Here’s the latest installment of my John Durham series published by The American Spectator. Like the previous articles, this one made Real Clear Politic‘s “Most Read” list and has gone viral. Later today I will be a guest on Chicago’s Morning Answer AM560 to discuss the Durham investigation. When I receive the audio download, I will post it on Knowledge is Good. In the meantime, get out your Ovaltine secret decoder, sit back and enjoy this latest cliff-hanger episode of “John Durham Blows Up Washington”. Note: For those of you who never had the privilege of growing up in the...
Here’s my take on the Trump impeachment trial which appears in today’s The American Spectator. You can read it below or, if you want to see the readers’ comments, you can access it here. Hope you like it! How Not to Impeach a President | The American Spectator With the 51 to 49 vote not to call witnesses, the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump is on track to an acquittal. And so the Trump impeachment saga is coming to an end not with a bang but a whine. “We wuz robbed!” shriek the foot-stomping Democrats as they repeat their...
Webster’s dictionary defines “Potemkin village” as “an impressive façade or show designed to hide an undesirable fact or condition.” So it is that the adjective “Potemkin” is used to characterize any artifice contrived to deceive others into thinking that things are better than they really are. As set forth below, I pose the question as to whether or not, based on its operations and recent events, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”) can fairly be described as a Potemkin institution which in reality serves only to give the false impression that it is protecting U.S. citizens by imposing constitutional limits on...
Hope you had a happy and harmonious (i.e., politics-free) Thanksgiving. This year, for the first time in decades, my bride and I sheltered in place instead of joining the nationwide mass migration to visit kids, grandkids and relatives. We skipped the home-cooked turkey, too, and dined out on professionally-prepared Thanksgiving cuisine. Not exactly a Norman-Rockwell-Hallmark-Channel family event, but not bad. Meanwhile, The American Spectator published my article about the Office of Inspector General’s report on the many deficiencies of the FBI’s faux program for validating the reliability of its confidential informants. You can access it by clicking this link. Or...
My post Tap Dancing Through the Ukrainian Minefield has been retitled and published by my friends at The American Spectator. Since the editors at TAS were able to clean up the piece – including removing the goofy formatting of the astonishing ZeroHedge article – I have substituted the far cleaner TAS article for yesterday’s post. As always, I want to thank the TAS’ editors for their help and consideration. Here’s the article An Impeachment Defense: It Most Justifiably Means Going on Offense | The American Spectator Legats. That’s FBI shorthand for its agents who serve as legal attachés in U.S. embassies...
A better-edited version of yesterday’s post The CrowdStrike Panic was published today by my friends at The American Spectator and linked to on Real Clear Politics. Judging by the amount of reader mail and comment, it seems to have stirred up quite a bit of controversy. A few minutes ago I was asked by a producer for the Fox Business Network to appear on The Evening Edit at 6:00 P.M. with host Elizabeth MacDonald. Of course I accepted the invitation and will be appearing via Skype from KIG’s home office. Hope you can tune in and join in the fun. Share...
Not too long ago, I was privileged to represent a former big city police officer who had been charged with raping two young women of questionable virtue. He had met one of them through an online site where, among other things, prostitutes advertised their services. That purported victim had introduced him to her friend who became the second complainant. It was no secret – and the prosecution was well aware – that the two young women were hookers. Nevertheless, despite the fact that my client had retired after being grievously wounded in the line of duty, he was arrested in...
Last Thursday I attended another meeting of the Saturday Evening Club (which by tradition never meets on a Saturday), a dinner hosted by The American Spectator at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, D.C.. Back in July, I attended a previous such dinner at which the guest of honor was President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. This time, the guest of honor was Attorney General Bill Barr. Attendance was limited to 30 media, political, and business big wigs. How or why I came to be included in this group remains a complete mystery, but I wasn’t about to turn down an invitation to...
“Tickling the wire.” That’s the slang expression used by law enforcement personnel to describe the process of trying to breathe life into a moribund or unproductive wiretap. When the subjects of such surveillance fail to discuss their criminal activities over the monitored telephones or at the bugged premises, surreptitious steps can be taken to induce them to do so. For example, in the case of a federal wiretap on a drug dealer’s telephone, if few incriminating communications have been intercepted, the local police can be enlisted to conduct an apparently unrelated car stop, interrogation and search of the subject. This...
My friends at The American Spectator published my article titled The Art and Science of Cross-Examining Mueller which is an expanded and much improved version of my previous post on the same subject. It generated a flood of emails and a great deal of interest after it was was picked up by Powerline, Real Clear Politics and Lucianne.com. Happily many readers caught and approved of my juvenile and completely tasteless reference to Deliverance at the end of the piece. The American Spectator is converting to a pay site*. Nevertheless, you may still be able to access my article on TAS’ website for...
In a desperate effort to squeeze political advantage out of the Special Counsel’s report exonerating Donald Trump and his presidential campaign of conspiring with Russia to affect the outcome of the 2016 election, Congressional Democrats have subpoenaed Robert Mueller to testify before the Oversight and Judiciary committees of the House of Representatives. They apparently believe that Mueller’s testimony will further their impeachment narrative by drawing public attention to those portions of the report interpreted by some partisans as demonstrating that President Trump obstructed the investigation of his non-conspiracy with Russia. Quite understandably, Congressional Republicans have been slapping their foreheads in...
In 1949 my parents moved from the small town of East Point, Georgia to a quiet, tree-lined street in the northwest section of Atlanta. There we had wonderful neighbors who became our close friends and with whom we shared life’s joys and sorrows. I could – and probably should – write a book about growing up in that neighborhood during the 1950s and 1960s. Until then, suffice it to say that, according to today’s child safety experts, I was killed or seriously maimed approximately 4,279 times before reaching adolescence. The boys on our block played with bows and arrows, knives,...
In his muddled, obfuscatory farewell remarks, Special Counsel Robert Mueller strongly suggested that, although he and his cohort of Hillary Clinton acolytes had reached no conclusion as to whether President Trump had obstructed justice, Congress should address that question by means of the impeachment “process”. Why? Because Team Mueller had not been able to “exonerate” the President. But exoneration is a non-legal standard which completely inverts and perverts our system of justice which places the burden of proof on the prosecution to prove its case. In every criminal trial across America, the judge instructs the jury that the burden of...
As he departed the Justice Department, Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered a valedictory address in which he reiterated the main points of his office’s written investigative report. In doing so, he explicitly confirmed what many of us have recognized from the beginning, i.e., that the efforts of his handpicked team of Hillary Clinton acolytes comprised first, last and always a taxpayer funded exercise in political opposition research masquerading as a criminal investigation of Donald Trump. Regarding whether or not the president had obstructed the special counsel’s investigation of possible collusion with the Russians by the Trump campaign, Mueller cited the...
The Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are gleefully rubbing their hands at the prospect of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony which is scheduled for next week. They apparently think that he will support their claim that the president obstructed Team Mueller’s Russian collusion investigation. Here is my article which was just published on line by The American Spectator in which I outline how the Committee Republicans should cross-examine Mueller. If you want to read the article with reader comments on The American Spectator website click on this link. John Dowd’s Indispensable Work for President Trump | The American...