The
Greatest Constitutional Crisis Since the Civil War, By Conrad
Black, 2/21/19.
The most immense and dangerous
public scandal in American history is finally cracking open like a ripe
pomegranate. The broad swath of the Trump-hating media that has participated in
what has amounted to an unconstitutional attempt to overthrow the government
are reduced to reporting the events and revelations of the scandal in which
they have been complicit, in a po-faced ho-hum manner to impart to the
misinformed public that this is as routine as stock market fluctuations or the
burning of an American flag in Tehran.
For more than two years, the United
States and the world have had two competing narratives: that an elected
president of the United States was a Russian agent whom the Kremlin helped
elect; and its rival narrative that senior officials of the Justice Department,
FBI, CIA, and other national intelligence organizations had repeatedly lied
under oath, misinformed federal officials, and meddled in partisan political
matters illegally and unconstitutionally and had effectively tried to influence
the outcome of a presidential election, and then undo its result by falsely
propagating the first narrative. It is now obvious and indisputable that the
second narrative is the correct one.
The authors, accomplices, and dupes
of this attempted overthrow of constitutional government are now well along in
reciting their misconduct without embarrassment or remorse because—in fired FBI
Director James Comey’s formulation—a “higher duty” than the oath they swore to
uphold the Constitution compelled them. Or—in fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe’s words—“the threat” was too great. Never mind that the nature of “the
threat” was that the people might elect someone he and Comey disapproved of as
president, and that that person might actually serve his term, as elected.
A Long
List of Offenders—and Offenses - The
extent of the criminal misconduct of the former law enforcement and
intelligence chiefs is now notorious, but to make the right point here, it has
to be summarized. The fact that the officially preferred candidate lied to
federal officials about her emails and acted in outright contempt of Congress
and the legal process in the destruction of evidence, was simply ignored by the
FBI director, who announced that she would not be prosecuted, though he had no
authority to make that determination.
The dossier of salacious gossip and
defamatory falsehoods amassed by a retired British spy from the lowest grade of
intelligence sources in Russia, commissioned and paid for by the Clinton
campaign and Democratic National Committee, was circulated to the media by high
public officials and cited in illegal and dishonest applications to authorize
surveillance of the campaign of the other presidential candidate. A special
counsel was empowered on the false pretext of the necessity to get to the
bottom of Trump-Russian collusion in the election, of which there was and
remains no evidence, because it did not occur and was a complete partisan
fabrication.
The special counsel then packed his
staff with militant Clinton partisans, and acted very late and only when his
hand was forced by the media to remove two officials who referred in texts to
each other to the Bureau’s ability to smear and provoke the impeachment of the
winning candidate as “an insurance policy” against his filling the office to
which he was elected.
Large sections of the media colluded
with the Democratic campaign and produced the doctrine that anything was
justifiable, no matter how dishonest, to destroy the incoming president’s
reputation and damage him in public opinion polls to legitimize attempts to remove
him from office. Large sections of the media deliberately deluged the public
with stories they knew to be false about the new president and referred to him
in terms of unprecedented vituperation in what purported to be reportage and
not comment.
This unorganized but widespread campaign of defamation was
taken up by a great number of ordinarily newsworthy celebrities and was
accompanied by false, unresearched stories denigrating President Trump’s
supporters, such as the false
claims about Catholic school students’ treatment of an elderly
native American and the false claim that actor Jussie Smollett had been beaten
up and reviled by Trump supporters. The former intelligence chiefs of the
nation under President Obama repeatedly have accused this president of treason,
the most heinous of all crimes, and have asserted with the authority of their
former positions that the Russians determined the result of the 2016 presidential
election. They knew this to be entirely false.
Distracting
Public Attention - The
special counsel has failed to find any evidence of the collusion and electoral
interference that was the justification for establishing his inquiry, and the Democrats
are already expressing disappointment in his failure to produce such evidence
when the leading Democratic members of congressional investigative committees
still robotically claim to have at least prima
facie evidence of such collusion.
The dishonest attempt of much of the
opposition and what even left-leaning media-monitoring organizations record as
90 percent of the national media, continued for more than two years to try to
condition the country to believe that the president had committed the “high
crimes and misdemeanors” required by the Constitution for impeachment and
removal from office.
The special counsel, apart from smearing
the president, distracted public attention from or tended to justify the ever
more evident misconduct of the president’s enemies. And we now know that Comey,
despite his “higher duty,” lied to the president about his not being a target
of an FBI investigation, illegally leaked to the New York Times the contents of a self-serving memo he
purloined from the government, and lied to Congress by claiming 245 times in
one sitting to be ignorant of recent matters that no one of sound mind could
have forgotten.
And now we have Andrew McCabe’s proud
confirmation that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein not only continued
the illegal counterintelligence investigation of President Trump, but actively
discussed methods of securing his removal from office by deliberate misuse of a
variety of laws, including the Emoluments Clause, the 25th
Amendment to deal with mental
incompetence, and the Logan Act of 1799, which has never been used successfully
and has not been tested in 150 years.
Make Those
Responsible Pay at the Polls - This
entire monstrous travesty is finally coming apart without even waiting for the
horrible disappointment of the special counsel’s inability to adduce a scrap of
evidence to justify his replication of Torquemada as an inquisitor and of the
Gestapo and KGB at rounding up and accusing unarmed individuals who were not
flight risks. The collapse of this grotesque putsch, under the irresistible
pressure of a functioning attorney general and Senate committees that are not
hamstrung by Never-Trumpers, will cause a revulsion against the Democratic
Party that will be seismic and prolonged.
The disgrace of their misconduct is
profound and shocking. Richard Nixon, against whom there is no conclusive
evidence that he broke any laws (although a number of people in his entourage
did) never did anything like this. J. Edgar Hoover in 47 years at the head of
the FBI and its predecessor organization, never tried to meddle in a
presidential election. Those responsible will pay for this, including at the
polls.
Without realizing the proportions of the
emergency, America has survived the greatest constitutional crisis since the
Civil War. All those who legitimately oppose or dislike the president,
including traditional high-brow Republicans who find him distasteful, should
join in the condemnation of this largely criminal assault on democracy, and
then, if they wish, go out and try to beat him fair and square, the good
old-fashioned way, in a free election. But they must abide by the election’s
result.
.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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