Why Isn't Domestic Terrorism A Federal Crime? Blame A Daft Interpretation Of The 1st & 2nd Amendments

Two domestic terrorists who ought to have been tossed into Supermax by now: Robert Bowers (L) who committed the Squirrel Hill Synagogue massacre last year, and Cesar Sayoc, the Trumpie renegade who sent dozens of pipe bombs to Dem leaders, others.

Evidently, from reading a piece in The Wall Street Journal yesterday ('Legal Curbs Hobble FBI On Domestic Terror', p. A4) the  white nationalists, Nazis and other extremists can pretty well do what the hell they want in this country and get no more than a wrist slap if that-  at least from the federal authorities. As we read:

"Lawmakers from both parties have made the case in recent years to make domestic terror a crime".

Hmmm....I'd always assumed it was a crime, but clearly not if lawmakers now wish to make it such.  And why is this?

"Americans' rights to speak, organize in groups and even stockpile firearms are largely protected by the Constitution"

Which of course is a total misreading of that document. Because if you are organizing like on 8chan to attack a Jewish synagogue or a Muslim mosque, and stockpiling arms under some white Aryan umbrella ("speech") for that, then you sure as hell are a terrorist and criminal and merit the full heavy hand of the law.

Take the stockpiling weapons issue. Here again the Right and its supporters have lost all claims to common sense in interpretation of the Constitution.  Because if you are caught with a cache of military grade weapons such as shown below, you definitely ought to have your ass in the slammer.

Nazi sympathizer's Christoper Hasson's weapons stash - which ought to have earned him at least a year in the slammer on suspicion of mass murder or domestic terrorism

Take a gander at the weapons stash above. It is not innocuous or benign! There is NO good reason to have assembled such high -powered military weapons in one place. But this is the weapons stash found in February compliments of another domestic terrorist,  Christopher Hasson.

Prosecutors said Hasson was a “domestic terrorist” and that he should be detained. He was arrested  on drugs and weapons charges. Incredibly (and inexplicably) there was no DOJ alert or followup news release - as if the agency sought to contain the news that this bad guy was not a Muslim,  But as noted by David Cay Johnston at the time,  after Jeff Sessions came in as AG, the cases involving  right wing domestic terror were "downgraded", i.e. shuffled to the backburner.

We now know Hasson - who incredibly reached the status of Lt. in the Coast Guard-  intended “to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country”, according to a filing to federal court in Maryland. Law enforcement officers seized 15 guns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his home.  What has become of this POS?  Nothing!    We learned in The Baltimore Sun (April 25):

"U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Day noted Thursday that 50-year-old Christopher Hasson hasn't been charged with any terrorism related crimes and is therefore entitled to be released."

So, of course, he's cleared now to assemble another more deadly cache of weapons and this next time to massacre maybe dozens of people.   Why? Because of inane, lax interpretations of the Constitution which lets the crazies and terrorists have at it while the innocent cower and shake in fear  - because, well, the law is a frickin' ass. 

How do I know this?  Because the reprobate had Democrats in his sights and his online targeting materials read like a 'Who's Who' of liberal media stars and politicians.  The filing acknowledged  Hasson to be a fan of the Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, and that he had compiled a spreadsheet of targets, including:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Scarborough, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris,  Cory Booker and Ilhan Omar, as well as Chris Hayes ('All In') and CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. 

Hasson’s  terror plot was first noted by Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of George Washington University’s program on extremism and a former US anti-terrorism official.  It was, as I said, not put out there by the DOJ.   We also now know this rabid dog  had been stockpiling weapons in his cramped basement apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland - probably for months in anticipation of his Nazi-spawned bloodbath.

Here's the deal: Once you are proven to have  stockpiled weapons and compiled lists of targets it is no longer fantasy land and you have transited into hard reality. Therein you deserve being arrested, read your rights, then locked away in a secure hole to await a trial by a jury of your peers. No namby -pamby "plea bargains" either-   any more than you'd award them to an Isis butcher who just beheaded two Christian girls.

Then there is the Tree of Life synagogue massacre that traversed from ideation to reality. .  Eleven people were killed and six wounded in the worst ever massacre of Jews in U.S. History. The slaughter  - at a synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh  was the work of a  brain-poisoned crazy of the extreme Right  named Robert Bowers who likely got infected by Trump's own hate rhetoric.

We know that  Bowers took to "Gab", a white extremist hate site,  like a fly takes to  dog shit. There he shared a stream of anti-Jewish slurs and conspiracy theories, including repeating one long held trope of Right wing loons:

"Jews are the children of Satan"

Basically dehumanizing Jews just like Hitler and the Nazis did, turning them into an alien "Other" and hence fit for attacks.  Bowers didn't invent all this hideous brain poison, but he did imbibe it and it drove his actions like it has millions of others who even now are just waiting for the right words from their Fuhrer Trump to act.

 Bowers also frequently reposted anti-Semitic content that alleged Jews control the nation. On a doctored image of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he altered the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" to  read: “Lies Make Money.” Another post said: “Open you Eyes! It’s the filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL Muslims into the Country!!”

Bowers was also fixated on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) which helps immigrants settle in the U.S. In his last post before the shooting, this slime ball wrote: "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered."

Bowers, as Janice had volunteered at the time, at least needed to be locked up in a psych ward as a palpable risk to others, namely Jews.  

Then there was Cesar Sayoc, who - before his pipe bomb dissemination in October 2018 -  had been arrested nearly a dozen times in Florida, including a 2002 arrest for making a bomb threat. His criminal record in the state extended to the early 1990s, starting with his arrest for larceny at the age of 29, according to state records. Other charges of larceny, grand theft and fraud would soon follow across the southern part of the state.

In the 2002 bomb threat case, Sayoc pleaded guilty to the felony without a trial and was sentenced to probation. Probation for a bomb threat?! Why the hell wasn't he given five years? 

But then we learn the sorry answer in the WSJ piece, previously cited:

"Severe legal constraints limit what the FBI can do at hone. And anything that would allow more rigorous intelligence gather on purely domestic threats could run aground in the courts and prompt criticism in Congress."

So, let's get this straight: The FBI can go full barrel in to halt a band of Isis renegades planning to do a mass beheading and  blowing up nail bombs in Times Square.  But can't do diddly or squat if white Aryan Nations, KKK and other extremists are planning a Vegas-style bump stock mass shooting of blacks and Jews - say in Dallas.

Sorry, this does not compute! But then as we learn (WSJ, ibid.):

"Domestic terrorism isn't a federal crime in itself"


So a cabal of white nationalist, Aryans, Nazis and other refuse can plan mass slaughters to their hearts' content and no federal law enforcement agency can do a thing to stop it, i.e. "without evidence of the violent crime."

In other words, in the federal milieu we'd have to wait for the scum to blow up or shoot up innocents before making a move.   Thus:

"As a result the law enforcement response to domestic terrorism has been largely reactive instead of proactive."

What this means is that bringing down the hammer on these lethal malcontents is left to local law enforcement, such as the bust of the 15 year old punk in Volusia County, FL.  This was the imp who volunteered on a gaming site that he planned to bring his dad's M15 to a school gathering to take out as many as he could.  Of course, his whiny mom tried to defend the little savage,   screaming at the cops: "Well, he's just a little boy!"

Nope, at 15 he's no longer a little boy.  There've also been a half dozen other scumballs that  local authorities have busted who had telegraphed their plans for mayhem on Jews or  other minorities. They include one white nationalist from Ohio - who had also marched in Charlottesville 2 years ago, who even had obtained a .40 caliber weapon to take out the innocents in a Jewish community center.

Fortunately, in other words, local cops are not sitting and waiting (like the Feds) for massive violence to happen. They are taking proactive action on the basis of just the threats. As one put it on the NBC News last night:  'They better understand now that just making threats can get you years behind bars."

As it damned well should be, because threats of violence cannot be "free speech" as so many of the Right's imbeciles claim.

Former FBI special agent Cliff Watts in his recent WSJ Review piece, 'Our New Terrorism Problem' (Aug. 10-11, p. C1)   writes:

"Today's white supremacist terrorists band together online, further radicalize themselves and fire one another up in much the same manner as their jihadist counterparts."

And we know for a fact the El Paso mass killer (Patrick Crusius) got his launch for butchery on 8 chan where the local den of cockroaches cheered him on.  One even writing:

"The new guy deserves some praise, he reached almost a third of the high score."

Referring to a third of the nearly 60 slaughtered in the Orlando Pulse nightcliub massacre.  And as I pointed out at the tie:

"If the FBI had been monitoring the site they'd have been alerted to his plans, put a GPS or other tracking on his vehicle, then taken him out before he even got to the outskirts of El Paso  Then 22 lives could have been saved.  "

And as Cliff Watts aptly noted (ibid.):

"The overall goal is clear and urgent: detect violent white supremacists online and intercept them on the ground by increasing the volume of intelligence and the speed with which it is shared among federal, state and local law enforcement officers."

Adding:
"As white supremacists have been pushed from more mainstream social media platforms, they have descended on less policed, more anonymous platforms such as Gab.com and 8chan."


Hopefully, we can soon get the Feds to catch up with local law enforcement to bust the domestic terrorists and also ensure they're all put away long enough to never darken anyone's door with terror again. Or at least give them each 5 years each in a federal pen for making threats, even if they don't carry them out.

See also:

Terrorism

Should We Fight a War on White Terrorism?

by Harry Blain | August 22, 2019 - 6:24am | permalink
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And:

Constitution, Civil Rights, Civil Liberties

Are Terrorist Watch Lists Expanding Under Trump?

And:

Donald Trump

Trump's Putrid Anti-Semitism; But Oh Well, Just Another Day in America

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/02/sorry-you-have-no-constitutional-right.html

No More Kid Gloves For Domestic Terrorists - It's Time To Treat Them Like Al Qaeda & ISIS Vermin

Right Wing terrorist Robert Dear blurts out his guilt in court, in December, 2015. 


It was back in November, 2015 that domestic terrorist Robert Lewis Dear, 57, had been arrested and charged with shooting three people to death and wounding nine others,  including five police officers.  This was at a Planned Parenthood clinic here  in Colorado Springs, in which he took aim using an AK-47, the same type of weapon used by the White Nationalist terrorist Patrick Crusius in the El Paso butchery.

At the time I recall going at it with my (now deceased) brother Mike, a strong NRA guy, e.g.

who himself owned an AR, and leaned toward Rightist ideology, though to my knowledge he never entertained ideations of retribution against Jews, undocumented immigrants or LGBT people.  Nonetheless, he did feel Dear was getting a raw deal - and like other right wingers-  had come out strongly against a 2009  Dept. Of Homeland Security report by domestic terror specialist Darryl Johnson.  Johnson at the time headed up a 6-person team at DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis which had focused on right wing extremism and terrorism   The paper produced at the time exposed a linkage between Christian fundie religious terrorists (like Dear) who kill abortion providers, as well as anti-immigration and other anti-Semitic extremists.

Alas, the report was pilloried by conservatives and GOP groups as picking on their lot while leaving the left alone, and ignoring the Islamic terrorists.   In the words of Johnson - a self-described conservative Republican: "I didn't think the whole Republican party would basically throw a hissy fit."

Well, they sure did and the effect grew as conservative media's usual whiners (like O'Reilly et al on FOX) painted it as a political hit job by the Obama administration.  My brother Mike (in his blog postings), also depicted it this way, to the point of suggesting Obama had "ordered it".  Ultimately - following the "squeaky wheel"  model -    funding and oversight for domestic terrorism was pulled back in reaction to right wing squeals.  In its wake, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano issued an apology to the American Legion (since one report section concerned returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets) and the number of domestic terror analysts fell to zero by 2010. It was literally a gold-engraved invitation for the rats and roaches to crawl out of the rotting, racist national woodwork.

No one, certainly in the wider media, was able to see how the spread of domestic right wing terror was to metastasize like a cancer gone wild.     Indeed, Johnson's report and the energy devoted to the right wing terrorists proved prescient  given  that since 9/11 far right extremists (including white nationalists) have been responsible for 3 times as many attacks in the U.S. as Islamic extremists.  That stat alone speaks with force to the idea that the full power of the national security state now needs to be brought to bear on the domestic terror elements - including surveillance of all their web cesspools and hiding places. Not necessarily to shut them down but to surveil them for information much as the national security apparatus now does for Isis and al Qaeda bad actors.

This follows the advice of former FBI special agent Cliff Watts in his recent WSJ Review piece, 'Our New Terrorism Problem' (Aug. 10-11, p. C1)  wherein he writes:

"Today's white supremacist terrorists band together online, further radicalize themselves and fire one another up in much the same manner as their jihadist counterparts."

For example, to give an idea of this "firing up" we learned (WSJ, 'Suspect Got Ideas Online', Aug. 6, p. A9):

"In the hours after the attack a discussion broke out on 8chan about his place in the history of mass shooters. One commenter offered:  ' The new guy deserves some praise, he reached almost a third of the high score."

This referred to the fact these cockroaches actually keep score by using the published death counts. Hence, at the time the largest such toll was due to the Orlando Pulse nightclub killer (59) and at the time of the comment Crusius had slaughtered 20. (The death toll has since climbed to 22).   Still other roaches in the vile den of losers were unimpressed and mocked Crusius for failing to kill more people, or for targeting Hispanics instead of Jews.

 Others spewed out praise of the New Zealand mass murderer with this drivel: "Hail St. Tarrant!"  referring to Brenton Tarrant, the slime  who killed 51 Muslims in two Christchurch mosques.

Crusius himself, appeared to lose nerve when first posting on this roach den, writing (ibid.):

"I have to do this before I lose my nerve.  I figured that an underprepared attack and a meh manifesto is better than no attack and no manifesto."

And of course, the most outspoken in the 8chan  roach nest urged him on to action. But stop for a moment: If the FBI had been monitoring the site they'd have been alerted to his plans, put a GPS or other tracking on his vehicle, then taken him out before he even got to the outskirts of El Paso  Then 22 lives could have been saved.  As Cliff Watts aptly noted (ibid.):

"The overall goal is clear and urgent: detect violent white supremacists online and intercept them on the ground by increasing the volume of intelligence and the speed with which it is shared among federal, state and local law enforcement officers."

Adding:

"As white supremacists have been pushed from more mainstream social media platforms, they have descended on less policed, more anonymous platforms such as Gab.com and 8chan."

It is true Crusius' manifesto on 8chan didn't include specific plans to carry out the shooting and as the WSJ piece notes "it isn't clear law enforcement would have taken action even if they had known about it."

This is because "there are many vague threats of hate-filled violence" including 2,730 in a single hour two days following the shooting. Fair enough, but we've since learned Crusius purchased an AK-style weapon and his mother Lori had alerted local authorities. That ought to have been a major red flag in tandem with his 8chan post, especially on the "fear of losing his nerve".  Which I would always take 100 times more seriously than an ordinary threat, i.e. minus any expression of fear.  And as Cliff Watts points out, this is all the more urgent given "violent white supremacism in the U.S. has grown from the bottom up, not the top down."

Basically then, we are dealing with a leaderless,  paranoid pseudo resistance to "elite" democratic norms and laws. This means other (peer) extremists, like on 8chan, or the Daily Stormer, will generally be the immediate stimulus for any attacks, not some distant authority - such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,  who directs the Isis rats.    Thus we have a spontaneously emergent  - but malignant -- social media entity that irrationally glorifies the worst solo mass killers while extolling their monstrous deeds  - and challenging others to surpass them.  In many ways, as bio-ethnologist Jacques Monod would put it, we are confronting one of the most malignant mind viruses.  And just like smallpox or the Ebola virus it needs to be eradicated but there are right and wrong ways to do it.

Current 8chan operator Jim Watkins describes his site in preposterously vanilla terms as "just an open piece of paper for writing on" (Sunday Denver Post, p. 7 A)..  Hardly! It's more akin to an open cyber cesspit inviting every passing hater and miscreant misogynist (incel) or white supremacist to spout his venom and violence and add to the existing, overflowing effluent.

Fortunately, Cliff Watts in his WSJ piece,  offers ways to neutralize this effluent and its more violent, would be terror perpetrators   Many of his proposals also ought to be acceptable in terms of the First Amendment. My brother Mike always would say 'Show me a decent way to temper online speech - say to prevent mass murders- and I'll accept it!"  Well, I believe Mr. Watts has found a way and I suspect Mike might concur if he was still alive.

For example, Watts bids us to honestly acknowledge that "U.S. counterterrorism is behind the times".  This also references Director Chris Wray's recent testimony that "the Bureau has recorded roughly as many domestic terrorism arrests as international terror ones in 2019": and yet the FBI still dedicates more investigators to the latter.  The question is 'Why?'   The answer provided is simply that the "FBI has more resources to tackle the jihadist problem and more legal authority to pursue its adherents."

But this needs to change if the statistics for victims keep accumulating as they are. The most direct way to resolve this issue, which even Mr. Watts has advocated for (in a recent appearance on 'All In' ) is by  using human intelligence in conjunction with extending surveillance of social media sites where these dregs of society congregate   As he also writes:

"Law enforcement and social media companies must also work more transparently together. to detect likely attackers and stem the flood of terrorist and violent content."

This is already being done in the case of child pornography and federal and local authorities can now profile the creators, traffickers, traders and related offenders, as well as track them across the web - to the point of arrest and then prosecution. So why not a similar method to ferret out the mass killers hiding out in assorted rat warrens?   Well, it's largely a matter of will, political and legal.  One answer for Watts is to create a "joint center for social media intelligence where investigators and personnel at the tech companies share information about extremists."   This could work, assuming the social media outfits cooperate, but an even better solution would be to do what is already done for surveillance of child porn creators and purveyors: assign specific task force units to monitor activity 24/7  on supremacist- incel sites - and then drop the hammer when the line is crossed and a transaction or attack is evident.. This can be done with or without social media companies' cooperation. Above all, it ought to be done in the name of national security just as was invoked to monitor Islamic radical attacks.  Watt also adds that: "Investigators must know what to look for. That means a comprehensive study of domestic extremist ideologies, however confused or vitriolic."

We can no longer afford to keep separating the two forms of terror, and then claim we are advocating for the general welfare, and protecting the most vulnerable.  But when more people were murdered last year by  right wing extremists than any year since 1995 (Oklahoma City bombing) and the result is to defund the FBI's counterterrorism domestic task force- well, it's not getting done. No way in hell.  Begging the question that if Islamic terrorists were responsible for committing 75% of all extremist -related fatalities (from 2009-18) would such a blind eye similarly be evident? I doubt it.

Watts' other suggestion of conducting online interventions to match right wing extremists with counselors (to provide an "off ramp")  could also work.  But as my psychology post doc niece Shayl put it: "Yeah, but only if the choice offered is between seeing a counselor or getting ten years in the slammer!"

She has a point.  No intervention toward matching a miscreant with a case worker is likely to be of any use if it's purely voluntary.

What about the availability of military -style weapons like the AR-15, or AK-47?  Cliff Watts pulls no punches in his take that these don't belong on American streets - or in the hands of any respectable citizen. As he writes (ibid.):

"Reducing the impact of domestic terrorism requires restricting the weaponry available to radicals. America should treat guns much the same way it does cars.  Few Americans would want to share the road with unlicensed, untrained and uninsured motorists, but with guns we don't require even one of these elements to protect the public."

Which, of course, is pure, unadulterated insanity, as I often told Mike, including in responding to his then blog posts.  Most salient is Watts next point:

"Weapons of  war, like the assault rifles used by white supremacists in recent weeks....have no place on American streets. Today's terrorists have cops outgunned."

And as I repeatedly told Mike even after he got his own AR-15, one doesn't need such a weapon to protect home and hearth - OR for hunting.  That is bare foolishness.  Nor is there some 2nd amendment right to own such weapons, as I previously posted, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/02/sorry-you-have-no-constitutional-right.html

As blogger David Lindorff put it soon after the Parkland massacre:
"An AR-15 is not a hunting weapon. In fact there’s a reason it’s called an “assault rifle.” As a hunter, unless you’re an atrocious shot and are hunting random flocks of small birds, you certainly don’t need to be able to fire powerful ammunition of two bullets per second — the rate at which experts say an ordinary person could be able to pull the trigger."

By contrast, the knife  -- no matter how sharp or large- must usually be wielded by an assailant in an up close and personal manner. It isn't like taking aim from 20 or more feet away and dispatching victims with the touch of a trigger.  To kill seventeen people  even in the same room - the assailant would have to work demonically, stabbing from one to the other, and there is no assurance any given slash would be a fatal one  say like an  AR-15 bullet fired into a chest.  Even if it took only 3 seconds per stab, this  is much longer than firing 2 rounds per second. And you can't assume the people will just stand there like tackling dummies and let you do them in, oh no. They will react and more than likely several will gang up to take the assailant down. 

This is the first point that the assault rifle lovers must be forced to admit, that it is far more difficult to kill with a knife than an assault weapon.

Cliff Watts has admirably addressed the menace of domestic terrorism with a multi-pronged approach that ought to be taken seriously and implemented with due dispatch.  If it isn't we will see many more of these slaughters -   and the extremists behind them will become ever more emboldened.   The time is now to act and for the sane and rational to cease making excuses.  As Watts noted,the targeted minorities - whether Jews, Hispanics or LGBT people - "still haven't been properly heard or supported by their political leaders."  That needs to change and pronto. Either we're serious about all forms of terrorism- and that includes the use of assault weapons-  or we are merely play- acting when we profess outrage at mass shootings such as occurred in El Paso. 

See also:

• Barr, Trump DoJ hid 2018 report on white supremacy and domestic terrorism 

And:

The QAnon Phenom

P.M. Carpenter

Conservatives and the Right

by P.M. Carpenter | August 9, 2019 - 6:42am  

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/85995/the-qanon-phenom

And:

Guns

Of Course Guns Have Nothing To Do With It

by Pierre Tristam | August 12, 2019 - 7:14am | 

Kim Strassel's Continued Humping Of Clinton Conspiracy Ideations Shows She's Gone 'Round the Bend'

With Robert Mueller's investigation rapidly tightening  the noose around Trump's
 fat neck it's understandable the traitor's boot and ass lickers would do everything in their power to provide him specious cover,  especially in the co-opted, i.e. Trump- tainted,  media. That media that gushes fake facts and distortions to prop up Doh-turd as easily as its denizens breathe.  That includes the likes of Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Tucker Carlson et al at FOX News, but also the resident Clinton conspiracists at the WSJ, especially Kimberley Strassel (above left) and Holman Jenkins.

But as goofy as he was, Jenkins at least appears to have moved on to other subjects like trade, tariffs, and Elon Musk (Tesla).  Not so with Kimberley Strassel. She keeps relentlessly pounding the drum for a hidden Clinton conspiracy like a brain- jacked refugee from 4chan, or an op-ed columnist who's exhausted her store of significant topics.  

This came to the fore again in her latest effort ('When Justice Is Only Partial', WSJ, Aug. 24, p. A13) in which she fulminates that:

"The country has watched the FBI treat one presidential campaign with kid gloves, the other with informants, warrants and eavesdropping"

Earlier insisting Americans are "furious that Lady Justice seems to have it in for only one side"   adding:

"And they are now witnessing unequal treatment in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe."

Please, Kim, you need to lay off the MJ candy and wine, or maybe at least the wine. It's clear you're so brain-addled now you couldn't write beyond your pet conspiracy obsession if you tried.  What we really need is for this mistress of misinformation to chill out, take a deep breath and look at the facts, at reality and then ask herself: 'Why is it that only one campaign is under the microscope?'

Let's begin by noting the Manafort jury found for 8 charges against this former Trump campaign chairman lowlife, including filing a false tax return in each of the years from 2010 through 2014  as well as two counts of bank fraud. The jury was deadlocked on the other ten counts, likely because one female member held out after watching a Trump "witch hunt" tweet on FOX News.  An even more impactful trial is coming up for Manafort on charges more directly linked to the Russian conspiracy case.

Then there were  the  8 charges on Michael Cohen, revealing a blatant effort by Trump to conceal his unsavory liaisons with a porn star and former Playboy model.  Cohen confirmed he was "directed" by Trump (ID'd as "individual-1") to hide those revelations which likely would have cost him the needed electoral votes to snatch victory from the jaws of certain defeat. In the charging documents filed last Tuesday Cohen claimed Trump directed him to make payments that violated campaign finance laws in an effort to stop Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film actress, and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, from going public about alleged extramarital affairs.

Ultimately, this is where Trump... our dear traitor...errr leader, faces gravest peril in that under federal law hush money payments made before an election are considered in-kind contributions to a campaign  and must be  disclosed. This is irrespective of whether the money came from the candidate's own paws or his campaign's. Conspiring to generate such a contribution in excess of $25,000 is an indictable offense and a felony.  While it is claimed "sitting presidents cannot be indicted" this is purely under DOJ current policy - not law. Bear that in mind as this whole sordid tableaux unfolds, and also the primary reason Trump would have used this ploy: to illegitimately snatch an election!

  Kim also appears to forget that it was her master Trump who - on July 26, 2016-  openly implored the Russians to hack Hillary's emails. In other words, openly pandering for the commission of the crime that occurred one day later.  In front of millions, the Orange Turd had baldly blurted:

"I will tell you this, Russia if you're listening, I hope that you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. You will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."

So Trump, in full public view, asked Russia to hack his political opponent.  Did this just come out of the blue as a brain fart blurt? Not at all, given we know Russia has been funding Trump since the late 1980s. Does Kim know any of that? Evidently not.  As per The New Republic (Aug./Sept. 2017, . p. 29):

"A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, or even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money .....Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics....It's entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters."

Dotard also boasted:   “I love WikiLeaks” and mentioned its revelations 164 times in the last month of the campaign. “This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable,” Trump said on Oct. 12. Eight days later, he marveled, “Boy, that WikiLeaks has done a job on her, hasn’t it?"

And Kim has the absolute chutzpah, the sheer nerve,  to question why it's "all on one side".  Jeezus, talk about being divorced from reality!  Another hobby horse of hers has been to try to implicate the Clinton campaign with "illegal" use of Fusion GPS to rain on Trump's parade and justify surveillance. Not in the least aware of several things:

1)  The hysteria about the Fusion GPS oppo research was exposed once it was learned the original firm that hired them was The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site. The relevant  WSJ editorial at the time noted it was funded by big GOP donor Paul Singer.  Singer wanted oppo research done on a two bit Queens' chiseler he didn't trust. Singer and a group of old guard GOP donors hired Fusion GPS to do the job of digging up dirt on the Queens' grifter. Subsequently, after Trump won the Repub primary the material was handed off to the Clinton campaign. This was NOT unlawful as Strassel tries to portray - unlike her master who  (along with Don Jr., Manafort, Kushner etc.)  engaged Russian assets (e.g. Natalia Veselnitskaya)  to help him with oppo dirt  on Clinton. 

2) Foreign intercepts of meetings of Trump cronies, e.g. Carter Page, with Russian  (GRU) agents meant that the U.S. had to enter the picture with its own FISA warrants, surveillance, etc. Not to do so would have violated agreements with foreign intel sources, assets. 

3)Strassel's other favorite target has been Christopher Steele, about whom I've written before. He  is no clown or stooge or  likely to be "fooled"  as Kimberly Strassel claimed in an earlier hit job (WSJ, 'The Fusion Collusion').  According to one Financial Times account (Feb. 16) , Steele was the "UK intelligence expert on Russia".  It is, therefore, highly unlikely he'd be "fooled" by any kind of false intel or disinformation as Strassel seems to believe.  James Nixey, the head of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, informed the AP that sections of the dossier document created by Steele "read exactly as reports from the secret services".

The point is there was not a damned thing sinister or wrong about Hillary's campaign hiring Fusion GPS or Fusion recruiting Chris Steele to dig up material on a lowlife vermin who would soon control the nuclear codes - IF he became president.  

Why worry? After Trump's siding with Putin over the U.S.  in Helsinki, e.g.  "I think I have a very good relationship with President Putin.  I think we're being hurt very badly by this witch hunt, I would call it the rigged witch hunt. You know,  in the United States we have this pure stupidity but it makes it very hard to do something with Russia"

 The little degenerate even offered to dispatch American citizens to be interrogated by the KGB! Strassel ought to be worried, and to recognize the wrong person won the 2016 election.

According to Robert Mueller's latest indictment:

"On or about July 27, 2016, the conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts on a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. They also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign. '

Most interesting, this happened on the very same day Traitor Trump appeared in front of the media cameras and pleaded with Russia to hack Hillary's emails. And after all, Hillary lost thanks to Trump's conspiracy with the Russians to leverage him into power. So who is really the victim here, Kim?  And who, pray tell, did the FBI Director Comey open up on 11 days before the freaking election? A Russian pawn leveraged into high office with the assistance of mobster cronies and foreign agents who hacked and lied (using bots on social media sites) or a woman whose campaign site was hacked by the same vermin? After Trump begged them to do so?  All this is why Ms. Strassel's plaintive whine of "Where is Mr.Mueller's case against Hillary for America?" rings hollow.  There is no case, Kim, because there's no "there" there.

FBI agent Cliff Watts has observed: 

“Without the Russian influence effort, I believe Trump would not have even been within striking distance of Clinton on Election Day.” 

That is the inconvenient truth the Trump lapdogs and conspiracy addled media stooges like Kimberley  Strassel  won’t admit.  But maybe in time we can at least get her to concede the "lady justice" effort now focused on Trump, his nefarious Russkie associates and campaign is not "one sided justice."  Yuh think?

 See also:

Trumputin's Mob Masters Own the White House, but for How Long?