For the first year of his presidency, Donald Trump was listening to the Republican establishment.  They urged caution in dealing with Robert Mueller. They recommended cooperation and to avoid even the appearance of being defensive.  That did not work.  That never works.  The same people recommended negotiating with Kim Jung-un, although that had no chance of working either.  The same people urged him to keep the nuclear deal with Iran, even though it wouldn’t prevent Iran from getting a Nuclear weapon and Iran was literally funding terrorism all over the globe thanks to the general donation by Barack Obama.

Trump did not follow their advice.  Instead of begging North Korea, he simply told them the truth. We will not let you have a nuclear weapon. We are capable of destroying you.  If you continue on your current course we are prepared to do whatever it takes to defend ourselves. This is remarkably similar to how Eisenhower obtained peace in Korea. He advised China that they could have peace or they could have war, but if it was war it would not be confined to the Korean peninsula. China wisely chose peace.

Instead of extending the Iran deal, Trump cancelled it. Instead of continuing to let China and other countries take advantage of our free trade policy, he hit them with tariffs.  He sent a message, strong and clear.  This president is not only able to take the action to defend the country, he is willing to take action to defend the country.  What’s more, he does not care whether or not this is politically correct.

The world has sat up and took notice. North Korea is releasing hostages, has verbally agreed to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and had agreed to cancel its ballistic missile program. Kim Jung-un is meeting with Trump next month in Singaphore.

China is negotiating with us on trade.  Both France and Germany came to the United States to try and intimidate Trump into staying in the Iran nuclear deal.  He turned them both down.

Trump is looked around and Robert Mueller showing no signs of slowing down his witch hunt. His detractors even lined up someone to take the reins in investigating Trump if Mueller is fired. The White Knight waiting in the wings was Eric Schneiderman, Attorney General in New York.

Trump hired Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani tells the world that he doesn’t really care what they think about Stormy Daniels or whether or not she was paid off to be silent. Time to move on. The media and the establishment in both parties thought this is a major mistake. It was not. Instead it announced the establishment of a war cabinet with the mission to end a clear and present danger, an illegal attempt to remove a duly elected President from office.

Think about what has happened since Rudy hit the ground running.  Eric Schneiderman was taken down in a matter of hours.  He didn’t even get to finish his shift.  Was it a coincidence, after all these years, that these women suddenly went public?

Michael Avenatti got his hands on confidential bank records for Michael Cohens.  He promptly waived them on TV and made wild accusations.  Oops.  It turns out some of those records are for another Michael Cohen, unrelated to Trump’s attorney. Avenatti may have committed a serious crime and self-documented it on National Television.  Within minutes the Treasury Department announced an investigation.Was that another coincidence?

A Federal Judge orders Robert Mueller to turn over the unredacted version of his authorization memo.  He publicly questioned whether Mueller has authority to investigate the personal business dealings of Paul Manafort. Another coincidence?

The IG for the Justice Department is getting ready to release another report.  He extended the time because he wanted to address how the Clinton e-mail scandal was handled. James Comey has suddenly gone silent. Coincidence?

Rudy Giuliani is meeting with Mueller but don’t assume that he is defensive or conciliatory. That is not his style. He is more likely making an offer to Robert Mueller than he can’t afford to turn down.  Vice President Mike Pence publicly told Mueller to end this and move on. So did Trump. I don’t think these are threats, I think these are promises. I believe that Trump has decided that the Mueller investigation and the organized resistance to him is a clear and president danger to the Presidency. The rest of the world has already learned that it is dangerous to underestimate Donald Trump.

Early this morning, around 3:00 a plane carrying three former hostages held by North Korea arrived at Andrews Air Force Base.  They were met by President Trump and Melania Trump along with Vice President Pence and his wife and Secretary of State Pompeo.  Trump and Melania went up the steps to the plane by themselves and visited for several minutes with these men, to welcome them home. Then, Trump and Melania walked down the plane with these men. It was pure theatre. The news media, as expected shouted out questions, but not about Robert Mueller and certainly not about Stormy Daniels. Instead the questions were about the possibility of peace with North Korea.

What was that again Bob?  I didn’t hear you.

TDM

The Stormy Daniel saga may be rapidly nearing an end. Perhaps I am wrong, but Michael Avenatti is starting to look and sound desperate. He represents Stormy Daniels, who at worst had a consensual one-night stand with Donald Trump ten years ago. If anything the publicity about this probably breathed a tiny amount of life into the fading career of a rapidly aging Porn Star. At first he sued to get her non-disclosure agreement voided. Who cares? She has been shooting off her mouth at every opportunity for months. Then he sued for defamation of character. Even liberal talk show hosts laughed about that. How, exactly, do you defame someone like Stormy Daniels?

Even if Avenatti wins, he loses. He can’t possibly recover his own costs. He has no authority to charge Donald Trump or anyone else with a crime. He can shoot his mouth off and make silly demands, but he only represents Stormy Daniel and even if she wins it is hard to imagine this resulting in any significant damages or settlement. A few months ago he might have squeezed some additional money out of Cohen for her continued silence, but that opportunity is long gone.

That begs the question? Why is Avenatti doing this? Is this just about a show boating attorney desperate for his fifteen minutes of fame? Granted his ego is big enough, but people like Avenatti have selective moral outrage directly proportional to how much money they can make. While Avenatti is getting a lot of face time on CNN, a big payday for handling Stormy Daniels seems unlikely. So what’s really in it for him?

Perhaps someone should ask who is funding Avenatti and why? I think someone, perhaps a Steyer or Soros, is paying Avenatti big bucks. They probably still dream that somehow, someway Stormy Daniels will be the key that finally opens the door to impeachment. It is an admission that everything else has failed. It is irredeemably stupid.

The reality, of course, is that the Mueller investigation is imploding and the Eric Schneiderman backup strategy just went down in flames. It would be easy to be outraged, but instead just look at the bright side, then laugh out loud. Some very arrogant, filthy rich, self-righteous jerks are throwing away huge sums of money chasing the mythical unicorn of a Trump impeachment. Now they are so desperate that they are going all in on Stormy Daniels. Please! As I wrote earlier, this is mostly stupid.

In addition there is the traditional glass house scenario. Avenatti’s wife kicked him out in December. Wanna bet that this was because he was living the life of a celibate monk? In addition, while he definitely made a lot of money, he grossly exaggerates some of this. For example he brags about a $454 million jury award against KPMG and fails to mention that this was eventually reduced to $21.7 million on appeal. Nice, but only about 5% of what he said he got. According to the divorce documents he is spending money at an unsustainable rate. He allegedly owes $5 million in taxes, his Newport Home costs $100,000 per month and his LA Apartment costs $14,000 per month. He admits to another $40,000 in monthly expenses and his wife has $25,000 in monthly expenses. Even if he is worth $20 million, it won’t last long at this rate.

https://heavy.com/news/2018/03/michael-avenatti-worth-bankruptcy-divorce-taxes/

Now Avenatti is alleging that Michael Cohen was paid $500k by someone connected to Putin. He is trying to turn a one-night-stand ten years ago into Russia colluding with the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. Good luck with that. The following article shows that this most recent charge is just plain silly:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/05/stormy_danielss_lawyer_puts_out_a_slamdebunkable_claim_of_new_russian_collusion.html

Meanwhile Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is literally flying home with three Americans who had been imprisoned in North Korea. Trump is going to meet them personally at 2:00 in the morning. If any CNN reporter is there someone is likely to try and ask him about Stormy Daniels or the absurd allegations by Michael Avenatti. Then they will wonder why no one watches them anymore.

TDM

Yesterday morning Eric Schneiderman was Attorney General of New York, one of the most powerful men in the nation.  Just six days ago Politico wrote that even if Trump fired Mueller, Schneiderman, who had worked with Mueller in investigating Manafort, would carry the flag.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/02/firing-mueller-russia-investigation-565570

Last month, Schneiderman called on lawmakers to change a New York statute which bars recipients of presidential pardons from prosecution for a similar state crime. That was widely seen as a response to concern that Trump might pardon aides like Manafort or Cohen — or even himself.

“It’s a race against time,” said Democratic state Sen. Todd Kaminsky, a former federal and state prosecutor. Kaminsky has introduced a bill to change the law, which faces an uphill battle in the GOP-controlled state Senate.

This is an admission that the Mueller investigation is imploding.  Last Friday the redacted report on Michael Flynn was released and it clearly shows that this was all political from the start.  Darren Samuelsohn’s article is proof that the opposition to President Trump has moved from irrational outrage to outright delusion.  Even though Mueller has zero evidence of Russian collusion, the liberal left desperately wants the investigation to go on and on and on until someone finds something.

Yesterday New Yorker Magazine published a report that four women had been physically assaulted by Schneiderman and he folded like a cheap umbrella.  His only defense was that he thought they liked it.  Seriously?

Superman crashed and burned in a matter of hours.  By the end of the day even his BFF Andrew Cuomo had turned on him and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand called for his immediate resignation.  He didn’t even have time to finish his shift, he resigned as of close of business on May 8, 2018.

https://www.newsday.com/news/region-state/schneiderman-sexual-assault-new-yorker-1.

If you have ever gone into a dark room filled with vile vermin and insects and hit them with a bright light, then you understand what happens. The minute someone turns on the light, the rats shriek in horror and run for cover.  For over a year the Mueller investigation has operated in total darkness cheered on by the hopelessly biased and increasingly hysterical mainstream media. They have been screaming about Donald Trump since day one oblivious to the obvious that none of their accusations were supported by a shred of evidence.  That is why CNN ran 59 stories about Stormy Daniels. That is all they have left.

But other people have been trying to peel back the covers and shed some light.  It has been painfully slow and many people feared the darkness was permanent but fortunately they were wrong. Everyday more documents are released, every day more actual facts are made public and every day more light is overcoming the darkness.

We are now at the point where the dawn is breaking, and we will soon experience that magical moment when the power of light allows us to see everything around us.  For Eric Schneiderman the light focused on him yesterday and quickly destroyed the myth of his personal power. Yesterday Eric Schneiderman thought he could order an investigation of the President of the United States. Today he can’t order a big Mac from McDonalds.

Change is coming at the speed of light.  Remember when the light shines, it exposes everything, so there are likely to be casualties on all sides. But light is a beautiful thing.  It is even more beautiful when it has been hidden for so long.

TDM

If the polls are accurate, a convicted felon is likely to be the Republican candidate for Senate in West Virginia. That would likely be a repeat of the Judge Moore fiasco, where the Republican primary was won by the only candidate capable of losing to a Democrat. I watched a little of the debate last week and immediately hated both of the other candidates. They both spent most of their time slicing each other up. Blankenship, who served time in prison for violating mine safety rules that resulted in the death of 29 coal miners, simply said he was familiar with an unfair prosecution.

He then attacked Mitch McConnell and contrary to news reports, he had real ammunition. He did not pick on McConnell’s wife for being Chinese or for her family being Chinese. He pointed out that she is Secretary of Transportation and her family just bought ten, that’s right folks ten, Chinese ships. His opponents were too busy accusing him of racist to realize he had a point. The never Trumper WEEKLY STANDARD wrote about this and managed to completely miss the point:

https://www.weeklystandard.com/john-mccormack/exclusive-two-west-virginia-internal-campaign-polls-show-blankenship-narrowly-edging-gop-rivals

If I didn’t know about the felony conviction, I probably would have declared Blankenship the winner. He definitely did a better job during the debate. The Weekly Standard views this as the naïve republican base voting for the “craziest son of a bitch in the race.” I do believe that Blankenship is likely to lose to Manchin. However, it is far from certain that either of the other candidates would be any better. Both of them were so focused on accusing the other guy of being a lying spineless coward that neither actually said what they would do for West Virginia. This was another case study in how the Republican establishment has perfected the art of losing elections they should easily win.

No matter who wins this week, I think the Republicans drew another blank.

TDM

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III just blew the Mueller Special Counsel Investigation sky high:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/why-a-judge-challenged-muellers-authority-to-charge-manafort.html

“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud. You really care about getting information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”* Ellis further cautioned the special counsel’s office against seeking “unfettered power” and said its statements that it is investigating allegations related to the 2016 election amount to “lying.”

T.S. Elliot is 77 years old and a senior judge for the Eastern District of Virginia.  He was born in Bogota, Columbia, and is obviously Hispanic.  Good luck with Mueller or anyone else trying to accuse this judge of bias.

Every major news organization is reporting on this story.That means a whole lot of people are learning that a respected Federal Judge believes that the Mueller Special Counsel investigation is a politically motivated witch hunt out to get Trump and he literally accused them of lying.

He did more than that.  He demanded an unredacted version of the memo Rosenstein sent to Mueller authorizing him to investigate Manafort. This would be the same document the DOJ has refused to turn over to congress.  Clearly the Judge does not trust the DOJ, the FBI or the Mueller Investigation.  .

Even if he orders the charges dismissed, which is unlikely, the damage has been done.  The main stream media has reported on this and they cannot ignore the significance of what the Judge said.  A lot of people, including Democrats, are sick and tired of the Russia Collusion nonsense and they are fed up with the Mueller investigation.  The Stormy Daniels fiasco may have actually been the best thing to happen to Trump. There is zero chance that a one night stand with a porn star in 2006 can be miraculously linked to collusion by Russia with the Trump campaign. Even Stormy Daniels admits she thought it was a good idea at the time and while that is certainly salacious, it is not a crime.  CNN may not be able to understand the difference between embarrassing scandal and a crime, but at least two Federal Judges have figured this out.

I think this Judge just gave Trump political cover to fire both Rosenstein and Mueller. Trump may not do that, but at a minimum the judge game Trump a “get-out-of-jail”. He made it much harder for Mueller to justify a subpoena against Trump.

Things are about to move in another direction at the speed of light.  The main stream media can no longer ignore this story.  The more this is investigated the more obvious to everyone that this was nothing more than a politically motivated witch hunt .If reports are accurate, the appointment of a Special Counsel was based on information Rosenstein knew or should have know was patently false. At the same time the DOJ was ignoring criminal acts by Hillary Clinton they were desperately seeking some excuse to convict Donald Trump of “something.”

This has been obvious to some of us for a long time.  It may soon become obvious to everyone.

TDM

Time magazine just published a devastating article about the FBI. While Time, predictably blames part of the problem on Donald Trump, it actually makes his case.  It is a devastating rebuke of the FBI:

http://time.com/5264153/the-fbi-is-in-crisis-and-america-is-paying-the-price/

Incredibly  Time still believes that Russia influenced our election by hacking the DNC servers:

“The bureau missed the significance of the damaging 2015 hack of the DNC database.  And when the Russian operation began to heat up in the summer of 2016, the FBI was always a step behind the Russians, struggling to understand intelligence reports they were getting about possible connections between Moscow and Trump aides.  The bureau also sat on the disputed “dossier” prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.”

The author is still praying that Mueller will some how find evidence that Russia did collude with members of the Trump campaign.  The problem is that the House Intelligence committee has already reported that there is no evidence and no one, including Adam Schiff, has a shred of evidence.

The author conveniently ignored the part about the Clinton campaign colluding with Russia to creat the “dossier.”  It does not mention the FBI’s failure to investigate and take action with regard to the Uranium One Scandal and and the large sums conveniently paid to the Clinton Foundation.  It totally ignores the obstruction of justice with regard to the Hillary Clinton e-mail server. In other words, this article was written by a die hard Clinton supporter. With regard to those subjects the author is either willfully oblivious or hopelessly  delusional.

That is what makes it so devastating.  Even with the obvious bias against Trump and for the Clintons it documents exactly why he was elected and why we need(ed) someone like him to drain the swamp.  This is a complete rebuke of what used to be the most respected law enforcement agency in the world.  If you add in the parts the author ignored, like the coverup of all things Clinton and the abuse of power in a failed attempt to destroy Donald Trump, then it is hard to imagine the FBI even surviving.
What is the point of giving so much power to an agency that has not only failed to perform its mission, it may have engaged in criminal behavior in a failed plot to overturn the results of an election.  It really doesn’t get worse than this.  The only thing we know for sure right now is that the FBI cannot be trusted to do anything.

Several congressional committees have threatened to impeach Rod Rosenstein for failure to turn over documents congress as required.  Donald Trump wrote that he may be required to intervene.  He has the authority to declassify any document and order the FBI to deliver them to congress.  After reading this report, that looks like a really good idea.

TDM

President Trump had hired a new lawyer. The New York Times assumes this is because Mueller is closing in on Trump. Of course the New York Times is famous for getting just about everything wrong. The reality is that the Mueller investigation is bogged down. The leaked questions prove that after all this time Mueller has zero, nada, bumpkis. He isn’t even attempting to prove collusion. So now he is trying to get Trump to say something that shows in his heart of hearts Trump was trying to obstruct justice. This is absurd. Mueller’s primary witness would have to be James Comey who has less credibility than a three dollar bill. The real message here is that Trump has hired an attorney who is famous for not playing nice with Special Counsels. He was a minor part of Bill Clinton’s legal staff during the impeachment trial but a major figure for both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Although Clinton was impeached, the Special Counsel never even attempted to charge either Bush or Cheney with anything.

I think Emmet Flood was hired to tell Mueller to shove it. If the New York Times thinks Flood is going to let Trump be interviewed by Mueller they haven’t done their homework. Flood is an expert on executive privilege. Patrick Fitzgerald was desperate to get Dick Cheney. All he got was a meaningless conviction of Gordon Libby. That was so pathetic that the Washington Bar reinstated his law license even though he technically had a felony. Contrast that with Bill Clinton who had his law license permanently revoked.

I think Mueller was bluffing and Trump just called his bluff. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Emmet Flood file to dismantle the Special Counsel because it was illegally authorized based on patently false documents. Flood will have the advantage in that, unlike Mueller, he actually has facts to support his position. Mueller’s case has been severely damaged by Comey admitting publicly that he leaked information to the press (illegally) because he wanted a Special Counsel appointed.

It is long past time for this to end. I really think Democrats are playing with fire here. Donald Trump is literally trying to prevent a nuclear war with North Korea, something few thought remotely possible a few months ago. Threatening him with subpoenas about something created out of whole cloth by the Clinton campaign is putting politics ahead of national security. That should be increasingly obvious even to Democrats.

TDM

James Comey has apparently hired Patrick Fitzgerald as legal counsel.  That probably seemed like a good idea at the time, because Patrick Fitzgerald was the special prosecutor who investigated the Bush administration.  However, there may be serious legal problems for both Comey and Fitzgerald because of this decision.  The conflict of interest literally jumps off the page.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/04/25/comey-memos-likely-shared-with-former-us-attorney-patrick-fitzgerald-sources-say.html

It turns out Patrick Fitzgerald was allegedly given the memos regarding Comey’s conversations with Donald Trump as the same time Comey leaked them to his friend, DanieL Richardson who leaked contents with the media.  There may have been a third person provided with these documents.

Comey is the one who hired Patrick Fitzgerald as Special Counsel.  Fitzgerald is the prosecutor who charged Scooter Libby with a felony for allegedly obstructing justice with regard to Valerie Plame. Judith Miller, who testified against Libby, later recanted her testimony. Miller believes she was tricked into giving false testimony. Miller never wrote a story about her conversation with Libby.  Fitzgerald pumped her about something in her notes where she said (“wife works in Bureau”)  Fitzgerald convinced her that Libby had to be talking about the CIA.  But she eventually realized that Libby was more likely talking about Plame’s job at the State Department. She also realized, later, that a lot of people knew that Valerie Plame was not an undercover operative for the CIA. She openly celebrated when Trump pardoned Libby.

https://www.weeklystandard.com/fred-barnes/key-witness-prosecutor-manipulated-me-into-falsely-testifying-against-scooter-libby

It gets worse.  E-mails from Strzok and Page refer to “Pat” as part of their inner circle and many people believe they were talking about Patrick Fitzgerald.

I used to play golf with an attorney who specialized in defending drunk drivers.  I remember one day he was obviously distracted by a case.  He said: ‘I am doing my best for my client but I just have bad facts!”

Exactly!

TDM

Representative Ron De Santis along with several colleages sent a criminal referall to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Federal Prosecutor John Huber. The referral applies to James Comey, Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/04/18/congress-sends-criminal-referral-to-sessions-wray-and-prosecutor-huber/

Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and James Baker and Bruce Ohr are all still employed by the FBI, but removed from positions of influence. That is a pretty good indication that all of the above are cooperating, probably with both the IG and John Huber. A criminal referral is likely to just add incentive for them to sing even louder.

Some still want another special counsel, but actually Huber may be more dangerous. He reports to Jeff Sessions and he has the full cooperation of Horowitz, the IG. He can move much faster than a special counsel. We may see grand juries and indictments sooner rather than later. In the meantime, James Comey has destroyed any potential of an obstruction of justice charge against Trump. He would be the key witness against Trump and he has thoroughly discredited himself. Odds are Mueller is absolutely furious with Comey.

The anti-Trumpers are desperate to find something and they are going all in on payments to Stormy Daniels. Good luck with that. The Michael Cohen raid is looking more and more like a setup. It was the CNN lawyer who asked the Judge, a candidate for Attorney General under Bill Clinton, to release Sean Hannity’s name. This is proof not only of the incredible bias at CNN, it demonstrates an astonishing mix of stupidity and desperation. Did they really think no one would notice the conflict of interest regarding the judge? Expect a world class backlash.

I will quote Churchill on this.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

It was more than that. The date was November 10, 1942. Rommel’s forces at El Alamein had just been defeated. The war would go on, but from that day on Germany was on the defensive and they never recovered.

TDM

The Daily Beast is not exactly a conservative rag.  That is what makes the following article so interesting:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/james-comeys-abc-interview-has-furious-fbi-insiders-lashing-out

Apparently seven current or former FBI agents watched the broadcast interview of James Comey by George Stephanopoulos and they were less than thrilled.  Imagine their response when they read the transcript and see what ABC News left on the cutting room floor.

One current FBI Agent who is known as a “Team Comey source” started out pleased and then literally sent a “poop emoji” after the final segment.  My favorite quote was:

“Good lord, what a self-serving, self-centered jackass.  True to form he thinks he’s the smartest guy around.”

ABC cut out the part of the interview where Comey trashed Obama and dropped a bombshell regarding Loretta Lynch.

http://abcnews.go.com/Site/transcript-james-comeys-interview-abc-news-chief-anchor/story?id=54488723

 “But there was material that I knew someday, when it’s declassified, and I thought that would be decades in the future, would cause historians to wonder, “Hmm, was there some strange business going on there? Was Loretta Lynch somehow in — carrying water for the campaign and controlling what the F.B.I. did?”

Again, it wasn’t true. But there was material that would allow that to come out someday in the long future when it’s declassified. That all changed when someday, in my mind, became maybe tomorrow. That was in the middle of June, when the Russian government, using some fronts, started dumping stolen material that had been hacked from organizations associated with the Democratic party in the United States. And all of a sudden, it dawned on me that that someday decades from now when this material comes out actually may be now, tomorrow. And again, even though I didn’t believe it, the material was real.”

Comey contradicted himself four times in the same interview.  He said it wasn’t true.  Then he said he didn’t believe it was true.  Then he said he didn’t know if it was true or not. Then he admits that the “material” is true. Wow!

The search for this document may rival the search for the Holy Grail.  If he said this about something potentially harmful to Donald Trump the MSM would have gone ballistic.  Because it involves a Clintonian like Loretta Lynch, they barely noticed.  But other people have noticed and even more will notice.  The hounds are on the scent big league.

The Comey interview was a real beauty, but in the end, Comey looks more like a beast.  Ultmately his attempt at self-glorification will result in him being universally despised by everyone. The one subject on which liberals and conservatives are in agreement is that this man should never have been Director of the FBI.

TDM