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

While the James Comey interview was playing on ABC, Steve Hilton was literally conducting a mock trial of James Comey. The trail was mostly a replay of what has been shown on Fox News for months. But there was a difference. This time there were two attorneys who were arguing on behalf of Comey.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/the-trial-of-james-comey-what-e2-80-99s-next/vi-AAvVqSN

If you were hoping to see a devastating case for the conviction of James Comey, you were probably disappointed. But the results were significant. No one, including the people arguing to defend Comey, could say that he did the right thing. Even Democrats don’t argue that Comey did the right thing. Instead his defenders argued that his actions did not rise to the level of criminality and in doing so they made a stunning argument. Comey is not guilty of a crime because he was doing what Loretta Lynch and Barack Obama wanted him to do.

That is the real problem with the Comey story. If he convinces people that he truly is the self-righteous choir boy he pretends to be, then the fickle finger of fate points directly at Loretta Lynch and Barack Obama. While Comey clearly hates Trump, he didn’t accuse Trump of doing anything wrong. While he praised Obama, his praise was a strong condemnation. This is because clearly Comey was ready, willing and able to do anything Obama wanted, but he openly resisted direction from Donald Trump. Since what Comey did was indisputably wrong, this places the blame on Obama.

Comey also destroys his own credibility during a meeting with Dick Cheney:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/the-trial-of-james-comey-what-e2-80-99s-next/vi-AAvVqSN

There was a dispute regarding the legality of the surveillance program. Comey felt that only the opinion of “the very smart lawyers working for me” mattered. When Cheney told him: “thousands of people are going to die because of what you (“Comey”) are doing” Comey said he felt bad but he never considered changing his opinion. The program developed by President Bush had bi-partisan support because it was used solely to spy on suspected terrorists.  Under President Obama that program was used to spy on political opponents.  Comey was a willing participant in abuse of this program. If Comey wanted to do the right thing, he should have offered Cheney suggestions on how to do this legally. If he wanted to do the right thing he should stood up to the abuse of power by Obama.  Why didn’t Saint Comey stand up to Barack Obama?

I doubt that this interview will play well with anyone. Liberals will be very disappointed that Comey has no bombshell news about Donald Trump.  Conservatives will be disgusted with the self-righteous sanctimonious bitching by a, thankfully, former FBI Director who didn’t like the President’s personality.

ABC’s 5 takeaways by Meghan Keneally are very bad, but not for Donald Trump:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/political-bombshells-james-comeys-exclusive-interview-abc-news/story?id=54489527

1. Rosenstein viewed as “dishonorable.”
2. Sessions seen as “overmatched.”
3. Obama’s comments about Clinton’s emails were “inappropriate.”
4. Comey would be fine with Kelly quitting now
5. Talk of Obstruction of Justice.

Comey doesn’t even accuse Trump of obstruction he merely said this could possibly be viewed as obstruction. Perhaps the best description of this interview was by Meghan Keneally on her twitter account:

“Watching an interview go off the rails in real time.”

Seems accurate. Once liberals get done rejoicing at the way Comey trashed Trump they will realize this interview was a total disaster. He shredded his own credibility, he never laid a glove on Trump and in his haste to make himself look good he threw Obama, Lynch and Rosenstein under the bus.

TDM

James Comey was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos and if the leaked reports are accurate, it is stunning.  The only question after this performance is how this man was ever appointed Director of the FBI.  This is a reminder that every year on American Idol there is always one performer who thinks he or she is a superstar only to deliver a nauseatingly bad performance.  You know the kind of performance that is so bad that a Simon Cowell would say something like: “is this a joke? Do you really think you can sing?”

I am sure a certain portion of the liberal left will buy this hook line and sinker.  They will view this as conclusive evidence that Donald Trump is totally unqualified to be President of the United States.  The rest of us will watch and ask at what point someone intervenes and pulls Comey off the stage so he can stop embarrassing himself.  I thought that the 60-minute interview of Stormy Daniels by Anderson Cooper was a low point in American journalism, but I was wrong.  The Stephanopoulos interview of James Comey will set a new standard.  Stephanopoulos either brilliantly exposed James Comey as a hopeless fool or he himself is too blinded by his hatred for Donald Trump to recognize the level of insanity. Based on the video of Stephanopoulos discussing this on Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos tossed Comey soft ball leading questions and never pushed back against conclusions that are beyond pathetic.

For example: Comey discusses describing the Russia Dossier.  When Comey told Trump about the alleged golden shower incident, Trump quickly said that was absurd and asked if Comey could investigate to prove that this was false.  Comey said he thought it was possibly true.  He failed to grasp the obvious that Trump would never ask the Director of the FBI to investigate this if there was any chance this was true.  Trump’s response is what one would expect from someone falsely accused of doing something not only salacious, but absurd.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/video/comey-trump-asked-investigate-dossier-54439320

The only question most people will ask is why it took Trump so long to fire Comey. I believe the unprecedented raid on Michael Cohen and the wall to wall coverage of people like Stormy Daniels and now James Comey will backfire big time on the liberal left.  They have lost the last shred of credibility.

As for Comey, he would be smart to shut up and lawyer up.  He is consistently inconsistent with a delusional self-righteous vision of every event.  At one point he literally describes feeling that he is floating about the conversation looking down upon this in disbelief.  Are you kidding me?  How could anyone explain this as other than mentally unstable.  Yet, in their all-consuming hatred of Donald Trump and their desperation to destroy him the liberal left has fully embraced the looney tune crowd. This is embarrassing, and it needs to stop, now.

Trump response to Comey, almost certainly written by legal counsel, is below:

“James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH,” “He is a weak and untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst ‘botch jobs’ of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!”

The only legitimate criticism of Trump is: “what took you so long?”

TDM

Russian ships have pulled out of Syrian ports on a “training exercise.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-warships-have-left-port-in-syria-out-of-fear-for-their-safety-after-trumps-missile-threat/ar-AAvO87g

Air traffic has been halted in the area. Flight radar proves that commercial air traffic is avoiding Syria and Lebanon:

https://www.flightradar24.com/33.82,35.49/8

The world is holding its breath waiting to see what action, if any, is taken by President Donald Trump. It seems unlikely that he will do nothing, since that would result in worldwide humiliation.  Yet, he is clearly hesitating.  Perhaps the following article explains why:

http://www.pravdareport.com/hotspots/conflicts/07-04-2017/137411-russia_usa_nuclear_war-0/

We do not know the effectiveness of this system.  Putin said that he will shoot down any missiles launched by the U.S. That should not necessarily be viewed as an idle threat.  Putin may believe he is capable of doing that.  The United States may believe he is capable of doing that. Perhaps the U.S. is trying to negotiate a deal with Putin where we can strike Syria and punish them without an extremely high risk military conflict.

If we launch missile and airstrikes against Syria and Russian air defense shoots down our missiles and planes, it will be beyond catastrophic.  Since World War II the primary thing that has kept us safe is the ability of our military to defeat any air defense system.  During both Iraq wars the U.S. states quickly destroyed the soviet designed air defense system which is the reason we scored quick and decisive victories. If countries like North Korea and Iran believe they are immune from attack by us we are in serious trouble.

On the other hand, if we launch missile and airstrikes against Syria and the Russia air defense systems do not work as advertised that would be a major humiliating event for Putin.

It seems logical that the U.S. will have to either get an agreement from Putin to not use those air defense systems or the U.S. will have to begin any mission by taking them out.  There are probably some very intense meeting going on in both Moscow and Washington today asking a really important question.  What are our real capabilities and what are the real capabilities of the S400 system.  There is a lot more at stake than whether or no Assad, again, dumped chemical weapons on people.

Congress should be uniting around this President and showing a unified front to the world.  Instead people who should know better are distracted by an over-the-hill porn star and a former FBI Director foaming at the mouth with his hatred for the President who dared fired him.

No wonder there are reports of Trump administration cabinet members meeting for prayer.  Seems more than appropriate.  Unfortunately the silence can’t last much longer and these are very scary times.

TDM