FBI Investigating House Democrat For Paying His Opponent To Drop Out Of Race

Authored by Peter Hasson via The Daily Caller,

The FBI is investigating Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Bob Brady for conspiracy, false statements and campaign in relation to payments his campaign allegedly made to 2012 primary opponent Jimmie Moore in order to persuade him to drop out of the race, court documents reviewed by The Daily Caller show.

FBI special agent Jonathan R. Szeliga filed a search warrant request on November 1 in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for all emails associated with Brady’s campaign email, BobCongress@Aol.com

Szeliga asserted he had “probable cause to believe that Kenneth Smukler, Robert Brady, Donald ‘D.A.’ Jones, Jimmie Moore, and Carolyn Cavaness and others known and unknown have committed violations” including charges of conspiracy, false statements, producing false records, causing false campaign contribution reports and violating limits on campaign contributions and expenditures.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Carol Sandra Moore Wells signed the search warrant the same day, court records show. The search warrant was unsealed by the court last week, court documents show.

Seamus Hughes, deputy director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, first broke the news on Twitter.

Let’s break some news: A sitting member of Congress is being investigated by the FBI for false statements, conspiracy, and campaign fraud. They got a search warrant for his email and believe he’s lying. pic.twitter.com/YyT6WDABkX

— Seamus Hughes (@SeamusHughes) November 21, 2017

Federal prosecutors announced charges last month against, Kenneth Smukler and Donald Jones, in relation to the campaign finance probe.

Federal Prosecutors Are Running Amok

Authored by William Anderson via The Mises Institute,

It is hard to know where to begin regarding the charges against Paul Manafort, the former campaign director for Donald Trump’s successful presidential bid, but having read the indictments and knowing some background about both the case and the investigation, I cannot say it is exactly a high point of American justice. In fact, when former FBI chief Robert Mueller first was appointed as a special prosecutor to look into the allegations that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia the tilt the election to Trump’s favor, I feared his investigation would turn out to be an assault on the Constitution – and Mueller has done nothing to dispel those fears.

I have included a link to the actual indictment, and while federal indictments can be a bit mind-numbing to read, nonetheless I have found nothing in it that relates to the original reason the Mueller probe was created: alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. Instead, it is clear that Mueller engaged in a legal “fishing expedition” against Manafort and found evidence of tax evasion involving income that Manafort made while serving as a lobbyist for the government of Ukraine.

The criminal charges themselves clearly don’t match up to the original purpose of the investigation. Writes Judge Andrew Napolitano:

Both were accused of working as foreign agents and failing to report that status to the federal government, using shell corporations to launder income and obstruction of justice by lying to the federal government.

He adds:

The alleged crimes of Manafort and Gates appear to have nothing to do with Trump, nor have they any facial relationship to the Russians. So why were these two indicted by a grand jury hearing evidence about alleged American assistance to Russian interference with the 2016 presidential campaign?

One of the worrisome aspects of the indictments, however, has been Mueller’s use of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as filing criminal charges using that law has been done only six times before, according to George Washington University and legal blogger, Jonathan Turley. Manafort’s violation, notes Turley, was retroactively registering as a foreign agent, something that in almost all cases is treated as a regulatory violation and punished with fines (if it even comes to that). For that matter, prominent Democrat lobbying Tony Podesta, brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, did the same thing and no federal prosecutor cared to make a federal crime out of it.

If anything, I believe that in his quest to rid Washington of Donald Trump, Mueller seems to be taking a page from Rudy Giuliani’s infamous Wall Street prosecutions in which he and his staff found ways to criminalize what at most were regulatory violations (which almost are impossible not to violate, given the voluminous numbers of them promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission). Yes, there are issues of tax evasion, allegedly hiding income, and depositing money in offshore banks, but none of those relates to anything remotely involving alleged Russian involvement in the U.S. presidential election of 2016.

While I have no doubt Manafort will go to federal prison, given the near-unchecked powers of U.S. attorneys, whether or not Mueller and his highly-partisan staff are going to be able to use their probe to remove Trump from office – which clearly is Mueller’s goal – is another matter altogether. What is clear is that Mueller has openly declared war on legal ethics, from his hiring of a prosecutor who has been cited before for skirting the law, to his basing much of the justification for his investigation upon a document secretly funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign which has seriously been questioned for its truthfulness.

Whether or not one approves of Donald Trump’s presidency, when a prosecutor staffs his organization with other known partisans that openly supported Trump’s opponent, he is sending a message that his is a political probe, not a legal one. Furthermore, Mueller’s lead prosecutor, Andrew Weissman, while admired by the New York Times for his lack of legal ethics (the NYT long has openly cheered for prosecutors like Weissman, James Comey, and Rudy Giuliani that regularly have broken the law in their prosecutorial quests), is well-known for scorched-earth prosecutorial tactics that at least one time resulted in a fellow federal prosecutor filing ethics complaints against him.

Not surprisingly, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, well-known for his legal moral compass and support of the rights of the accused, has pointed out that Weissman seems to have no legal scruples whatsoever, essentially filing criminal charges wily-nily and then letting the courts sort out whether or not his actions even were legal. Writes Turley:

Mueller raised some eyebrows early in his tenure as special counsel by hiring prosecutors with controversial reputations for stretching the criminal conduct to the breaking point. His chief aide, Andrew Weissmann, has been widely criticized for a pattern of “prosecutorial overreach” in cases like Enron. Weissmann’s work against the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen is one such example. The convictions that he secured at any cost in that case were unanimously reversed by the Supreme Court. Likewise, Weissmann secured convictions against four executives with Merrill Lynch by stretching the criminal code beyond recognition The Fifth Circuit reversed them. He also resigned from the Enron task force in the midst of complaints over his tactics.

One should recall that the Enron prosecution was characterized by prosecutorial misconduct throughout the case, including subornation of perjury, lying to the judge and jurors (not to mention the public), and withholding exculpatory evidence. That Mueller would reach into that prosecutorial cesspool and pull out the one prosecutor who was deemed even too dishonest for that probe says clearly that Mueller is not going to allow truth to seep into his prosecution.

Indeed, Weissman’s dishonesty and Cheka-like tactics could be the entire subject of this article (which would make it a very long piece of writing, indeed) and I am not surprised that the New York Times and the rest of the political establishment is solidly behind him. The newspaper that covered up the horrendous Ukraine famine of the early 1930s – and still proudly displays the Pulitzer Prize it won for its false reporting – long ago abandoned journalistic integrity to use its pages to chase after progressive causes. Those of us that wrote extensively about the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case also remember how the NYT cheered on one of the most corrupt prosecutors in U.S. history. That Mueller would use a known liar like Weissman as his lead prosecutor is deemed acceptable by the NYT because the ultimate goal in the Mueller campaign is to remove Trump from the White House. While the NYT will not use the term “by any means necessary,” it is clear that the newspaper and the ruling class it represents are willing to accept lawbreaking on behalf of the federal government to accomplish Trump’s outster.

It was Weissman that orchestrated the infamous Gestapo-like pre-dawn raid on Manafort in his home, holding him and his family at gunpoint (although all of them were unarmed and posed no threat to federal agents). While the political establishment and the left cheered the raid, others that are concerned with police and prosecutorial abuse wonder if government agents should be free to engage in such actions of intimidation against people who are simply under investigation.

Mueller himself already has demonstrated his lack of legal ethics, as he once tried to trick the famed civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate into suborning perjury. Mueller’s tactic that Silverglate describes was one that if the courts actually were honorable, it would have resulted in Mueller’s being disbarred, but federal prosecutors are not honest people and the system that supports them only enables outright criminal behavior by those shielded from being subject to the law.

In his well-referenced book Three Felonies a Day, Silverglate documents how federal prosecutors manage to find crimes where there is no criminal behavior, and certainly no intent even to break the law. He also points out that a favorite tactic of federal prosecutors is to charge a lower-level employee or associate of the person actually being targeted, and then offer that person a deal – provided the accused says what prosecutors want to hear. As Silverglate has said, the idea is to get the accused person to “sing,” but all-too-often, what prosecutors actually do is to get the person to “compose” something that is not true. Judge Napolitano concurs:

The ultimate target of Mueller’s investigation is President Trump. It is standard operating procedure when prosecutors have a high-level target to charge those below the target with something just to get them to cooperate. Though the charges against Manafort and Gates need not be related to the Russians or to Trump, they must be real. It’s clear they are, as each is facing more than 20 years in prison. Mueller believes that that prospect is enough to dispatch their lawyers to make deals with him.

The danger of such a deal is that Manafort and Gates may offer to tell Mueller what they think he wants to hear — even if it is not truthful — so that they can have their prison exposure lessened. (Emphasis mine)

In a recent story, NBC News announced that Mueller is likely to indict Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. No doubt, prosecutors will try to get Flynn to implicate Trump on something – or face what would be a life sentence in prison.

Indeed, given that neither Weissman nor Mueller ever have been bound by ethical constraints, I would not be surprised to see prosecutors and the FBI simply create false testimony out of whole cloth. Ordinarily, using such a tactic against a sitting president would be beyond the pale and not even federal prosecutors in ordinary circumstances would consider doing it. However, these hardly are ordinary times, and the American political establishment is united against Trump and the media and the courts are less likely than usual to apply safeguards to accepting the truth of accusations against him. Just as Rudy Giuliani was able to run roughshod over law in order to indict and ultimately force Wall Street investment banker Michael Milken to plead guilty to what essentially were non-crimes, Mueller and Weissman are looking to do to President Donald Trump.

Not long ago, I would not even have thought of saying things I have written in this article, but that was before I began several years of research of federal criminal law and how prosecutors apply it. I still believe what I wrote seven years ago:

The great English jurist William Blackstone declared that law was to be “a shield for the innocent” and a mechanism to protect people from the predations of others, as well as the predations of the government itself — the very meaning of limited government. This is no longer the case. Ironically, as laws proliferate in Congress, the rule of law is disappearing. The law has become the plaything of federal prosecutors who advance their careers by convicting others.

 

Liberals Love Trump"s Tax Plan (When Told It"s Bernie"s)

President Donald Trump"s proposal for comprehensive tax reform was almost immediately dismissed as heartless and impractical by his political opponents.

But Campus Reform wondered what would some of those opponents think if they were told the same plan was being proposed by someone they adore - Senator Bernie Sanders?

To find out, we headed to George Washington University to ask students their opinions on Trump’s new tax plan. WIthout much explanation, the students immediately made clear their distaste for the plan.

“It’s not the most efficient, nor beneficial to the general populus,” said one student when asked her opinion of Trump’s plan.

 

“It’s better for the upper class than anyone else,” added another.

After watching student after student express their disapproval of the plan, we then asked those same students what they thought of Senator Bernie Sanders’ new tax plan.

Immediately, they expressed excitement and support after hearing the details of the plan.

The only problem for them? There was no tax plan for Senator Sanders. The plan they loved was actually President Trump’s.

How did they react?

Enjoy...

Additionally as MishTalk"s Mike Shedlock writes, unsurprisingly, Students Despise Obama Policies...When Credited to Trump.

In anticipation of the 100-day mark of Donald Trump"s presidency, Campus Reform asked students at George Mason University to evaluate some of the president"s accomplishments.

The students predictably blasted things like the "Apology Tour" and stimulus package, even comparing them to Nazi policies, at least until learning that they were actually accomplished during President Obama"s first 100 days.

What"s Going On

1. These students are so brainwashed by mainstream media they respond to the person, not the idea.

 

2. More fundamentally, the students know nothing of current events or they would not fall for these types of gotchas.

To be fair, we do not know the percentage of students who did not fall for the traps. However, I strongly suspect the vast majority of the students (and most likely the average person on the street, not just students) would tend react to the person, not the issue.

Maxine Waters: "They're Trying To Kill Me!"

California Democrat Maxine Waters thinks white nationalists and the KKK are trying to kill her.

At least she suggested as much during a House subcommittee hearing on terrorism and illicit financing when she asked what she and others could do about white nationalists and KKK members who threaten them on the Internet.

“What can we do to deal with the KKK, the white nationalists, the extremists, the alt-right?” Waters, who serves as ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services, asked during a Subcommittee on Terrorism and Illicit Finance hearing. ‘They’re on the internet, they’re Breitbart. If you look at the YouTube, you see how much they want to kill me and others. What can we do?’”

“Extremists radicalized by foreign terror groups are not the only terrorists with the capacity to target and kill American citizens,” Waters said. “Indeed, domestic terror attacks have become more frequent in recent years.”

The hearing was intended to discuss “lone-wolf” terrorist threats, with a focus on the financial aspects of terror plots, according to PJ Media.

Seamus Hughes, deputy director for George Washington University’s Program on Extremism and former senior counterterrorism advisor for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told Waters that domestic terrorists are just as big a threat as foreign born terrorists.

“You should be worried about the Orlando shooters, the Omar Mateens of the world as much as you are the James Fields and the Dylann Roofs of the world,” Hughes said.

Waters responded by reeling off a long list of domestic attacks including the Ruby Ridge standoff in 1992, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting in 2009, the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting in 2012, the Los Angeles International Airport shooting in 2013, the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting in 2015, the Portland train attack this year and, of course, Charlottesville.

“Extremists radicalized by foreign terror groups are not the only terrorists with the capacity to target and kill American citizens,” Waters said. “Indeed, domestic terror attacks have become more frequent in recent years.”

Hughes, who testified at the hearing, described the creative ways in which domestic terror groups like an offshoot of the Aryan Nation finance their activities. The group robbed several armored vehicles in the 1980s and successfully laundered more than $4 million to be used in financing and arming white nationalist groups. Hughes explained how Army Private Isaac Aguigui murdered his pregnant wife in 2011, collected about $500,000 in insurance money and then purchased $30,000 worth of guns and ammunition for his militia group Forever Enduring Always Ready, a group that had planned to assassinate President Barack Obama.

Watch the webcast of the hearing below

Months-Long Forensic Investigation Concludes Seth Rich ‘Likely Killed by Hired Killer’

WASHINGTON – The murder of Seth Rich was written off as a robbery gone bad by the mainstream press, as well as the DC police. However, there has been a persistent discussion that he may have been the source of the leaked DNC emails, published by WikiLeaks – and that he was not the victim of a random homicide.

After a months-long investigation into the murder of Rich by they Profiling Project, investigators found that his murder, “more likely was committed by a hired killer or serial murderer,” than a robbery gone bad.

The Profiling Project released the results of their months-long investigation into the murder of Rich on Tuesday.

“A proficient killer is what we think – the fact that the killer has gotten away with it for this period of time and it appears it was a very sanitized crime scene, so there is certainly some level of proficiency in the killing,” Kevin Doherty, lead investigator of the Profiling Project said during a press conference Tuesday.

When asked about any specific clues that have led to the group’s conclusion, Doherty explained “it is the lack of clues” that substantiated the deduction.

“The crime scene was sanitized, there is no direct linking to really anything. The police have no suspects,” he said. “The individuals have gotten away with it at this point in time. There were no behavioral indications at the crime scene. It didn’t look like rage or revenge or hate were the motivation behind it. It’s really a lack of behavioral indicators, motion and evidence that leads us to believe that whoever did this is proficient at killing.”

The project, which is an “all-volunteer group of current and former George Washington University forensic psychology graduate students and instructors,” said the group came together in an effort to “aid the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police utilizing forensic psychology skills and tools in hopes of providing at least one actionable item.”

The report includes numerous troubling findings, which lends credibility to the idea that there has been cover up of some kind related to Rich’s murder, including:

1. Seth’s death does not appear to be a random homicide.


2. Seth’s death does not appear to be a robbery gone bad.


3. Seth‘s death was more likely committed by a hired killer or serial murderer.


4. There may be additional video surveillance of the crime and crime scene.


5. The resolution of prosecuting the individual(s) responsible appears to be hindered both actively and passively.


6. Seth’s killer(s) most likely remains free with the community.

READ MORE:  Clinton Campaign Busted Using Child Actor at Town Hall Event -- Corporate Media Spreads the Lie Anyway

The Profiling Project noted that it “decided not to officially interview anyone for this section” to avoid “the potential for re-victimization” and instead used open source information.

Over the course of the investigation the group found Rich was “conscious and breathing with apparent gunshot wound(s) to the back” when police arrived. He was taken to an unnamed hospital and “pronounced by attending physician at 0557 hours.”

Investigators from the group found “the crime scene was very organized to the point of being sanitized.”

“This would indicate careful planning on the part of the offender, control of the entry to and exit from the crime scene as well as in-depth understanding of law-enforcement investigative processes.”

This comes on the heels of Kim Dotcom offering to provide evidence to the US government that Rich was indeed the source of the DNC emails.

While WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange has stopped short of identifying Rich as the source of the emails, as WikiLeaks never divulges sources, he has shown an unusual interest in the case – leading many to speculate as to why.

“WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich,” the organization announced shortly after his murder.

After announcing that WikiLeaks would pay $20,000 for information leading to the conviction of Rich’s murderer, Assange went on an interview with Nieuwsurr. During the interview, Assange implied that Rich was his source.

Assange: Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often significant risks. There was a 27-year old that works for the DNC who was shot in the back… murdered.. for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington.

Host: That was just a robbery wasn’t it?

Assange: No. There’s no finding.

Host: What are you suggesting?

Assange: I am suggesting that our sources take risks and they become concerned to see things occurring like that.

Host: But was he one of your sources, then?

Assange: We don’t comment on who our sources are.

In subsequent appearances on Fox News Channel, Assange confirmed, “We’re interested in anything that might be a threat to alleged WikiLeaks sources.”

These recent revelations, regarding the investigation, also explain why the FBI was not allowed to inspect the DNC servers that were allegedly hacked by the Russians. It also explains why a private company was brought in to analyze the allegedly hacked computers, as the FBI’s analysis would likely have proven that there was no Russian hacking of the DNC – undermining the “Russia hacked the election” propaganda war — thus the DNC conveniently relying on the analysis of a private company, CrowdStrike.

READ MORE:  DNC Just Admitted They Had the Legal Right to Rig the 2016 Primaries

Interestingly, Crowdstrike’s CTO and co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank with openly anti-Russian sentiments that is funded by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who also happened to donate at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Furthermore, in 2013, the Atlantic Council awarded Hillary Clinton its Distinguished International Leadership Award. In 2014, the Atlantic Council hosted one of several events with former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who took over after pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in early 2014, and who now lives in exile in Russia.

Really think about that for a second…

What legitimate reason would the DNC have for denying the FBI access to their allegedly hacked servers, and instead hire a private cyber security firm with a strong anti-Russian stance with extremely close connections to Ukrainian oligarchs?

The answer is that there is NO legitimate reason to do so. The only possible reason seems to be that the DNC didn’t want the FBI to be able to report that there was no Russian hack – as that would undermine the entire psyop/propaganda operation.

These facts lend credence to the theory that the DNC denying the FBI access was a strategic move meant to cover up what the DNC already knew to be a leak so they could forward a strategic narrative — that Russia did it.

The reality is that this family is now simply a pawn in a much larger geopolitical game. Oddly, the thought of Seth’s killing being the result of random violence is likely much more comforting to his family than the thought that Seth was potentially murdered by people connected to the organizations and causes he gave his time, energy and effort towards supporting — while trying to “make a difference in the world.”

READ MORE:  Naval Reservist Committed EXACT Same Crime as Clinton -- Guess What Happened to Him

The mainstream media is working diligently to spin this story, so if you care to help wake people up to what is actually transpiring please share this important report!

Law Professor Suggests GPS Trackers For Refugees (Instead Of Immigration Ban)

Seemingly taking a page out of Europe"s idiotic government decisions, George Washington University Law Professor John Banzhaf is urging President Trump to go slow on appealing a court"s rejection of the administration"s travel ban and instead, follow Germany"s example and put GPS ankle bracelets on visitors from the seven targeted nations until a final decision is made.

As The Washington Examiner reports, a prominent legal expert said that the administration should wait to appeal until Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch gets to the court, giving Trump a 5-4 majority and in the meantime put the tracking devices on any refugee or visitor.

"Going to the Supreme Court now could result in a widely predicted 4-4 decision," warned George Washington University Law Professor John Banzhaf.

Wait instead, he urged, and in the meantime look to Germany"s model of using trackers on those it suspects of having terror ties — not all refugees.

"Imposing such conditions on admission is fully consistent with 8 USC 1182(f) which expressly gives the president the authority to "impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate." It is also more likely to be upheld since it is far less objectionable than a total ban," he said.

Ankle bracelets are currently widely used by law enforcement and immigration agencies and Banzhaf suggested that it can be expanded and would be accepted by the nation.

"There have now been several major terrorist incidents in which authorities pointed out that they were suspicious of the perpetrator, but did not have sufficient information to arrest him, nor the vast resources necessary to provide effective surveillance of everyone under suspicion. GPS systems incorporated in ankle bracelets permit one agent to track hundreds of suspects in real time, and provide computer generated alerts if he goes anywhere suspicious (e.g., near a nuclear power plant), meets with other persons likewise wearing ankle monitors," he said.

We look forward to hearing the uproar from the liberal intelligentsia regarding invading the privacy of potential terrorists.

Mike Shedlock previously summed up the inaneness of the idea...

Confessions Of A Fake News Reporter

Submitted by Douglas Herman via Strike-The-Root.com,

“A lie can travel half way around the world while truth is still putting on its shoes.”  ~ Mark Twain

I write for those so-called “fake news” websites. You know the ones: the 200 odd deplorable websites, the ones Hillary, the Pope and Michael Moore have attacked as threatening to destroy World Peace, Democracy, Facebook and the Mainstream Media (MSM).

I only write for a handful of them, sad to say, although I’ve been linked to scores more. One of my recent columns went viral and it probably swayed the entire election – for better or worse: Before Trump, Sen Bulworth Spoke Truth To Power .  Seriously, the blatant corruption of the losing team, from Super Delegates to Podesta and PizzaGate to hidden Hillary health issues and secret sums of money funneling through the Clinton Foundation in “Pay to Play” accusations cost them the election, despite the best efforts and endorsements of the entire American media.

I’ve written for Rense, Counterpunch, Antiwar and Zerohedge. Most of my best stuff appears here on Strike The Root first, or STR as we call it, a website where Henry David Thoreau rather than Mark Zuckerberg is our moderator.  Tragically, STR did not appear on ProporNot and we are devastated, absolutely devastated.  Not.

Sometimes I ask my friends: If knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss, which is preferable? I always hope someone will respond, as Socrates or Obi Wan would have: Knowledge of our ignorance is power; bliss in this age is unattainable. 

So then, as an average American citizen, is it better to be misinformed or uninformed? Because Disinformation is almost a holy sacrament within the mainstream Operation Mockingbird media. Thus we fake news reporters believe we’re channeling our inner Tom Paine, Mark Twain or Henry D. Thoreau when we blog or post or link. When HDT wrote: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil, to one who is striking at the root,” he was a spreader of fake news, by today’s tender standards. We like to think of ourselves as worldwide root strikers, following in his footsteps.

Cui Bono: Who Benefits?

Cops and crime scene investigators (CSI) always ask that question: Who benefits? Who had most to gain by the murder? We fake news reporters pride ourselves on getting the facts. Like legendary Joe Friday from that old TV show, Dragnet, we interview eyewitnesses, contact insiders and whistleblowers, sift through the circumstantial evidence (Like John Podesta’s creepy artwork) and attempt to deduce the truth. Unlike the TV talking heads and Op/Ed writers for the elite media news, we want to know exactly Who Benefits?  Even if it pisses off some elites. Or the elite media.

“There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.”

Sounds like some fake news screed, right, or some wacky conspiracy theory, right? Nope, this was written almost a hundred years ago by the Father of Public Relations and author of a book on propaganda that greatly influenced Adolf Hitler. Edward Bernays was Jewish and teaching in New York in 1923. Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, read his book Crystallizing Public Opinion and learned a lot from him a few years later, adopting Bernays’ masterful propaganda techniques.

“There is no means of human communication which may not also be a means of deliberate propaganda,” Bernays wrote and the Nazis adopted. “The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today.”

Maybe the mainstream media should nominate Ed Bernays as the Founding Father of Fake News, for spreading these ludicrous ideas far ahead of his time. But fakery and fudging the facts is best left to those rich and powerful Mockingbirds and their presstitutes of the so-called legacy media. Most of the best and brightest of that media have long since been blacklisted or silenced. Seymour Hersh, Steve Lendman and Paul Craig Roberts rarely appear in the NY/LA Times anymore.  Why? Because their stuff, like most of the stuff written by unknown root strikers like me, is exactly like Senator Bulworth’s. Too tough, too true.

“It must be the money; it turns everything to crap,” said Bulworth to some Hollywood elites in that movie, just before the Oscar-winning actor and director, Warren Beatty, was blacklisted from Hollywood for almost 20 years. But money is rarely a factor for fake news reporters like myself. We do it for patriotism and professional pride. In more than a dozen years of devising “fake news,” I’ve been paid about $2,000 or about TEN BUCKS A COLUMN.

“I guess I really do believe that the good is worth doing because it is good,” said peace activist and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), Ray McGovern. “It shouldn’t matter that there is little or no guarantee of success, or even a truthful recounting of what happened.”

A couple years ago, McGovern was manhandled out of a Hillary Clinton speech she gave at George Washington University.  The topic of her speech? The need for respect of dissent. Naturally NONE of the so-called legacy media present there covered his dissent, except in a dismissive way. “America’s Fawning Corporate Media is the embodiment of a Fourth Estate that is dead in the water,” McGovern added.

By contrast to my TEN BUCKS a column, Hillary Clinton received a reported $500,000 for an appearance and speech she gave at ASU. The transcript never appeared in public, as far as I know, so it must have been absolutely priceless.

“Hillary Clinton, the woman who voted for a war that was sold on a diet of fake news, a war that killed hundreds of thousands, is now lecturing Americans about fake news putting ‘lives at risk’,” wrote Paul Joseph Watson, on the alleged fake news website Infowars. Watson is like Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick on steroids. “Being lectured by Hillary Clinton about fake news is like being lectured by Ted Bundy about not raping and killing women. It’s a joke, but a particularly sick joke given that Hillary’s role in pushing fake news had actually led to the deaths of countless innocent lives.”

We fake news reporters feed on the efforts and insights of others. We wish them well, Godspeed, Kudos, Bravos, Hurrahs, Links and Likes. Because we know that Pulitzer Prizes for reporting are now reserved for the con artists connected to the crony crime media. True Crime reporters rarely win Pulitzers anymore.

Consider Matthew Allen. He penned a column called: NYT Mocks PizzaGate as Impossible, But Its CEO Covered up Jimmy Savile Scandal. Now if this news reporter Allen is wrong, a malicious spreader of so-called fake news, then why doesn’t the NYT sue him for slander or libel?  Most of us would simply Google this fellow Jimmy Savile and then we would try to weigh the facts in PizzaGate objectively.

Allen writes, “It’s important to remember that the CEO of the fabled newspaper is none other than Mark Thompson, the former BBC director who ‘lied’ during the Jimmy Savile investigation, and is at least partly to blame for allowing a monster like Savile (So evil?) to operate within the BBC for so long ‘undetected’.”

As I said, if so many of us fake news reporters are slandering people, why aren’t they suing us? Shouldn’t The New York Times, instead of trying to sublet office space in their diminishing empire, sue writers like Matthew Allen? Why doesn’t the New York Times sue him for malicious slander or libel? “Mark Thompson’s newspaper is a crime against the written word,” Allen added, as a parting shot.  

To those of us who seek the truth, guys like Allen and Assange and Anonymous are allies in the fight against the toxic lies of the wealthy, well-connected and woefully corrupt power elites.

Props or Snopes?

Over the holidays, when a huge scandal shocked the cringing mainstream media world, WE CELEBRATED. We celebrated the deliciously karmic news that Facebook "fact checker" Snopes.com was accused of embezzling company funds. The so-called debunker of “fake news,” deified by the mainstream media without any fact-checking at all, suddenly was a steaming pile of backstabbers, porn stars and alleged con artists and embezzlers.  Not that there’s anything wrong with porn stars.  Most mainstream media personalities are highly paid porn performers. They just earn MILLIONS more than porn star Jenna Jameson ever dreamed of earning.

Many brilliant fake news reporters remain anonymous while posting as fictional characters in the alt media. Cognitive Dissonance, Miffed Microbiologist and Hedgeless Horseman are funny and always provocative at Zerohedge.  Jack Burton, at the same website, offers some astute, thought-provoking insight on an especially timely subject, terrorism.

“ISIS never touches an Israeli head,” Jack opined recently. “They are sworn allies of the Israeli Government. Seeing great benefits to be had from the Middle East Super Power, backed by the USA. The main ISIS allies are: Turkey, Israel, the USA and NATO. All this Obama crying on TV about ISIS threats is bullshit fucking lies. Obama is behind backing ISIS on to final victory in Syria. When Russia began to kill ISIS in earnest, the following governments demanded they cease bombing ISIS at once:  Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, USA, UK, Germany and others.”

Now that Aleppo has fallen, the mainstream media is in mourning. Not for all the wars they encouraged these past 15 years, or for the millions of refugees those wars caused, or the tremendous pressure now on European countries to house and feed those refugees.  No, not at all.  To them, that evil dictator Putin has almost prevailed, and only freedom of the press will keep democracy safe. And you know what? They are right. Only freedom of the press and the Constitution will keep citizens safe. That’s why I guess I’ll log onto George Washington’s Blog, Zerohedge, Infowars, Brietbart, STR, Rense and Natural News to stay informed.  Because we fake news reporters must keep informed.  Without us, America will certainly fall.

Addendum: While we fake news reporters love to be proven right, quite often we’re proven prescient. When I penned JFK and Obama--Profiles in Courage and Cowardice, I hoped to have been proven wrong. Sadly, ALL of the fake news reporters I quoted in that column EXACTLY eight years ago were proven correct.

Addendum 2.0   No fake news reporter can claim Trump will succeed overwhelmingly. More likely he will sell out his huge core of hopeful believers to the money/power elites, just as almost all presidents have done in the past. If not, Trump will die in some tragic accident or from some lone gunman. We would love to be proven wrong.

GWU Eliminates U.S. History As A Requirement For History Majors

Upon his death in 1799, George Washington"s will set aside 50 shares of the Potowmack Company in his estate to fund the creation of a national university in the nation"s capital.  Just over 20 years later, an Act of Congress created the Columbian College in the District of Columbia which subsequently changed its name to George Washington University in 1904 in honor of Washington. Per WikiPedia:

George Washington, the first president of the United States, had indicated to Congress through various letters, as well as his last will and testament, that he wanted to establish a university within the nation"s capital. Washington left fifty shares of the Potowmack Company in his estate for a national university in the District of Columbia. The university was chartered by an Act of Congress on February 9, 1821, as the Columbian College in the District of Columbia. In 1904, it changed its name to the George Washington University in honor of Washington.

Now, some 200 years later, GWU, like many of the nation"s universities, has been overrun with liberal, elitist professors who have decided to shun America"s first president, and the inspiration behind the founding their university, by removing U.S. History as a required course for history majors.  Of course, why would U.S. history be important for history majors...this country has been a fairly irrelevant player in shaping world history for the past 200 years.

Syndicated radio host Larry Elders recently blasted the decision on Fox News as just another effort to indoctrinate students with the notion that "America is nothing more than a series of incidents that oppress people,
whether it"s Native Americans or women or blacks or Hispanics or Asian
people."

"According to a lot of professors, the founding fathers are a bunch of old rich white guys who owned slaves," syndicated radio host Larry Elder said Monday on "Fox & Friends." "As a result, they"re no longer relevant."

"I call this the access of indoctrination. Schools have long since passed the line from education to indoctrination, and this is one more step toward that."

"Kids are learning that America is nothing more than a series of incidents that oppress people, whether it"s Native Americans or women or blacks or Hispanics or Asian people," he said. "That"s what they"re learning."

Meanwhile, the chair of GWU"s history department told the school"s newspaper that the move was nothing more than an effort to cater to the university"s snowflakes who may be saddened by the burden of being forced to take a U.S. history course.

Katrin Schultheiss, the chair of the history department, said faculty made the changes to the requirements largely due to enrollment pressures. She said by becoming more flexible and more responsive to students’ interests, the department hopes to recruit students who might not have decided to major in history otherwise.

“I think the main gain for students is that they have a great deal more flexibility than they had before, and they can adapt it to whatever their plans are for the future,” Schultheiss said. “Whatever they want to do, there’s a way to make the history department work for them.”

This pretty much sums up our thoughts: