3,000 a day. Not a week, but a day. The surge has maxed out the capacity of existing detention centers, and the Department of Homeland Security is now in negotiations with the Department of Defense to detain and care for the overflow on US military bases, according to a DHS official and two other US officials familiar with the discussions. The Department of Health and Human Services has requested DOD support for bed space for up to 5,000 children, but DOD has not yet approved the request, according to a defense official." • Townsend asked : "How can our border patrol and checkpoint system possibly keep up with this invasion? The simple truth is that they can not keep up and an article caught my eye over the weekend that now border security checkpoints have been ordered closed at the El Paso section. Border Patrol agents are not allowed to speak on the record to the press, according to Texas Monthly, but several did speak to the publication on the condition of remaining anonymous. 'We were told to go ahead and close down all the checkpoints,' one official said Saturday morning. Agents assigned to checkpoints were told they would be sent indefinitely to assist in efforts to process and transport hundreds of families and unaccompanied children crossing the border each day in El Paso, a surge that is overwhelming available resources. 'It’s really out of control. It’s bad,' the official said. A Border Patrol spokesman said the agency was preparing a statement on the checkpoint issue but as of Saturday evening the agency hadn’t responded to Texas Monthly inquiries." • Townsend stated that : "US Representative Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, confirmed reports of the checkpoints shutting down and said he is also receiving reports that agents with Customs and Border Protection who usually inspect cross-border cargo and other trade are also being redeployed to help with asylum claims. 'We’re seeing an impact on the traditional work Border Patrol and CBP do to handle a large number of asylum cases,' he said. He added that he is already looking at future appropriations to see if more incentive can be provided for Mexico and other Latin American countries to work more diligently to fend off the flow of migration from Central Americans." • Checkpoints are closed. Detention centers are over capacity. Children are no longer separated from their families, or those claiming to be family (human trafficking is rampant on the border). What is the solution? Homeland Security has turned to the Department of Defense for help, though troops on the border is tricky because of the Posse Comitatus Act. Townsend reports : "The US officials and a DHS official told NBC News they are working on a plan that would allow defense funds and personnel to be used in transporting immigrants in need of medical transport. The request from the DHS includes the use of DOD land to build facilities that would house detained migrants while they await deportation or an asylum hearing. The Trump administration has already deployed thousands of US troops to the border to help reinforce existing barriers, such as by hanging wire over fencing, and has plans to keep them there into September. Those troops do not have direct involvement with immigrants, and Defense officials are wary of having uniformed military personnel come in contact with or transport migrants, two officials told NBC News. How about using more DOD land like Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base? That is under consideration. Illegal aliens can be housed there, whether it is family detentions or single person detentions. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed site surveys were completed at both Goodfellow AFB and Fort Bliss last year but said there has still been no request to begin housing migrants on US military bases. 'DOD will not begin constructing additional shelters until DOD receives a notice of intent from either DHS or HHS requesting that DOD start construction,' Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Davis said. 'At this time, DOD has not received notification.' ” • • • DEMOCRAT OPPOSITION TO BORDER SECURITY. Democrats can no longer use the old argument that "border detentions are down and more aggressive measures, like a border wall, are not necessary," says Karen Townsend. "Everything is on the table and border security should include a mix of border barriers, border patrol agents, and technology. Over the first five months of fiscal 2019, CBP had apprehended 268,044 migrants, on pace for more than 643,300 this year. If reached, that total would be the most since 705,005 in 2008 and more than twice as high as the 310,531 migrants taken into custody two years ago. Adding to the Democrats woes on border security is the fact that their attempt to override President Trump’s Executive Order directing $1B of money from the Pentagon budget towards border wall construction failed Tuesday. Representative Adam Smith (D-WA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, tried to deny the move Monday and sent a letter to DOD to that effect. As Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan was testifying before his committee Monday, Smith released his letter as the Secretary was still testifying. On Monday night, Shanahan announced that he had authorized the US Army Corps of Engineers to spend up to $1 billion to support the Department of Homeland Security’s request 'to build 57 miles of 18-foot-high pedestrian fencing, constructing and improving roads, and installing lighting within the Yuma and El Paso Sectors of the border.' The reprogramming was directly in response to President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency in February. Bu...Smith released [his] letter informing DoD it would not be allowed to do any such reprogramming : 'The committee denies this request. The committee does not approve the proposed use of Department of Defense funds to construct additional barriers and roads or install lighting in the vicinity of the United States border.' The failure of the House Democrats to override President Trump’s Executive Order leaves [Chairman] Smith impotent here. The money can be used for the border wall." • Townsend ended her article with DHS Secretary Nielson's tweet : "Hard to argue with the numbers, no matter how hard the President’s opposition tries. There is no 'manufactured' crisis at our Southern Border. There is a real-life humanitarian & security catastrophe. The numbers are trending from bad to worse, which is why we need Congress to act to fix outdated laws to address today’s migrant flows. pic.twitter.com/rH7eDLIt0G — Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen (@SecNielsen) March 26, 2019." • • • RELEASING ILLEGAL ALIENS INTO THE US BECAUSE OF DEMOCRAT OPPOSITION TO BORDER SECURITY. Breitbart reported on Wednesday : "The Department of Homeland Security released 24,000 foreign family members who crossed through the United States-Mexico border into the US over the course of two weeks this month....In newly confirmed federal data from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, Breitbart News has learned that the country’s Catch and Release program has resulted in the mass release of border crossers and illegal aliens on a weekly basis. For months, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have said privately that the Catch and Release program has been taken to new heights, while ICE union officials declared this week that the program was in 'overdrive' under the direction of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Between March 5 and March 20, about 24,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have been released into the interior of the US while they await their immigration and asylum hearings. The vast majority of these foreign nationals never appear at their hearings and the overwhelming majority are never deported from the country after release by DHS. The Catch and Release process often entails federal immigration officials busing border crossers into nearby border cities and dropping them off with the promise that they will show up for their immigration and asylum hearings, sometimes years later. The data obtained by Breitbart News reveals those 24,000 individuals were released through these areas : 2,500 border crossers released in San Diego, California; 4,000 border crossers released in Phoenix, Arizona; 7,500 border crossers released in El Paso, Texas; 10,000 border crossers released in San Antonio, Texas. Overall, in the last three months, 108,500 border crossers and illegal aliens have been released by DHS into the interior of the country. Nearly 50,000 of these border crossers and illegal aliens, alone, were released in the San Antonia area since the beginning of the year." • Breitbart reports that : "ICE officials said their detention capacity to detain border crossers and illegal aliens has been strained by the enormous levels of illegal immigrants arriving in the country every month. In a statement to Breitbart News, officials said : 'Since December 21, ICE has released approximately 108,500 family members into the interior of the United States; recently, for the first time during the influx, the agency has seen multiple days culminating in over 1,000 individuals released in the Rio Grande Valley alone. The sheer volume of family units (FAMU) crossing the border has overwhelmed ICE’s limited transportation resources; combined with a requirement to detain these individuals for no more than 20 days, the agency has no option but to expeditiously arrange for their release. ICE makes every attempt to coordinate the release of these individuals with NGOs that provide assistance with basic needs, but the heavy influx in recent months has inundated these organizations as well." • "At this current rate," says Breitbart, "DHS is releasing more than 36,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into the country every single month. For the year, DHS is on pace to release more than 430,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into the country. This concludes that about half of the illegal aliens apprehended at the US-Mexico border are eventually released by DHS into the U.S. where they have a high probability of never being deported. Federal immigration officials expect the Catch and Release program to be supercharged this year as the Trump administration most recently expanded the program and cut back on ICE detention space. Current illegal immigration projections predict that aside from the border crossers and illegal aliens who are caught by Border Patrol, then released into the interior of the country, there could be about half a million illegal aliens who successfully cross into the US through the southern border, undetected, this year." • Breitbart also quoted Customs and Border Protection leaders, who said Wednesday that apprehensions of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants at the southern border spiked in March to levels unseen in a decade : 'We are now on pace for over 100,000 apprehensions and encounters with migrants -- with 90% (90,000) crossing the border illegally between ports of entry. March will be the highest month in over a decade,' CPB Commissioner Kevin McAleenan tweeted. Most of the increase is because of the number of Central American families seeking to flee violence in their homelands and seek asylum in the US. 'In March, we will see over 55,000 family units apprehended and encountered. In March of 2017, when we saw historic lows, we saw 50,342 crossings total -- including all demographics, not just families,' he added. The commissioner added that the surge in families had overwhelmed ICE and the Department of Health and Human Services. 'This stark and increasing shift to more vulnerable populations, combined with the overwhelming numbers, and inadequate capacity to detain families and children at ICE and HHS, respectively, has created a humanitarian crisis,' McAleenan wrote, echoing President Trump’s description of conditions at the border. He also posted that unspecified changes in the law were needed to step the migrant flow. 'Changes in the law and closing the vulnerabilities in our legal framework is the only way that this flow is going to be reduced,' he wrote. His tweets came days after more than 3,700 people were apprehended along the border on Monday. 'Border Patrol recorded more than 3,700 apprehensions along the Southwest Border yesterday -- the largest single day total in more than a decade,' CBP tweeted Tuesday." • President Trump has now declared a national emergency to secure Defense cash for his long-promised border wall. So many asylum seekers have recently crossed the Mexican border into Texas that the Border Patrol had started releasing some of those it catches. AND, the Democrat-controlled Hosue was unable to muster the 2/3 vote needed to override President Trump’s veto of a national emergency border security measure that will now stand. The New York Post said : "Democrats tried to cancel the emergency declaration, but Trump vetoed their vote. Tuesday, the House voted again, 248 to 181, to override the veto. However, the vote needed 38 more votes to earn the two-thirds majority to override the President’s veto. According to Fox News, 14 Republicans voted in favor of the override." • When America’s top border security official says the US-Mexico border is at its "breaking point," with insufficient numbers of agents "to adequately respond" -- Fox News reported this on Wednesday, quoting US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan -- it is time to call the bluff of the radically Insane Democrats. • It is perfectly obvious that House and Senate Democrats are unwilling to do anything to stop the flow of illegal aliens into the United States. We need to turn the anti-Trump talk around and label these Democrats as the "anti-Americans" they are. They have violated their duty to uphold the Constitution by allowing the United States to be invaded by illegal aliens. Republicans in both the House and Senate must support and pass resolutions condemning their acts and naming them individually. Americans must stop voting for them. The 2020 House elections are just around the corner -- the congressional GOP must give us the ammunition we need to go after these radical Democrat Open-Border anti-Americans. • • • DEAR READERS, These Democrat swines in Congress are sitting on the same bench as the growing horde of radical Democrat presidential wannabes -- Harris, Warren, Booker, Sanders, Holder, Buttigieg, Gillibrand, O'Rourke, Yang -- and they all bear the same mark of anti Americanism. The worst may be Joe Biden -- he's the guy who once said Germany attacked Pearl Harbor -- because Uncle Joe is both old enough and experienced enough to know better, so we must assume that he is pandering -- a word whose origins are in the name Pandarus, who in Homer's Iliad breaks the truce between the Trojans and the Greeks by treacherously wounding Menelaus, the king of Sparta and is ultimately slain, and who in medieval literature became a licentious figure who is the procurer of Cressida for Troilus. Joe Biden took to the stump this week to proclaim that he apologizes for his role in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas more than a quarter-century ago, which involved sexual harassment claims made by Anita Hill. Biden tried to say he was helpless to prevent Anita Hill from being cross examined by the Senate Judiciary Committee -- he was Committee chairman at the time !! • It is truly amazing to me that these Democrats, lately turned radical for the love of position and power, can say 'I was in charge but I'm innocent.' BUT, Biden took his apology a huge step further. He blamed the Anita Hill affair on this : "It's an English jurisprudential culture, a white man's culture. It's got to change." American Thinker's Nick Kaster wrote : "In an attempt to outflank other Democrat contenders in the identity politics sweepstakes, Biden became the first presidential candidate to openly question the entire system of law upon which our country is based. And while it is tempting to dismiss Biden's remarks's as desperate opportunism, it is important to remind all Americans that the British legal system is America's greatest inheritance." That heritage began at Runnymede, on June 15, 1215 -- 804 years ago. It was where, wrote author and parliamentarian Daniel Hannan : "The idea of the law standing above the government first took contractual form. King John accepted that he would no longer get to make the rules up as he went along. From that acceptance flowed, ultimately, all the rights and freedoms that we now take for granted : uncensored newspapers, security of property, equality before the law, habeas corpus, regular elections, sanctity of contract, jury trials." Kaster adds that the Founders "built on the rights enunciated in the Magna Carta and on other significant British documents, such as the Petition of Right (1628) and the Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641). The British Constitution is unwritten and is based on the English 'common law' -- law built through precedent, case by case, which has long served as a protection against excessive state power. And while the people who originated this system may have been 'white,' the common law is practiced all over the world, in some eighty countries, including India and Hong Kong. The Framers went one step farther and codified the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. 'The rights we now take for granted -- freedom of speech, religion, assembly and so on -- are not the natural condition of an advanced society,' Hannan concludes. 'They were developed overwhelmingly in the language in which you are reading these words.' " • But, Joe Biden doesn't seem to remember his law school lessons, preferring to toss into the trash barrel a system of law that has given us all the freedoms and protections "that are our birthright. Biden's attack is an attack on America itself." Kaster asks : "What would Biden replace our 'English jurisprudential culture' with?....Will any member of the Fourth Estate have the courage to ask him : 'Sir, if you jettison English jurisprudence, then what would you have us replace it with?' " • Based on current experience with these radical Democrat swine, we can assume that Joe Biden prefers the putrid stench of American jurisprudence being burned at the stake in Chicago in what has all the earmarks of a classic Chicago Democrat "fix." And, we can feel pretty sure that Biden would prefer to replace American jurisprudence with the uncontrolled radical Democrat elitist outlaws who thought they could appoint Robert Mueller to destroy a President they didn't agree with. • White man's culture??? If Joe Biden wants to deep-six our English judicial system, what exactly does he want to eliminate? Trial by jury? Innocence until proven guilty? Right to counsel? Right to a jury of one's peers? Right to confront one's accusers? Equal treatment under the law? Right to own property? Right to vote? Right to religious freedom? Right of peaceful assembly? Right to speak one's mind? • BEWARE, America. Joe Biden may guffaw and sound silly when he says Germany attacked Pearl Harbor. But, he and his fellow travelers are far from silly. They are the advance troops of radical marxist socialism who mean to bring down America and her Republic.

Republican Gear Up to Investigate the FBI/DOJ Cabal against President Trump, While the Media Digs In and Brennan Seeks Cover by Saying He May Have Received 'Bad Information'

PRESIDENT TRUMP AND HIS SUPPORTERS ARE GEARING UP TO UNRAVEL THE PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT ATTEMPTED COUP. • • • PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL RELEASE THE FISA DOCUMENTS. Fox News reported on Thursday about the President's interview with Sean Hannity to discuss to outcome of the Mueller report and the role the FISA abuse scandal played. The interview is available at : < http://video.foxnews.com/v/6018986517001 > and < http://video.foxnews.com/v/6018995725001 >. • President Trump told Hannity that he will release the full and unredacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants and related documents used by the FBI to probe his campaign, saying he wants to "get to the bottom" of how the long-running Russia collusion narrative began. The President told anchor Sean Hannity : "I do, I have plans to declassify and release. I have plans to absolutely release. I have some very talented people working for me, lawyers, and they really didn't want me to do it early on....A lot of people wanted me to do it a long time ago. I'm glad I didn't do it. We got a great result without having to do it, but we will. One of the reasons that my lawyers didn't want me to do it, is they said, if I do it, they'll call it a form of obstruction. Frankly, thought it would be better if we held it to the end. But at the right time, we will be absolutely releasing." • President Trump also accused FBI officials of committing "treason" -- calling former FBI Director James Comey a "terrible guy," saying former CIA Director John Brennan is potentially mentally ill -- "I think Brennan's a sick person, I really do," Trump said. "I believe there's something wrong with him, for him to come out of the CIA and act that way was so disrespectful to the country and to the CIA. He was not considered good at what he did. He was never a respected guy." -- and labeling Democrat House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff as a criminal. President Trump attacked Schiff, D-Calif., who has pushed strongly for investigations into possible Trump-Russia links : "Schiff is a bad guy, he knew he was lying -- he's not a dummy. For a year and a half he would just leak and call up CNN and others. You know, I watch him, so sanctimonious...He knew it was a lie, and he'd get in the back room with his friends in the Democrat Party, and they would laugh like hell. In one way, you could say it's a crime what he did -- he was making statements he knew were false. He's a disgrace to our country." • Fox News reminded us that : "Redacted versions of FISA documents already released have revealed that the FBI extensively relied on documents produced by Christopher Steele, an anti-Trump British ex-spy working for a firm funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, to surveil Trump aide Carter Page. At least one senior DOJ official had apparent concerns Steele was unreliable, according to text messages exclusively obtained last week by Fox News....The leaked Dossier, and related FBI surveillance, kickstarted a media frenzy on alleged Russia-Trump collusion that ended with a whimper on Sunday, when it was revealed special counsel Robert Mueller's probe concluded finding no evidence of such a conspiracy, despite several offers by Russians to help the Trump campaign. Page was never charged with wrongdoing, and he is currently suing the DNC for defamation." • President Trump also told Hannity : "When I said there could be somebody spying on my campaign, it went wild out there. They couldn't believe I could say such a thing. As it turned out, that was small potatoes compared to what went on....Millions and millions [spent] on the phony Dossier, and then they used the Dossier to start things. It was a fraud, paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats." • Fox News noted that : "Just hours earlier Wednesday, Trump made clear he was enthusiastic about the idea of appointing a second special counsel to review the origins of the Russia investigation when it came up during a meeting Tuesday with Republican Senators, a source familiar with the discussions told Fox News. The President also said he had doubts about the secretive and mysterious June 27, 2016 Phoenix airport tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch -- which was spotted while Lynch was overseeing the Hillary Clinton email probe : 'I had a lot of planes for a long time. I’ve never stopped the plane on the tarmac to let somebody on the plane. Bill Clinton said he was there to play golf, but I know the area very well. Arizona. It's a little warm at that time of year for golf, OK?" • The President's parting shot was : "If you wrote this as a novel, nobody would buy it; it would be a failure, because it would be too unbelievable. We're getting to the bottom of it. This can never, ever happen to a President again. That was a disgrace and an embarrassment to our country....Hopefully they won't get away with it. We'll have to see how it all started, but I'm going to leave that to other people, including the attorney general and others, to make that determination. Fifty years, 100 years from now -- if someone tries the same thing, they have to know the penalty will be very very great if and when they get caught." • • • SENATOR RAND PAUL SINGLES OUT JOHN BRENNAN. In a separate report, Fox News revealed : "Citing a high-level source, Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul late Wednesday tweeted that anti-Trump ex-CIA Director John Brennan had internally pushed the Dossier. Fox News has not independently verified Paul's source." BUT, Fox did say : "Brennan was one of the loudest and most virulent voices to trumpet the Russian collusion theory over the past two years, asserting falsely just weeks ago that Mueller was likely planning to indict members of the Trump administration's family....Trump, who revoked Brennan's security clearance last year amid concerns Brennan was improperly hinting that he had inside information about ongoing federal probes, called those remarks 'horrible' on Wednesday. Brennan has since acknowledged he was wrong, but has said inaccurately that Mueller merely could not find evidence meeting the high bar needed for a criminal prosecution -- when in fact Mueller found no evidence at all that the Trump team responded to Russians' numerous efforts to involve them in a conspiracy." • BlabberBuzz on Wednesday published a Breitbart Exclusive written by Matthew Boyle, in which Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said he wants to know if former President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch were in on the decisions to spy on President Donald Trump’s campaign and lend credence to the phony Dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that gave way to what became the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. In the exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Tuesday, Senator Paul said he is not sure if Obama or Lynch were personally aware of everything going -- but demanded the production of documents that would prove it conclusively one way or the other : “You know, I don’t know. But I think we ought to know. The thing is like I say, when they release the information -- if the report is to come out, part of the release is they should have to release any documents from Loretta Lynch and any documents from the President that discuss or have information pertaining to the FISA warrant. If this went all the way up to President, to President Obama, yes we should know that. The only way you’ll get that is if Democrats really want to read all million pages of Mueller’s investigation and we tell them fine you’ll get that but only if we get all the information from the Obama administration on who was unmasking names, who was unmasking phone calls. Who was making the arguments for the FISA warrant and what were there arguments for it? Did President Obama get involved in it? Did Loretta Lynch get involved in it? So I think if we’re going to look at the Mueller report we should look at the origins of this Russian hoax investigation as well.” Senator Paul told Breitbart that there needs to be a full investigation into the origins of all of this, in particular what appears to be abuse by the Obama administration when it comes to using foreign surveillance wiretap powers : “Yeah, and the way you’ll find out about it like I say is if they’re demanding the full report come out and all of that information come out then we should demand in exchange for that all of the paper, all of the information that was transforming how and why they got those FISA warrants should be made public too. Everybody should be allowed to read who’s making the decisions and what were their arguments for why anybody should respect or believe this Dossier that was paid for by the Clinton campaign. So I think that from my point of view the only way I’ll agree to release more information from this Mueller investigation is they also need to release information that points to who in the Obama administration agreed to start this Russia hoax.” • Senator Paul also took on the mainstream media : "I think the left-wing media has no conscience. I don’t think that they’ll apologize. I think the left-wing media has no shame. They’ve been trumpeting this thing for two solid years. People were saying ‘the President is going to jail,’ that he ‘absolutely colluded,’ that the President is a spy, we’ve even had some in the media do the same to me. I think they should apologize but do I think they will apologize? No. If you go on the left-wing television sites and watch them they’re still concocting new stories and saying things like ‘we need to know about his tax returns.’ It’s endless. But I think the American people are catching on. Ever since the Catholic high school student who was in Washington that the left-wing media made this fake story about him disrespecting Native Americans -- ever since then I think people are catching on that the media doesn’t really care about the truth and is willing to concoct any story that fits their narrative. It’s the same thing with Trump. They hate Trump so they concocted this whole thing, and now they’ll move on to some other thing. So I think you’ll see rare if any apologies.” • Senator Paul, also in his exclusive interview with Breitbart News after the President’s complete exoneration, called for several other senior Obama officials like former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director James Brennan, and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, to be compelled to testify before Congress about their roles in perpetrating this hoax on the American public." • Fox News First reported on Thursday that Senator Rand Paul charged in a bombshell Tweet late Wednesday that an unidentified high-level source told him that anti-Trump ex-CIA Director John Brennan "insisted that the unverified and fake Steele Dossier" be included in a classified intelligence community report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections -- a decision that ultimately lent credibility to the Dossier and may have played a key role in fomenting unfounded fears of Russia collusion for two years....Paul called on Brennan to testify under oath immediately, as Republicans continue to aggressively seek out the origins of the collusion narrative. Fox News had not independently verified Paul's source, and Brennan has not replied to Fox News' requests for comment." • The Gateway Pundit quoted Senator Paul : "Well my source tells me that the intelligence community, Obama’s intelligence community, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, they were frustrated because they had this Russian Dossier but no one believed it was real. It wasn’t verifiable, they couldn’t get anything out of it, so they sent spies into the Trump campaign, they tried to entrap Trump officials [into] admitting that they were working for Russia, but it wasn’t working. So finally what they decided is we have to attach this Dossier, this fake Dossier, to the intelligence reports [given to Obama]." • The Gateway Pundit explained that in late summer of 2016 : "then-FBI Director James Comey was notified that former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would be sending him a letter asking him to investigate the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. Harry Reid’s letter was written a week after he met with John Brennan -- raising suspicion that Brennan briefed Reid on the fake Steele Dossier -- Reid’s letter was then leaked to the New York Times just before election day. John Brennan said during a February 2018 appearance on “Meet the Press” that he learned about the Dossier in December of 2016 and that 'it did not play any role whatsoever in the intelligence community assessment that was done that was presented to then-President Obama and then-President elect Trump.' [BUT] It gets worse....John Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee [earlier] in a May 2017 hearing that the Dossier was not a part of the intelligence used to assess Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Dossier, Brennan testified, 'was not in any way used as a basis for the intelligence community assessment that was done.' Former House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes is reportedly investigating whether Brennan perjured himself during his 2017 testimony to the Committee. Rand Paul is right -- it’s time for Congress to drag Brennan in again and question him under oath ASAP." • The Washington Examiner wrote a similar article about Brennan on Thursday, stating : "In an earlier tweet Wednesday, Paul called for wide investigation into former President Barack Obama and his team : 'I agree with @kimguilfoyle Time for Congress to investigate. What did President Obama know and when? How did this hoax go on for so long unabated? https://t.co/fgJZaqR6cI — Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 27, 2019' Paul said the topic of a probe into the Dossier 'keeps coming up for discussion. How did all this get started.' He added that Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Lindsay Graham has indicated it would open a probe. Brennan has denied in the past that he included the salacious Dossier, generated at the request of the Democrats, in Intelligence Community Assessment reports on Russian interference in the 2016 election during the final months of the Obama administration. But at least two other top intelligence officials said he did. And Washington Post editor Bob Woodward also said that Brennan endorsed the Dossier from Christopher Steele when he got a copy in late 2016. Woodward said that Brennan felt it matched the Russia collusion charges he had heard. The Dossier was never considered true until it was recognized in intelligence assessments and only after the late Senator John McCain and top Obama officials helped circulate it, said Paul....The Dossier was underwritten by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. By indicating the Kremlin interfered in the election, it helped to fuel false allegations of foreign collusion with the Trump campaign, leading to two years of nonstop investigations." • The Examiner also quoted Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin, who has demanded a probe into the efforts by the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign to spy on the Trump campaign : “I’m very concerned that it’s becoming more clear that the Obama administration was able to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on our campaign based on phony opposition research from the Clinton campaign. Having federal law enforcement spy on a presidential campaign based on phony campaign research is really distressing and the true untold story." • • • BRENNAN SAYS HE HAD 'BAD INFORMATION.' Daily Caller's Chuck Ross wrote on Thursday : "Former CIA Director John Brennan’s recent admission he received 'bad information' that led him to inaccurately predict conspiracy indictments in the Mueller probe is raising questions about claims he made to Congress about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians. Brennan told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in May 2017 the CIA provided the FBI with information on contacts between Russian officials and Trump campaign figures. Brennan said he was 'concerned' about the contacts because of known Russian efforts to 'suborn' Trump campaign associates. 'It raised questions in my mind...whether or not the Russians were ever able to gain cooperation of those individuals. I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign,' he added, noting he had not seen evidence of collusion between the Trump associates and Russians. Brennan did not identify the Trump officials or add any other details about the alleged contacts, other than that they occurred in 2016. Whatever contacts there might have been did not involve a conspiracy to influence the election, as special counsel Robert Mueller has determined. Mueller ended his investigation without issuing any new indictments in the case. Mueller also found no evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian government, according to a summary of the investigation that Attorney General William Barr submitted to Congress Sunday. Brennan acknowledged after Barr’s revelation that he may have relied on 'bad information' when he recently predicted conspiracy indictments against Trump associates in the Mueller probe : 'Well, I don’t know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was. I am relieved that it’s been determined there was not a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government over our election. I think that is good news for the country.' Brennan said in his May 2017 testimony he could not reveal the Trump campaign contacts because the information was classified. He said the Intelligence panel was aware of the information." • I have to say that when the Director of the CIA chooses as his first line of defense that he relied on "bad information," he is in big trouble and he knows it. • • • REPUBLICANS TELL SCHIFF TO RESIGN. Fox News published on Thursday a letter asking Adam Schiff to step down. The letter was written and signed by all the GOP members on House Intelligence Committee. Catherine Herridge reported from Washington ; "Every Republican on the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday demanded Representative Adam Schiff step down as chairman over the California Democrat’s repeated claims to have evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. In a letter, obtained by Fox News and signed by every Republican on the committee, the lawmakers slammed Schiff for his claims in the media that there was 'more than circumstantial evidence' of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. 'Your actions both past and present are incompatible with your duty as Chairman of this Committee,' the letter states. 'We have no faith in your ability to discharge your duties in a manner consistent with your Constitutional responsibility and urge your immediate resignation as Chairman of this Committee.' ” The entire letter was posted by Fox News on Scribd and is available at < https://www.scribd.com/document/403481639/GOP-Letter-to-Schiff >. Herridge wrote : "The letter follows the conclusion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, which turned up no evidence of collusion between Trump campaign members and Russia during the 2016 presidential election. President Trump himself went even further than congressional Republicans Thursday morning, tweeting : 'Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress!' Schiff, a vocal critic of the President, has doubled down on his claim that Trump and his administration colluded with foreign powers despite Mueller’s findings. 'Undoubtedly, there is collusion,' Schiff told the Washington Post after Attorney General William Barr's four-page summary of Mueller's investigation was released Sunday. He told the paper that the question of whether Trump or the people around him were compromised by a hostile foreign power was not in any part of Mueller’s report." • TheHill reported that : "House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) aggressively pushed back at calls for him to step down from President Trump and other Republicans, defending his past comments by lighting into the President and his family and campaign over its contacts with Russia. Schiff at the opening of an Intelligence Committee hearing on Russia listed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia that he described as being 'not OK,' signaling he'll fiercely defend himself from the calls to end his chairmanship. 'My colleagues may think it is OK the President's son was offered dirt as part of an effort to help Trump,' Schiff said in his statement. 'You might think it is OK. I don’t,' Schiff added, his voice rising as he went on." • NOTICE that Schiff did not say that the President's son accepted the "dirt" or entered inot a collusive arrangement -- he was merely "offered dirt." • BUT, TheHill stretched the truth a bit when it said : "Schiff spoke after ONE of the panel's senior members, in a striking display called for him to step down. Representative Mike Conaway (R-Texas) said Schiff had lost confidence in the panel by promoting a 'demonstrably false' narrative that has damaged the 'integrity' of their panel. NO MENTION by TheHill of the letter signed by all GOP Committee members. • • • NATIONAL REVIEW'S DAVID FRENCH CALLED THE DOSSIER A 'MALIGNANT GIFT TO AMERICA.' National Review's David French wrote : "The Dossier, characterized by James Comey under oath as “salacious and unverified,” consisted of opposition research compiled by a former British intelligence officer and commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Taken as whole, it undermined the credibility of American intelligence agencies, corrupted elements of the media, and distorted the public debate. It may well be one of the most malignant documents in modern American history. I’m not going to link to the Dossier, but it’s worth remembering its core claim. As explained in this December analysis in Lawfare, the document not only contained claims that Russia possessed lurid, compromising information on Donald Trump, it also made the sensational allegation that there existed a 'well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [Trump and his associates] and the Russian leadership,' including an 'intelligence exchange [that] had been running between them for at least 8 years.' The very existence of this allegation detonated like a bomb in the American body politic....The Nunes memo notes that 'Deputy Director McCabe testified....that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Dossier information.' In addition, elements of the Dossier made it to lawmakers including Harry Reid and John McCain, and the FBI ultimately even briefed then-President-Elect Trump about its contents. While the summary it provided Trump is still largely redacted, it is easy to imagine how the existence of such a document could enrage the President....But even in the face of widespread rumors, responsible journalists -- or journalists who aspire to responsibility -- do not print the rumor, at least not without verifying or debunking it. They should not print the rumor even if they know that law enforcement is looking into it....Well, if you’re BuzzFeed, that’s exactly what you do. While it may well be newsworthy that the FBI is looking into claims that Trump is 'compromised,' there’s a vast difference between that factual report and just tossing a raw opposition-research file into the public square and telling people to 'make up their own minds.' That makes no sense. None. Between taking kids to soccer practice and dance lessons, parents aren’t able to determine whether Michael Cohen went to Prague. As I wrote at the time, 'individual Americans aren’t free-standing intelligence agencies, ready and able to investigate alleged Russian operations in Moscow.' If a journalist hears a claim, he should investigate. Not punt to the public. BuzzFeed’s decision had two immediate effects. First, it demonstrated the extent to which an influential media outlet would depart from best practices when it possessed negative allegations against Trump. Second, the instant the claims were published, millions of Americans became convinced they were true....a veritable industry sprang up that attempted to tie the entire Trump-Russia investigation to the Dossier....The Dossier was the chief weapon in the effort to delegitimize the investigation itself, and it was a potent weapon indeed. For all of their other accomplishments, the Clintons are leaving American public life with a legacy of lies and lawlessness. Bill Clinton’s shameless behavior, perjury, and obstruction of justice led to his impeachment. Hillary’s serial deceptions and her grotesque mishandling of classified information led to her defeat. The Dossier, however, in its sheer negative impact on American public life, may be her most infamous achievement.' Her campaign -- and ultimately Hillary herself -- bears responsibility for the chaos it sowed. But key members of the media and the government share in that responsibility. The Dossier redefined the debate. It was a cancer, and it sickened American culture and politics. Our nation is weaker because that document entered the bloodstream of the body politic." • AND, in news just in, Representative Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo that he plans to submit criminal referrals to the Justice Department on accusations both the DOJ and the FBI made false claims while they investigated allegations of Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election. Nunes said, according to Newsmax, that referrals to DOJ are likely next week over the Russia probe : "We think will grab everybody that we need to grab to make sure that there is a proper investigation." Nunes told Newsmax that the FBI and the DOJ used counterintelligence capabilities while investigating Trump that would normally be used to go after "terrorists and other bad guys. They turned it on a political campaign. This is where they first went wrong....Congress should not tolerate it, the American people should not tolerate it, and the Democrats should not tolerate it." He added that the FBI and DOJ had claimed their investigation did not begin until late July 2016, but "We now know for certain that that's not true. We are still trying to get to the bottom of that. Of course, there are still documents that need to come out." He said while he expects the referral to be delivered by next week, as more information surfaces, it might need to be supplemented : "There are documents that need to come out, but, we are prepared and are now drafting a criminal referral. We can't force them to do an investigation, but we will give appropriate names to some crimes." • • • DEAR READERS, to finish, and with a big thank-you to Thomas Lifson and Rick Moran, I offer you another pinch of fertilizer for your ever-blooming release and relief catharsis following the American tragedy that presented itself as the Mueller probe and ended with the ZERO result of collusion or obstruction findings for President Trump and America. Watch the definitive takedown of CNN by Tucker Carlson on Fox News Wednesday evening. It will make you shed tears of cathartic joy. It is available at < https://youtu.be/V0zf7oEI9uM >. And, then, because a good laugh is the best catharsis I know of, watch "the walls are closing in" You Tube that covers the last two years of media hysteria in trying to "'Get Trump". This one is available at < https://youtu.be/qjUvfZj-Fm0 >. As Rick Moran says, save this one for later, too, to re-watch when the media becomes too much to take -- those moments when "the walls are closing in."

Americans Are Experiencing Renewal and Relief -- Aristotle Called It 'Catharsis'

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE GOING THROUGH A CATHARSIS. Britannica discusses catharsis in the classic Greek tragedy sense : "Catharsis, the purification or purgation of the emotions (especially pity and fear) primarily through art, but also through any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration....In criticism, catharsis is a metaphor used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of true tragedy on the spectator....Tragedy then has a healthful and humanizing effect on the spectator or reader....Debate continues about what Aristotle actually means by catharsis, but the concept is linked to the positive social function of tragedy....The interpretation generally accepted is that through experiencing fear vicariously in a controlled situation, the spectator’s own anxieties are directed outward, and, through sympathetic identification with the tragic protagonist, his insight and outlook are enlarged." We remember the Greek tragesies of Oedipus and Antigone, or the Shakespearean tragedies of King Lear and Macbeth. In these dramas, the audience experienced catharsis in a timespan of not more than several hours. But, Americans have been through a real life tragedy that lasted more than two years. The catharsis is not only proportionately greater but deeper, requiring more time for the "healthful and humanizing" effects to be felt. One thing is certain -- those who did not accept the ending of the American real life tragedy cannot experience the catharsis or be healed and renewed by it. • • • EVIDENCE OF AMERICA'S CATHARSIS. Newsmax reported on Monday the results of a HarrisX Poll showing that : "A majority of registered voters say they’re open to giving President Donald Trump a second term -- with almost a quarter of them citing the economy as their reason. In the HarrisX survey conducted for TheHill, 54% said they’d think about voting for Trump; 46% said they wouldn’t even consider casting a ballot for Trump. The economy will figure prominently in voters’ decision, according to the poll; 22% of those saying they could vote for Trump cited the economy as their primary reason. 'Clearly the economy is always the issue in every presidential election,' GOP pollster Ed Goeas told Hill.TV. 'Because that's what it always is. Jobs, the economy, taxes. Basically, do people feel their lives are doing better economically than when that president went in?' The margin of error in the poll -- which was conducted before a summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was released -- is plus or minus 3.1%.Here’s some other findings : 95% of respondents who said they voted for Trump in 2016 said they’d do it again in 2020. 76% of 2016 Hillary Clinton voters said they would 'never' vote for Trump; 24% said they’d at least consider it. 65% of respondents who didn’t vote in 2016 said they’d never vote for Trump; 35% said they could do so." • While the HarrisX Poll was taken before the Mueller findings were released, it was made in the period leading up to their release, in which many were beginning to warn that the Mueller findings could "disappoint" those who believed the President had "colluded" with Russia. • • • THIS WAS AMERICA'S FIRST ATTEMPTED COUP D'ETAT. That was enough to lead most Americans to see the enfolding of the radical Democrat cabal as a major test point for the Republic. The New York Sun published an essay be Conrad Black on Monday. Its title was "US Was Closer To Coup D’Etat Than Ever Before." Conrad Black wrote : "No reader of my previous comments on the subject would expect surprise from me about the verdict of the Mueller report. No one nominated by a major political party to the presidency of the United States would have dreamed of cooperating with any foreign power to influence a US presidential election. Aaron Burr, who was thought to be running for vice president but ended by opportunistically challenging Jefferson for President, requiring that the House of Representatives determine the victor, and who was later accused but acquitted of serious crimes, would not have done that. Millard Fillmore, who succeeded to the presidency on the death of President Zachary Taylor and later ran as a third-party candidate in 1856 for the American Party, nicknamed the “Know Nothings,” which opposed immigration and the eligibility of Roman Catholics to hold public office, would not have dreamt of it. The Russian-collusion argument was always an absurd, a practically insane proposition. The fact that it enjoyed the currency it did as long as it did illustrates the cognitive incapacity of the Obama-Clinton majority to accept that they were honestly defeated in 2016. Worse than that, while it was just mad partisanship by most Democrats and most of the political press, the collusion fraud was a crime, of extreme gravity, by its perpetrators." • Black even used theatrical similes to describe what happened : "Donald Trump is like a circus actor who excites laughter and only as he exits at the end of the program is his full talent recognized. He ran against the Bushes as much as the Clintons, and the congressional Republicans gave him no assistance at all for six months. There is little Never Trump and RINO sentiment left in Congress. But the Democrats signed on almost unanimously to some variant of the Russian-collusion fable, and stuck with it to the bitter end, to the point of not realizing that the end has come. The Democrats said Mr. Trump was protesting too much, and was acting like he was guilty....Mr. Barr attracted three Democratic votes in the Senate confirmation vote, a rare occurrence in this administration, and six weeks later, he finally strangled the mutant monster of fraudulent impeachment. Yet in febrile Democratic minds, it still lives. Much of America’s political and press community no longer knows the difference between truth and lies and political life and death....It is Mr. Barr’s decision whether to prosecute, and he explained in his report to the bipartisan Judiciary Committee leaders that laying a charge of obstruction of justice would require proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the president had committed an obstructive act, with corrupt intent, and in contemplation of a real or apprehended legal proceeding, and that in his and Mr. Rosenstein’s opinion, that threshold was not met on any of the three required criteria." • Conrad Black is an historian of major proportions -- his biography of Richard Nixon is definitive, and so he knows his subject -- and when he writes : "It is now confirmed, as many of us have been alleging for many months, that the original counterintelligence investigation was set up on the basis of information former intelligence and FBI chiefs John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe knew to be false. The entire collusion claim was a political smear funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, and all of those just mentioned as well as Mrs. Clinton, former attorney general Loretta Lynch, her deputy Sally Yates, others who made false FISA-warrant applications, and a large group of smaller fry, are up to their eyeballs in criminal abuse of high offices and betrayal of the nation’s trust." • • • THE MPACT OF THE MUELLER COLLUSION PROBE ON PRESIDENT TRUMP. We who have supported Donald Trump from the beginning were always a bit worried that he would simply give up -- although what we knew of the man told us he would never give up on anything. Conrad Black described his suffering : "The President and his family have endured merciless torment by the intellectually corrupt national press and the lawless opposition. His restraint at the end of the story has shown more taste than his enemies would have thought him capable of; he is owed an apology. All those who said there was clear evidence of Trump–Russian collusion, including dozens of congressional Democrats and scores of prominent political-press figures, should be shamed and ashamed. And the ringleaders in confecting this monstrous aggregation of defamatory lies should be legally punished, with the due process they tried to deny the nation’s leader. Attempts to drive a President from office on the basis of allegations of betrayal of the country that they knew to be false is as close as the United States has ever been to an attempted coup d’état. It is time for the legal system, which has ground slowly to a just verdict, to do the same to those responsible for this disgraceful episode. This must never happen again; not in America." • • • CATHARSIS REQUIRES ACCEPTANCE OF THE FACTS. American Thinker has been full of analysis about the effects of the Mueller report's conclusions. • On Tuesday, editor Thomas Lifson wrote : "The man who used to run the CIA, and lost his job when Donald Trump took office, did a huge amount of damage to the United States by calling the sitting President a traitor. Because of his presumed access to information unavailable to the public, many foreign leaders had reason to believe that they could resist the demands and requests of President Trump by simply outlasting him in office. Think Kim Jong un, Xi Jin ping, Angela Merkel, and of course Vladimir Putin for starters....Brennan has been throwing around charges of treason for a long time : Brennan castigated Trump for a widely condemned joint appearance with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland in which Trump suggested he found Putin more credible than the US intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. 'Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors’,' Brennan tweeted, using language associated with impeachment. 'It was nothing short of ‘treasonous’. Not only were Trump’s comments ‘imbecilic’, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???' ” • Lifson notes that Brennan has never lowered his attack level : "Brennan has kept up his false attacks on Trump through regular appearances on MSNBC, where he is a paid contributor. Including very recently, as Terry Moran of ABC is pointing out : '@TerryMoran. John Brennan has a lot to answer for -- going before the American public for months, cloaked with CIA authority and openly suggesting he’s got secret info, and repeatedly turning in performances like this.' " Here is the Brennan video < https://twitter.com/TerryMoran/status/1110010116361932800 > and the tweet that provided it : "Terry Moran✔@TerryMoran Replying to @ad1220 He used the prestige of his position as DCI to advance his argument that the President was a criminal and a traitor. What he did makes it harder for future DCIs to maintain the confidence of the country; he poisoned that high office with partisan hackery." • But, writes Lifson, "now that the Mueller Report has stated there is no evidence of any collusion between Russia and Trump or any members of his staff, Brennan is attempting to squirm out of responsibility for his lies." Here is the video : < https://twitter.com/PolishPatriotTM/status/1110211940104704001 > and the tweet that provided it : "Wojciech Pawelczyk@PolishPatriotTM Brennan on MSNBC : 'Well, I don't know if I received bad information but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was. I am relieved that it's been determined there was not a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government over our election.' " • Lifson notes : "Of course, what Brennan must really be worried about is his probably large role in launching the spying on the Trump campaign that took place long before Crossfire Hurricane was begun by the FBI counterintelligence operation under Peter Strzok and Lisa Page." • Meanwhile, Lifson sheds light on one of the President's moves to warn the media that they are now in a post-Mueller world : "I have to wonder how much longer Brennan’s gig at MSNBC will last, given the memo that the Trump re-election campaign has sent to all the networks. Via Legal Insurrection : 'Six Democrats were mentioned in a memo sent by the re-election campaign to networks : Senator Richard Blumenthal, Representative Jerry Nadler, Representative Adam Schiff, Representative Eric Swalwell, DNC Chair Tom Perez, and John Brennan, former CIA director.' From CNBC : 'Trump’s re-election campaign sent a memo to television producers on Monday instructing them to 'employ basic journalistic standards when booking' six current or former government officials that the campaign said 'made outlandish, false claims, without evidence' while on air. The others targeted in the memo either declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment from CNBC. The Trump campaign letter ....which was distributed to producers for all the networks and cable outlets, cited comments that the guests made on air alleging that there was evidence of collusion. 'Moving forward, we ask that you employ basic journalistic standards when booking such guests to appear anywhere in your universe of productions,' wrote Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s director of communications, in the memo. The campaign wrote that the producers should 'begin by asking' the following question : Does this guest warrant further appearances in our programming, given the outrageous and unsupported claims made in the past? 'At a minimum, if these guests do reappear, you should replay the prior statements and challenge them to provide the evidence which promoted them to make wild claims in the first place,' Murtaugh wrote.' " • Lifson points out : "One thing we know : Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s biggest eyeball-getter, isn’t penitent in the least : 'John Ekdahl @JohnEkdahl She’s taking this well 2:29 AM - Mar 26, 2019" Here is Ekdahl's posted video : < https://twitter.com/JohnEkdahl/status/1110353033131687936/photo/1 >. • • • RATINGS WILL BE USEFUL IN CONVINCING THE MAINSTREAM PROPAGANDIST MEDIA TO CHANGE. Brennan, Schiff, Nadler, Swalwell, Blumenthal, Perez -- the Trump campaign could have added many more names, but the point was well made. And, its warning was re-inforced by viewer ratings. American Thinker's Peter Barry Chowka gave us new Neilson Media Research ratings on Wednesday : "The long-awaited news on Sunday that the Mueller Report had exonerated President Trump of collusion with Russia instantly shed major new light on the complicity of the mainstream media in perpetrating the mass delusion of collusion. The news also had an immediate and potentially game-changing impact on the cable news television ratings. Starting on Sunday and continuing all day Monday, CNN and MSNBC -- the two cable 'news' channels that over the past two years have morphed into high-impact electronic facilitators of the anti-Trump resistance -- saw their ratings plummet - precipitously. Meanwhile, the Fox News Channel (FNC), the only mainstream media outlet to even question the whole collusion meme from the outset, trounced the competition. On Monday, Fox News had more than twice as many viewers -- in both total numbers and in the preferred 25-54 year old demographic -- than MSNBC and CNN combined. According to Nielsen Media Research, FNC surpassed CNN and MSNBC combined in every hour on Monday from 5 PM to 12 midnight while CNN had its 2nd lowest weekday prime time ratings of 2019 and its 3rd lowest demo of the year." • Chowka noted that the Fox News prime sime stars -- Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham -- did some of their best shows ever on Monday. Greatly assisting their efforts was their access to and the expert editing and presentation of an archive of video clips of CNN and MSNBC hosts and guests projecting the demise of President Trump and predicting his indictment at the hands of Special Counsel Robert Mueller going back to 2016 and right up to last week." Chowka says that in watching Fox News on Monday, he "hadn’t experienced such a natural high since the evening of November 8, 2016 when Donald J. Trump was declared the winner of the presidency." Catharsis?? You bet. • Chowka provides a long quote from Hannity's Monday show : " Mainstream media has lied to you for years. We have so much to unpack here. I'm just telling you tonight, it's the tip of the iceberg. This will take months. Stay with us. I have so many details. And we are holding everyone accountable. Mueller’s report on Russia election interference finds, as we have been telling you, zero collusion between the president, his campaign, and Russia. Tonight, Newt Gingrich, Senator Lindsey Graham, the great one Mark Levin, Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekulow will be here in just a moment. My opening monologue and how we got here, what it means -- and more importantly where do we go forward.....Many of you since yesterday have been writing to me and you want me to spike the football. I am not in any type of celebratory mood. This is a time where every American that now knows the truth should be angry at what has happened here to all of America. I am ticked off, and the rest of the country should be, too. This is only the first chapter. This must be a day of reckoning for the media, for the Deep State, for people who abused power -- and did it so blatantly." • Chowka tells us how the networks got to Monday : "On Monday evening, Fox News not only exceeded the number of viewers of MSNBC and CNN combined. It also beat two of the broadcast network channels, including CBS, which ran a Mueller Report special, and ABC, which programmed Fix It. In 2017 and into 2018, I reported extensively in a series of articles for American Thinker on the cable news wars and the low and high points of Fox News. After 15 years of ratings dominance, Fox News in early 2017 was in trouble : its brilliant co-founder and CEO Roger Ailes had been forced out in July 2016 and months of tumult followed, including the upending of FNC’s dominant prime time schedule early in 2017 with the departures of hosts Megyn Kelley and Bill O’Reilly. After the disastrous summer of 2017, Fox News righted itself with the strongest conservative prime time opinion line-up in its 20+ year history, with Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham holding down 8-11 PM ET. According to most metrics, in 2018 and 2019 to date, FNC has held on to its overall ratings lead, not only well ahead of its cable news competition but almost all other cable television channels, as well. It was often bested in prime time, however, by MSNBC and its virulent, one-sided, non-stop anti-Trump programming especially in the 9 PM hour when resistance icon Rachel Maddow often beat Sean Hannity in the demo and sometimes in total viewers. The ratings success of MSNBC and to a lesser extent CNN -- which usually did much better in the demo compared with its paltry numbers of total viewers -- suggested that the strategy of the executives at NBC and CNN starting in November 2016 to go all-out 24/7 anti-Trump was paying off. The collapse of the ratings for these two resistance channels since this past weekend, however, may be a sign that not only is their heyday coming to an end -- but that the whole political game in the wake of the Mueller Report has changed and with it, the prospects for the looming presidential campaign and the re-election of President Trump in 2020." • American Thinker's Tim Gorman wrote on Tuesday : "The meme being pushed on MSNBC, CNN, and by the Democrats is that Mueller's assertion that there is no evidence of collusion between Trump, the Trump campaign, and Russia doesn't mean that collusion didn't happen. It just means that Mueller couldn't find any evidence after 2800 subpoenas and interviewing 500 witnesses. This meme is being used to justify the Democrats expansive investigation into the collusion issue with 81 requests for information on the subject and threats of subpoenas if the information is not provided. The MSM and the Democrats just can't quite seem to get over Hillary's loss in 2016 and they will try to overthrow Trump in any manner possible using any rationale they can devise. When asked what evidence was used to begin the investigation into collusion when Mueller could find none, the talking heads and the Democrats just avoid answering. Today is just one more sad day for the believability of the MSM and the Democrats. When will it end?" • Perhaps it is ending even now, as CNN and MSNBC reflect on the Trump campaign memo they received earlier this week. • AND, there si also the beginning of lawsuits aimed at the propagandist media. Bruce Thompson wrote in American Thinker on Tuesday : "It may be Spring according to the calendar, but America's dominant media outlets are heading toward a brutal winter season when it comes to accountability for the actions. Not just a reckoning for pushing a hoax about Russian collusion with a presumed treasonous Donald, but potentially gigantic judgments in courtrooms. Recently, two parties have filed notable defamation lawsuits against powerful press outlets. The most talked about has been the 2 (so far) filed on the behalf of Nicholas Sandmann, the young student from Covington Catholic High School. His attorney has filed in Kentucky. Given that the press is so unaware of the attitudes of potential fly-over country jurors that they failed to predict the election of President Trump and failure of the Mueller probe, they may not recognize the financial threat those suits pose to their future. Time will tell. The settlement prices are in the $250 million range." Thompson raises another lawsuit that has gotten less coverage : "But my personal interest is in the most complex and nuanced suit filed on behalf of Don Blankenship, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for the Senate seat now held by Democrat Joe Manchin. His suit asks for $12 billion! Talk about 'the audacity of hope'! So, I spoke to one of his attorneys, Eric Early of Early, Sullivan, Wright, Gizer & McRae. We had a pleasant, but brief conversation. The core of his position is that they firmly believe that Mr. Blakenship has been defamed and that he will win at trial. He suggested that anyone with an interest in their position read their filing with the court. I first became aware of the case in a story on the Mediaite website, which provided a link to the actual document. Here is how they described their conversation with Mr. Early. 'Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and the other defendants in this case, when they represent themselves as a news outlet or news source, the public’s reasonable expectation is that they are indeed a ‘credible’ news outlet,' Blankenship’s attorney Eric Early, a failed GOP candidate for California attorney general, said in a statement to Mediaite. 'It’s beyond wrong when they lie about facts that are easily ‘google-ible.’ These news outlets are going to have to decide at some point whether they are actual news or entertainment channels.' For 'injuries Mr. Blankenship has suffered,' he is seeking 'damages in an amount not less than $2 billion dollars,' the suit notes, before adding that he also 'seeks substantial punitive damages in the amount of 10 billion dollars.' Their description of Mr. Early as a 'failed GOP candidate' suggests a certain lack of caution about the financial threat that losing the case might pose to the titans of the 'Mainstream Media.' It may be a very low probability outcome, but it might also be a 'Black Swan' event. Taking Mr. Early’s advice to heart, I read the complaint. Given the present state of affairs, it seems that Mr. Early’s best approach would be to apply Saul Alinsky’s Rule 4, 'Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.' To that end, I note that one of the defendants is the Associated Press, which conveniently publishes its set of rules in a book, The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law 2018, ISBN 978-1-5416-7238-3. On page 485, they list five things a successful libel plaintiff must prove '-- A defamatory statement was made. The defamatory statement is a matter of fact, not opinion. The defamatory statement is false. The defamatory statement is about ('of and concerning') the plaintiff. The defamatory statement was published with the requisite degree of 'fault.' I am not a lawyer (nor a professional journalist either). But in my opinion, when a press account describes Mr. Blankenship as a 'felon,' even though he was found not guilty on the felony counts filed against him and was convicted only on a misdemeanor charge with a one-year prison term, they may want to ask their own lawyers to negotiate with Mr. Early. When approached with proper respect, he seems to be a nice man in my experience. There is an alternative, which would be to go to trial in Mingo County, West 'By God' Virginia. To get there, they might take one of those 'Country Roads' John Denver sang about. You know the tune, 'Almost Heaven, West Virginia...' Once they get to the courthouse, they might acquaint themselves with the potential jury pool including some Coal Miner’s Wives. You know, women like Loretta Lynn’s mother. 'Daddy loved and raised eight kids on a miner’s pay, Mommy scrubbed our clothes on a washboard very day, Why I’ve seen her fingers bleed, but to complain there was no need, She smiled in Mommy’s understanding way...' Don’t say you haven’t been properly warned. Give Mr. Early a call today!" • Bruce Thompson mentioned the possible Black Swan of a gigantic award to Mr. Blankenship. BUT, Fritz Pettyjohn, of the ReaganProject.com, wrote on American Thinker on Tuesday what may be the ultimate "catharsis" for all of us who love and stuck with President Trump. Pettyjohn wrote : "They shot at the king, but they didn't kill him. And because they didn't destroy him, they only made him stronger. If, a year from now, the economy is robust, Trump will be re-elected in an historic landslide. His enemies have played right into his hands. This is all because of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), an especially virulent form of the psychiatric disorder known as cognitive dissonance. If you know, for absolutely certain -- as an article of faith -- that something is true, and evidence in contradiction of this truth emerges, the psychic toll can be severe. Experts say it stems from the use of degenerate meta-probability. So it is with Donald Trump and his critics. At one time, I was one of those critics myself, and I suffered severely when he won the Republican nomination. I knew that Donald Trump could never win a presidential election for all kinds of reasons. Even though his opponent was one of the worst political candidates in our history, I knew he still couldn't win. What kind of a guy is associated with Trump University, for God's sake? All the smart people, liberal and conservative, agreed, from National Review to the Wall Street Journal, from the New York Times to the Washington Post. And then he won. What happened? How was this possible? How could we explain to our friends, colleagues, and families that we were wrong? Hillary suffered a virtual nervous breakdown and concocted the Russia collusion theory. The media flocked to this fantasy, and the Mueller fiasco began. After two years, this long national nightmare is over. As it turns out, Donald Trump is an authentic political genius, unique, one of a kind, never to be seen again, a political phenomenon. Who knew? God bless America, and God bless President Trump." • If you still want to feel more catharsis, try this -- Fox News reported on Tuesday that : "House Democrats on Tuesday failed to override President Trump’s first veto as part of their battle over border security, representing a victory for the administration that allows the President's declaration of a national emergency at the US-Mexico border to stand....The House voted 248-181 on Tuesday in favor of overriding – but this fell 38 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed. Only 14 Republicans voted in favor of the veto override [hope those 14 Republicans have their new day jobs lined up]. The outcome of the vote, while not surprising, now enables Trump to move forward on an issue that was a hallmark of his 2016 presidential campaign and of his presidency....Representative Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said Trump was acting against the 'radical left in this House that would dissolve our borders entirely if given the chance'...while Representative Paul Mitchell, R-Mich., called the veto override effort 'a partisan whack job' because of its certain defeat....With the House override vote failing, the Senate won't attempt its own override and the veto will stand." • That loss for Speaker Pelosi feels so good that it just has to add to the euphoria and catharsis. • • • DEAR READERS, Peter Barry Chowka received an email from Fox News Media Relations to tell him that “Sean Hannity will present an exclusive interview with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, March 27th at 9 PM ET [with a replay at 10 PM PT]. During the interview, President Trump will react to Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and discuss the latest [news] surrounding his administration, including border security.” • If you are looking for more joyful moments to add to your cathartic release, tune in to Fox later tonight. • AND, then, you may want to write an email to Fox News to tell its management that America does not need or want the lying, conniving, cheater Donna Brazille on its favorite TV outlet. That will be another boost for your catharsis.