WOW! Dan Bongino explains well what I wasn’t grasping… and the key for me next time is to read the “in court transcript,” as it makes clear what the Judges actions were really about — rather than the MSM running roughshod over the happenings in the courtroom. For headlines. Judge Sullivan threw a red-flag for Flynn… I hope his legal team takes the generous offer to rethink their strategy. Bongino’s fourth point is about the Logan Act (at the 16:02 mark) – great stuff!
…After giving Flynn and his attorney’s ample opportunity to change his guilty plea, Sullivan then went on a tirade against Flynn. He accused the three-star general of “treason” and excoriated him for crimes he’s never been formally accused of by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office.
“Arguably, that undermines everything that this flag over here stands for,” said Sullivan to Flynn and looking at the flag in the courtroom. “Arguably, you sold your country out.”
Shocked. That was the face of everyone in the courtroom. Whispers. Everyone was wondering what was going on – what happened to Sullivan, whose record against prosecutorial misconduct is well documented. He dismissed the ethics conviction of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens in 2009 after he discovered government prosecutors withheld exculpatory information and possible ethical misconduct.
Why didn’t Flynn withdraw his plea, I wondered? Could it be that he’s overwhelmed with debt, his family is exhausted of the whole situation or did Mueller’s office threaten to go after his son for something we have yet to discover. Maybe, all of the above.
The government prosecutors corrected Sullivan but the damage was done. The prosecution also reiterated that Flynn was still assisting them on the case against Bijan Kian, Flynn’s former business partner with the former Flynn Intel Group. Sullivan gave Flynn’s counsel one more out before moving forward with the sentencing, suggesting it might way better in Flynn’s case to have a sentencing hearing after he finishes cooperating with the Special Counsel.
Flynn’s more relaxed demeanor at the beginning of the trial was now gone. He seemed stoic, upset and his body language reflected that fact. Sullivan then announced a 25 minute break to let Flynn discuss the matter with his attorneys. Flynn accepted the postponement of his sentencing.
When the break ended Kelner told Sullivan that they would accept the postponement. Sullivan then walked back all the inaccurate statements that Flynn was a traitor, along with the faulty statement that Flynn served as an unregistered foreign agent for Turkey, while he was at the White House.
[….]
Flynn’s case wasn’t about collusion with Russia or his work for Turkey.
But it did start with a felony. Not a felony committed by Flynn but one committed by a senior U.S. Obama official who disclosed to the public a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on then Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak and his private phone calls with Flynn in December, 2016.
The second felony committed by this former senior government official was unmasking Flynn’s name in the media reports….
Comey let’s out small snippets of his thoughts in handling the Russian Dossier. Comey AGAIN slips up. Enjoy the fun:
POWERLINE notes the following in their 7th part of a longer series:
In “Flynn’s fate (6)” I posted the Special Counsel’s reply memorandum in the matter of Michael Flynn’s sentencing. Judge Sullivan had ordered the parties to file the FBI 302 and underlying notes of the the FBI’s interview with General Flynn. The attachments to the reply memorandum include neither. Where are they?
Those documents are not included, but McCabe’s memo of his conversation scheduling the meeting with Flynn is included as Attachment A. It is a key document.
I find the reply memo to be shockingly weak. Something does not compute. As I said on Friday, anyone seriously trying to understand what happened here will be frustrated by the threadbare and circular quality of the reply memo and attached materials. Assuming the documents Judge Sullivan ordered to be produced haven’t been separately filed, I trust that Judge Sullivan will notice…..
It’s undeniable: Around the world, nationalism is on the march, and the media and reigning political elites would have you believe this is a dangerous disaster in the making. So, why is Yoram Hazony, author of The Virtue of Nationalism, unafraid? Watch to understand.
Back in Virginia in 1788, Madison led the fight for ratification of the Constitution at the state’s convention, oratorically dueling with Patrick Henry and other Anti-Federalists who tried to block the nationalistic document. The compromise reached was ratification together with the promise of a Bill of Rights that would be promptly added. All 13 states ratified the new Constitution and it took effect in 1789, as Washington was sworn in as president.
By late 1815, however, Madison asked Congress for a new bank, which had strong support from the younger, nationalistic republicans such as John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay, as well as Federalist Daniel Webster. Madison signed it into law in 1816 and appointed William Jones as its president.
Like other nationalists Madison was disgusted with the weak national government of the 1780s—it was badly organized (with no president and no courts), and lacked the power to raise taxes. It would be unable to defend the new nation in a major war. Hamilton therefore was a strong proponent of powerful national government at this point. (He changed his mind in the 1790s.)
All totalitarian ideologies eat their own. Standards of orthodoxy become ever more unreasonable as the blood in the water becomes increasingly intoxicating, until the Jacobins themselves find their way to the guillotine, and communists are rounded up for the one-way train ride to Siberia.
Progressivism has reached that stage. Like a biological weapon that has escaped the laboratory, political correctness now destroys not only the enemies of progressives, but progressives themselves.
[….]
Maybe leftists will get tired of living in fear and admit that life was better when almost all Americans believed in freedom. More likely, they will double down on the witch hunts to rid the world of thought criminals, until the rest of us find a way to rid the world of their ideology.
I add video to what Larry can only sample audio of (obviously because of the medium). I also add a long interview at the end with BET Founder Bob Johnson, who praised President Trump at a White House for his 401(k) Auto Portability Program. Also added is video of Democrat Bill Lockyer scolding fellow Democrats about their JUNK SPENDING. Great “Sage” commentary. ENJOY!
As TGP previously reported in February, according to Mike Cernovich, McCabe altered far left FBI investigator Peter Strzok’s 302 notes on his interview with General Michael Flynn.
And then McCabe destroyed the evidence.
In early May Senator Grassley demanded the FBI and DOJ produce the transcript of Flynn’s intercepted calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak and the 302’s by May 25th.
The DOJ and FBI ignored him. Grassley then concluded his letter by reiterating his request to schedule an interview with the second special agent who was present at Flynn’s interrogation, Joe Pientka, after push back from the DOJ….
As GATEWAY further notes… Joe Pientka’s name was redacted in the newly released 302s:
As noted above, Special Agent, Joe Pientka, who was present during the interrogation of General Flynn. He has been ready to give testimony regarding circumstances surrounding the ambush interview (GATEWAY PUNDIT | SARA CARTER). Investigative reporter, Sara Carter says Pientka, if issued a subpoena, will discuss how forthcoming Flynn was about very specific sensitive information that Flynn could not have possibly known the investigators already knew, which may give additional insight into Flynn’s veracity and willingness to tell the truth.
SARA CARTERnotes that with these new revealed documents, that some internal document discrepancies are noted… and it is because of the changed 302 we know Strzok had written:
The Special Counsel’s Office released key documents related to former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn Friday. Robert Mueller’s office had until 3 p.m. to get the documents to Judge Emmet Sullivan, who demanded information Wednesday after bombshell information surfaced in a memorandum submitted by Flynn’s attorney’s that led to serious concerns regarding the FBI’s initial questioning of the retired three-star general.
The highly redacted documents included notes from former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe regarding his conversation with Flynn about arranging the interview with the FBI. The initial interview took place at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017.
The documents also include the FBI’s “302” report regarding Flynn’s interview with anti-Trump former FBI Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Agent Joe Pientka when they met with him at the White House. It is not, however, the 302 document from the actual January, 2017 interview but an August, 2017 report of Strzok’s recollections of the interview.
Flynn’s attorney’s had noted in their memorandum to the courts that the documents revealed that FBI officials made the decision not to provide Flynn with his Miranda Rights, which would’ve have warned him of penalties for making false statements.
“The agents did not provide Gen. Flynn with a warning of the penalties for making a false statement under 18 U.S.C. 1001 before, during, or after the interview,” the Flynn memo says. According to the 302, before the interview, McCabe and other FBI officials “decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted Flynn to be relaxed, and they were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely affect the rapport.”
The July 2017 report, however, was the interview with Strzok. It described his interview with Flynn but was not the original Flynn interview.
Apparent discrepancies within the 302 documents are being questioned by may former senior FBI officials, who state that there are stringent policies in place to ensure that the documents are guarded against tampering…..
JOHN SOLOMON also is in the mix as he dropped a bombshell of information:
As the NATIONAL SENTINEL continues in their posting, we see the Judge in Flynn’s case
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Emmitt Sullivan demanded to see the FBI’s 302s — interview summaries — of agents’ ambush interview with Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017, just a few days after POTUS Trump was inaugurated.
According to Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton: “Big: Judge Sullivan, who is overseeing General Flynn’s case, demands to see the infamous FBI 302 and other FBI doc about the ambush Flynn interview set up by Yates, McCabe, and Strzok.”
DAN BONGINO also joins the fun by letting us know about the destruction of key evidence to another investigation (seperate from Mueller’s of course) that hints at something damning is being hidden:
The 11-page report reveals that almost a month after Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team, his government-issued iPhone was wiped clean and restored to factory settings by another individual working in Mueller’s office. The special counsel’s Record’s Officer told investigators that “she determined it did not contain records that needed to be retained.”
“She noted in her records log about Strzok’s phone: ‘No substantive texts, notes or reminders,’” the report states.
When the OIG obtained his old cell phone in January, it had been issued to another individual within the agency and investigators were unable to recover any text messages sent or received by Strozk on that device.
Two weeks after Page departed Mueller’s team on July 15, 2017, her government-issued iPhone was also wiped and restored to factory settings and had not been reissued to another person within the agency. No one within the special counsel’s office or the Justice Management Divisions of the agency had any records as to who cleared all the data from the iPhone.
[….]
Some of their most memorable texts (there are too many to list them all) include:
Page: “Trump’s not going to become president, right?” Strzok: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”
Page: “God Trump is loathsome human.” Strzok: “Yet he many win.”
Strzok: “God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0.” Page: “I know”
Strzok: “I am riled up. Trump is a f***ing idiot, is unable to provide a coherent answer.”
Page resigned from the FBI in May of 2018 and Strzok was fired in August.
I guess they were learning from Hillary Clinton? As Trey Gowdy noted about the HIllary:
Hillary Clinton’s lawyers used a special tool to delete emails from her personal server so that “even God can’t read them,” House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy said on Thursday.
Gowdy (R-S.C.) said the use of BleachBit, computer software whose website advertises that it can “prevent recovery” of files, is further proof that Clinton had something to hide in deleting personal emails from the private email system she used during her tenure as secretary of state.
[….]
“She and her lawyers had those emails deleted. And they didn’t just push the delete button; they had them deleted where even God can’t read them,” Gowdy said Thursday morning during an interview on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.” “They were using something called BleachBit. You don’t use BleachBit for yoga emails or bridemaids emails. When you’re using BleachBit, it is something you really do not want the world to see.”…
…Despite the guilty plea, Spakovsky said that Trump should not be worried because it would have to be a “campaign-related expense” for the contribution break any campaign finance laws.
He also pointed out that the only other time the Justice Department tried to say payments like these were campaign-related expenses was with John Edwards. Donations to Edwards’ campaign actually went to paying his mistress, a woman who worked for the campaign and ended up having his child. (RELATED: Trump Hits Back At Michael Cohen, Justice Department Claims)
A jury, however, ruled that Edwards’ donations were not a campaign-related expense.
Spakovsky went on to say that Trump has nothing to worry about and that the U.S. attorney’s office is being “overly aggressive” in their pursuit of the matter.
When Lying To The FBI Wasn’t A Crime I predict Flynn will be exonerated from all this. And with Mueller’s teams past, other cases he has and will put forward may fall apart. NOT because he is wrong, but because of the tactics used (like with Enron and the like).
…The bombshell allegation seems to have piqued the interest of Sullivan, a magistrate known for having a low tolerance level for the shenanigans of federal prosecutors.
Sullivan — who overturned the 2008 conviction of former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens after government misconduct came to light — is weighing how to sentence Flynn, who pleaded guilty to one count of lying to federal authorities during the 2017 interview in the West Wing. Flynn faced mounting legal bills that forced him to sell his home amid the prosecution, and Mueller has already recommended he receive no prison time.
The judge’s brief order states that Mueller can choose to file the materials under seal if necessary.
Sullivan also ordered the Flynn team to turn over the documents backing up its assertions. The judge could determine why the FBI apparently took a significantly more aggressive tack in handling the Flynn interview than it did during other similar matters, including the agency’s sit-downs with Hillary Clinton and ex-Trump adviser George Papadopoulos.
Flynn is set to be sentenced next Tuesday — but Sullivan’s move might delay that date, or lead to other dramatic and unexpected changes in the case. Sullivan even has the authority to toss Flynn’s guilty plea and the charge against him if he concludes that the FBI interfered with Flynn’s constitutional right to counsel, although he has given no indications that he intends to do so.
Federal authorities undertaking a national security probe are ordinarily under no obligation to inform interviewees of their right to an attorney unless they are in custody, as long as agents do not act coercively. Flynn’s lawyers claimed in Tuesday’s filing that FBI brass had threatened to escalate the matter to involve the Justice Department if Flynn sought the advice of the White House Counsel before talking with agents.
In his order, Sullivan requested Mueller turn over the FBI’s Flynn interview report (known as a 302), a memo written by McCabe, and any similar documents in the FBI’s possession.
The judge is likely interested in finding out why the Flynn 302 is dated August 22, 2017, seven months after the interview took place….
(Originally posted in 2016 — UPDATED) What’s a greater leap of faith: God or the Multiverse? What’s the multiverse? Brian Keating, Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego, explains in this video.
Here are a couple of great articles to read on the “Multiverse” and the war on science, ala cultural atheism — I love Denyse O’Leary’s title of the first article excerpted:
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by the multiverse’s ready acceptance. David Berlinski observes, “The idea that everything is really true somewhere has been current in every college classroom for at least fifty years.”
Until recently, many were reluctant to accept this idea of the “multiverse”, or were even belligerent towards it. However, recent progress in both cosmology and string theory is bringing about a major shift in thinking. Gone is the grudging acceptance or outright loathing of the multiverse. Instead, physicists are starting to look at ways of working with it, and maybe even trying to prove its existence.
Maybe even trying to prove its existence? Yes because, remember, evidence is now superfluous. Methodological naturalism produced the Copernican Principle, which is an axiom. It axiomatically accounts for our universe’s apparent fine tuning by postulating — without the need for evidence — an infinity of flops. And cosmologists’ acceptance makes the multiverse orthodoxy.
[….]
…Ian Sample, science writer for Britain’s Guardian, asked Hawking in 2011, “What is the value in knowing ‘Why are we here?'” Hawking replied:
The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can’t solve the equations, directly in the abstract. We need to use the effective theory of Darwinian natural selection of those Societies most likely to survive. We assign them a higher value.
Sample had no idea what Hawking meant. But we can discern this much: Philosophy and religion may not matter, but Darwin does.
How far has the multiverse penetrated our culture? Tegmark observes, “Parallel universes are now all the rage, cropping up in books, movies and even jokes.” Indeed, multiverse models can hardly be invented fast enough, with or without science. Cosmologist Andrei Linde has commented that a scenario that is “very popular among journalists” has remained rather unpopular among scientists. In short, popular science culture needs that scenario.
Multiverse cosmologists look out on a bright future, freed from the demands of evidence. Leonard Susskind writes, “I would bet that at the turn of the 22nd century philosophers and physicists will look nostalgically at the present and recall a golden age in which the narrow provincial 20th century concept of the universe gave way to a bigger better [multiverse] … of mind-boggling proportions.” Physicists Alejandro Jenkins and Gilad Perez say their computer program shows that “universes with different physical laws might still be habitable.” And reviewing theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss’s Universe From Nothing (2012), science writer Michael Brooks notes that the multiverse puts laws of physics “beyond science — for now, at least.” Before methodological naturalism really sank in, undemonstrable universes, not the laws of physics, were beyond science….
War on science? Well, we hear about it more often than we see it. People—particularly naturalist atheists involved with progressive causes, who are flogging up some unverifiable thesis—are prone to claiming that their opponents are creationists (whether they are or not, in any meaningful sense), or else some other type of warriors against science.
There is, as it happens, an assault on the science concept of falsifiability as explained at PBS:
Does Science Need Falsifiablity?
Meanwhile, cosmologists have found themselves at a similar impasse. We live in a universe that is, by some estimations, too good to be true. The fundamental constants of nature and the cosmological constant, which drives the accelerating expansion of the universe, seem “fine-tuned” to allow galaxies and stars to form. As Anil Ananthaswamy wrote elsewhere on this blog, “Tweak the charge on an electron, for instance, or change the strength of the gravitational force or the strong nuclear force just a smidgen, and the universe would look very different, and likely be lifeless.”
Why do these numbers, which are essential features of the universe and cannot be derived from more fundamental quantities, appear to conspire for our comfort?
In fact, you can reason your way to the “multiverse” in at least four different ways, according to MIT physicist Max Tegmark’s accounting. The tricky part is testing the idea. You can’t send or receive messages from neighboring universes, and most formulations of multiverse theory don’t make any testable predictions. Yet the theory provides a neat solution to the fine-tuning problem. Must we throw it out because it fails the falsifiability test?
“It would be completely non-scientific to ignore that possibility just because it doesn’t conform with some preexisting philosophical prejudices,” says Sean Carroll, a physicist at Caltech, who called for the “retirement” of the falsifiability principle in a controversial essay for Edge last year. Falsifiability is “just a simple motto that non-philosophically-trained scientists have latched onto,” argues Carroll. He also bristles at the notion that this viewpoint can be summed up as “elegance will suffice,” as Ellis put it in a stinging Nature comment written with cosmologist Joe Silk.
[….]
“I think falsifiability is not a perfect criterion, but it’s much less pernicious than what’s being served up by the ‘post-empirical’ faction,” says Frank Wilczek, a physicist at MIT. “Falsifiability is too impatient, in some sense,” putting immediate demands on theories that are not yet mature enough to meet them. “It’s an important discipline, but if it is applied too rigorously and too early, it can be stifling.”
Astronomers are arguing about whether they can trust this untested—and potentially untestable—idea
Detailing the objections of those who want evidence, she then explains,
Other scientists say that the definitions of “evidence” and “proof” need an upgrade. Richard Dawid of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy believes scientists could support their hypotheses, like the multiverse—without actually finding physical support. He laid out his ideas in a book called String Theory and the Scientific Method. Inside is a kind of rubric, called “Non-Empirical Theory Assessment,” that is like a science-fair judging sheet for professional physicists. If a theory fulfills three criteria, it is probably true.
First, if scientists have tried, and failed, to come up with an alternative theory that explains a phenomenon well, that counts as evidence in favor of the original theory. Second, if a theory keeps seeming like a better idea the more you study it, that’s another plus-one. And if a line of thought produced a theory that evidence later supported, chances are it will again.
Radin Dardashti, also of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, thinks Dawid is straddling the right track. “The most basic idea undergirding all of this is that if we have a theory that seems like it works, and we have come up with nothing that works better, chances are our idea is right,” he says.
But, historically, that undergirding has often collapsed, and scientists haven’t been able to see the obvious alternatives to dogmatic ideas. For example, the Sun, in its rising and setting, seems to go around Earth. People, therefore, long thought that our star orbited the Earth. More.
With so many people rethinking evolution, the Darwinians could use a theory that doesn’t require physical support too.
Smug Lawrence Krauss taken back to school by physicist David Gross.
