Biden Admits Democrats and the Media Are Anti-Democratic

Fox News host Steve Hilton weighs in on MSNBC’s reaction to the election of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and gives viewers a flashback into Democrats’ own election denial accusations on ‘The Next Revolution.’

(THE BELOW WAS POSTED SEPT 7TH, 2022)

Yes, years of denial that Trump won the 2016 election has made this video possible.


~ UPDATED ~


Joe Biden’s own press secretary is a threat to democracy!

Here are some pics via the POSTMILLENNIAL:

PJ-MEDIA has a decent post on the exchange:

It’s been pointed out several times now that Joe Biden declared that anyone who questioned the results of an election was a “threat to democracy” even though Biden and pretty much everyone around him has also questioned the results of an election.

“Democracy cannot survive when one side believes that there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated,” Biden claimed during his infamous Hitler-esque speech. “And that’s where MAGA Republicans are today.”

However, in 2020 Biden agreed with a supporter of his who told him she thought Trump was an illegitimate president. In 2013, he also said he believed that Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election. Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, also said that Trump was an illegitimate president.

Another person in Biden’s inner circle who is an election denier is his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. She believes the 2016 election was stolen from Hillary, and she also said that Brian Kemp stole the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election from Stacey Abrams. And on Tuesday, she was finally called out over it, by, you guessed it, Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy.

Doocy, recalling how Biden has focused on attacking “MAGA Republicans” as dangerous for questioning the results of the 2020 election, pointed out how she denied the results of the 2016 presidential election and the 2018 Georga gubernatorial election. Jean-Pierre tried to laugh it off, “I knew this was coming! I was waiting, Peter, [wondering] when you were gonna ask me this question.”

“Well, here we go. You tweeted Trump stole an election. You tweeted Brian Kemp stole an election. If denying election results is extreme now, why wasn’t it then?”

[….]

  • DOOCY: “You tweeted in 2016 that Trump stole an election.”
  • KJP: “I knew this was coming.”
  • DOOCY: “If denying election results is extreme now, why wasn’t it then?”
  • KJP: “That comparison that you made is just ridiculous.”

Umm. What? Jean-Pierre claims she knew that question was coming, and that’s the best response she could come up with. That doesn’t even make sense. Jean-Pierre quickly deflected, insisting she now believes that Trump won in 2016 and that Kemp won in 2018 (perhaps she should tell Stacey Abrams, who never conceded) and then tried to shift the issue back to January 6, before not allowing Doocy a chance to follow up.

FLASHBACK:

Here are some “threats to democracy”

I use an excerpt of Matt Gaetz floor speech from the 6th (January 2021), and combine it with Dinesh D’Souza’s RUMBLE upload as well as MRCTV’s YouTube upload. There is a good post regarding this via PJ-MEDIA that is a must read:

LIKEWISE, I post on the topic via my website: 

NEWER RPT EDIT

Biden Admits Democrats a Threat To Democracy… Sorta

Biden says not accepting an election a threat to democracy. Here are Democrats and the media not accepting Trumps election in 2016:

Biden says political violence a threat to Democracy. To Wit: here is over 15-minutes of democrat political violence.

SEE ALSO:

Dark Brandon’s Speech (Election Deniers Response)

EMPOWERING ELECTION DENIERS:

Here’s 10 minutes of Democrats questioning election results

Over the past 20 years, Democrats have on three separate occasions objected to the validity of electoral votes on the floor of Congress. Wednesday, Jan. 6, will mark the first time Republicans choose do so in the past two decades.

(DAILY WIRE)

My sons and I have discussed the January 6th issues, and, some historical aspects as well. Firstly, people saying Trump should be impeached are just as radical as the people breaking into the Capital. The throwing around of the “sedition” label is funny, and shows how people are not aware of the recent history of the lawful process of debate in Congress about just such topic. Here is one blogger noting Chuck Todd’s biased lack of awareness:

NBC host Chuck Todd, who is always in the running to overtake CNN’s Brian Stelter as the dumbest newsman in the news media, had it out with Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) over a number of Republican members of Congress who are planning to dispute the certification of Joe Biden winning the 2020 election due to questions of massive election fraud.

After being accused of trying to thwart the democratic process, Johnson hit back by telling sleepy eyes Todd that they are trying to protect it.

“We are not acting to thwart the democratic process, we are acting to protect it,” Johnson said to Todd.

[….]

Todd and others in the Fake News media are acting like the Republicans contesting the election results is an unprecedented affair.

Let me remind them that the last three times a Republican won a presidential election the Democrats in the House brought objections to the Electoral votes the Republican won.

Lest they forget that the House Democrats contested both elections of former President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and President Trump’s win in 2016.

(DJ-MEDIA)

PJ-MEDIA however has an excellent notation of this history when they point out Democrats outrage that Republicans objected to the certification of electoral votes. “It’s ‘conspiracy and fantasy,’ says Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.” PJ further states,

“The effort by the sitting president of the United States to overturn the results is patently undemocratic,” the New York Democrat said. “The effort by others to amplify and burnish his ludicrous claims of fraud is equally revolting.”

“This is America. We have elections. We have results. We make arguments based on the fact and reason—not conspiracy and fantasy,” he added.

There’s only one problem with Chucky’s “argument based on fact and reason.” Democrats have been challenging the electoral vote certification for two decades.

The last three times a Republican has been elected president — Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004 — Democrats in the House have brought objections to the electoral votes in states the GOP nominee won. In early 2005 specifically, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., along with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs, D-Ohio, objected to Bush’s 2004 electoral votes in Ohio.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin appears to be even more incensed at Senator Josh Hawley’s plan to object to the Electoral College vote.

Fox News:

“The political equivalent of barking at the moon,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said of Hawley joining the challenge to electoral slates. “This won’t be taken seriously, nor should it be. The American people made a decision on Nov. 3rd and that decision must and will be honored and protected by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.”

Brave Sir Dick seems to forget he was singing a different tune in 2005. Then, it was Democrats questioning the results of the Ohio vote, which went narrowly for George Bush.

Durbin had words of praise for Boxer then:

“Some may criticize our colleague from California for bringing us here for this brief debate,” Durbin said on the Senate floor following Boxer’s objection, while noting that he would vote to certify the Ohio electoral votes for Bush. “I thank her for doing that because it gives members an opportunity once again on a bipartisan basis to look at a challenge that we face not just in the last election in one State but in many States.”

In fact, the Ohio electoral vote challenge was only the beginning. Rumors and conspiracy theories swirled around the outcome on election night that saw Bush winning Ohio by a close, but the surprisingly comfortable margin of  120,000 votes. So why are so many of these headlines familiar to us today?

(READ THE REST)

And THE BLAZE also referenced it’s readers to the same issues in their post (BTW, these are the two videos I used for my upload):

TheBlaze’s Chris Enloe noted this weekend that while Democrats are rebuking Republicans for planning Wednesday to oppose the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory due to fraud concerns, Democrats themselves have a robust history of doing that very thing.

And a damning, resurfaced video underscores what’s already on the public record.

The video is a compilation of clips from congressional sessions following the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, both won by Republican George W. Bush — and in the clips Democrats launched protests against Bush’s electoral votes.

[….]

That wasn’t all. The Washington Post reported that during the January 2001 session, words such as “fraud” and “disenfranchisement” were heard above Republicans calling for “regular order.”

More from the paper:

The Democratic protest was led by Black Caucus members who share the feeling among black leaders that votes in the largely African American precincts overwhelmingly carried by [then-Democratic presidential nominee Al] Gore were not counted because of faulty voting machines, illicit challenges to black voters and other factors.

“It’s a sad day in America,” Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) said as he turned toward Gore. “The chair thanks the gentleman from Illinois, but . . . ” Gore replied.

At the end of their protest, about a dozen members of the Black Caucus walked out of the House chamber as the roll call of the states continued.

(THE BLAZE)

Hillary vs. Trump’s Tax Plans

The bottom small section was posted March of 2016… the updated information comes to us as a way of emboldening the comparisons between Hillary’s tax plan and Trump’s compared. With the predictions made about Trumps’ plan coming to fruition.

UPDATE

The WASHINGTON EXAMINER (Dec 2021) has a tracking of how these tax plans worked out (note the highlighted portion readers):

President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats’ Build Back Better Act would increase taxes on higher-income earners and expand business levies to help cover its $2.4 trillion price tag.

Biden and many Democrats in Congress have argued that their plan to raise taxes in the midst of an economic recovery is justified because it would help offset or reverse important elements of the Republican tax reform passed in 2017. Democrats have long claimed that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act needs to be repealed or heavily altered because it unjustly benefits the wealthy at the expense of working and middle-class families.

However, the most recent personal income tax data from the IRS prove that this claim is completely false. The 2017 tax law has disproportionately benefited lower- and middle-income working families. The data show the law has also led to substantial improvements in economic mobility for middle-income and upper-middle-income households.

A careful analysis of detailed tax data from 2017 and 2018, the first year the TCJA went into effect and the most recent year for which detailed IRS income data are available, reveals that over just one year, households with an adjusted gross income of $15,000 to $50,000 saw their total tax bills cut by an average of 16% to 26%, with most filers enjoying at least an 18% tax cut. Similarly, filers earning between $50,000 and $100,000, one of the largest groups of taxpayers, experienced a 15% to 17% tax cut, on average, from 2017 to 2018.

Higher-income households also experienced sizable tax cuts, but not nearly as large as the tax reductions provided by the law to working and middle-class families. Those with AGIs of $500,000 to $1 million, for example, had their taxes cut by less than 9%, and filers earning $5 million to $10 million received a 3.4% cut, the lowest of any bracket provided by the IRS.

The data also show that wealthier filers ended up providing a slightly higher proportion of total personal income tax revenue in 2018 than they did in 2017. In 2017, filers earning $500,000 or more provided 38.9% of all personal income tax revenues. In 2018, the same group provided 41.5% of revenues.

That means the Trump-GOP tax cuts made the income tax code more progressive than it had previously been. That’s a remarkable finding. After all, Democrats have spent the past few years insisting the TCJA provided a huge windfall to the richest income brackets while leaving everyone else behind!

Perhaps most importantly, the tax cuts caused substantial upward economic mobility. Despite an increase in the total number of tax returns filed in 2018 compared to 2017, the number of people filing who claimed an AGI of $1 to $25,000 fell by more than 2 million. But every other income bracket above $25,000 increased, with many seeing huge gains.

The number of filers claiming an AGI of $100,000 to $200,000, for example, increased by more than 1 million in a single year……

And in April of 2022 AMERICAN’S FOR TAX REFORM noted that this delve into the IRS data shows strongly that the “Trump Tax Breaks for the Rich” helped the middle class the most:

The Internal Revenue Service’s released 2019 Statistics of Income (SOI) data, the agency’s most recent available data, shows that middle income American families saw a significant tax cut – measured as the percentage decrease in “total tax liability” between 2017 and 2019 – from the Trump-Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Similarly, Americans saw significant decreases in tax liability from 2017 to 2018.

Total tax liability includes federal income taxes as well as taxes listed on IRS form 1040 such as payroll taxes including social security and Medicare taxes. The TCJA significantly reduced federal income taxes but did not modify payroll taxes. 

As the data notes, Americans with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 saw a substantial decline in their tax liability:

  • Americans with adjusted gross income (AGI) between $50,000 and $74,999 saw a 15.2 percent reduction in average tax liabilities between 2017 and 2019.  
  • Americans with AGI of between $75,000 and $99,999 saw a 15.6 percent reduction in average federal tax liability between 2017 and 2019. 

Middle-class Americans in key states were delivered significant tax cuts:

  • Floridians with AGI between $50,000 and $74,999 saw a 19.6% reduction. Floridians with AGI between $75,000 and $99,999 saw a 17.2% reduction. 
  • New Yorkers with AGI between $50,000 and $74,999 saw a 18.9% reduction. New Yorkers with AGI between $75,000 and $99,999 saw a 12.4% reduction. 
  • Californians with AGI between $50,000 and $74,999 saw a 18.4% reduction. Californians with AGI between $75,000 and $99,999 saw a 14% reduction. 

The TCJA also caused millions of Americans to see an increased child tax credit, and millions more qualified for this tax cut for the first time. The TCJA expanded the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 and raised the income thresholds so millions of families could take the credit.

The TCJA also repealed the Obamacare individual mandate tax by zeroing out the penalty. Prior to the passage of the bill, the mandate imposed a tax of up to $2,085 on households that failed to purchase government-approved healthcare. Five million people paid this in 2017, and 75 percent of these households earned less than $75,000.

[….]

Additionally, the TCJA enacted a high alternative minimum tax (AMT) exemption and raised the income level at which the exemption begins to phase out. Congress enacted the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) in 1969 following the discovery that 155 people with adjusted gross income above $200,000 had paid zero federal income tax. Over time, the AMT grew so large that millions of Americans paid the tax and millions more saw increased tax complexity. The TCJA caused the number of AMT taxpayers to fall from more than 5 million in 2017 to just 263,720 in 2018. 

For years, President Joe Biden has falsely claimed that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) passed by the Congressional Republicans and President Trump overwhelmingly benefited “the rich” and large corporations and did little or nothing to help middle class families.

Even left-leaning media outlets have (eventually) acknowledged the tax cuts benefited middle class families. The Washington Post fact-checker gave Biden’s claim that the middle class did not see a tax cut its rating of four Pinocchios. The New York Times characterized the false perception that the middle class saw no benefit from the tax cuts as a “sustained and misleading effort by liberal opponents.”  ……

Yep, another Democrat myth about Trump bites the dust. Here is the small original post:

ORIGINAL 2016 POST

This is with thanks to the US Tax Center:

(to enlarge right click on image and “open in another tab”)

Stephanopoulos Claims Clinton Supporters Didn’t Riot After 2016 Election

After the Daily Caller clip, I delve deeper into these misconception about the 2016 and 2020 election with Larry Elder’s Sacramento Bee interview when he was running for governor. (That file can be found HERE)

DAILY CALLER:

“George Stephanopoulos suggested Sunday that even though Hillary Clinton supporters did not recognize the 2016 election as legitimate, they did not take the ‘same action’ as Trump supporters after the 2020 election.

[….]

Stephanopoulos interjected that Hillary Clinton supporters ‘did not take the same action.’ Police arrested more than 200 rioters in Washington, D.C., in January 2017 as riots ensued immediately after President Trump’s swearing in ceremony. Four businesses underwent “significant damage” due to vandalism, six police officers sustained minor injuries, and one limousine was torched on Inauguration Day, NBC News reported at the time.

Time-Line of Trump’s “Mockery”

UPDATED MEDIA!

This is a smaller portion of a larger PRAGER U VIDEO that was shortened on Prager U’s Facebook Page… but not on their embeddable YouTube or Rumble sites. So I needed it now.

(The below was posted January 2017)


Trump Mocks Disabled Reporter ?


This one I believed for a long time. Here is a common way this is added into a litany of grievances:

  • If I owned a business and someone applied for the job that had a history of denigrating women, mocking a reporter with a disability, targeting people of a certain ethnic or religious affiliation, I would not hire that person. I am surprised to see that some would. Perhaps we have different values.

Firstly, it is not my job to correct EVERY detail a person brings up. Even I have a life. Barely, but it’s there… somewhere. So the denigrating women thing makes no real difference to the Democrat, because assaults, murder, and rape are all too common on the left. JFK raped a 16-year old girl in the White House and brought prostitutes into the same House. Ted Kennedy, the “Lion of the Senate,” a hero to the Left assaulted women even killing one in a drunken night out. Bill Clinton either raped or assaulted over 15-women and had sex with prostitutes, and his wife got a man she knew was guilty of rapping so violently a 12-year old girl that she could never have kids her entire life. She laughed about getting this rapist off. She [Hillary], also covered up her husbands attacks. She got so much flack for this that she removed from he campaign website a section detailing her hard work to protect women.rape-drown

Thank you Bernie fans for being tough on her for this!

— But I Digress —

(and have already answered this more here)

My answer to this requires watching a video/audio I worked on and uploaded to my YouTube… but if you want a condensed version that I responded to a person elsewhere on the WWW:

So, what have we learned so far by exchanging ideas in an open forum. Trump was right about the rapists comment, and the best thing to protect women is to control our border (both for the immigrant women and our mothers and daughters).

And the other things we learned is that Trump mocks everyone with the same motions. Childish? Yes. Not ideal for a President. Sure. He wasn’t my 18th choice out of seventeen. But what is said of him is not [often true].

Here is a time-line of each video of Trump mocking various persons (including himself) with the same mannerisms as the media says he expressly used to mock a man’s disability:

The videos used to make the montage are from CATHOLICS 4 TRUMP’S article entitled, “Even MORE Video Evidence Trump Did Not Mock Reporter’s Disability“. Here is the timeline (maroon is before or during the event in question):

  • May 2005 – Trump imitates a flustered Trump (decade prior to the “event” in question);
  • October 2015 – Trump imitates flustered bank president (25-days prior to the “event” in question);
  • November 25, 2015 – Trump imitates flustered reporter and flustered general (during the same speech given as the “event” in question);
  • February 2016 – Trump imitates flustered Ted Cruz;
  • October 2016 — Trump imitates a flustered Donna Brazile.

I include this call because it is more concise than my other uploads:

Again, he did this of himself, Ted Cruz, a general, and more. It is his “quirk.” One I hate, but not aimed at anyone in particular to represent a physical condition. (See a much longer report on all this here.)

Here is my “finisher” to a recent discussion via FB on this topic:

No, he was not mocking his disability. He was mocking his reporting. Like he was mocking the general later in that same speech. Unless, waitBonnie you may have something when Donald J. Trump mocked himself in May 2005, a bank president in October 2015, that general in November 25, 2015, Ted Cruz in February 2016, and Donna Brazile in October 2016…

h-e was r-e-a-l-l-y mocking that reporter that doesn’t have a disability that causes him to make those motions.

In the opening of John Stossle’s video he deals with this:

LARRY ELDER BNONUS:

I previously uploaded some segments of Dennis Prager dealing with the issue as well. Since then more videos of Trump’s mannerisms have come out. In this show by Larry Elder, he takes calls from people who believe Trump really did mock a reporter’s disability. In fact, these mannerisms pre-and-post date the event Meryl Streep comments on showing her #Fakenews bully pulpit to spread miss-truths. Even Randy Quaid was moved to pen a forceful open letter to Meryl Streep.

Here is part of the article in the DAILY MAIL by Piers Morgan:

Last night, Streep received a Lifetime Achievement award at the Golden Globes, and chose the moment to launch a very personal attack on Donald Trump.

She began by saying that Hollywood, foreigners and the press are ‘the most vilified segments of American society right now’.

At which point the cameras panned out to hundreds of the richest, most privileged people in American society sitting in the audience in their $10,000 tuxedos and $20,000 dresses, loudly cheering this acknowledgement of their dreadful victimhood.

She then said that if all the ‘outsiders and foreigners’ were kicked out of Hollywood, ‘you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.’

Wow.

I haven’t heard such elitist snobbery since Hillary Clinton branded Trump supporters ‘a basket of deplorables’. 

For your information, Ms Streep, tens of millions of ordinary Americans love football and the MMA and would be quite happy watching their favourite sports at the expense of the next Woody Allen film.

Her real target, though, was Trump. She’d come to take him down, and that is exactly what she proceeded to do.

‘There were many powerful performances this year that did breathtaking, compassionate work,’ she said. ‘But there was one performance that stunned me. It sank it hooks in my heart, not because it was good – there’s nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege and power and the capacity to fight back.’

Meryl’s bottom lip began to tremble.

‘It kind of broke my heart when I saw it,’ she cried, ‘and I still can’t get it out of my head. This instinct to humiliate when it’s modelled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, filters down into everybody’s life because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.’

Hmmm.

Really, Meryl?

For starters, the incident to which she referred didn’t happen last year, it happened in 2015. There’s even been another Golden Globes in between then and now, at which it was never mentioned.

Second, Trump has always furiously denied – and has again today on Twitter – he was mocking the reporter’s disability and a Conservative website produced video evidence of numerous other instances where he made the exact same gesture to fully able-bodied people when attacking them. (See here and decide for yourself)….

Ouch!!

Katy Tur’s Tweet About Democrat Violence and Insurrection

I thought this Twitter response[s] tp Katy Tur was excellent (TWITCHY)… and it seems like people forget the past easily (when Democrats are involved):

RESPONSES


FLASHBACKS


Just a reminder of past events where Democrats praised offices being taken over.

A long montage (8-minutes), but the key point is the first few minutes of the longer montage.

This video is from Larry’s YouTube Channel. At the end of his small montage I add video of a larger call to violence by [hypocritical] Democrats.

Democrats for 4-years say Trump is illegitimated.

I use an excerpt of Matt Gaetz floor speech from the 6th (January 2021), and combine it with Dinesh D’Souza’s RUMBLE upload

Duly Elected Should Have Been Biden’s Answer

Larry Elder plays a question to Biden on the campaign trail and then the Sage responds how Democrats expect others to think regarding Biden’s Presidency. For more on Trump being tough on Russia, see here: Trump, Tougher On Putin Than Obama

California Compromised (PragerU Update)

(PRAGER U UPDATE) What is the greatest threat to free and fair elections in America? Here’s a hint: it’s not Russia or any other foreign power. It’s not a person, either. It’s something much more subtle, and much more dangerous. Investigative reporter Eric Eggers has the answer.

Larry Elder had Katy Grimes on his show to discuss her article, “California’s Elections Compromised… By State Legislature: Republicans Ignored The Warnings“. We lost a representative to this where I live.

Here is a snippet from Katy Grimes‘ article:

Ballot Harvesting Perfected

Paine said in particular “ballot harvesting” derailed many California Republicans in the last election. And, not coincidentally, automatic DMV voter registration, known as the state’s New Motor Voter Program, was launched just before the June 2018 primary. It automatically mis-registered 23,000 people, including many illegal aliens.

Weeks after election night November 6, 2018, voters watched as double-digit leads in many key California House races disappeared as additional ballots were found and recorded – finalizing one month later. Paine said, based on EIPCa observers’ documentation, hundreds of thousands of the state’s mail voters never received their mail ballots, though the counties had announced successful mailings in early October. This was discovered when the mail ballot voter appeared in person at a polling location to cast their vote in person, because they had not received their mail ballot. Paine said most were told by poll workers that their ballot had already been received… filled out and recorded.

Linda Paine has long said that vote by mail is no longer reliable because the way it is now handled and managed – or mishandled and mismanaged – encourages and even facilitates criminal activity in voting.

“’You have a whole group of legislators that came out of voter organizing,’ said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, a San Diego Democrat who authored the prepaid postage bill and previously carried legislation to automatically register voters through the Department of Motor Vehicles,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “It’s changed everything.”

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher was bragging about how many now-elected California legislators were community organizers and “voter organizing.”

FBI “Effectively Meddled” in 2016 Presidential Campaign

Via POWERLINE:

  • Quotable quote: “The DNC pays for the Steele dossier, solicits the Steele dossier, and then gets the Federal Bureau of Investigation to go get FISA warrants, surveil an American citizen, surveil a presidential campaign, all on the basis of this manufactured garbage that they paid for. I mean that’s extraordinary. That has got to be a first time in history. In fact, let me just ask you, Mr. Horowitz, are you aware ever of another presidential campaign being targeted by the FBI during the campaign like the Trump campaign was?” (Answer: No.)

Senator Josh questioned Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz about his report detailing widespread misconduct related to the 2016 counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign. Senator Hawley expressed deep concern about the revelation that the FBI doctored evidence to obtain a surveillance warrant against a Trump campaign official asking, “Is it worse to have a foreign government trying to meddle in our elections, or is it worse to have our own government meddling in the election?”

Sen. Hawley also asked Inspector General Horowitz if this was the first time the FBI used partisan-funded opposition research to obtain FISA warrants against an American presidential campaign saying, “The DNC pays for the Steele Dossier, solicits the Steele Dossier, and then gets the Federal Bureau of Investigation to go get FISA warrants, surveil an American citizen, and surveil a presidential campaign all on the basis of this manufactured garbage that they paid for. I mean that’s extraordinary. That has got to be a first time in history. In fact let me just ask you, Mr. Horowitz, are you aware of ever of another presidential campaign being targeted by the FBI like the Trump campaign was?”

Inspector General Horowitz told Senator Hawley that to his knowledge that to his knowledge this was the first time a presidential campaign had been targeted in this manner

Even Putin Thought Hillary Would Win. Why the Hacking Then?

See POWERLINE’S, “What Putin Was Up To?”

Yep, Russia wasn’t “helping Trump,” they were weakening Hillary’s appearance on the world stage. Neutering her and her stance. General Michael B. Mukasey makes this point and asks the question that matters:

  • “Why would Mr. Putin, an SVR alumnus, give GRU a mission meant to be highly covert? Was this a serious attempt to swing the election to Donald Trump?”

He starts his surmising with this: “AT THE TIME OF THE HACKING, VIRTUALLY NO ONE GAVE MR. TRUMP ANY CHANCE OF WINNING.”

Yep. EVERYONE thought Hillary was a sure thing.

Even Putin.

So what was Russia’s angle? I think General Mukasey has the best answer thus.

Here is the entire WALL STREET JOURNAL article by General Michael B. Mukasey mentioned by Medved, via LUX LIBERTAS:

The indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence agents last week, on charges they hacked into Democratic National Committee and other servers during the 2016 campaign, raises questions about the timing of the announcement and the work of the hackers themselves. The news came on the eve of the Trump-Putin summit. Why then?

The president was told of the indictments before he traveled. Yet the plain effect of the announcement was to raise further doubts about the wisdom of the meeting—and perhaps to shape its agenda. Neither is the business of the special counsel or anyone else at the Justice Department. The department has a longstanding policy, not directly applicable here but at least analogous, that candidates should not be charged close to an election, absent urgent need, lest the charges themselves affect the outcome. The general principle would seem to apply: Prosecutors are supposed to consider the impact of their actions on significant events outside the criminal-justice system, and to act with due diffidence.

From a law-enforcement standpoint, there was nothing urgent about these indictments. All 12 defendants are in Russia; none are likely ever to see the inside of a U.S. courtroom.

Alternative strategies were available. In 2008 Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, known to law enforcement as the “Merchant of Death” and the defendant in a sealed indictment, was lured in a sting by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Thailand, where he was seized. The Thais, to their great credit, resisted heavy Russian pressure to release him. Instead they fulfilled their treaty obligations and granted a U.S. extradition request.

It has been argued that the objective of last week’s indictments was not to prosecute the defendants but to “name and shame” them. They were named, and even their military intelligence units disclosed—but shamed? In 2006 Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian defector to the U.K., was poisoned in London with polonium from a Russian nuclear facility. Litvinenko had charged that Vladimir Putin was directly responsible for bombing a Moscow apartment building in 1999, an event used as a pretext for the invasion of Chechnya.

Andrei Lugovoi, implicated in the assassination, fled the U.K. and returned to Russia. Not only did Moscow refuse a British extradition request, but Mr. Putin decorated Mr. Lugovoi for “services to the nation.” Mr. Lugovoi was given a seat in the Russian Parliament in 2007. On that record, the 12 indicted hackers are likelier to be lionized than ostracized.

Recall also that the only basis for appointing a special counsel under applicable regulations was the conflict of interest and special circumstance presented by a Justice Department investigation into possibly unlawful conduct by the president’s campaign. Thus the initial order appointing Robert Mueller directs him to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump. ” Thus far, numerous Russians have been charged with crimes related to the campaign, and several “individuals associated with the campaign” have been charged with crimes unrelated to the charges against the Russians or to the Trump campaign. No “links” or “coordination” has been charged or even suggested.

Turning to the crime charged, and assuming that the 12 current Russian defendants are guilty, why did they do what they did, in the way that they did?

Despite the wide-eyed, golly-Mr.-Science tone in much of the news coverage, the indictment doesn’t portray cutting-edge Russian intelligence capabilities. The defendants all are said to be members of GRU, Russia’s main military intelligence unit. It is comprised largely of former special-forces types who are looked down upon by their more sophisticated competitors in the SVR, successor to Mr. Putin’s alma mater, the KGB. Their acts, as portrayed in the indictment, obviously were detected—in exquisite detail—by U.S. intelligence services. GRU’s phishing venture, although widespread, was primitive compared with the SVR’s capabilities.

Why would Mr. Putin, an SVR alumnus, give GRU a mission meant to be highly covert? Was this a serious attempt to swing the election to Donald Trump?

At the time of the hacking, virtually no one gave Mr. Trump any chance of winning. Mr. Putin is a thug, but he is not reckless. It seems unlikely he would place a high-stakes bet on a sure loser. Rather, he likely sought to embarrass the person certain to be the new president, assuring that she took office as damaged goods.

Why leave fingerprints? If the only goal was to inflict damage, the new president would have been not only damaged, but also resentful. Even the person who happily posed with a mislabeled “reset” button in frothier days likely would have turned sour.

The point likely was not merely to inflict damage but also to send a warning. Consider the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of an unauthorized and vulnerable email server. It found that the bureau had concluded the server could well have been penetrated without detection. Recall also that some of the people hacked by GRU agents were aware of that server and mentioned it in messages they sent, so that the Russians too were aware of it. The SVR certainly was capable of an undetected hack.

There are some 30,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton did not turn over, on the claim that they were personal and involved such trivia as yoga routines and Chelsea’s wedding. If they instead contained damaging information—say, regarding Clinton Foundation fundraising—the new president would have taken office in the shadow of a sword dangling from a string held by the Russians.

As we watch the drama of an investigation into whether the president or those close to him committed crimes to help the Russian government, it seems useful to keep in mind not only the possibilities but also the plausibilities.

Mr. Mukasey served as U.S. attorney general (2007-09) and a U.S. district judge (1988-2006).