Never? Not once? The FBI has consistently asserted that the hack of the Democratic National Committee was an operation linked to the Russian government, even if they were less convinced that the Russians wanted to elect Donald Trump as a result. Last night, however, BuzzFeed’s Ali Watkins reported that the DNC has told her that the FBI never requested access to their servers, nor has any other government agency. Instead, they relied on a report from a private vendor:
The FBI did not examine the servers of the Democratic National Committee before issuing a report attributing the sweeping cyberintrusion to Russia-backed hackers, BuzzFeed News has learned.
Six months after the FBI first said it was investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, the bureau has still not requested access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US government entity has run an independent forensic analysis on the system, one US intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.
“The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers,” Eric Walker, the DNC’s deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed News in an email.
So who did check out the hacked servers? The DNC brought in a well-respected outfit called Crowdstrike to check out their systems, and it was Crowdstrike that concluded that the DNC was the victim of a Russian-government hack. “Crowdstrike is pretty good,” Watkins’ intel-community source told her, adding that they had no reason to believe that Crowdstrike got it wrong.
As pretty good as Crowdstrike might be, cyberattacks are federal crimes. Add to that the espionage implications involved with a hostile government intrusion, and this story doesn’t add up at all. This kind of crime should have had the FBI seizing the evidence and creating a chain of evidence in order to build a case should the opportunity for prosecution arise. The CIA and/or the NSA should have conducted their own probe of the servers to check for potential means to track back the attacks. Those are fairly obvious first steps to take under any circumstances, let alone the highly public circumstances of these hacks both then and over the last several weeks.
One could assert that political organizations might not be too comfortable having law-enforcement and intelligence agencies delving into their communications, and for good reason. However, the communications got released to the public anyway, so that’s a bit like locking the barn door after the horse has bolted. Certainly the DNC should have gotten over that last shred of modesty by then, and the FBI and intelligence community should have been eager to get their hands on the hardware. And yet, they still haven’t done so to this day, according to BuzzFeed. Hmmmmm.
U.S. intelligence agencies obtained what they considered to be conclusive evidence after the November election that Russia provided hacked material from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks through a third party, three U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
U.S. officials had concluded months earlier that Russian intelligence agencies had directed the hacking, but had been less certain that they could prove Russia also had controlled the release of information damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The timing of the additional intelligence is important because U.S. President Barack Obama has faced criticism from his own party over why it took his administration months to respond to the cyber attack. U.S. Senate and House leaders, including prominent Republicans, have also called for an inquiry.
Well, isn’t that convenient timing. Put these two stories together, and it appears that the intelligence and law-enforcement communities didn’t take a very strong interest in chasing down evidence until after the election, too. That doesn’t mean the Russians weren’t behind it all — that still seems more likely than not — but it sure makes it look like the Obama administration, FBI, and the intelligence community didn’t care about it enough to act until the results of the election embarrassed the White House.
Barack Hussein Obama, in the waning days of his administration, is clearly preparing to do maximum damage to his country and its allies on his way out the door to a very comfy — and no doubt ungratefully activist — retirement. First, there was the stab in the back to Israel at the UN the other day; now, he’s threatening to “retaliate” against the Russians for “hacking” the American election:
The Obama administration is under intense pressure to release evidence confirming Russian interference in the presidential election before leaving office. The administration up until now has provided little documentation to back up its official October assessment that the Russian government was attempting to interfere in the U.S. election.
Nor has it corroborated subsequent leaks from anonymous officials contending that the CIA believes the campaign was an attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to ensure Donald Trump’s victory.
President Obama has ordered the intelligence community to produce a complete review of its findings before Trump takes office on Jan. 20. The White House has said it will make as much of the report public as it can. But officials have warned that the document will contain “highly sensitive and classified information” and it is unclear how much concrete evidence it will be able to release.
Yeah, right. This is simply another shot across the incoming president’s bow — part of the “resistance” deracinated Democrats have promised in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s surprising (to them) — but thoroughly satisfying defeat in November.
Releasing any documentation of Russian interference would be a slap in the face to Trump, who has rejected assertions that the Kremlin was involved in the hacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) andHillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
The president-elect and his team have treated any suggestion of Russian involvement as an attack on the legitimacy of his election, and Republican leaders in Congress have treaded carefully on the issue.
The firestorm ignited by the CIA’s assessment has spurred calls from both parties for the administration to provide proof of Russian meddling. In late November, seven Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the White House to declassify “additional information concerning the Russian Government and the U.S. election.”
As of last week, they had not yet received a response.
“If the CIA Director [John] Brennan and others at the top are serious about turning over evidence … they should do that,” Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said earlier this month. “They should not be leaking to the media. If there’s evidence, let’s see it.”
How about that? What this episode shows is the near-complete untrustworthiness of the CIA under career hack John Brennan, and its politicization by Obama. It also reveals the extent to which mainstream newspapers — the Washington Post and the New York Times — are so addled by partisanship that they have willingly abrogated their ethics in order to smear the new administration. As I wrote in the New York Post on Dec. 13:
In the wake of their shocking loss, Democrats and their fellow travelers in the media have mounted a frantic, and increasingly deracinated, campaign to deny Trump the fruits of his victory in the Electoral College and thus overturn the election by any means necessary, fair or foul.
Except that was the same “bombshell” that Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, and James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said on the record in October. The same “bombshell” that had Joe Biden acting like John Wayne, saying the US was going to retaliate. “We’re sending a message. We have the capacity to do it. And the message — he’ll know it,” Biden said about Vladimir Putin on “Meet the Press.”
No proof was offered then, or now, that Russia was involved. But it’s not as though voters weren’t aware of the speculation before the election, as some Democrats and columnists claim.
So what’s changed? Now Democrats and their media allies are in panic mode, looking for something, anything, to try to change the results.
As I’ve been saying on Twitter since the election: don’t believe a word you read in the MSM until Jan. 20, because every single “news” story will be a naked attempt at propaganda. After the inauguration, of course, the same warning will apply; it’s just that, having failed to stop Trump from taking office, the media will be on to something else in order to sabotage him and his voters.
What was actually revealed by Wikileaks and what effect it had are being conflated with the matter of who revealed it, as if the messenger somehow changes the message.
**********************************
“The Russians hacked the election!” say Democrats trying to discredit Donald Trump’s presidency. Of course, their statement is deceptive, referring only to the theory that the Russians provided Wikileaks with the campaign season’s revelatory Democrat emails.
Not surprisingly, the Fake (establishment) Media has embraced the theory, which is probably the best argument for its falsity. In addition, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange denies Russian involvement. So does Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who said “I’ve met the person who leaked them [the emails]” and that the individual is an “insider” representing Democrats angry over “the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Senator Bernie Sanders.” Moreover, both FBI director James Comey and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, said there’s “no credible evidence” Russia influenced Nov. 8’s outcome, according to reporter Ed Klein. Yet whatever the truth, the more important matter is that the issue is being used as a distraction and a tool for disruption.
What was actually revealed by Wikileaks and what effect it had are being conflated with the matter of who revealed it, as if the messenger somehow changes the message. Consider an analogy: Imagine it came to light that a Capitol Hill restaurant’s kitchen was filthy and vermin-infested. Would the health department’s course of action be dictated by whether the information came from a disgruntled employee or an investigative reporter who illegally gained access to the kitchen? If the latter, would Washington Democrats still eat there?
As a reminder, the Wikileaks emails contained damning information showing direct collusion between the mainstream media and the Hillary Clinton campaign, including evidence that a CNN figure gave Clinton debate questions ahead of time, thus disadvantaging primary-season opponent Sanders. They contained other dirt on the Democrats as well. Is anyone but Clinton and her apologists upset these truths came to light?
Of course, our systems must be made safe from intrusion by foreign actors, but this gets at an important point: it will reflect better on the Democrats if the Wikileaks source is a leaker. After all, whose systems were supposedly hacked and under whose watch would it have occurred?
Answers: the Democrats’ systems and the Obama administration.
The New York Times recently ran a painfully long article about how “how Russian cyberpower invaded the U.S.,” calling it “The Perfect weapon.” But the piece mainly illustrates how Democrat and administration entities exhibited the perfect storm of incompetence. The Timeswrites of how its examination “based on interviews with dozens of players targeted in the attack, intelligence officials who investigated it and Obama administration officials who deliberated over the best response — reveals a series of missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of the cyberattack.”
So here’s the Democrat complaint, translated: “We were too incompetent to secure our systems — or react promptly to a perceived threat by a hostile foreign actor — and as a result damning truths about us were revealed. We’re such victims!”
Taking the above together with Hillary Clinton’s use of a “home brew” server to send classified emails, and that the FBI stated there appeared to be hacking attempts on it, a question is raised:
Were these people ever qualified to be at the nation’s helm, in charge of national security?
In the 1997 film Liar Liar, Jim Carrey plays a shyster lawyer who, after a birthday wish made by his son comes true, is suddenly incapable of telling a lie. Objecting to the opposing counsel’s argument in court but robbed of his verbal legerdemain, he responds to the judge’s question as to why he objected by saying, with the only argument he could honestly muster, “Because it’s devastating to my case!”
That is essentially the Democrats’ gripe regarding the quite true Wikileaks revelations. Objection overruled.
Now, the same news outlets that refused to cover the Russian government’s hacking into White House and State Department computers and email systems try to tell us that an intrusion into Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s and John Podesta’s email accounts by someone–allegedly the same Russian government–is a story of world-historical importance. What a load of bulls–t.
**************************
You probably don’t. We broke the story on Power Line in October 2014, writing about it here, here, here, here, here and here. The White House’s computers were down for weeks because of the intrusion by a “foreign power,” which the administration finally identified as Russia. It wasn’t just the White House, either; it was the entire Executive Office of the President, which comprises a good chunk of the executive branch. Nor was that all: the State Department’s computer system was hacked, too.
While we pounded away at the story, the White House refused to respond to our inquiries. The Washington press corps, which must have known that the White House’s computers were out of action, maintained a discreet silence, declining to write about the Russian hack, even though many D.C. reporters no doubt followed the story on Power Line. Why the coy silence? Because it was October 2014, weeks before the midterm elections, and the story reflected poorly on the Obama administration, which didn’t even discover the intrusion itself. It turned out that American officials were alerted to the Russian hack of the White House and State Department by an unidentified ally (I’m guessing Israel).
Only when the election was safely over did news outlets like CNN report the story (“How the U.S. thinks Russians hacked the White House”). Throughout, the Obama administration minimized the story, claiming that no harm was done and only unclassified material was accessed–an excuse that, as CNN wrote post-election, “belies the seriousness of the intrusion.”
Now, the same news outlets that refused to cover the Russian government’s hacking into White House and State Department computers and email systems try to tell us that an intrusion into Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s and John Podesta’s email accounts by someone–allegedly the same Russian government–is a story of world-historical importance. What a load of bulls–t.
(But Obama says his Administration is the most transparent in history.
You can see right through him. — DM)
So, as chance would have it we are currently hosting a newly arrived visitor from Mars, who has been avidly following the headlines. Having studied our world for some time, he is intrigued by the news, as reported first by the Washington Post on Friday: “Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House.”
This is the story in which U.S. “officials” told the Post it is “now ‘quite clear’ that electing Trump was Russia’s goal.” Earlier in the week, according to White House spokesman Eric Schultz, President Obama “instructed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of the pattern of malicious cyber activity related to our presidential election cycle.” Obama wants this report completed and submitted to him before the end of his term, Jan. 20 — now less than six weeks ahead.
Since this story broke, we have been trying to field questions from our inquisitive Man from Mars, who seems oddly disinclined to take things at face value. (We think our visitor is a he, so I’ll proceed on that assumption, though we have not inquired about gender identification).
I’m sharing below some excerpts from our chat. For convenience, I’ve abbreviated “Man from Mars” as MFM. Our replies, I am attributing simply to “Us.”
MFM: This is shocking news about Russia, but surely meddling in America’s elections is not new. What were the findings of the deep-dive report produced at speed by the Obama administration, its concerns leaked in advance to the press, over the effects, starting early in his first term, of the IRS targeting conservative groups?
Us: There was no such report. There were congressional hearings in which a prominent witness from the IRS took the Fifth. There were tussles over destroyed hard drives, emails not turned over, or some turned over long after the deadlines, and this year brought news that the targeting may still be going on — see Kim Strassel’s May 19 column in the Wall Street Journal on the “The IRS’s Ugly Business as Usual.”
MFM: But wasn’t Obama deeply worried that this targeting might silence a lot of conservatives, skew public debate and warp America’s political process?
Us: Nah. In 2014, Obama in a TV interview dismissed it all as nothing worse than “bone-headed decisions,” saying there was “not even a smidgen of corruption.” So much for that.
MFM: OK. But what about the deep-dive report Obama demanded, urgently, prior to the 2012 presidential election, to shed light on his own administration’s lies about the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi. You remember, all that “messaging” about an ad hoc mob, and blaming the “video.” That sure looked like Obama was trying to mislead the American public in order to bolster his campaign line that “the tide of war is receding,” plus his administration’s claims that leading-from-behind in Libya was a success. I mean, there were four Americans murdered, including — as I discern from your Earth records — the first American ambassador killed on the job in 33 years. Obama, who had the authority to send help directly to Benghazi, never did. What does Obama’s urgently ordered, in-depth and surely impartial report tell you about what Obama himself was doing that night?
Us: Get real. Obama was hardly likely to order an all-out urgent investigation of himself and his team, especially during the final weeks of his reelection campaign. He was already booked to go to Vegas, he needed his sleep. Anyway, by the morning after the Benghazi attack, the damage was already done. So — as somebody-or-other told Congress — “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
MFM: Right-o. I can see that a president needs his sleep. But I’m still puzzled over these latest news stories that imply President Obama thinks Russia is an enemy trying to subvert the United States. Yes, but…wasn’t Obama a buddy of Vladimir Putin?
Us: Well, yes. But only for the first six or seven of Obama’s eight years in office. There was Obama’s chummy 2009 “Reset” with Russia — you remember that mislabeled red button Hillary Clinton presented to Russia’s foreign minister. Obama threw in, as a bit more swag for Putin, the gift of shelving missile defense plans for Eastern Europe. And when NATO missile-defense plans became a sore point with the Kremlin during Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, there was that open-microphone moment in which Obama was caught promising Putin’s sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev, “After my election I will have more flexibility.” To which Medvedev replied, companionably, “I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you.” Pretty friendly, actually. But, hey, dude, that was like four years ago.
MFM: Fair enough. But wasn’t there a bit more to it?
Us: OK, yeah, but let’s not get too bogged down in the past. There was Obama’s 2013 red line in Syria over chemical weapons, which he erased by way of basically turning over the Middle East to Putin — and, of course, to Iran. And of course there was the case that same year of Edward Snowden, the guy who fled the U.S. with a trove of National Security Agency secrets. After a quick sojourn in Hong Kong, Snowden washed up as Putin’s guest in Russia, where Putin has not gotten around to sending him back. Obama apparently didn’t like that, but he didn’t let a transient thing like wholesale plundering of the NSA, or Moscow’s asylum for the plunderer, interfere with buddying up to Moscow to clinch the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
MFM: Well, at least when Putin snatched Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, Obama made him give it back.
Us: Umm, actually, no, he didn’t. Russia now owns Crimea, has roughed up more of Ukraine and seems to be eyeing the Baltics. Though Obama did impose sanctions on Russia, which Putin didn’t like.
MFM: And those sanctions, of course, stopped Russian aggression and put Putin back in his box?
Us: Would you like more coffee?
MFM: Thanks. You Earth people have such nice customs.
Us: Coffee’s even better with sugar, not salt. Try it.
MFM: Wow. Who knew? Which brings me to just a few more questions. In the stories this week about the urgent report Obama has ordered — following up on conclusions reached secretly with “high confidence” by U.S. “intelligence agencies” that Russia acted covertly to promote Donald Trump over Hillary — why are all the official sources anonymous? I see a couple of officials quoted by name, commenting on the need for such a report, including Obama’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, who had breakfast recently with some reporters. But the whole thing seems based on specifics which the press has attributed only to anonymous “officials briefed on the matter,” or officials “who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.”
Us: Look, this is delicate stuff. The intel guys have to worry about exposing sources, and there are clearly big secrets involved. Check out the cloak-and-dagger stuff in the penultimate paragraph of the Washington Post story, telling how administration officials briefed select members of Congress, in ” a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information.” That ought to tell you just how extremely secret and classified this stuff is.
MFM: Call me an idiot, but how secret is an assessment that has details of its contents leaked to one of America’s major newspapers, including the sweeping conclusion that, as one nameless “senior U.S. official” told the Post, “Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected.” Isn’t Obama, with his concerns for the integrity of state secrets, trying frantically to stop these anonymous officials from leaking these secrets to the press? Haven’t people lower down the food chain gone to prison for leaking classified information?
Us: Yes, but as you say, those jailbirds were lower down the food chain. Maybe Obama doesn’t know who exactly is leaking this information to the press. As you say, they’re anonymous.
MFM: Give me a break. If these anonymous officials have it right about Russia’s cyber abilities, I’d bet the Russians already know who these same anonymous officials really are. Surely Obama could find out. If he can’t find out direct, maybe he could order U.S. intelligence to steal the information from the Russians? Can’t he order up another urgent report, to get to the bottom of who’s leaking some of the state secrets that inspired him to order up the original urgent report?
Us: Enough already. You may know plenty about Mars, but you’ve got a lot to learn about White House politics under Obama.
MFM: Speaking of Mars, we Martians love conspiracy theories. There’s lots here that we don’t know, but all this leaking seems tilted toward delegitimizing the victory of Donald Trump, even before he takes office. I mean, how does someone defend himself, when accusations are all over the headlines, conveyed by anonymous officials, while the actual basis for these stories is officially secret? Is that what Obama meant when he promised to run the most “transparent” administration ever?
Us: Give it a rest. U.S. elections are sacred to our democracy, and if anyone — and we mean anyone — tries to fiddle them, we have to get to the bottom of it.
MFM: Calm down. I’m just curious. If the Russians did try to intervene, by hacking and flooding the public with emails humiliating to Hillary and the Democrats, but not to Trump, then did Trump have any control over this? Wasn’t it the responsibility of Obama to protect the country, and the election, from any such intrusions?
Us: You’ve been reading too much fake news. Obama’s a busy guy. He’s been trying for years to control the level of the oceans. He can’t cover everything.
MFM: And if the Russians, emboldened by Obama’s reset and flexibility and vanished red lines, did actually try to tip the 2016 American election, did they succeed? Did it make a difference?
Us: Look, please stop with the questions. We’re just the little guys here. Normal Americans. We don’t have time to read reams of emails dumped out by anybody. We come home tired from our day jobs. Or we’ve been reading about the wealth and fashions of the liberal elite, and the fat pensions of the federal bureaucracy, while we work the part-time night shifts, and look for any extra income we can scrounge up.
I’ll tell you what we read during the recent presidential campaign. We read the letter that arrived a week before the election, from our health insurance company, informing us of the double-digit rate hike slated for our premiums, yet again. We read about the terrorist attacks — in Paris, Nice, San Bernardino, Orlando — inspired or linked to ISIS, the “JV team” that was expanding its murderous reach while Obama was still boasting about killing Osama bin Laden. We listened to Obama exhorting people to vote for Hillary, in order to cement and extend his legacy. We listened to Hillary denouncing tens of millions of Americans as “deplorables.” Did Russia make her do that?
MFM: Don’t ask me. I’m from Mars.
Us: We get it. But watch out. If you keep asking questions like these, someone’s going to report you as part of a Russian plot. Speaking of… enough with the coffee. It’s gonna take more than caffeine to get through these next six weeks. Ever tried vodka?
Alan Dershowitz thinks that Keith Ellison is just the man to lead the Democratic Party — if you want to bury the Democrats. On that point, he agrees with many Power Line readers on Ellison’s candidacy to to chair the DNC. In the video below, Professor Dershowitz expounds on what he sees as Ellison’s — what’s the word? — “weaknesses” as a prospective party leader. Professor Dershowitz argued his case against Ellison in a brief segment with Trish Regan on Fox Business Network yesterday (about five minutes).
Unlike me, Professor Dershowitz has the best interests of the Democratic Party at heart. Nevertheless, in Professor Dershowitz’s unvarnished opposition to Ellison, the video presents us with a pass-the-popcorn moment. We can all get along here beautifully on the merits.
Quotable quote: “[I]f you gave me a list of a thousand people, I’d put Ellison 1,001. He is the worst possible person at this point in the history of the Democratic Party to pick.”
Sometimes the enemy slips up and tells you his agenda.
Keith Ellison had a clear path to heading the DNC. He had the backing of Harry Reid and Schumer. He was the leading prog candidate. Howard Dean dropped out to clear the path for him. But the Investigative Project has stayed on this. It’s released audio of some of his speeches, particularly to Muslim groups, and the content is certainly revealing.
The fundraiser for Ellison’s re-election campaign was hosted by Esam Omeish, a past president of the Muslim American Society (MAS) who was forced to resign from a Virginia state immigration panel in 2007 after an exclusive IPT videotape showed him praising Palestinians for choosing the “the jihad way … to liberate your land.” Omeish was a candidate for Virginia’s general assembly the previous year, and Ellison spoke at a fundraiser for that losing effort.
There are rants about Israel in this one. All the stuff you expect. But there are also revealing comments like these about the larger Islamist plan for America.
Here’s Ellison on ObamaCare
“”Salaam aleikum brothers and sisters. First of all let me tell you, this day, this huge day where the President signed the healthcare bill, should know that the Muslim community was at the very forefront of this effort. There is not 25 Muslim clinics, there is not 30; there is about 35 clinics founded by Muslims throughout the United States. And it seems like every single day there is a new one being formed yet again. We got big ones in Chicago, in Los Angeles, but also throughout Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, Maryland, New York, all through Florida”
“Things are going well because not only this healthcare debate there was a group of Muslim physicians and medical professionals who beat the doors down and talked about to every member of Congress about the need for federally qualified healthcare centers. I mean can you imagine?”
There is a larger strategy to gain and build influence.
“We need to have so much goods and services going back and forth between this country and the Muslim world that if we say we need this right here, then everybody is saying, OK. Do you understand my point? If you, I mean you’ve got to be strategic. And these things are not overnight, they’re not a one and done. It takes time to build these relationships and they got to be built.”
“These business relationships can be leveraged to say that we need some, a new deal politically. Do you understand what I am trying to say? And so, and bring some of your, you know, friends who may not be Muslim along too.”
“I’m telling you now, with some of the money that you give to me, one of the things I do is I make sure that in Minnesota that whoever I’m supporting wins. And I tell them, this is the hard-earned dollars of Muslim-Americans. OK, so they know.”
The larger goal is influence and domination.
” Sometimes people run for office and I always tell them, brother you remember when you were running, I say you know what, you may not win, but you run like you’re going to win. Right? Because only Allah knows who’s going to win and sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose the first time, win the next time. You know what I mean [audience – yes, yes]. So we gotta keep on running, cause I lost the first time I ran. But what I am saying is we can decide whether we are going to fight hard, right? And I am telling you, that with your help, we are able to take Muslim presence on Capitol Hill from zero to a real player. And this is what we’re trying to do and we got to do it in every state house in America, we got to do it in the Capitol Hill.”
“The message I want to send to you is that what you’re doing by donating to this campaign is positioning me and positioning Muslims in general to help steer the ship of state in America. You understand what I am saying? [Another person says, “Yes”] Steer it in a direction that makes sense”
“CAIR has not fallen, they are fighting and struggling every day. Right? I am telling you that every Friday my brother calls the adhan in the Capitol. Is that right? [Male replies ‘Alhamdulillah.’] Under the Capitol dome. [Male says, ‘Yes sir.’] And whenever, is that right? [Replies of “yes” and “Alhamdulillah”].”
Along with bursts of triumphalism.
” Do you know that there is a Muslim brother about to buy the Los Angeles Rams? [One guys says ‘Saint Louis.’] Saint Louis Rams. [Laughter and commotion over few words] Rams, but the Rams. Muslim guys getting ready to buy the Rams. [Male says, “not Rush Limbaugh] Not Rush Limbaugh. [Laughter.] You know those players said we will not play for that racist, we will not play for that racist. But they’ll say, we’ll play for the Muslim guy. [Laughter, someone claps.] You know alhamdulillah. So, so, and do you know that Ethan Allen, owned by a Muslim, right? ”
“If you measure progress by the day, you might not see it. If you measure progress by the week you may not see it. But if you measure progress by the year, in two years, in three years, in 10 years, in 20 years, it’s unmistakable progress, unmistakable, unmistakable progress”
Tablet magazine, an online magazine on Jewish affairs, was one of the leading “NeverTrump” websites — but has published an op-ed defending Donald Trump and denouncing Democrats for supporting Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) to lead the party.
The article, by Jeff Ballabon, documents Ellison’s history of supporting and defending rabid antisemites. It also defends the President-elect, as well as adviser Stephen K. Bannon and Breitbart News, from false charges of antisemitism. Ballabon also notes that some of the same Jewish politicians that led the attack on Bannon, such as incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), are also leading the effort to elect Ellison as the next chair of the Democratic National Committee. He also notes that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which led the attack on Bannon, has had to “withdraw their accusations.”
It is clear that Ellison trafficked with incredibly virulent, open anti-Semites and supported and defended them until it became politically inconvenient. Then he lied about it—and once in office, he decided to target the Jewish state.
…
Personally, I don’t care if Ellison ever did or still does hate Jews. He’s entitled to love and hate whomever he wants. What worries me is that a leading member of the extreme anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party is poised to become the party’s chairman. What disturbs me is that the mainstreaming and elevating of this man—who, at the very least, is clearly more enthusiastic about Louis Farrakhan than he is about the State of Israel—is being done with the support of Sen. Chuck Schumer, and of organizations that claim to represent the interests of American Jewry.
It is also hard to miss the fact that these same politicians and groups are now diverting attention away from actual threats to a campaign of politically-motivated fictions and calumnies directed against Donald Trump, a man who has spent decades supporting an impressive array of Jewish causes and of the State of Israel—and whose daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren are Orthodox Jews. Trump’s daughter Ivanka chose to join the Jewish people, and she did so by all accounts with the approval and full support of her father. Perhaps Keith Ellison, despite his associations and activities, is secretly a great friend of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, and Donald Trump, despite his friends and family, is secretly the raving anti-Semite his detractors allege. But even the most extreme partisan would have to admit that the evidence for either proposition is quite thin. In fact, the ADL and friends have also had to withdraw their accusations of anti-Semitism against Trump’s adviser Steve Bannon and Breitbart news, which briefly flourished after Trump’s win, since they could not point to any actual evidence that either charge was true: In fact, Bannon and Breitbart have demonstrably been among the most dedicated supporters of the State of Israel and most vociferous opponents of BDS and campus hate in the America media.
(Ellison seems highly qualified to head a substantially antisemitic, anti-Israel, pro-Islamist organization. — DM)
It seems that with each passing day, more information comes to light about the alarming anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and extremist radical Islamist involvements and positions of Muslim U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison a/k/a Keith X. Ellison a/k/a Keith Hakim a/k/a Keith Ellison Muhammed (D-Minn.) – which should disqualify Ellison from heading the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for which he is the Senator Schumer-supported leading contender. Ethical issues have also come to the fore.
On Monday, we learned that the House of Representatives Ethics Committee had opened an investigation into Rep. Ellison (D., Minn.) after he failed to disclose that the Muslim American Society – a group that Muslim Brotherhood members founded to be the “overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.” – paid $13,350 for Ellison to visit Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 2008. (See “Muslim Brotherhood-Tied Group Paid for Keith Ellison to Visit Mecca in 2008: Group was founded as ‘overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.’,” by Brent Scher, Washington Free Beacon, Nov. 21, 2016.) The Muslim Brotherhood is the “parent” organization of Hamas, al Qaeda and other terrorist entities. Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UAE, and Kuwait have all designated the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization.
Last week, my organization, the ZOA, published a release, urging that Ellison should not be appointed to head the DNC. Per the extensive sources cited in ZOA’s release, Ellison’s dangerous positions and involvements, have included the following:
During a DemocracyNow! TV interview, Ellison suggested that the Israeli “occupation” was to blame for a “humanitarian crisis” and lack of sewage processing in Gaza – while ignoring that Israel withdrew from every inch of Gaza, and that Hamas diverts the electricity needed to operate Gaza’s sewage treatment plant to Hamas’s terrorist tunnels and operations.
Also in 2016, Ellison tweeted a sign falsely accusing Israel of expropriation and “apartheid.” And just two months ago, Ellison defended the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) on the House floor. ISNA is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, involved in funneling money to Hamas.
In 2015, Ellison co-authored and spearheaded a letter (and obtained signatures on the letter of 23 Democratic Members of Congress) demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress about the Iran deal be delayed until after the sanctions deadline – when the visit would have been useless.
In 2014, Ellison was one of only 8 Congresspersons who voted against the bi-partisan bill to provide $225 million to Israel’s “Iron dome” missile system. Ellison’s position would have left innocent Israeli civilians at the mercy of Hamas rockets.
In 2012, Ellison traveled from Minnesota to raise funds and speak at mosques in New Jersey, urging Arab-American residents of New Jersey to defeat pro-Israel Democratic Jewish Congressman Steve Rothman.
In 2010, Ellison spearheaded and convinced 53 other Democratic Congresspersons to sign his infamous “Gaza 54” letter to President Obama, which falsely accused Israel of humiliating and wreaking “collective punishment” on Gaza residents and demanded that President Obama should pressure Israel to lift the Gaza blockade – thereby enabling Hamas to obtain more weapons to kill and terrorize innocent Israeli civilians.
The leading anti-Israel, anti-Semitic boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) group in the U.S. still uses the anti-Israel smears in Ellison’s “Gaza 54” letter to promote BDS.
In a 2010 DemocracyNow! Interview, Ellison also argued that the U.S. should not kill a leading terrorist located in Yemen, who was responsible for numerous deaths of Americans and was continuing to foment some of the worst terror attacks on Americans, because the terrorist would consider his own death to be a “reward.”
Ellison also received substantial campaign contributions from groups tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, spoke at Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) dinners, and defended CAIR on the House floor. Materials handed out at CAIR’s 2008 dinner (where Ellison spoke) called America a terrorist organization, and called for the destruction of Israel and the United States. CAIR is another unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, involved in funneling money to Hamas.
In 2007, Ellison analogized President Bush’s prosecution of the war on terror after 9/11 to Hitler’s rise to power and activities after the Reichstag fire.
From approximately 1989 until at least 1998, Ellison was an active leader in Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic Nation of Islam. Ellison raised funds and led anti-police chants to support cop-killers; co-sponsored a vicious anti-Semitic speech by Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), entitled “Zionism: Imperialism, White Supremacy or Both?” while ignoring Jewish law students’ pleas to Ellison not to sponsor the speech; and spoke at a public hearing on behalf of the Nation of Islam in support of a woman alleged to have said “Jews are among the most racist white people I know.“
Back in 2007, the ADL criticized Ellison’s analogy of President Bush to Hitler.
However, the ADL is utterly silent about Ellison now – when the leadership and direction of the Democratic party is at risk of falling into the hands of someone with a longstanding record of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel activities. Instead of calling out the real danger from Ellison, the ADL has been busy falsely accusing President-elect Trump’s appointee Stephen Bannon of anti-Semitism.
ADL’s failure to condemn Ellison’s overwhelming record of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activities displays rank partisanship, and is an abdication of the ADL’s stated mission of combatting anti-Semitism.
The ZOA thus again urges the ADL to join us in speaking out against appointing Ellison to the extraordinarily powerful position of head of the DNC.
The Democratic Party handed Donald Trump a rare opportunity to make radical changes to the electoral map that could last for years to come.
First, the Democrats gave Trump a great gift by completing the ongoing radicalization of their party under President Obama. After 2008, it was no longer a party of the working and middle classes, but a lopsided political pyramid.
On top were the cynical elites who turned up in the WikiLeaks John Podesta email trove: self-important media members, Ivy League grandees, Silicon Valley billionaires, Wall Street plutocrats and coastal corridor snobs. They talk left-wing but live royally. They court minorities to vote in lockstep, then deride them in private. The vast lower tier of the party comprises government employees, the poor, minorities, and the millions dependent on state and federal assistance. The Democrats in between were ignored, and so they kept fleeing the party. Look at the red/blue map of the election. Democratic strength retreated to the inner cities and the rich coastal suburbs.
The Democrats also, in suicidal fashion, stoked racial chauvinism, or the notion that one’s tribe should transcend all other affiliations. After pandering to various minority groups, Hillary Clinton apparently believed that they suddenly would forget her emphasis on race and ethnicity to vote for her, a 69-year-old white multimillionaire.
But the Democrats learned a bitter lesson in 2016: Obama’s left-wing, rich/poor ideological agendas do not appeal to most of the country. Despite a hard progressive agenda, Obama was able to win two terms by relying on racial and ethnic solidarity, earning record numbers of Latino and black votes.
The logic of such a formula could not be easily transferred to a non-minority Democratic candidate. So Clinton lost key blue states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin because minority turnout in cities such as Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee fell off from 2008 and 2012.
Worse for Democrats, by pandering to tribal solidarity, they polarized the white working classes. When physical similarity is touted as the best argument to vote for someone, it green-lights everybody to do the same — including huge numbers of less affluent whites who voted for Trump.
Trump took advantage of these openings. By reformulating the old Republican messages to include so-called fair (rather than free) trade, by leaving Social Security alone and by promising to create more jobs, Trump plucked millions of lower- and middle-class voters from the Democratic Party.
Republican elites may have been appalled that Trump blasted global trade agreements and promised to punish corporations that outsourced jobs overseas. But those who have been left out of the globalized economy flocked to that message after not warming up to John McCain and Mitt Romney in earlier presidential elections.
Trump’s populism also appealed to a surprising number of blacks and Latinos. Although Trump was even richer than some multimillionaire Republican nominees of the recent past, he posed as a man of the people, eating fast food and speaking in a Queens accent.
For many non-whites, Trump’s message was more about class than race. Inner-city dwellers share many of the same worries as the poor whites of the Ohio Valley and southern Michigan. Some blacks have more in common with poor whites than with Colin Kaepernick or Van Jones. And many whites have more in common with less affluent blacks and Latinos than with Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush.
These populist economic interests had been ignored by Democrats and Republicans, as coastal-corridor economies made 30-somethings in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street multimillionaires — with only crumbs left for those who work with their hands.
In other words, Trump miraculously won the Electoral College despite adversarial media and hostile Democratic and Republican establishments. He ran with relatively little campaign spending, virtually no ground game, few political handlers, little celebrity backing and few establishment endorsements. And he won because he rewrote the traditional rules of red/blue presidential politics.
Democratic Party chiefs slammed Trump as a bigot. “Never Trump” Republicans trashed him as a protectionist and populist rather than label him a true conservative. Some elite Democrats rightly feared that he might revolutionize politics by stealing minority and working-class voters from Democrats on shared class concerns that transcend race. Some elite Republicans worried that he could win new converts who weren’t concerned with whether the Wall Street Journal found him to be an apostate and so often a vulgarian.
The strangest irony of all?
Establishment Republicans who hated Trump sounded a lot like establishment Democrats.
In sum, the billionaire Trump thinks he can forge a new kind of “Republican” majority, to the chagrin of elite Democrats and elite Republicans alike.
anneinpt
artaxes
danmillerinpanama
davidking1530
Peter Hofman
Joseph Wouk
Peter
Louisiana Steve
WarSclerotic 
Recent Comments