As the Trump Russia Collusion Probe Closes, the Hillary Ukraine Collusion Probe Opens

IS THE RECKONING AT HAND FOR THE DEMOCRAT WITCH HUNT ON PRESIDENT TRUMP? There are signs that point to the unraveling of the Mueller probe for lack of evidence on "collusion" with Russia, just as a probe on the Democrat and Hillary "collusion" probe could be starting. • • • WHY HAS ANDY McCABE NOT BEEN INDICTED? That's the question GOP Representatives Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, members of the House Oversight Committee, asked Attorney General William Barr Wednesday. Jordan and Meadows asked AG Barr for an update on the Department of Justice investigation of McCabe, who was fired one year ago for allegedly leaking information to reporters about the agency’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation. BizPAc Review said : "Citing the Inspector General’s referral to McCabe’s 'lack of candor' to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Meadows, the North Carolina congressman and chair of the Freedom Caucus and Ohio congressman Jordan questioned Barr about McCabe’s prosecution in a letter. • In the letter, Jordan and Meadows told Barr : "McCabe’s pattern of lies to the FBI and OIG officials was particularly troublesome because they were intended to cover up media leaks that would benefit McCabe personally and professionally. Especially in context of other outrageous conduct by senior FBI officials -- including former Director James Comey, former FBI assistant general counsel Lisa Page -- public transparency about the McCabe referral is vital to restoring the FBI’s integrity.” • In April 2018, the DOJ Inspector General concluded in his report that McCabe broke FBI policy and leaked confidential details and information about an investigation to the media to “advance his personal interests,” then lied about it. • Jordan and Meadows wrote to AG Barr : “McCabe disclosed confidential investigative details to a media outlet ‘to advance his personal interest at the expense of Department leadership.’ Specifically, to rebut what he believed to be an incredibly damaging narrative about himself, McCabe directed [Lisa] Page and another FBI employee to reveal information related to the FBI’s ongoing investigation of the Clinton Foundation investigation. By authorizing the leak, McCabe confirmed the existence of an active FBI investigation in violation of the Departmental policies....[McCabe] concealed his conduct by lying to Comey and lied under oath to other DOJ and OIG officials when he was confronted about being the leaker....[his] dishonesty ultimately resulted in his termination from the FBI” as well as landing him with a criminal referral 'for misleading federal investigators about his media leak.' ” • Interestingly, BizPac Review stated : "Jordan believes that another letter he and Meadows sent to Barr at the beginning of the month may have sparked the departure of two top prosecutors on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. Jordan and Meadows questioned Zainab Ahmad and Andrew Weissmann, who were involved in discussions with DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and who left Mueller’s team in recent days. 'The reason Ms. Ahmad might have left is the fact that the report is coming soon. We all kind of suspect that it is,' Jordan told Fox News host Harris Faulkner. 'It also might be a letter that Mr. Meadows and I sent to Attorney General Barr just 19 days ago, on March 1....The letter, he explained, points out a bias against Trump at the DOJ....The FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant application, which was secured to wiretap Trump campaign aide Carter Page, left out some 'critical information,' Jordan noted in a tweet on Wednesday....We sent a letter to AG William Barr on March 1st outlining that Bruce Ohr told them both in August 2016 that Chris Steele was 'desperate to stop Trump.' But, the FBI didn’t tell the FISA Court this critical information. Ohr reportedly told House investigators that he warned the two prosecutors back in August 2016 that Steele was 'desperate to stop Trump.' We pointed it out. Maybe that had to do with them leaving him as well. I don’t know,” Jordan said." • Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows are tough-minded Republican Representatives who are not going to let a Democrat majority in the House prevent any further investigation of the corrupt Obama FBI and DOJ. Bill Barr better get used to their letters -- unless or until he does something to show that he is interested in pursuing the FBI / DOJ corruption. • • • WILL UKRAINE BE HILLARY'S WATERLOO??? As the Fake news about a Trump campaign collusion with Russia fades for lack of any evidence, another collusion story is gaining speed. BizPac Review's Samantha Chang reported on Thursday that : "Ukraine’s top prosecutor says Hillary Clinton colluded with Ukrainian officials to rig the 2016 election in her favor. Hillary met with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko in September 2016 -- two months before the election. Now that Robert Mueller’s fruitless “Russia collusion” investigation is wrapping up -- with no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion -- a bombshell new probe suggests there was election collusion between Hillary Clinton and Ukraine. • Chang was talking about TheHill‘s award-winning investigative reporter John Solomon, who reports that that his office launched a criminal investigation into a Clinton-Ukraine collusion plot to rig the 2016 election in Hillary’s favor. Solomon's report appeared on TheHill online site late on Wednesday. TheHill's Solomon stated : "After nearly three years and millions of tax dollars, the Trump-Russia collusion probe is about to be resolved. Emerging in its place is newly unearthed evidence suggesting another foreign effort to influence the 2016 election -- this time, in favor of the Democrats. Ukraine’s top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his country’s law enforcement apparatus intentionally leaked financial records during the 2016 US presidential campaign about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton. The leak of the so-called black ledger files to US media prompted Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign and gave rise to one of the key allegations in the Russia collusion probe that has dogged Trump for the last two and a half years. Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko’s probe was prompted by a Ukrainian parliamentarian's release of a tape recording purporting to quote a top law enforcement official as saying his agency leaked the Manafort financial records to help Clinton's campaign. The parliamentarian also secured a court ruling that the leak amounted to 'an illegal intrusion into the American election campaign,' Lutsenko told me. Lutsenko said the tape recording is a serious enough allegation to warrant opening a probe, and one of his concerns is that the Ukrainian law enforcement agency involved had frequent contact with the Obama administration’s US Embassy in Kiev at the time. 'Today we will launch a criminal investigation about this and we will give legal assessment of this information,' Lutsenko told me." • TheHill said : "Lutsenko, before becoming prosecutor general, was a major activist against Russia’s influence in his country during the tenure of Moscow-allied former President Viktor Yanukovych. He became chief prosecutor in 2016 as part of anti-corruption reforms instituted by current President Petro Poroshenko, an ally of the US and Western countries. Unlike the breathless start to the Russia collusion allegations -- in which politicians and news media alike declared a Watergate-sized crisis before the evidence was fully investigated -- the Ukraine revelations deserve to be investigated before being accepted. After all, Ukraine is dogged by rampant corruption. It is a frequent target of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dirty tricks. And it is a country that, just last year, faked a journalist's death for one day, reportedly to thwart an assassination plot." • But, says Solomon : "The chief prosecutor, a member of parliament and a court seemingly have enough weight to warrant serious scrutiny of their allegations and an analysis of the audio tape. Furthermore, the mystery of how the Manafort black ledger files got leaked to American media has never been solved. They surfaced two years after the FBI investigated Manafort over his Ukraine business activities but declined to move forward in 2014 for lack of evidence. We now have strong evidence that retired British spy Christopher Steele began his quest in what ultimately became the infamous Russia collusion Dossier with a series of conversations with top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr between December 2015 and February 2016 about securing evidence against Manafort. We know the FBI set up shop in the US embassy in Kiev to assist its Ukraine/Manafort inquiry -- a common practice on foreign-based probes -- while using Steele as an informant at the start of its Russia probe. And we know Clinton’s campaign was using a law firm to pay an opposition research firm for Steele’s work in an effort to stop Trump from winning the presidency, at the same time Steele was aiding the FBI. Those intersections, coupled with the new allegations by Ukraine’s top prosecutor, are reason enough to warrant a serious, thorough investigation. If Ukraine law enforcement figures who worked frequently with the US Embassy did leak the Manafort documents in an effort to influence the American election for Clinton, the public deserves to know who knew what, and when." • Solomon stated : "In our interview, Lutsenko accused the Obama-era US Embassy in 2016 of interfering in his ability to prosecute corruption cases, saying the US ambassador gave him a list of defendants that he would not be allowed to pursue and then refused to cooperate in an early investigation into the alleged misappropriation of US aid in Ukraine. Lutsenko provided me with a letter from the embassy, supporting part of his story by showing that a US official did in fact ask him to stand down on the misappropriation-of-funds case. 'We are gravely concerned about this investigation for which we see no basis,' an embassy official named George Kent wrote to the prosecutor’s office. The State Department on Wednesday issued a statement declaring that it no longer financially supports Lutsenko’s office in its anti-corruption mission and considers his allegation about the do-not-prosecute list 'an outright fabrication.' " • Samantha Chang in her BizPac Review article reminds us : "Paul Manafort was the manager of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign for five months. Trump fired Manafort in August 2016 amid revelations that Manafort failed to disclose his past lobbying work on behalf of Ukraine. As part of Robert Mueller’s sham investigation of alleged collusion between Trump campaign aides and Russia, Mueller discovered that Manafort had evaded taxes several years before he joined the Trump campaign. As BizPac Review reported, Manafort was indicted for tax evasion and money-laundering for business activities he engaged in between 2006 and 2014. Manafort did not join the Trump campaign until April 2016, and was fired five months later, in August 2016." BUT, Chang notes that : Tellingly, a month after Manafort’s firing -- in September 2016 -- Hillary Clinton met with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. During the meeting, Poroshenko profusely thanked Hillary for her past support of Ukraine and for her pledge to support Ukraine if she became President. That was two months before the 2016 US presidential election." Chang then quotes Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, who has said that Manafort was maliciously prosecuted -- and his case sensationalized in the media -- in order to "squeeze” him to manufacture a case against Trump. Chang states : "That failed. Dershowitz -- a lifelong liberal who voted for Hillary -- says Trump has committed no impeachable offenses. So the rabid Democrat saber-rattling is nothing more than pathological Trump Derangement Syndrome. Earth to libs for the millionth time : The Manafort case had nothing to do with President Trump, the 'Russia collusion' hoax, or Trump’s 2016 campaign. Period. We can’t say the same for Hillary Clinton and Ukraine. If you want to know why the GOP-led House of Representatives under former Speaker Paul Ryan never investigated these alleged crimes, it’s because Ryan blocked their attempts to subpoena Democrats. Trump says the wimpiness of former House Speaker Paul Ryan is why the Democrats have gotten so out of control....Ryan would not allow the GOP-led House to subpoena and investigate crooked Dems. He also failed to push wall funding through." • • • HILLARY HAS RENEWED DOJ TROUBLES. Gateway Pundit reports that Hillary Clinton FBI investigators were told that the Obama DOJ was "not willing to charge" her on key espionage statute : "An internal chart prepared by federal investigators working on the so-called 'Midyear Exam' probe into Hillary Clinton's emails, exclusively reviewed by Fox News, contained the words 'NOTE : DOJ not willing to charge this" next to a key statute on the mishandling of classified information. The notation appeared to contradict former FBI Director James Comey's repeated claims that his team made its decision that Clinton should not face criminal charges independently." • Fox News has confirmed that the chart was a critical in providing the basis for Texas GOP Representative John Ratcliffe's damaging questioning of former FBI lawyer Lisa Page last year, in which Page agreed with Ratcliffe's characterization that the DOJ had told the FBI that "you're not going to charge gross negligence." A transcript of Page's remarks was published Tuesday as part of a major document release by the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Georgia Representative Doug Collins. Fox News wrote : "The document, entitled 'Espionage Act Charges -- Retention / Mishandling,' contained a list of several criminal statutes related to the mishandling of classified information, as well as a list of all the elements that prosecutors would need to prove in order to successfully prosecute a case. Among the statutes listed are 18 USC §793(d), which covers the 'willful' retention of national defense information that could harm the US; 18 USC §793(f), which pertains to 'gross negligence' in the handling of classified information by permitting the information to be 'removed from its proper place of custody'; and 18 USC §1924, listed as a misdemeanor related to retaining classified materials at an 'unauthorized location.' Listed directly below to the elements of 18 USC §793(f) were the words : 'NOTE : DOJ not willing to charge this; only known cases are Military, cases when accused lost the information (e.g. thumb drive sent to unknown recipient at wrong address.)' None of the other descriptions of the statutes had a similar notation." • Gateway Pundit reminds us that : "In July 2016, Comey took the unusual step of making a public statement about the Clinton email investigation findings and his decision to recommend against criminal charges. He said Clinton had been 'extremely careless' in handling classified information but insisted that 'no reasonable prosecutor' would bring a case against her....Originally, Comey accused the former Secretary of State of being 'grossly negligent' in handling classified information in a draft dated May 2, 2016, but that was modified to claim that Clinton had merely been 'extremely careless' in a draft dated June 10, 2016....However, Page's testimony and the internal 'Midyear Exam' chart constituted perhaps the most salient evidence yet that the Justice Department may have interfered improperly with the FBI's supposedly independent conclusions on Clinton's criminal culpability." • Gateway Pundit is referring to this exchange between Representative Ratcliffe and Page -- Ratcliffe : "So let me if I can, I know I’m testing your memory. But when you say advice you got from the Department, you’re making it sound like it was the Department that told you : You’re not going to charge gross negligence because we’re the prosecutors and we’re telling you we’re not going to —" Page interrupted : "That is correct," before Ratcliffe finished his sentence, " -- bring a case based on that." • After these transcript revelations, President Trump last Wednesday tweeted : "The just revealed FBI Agent Lisa Page transcripts make the Obama Justice Department look exactly like it was, a broken and corrupt machine. Hopefully, justice will finally be served. Much more to come!" • • • THE UKRAINE CONNECTION HAS LEGS. American Thinker editor Thomas Lifson wrote on Thursday : "Democrats may regret their years of hyperventilation over allegations of foreign 'collusion' to influence a presidential election. In what amounts to slow-motion political jujitsu, the very nefarious acts attributed to the Trump campaign may end up being applied to the Obama administration and Hillary campaign. A formal criminal investigation already is being launched overseas, making an American counterpart investigation awkward to suppress. Anyone who has paid attention to the genesis of the Mueller investigation understands that it was opposition research paid for by the Democratic Party and Hillary presidential campaign and corrupt senior officials at the FBI that sparked the appointment of the special counsel. But new information developed by John Solomon of The Hill suggests that there was indeed an effort by a foreign government to influence the 2016 election, and that it was the government of Ukraine attempting to sway voters in Hillary’s favor." • BUT, Lifson adds another leg to the Ukraine story : "But a second version of Pandora’s Box related to Ukraine is also open at this moment, thanks to the prosecution of Paul Manafort for failing to register as an agent of the Ukraine government under FARA, the Foreign Agent Registration Act. That rarely-enforced law now may be turned against others in the Democrats’ camp, who also lobbied for Ukraine, including Clinton White House counsel and Washington, DC power lawyer Greg Craig. Greg Re of Fox News reports : 'Former Obama White House Counsel and Clinton-linked attorney Greg Craig may soon be charged by the Justice Department for engaging in illegal unregistered overseas lobbying, in a case initially probed by special counsel Robert Mueller -- a development that would make him the first Democrat to face prosecution amid the long-running Russia investigation. The case centers on lobbying work that Craig performed in 2012 for the Russian-backed president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, while Craig was a partner at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Craig allegedly never registered as a foreign agent under a US law known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires lobbyists to declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders, governments or their political parties.' FARA violations were only rarely prosecuted until Mueller took aim at Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman, for his lobbying work in Ukraine. Keep in mind that there are many other potential sources of evidence for turning the Democrats’ efforts to rid themselves of President Trump by investigation against them. President Trump can de-classify and release the FISA warrants, that appear to have concealed relevant facts from the Court – a criminal offense -- and other information about the corruption at the FBI. My assumption all along has been that as the most successful reality TV producer in the history of the medium, Donald Trump is managing the 'story arc' for maximum effect on the 2020 electorate. Finally, at long last we may be seeing the third act of this drama begin." • • • IS GERMANY FACING EAST? While the ties of Hillary and her campaign to Christopher Steele and the Russia Dossier are well established at this point, the new Ukraine information will surely lead to other more far-reaching probes into the efforts of international Globalists -- all anti-Trumpers -- to sink President Trump in a Fake ocean of innuendo. • On Wednesday, American Thinker's Richard Jack Rail noted in an article that is not about the Russia "collusion" scam, that : "Angela Merkel apparently went behind NATO's back to make a deal with Russia for the natural gas pipeline Nord Stream II, paying for which will drive Germany's contribution to NATO defense spending below the 2% of GDP that was agreed on in 2014. Germany, with one of the world's wealthiest economies, is far in arrears on her NATO obligations, has been for years, and has no acceptable excuse for it. America has been open for years now to selling liquid natural gas (LNG) to Europe at rates below those the Russians can provide with a pipeline. It actually looks as if Merkel just prefers to do business with the thuggish Eastern oligarchs than with the putatively like-minded free markets of the West. Germany evidently isn't as like-minded as we might have imagined. Merkel casts it as a choice between foreign aid and an obligation of lesser importance. After all, why would Germany worry about Eastern military adventurism when she's buying Russian LNG? It isn't a clash of priorities, but stubborn refusal to meet a commitment. As if Germany didn't owe America some consideration for the years we rebuilt her shattered WWII economy and then stood by her through decades of Russian bullying and threats. Now Merkel makes nice with those same Russians while thumbing her nose at America." • Rail suggests that President Trump could pose high "tariffs on German goods" so that the American market for anything Deutsch screeches to a halt." Rail states : "Ingratitude is among the more infuriating human failings, and Angela Merkel has many of us on this side of the pond good and riled." • That article led me to dig into Merkel's relationship with President Trump, President Putin, and Ukraine. Back on November 18, 2016, right after the US election of President Trump, the German media outlet Spiegel Online wrote about Obama's farewell visit to Berlin : "It is true what Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security advisor, says : namely that Merkel has been 'the President's closest partner over the course of his entire presidency.' Perhaps most important was his emphasis on the fact that she was German chancellor during his entire tenure. Merkel remained a reliable partner even in those moments when Obama was deeply alone. The two never developed the warmth in their relationship that Helmut Kohl and Bill Clinton enjoyed. Or even the kind of manly friendship that initially characterized Gerhard Schröder's relationship with George W. Bush prior to Schröder's polemic rejection of Bush's Iraq invasion plans during his 2002 campaign for re-election to the Chancellery. The relationship between Obama and Merkel was always respectful, rational and professional in nature. But perhaps it was exactly that sort of relationship that allowed an element of emancipation to creep into the German-American relationship of a kind rarely seen since World War II. America had always seen Germany as being reliant on its trans-Atlantic big brother. The NSA spying scandal contributed to the new distance, along with the SPIEGEL disclosure that the Americans had eavesdropped on Merkel's mobile phone. Obama, it is said in Washington, cursed when he learned about it and publicly promised that something like that would never happen again, at least not involving Merkel. In May 2014, during her first visit to Washington after the affair, Merkel told Obama exactly what she thought. On a sunny day in the White House Rose Garden, she delivered a sharp rebuke....To those close to her, she even compared the NSA with the East German secret police, the Stasi. Her comments were leaked and Americans were not amused. Obama, though, accepted it....And paradoxically, the relationship between the two leaders became closer as a result of the affair....To the chagrin of conservatives in Congress, Obama initiated an orderly retreat from the world stage, in part because of his trust in Merkel. In the Ukraine crisis, she grew into her role as mediator and, more recently, as Obama's surrogate. In conversations with Putin, she translated Obama's positions into a language that the Russian leader could understand -- and the US President was happy for the help. With Syria, Cuba, Iran and domestic issues, he had enough on his plate....He and Merkel spent three hours together on Wednesday evening in the Adlon [the hotel Obama stayed in while in Berlin]. They had dinner and talked, informally and privately just as the White House had requested. Ben Rhodes said that he couldn't remember Obama ever sitting down with someone for so long during his entire eight years as President [perhaps deicussing golf and their grandchildren?]. Obama began Thursday morning in his Adlon suite. He had no appointments and he prepared for his meeting with Chancellor Merkel and subsequent press conference that afternoon as well as for his interview with ARD and SPIEGEL." • On February 5 of this year, the Harvard Program on Negotiation for business executives at Harvard Law School has this to say about Angela Merkel : "At a January press conference back in 2015, German chancellor Angela Merkel dangled a carrot in front of Russian president Vladimir Putin: the possibility of a summit in Kazakhstan aimed at easing the Ukraine crisis, to be attended by the two famous negotiators as well as the leaders of France and Ukraine. That carrot, however, was dangling from a significant string. For the meetings to occur, Merkel said, Russia would first have to make 'visible progress' on all 12 points of the Minsk accord, the agreement that brought a shaky cease-fire to eastern Ukraine in September 2015, as reported in the New York Times. While the cease-fire endured, reports by the New York Times indicated that sanctions remained in place as of February 2016....Why would Putin listen to the German Chancellor, aside from wanting to remove the sanctions from Russia’s economy? Angela Merkel is not only Putin’s closest negotiating partner in Europe but also stipulated the force behind the sanctions on Russia. In his recent profile of Merkel in the New Yorker, journalist George Packer outlined the complex relationship that she and Putin have forged. Merkel, who grew up in East Germany and spent her young adulthood there, shares a common geography with Putin, a former KGB major who guarded the KGB bureau in Dresden, Germany, when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Merkel and Putin switch between German and Russian during their meetings and regular phone calls....'She has a way of talking to [Putin] that nobody has,' one of her senior officials told the New Yorker. Even as she engages in tough talk, she is working to help Putin find a way to make a graceful retreat." • Then, we come to March 15 of this year, and Politico Europe Edition's observations about the Merkel-Trump relationship, titling it "The Trump-Merkel doctrine of mutually assured detestation." Matthew Karnitschnig writes : "If it seemed like the US-German war of words couldn’t get any worse, think again. Tensions between Washington and Berlin broke wide open across a range of core security issues this week, from Chinese involvement in Germany’s 5G network to burden-sharing within NATO, suggesting that a rapprochement between the two capitals is unlikely anytime soon....'It’s a catastrophe for the transatlantic relationship,' said Maximilian Terhalle, a German international security analyst and commentator, adding that both sides bear some blame for the recent collapse of the relationship....It’s become accepted wisdom among Germany’s political elite that the US is no longer a reliable partner. About the only thing the two sides seem to agree on these days is that the other is at fault. 'We have to accept that the U.S. is no longer the stable Western partner that it once was,' Friedrich Merz, a prominent Christian Democrat [Merkel's party], told a group of German MPs this week. What was notable about the comment is that Merz, who recently lost the contest to succeed Merkel, is also chairman of Atlantik-Brücke, a transatlantic lobbying group that has been a bastion of the German business and political establishment for decades....Exhibit A : the retreat from the Paris climate accord. Exhibit B : the US pullout from the Iran nuclear deal. What’s curious about that view from the American perspective is that neither of those issues has any direct bearing on the US commitment to European security. The US operates military bases across Europe and has continued to expand its operations there under Trump. Though the President hasn’t been shy about criticizing European allies for their modest military spending, the US has continued to fulfill its commitments, recently sending troops to Poland, for example, as part of NATO’s response to Russian aggression in Ukraine. In congressional testimony on Wednesday, Kathryn Wheelbarger, an acting assistant US defense secretary, said that Washington is close to being in agreement with Warsaw about building a permanent presence in Poland, a project the country’s president once dubbed 'Fort Trump.'....In American eyes, however, it’s Germany that represents the weakest link in the transatlantic chain. While Trump may have threatened Germany on various fronts, it's Berlin that has taken steps to undermine the alliance. For example, after months of pledging to increase defense spending in the coming years to move toward NATO’s benchmark of 2% of GDP, Berlin signaled this week that it wouldn’t spend as much as anticipated....American frustration with Germany is also growing over Berlin’s refusal to bar China’s Huawei from installing its 5G network equipment in the country, despite months of urgent US warnings. The US went as far as to threaten to suspend intelligence-sharing with Berlin, which Germany's security apparatus relies on heavily, if it allows the Chinese in. 'We're concerned about their telecommunications backbone being compromised in the sense that particularly with 5G, the bandwidth capability and the ability to pull data is incredible,' said NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Curtis Scaparrotti in congressional testimony on Wednesday. 'If it also was inside of their defense communications, then we're not going to communicate with them across the division defense communications. And for the military that would be a problem.' Washington also regards Berlin's conciliatory stance toward Iran as undermining American interests. On the same day that US Vice President Mike Pence urged allies in Europe to sever ties with the Iran regime, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas met with his Iranian counterpart. His office then tweeted a photo of the two shaking hands. A few days later, it emerged that German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier had sent a telegram to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, congratulating him, 'also in the name of my people,' on the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Islamic republic. Though it was a symbolic gesture, the message wasn't lost on Washington. The US also points to Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline project under the Baltic Sea linking Russia and Germany, as an example of Berlin's lack of solidarity. The US and many European countries worry that the project, which is still under construction, would make the Continent too reliant on Russian gas....Berlin, however, wants to continue to engage with Russia, arguing that isolating it further would backfire." • • • DEAR READERS, while, as Politico Europe Edition says, "Berlin may be underestimating the repercussions of alienating the US, the country that has been its key ally and guarantor of its security for more than 70 years," the fact is that "the US remains Germany's biggest export market. Since President Trump was elected, German businesses have continued to invest heavily in the US and have welcomed his administration's deregulation push. Yet if the political climate between the two countries continues to deteriorate, it's likely only a matter of time before the business community gets hit, as the standoff over imposing auto tariffs has made clear. When it comes to security, Berlin increasingly finds itself isolated not just from the US but from other key allies as well, as illustrated by both Nord Stream and Huawei. Poland and the Baltic states, for example, are much more aligned with Trump's position on defense spending than Germany's....Some senior German officials in Merkel's party agree and are frustrated with the government's failure to engage more with the Trump administration. But they are unwilling to express their views in public for fear of alienating the chancellery. Aversion to Trump within Merkel's inner circle runs so deep that Berlin's first reaction to anything out of the White House is opposition, they say. The two leaders haven't spoken since meeting at the G20 in early December. 'Merkel has become so caught up in her criticism of Trump that she can't move beyond it.' " • All these threads make me wonder if, back in 2016, when Obama was sure Hillary would be elected and muscled Ukraine to do its bit to make that happen whether Germany diplomacy and intel was also engaged in trying to stop Trump. Has Angela Merkel been facing so far east into Russia that she "shook hands with the Devil" that was the Obama FBI in Ukraine in order to help out with Hillary's campaign. Pure speculation -- but don't rule it out entirely.