However this era of angry polarization, crime and violence ends, it will be left to historians to decipher how America got so far off track. Instead of building on our unprecedented prosperity and role as the worlds ultimate superpower, we declared war cultural, political and social on each other. Even our nations Founders are not spared.
The reasons will be better understood in hindsight, but its hard to believe the 2016 presidential campaign wont be seen as an inflection point. Our move toward disunion didnt begin then, but it certainly gained steam and vitriol during and after the election of Donald Trump.
Two recent developments illustrate how that campaign remains a radioactive hot spot. With both developments centering on Hillary Clinton, they underscore her role and the depths of her venality.
Just when you think youve seen the worst of her, proof emerges that she was even more duplicitous than we knew.
The first evidence came in a little-noticed decision from the Federal Election Commission. It ruled on a complaint from the Coolidge Reagan Foundation that Clinton and the Democratic National Committee violated federal law by hiding how they funded the odious Christopher Steele dossier, perhaps the most destructive disinformation document in United States history.
The FEC agreed with the complaint and ruled that Clinton and the DNC, which she effectively controlled, hid their payments to Steele as merely legal fees, without mentioning him or his work. In fact, the money was funneled through a law firm, Perkins Coie, which then hired the smear merchants at FusionGPS, who hired Steele, a former British spook.
The layers and false claim about legal fees were intended to put distance between Clinton and Steele because knowledge of the truth would have destroyed her campaign. Although her lawyers and the DNC argued they did nothing wrong, they agreed not to contest the findings and quietly paid fines totaling $113,000.
If this effective admission on funding the dirtiest dirty trick in presidential politics is news to you, dont blame yourself. Much of the media ignored or downplayed the finding and Clintons fine, saying the issue was just one of misreporting or mislabeling the Steele payments.
Thats because the truth would make them look guilty, too. To report on the election commissions significance would force the Dems propaganda arm to acknowledge its own culpability.
By treating the Steele dossier as if it were holy writ, or at least credible, the media furthered Clintons campaign to paint Trump as a Russian stooge.
Of course, the FBI was also complicit, using the dossier as a crutch to justify its unjustifiable spying on a presidential campaign. A remaining question is, under Jim Comeys leadership, was the FBI the dumbest ever or the most venal?
Probably both but whatever the answer, J. Edgar Hoover finally can rest in peace.
The second recent development involves a new court filing by special counsel John Durham in the case of Michael Sussmann, a Clinton lawyer and campaign operative who is charged with lying to the FBI in 2016. His alleged role expands the deception annals by showing Clintons team wasnt relying only on Steeles farrago of lies, lies and more lies.
Perhaps doubtful that Steele, even with his FBI friends and media contacts, could make up for her unpopularity, Clinton financed a bookend to his dossier with another fabrication.
This second scam had Sussmann, a tech executive and the same smear merchants try to sell the FBI on a concocted story about a Trump computer secretly communicating with a Russian bank.
Durham calls the effort a joint venture of the conspirators, a phrase that gives a sense of the plot and the players. There wasnt a scintilla of truth to back up the computer nonsense, and even though the FBI saw through the tissue-thin claim, many in the media naturally fell for it.
They managed to find in this particular lie a confirming detail of the larger lie Steele was spinning that Trump was a toady of Vladimir Putin and was colluding with him to steal the election.
The case is a criminal one because Durham accuses Sussmann of lying by saying he was not representing any clients as he tried to spin a top agency official on the computer connection. In fact, Sussmann was representing the Clinton campaign, which he billed for the meeting, and the tech executive, identified as Rodney Joffe.
Although Sussmann pleaded not guilty, Durham released a text message in which Sussmann explicitly tells the FBI he is not representing any clients.
His trial, scheduled for next month, has the potential to be a breakthrough in Durhams long-running effort to reveal voluminous wrongdoing by Clinton and the federal government against the Trump campaign.
Based on his court filings, the prosecutor appears to be planning to link Sussmanns efforts to the dossier, in part because of the role his firm, Perkins Coie, played in both scams. Also, Durham said Sussmann met with Steele and FusionGPS in Perkins Coie offices and raised the possibility that Steele could testify.
Even before a verdict, the case moves the responsibility closer to where it ultimately belongsin Clintons lap. Whether Durham will ever be able to show her fingerprints on any criminal conduct is the great unknown, but in one sense, its also beside the point.
We already know with 100 percent certainty that she is guilty of igniting the false accusations of Russian collusion that continue to shape our culture and politics. Although Trump was hardly a model president, the widespread claim by her party and the media that he was an illegitimate president wasnt just dirty politics. It was a nuclear attack on the spirit that has always held our nation together, however tenuously.
Clinton lost the election and Robert Muellers special counsel probe came up empty, yet the collusion narrative lives on among major elements of the political left. To judge from the tumultuous years since, many of those who subscribe to her lie are using it as a license to try to destroy America.
Tragically, they are having a good deal of success.
Reader Steve Lounsberry, fearing that violence in New York is too entrenched to be reversed with halfway measures, offers what he admits is a draconian solution. He writes: If you possess an illegal gun
5 years in prison. Use an illegal gun in commission a crime 10 years. Shoot someone in commission of a crime 20 years. Kill someone in commission of a crime life without parole.
He says sentences should be mandatory with no plea bargaining and adds: I bet victims and family members would like the idea.
Amid a COVID outbreak, The Wall Street Journal reports from Hong Kong that At least 20 patients died in recent weeks at the Donghai Elderly Care Hospital, according to members of several families.
Anybody see Andrew Cuomo lately?
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America is still paying the price for Hillary Clinton's treachery - New York Post