Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 24, 2019 Share Posted June 24, 2019 Project Veritas and Persuasion I keep coming across Project Veritas and James O'Keefe doing amazing work in exposing the misbehavior of the powerful. And this has become an increasingly effective form or persuasion. There is nothing like seeing insiders brag about their power and how they intentionally deploy unfair or illegal practices to promote their agenda. Nothing better, in fact. I've set up several threads on OL to present this work, but now it's time to consolidate all things Veritas. From now on, I will use this thread to present new reports coming from Project Veritas and James O'Keefe, even if I present them elsewhere. On doing a site search, here are some of the places on OL that already present this work. This Is Worth $63,280.00 Per Year... - This 2015 thread is about administrators at Vassar College literally shredding the US Constitution in a paper shredder. A 2015 post about Common Core A 2016 post about the Clinton Campaign and DNC stirring up violence at Trump rallies WikiLeaks and other Whistleblowers - Clinton - The opening post of this 2016 thread presents the four videos in the "Rigging the Election" series. A 2017 post about a group called the DC Anti-Fascist Coalition trying to sabotage with butyric acid stink bombs the pro-Trump Deploraball at the National Press Club the night before President Trump's inauguration A 2017 post about releasing 100 hours of audio from inside CNN A 2017 post (and the one following it) about a lawyer who helped exonerate a pedophile teacher who raped students A 2017 post dealing with CNN admitting it hyped Trump-Russia bullshit for ratings Veritas Deep State Project - A 2018 thread. Veritas, O'Keefe and the 2018 Midterm Elections - A 2018 thread. There's some more stuff around, but that is the bulk of the past postings. I might add to them if I find anything important. For now, let's do the thing that is exploding today. From Zero Hedge: Google Using AI To Meddle In 2020 Election, Prevent 'Next Trump Situation': Veritas Here it is on the Veritas site (which hit Drudge): Insider Blows Whistle & Exec Reveals Google Plan to Prevent “Trump situation” in 2020 on Hidden Cam There are videos at both links, and documents from Google at the Veritas link, but for convenience, here is a YouTube video of the main issue: (VIDEO DELETED BY YOUTUBE.) Since this could be taken down at any time seeing how Google owns YouTube, here is a BitChute link: https://www.bitchute.com/video/re9Xp6cdkro/ The gist is that an employee of Google is interviewed as a whistleblower (with no clear image of him and with voice altered for the sake of anonymity), an administrator at Google is on tape openly admitting that Google is trying to skew the 2020 election with AI algorithms, and James O'Keefe shows how this works running a few trial searches. This is disgusting. Google wants you to see what it wants you to see, not what you want to see on your own. And it has lots of behavioral science behind its manipulations to make sure what it wants you to see nudges you in the direction of its political agenda. The employee said this was pure 1984 Newspeak and fascist. The most damning thing was that the Google administrator said she loved Elizabeth Warren, but finds her midguided about wanting to break up Alphabet (Google's parent company). Why? Because if Google turns into a bunch of smaller companies, they will not be able to skew the 2020 election. If Google remains large, they will have (and use) the power to do that. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 24, 2019 Author Share Posted June 24, 2019 Since Tim Pool was mentioned in the Veritas video above, here is his response. At face value, it looks like he is undermining the insider's claims by saying his own views are not suffering. But I think he is actually making them stronger by saying he believes that the insider's stuff against Google is credible (based on his own sources inside YouTube) and recommends people set their platforms up (or make backups) on alt sites, especially Minds. Tim did not deal with Google Search, which is where the Google insider worked, but instead with YouTube, which is a separate wing. So that could confuse the audience. Still, Tim did a good and balanced report, both pro and con. Ultimately, he wants Google out of the elections and thinks Google actually is doing nefarious stuff against Trump's reelection. He's grateful for his platform on YouTube and does not agree that his own project has been damaged since it has grown instead, but is preparing for the day when they kick him off. And he tells everyone else who does political videos to do the same. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 25, 2019 Author Share Posted June 25, 2019 On Infowars: Blacklist: MSM Ignores Project Veritas Bombshell Google Exposé Quote CNN, WaPo, CNBC, HuffPost, The New York Times, Vox, Vice, Newsweek, Politico, and even The Daily Beast haven’t written a single piece on the devastating evidence presented by a Google whistleblower and undercover footage of a Google executive discussing how to algorithmically manipulate the 2020 presidential election. And there follows screenshot evidence. It's quite a show. Another quote from the end. I believe it correctly states what most Trump supporters--and even some anti-Trumpers--think about all this. Quote Imagine if it was revealed that a “right-wing” tech company was trying to meddle in the 2020 election. The truth is, the mainstream corporate media and the Silicon Valley czars are colluding with each other to consolidate power for the Democrats in the 2020 presidential election by employing censorship, manipulating data, and fabricating their own narratives. But there is someone who did notice. The Google lady busted in the video: This is not how I expected Monday to go! by Jen Gennai She doesn't like it when the crap lands on her. She cried foul because people decided to do this covertly. But when you listen to the video, she likes it when it lands on others, especially when Google does it covertly. At least she said this: Quote I was having a casual chat with someone at a restaurant and used some imprecise language. Project Veritas got me. Well done. Imprecise language? Heh... Well done? She should know... Michael 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 25, 2019 Author Share Posted June 25, 2019 19 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said: ... for convenience, here is a YouTube video of the main issue: Since this could be taken down at any time seeing how Google owns YouTube... That was quick. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 25, 2019 Author Share Posted June 25, 2019 It looks like the Google censorship ain't working. The grilling below is in direct response to the Project Veritas report. The Google lady didn't do well in her attempt to respond like a politician. She started out way too arrogant, saying she didn't review the Veritas report in preparation for the hearing because she's too busy. After all, she has a day job. Then Senator Cruz said he's sorry the hearing in Congress is impending on her day job and things went downhill from there. But her arrogance went away. As soon as Senator Cruz started getting under her skin by quoting directly from the Veritas video about Google wanting to skew the 2020 election against Trump, she started answering each question with a preface, "Thank you, Senator." She then said what she wanted to say. In other words, she said, "Thank you, Senator," before each answer even in relatively rapid-fire questions. That made her sound like a goddam robot. Seriously. It was weird. Total PR fail. You would think a Google person would not be such an amateur and so awkward at speaking in public. I wonder if Google will now censor the videos and search results of Senator Ted Cruz. Good luck, if so. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 25, 2019 Author Share Posted June 25, 2019 Some more ripples in the culture. From Breitbart: Project Veritas – Leaked Google Document Labels Prager U, Jordan Peterson ‘Nazis’ Quote A recent report from investigative journalism group Project Veritas claims that leaked internal Google documents shows a Google employee and a member of a Google “transparency-and-ethics” group calling conservative and libertarian commentators such as Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson, “Nazis.” The email was sent as part of internal communications between the Google “transparency-and-ethics” group and suggests that content published by PragerU, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro should be removed from the “suggestion feature.” A Google employee named Liam Hopkins can be seen stating: “…if we understand that PragerU, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro et al are nazis using the dog whistles…” The employee further suggests following through with the suggestion of another employee named Meredith: “I don’t think correctly identifying far-right content is beyond our capabilities. But if it is, why not go with Meredith’s suggestion of disabling the suggestion feature?” Here is what the Breitbart article is referring to on the Project Veritas site: BREAKING: New Google Document Leaked Describing Shapiro, Prager, as ‘nazis using the dogwhistles’ Quote Project Veritas has obtained a newly leaked document from Google that appears to show a Google employee and member of Google “transparency-and-ethics” group calling conservative and libertarian commentators, including Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro, “nazis.” Project Veritas received this document after the release of its investigation into Google through the “Be Brave” campaign at VeritasTips@protonmail.com. Other big tech insiders can contact Project Veritas HERE. Images of the Google documents are giving in that article. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 26, 2019 Author Share Posted June 26, 2019 Now President Trump is talking about Google being busted on national TV with Maria Bartiromo. Great job, James. This time I think it's different. I think some serious measures are going to unfold to stop this crap. Platform or publisher? There are vastly different legal implications for each and it's time for big tech's gaming of this to stop. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 26, 2019 Author Share Posted June 26, 2019 The official hits against Google due to Veritas just keep coming. Representative Dan Crenshaw asked the Google dude what education the Google people have received that they refer to two highly religious Jewish people, Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager, who had family killed in Concentration camps as Nazis. He mentioned that all three people called Nazis--as a Google premise--in the emails, the third being Jordan Peterson, had family killed during the Holocaust. And he asked it in a tone implying that the Google people were as dumb as rocks. It actually does make you think. Seriously. How dumb are these people who work at Google? They do algorithms and coding well, but it's starting to be clear that they know jackshit about human nature, history, and even about simple identification and logic. Say it slow, Googlers. Religious practicing Jew is one thing. Nazi is another. Did you get that? Need some more time? OK... now, let's go to the next step. Nazis killed Jews. Lots of 'em. Let's give you a few days to see if that sinks in. Then we can go onto something a little harder. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 26, 2019 Author Share Posted June 26, 2019 8 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said: Now President Trump is talking about Google being busted on national TV with Maria Bartiromo. Great job, James. That was a tweet by James O'Keefe in that post. But the audience suddenly grew. President Trump himself tweeted it. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 27, 2019 Author Share Posted June 27, 2019 Just to be on record, ever since Project Veritas launched its report about Google, the video was removed from YouTube. I don't know if a reason was given by YouTube. But, in addition, the Project Veritas account was banned on Vimeo and Reddit for "hate." There is more, but those are the main ones. Michael 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 27, 2019 Author Share Posted June 27, 2019 8 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said: There is more, but those are the main ones. There's a Breitbart article about this: 4 Companies Move to Blacklist Project Veritas in Quick Succession After Big Tech Exposés This tweet is included in the article with a discussion of each point. In the comments to the Breitbart article, one guy wrote: Quote Facebook / Twitter - Use Gab or Minds YouTube - Use Bitchute Gmail / Yahoo / Outlook - Use Protonmail Reddit - Use Voat Pinterest - Get a Life That's a pretty good plan, or at least backup, except for the comment about Pinterest. Internet marketers know Pinterest is a massive traffic source when you learn how to use it correctly. It's even more powerful in driving traffic than SEO or video. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 27, 2019 Author Share Posted June 27, 2019 On 6/26/2019 at 12:35 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said: Representative Dan Crenshaw asked the Google dude... Here's a longer video than the one in that post. It's even better. I really like Crenshaw based on this video alone. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 28, 2019 Author Share Posted June 28, 2019 YouTube censored this body language lady a long time ago. But I like her. Here is her analysis of the Google people squirming in Congress. It's a BitChute link, so click the link and it will take you there. VIDEO - BODY LANGUAGE - CRENSHAW & CRUZ ON BIG TECH Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted July 24, 2019 Author Share Posted July 24, 2019 It's going to be hard for anyone to debunk this. This engineer from Google is showing his face and giving his name, Greg Coppola. The above is a YouTube link. YouTube is owned by Google. Here is a BitChute link in case that goes down. There are probably a lot of people like Greg Coppola at Google. They signed on for one thing, then watched in horror as their environment changed into something ugly. I imagine this is what German and Russian scientists felt during the dictatorial takeovers of their countries last century. In America, people like Coppola can come forward. In other countries, they are simply shot. So I imagine there is going to be a trickle, then a flood of whistleblowers taking inspiration from one another. btw - I admire Coppola for his courage about as much as I am able to muster. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted July 24, 2019 Author Share Posted July 24, 2019 Thar she blows. The backlash starts. But I bet Greg Coppola gets job offers for several times his Google salary. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted August 14, 2019 Author Share Posted August 14, 2019 Shit, meet fan: (This is a BitChute link. I don't feel like posting a YouTube link for this one seeing how YT is part of the company being denounced.) And here is the Project Veritas article where the video came from and the document dump of hundreds of Google documents that back all this up. Google “Machine Learning Fairness” Whistleblower Goes Public, says: “burden lifted off of my soul” Google Document Dump At this very moment, there seems to be a media blackout on this story. I doubt the blackout will last. Especially once people start going through the document dump. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted August 16, 2019 Author Share Posted August 16, 2019 Amazing Polly analyzes one category (Censorship) of the Google document dump. There is nothing screaming scandal so far (meaning to the point Polly read and dissected), but the pattern at Google is totally biased and constant to the point of toxicity. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted October 17, 2019 Author Share Posted October 17, 2019 James is getting the attention of CNN. Friggin' hacks... Expose CNN - Part 1 Expose CNN - Part 2 Expose CNN - CNN Media Coordinator states 'Zucker insists Tapper press Kellyanne Conway, "just f**king nail her.. This is going to get uglier and uglier. Part 3 comes out tomorrow. Meanwhile, there's this: Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted October 17, 2019 Author Share Posted October 17, 2019 And there's this: Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted October 17, 2019 Author Share Posted October 17, 2019 Expose CNN - Part 3 Drip... drip... drip... Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted October 18, 2019 Author Share Posted October 18, 2019 From Rush Limbaugh today: The Trump Campaign Threatens to Sue CNN Quote Man, oh, man, folks. James O’Keefe, Project Veritas, we have been keeping you up to speed on their daily release of insider videos. They’ve got a CNN whistleblower who wore a wire, in effect — audio and video wire — and has been collecting data in meetings, CNN executives, the CEO Jeff Zucker. It has been bombshell stuff. You know, when O’Keefe first released this stuff on Monday, I had people say, “Well, Rush, I don’t think this is any big deal. I mean, it’s nothing we don’t already know. CNN’s filthy, CNN’s biased. So what? This is going to be met with a lead balloon.” I said, “No, this is proof and fact versus just what we all so-called know.” We now have Zucker on tape, audio and video, in the IFB talking to anchors interviewing Kellyanne Conway, telling them to “go F-ing destroy her.” We have CNN employees acknowledging that it’s a tough place to work because there’s no news anymore; it’s just “get Trump.” We’ve the bottom CNN employees acknowledging they’re not gonna stop going after Trump until he is dead. So, the Trump campaign is threatening to sue CNN. This is the big news of the moment. The Trump campaign is threatening to sue CNN, demanding “a substantial damages,” because of the “now documented bias and the false representations” in what they do. “Your actions are in violation of the Lanham Act,” reads this suit, “among other applicable laws, by constituting misrepresentations to the public, to your advertisers, and others. “Your own employees appear to state that CNN is focused on trying to ‘take down President Trump,’ driven by a ‘personal vendetta’ that Mr. Zucker purportedly has against him, rather than reporting the news in an objective manner.” (impression) “Rush, the president can’t sue anybody. This is the media, First Amendment, freedom of speech.” Well, this goes beyond that now, because CNN has indicated that they’re not doing the news here. This is a search-and-destroy mission, and there’s evidence produced by CNN employees now. So we’ll play this out. But the point is that for all of you, “When are we gonna get our own network? When are we gonna sue the media?” Here you go. Somebody suing the media. Stand up and applaud. Trump’s not sitting back and taking it. He’s suing the media, threatening to sue CNN. It’s just more of the fight and pushback that you love from Trump. This is a thing of beauty to behold. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatGuy Posted October 22, 2019 Share Posted October 22, 2019 Veritas is ready to reveal more CNN news today, this time about the sexual harrassment scandal. The accused had already locked their Twitter account, but now, Twitter is DOWN; "over capacity", it's saying... Probably just a coincidence, I'm sure... (Edit, 10/22/19: It's back up, now...for now...) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Posted October 22, 2019 Share Posted October 22, 2019 Muh Russians! I want the truth. I thought this interview is worth a read. Sorry Michael, it is a bit long. We know the President cannot be “convicted” of anything after impeachment but is the impeachment process worrisome in itself? Who is in charge of the process? Who really committed crimes and what is the evidence of that? Were there conflicts of interest in the Mueller investigation? Do those conflicts between Susan Rice and the DOJ, reach a criminal level? What can the President do that does not conflict with the 2020 election and the spirit of our campaign laws? Quote from below. McCarthy: Well, I think the biggest lesson is that we don’t want law enforcement, and intelligence, involved in our politics. end quote If inquiring minds want to know, read the following which came out today. The following was closed up because it was really over paragraphed. Peter The Real Collusion, and the Lessons of the Mueller Investigation by Daniel Davis / October 22, 2019 Davis: So right now the president is embroiled in this controversy over potential quid pro quo with Ukraine, and we’ve seen a lot in the media about that, but just not six months ago it was a different story. It was about collusion between Trump and Russia, and you argue in a new book called “Ball of Collusion“, you argue that the real collusion crisis wasn’t between Trump and Russia, but between the Obama administration and Democratic goals. Can you explain what you mean by that? McCarthy: Well, what I tried to lay out in the book is that there was collusion in connection with the election, but the essential collusion was the Obama administration putting the intelligence and law enforcement apparatus of the government in the service of the Hillary Clinton campaign. There was no small amount of collusion in that endeavor to take help, in the way of information from foreign intelligence services, also toward that end. It was obviously for the political purpose of trying to win the 2016 election, and when that failed, to hamstring Trump’s presidency. But it was clearly doing what Trump is actually being accused of doing now, which is basically taking your government power and exploiting it for political purposes. Davis: And what would you say was the biggest piece of evidence pointing to that? McCarthy: Well, there’s a lot of evidence. Probably the most interesting evidence and what I hope Congress will cover closely when we finally get to the point of having public hearings about this is the day before the intelligence agencies briefed then President-elect [Donald] Trump at Trump Tower about the Russian interference in the election based on an assessment that the intelligence community, mainly under the direction of John Brennan, who was then the CIA director, had done. So the Trump meeting happens on Jan. 6. On Jan. 5, there’s a meeting in the Oval Office between, on the political side, President [Barack] Obama, Vice President [Joe] Biden, and Susan Rice, who was then the national security advisor. On the law enforcement/intelligence side, Jim Comey, who was then director of the FBI, and Sally Yates, who was then effectively the acting attorney general. That meeting involved a discussion about what information should be withheld from the incoming Trump people in connection with Russia. It’s a very interesting meeting in that Susan Rice actually papered it with what we often refer to as a CYA memo. But interestingly, she was intent enough on doing it that she actually wrote the memo, not contemporaneously to the meeting, but 15 minutes after she was out of power, although she still had access to her White House email. In other words, on Jan. 20, she wrote her “contemporaneous memo” of this meeting that had happened on Jan. 5. Of course, by then we had had a tumultuous two weeks, in which the briefing of Trump at Trump Towers was followed… by first, the leaking of the Steele dossier and then the publication of the Steele dossier and all hell breaking loose in that two-week period. I think that’s a very interesting chapter of it, but it shows President Obama in a hands-on way talking about holding information back from the Trump administration. Davis: Yeah, very interesting. Looking at the way the Democrats launched into the beginning of this Trump-Russia collusion allegation … would you say that there were legitimate grounds for beginning that investigation? McCarthy: We don’t know yet. What I’ve always tried to do with this is not take wild swings that we can’t justify, because it doesn’t help anyone, and it certainly doesn’t help my credibility. So I’ve always tried to look at this as I tried to look at things when I was a prosecutor. Now, you’re at a disadvantage as a journalist on the outside because the prosecutor always knows things that nobody else does, right? You’re always making judgments a little bit in the blind, because you don’t have the information available to you that’s available to them. But what I’ve always tried to do is stay within what we knew and, therefore, draw inferences that were based on that rather than get too extravagant and too far out in front of what we know, to the point where I think it’s a fair criticism that I’ve made mistakes along the way, mistakes that were based on this conservative approach. To be more concrete about that, probably two and a half years ago when the Steele dossier first emerged, this set of faux intelligence reporting by this guy, Christopher Steele, who had been a British asset, a British intelligence officer who was working, as it turned out, for the Clinton campaign and the [Democratic National Committee] through an outfit called … Fusion GPS. When the stories first emerged that he had cooperated with the FBI and given these reports to the FBI, people instantly theorized that the FBI had taken this information and run to the foreign intelligence surveillance court to get warrants based on it. At the time, I told them I thought that was nuts, because in my experience what the FBI would have done with any information it got was pick out the five or six facts that it needed to make out probable cause that someone was an agent of a foreign power, and then do an FBI investigation on those facts. By the time they got to the FISA court, you would never have had to hear Steele’s name. They would have documents and independent witnesses. In other words, by the time they got there, it would be an FBI investigation. It turns out I was wrong about that. They did exactly the thing I said they wouldn’t do. So you do the best you can on the basis of the finite amount of information you have and what you think you can logically deduce from it, but it’s a crap shoot when you don’t know everything you should know. Davis: What do you think of how Robert Mueller handled this investigation? McCarthy: I think it was appalling. I think, first of all, his appointment was outside the regulations. I always want to say illegitimate, but that’s a loaded word because the regulations actually have a provision at the end of them, the ones that pertain to a special counsels, that basically say there’s nothing in these regulations that’s actionable. Meaning the Justice Department is saying, “If we violate our own regulations, you can’t do anything about it. You can’t take us to court. You can’t enforce it.” It’s not like the Justice Department can’t appoint a lawyer from the outside, so anything that Mueller did is legitimate in the sense that it is a prosecutor acting with the authority of the Justice Department. So I wouldn’t want to say it’s illegitimate, but it’s totally outside the regulations. The regulations say that you’re only supposed to have a special counsel if you have a factual basis to believe a crime has been committed, so in other words, as a basis for a criminal investigation, and secondly, a conflict of interest that’s so profound that the Justice Department can’t handle the case in the normal course. What you judge the conflict on is whatever the factual basis for the criminal investigation is. Here, with respect to President Trump, they never had a factual basis for a criminal investigation in the nature of a cyber espionage conspiracy between Trump and Russia, so you never even would get to the question of whether there was a conflict that required the Justice Department to get out of the case. But you know there wasn’t, because when Mueller return these indictments that he returned, what he did was he basically parceled them out to different components of the Justice Department, which you couldn’t do if there was a conflict. The other thing Mueller did was he recruited from the upper levels of the same Obama Justice Department that had been investigating Trump. So if DOJ is conflicted, why are you grabbing staff lawyers from the conflicted DOJ? Davis: Well, and by the time he finally delivered his report and answered to Congress, I think there was this almost universal impression that he was not as well-versed in the facts of his report as he should have been if he was really running the thing. So did that give you pause and make you really wonder if he was more of a figurehead and that someone else was really running the operation? McCarthy: Yeah, that’s admirably charitable on your part. I congratulate you on that. I think from the beginning, I thought he was very staff-driven. By the way, his staff, you have to separate out the politics of these actors from their skill level. They are grade-A lawyers, very good. Andrew Weissmann’s a really driven, clever, aggressive prosecutor. Michael Dreeben is a very accomplished appellate advocate. They have people in this investigation who are alpha lawyers. And it was clear to me, because I’ve followed the work of some of these people over the years, and I knew some of them back when I was in the Justice Department, the tail end of my years there. You could recognize their work, and you could recognize the way they went about things in their charging instruments. My big criticism of the charge… I had a number of criticisms, but the big one I had about the way that the investigation was conducted was, there never was a cyber espionage conspiracy between Trump and Russia, there was never any evidence of it. And the reason that’s relevant is, they would bring these cases, like a one count full statement case, in which they would write a 25 page narrative about collusion, “It’s almost collusion, it feels like collusion, we’re getting close to collusion.” And then you’d flip to the last page, and it would be, a guy lied about the date of a meeting … So it seemed to me, very transparently, that what they were doing was feeding a political narrative, rather than pushing forward with a criminal investigation. The criminal investigation was not their top priority, it was the narrative. And they kept talking about statistically all these people they had charged, the dozens of Russians that had been charged, and the number, I can’t remember the exact number, but the Trump associates. And what they never wanted to cop to was, none of the Russians had anything to do with the Trump campaign, and none of the Trump campaign people had anything to do with the Russians. So they ran their numbers up. And I remember saying at the time, when Mueller did his last dozen or so Russians, saying, “There’s 144 million people, other people, in Russia, who will never see the inside of an American courtroom. And if Mueller indicts every one of them, he won’t be one inch closer to showing collusion.” So of course he never showed any collusion. Davis: Right. And there was, of course, so much hype in the media for over a year, really two years, going into this final report. And the let-down, for so many folks who expected some bombshell. It was just not there. McCarthy: It should be that way though, if you think about it. Because in most instances you do an investigation, and then you charge people, and the story is the charges that you bring. Here, the narrative was about the investigation, because they didn’t have a crime. Davis: So what lessons should we take from that? I feel like a lot of folks are concerned that the media just cried wolf, big time. And all those who were pushing for this investigation cried wolf, because they suggested this was going to lead to some smoking gun, or some compelling case. What lessons should we take away from this? McCarthy: Well, I think the biggest lesson is that we don’t want law enforcement, and intelligence, involved in our politics. I said to you a few minutes ago, that I was flatly wrong when I told people that the FBI, with respect to Steele, that it would be crazy to think the FBI ran to the FISA court with an uncorroborated screed of faux intelligence reports, and of course they did. Because I hate to be wrong, I’ve had to spend a lot of time on why I was wrong about that. And I think it goes back to, we had this set of procedures in the mid ’90s, that was known as, the wall, which prevented the intelligence side of the FBI’s house from cooperating with the law enforcement side, to pull together information about terrorist organizations. There’s a good argument that having that wall in place stopped us from, at least, detecting one strand of the 9/11 conspiracy. And if you had gotten one strand, who knows whether you could have folded up the whole plot. So the rationale for the wall, back in the ’90s, was that the FBI, or the Clinton Justice Department, was worried that rogue agents, if they didn’t have the predicate for a criminal investigation, would fabricate a national security angle, or foreign counter intelligence angle, so that they could spy on people until they finally got a crime, and then they would throw that over to the criminal side. I said, back at the time, that could never, ever happen. And the reason I thought it couldn’t happen, was because if you assume a rogue agent, it would be much easier to lie, and fabricate the basis for a criminal investigation, and just go the ordinary criminal route, than go the national security route. Because in the Justice Department, that’s got a whole bunch of layers of supervision that you have to get through. So here’s what I didn’t account for, what happens when the supervisors decide to take over the investigation? And that’s what happened here. Davis: There you go. McCarthy: And you’re asking me about what do we take away from all this? Number one, headquarters for these agencies, whether it’s the FBI, or the Justice Department, they need to go back to being headquarters. They shouldn’t be hands on doing an investigation, because they’re just as susceptible as every other investigator to the urge to cut corners, and push envelopes, and buck the rules. And that’s why you need supervisors there to say, “We don’t do that kind of stuff.” And the second thing is, we worry about the Russians, we worry about the Chinese, worry about all these foreign elements, the biggest threat, and the framers knew this, the biggest threat to our elections comes from within, not from without. And if our government exploits its law enforcement, and intelligence authorities in a way that undermines our political process, that’s much more threatening to us than the Russians are. The Russians come as the Russians, and they’re not very good at this stuff, although they’ve been doing it forever. But our own government putting its thumb on the scale of an election, is something to be much more worried about than the Russians. Davis: Well, President Trump is now facing the potential for impeachment, based on his interactions with the Ukrainian president, and allegations that he engaged in a quid pro quo with them. And we’ve been seeing more of the transcript evidence coming out. And just the other day, White House Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, made some comments that seemed to admit that there was a quid pro quo, and then he went back on that, a lot of controversy there. Do you think that so far, the evidence suggests that there was a quid pro quo that was withholding military aid for an expressly political partisan purpose? McCarthy: Quid pro quo is one of these terms that really isn’t helpful to our public debate. There’s a lot of terms out there that have a literal meaning, and a specialized legal meaning. And what you always have to watch, is people flipping from one to the other without telling you they’re doing that. And they can make things sound more sinister than they are. Quid pro quo literally just means, this for that. And all foreign exchange is quid pro quo, every single foreign. … Davis: Any deal is going to be something for something. McCarthy: In normal contract law, they’ll teach you the first week of law school, that if there’s not consideration on both sides, there’s no deal. That’s just the way it works. The thing with quid pro quo, and the reason that it sounds sinister, and therefore, the people who are accusing Trump want to use that term, and put it out there, whatever they can, is it’s not a common English term. It’s an antiquated Latin term that we hear anymore, only in corruption cases. And those cases are distinct because the quid pro quo is corrupt. But that doesn’t mean it’s always corrupt. So you have to watch out with quid pro quo. You also have to realize when you’re dealing with foreign relations, it’s very different from domestic law, and domestic law enforcement. I hear the Democrats speak a lot about Trump committing extortion. That was the flavor of the week about a week ago, that he had extorted… That he had committed the crime of extortion with [Ukranian President Volodymyr] Zelensky. Davis: And now [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi is saying it was a shake down. It’s like the same kind of thing. McCarthy: Yeah, and the thing is, extortion has a meaning in the criminal law, when we’re all in domestic law enforcement, we’re all under the same sovereign, and under the same law. In foreign relations, we want the president to be able to put pressure on other countries. Our whole, for example, the maximum pressure campaign on Iran, is designed to squeeze them to make them come to the negotiating table, and give us concessions. We want to be able to extort other countries in foreign relations. That doesn’t mean that you want to do it corruptly. The issue at the bottom of all this is always, is the objective corrupt? And in this narrow context what it means is, is the objective in the service of the interest of the United States, or is it in the service of Donald Trump’s political interest? Now, that sounds like it should be a bright line, it’s not. It turns out that presidents try to get reelected. And when they do, what you find, is that there’s a melding between the American interest, what the American interest is, and what the president’s political interest is. … Davis: Right, you might make the same case when Barack Obama decided to take out Osama Bin Laden. That was a decision that he made in foreign affairs that obviously was in the good of the country. But hey, it turns out that the president benefited from that. McCarthy: Yes, and the most important thing is, is it in the interest of the United States? If it is, then everything else is subsidiary. Davis: So if the president… got information, or asked for information from the Ukrainians that helped him politically, his campaign … So he would say it was dirt on Joe Biden, but so you’re saying that if that served a legitimate national security function, then it’s clean? McCarthy: Well, the way I look at this particular conversation, it seems to me that Trump asked for three things. And you have to parse it out because each one of them may be different. So long before Biden even gets mentioned in the conversation …what Trump seems to ask is for assistance in the Barr Durham investigation, that is the investigation that Attorney General Barr is doing into the origins of the 2016 election to see if there were abuses of power. Now the Democrats don’t like that investigation and they would like it to be publicly seen as kind of an adjunct of the Trump 2020 campaign. But the fact of the matter is it’s a legitimate Justice Department investigation. I didn’t like the Mueller investigation, but it was a legitimate Justice Department investigation. There is nothing wrong with the president asking a foreign counterpart for assistance in a Justice Department investigation, it happens all the time. Now normally to be fair, the Justice Department asks for the help. Here it doesn’t look like the Justice Department–you know, Trump brought this up. It doesn’t look like he talked to Barr about it beforehand. But that part of it is clearly legit. Then there’s Trump asks him to investigate Biden and the firing of the prosecutor. It seems to me that part of the origins investigation involves what was going on in Ukraine in 2016 and specifically what pressure did the Obama administration put on the Ukrainian authorities to investigate Manafort? And there’s been a lot written about that and that all went on between 2014 and 2016. It seems to have gotten revived in 2016. If that turns out to be a legitimate part, or a relevant part of the origins investigation, this investigation that Barr and [John] Durham are doing, it would obviously be relevant that the Obama administration, and Biden specifically, had so much influence over the Ukrainians, could get them to do things that they could get a prosecutor fired. So it seems to me that would be relevant and legitimate to look into. The last thing is Hunter Biden. To my knowledge there was no Justice Department investigation open on Hunter Biden. Now what it seems he was doing in connection with Ukraine and China and who knows where else is cashing in on his dad’s political influence. That is icky. … But it may not be criminal. And it sounds like Trump was asking them to look into something that wasn’t under investigation in the United States. And that the purpose of that would be for his campaign. Now they come back and say, “No, no, this was about corruption.” Now it would be legitimate for the president to inquire into corruption. On the other hand, if I’m the Democrats, what I’d be asking is, well, where else in the world did President Trump come down on corruption? Because it seems to me that when he gave his U.N. speech, his approach to the world is we should basically butt out unless there’s some critical American interest at stake. So he’s hardly been the scourge of corruption. I don’t think Kim Jong-un thinks he’s the scourge of corruption, right? But on the other hand, you could play this game all day. McCarthy: The thing the Republicans might be asking is, you know, Biden says, We were committed to anti-corruption and that’s why I got the prosecutor fired. It had nothing to do with my son. So my question as an old prosecutor about that would be … There’s lots of prosecutors in countries where we’re trying to help them with corruption. Can Biden name us one other prosecutor that he tried to get fired? Was it only the guy who happened to be investigating his son or is there a whole list of prosecutors and other officials that he tried to get fired over corruption? So I don’t think either side is going to come out looking particularly great on this. It’s very unfortunate to me that we’re discussing it with the overlay of impeachment because that makes it much more inflamed than it needs to be. But I think that you should be able to step back and say nobody [was] perfect here. Davis: Something tells me that’s not going to be what … either side comes to agree. But my last question for you here, first we had collusion with Russia. That turned out to be, you know, there was no collusion. Now we have potential impeachment over Ukraine. Do you see similarities between these two? Are they connected in any way or do you think Congress is doing its due diligence? McCarthy: Oh no, look, I think it’s all political. Well, impeachment is political by nature. So anytime it reared its head, even if it did so legitimately, it would be political. But before Trump, this is the most unusual impeachment in American history. Not that we’ve had many, but every other impeachment inquiry that I know of arises out of some known episode of misconduct. Here what you have is a president that the Democrats, their base, and a number of people who are anti-Trump, people who are not leftists, but they’re anti-Trump. They decided that Trump was not fit to be president… before he ever stepped into office. And they have simply been waiting for the facts to catch up with their predisposition in the instantiation of something they could say is grievous enough that it’s a high crime and misdemeanor. So this has been basically a three-year conclusion about fitness that has been chasing around after some impeachable act. And for a long time they waited for Mueller and they hoped that Mueller was going to come through for them and that kind of fell through. So this time I think they’re trying to go faster and get it done because the smarter Democrats know that this could blow up on them politically, but the base really wants it. So I think on this one Speaker Pelosi thinks they can do a fast and nasty impeachment. They can do by Thanksgiving. Throw it all together, do most of it behind closed doors, get a couple of articles of impeachment out … Make that the one and only time they vote. And then they can go back to their base and say, “See, we impeached him.” Davis: Even though [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell lets it die in the Senate. McCarthy: Yeah, it’ll die. … which is why Pelosi didn’t want to do it in the first place. But you know, somebody smarter than me told me a year ago, and I doubted this, but it’s proven to be prophetic. That the thing about impeachment is no one’s in charge of it. And the problem with that is that once the wheels start to turn and the machinery gets rolling, it’s very hard to stop it. There’s no one really who can jump in and stop it. And we’re in this election cycle where all of their candidates have been pulled to the impeachment position by the base and they’re the most high-profile people in the party right now because of the 2020 race. So everybody who’s got a platform is pulling for impeachment and it puts a lot of pressure on other Democrats who know better to say, “Oh OK, we have to impeach him because that’s what the base wants.” But I think in the great middle America out there, even people who don’t like Trump don’t want to put the country through the trauma of an impeachment. And if we’re only 12 months out, I mean this is the first time I’ve ever heard we had an impeachment where they started the impeachment and then they went on vacation for two weeks, right? This is such a national crisis. So if we’re only 12 months out, what’s the good argument for it’s so important to remove him that we have to take the decision away from the sovereign and let the political class make it? That doesn’t make any sense to me. Davis: Well, we’ll see how it pans out in the months ahead. You can follow Andrew McCarthy’s commentary on this at National Review, and his new book is called “Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.” Andrew McCarthy, appreciate your time today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted October 22, 2019 Share Posted October 22, 2019 The link to Peter's article copy/paste: https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/10/22/andrew-mccarthy-discusses-collusion-lessons-from-mueller-probe/ At that site, readers can also choose to listen to the interview ... or can click on the audio player in the tweet below. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted October 22, 2019 Author Share Posted October 22, 2019 2 hours ago, ThatGuy said: Veritas is ready to reveal more CNN news today, this time about the sexual harrassment scandal. T, Here you go: Expose CNN - Part 4 Alleged Sexual Misconduct by CNN Exec and Possible Cover-Up by Senior Management The important part of this one is not the bombshell. It's the solidity of the case against a senior manager. This play right into the MeToo zeitgeist because it implies that this is CNN's normal culture. I don't expect the media to cover this one too much, but I do expect the money folks to be 100% engrossed. All CNN needs right now is a domino effect of MeToo women (and maybe men) coming out with their stories followed by Gloria Allred showing up. Also, I expect the public to punish CNN a little more with even lower rating from the feeling that CNN not only lies all the time, the people who work there are creeps. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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