It’s Wednesday, August 10th, 2022…but before we begin, for anyone needing further proof the federal bureaucracy in general, and the DOJ/FBI in particular, is completely out of control, this account from the New York Post’s Miranda Devine of Chris Wray’s non-answerthon before the Senate…and his actions immediately afterwards…should be all you need, and then some, as she observes…

FBI Director Christopher Wray is guiding the agency the wrong way, fast

 

“Christopher Wray’s disingenuous testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, before he left early on the FBI’s private Gulfstream 550 jet, speaks volumes about the need to defund the FBI — or at least dump its unctuous director. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and his team of Republicans expected to have the chance to ask a second round of questions. Grassley pleaded for just an extra 21 minutes.

But Wray took an early mark, dismissing the committee’s constitutional obligation to ensure he answers questions under oath to ensure the FBI complies with the law and is accountable to the American people. 

What was so urgent that he had to leave after just three and a half hours? Was he taking a long weekend in the Adirondacks where his family has a summer home?

…On some of the most serious questions of national security and the politicization of the FBI, Wray had nothing to say. Like Mister Magoo, he sees nothing. Unlike most things on Capitol Hill these days, the politicization and repeated failures of the FBI are a bipartisan concern.

In the short time they had with Wray, senators from both sides had urgent questions. Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein and Republicans Marsha Blackburn and Grassley were concerned about the FBI’s botching of the Larry Nassar case. Why, when Nassar was convicted in 2016 of sexually abusing U.S. gymnasts, did Wray wait until 2021 to fire one of the agents involved in slow-walking the case? Grassley complained about a lack of transparency over why the Department of Justice had decided a jury wouldn’t convict FBI agents for their handling of the investigation.

Other Democrats were concerned about the FBI not investigating complaints about Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Wray had no answer, nor to questions about Afghan evacuees considered significant security threats after being brought to the U.S. in last year’s bungled withdrawal from Kabul. “I can’t sit here right now and tell you we know where all of them are located at any given time,” he said.

Wray refused to classify the flood of illegal migration at the southern border as a “national security threat.” When asked what the FBI was doing to track down 56 suspected terrorists that have crossed the border this year he waffled about “sharing watchlist information” and “investigating any number of individuals.”

He refused to admit that the Russia collusion hoax — in which the FBI treated seriously palpably false allegations that then-candidate Donald Trump was a Russian agent — was in fact a “hoax”.

He refused to agree with Sen. Blackburn that Hunter Biden’s laptop was not “Russian disinformation,” and didn’t respond to whistleblower allegations of an FBI coverup of derogatory information related to the Bidens in October 2020.

He refused to explain to Sen. Ted Cruz why the FBI had blacklisted patriotic historical American symbols such as the Betsy Ross flag, the Gadsden Flag and the Gonzales battle flag as “militia violent extremism” in training documents.

When Sen. Josh Hawley asked why the FBI was “snooping around the concealed carry permit records” of Missourians, he had nothing.

When Sen. Tom Cotton asked why no FBI agent had thought to enforce the law broken by abortion activists parading outside the homes of Supreme Court justices, Wray was impatient: “Our agents are up to their necks enforcing all sorts of laws.” (Yeah,…like a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago!)

When the hearing ended at 1:30, Wray ambled over to Grassley to shake his hand. The microphones picked up some of the exchange. Grassley, a courtly row-crop farmer from Butler County, Iowa, who has a shrewd Columbo-esque tendency to ask “just one more thing,” leaned forward: “I assume you’ve got other business.”

“Yeah,” said Wray. And off he sauntered, minions in tow. Grassley’s staff did not know where Wray was going after the hearing and FBI public affairs did not respond to an email Sunday by press time.

But the luxury FBI Gulfstream Wray uses was recorded on Flightradar24 making the one hour and 12 minute flight later that afternoon to bucolic Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, which happens to be a favorite summer destination since his childhood, when he used to hike the High Peaks and fish for trout, according to the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. The FBI’s Gulfstream made another trip to Saranac Lake on Thursday, June 2, returning to Washington, DC on Sunday, June 5.

While there has been controversy over the FBI director commandeering a plane originally intended for counterterrorism use, Wray’s predecessor James Comey used it as his private conveyance as well. The director is required to reimburse the cost of a coach class airline fare for personal trips, a significant discount on the several thousand dollars an hour it costs to operate the Gulfstream, which is considerably more convenient than Delta. (And what about the CO2 emissions?!?)

Wray ensured his testimony was useless, but if he did cut short his testimony to go on vacation at a time when his agency is under fire from all sides, then that is an act of disrespect and insubordination which requires a firm rebuke, or what is the point of Senate oversight?“

All of which sorta begs the question…

Hopefully Grassley will occupy Dick Durbin’s chair come January, and he’ll be able to pose that specific question to Wray…along with a lot of others concerning his Bureau’s and his own…without the Dimocrats running interference for him.  That is, if, following a GOP sweep in November, criminals such as Wray, Faux Chi and hundreds if not thousands like them don’t resign to avoid serious interrogation and perhaps even prosecution.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We had already prepared the Wray item as our opener before news broke of the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, thus it provided the perfect segue into discussing it.

Meanwhile, can you recall a single Progressive, either politician or government bureaucrat, whose home the FBI has raided?  Louis Lerner?…Sandy Burglar?…Eric Holder?…Hunter Biden?…Andy McCabe?…Hillary?!?  The list goes on…and on…and on.  Hells bells, not even Nixon‘s home was raided by federal agents.

Welcome to Progressivism’s bifurcated system of disparate justice. 

As Charlie Cooke notes at The Corner, despite the lowing MSM herd, evidently forgetting how the Russiagate FISA warrants were fraudulently obtained, quickly concluding the mere granting of a search warrant means it was not only justified but evidence of Trump’s guilt, the proverbial sh*t will really hit the fan if it was neither:

“…Missing, though, was the second part of the thought. Namely: What if that isn’t true? George Conway says that the FBI has “crossed the Rubicon,” but that this must be because there’s “something behind the curtain that would surprise us.” Okay, but what if there’s not? Then what? I’d like to hear his thoughts. David Axelrod says that “Garland would not have authorized this raid, and no federal judge would have signed off on it, if there weren’t significant evidence to warrant it.” Okay, but what if they did? Then what? I’d like to know what Axelrod thinks that means. If this was obviously justified, Conway, Axelrod, and co. will be able to sit back and say, “see!” And I’ll join them! As I’ve written before, there’s nothing per se wrong with investigating presidential candidates, so long as it’s done even-handedly, and if Trump has committed a crime for which others in a similar position have been prosecuted, then he should be charged. But if it wasn’t justified, and the FBI “crossed the Rubicon” without cause, what happens next? Do we just move on — as if nothing ever happened?

Politico Playbook quotes a lawyer on this point:

“If they raided his home just to find classified documents he took from The White House,” one legal expert noted, “he will be re-elected president in 2024, hands down. It will prove to be the greatest law enforcement mistake in history.”

This is a useful yardstick. It contains a specific and testable definition of “unjustified”: “just to find classified documents he took from The White House.” It contains a judgment that utilizes that standard: “It will prove to be the greatest law enforcement mistake in history.” And it contains a prediction: “he will be re-elected president in 2024, hands down.” I would like to hear a similar specificity from others who have suggested that the raid must have been justified. What, in precise terms, does “justified” look like? And if the raid was unjustified, using those terms, then what should happen to the people who enabled it? Should Merrick Garland resign? Should the judge who signed off on the warrant be impeached? Should the FBI be reformed? Should Joe Biden — who is at the head of the executive branch — be blamed? What would it say about the federal government? Let’s define terms here.

I know nothing more about the details than anyone else, but I’ll lay out my own views on this as best I can. They are:

• that the warrant must immediately be made public
• that as the head of the executive branch, Joe Biden must explain to the country what happened today (yes, it’s Biden’s concern: progressive wishes to the contrary, the DOJ is not some free-floating fourth branch of government, it is under the president’s purview)
• that, for the raid to be justified, the warrant and the explanation must clearly reveal (a) that there was an urgent need to obtain evidence that pertained to a serious crime, (b) that this evidence could not possibly have been obtained by other means, or on another occasion, or without a surprise visit, and (c) that, if the target was not named Donald Trump, a similar operation would have been launched
• that if this standard is not met, Merrick Garland must resign or be impeached, as must the head of the FBI
• that the FBI must be examined and reformed as a matter of utmost priority

There will be more George Conways and David Axelrods on TV and on Twitter today. Any hot takes from them that omit the crucial “then what?” part of the equation will be next to useless.“

In this clip from Fox & Friends, Jonathan Turley relates the most dangerous aspect of the FBI’s latest imitation of the Gestapo:

For what it’s worth, our two cents says the raid was partially intended to infuriate The Donald into announcing prior to November, thus energizing Never-Trumpers into voting Dimocratic in the mid-terms.  But we’re down with Andy McCarthy’s more learned and expert explanation:

“There’s a game prosecutors play. Let’s say I suspect X committed an armed robbery, but I know X is dealing drugs. So, I write a search-warrant application laying out my overwhelming probable cause that X has been selling small amounts of cocaine from his apartment. I don’t say a word in the warrant about the robbery, but I don’t have to. If the court grants me the warrant for the comparatively minor crime of cocaine distribution, the agents are then authorized to search the whole apartment. If they find robbery tools, a mask, and a gun, the law allows them to seize those items. As long as agents are conducting a legitimate search, they are authorized to seize any obviously incriminating evidence they come across. Even though the warrant was ostensibly about drug offenses, the prosecutors can use the evidence seized to charge robbery.

I believe that principle is key to understanding the FBI’s search of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday. The ostensible justification for the search of Trump’s compound is his potentially unlawful retention of government records and mishandling of classified information. The real reason is the Capitol riot…”

And as Jim Freeman assesses the situation, given its recent history of abuse, only a fool…or a hopelessly partisan Progressive…would assume the FBI has suddenly straightened up and begun flying right:

“Voters will eventually have a chance to decide whether the means used by the Biden Justice Department to investigate former President Donald Trump are justified by the ends. But of course in the United States the rights of an individual—even one who refuses to accept legitimate election results—are not supposed to be decided by politics. When the individual is Donald Trump, recent history suggests that neither the FBI nor even the federal judiciary can be relied upon to protect such rights…”

Anyway you slice it, as Jesse Watters details, nobody’s talking…

…and this is why, when they finally regain control of government, Republicans have to clean house at every level of the federal bureaucracy and Military, as promoting from within presents the same problem in life as it does in art:

Until then, welcome to Biden’s brave, new Amerika:

Meanwhile, the circumstances surrounding the issuance of the warrant are, to say the least, curious.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, since we’re on the subject of 2024, filling in at the Morning Jolt, Isaac Schorr addresses the question of…

Should Ron DeSantis Wait His Turn?

 

“Florida governor Ron DeSantis has established himself as the most, and perhaps the only, viable alternative to Donald Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries.

For the last three and a half years, DeSantis has used his time in Tallahassee to build out a resume that evidences a firmer commitment to conservative causes and much more impressive focus on achieving conservative ends than Donald Trump ever did. He’s bolstered that record — on Covid, education, “younger transgender” Floridians, and other issues — with crowd-pleasing rebukes of woke capital and the media, which treat DeSantis with a contempt comparable only to that which they show the former president.

And yet, there exists some non-negligible number of politicos who believe that DeSantis would and/or should wait his turn, let Trump have one last go at it, and start gaming out a 2028 run for the White House.

Last month, former Trump campaign manager and Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway issued a not-so-subtle warning to DeSantis after a straw poll found that 78 percent of attendees at a TPUSA youth conference wanted Trump to top the ticket again in 2024.

“He’s [DeSantis] a great governor, he’s fascinating. He could be a two-term [governor], and he’s got a great sense for the culture warrior part [of the job] too. Ron DeSantis can be the best two-term governor in Florida in modern history and run for president before he’s 50,” said Conway on Fox Business. “Governor DeSantis did speak on Friday night. He was well-received. He’s an unbelievably successful and consequential governor of Florida. But it’s President Trump who led in the polls,” she continued.

Peter Navarro, another longtime Trump groupie, has suggested that DeSantis resign himself to being the former president’s sidekick in 2024, writing a “memo to Ron” for the Daily Caller cautioning that “patience is as patience does.”

A CPAC straw poll conducted at a conference in Texas this weekend showed similar enthusiasm for a Trump-redux, with 69 percent calling him their man.

None of this should — or is likely to — dissuade DeSantis from throwing his hat into the 2024 race, and here’s why.

First, it is a sign of weakness, not strength, that Team Trump has been reduced to touting straw-poll results from events that most Americans, and indeed the vast majority of Republicans, know nothing about. CPAC, affectionately called “TPAC” by Conway, is a conference that’s been repurposed into an appeal to the former president’s vanity — its organizer, American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, used the occasion to proclaim that Trump would lead the conservative movement until he “takes his last breath.” TPUSA, meanwhile, is led by Charlie Kirk, who proclaimed that he would pay for 80 buses full of students to attend the protests of Trump’s loss in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021. (He sent seven.)

Do you think that weirdos who not only show up to political conferences, but show up to political conferences run by such slavish Trump devotees, make up anything close to a representative sample of Republican voters?

Polls of the general public show a much closer race, two years out, even with Trump’s built-in advantages. One recent YouGov poll of registered Republicans found that Trump could only boast a nine-point national lead over DeSantis. State-level surveys conducted by John Bolton’s super PAC suggest that DeSantis could compete against Trump in Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina. Especially encouraging is DeSantis’s well-established lead in Florida, where Senator Marco Rubio could not best Trump in 2016. It’s not just evidence that the governor can do the bare minimum and win his home state, but that the more voters know and learn about him, the more they like him.

Second, no politician with presidential aspirations ever benefited from waiting until the iron cooled to strike. Just ask Chris Christie, who passed on running for president in 2012, when he would have been a favorite for the Republican nomination, and ended up dropping out before the South Carolina primary in 2016.

Christie, by all measures a successful executive during his first term in New Jersey, was plagued by scandals in his second term that had rendered him a spent force when 2016 rolled around. In this world, bad things happen. Sometimes they’re out of, and sometimes they’re within, the control of elected officials, but they happen. If you’re lucky enough to have avoided them while positioning yourself as a genuine contender for the White House, you don’t wait around until they do, inevitably, occur under your watch.

Moreover, the allure of the new and exciting cannot be underestimated. In 2012, Christie was the popular, bombastic, conservative governor of a blue state. By 2016, he was old news. Right now, DeSantis’s flouting of Covid orthodoxy is at the top of many peoples’ minds. By 2028, it will be a distant memory of a long-since-passed political age.

Lastly, DeSantis can and should run in 2024 because to decline to do so would undermine his central appeal: his conviction that he is the best man for the job.

To run in 2028 as a Trump acolyte would be to run as Trump-lite. Voters don’t want a watered-down Americano; they want authentic, distinct brands. DeSantis has one of those right now, and it shines through — like it or not — at every signing ceremony, press conference, and other public appearances he makes. DeSantis says he takes the positions he does because he believes they’re right — torpedoes be damned.

If he wants everyone to believe him, he’ll need to take them not just from the media and the left, but from the man at Mar-a-Lago.“

Though we’d personally prefer a Pompeo/DeSantis or DeSantis/Pompeo ticket, a Trump/DeSantis slate certainly wouldn’t cause us to pull the lever for any Dimocrat, living or dead.

Next, courtesy of Balls Cotton, Jonathan Turley explores… 

The Art of Scandal Implosion: The Political and Media Elite Prepare To Drop Hunter Biden in a “Controlled Demolition”

 

…Speed…

…and Ed Hickey:

 

“…A Facebook post by the Everett Police Department said an 11-year-old named Jeremy spent his allowance money to set up a lemonade stand to earn extra cash during the summer when a man approached the boy with a fake $100 bill. The Facebook post said the man bought a drink from Jeremy with the counterfeit bill but asked for exact change, to which Jeremy could give only $85 using his allowance.

Jeremy found out the $100 bill was a fake when he tried to purchase something at a local gas station, according to the Everett Police Department.

The police on Friday shared a GoFundMe page set up by Amy Steenfott, who identified herself as a neighbor of Jeremy’s family. She wrote that she was seeking $250 “to help cover his loss and give him some more funds to possibly expand his enterprise.” The GoFundMe had raised more than $9,000 at the time of this writing.“

Which brings to mind a line from Christmas Vacation:

And if we had our way, just a…

Magoo

Video of the Day

As Charlie Cooke notes in today’s offering, the REALLY big question isn’t whether the DOJ/FBI knows something we don’t which justifies such incredible recklessness, but rather what if they DON’T?!?

Tales of The Darkside

Progressive Propagandist Pamela Brown now defines “legislative success” as ruining the economy by throwing trillions of taxpayer dollars at problems which don’t exist.

On the Lighter Side

No guts, no glory!