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It was expected that Democrats would be up in arms over the news that the Justice Department retracted and rewrote Roger Stones sentencing recommendation memo, but once again I find myself astonished by the rank hypocrisy of Democrats.

But before I get into that, I think its worth mentioning that the prosecution of Stone and, quite frankly, the sentencing, was excessive. The prosecutors, many of whom were part of the Russian collusion hoax investigation team of Mueller, literally ordered a pre-dawn raid on Stone's home in Florida, complete with a CNN detail ready to cover the event for the country to watch as it unfolded. The recommendations for sentencing were completely absurd. Violent criminals, including rapists, get less time than what they were recommending for Stone. In due time, I am sure that will become clear, but, once again, I feel compelled to bring to light that the Democrats outrage over this is just the latest example of their hypocrisy because for eight years under Barack Obama we saw actual corrupt manipulation of the justice system in favor of Barack Obamas allies.

Under Obama and his radical attorneys general, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, the Justice Department became a hotbed of political favoritism, pretty much from day one.

I have picked five examples of Obama's allies being protected from justice in various ways by his administration that Democrats didnt give a hoot about and when you read them, youll understand why.

You may remember images and video from Election Day 2008, with members of the New Black Panther Party standing outside a Philadelphia polling place wearing military garb making racial remarks and discouraging people from voting. A voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers began weeks before Obama took office. It was an open-and-shut case, and the New Black Panthers didnt even show up in court to defend themselves, assuring the governments victory in the case. Then in May 2009, the case was inexplicably dropped by Attorney General Eric Holder.

By the summer of 2010, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights declared there was evidence of possible unequal administration of justice by the Justice Department in the New Black Panther Party case. It was quite clear that under Obama and Holder, civil rights cases against minorities discriminating against whites were being systematically ignored. Holder still denied there was a racial motivation during a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in March 2011, justifying the decision not to prosecute the NBPP by bizarrely citing the roadblocks African Americans endured when trying to vote in the South during the era of Jim Crow laws.

Attorney General Eric Holder took part in a scandalous, incompetent gun-running project known as Fast and Furious from 2009 to 2011, and did everything in his power to protect his boss, Barack Obama, during that investigation. In return for his steadfast loyalty, Obama protected Holder, who was aggressively stonewalling the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee investigation into Fast and Furious. Obamas asserting of executive privilege was not only to protect himself but also to protect Holder ahead of the Oversight Committees vote to declare Holder in contempt of Congress for withholding documents from the committee. Ultimately it didnt save Holder from being held in contempt of Congress by a bipartisan vote.

In 2012, just days before the November election, ICE agents were ready to arrest an illegal immigrant and registered sex offender, but were ordered by the Department of Homeland Security to wait until after the election. Why? The suspect was a volunteer intern for Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and there would be significant interest from Congress and news organizations about the arrest. Menendez was seen as vulnerable in the 2012 election, and the delay of the arrest saved him from a potentially politically damaging scandal on the eve of voting. All the while letting a sexual offender avoid justice for six weeks.

In 2009, Barack Obama illegally fired Gerald Walpin, the inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service. Walpins only crime was that he was investigating Obamas friend and donor, Kevin Johnson. Johnson had misused federal grant money for AmeriCorps by funneling it to his personal nonprofit group, paying for political activity, and using it to pay hush money to underage girls hed sexually abused. When Walpin recommended charges against Johnson, Obama, in violation of federal law, fired him.

An investigation by Congress into the illegal firing was met with stonewalling by the Obama White House, and the withholding of documents. The Obama White House also deliberately misled Congress about the reasons for the firing.

Its hard to think of anyone who has managed to avoid accountability more than Hillary Clinton, and her response to the Stone sentencing story was her latest example of a lack of self-awareness.

It was not all that long ago that Hillary Clinton was the heir-apparent to Barack Obama, and Obama wasnt going to let her criminal behavior get in the way of her winning the election and keeping his legacy intact. Thanks to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey, Hillary was never going to be punished for her illegal private server and mishandling of classified and top-secret information that would have seen anyone else indicted. In fact, FBI Director James Comey had drafted her exoneration letter before Hillary had even been interviewed by the FBI. And through the entire process, Barack Obama wanted to be kept in the loop, according to text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.

Hillary Clinton benefited from Barack Obama and his Justice Department doing everything they could to protect her, and she has the nerve to criticize the Trump administration for reducing the excessive sentencing of Roger Stone? Seriously?

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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama's Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis

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5 Times Barack Obama Protected His Allies from Justice and Democrats Didn't Care | News and Politics - PJ Media

Scott got a lot off his chest in his post called Jeff Sessions: The Open Questions, a critique of my post called Its John Boltons turn. Thats good. However, it will take more than one post for me to respond.

This first post will focus on matters related to Jeff Sessions and what I take to be the demonizing of him.

Scott opens by saying that demonizing anyone other than demons would be wrong by definition. Not really.

The definition of demonize I had in mind is to portray (someone or something) as evil or as worthy of contempt or blame. If someone deserves contempt or blame to a significant degree, it is not wrong to demonize him.

President Trump has portrayed Jeff Sessions as worthy of contempt or blame. He has vilified the man. Sessions does not deserve this treatment.

The title of Scotts post suggests as much. If there are open questions about Sessions, he should not be portrayed as worthy of contempt or major blame until the questions are answered satisfactorily.

What are Scotts open questions? In his email to me about the post he critiques, Scott said that if Sessions couldnt ethically perform his job in the Russia investigation, he shouldnt have taken the job or [should have] resigned.

I hadnt addressed this point in my post. To fill the gap, I addressed it here.

I showed that Sessions couldnt have known in mid-November 2016, when he agreed to be attorney general, that his role would include overseeing an investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. I also discussed in some detail why, later on, it wouldnt have made good sense for Sessions to withdraw from consideration or resign.

Scott doesnt address these arguments except to say they are well informed, but speculative. It isnt possible to consider the wisdom of a decision in this case Sessionss decision not to withdraw of resign without considering what the likely consequences of making a different decision would have been. And such consideration necessarily involves a certain amount of speculation.

I take Scotts characterization of my analysis as well informed, coupled with the fact that he doesnt challenge any of it, as confirmation of the reasonableness my speculation and of my conclusion that Sessions doesnt deserve to be attacked for taking the Attorney General job and for not resigning.

This was the only criticism of Sessions that Scott leveled in his email to me. But now he levels an additional one. He doubts that Sessions needed to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. (To be clear, I dont understand Scott to be demonizing Sessions for this decision.)

Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation because that investigation centered on the Trump 2016 campaign, and Sessions was a central figure in the campaign. In addition, Sessions had met members of the Russian government a few times while the campaign was in progress.

I think Sessions made the right decision as a matter of legal ethics. No one should oversee the investigation of an enterprise he was intimately involved in, especially when its possible that his testimony will be sought in the investigation.

This, I take it, is why Attorney General William Barr says that Sessions probably made the right decision when he recused himself. One can disagree with Barr, of course. However, given the high regard in which Scott and I hold the current AG, it seems unfair to portray Sessions with contempt or blame for making a decision Barr says was probably right.

Barrs view is supported by the fact that the legal ethics advisers at the Department of Justice counseled Sessions to recuse himself. In an email to Scott, Andy McCarthy said he doesnt doubt that the advice came from the same people who were signing off on the preposterous Carter Page FISA warrants.

I dont know who at the DOJ performed the legal analysis regarding the Sessions recusal matter, and from Andys careful phrasing it seems he doesnt know either. I dont assume that the legal analysis of the ethical issue was performed by someone who approved the Page FISA warrant.

In any case, I think the ethics advice was sound. If an Obama attorney general had worked on an Obama election campaign that was under investigation (whether or not the investigation was labeled criminal), and that attorney general remained in charge of the investigation, Im pretty sure conservatives would have screamed bloody murder. And justifiably so.

Sessions was right not to put himself in that conflicted position. And those who, like the president, attacked him for it were wrong to do so, in my view.

Finally, Scott takes issue with my statement that Trump wanted Sessions to be his consigliere. But Trump expected Sessions to protect him (and I assume wants Barr to do the same, seemingly a source of mounting frustration for Barr). Thats my understanding of what a consigliere does, albeit typically in relation to a mafia boss. (I hope readers understood that I was not accusing Trump of being a mafia boss.)

According to reports, Trump complained to Don McGahn, the White House counsel, that he needed his attorney general to protect him the way Robert Kennedy protected JFK and Eric Holder protected Obama. Trump asked McGahn, Wheres my Roy Cohn?

Bobby Kennedy and Cohn were consigliere-like, in my view. Holder described himself as Obamas wingman. He didnt fit the literal definition of a wingman, but the description was apt nonetheless. Trumps view of his attorney generals role doesnt fit the literal definition of a consigliere, but I think the description is apt nonetheless.

Admittedly, my choice of words was harsh. But it was based on my view that Trump has (or at least had) a terribly misguided view of the attorney generals proper role. That role is not to protect the president, it is to enforce federal law.

Trumps view of the AGs role as his protector, if it persists, risks making the Justice Department an instrument for the advancement of the presidents personal interests. It risks making our justice system about the rule of a man, not the rule of law.

Jeff Sessions had the correct view of the attorney generals role. If anything, he should be praised, not demonized, for that.

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Regarding Jeff Sessions: A reply to Scott Johnson - Power Line

"Do you really trust these clowns?" So asks a new billboard going up on New York City's Times Square this weekend. The video broadcast on the billboard was exclusively provided to PJ Media. The video ad mocks leaders in the Democratic Party by putting their heads on the bodies of clowns at a circus.

The "DC Clowns" circus show features "Crazy Joe Biden," "Bernie Socialist Sanders," "Nervous Nancy Pelosi," "Shifty Adam Schiff," "Wacky Elizabeth Warren," "Lil Jerry Nadler," and "Clueless Chuck Schumer."

The Committee to Defend the President, a super PAC supporting President Donald Trump, launched the ad as part of a $40,000 ad buy.

"From the Democrats making fools of themselves on the campaign trail to those who foolishly sought to impeach President Trump, the Democratic Party is now a circus of epic proportions," PAC Chairman Ted Harvey told PJ Media. "The Committee to Defend the President will continue to expose their foolishness and support President Trump, as he prepares to serve Americans for a second term."

While it may seem undignified to mock the Democrats in this fashion, many of the figures in this ad have indeed beclowned themselves many times over.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for instance, rushed the impeachment of President Donald Trump, insisting that the House of Representatives had no time to defend its subpoenas against the president's executive privilege in court. This led the House to add a second impeachment article "obstruction of Congress." Law professor Jonathan Turley famously called impeaching the president on these grounds an "abuse of power." Yet weeks later when the House had passed the articles of impeachment, the very same Nancy Pelosi refused to send them over to the Senate, delaying the very process she insisted must be rushed to prevent Trump from threatening the 2020 election.

In a similar vein, House impeachment managersReps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) argued that Trump's executive privilege was an impeachable offense when they had vociferously defended former President Barack Obama's executive privilege after Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress for refusing documents in the "Fast & Furious" scandal.

Joe Biden has beclowned himself over and over and over on the campaign trail, from his infamous Silver Star story fabrication to his calling a New Hampshire voter a "lying dog-faced pony soldier." He began the New Hampshire Democratic debate last Friday by conceding he would likely lose, and then he shamefully skipped town on the night of the primary, leaving his campaign staff and volunteers in the lurch as he rushed down to South Carolina. I'm not sure "crazy" is a sufficiently offensive moniker.

As for Elizabeth Warren, it is certainly both "wacky" and clownish to present yourself as Native American for years, even getting touted by Harvard and published in a Cherokee cookbook, and then to insist you never received "any benefit" from the ruse whatsoever. Warren's pie-in-the-sky "plans" for government takeovers of whole industries also received much-deserved derision last year.

Bernie Sanders may be the greatest clown of all. He's more eloquent than Joe Biden and far more authentic than Elizabeth Warren, but his victory would represent the Soviets finally winning the Cold War against the U.S. While he firmly rejects the label now, he oncedidn't mind being called a communist. He infamously honeymooned in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and worked with various Marxist political parties during his time as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. He endorsed Socialist Workers Party candidates for president in the 1980s when that party was pointing to Soviet-aligned countries like Nicaragua and Cuba as inspirations for U.S. policy. His support for this party prompted an FBI investigation.

Democrats are terrified of having Bernie at the top of the ticket, but a Sanders nomination would be a fitting capstone for the Democratic Party's increasing clownishness.

While Americans should be terrified of this party, Jack Dunphy pointed out that it's healthy to have a laugh at some of the absurdity.

Watch the ad below.

Tyler O'Neil is the author ofMaking Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at@Tyler2ONeil.

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Times Square Billboard Mocks Clowns in the Democratic Party - PJ Media

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, discusses government spending, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and says she plans to stay in the 2020 race.

Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard defended her decision to file a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton in January, insisting that it was not a political maneuver.

"It's important to understand that this is not just another political thing where one person said this, another person said that," Gabbard told FOX Business' Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday. "The accusation that Hillary Clinton made really devalues the essence of who I am."

In the lawsuit, Gabbard claimed the2016 Democratic nominee defamed her when she called her a "Russian asset" during an October podcast interview.

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"Clinton lied about her perceived rival Tulsi Gabbard," the lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court in New York, read. "She did so publicly, unambiguously, and with obvious malicious intent. Tulsi has been harmed by Clintons lies and American democracy has suffered as well."

During an October interview, Clinton suggestedthat an unnamed Democratic presidential candidate was "the favorite of the Russians."

"I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate," Clinton said, speaking on a podcast withDavid Plouffe, a former adviser to President Obama.

TRUMP WEIGHS IN ON CLINTON-SANDERS FEUD: 'NOBODY LIKES HER. THAT'S WHY SHE LOST'

Although she never named Gabbard, a four-term congresswoman from Hawaii,there were just five women running for president at the time: Gabbard, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and MarianneWilliamson.

"This is about my life, and the oath of loyalty and service, willingness to lay down one's life for this country," Gabbard said on Wednesday.

"I am not willing to standby to allow her or any of her powerful allies or partners to take such an action, which is why I filed this lawsuit," she added.

The Hawaii representative is the first female combat veteran to run for president. She served in the Army National Guard for 16 years and has made that service an integral part of her bid for president.

Gabbard's suit suggests that Clinton targeted her with a false accusation for "retribution" over her endorsement of Vermont Sen. BernieSanders, Clinton's rival in the Democratic primary, in 2016. (Sanderseventually endorsed Clinton for president in July 2016).

According to an aggregate of polls, Gabbard is currently in ninth nationally. She has not qualified for the Democratic debate in Las Vegas next week.

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See the article here:
Tulsi Gabbard defends decision to sue Hillary Clinton: 'This is not just another political thing' - Fox Business

Jane O'Meara Sanders said elite establishment figures from both political parties are afraid of her husband's policies promoting affordable health care and education, noting that the U.S. "already has socialism" -- but only for corporations.

Sanders, the wife of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, told Fox News Saturday the "powers-that-be" in America are placing a shallow focus on her husband's "Democratic socialist" label instead of what they're really attacking -- his campaign policies. Jane Sanders said "corporate socialism" has benefited billionaires like President Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg, while hard-working U.S. taxpayers end up paying for their business subsidies and bailouts. She rejected Joe Biden's claims that Bernie Sanders can't win by citing her husband's back-to-back popular vote victories in Iowa and New Hampshire.

She called on the news media and the Democratic National Committee to talk honestly about the senator's campaign policies, and not focus on labels and Hillary Clinton "hypothetical" scenarios.

"There's clearly a pushed effort to find an alternative to your husband. What do you make of that?" asked Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto.

"I think it's pretty obvious, [Bernie Sanders is] running a campaign that is 'not me, us' that's about getting the working class a fair shake and being able to provide Medicare-for-all, affordable health care, affordable education and a Green New Deal. There are the powers-that-be and the status quo that don't want him to do those things," she said.

"They're using lots of other reasons why they don't support him, but the fact is it's the issues. And we are talking about transforming this country and not having the powers-that-be continue to be the-powers-that-be," Sanders told Cavuto. "Make it more government of the people and by the people."

Cavuto pressed the question and said a lot of DNC and media figures "respect your husband's consistency a great deal, but they think he's a sure loser" solely because of the "Democratic socialist" tag.

"Everyone is talking about the label - we have 'socialism' right now but it's not 'Democratic socialism,' it's called 'corporate socialism,'" Sanders replied.

Her husband has consistently accused the country's wealthiest individuals of running a rich-only form of socialism such as the 2008 taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street. New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another self-described "Democratic socialist," had previously echoed similar sentiments to that of Jane Sanders' in asking "hypocritical" Republicans why they don't criticize Trump's massive farm bailout as "socialism."

"President Trump got $800 million for his real estate development company. That's corporate socialism paid for from the working class to the rich," said Sanders. "We see that all the time, subsidies to the fossil fuel industries. We think the priorities need to be shifted so that people get those subsidies and we have the ability to access higher education if you have the willingness and the ability to do so.

"We want people to be less stressed about having health care and being able to afford health care or at-home care for their elderly parents," she continued. "It's which side are you on and I think that's clear to everyone who knows him is that Bernie is honestly and consistently on the side of the working class."

She urged U.S. news media and DNC figures to help "get beyond the top-level 'Democratic socialism' fearmongering and instead focus on improving health care for average Americans.

Sanders brushed off an unsubstantiated Drudge Report claim Saturday that Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton may pair up as running mates, saying: "Mayor Bloomberg can choose whoever he wants for a running mate. But he's not going to get there." She similarly addressed Cavuto's question about Clinton's interview last month in which she claimed "nobody likes" Senator Sanders.

"I like him. And I think a lot of people like him. I'm not here to talk about Hillary Clinton," she replied succinctly.

"I tend to not worry and waste time on hypotheticals. I think what we need to do is win and win well in all the races. The problem is by starting with 25 people, and eleven in Iowa and New Hampshire, the problem with having so many people ... but the field is winnowing."

Sanders acknowledged it is a "concern" the DNC might try to give the nomination to an establishment figure. But she hopes the party will "give the nomination to the person who has the plurality and that it will be fair."

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Jane Sanders: Bernie Campaign Will Remove 'Powers-That-Be' From Government - Newsweek