2 Cases Threaten to Shut Down Public Prayer. Why the Supreme Court May Need to Act.

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Two federal appeals courts are considering whether elected leaders throughout the Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions must abandon the 200-year-old practice of opening local meetings with an invocation.

Both cases could end up before the Supreme Court by Christmas time.

In one case, a self-described pagan sued the board of commissioners of Jackson County, Michigan, arguing that its tradition of beginning monthly board meetings with an invocation violates the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, the First Amendment provision disallowing government from establishing an official religion.

In 1983, the Supreme Court in Marsh v. Chambers examined Nebraska’s practice of employing a salaried Christian chaplain who offered the Legislature’s invocations for 16 years, and held that “legislative prayers” at policymaking-body meetings are constitutional.

The court noted that the first Congress wrote the Establishment Clause in the same week it passed laws to create a House chaplain and Senate chaplain, whose public duties included offering invocations every day that Congress is in session.

Over the next three decades, some lower courts and academics speculated that Marsh might be a one-off exception to normal Establishment Clause rules. Some argued that invocations must be generic, and therefore mentioning Jesus Christ or making other sectarian references would be unconstitutional.

In 2014, the Supreme Court addressed this confusion by taking another case concerning a New York town where the invocations are offered by local volunteer clergy—all of whom were Christian.

In Town of Greece v. Galloway, the court held that these invocations, too, are constitutional, even if all the prayer-givers happen to be Christian and include sectarian content from a single faith.

But litigation persisted, now focusing on the identity of the prayer-givers.

Plaintiffs argued that invocations given by government officials are unconstitutionally coercive because they might imply that lawmakers will use their official powers against those who refuse to participate in the invocations.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit rejected that argument when a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 for the government in Lund v. Rowan County, North Carolina.

However, the Richmond-based appeals court reheard the case in March in a rare en banc proceeding in which all 15 judges participated. It is very possible the en banc court will invalidate Rowan County’s invocations in the next few weeks.

The opposite situation is currently unfolding in Michigan in the case of Bormuth v. County of Jackson.

There, a Clinton-appointed district judge upheld the county’s practice of allowing each of its nine commissioners to rotate having an opportunity to deliver an invocation, each according to his or her personal faith.

Because all nine commissioners are Christian, the plaintiff argues that the resulting Christian invocations violate the Establishment Clause.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reversed the lower court’s ruling in a divided 2-1 decision, ruling that such practices are unconstitutional.

But on June 14, attorneys with First Liberty Institute will present arguments as all 15 judges of the Cincinnati-based appeals court rehear that case en banc.

It is very possible that by late this year, a “circuit split” situation could occur between en banc appeals courts.

If that happens, one or both of these cases will become prime candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear in 2018 as a major religious liberty case.

Legislator-led invocations fall within a broad historical tradition going back to the founding of the republic. The Town of Greece decision made clear that the Establishment Clause must be interpreted consistently with what the framers of the Constitution understood to be establishing religion.

Because these invocations do not establish an official religion, as “establishment” has been historically understood, and because the invocations do not require or coerce anyone to participate, they are perfectly constitutional.

If the Supreme Court means to enforce its decision in Town of Greece that centuries-old prayer traditions do not violate the Establishment Clause, then these cases may be at the forefront of a fundamental restoration of religious liberty in America. (For more from the author of “2 Cases Threaten to Shut Down Public Prayer. Why the Supreme Court May Need to Act.” please click HERE)

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Exposing the EPA’s Gold King Mine Cover-Up

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Does the Environmental Protection Agency care more about its image than it does about the environment?

Its behavior in response to the massive 2015 Gold King Mine disaster in Colorado would suggest a very clear “yes.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is hiding its incredible recklessness in the affair by giving official accounts that are clearly contradicted by ample evidence in the government’s possession.

As the new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt has an opportunity to drain a bit of the swamp by exposing the EPA’s cover-up.

An Environmental Disaster

In August 2015, an EPA crew inexplicably dug out the rock and rubble “plug” to the long abandoned Gold King Mine, triggering a massive blowout that flooded the Animas River with 3 million gallons of acid mine drainage and, according to the EPA, over 550 tons of metals.

Had the EPA actually been doing what it claims it did, the disaster would never have happened. However, it seems the EPA could not allow its reputation to be tarnished with the truth.

The EPA has put forth the fiction that its crew had simply removed backfill that was blocking access to a mine tunnel, but did not disturb the natural plug that had formed in the tunnel’s opening that was holding back a sea of acid mine drainage.

The EPA claims its crew planned to wait for experts who would address the plug. It says its team was just further cleaning up the site when, through some inexplicable bad luck, the plug eroded, causing a blowout that turned the Animas River bright orange.

In essence, the agency wants us to believe that this was an accident that could have happened to anybody.

The truth the EPA is concealing is that its team did not stop after excavating to the tunnel’s opening, and never had any intention of stopping.

The EPA crew began removing the plug as it had planned, even though it anticipated acid mine drainage would flow out and that the drainage could be pressurized.

The EPA’s actions could be likened to poking a balloon with a pin to let out just a little air. At best, the EPA’s actions were incredibly reckless.

Numerous federal officials in and outside the EPA turned a blind eye to the truth, and never challenged the fiction that the EPA maintains to this day and that was just repeated Monday by the EPA’s inspector general.

For an agency more concerned about its own welfare than its environmental mission, the almost unfathomable incompetence is sufficient motive to cover up what really happened.

There are other reasons as well. Some grossly negligent acts can be criminally prosecuted under provisions the Clean Water Act—a measure the EPA has used against private parties in the past. Additionally, New Mexico has already brought a lawsuit seeking damages.

Further, the EPA’s dishonest actions after the fact likely provide even more impetus to continue the deception.

Given the contradictory assertions they have made in public and the bogus reports they have produced for public and congressional consumption, it is difficult to imagine how the EPA officials involved could have possibly been honest with the inspector general investigators.

Pruitt’s team has inherited a tangle of half-truths, misdirection, and deceit. Like the Gold King Mine disaster itself, this is a mess the agency needs to clean up.

A Prelude to Disaster

Years before the Gold King Mine disaster occurred, there had been a collapse within a tunnel (an adit) used to access, ventilate, and drain the mine’s inner content.

Water can naturally accumulate within mines, and if there has been a collapse, fine solid matter like clay can eventually fill all the spaces between the collapsed rock, forming a natural plug. Eventually a pool of water forms behind the plug, and with enough time there can be so much water that it becomes pressurized.

In 2009, after this collapse, a pipe had been inserted into the mine in an attempt to prevent the accumulation of water. Then, the old structure at the entrance to the adit (posts and timbers supporting a roof to protect from debris sliding down from the slope above) was demolished, and the area in front of the mine opening was backfilled, burying all except the end of the drainage pipe.

Subsequently, water flowing from the mine had slowed to a trickle, a possible indicator that the mine was plugged.

When the EPA crew came to the mine in 2015, it came specifically to address the concern about conditions that could lead to a blowout.

The crew, however, was operating under outlandish assumptions that the agency had made one year before, which are covered in greater detail by a congressional committee report.

In brief, based on almost no evidence, the EPA had concluded during a visit in 2014 that the floor of the mine was 6 feet lower than the ground immediately outside the mine.

It assumed that water in the mine would have to be over 6 feet deep before it would flow out of the pipe. Seeing little flow out, it conjectured the backfilled mine was only half-full and not pressurized.

This conclusion was contrary to available old photographs, documents from the Colorado’s Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety, and the basic fact that the tunnel was designed in part to drain the mine—so recessing the floor 6 feet would make no sense.

The ground immediately outside the mine was made of the waste rock removed to create the tunnel. Why and how would a tunnel be dug so it couldn’t drain or be accessed?

An additional clue should have been clear to the crew: During a 2014 visit, the EPA removed a stinger—a pipe that is used to drive through a collapse to drain impounded water.

This is especially true given that when the crew yanked the stinger from the rubble, it found the front section mangled, indicating there had possibly been an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate a blockage.

In any case, whether the mine was full or not could have been determined by drilling to test for hydrostatic pressure. However, because drilling was difficult and expensive, the EPA chose to rely on faulty assumptions rather than data.

In 2015, the EPA crew set about removing unconsolidated backfill (material that was not holding back water) to reach the plugged tunnel opening cut into the mountain’s rock face. This was accomplished the first day of digging.

The crew’s outlandish assumptions were proven to be just that when it reached the tunnel’s opening. It had exposed the entire plug from the bottom to the top of the tunnel, not just the upper half.

With the tunnel not recessed as anticipated, the crew should have realized, and likely did, that the basis of its assumption that the mine was not full of water had evaporated.

In what appears to have been a hopeless effort to account for this, the following day, the EPA crew reburied all but the very top portion of the plug. It built a large mound of earth (a berm) in front of the tunnel opening and constructed a makeshift channel to the side.

The crew apparently anticipated that when it dug a hole into the top of the plug, any water that came out would calmly flow through the channel and to a pre-existing ditch that ran down the mountain to settling ponds.

Hope springs eternal.

Although the EPA fails to mention the reburying of the plug in any of its reports, several executive branch reports, along with an EPA inspector general report released this week, described what supposedly happened next.

All these reports are wrong, and most, if not all, are intentionally deceitful.

Rewriting History

First, the EPA produced a report that asserted its crew was just digging to clear the bedrock face, but not touching the plug. Then, somehow, the lower bedrock crumbled and the mine just blew out.

The Department of the Interior produced the next report, a bureaucratic treatise that says the EPA crew discussed a plan, but then ambiguously states “the contractor continued to excavate.”

Exactly what the crew was excavating—the dirt above the tunnel opening (which in fact had already been removed) or the plug itself—is left unsaid. The report asserts that the EPA crew planned to insert another stinger through the now-exposed plug to drain the mine.

The crucial fact omitted by the report is that the EPA did not have a stinger. So, the plan was pure fiction.

In fact, the Department of Interior report was so short on details that an Army Corps of Engineers peer-reviewer made his signature conditional on including additional text in the executive summary.

He included the line:

The report discusses field observations by EPA (and why they continued digging), but does not describe why a change in EPA field coordinators caused the urgency to start digging out the plug rather than wait for [Bureau of Reclamation] technical input as prescribed by the EPA project leader.

Unlike the Corps reviewer’s comments, the remainder of the Interior report is nebulous.

Then, the night before a congressional hearing on the Interior report, the EPA issued an addendum to its first report, stating that the report was based on an unrecorded, untranscribed, simultaneous interview of the two EPA on-scene coordinators in charge of the site.

According to the addendum, the on-scene coordinator who was on vacation at the time of the blowout had handed supervision off to the other, along with an emailed list of instructions.

Curiously, this critically important email was not mentioned in the narrative of the two earlier reports. The email provides explicit instructions on steps to take to remove the upper portion of the plug.

The EPA’s midnight addendum also asserts that its crew was following these instructions with one exception. Without any supporting evidence whatsoever, the report claims that after he sent the email, the on-scene coordinator who would be on vacation told his replacement not to remove the plug, something inconsistent with his instructions.

Even if this supposed “clear verbal direction” was ever given, it definitely wasn’t followed.

The report goes on to repeat the fiction that the EPA crew was digging high above the tunnel opening and preparing the site for when the experts would arrive when, somehow, the mine inexplicably burst open.

Finally, the EPA Inspector General’s Office released its report this Monday that at best demonstrates an inability to uncover the truth by repeating the fiction.

After omitting any serious discussion of the outlandish assumptions from the EPA’s 2014 site visit, the EPA inspector general repeats the official EPA line, stating that:

According to the [on-scene coordinator] on-site, the team stopped excavation in front of the blockage on Aug. 4, 2015, after they reached material that was compacted, well consolidated, and considered by the [on-scene coordinator] on-site to be the blockage.

The EPA inspector general goes on to state that the next day, “[t]he excavator operator built a ramp to enable reaching higher.” This was reportedly done so the excavator operator could “scratch” above the mine entrance where the plug was.

Like the other reports, the inspector general omits any mention that the plug that had been unearthed the day before was reburied—as is demonstrated in this series of photos—and that the rock face had already been “scratched” clean before the blowout, as demonstrated in this series of photos.

Time for Truth and Accountability

All these reports are clearly refuted by an email from the Department of Interior recently released by the House Committee on Natural Resources, which states:

On 8/5/2015, the EPA was attempting to relieve hydrologic pressure behind a naturally collapsed adit/portal of the Gold King Mine. The EPA’s plan was to slowly drain and treat enough mine water in order to access the inner mine working and assess options for controlling its discharge. While removing small portions of the natural plug, the material catastrophically gave-way and released the mine water.

This document, site photographs, and other information clearly contradict the fiction that the EPA has spun. The cover-up is so bold it fits the old saying, “Who you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

While the EPA crew did not snap a photo of the excavator bucket that was digging the last fateful scoop of the plug, it might as well have.

There are enough people inside the agencies that know the truth, and a trail of pictures and papers show that they know it.

It is time the cover-up be uncovered, and the EPA be exposed for caring more about its own institutional interests than protecting the quality of the environment. (For more from the author of “Exposing the EPA’s Gold King Mine Cover-Up” please click HERE)

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Results of Virginia’s Primary Hint at Future for Trump, Sanders Movements

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In one of the first major primary races after the 2016 presidential election, a Republican candidate for governor who campaigned on a pro-Trump platform nearly pulled off an upset, while a Democrat candidate who cast himself in Bernie Sanders’ progressive mold lost.

Candidates perceived by some as establishment won in both the Democratic and Republican primaries for Virginia governor Tuesday. But another takeaway is that the polls—which predicted a nail-biter for Democrats and a blowout on the Republican side—were as wrong as the polls for the Nov. 8 general election.

“The real national takeaway was on the Republican side more than the Democratic side,” said Quentin Kidd, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University who is director of the Wason Center for Public Policy.

A Washington Post poll in May showed a significant lead in the GOP governor’s race—37 percent to 12 percent—for Ed Gillespie, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, over Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, who was state chairman of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. State Sen. Frank Wagner of Virginia Beach had 13 percent in the poll, actually outperforming Stewart.

“One candidate wrapped himself in a Donald Trump flag, running against an opponent with a huge advantage in polls,” Kidd told The Daily Signal. “Just as there were some shy Trump voters, I think there are also shy Stewart voters.”

Unofficial final results Tuesday night, though, had Gillespie only squeaking by Stewart, with 43.7 percent of the vote to 42.5 percent. Wagner finished with 13.8 percent.

On the Democratic side of the Virginia governor’s race, that same Post poll showed former U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, a progressive with the active backing of Sanders, the democratic socialist senator from Vermont, leading Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, 35 percent to 29 percent.

But in the end, Northam won 55.9 percent of the vote to Perriello’s 44.1 percent. The upstart’s loss came after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., did a TV commercial for him and several Obama administration alumni endorsed him.

Democrat Northam will face Republican Gillespie in the general election Nov. 7.

“The national implications are that the 37 percent or 40-something percent—whatever the Trump approval rating is on any given day—it’s real, and they do vote,” Kidd said. “Corey Stewart ran as Donald Trump’s right-hand man. … Ed Gillespie, I don’t know if he even uttered the words Donald Trump.”

Republican voters likely looked at the polls and thought Gillespie would win easily, said Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington.

“There is a real dispute within the Republican Party about how close a candidate should be to Donald Trump,” Farnsworth told The Daily Signal.

The president was a key factor in both primaries, he said.

“It was a factor in the intensity for Stewart that made it a close race, and the intensity that forced Northam to move to the left and sharpen his attack on Trump in order to fend off Perriello,” Farnsworth said.

Phil Kerpen, chairman of American Commitment, a conservative advocacy group, noted while tweeting about the results that Trump was underestimated.

The Trump campaign last year fired Stewart, an early supporter, as its Virginia chairman after he participated in a protest outside Republican National Committee headquarters to complain that the RNC provided inadequate support for Trump.

The Democratic primary had some lessons.

Northam, known as a moderate Democrat in the Virginia state Senate, admittedly voted twice for Republican George W. Bush for president. For two years, Northam built a campaign based on pragmatism.

But Perriello pushed Northam to the left, to focus more heavily on issues such as maintaining Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in Virginia and fighting for abortion rights. The lieutenant governor called Trump a “narcissistic maniac” in one campaign commercial.

“That ad was very effective in prompting progressive-minded voters who were hesitant about Ralph Northam to be more comfortable with him,” Kidd said. “Tom Perriello wanted a groundswell of progressive energy that didn’t materialize.”

However, he said, Northam’s move to the left showed significant progressive energy was in play.

Kidd said the Northam-Perriello spread in the 2017 Democratic gubernatorial primary is closer, but still resembles the Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders split in the state’s 2016 Democratic presidential primary, when Clinton beat Sanders 64.3 percent to 35.2 percent.

“The progressive left and the moderate middle are still fairly static in Virginia. Those voting blocs are what they are,” Kidd said. “Northam was forced to be more progressive, but there weren’t the votes there for Perriello.” (For more from the author of “Results of Virginia’s Primary Hint at Future for Trump, Sanders Movements” please click HERE)

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A mass shooting isn’t surprising given the mainstreaming of political violence by Democrat extremists

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It’s shocking, but not altogether surprising, that a mass-shooting occurred during a Republican Congressional sports outing. Senator Rand Paul, who observed the volley of 50 or 60 shots, said that a “massacre” had been narrowly averted.

If House Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s security detail hadn’t been present, Paul said, it would have been a slaughter.

“I do believe that without the Capitol Hill police, it would have been a massacre,” he said. “We had no defense at all.”

This attempted mass shooting isn’t surprising given the mainstreaming of political violence by Democrat extremists:

• There’s the rhetoric from “academia”:

“They should be lined up and shot,” Professor John Griffin posted to his Facebook, according to a screenshot of the post obtained by Campus Reform, even clarifying that he wasn’t being hyperbolic, saying “that’s not hyperbole; blood is on their hands.”

• There’s the theater:

• There’s Hollywood:

• There’s the fascist group laughably called “Antifa”:

• There’s the media:

Senior Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald wants innocent people to suffer and die in order to prove a point.

Eichenwald said on Twitter Friday night that he hopes every Republican who voted in favor of the American Health Care Act on Thursday sees a family member come down with a serious “long term” illness and lose their insurance before dying. When challenged, Eichenwald doubled down. “I want them to be tortured,” he said of Republicans who supported the AHCA. He added: “I want the [Republicans] who supported this to feel the pain in their own families.”

• There’s the world’s most famous community organizer, Barack Obama:

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama told the audience. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

…At another campaign stop on September 18, 2008, Obama advocated that his supporters “argue with [people], get in their faces”:

…[and d]uring the town hall meeting protests of the summer of 2009, Senior White House adviser David Axelrod and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina told Democrat Senators, “If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.”

• There’s social media:

It turns out the shooter was a “Bernie Bro.”

The leaders of the Democrat Party need to speak out against this violent rhetoric. If they fail to do so, it speaks volumes about how radical and anti-American the party has become. (For more from the author of “A mass shooting isn’t surprising given the mainstreaming of political violence by Democrat extremists,” please click HERE)

Comey Is The “Central Figure” in the Plan to Take Down the President of the United States

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Obama appointed Comey, as Director of the FBI. Comey let politics cloud his decisions as Director, and repeatedly did not operate the Bureau properly according to the rule of law.

Comey constantly engineered multiple misleading leaks to The New York Times that were a “violation of his FBI Employment and Non-disclosure Agreements.”

Comey said, in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, that he leaked information in hopes that a Special Council would be appointed to investigate President Donald Trump in the Russian Scandal.

Comey, in a press conference, publicly “cleared” Hillary Clinton for repeatedly violating Federal Security Laws by transmitting over 2000 Classified and Special Compartmented E-mail on an unclassified server for 4 years.

Comey refused to publicly clear President Trump after he told many Committee Chairmen in Congress and President Trump three times that he was not under investigation by the FBI, or collusion with Russia in the election.

Comey followed orders of Attorney General Loretta Lynch to call the “FBI Investigation” of Hillary Clinton violation of Federal Security Laws a “Matter” and Comey did not write a memo to himself about what AG lynch said.

When President Trump told Comey ”hoped Comey could let the investigation of LTG Flynn go”; Comey said he felt pressure and in a double standard, he wrote a memo to himself about what president Trump said.

Comey refused to investigate the Criminal Money Laundering of hundreds of millions dollars by Hillary and Bill Clinton of the Clinton Foundation, that they set up in Canada to avoid having to abide by US Federal Laws.

Comey refuse to investigate the transfer of 20% of the United States production of uranium to Russia for $145 million payoff to the Clinton Foundation, and they were paid a $500 million fee for a speech that Bill Clinton made to a Russian Bank.

Comey refused to take action to identify the member of the Obama administration who unmasked LTG Flynn and over 30,000 other Americans including Donald Trump, the Trump Campaign, the Trump Transition Team, US Senators, US Congressmen, members of the Supreme Court, members of the Joint Chief of Staff, and subsequently the details of President Trump’s conversations with Foreign Heads of State.

Comey refused to reinstate the training and reference material about the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, Radical Islamic Terrorism, and Sharia Law that once were referenced on FBI Computers and in FBI Libraries to alert and train Agents.

Attorney Session and the Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein took control of Comey’s files in his FBI Office and recovered a trove of information including unauthorized recordings of President Trump and others. That information is being reviewed by the Justice Department and will be turned over to the newly appointed FBI Director Christopher Wray who will initiate the housecleaning of the Comey Syndicate at FBI Headquarters; those individuals will be replaced by FBI Supervisor Agents who were not compromised by Comey, Lynch, Holder, Clinton, or Obama.

Former Assistant Directors of the FBI James Kallstrom, Bill Gavin, and Ron Hosko were glad President Donald Trump fired James Comey.

The three FBI Assistant Directors all said Comey sealed his fate after his July 5 press conference in which he improperly assumed the role of “a prosecutor” and recommended no charges be filed against Hillary Clinton for her egregious use of a private E-mail server to transmit highly classified messages during her tenure as Secretary of State.

“I’m glad it happened,” Kallstrom said of Comey’s firing. “I think Jim Comey way back almost a year ago kind of forgot he was the FBI Director.” “Jim Comey danced with the devil, and later on down the road talked about this great investigation the FBI conducted. The interview of Hillary Clinton, in my view, was a sham.”

Comey “threw the FBI under the bus, and the reputation of the FBI under the bus,” Kallstrom added. “That’s what I am very mad about and have been very mad about for a long time.”

Gavin said Comey’s firing was “something that had to happen.” “Jim Comey is a bright guy, but the bottom line is when he made a prosecutive opinion in an investigative matter he made a mistake,” he added.

The Integrity of the FBI will be restored by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and the 15,000 honest, dedicated, and hard-working Agents of the FBI.

This article will provide details of why Comey is being called the “central figure” in the Treasonous Plan to take President Trump down.

_____________________________________

Captain Joseph R. John, a combat veteran, is a 1962 graduate of the United States Naval Academy who retired from the US Navy after a long and distinguished career. He currently is the President of the Combat Veterans Training Group and is the founder of the Combat Veterans for Congress PAC.

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SERVERGATE: Hillary Clinton’s Email Scandal Getting Worse

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Last week, former FBI director James Comey brought the Hillary Clinton email scandal back to the front burner when he testified that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch forced him to downplay the FBI’s criminal investigation and call it a “matter.” The charge is so serious even Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein is calling for a probe.

That’s hardly the only movement in the case.

Evidence continues to pile up of Clinton’s wrong-doing using an unsecured private email server as secretary of state. But first, a refresher:

The Clinton-Comey Dance

Initially, it looked like Hillary Clinton would escape punishment. On July 7, 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey recommended that no charges be brought against her.

He reasoned that she lacked intent to commit a crime. However, as many pointed out, she did not need to have intended to break to law to be guilty of that crime.

The evidence Comey produced still damaged Clinton. She’d sent or received 110 classified emails. She first said she did not email any classified information. She changed her statement after it was clear that wasn’t true. Instead, she said she didn’t knowingly send or receive any classified intel.

A week and a half before voting day, Comey told Congress he was re-opening the probe. Classified emails had been discovered on the laptop of Anthony Weiner. He was the husband of Clinton’s personal aide Huma Abedin. Abedin had forwarded thousands of emails to him.

Many people — including Clinton herself — think Comey’s statement caused her to lose the race. A new study by a consortium of pollsters backs this up. Her emails were “the dominant narrative of the election for her.” Voters associated Donald Trump with several narratives. Some were negative but others were neutral.

Judicial Watch Obtains Unreleased Clinton Emails, Finds More Wrongdoing

Even though Clinton lost the race, the scrutiny hasn’t ended. Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit to obtain copies of her emails. So far, the group has obtained 433 new emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails she first turned over. She had claimed that she turned over all of them.

Judicial Watch says the new emails contain classified information. The group also says that neither the State Department nor the FBI have conducted a full search for the emails. The FBI admits that thousands of emails remain out there.

One batch of the new emails revealed that Clinton sent classified information to top officials at the Clinton Foundation, including its director Doug Band. They did not hold security clearances.

Clinton’s scheduler also forwarded her calendar to Clinton Foundation staffers. Cheryl Chumley, writing for The Washington Times, observed: “You know — in case the quid pro quo payments had to be made in person that day. At least: that’s a perception, and concern.”

Judicial Watch submitted new evidence to the court this week revealing that Clinton also used an unsecure Blackberry. She did so despite being warned. She wrote in an email that she carried it, “against the advice of the security hawks.” She said she didn’t use it in her office.

A 2009 memo from Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Eric J. Boswell stated that he “cannot stress too strongly…that any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving email, and exploiting calendars.” The memo was addressed to Cheryl Mills, who served as Clinton’s Counselor and Chief of Staff.

The Russian Connection

In another email obtained by Judicial Watch, Abedin says she “hooked up” people from the Russian American Foundation with “the right people” at the State Department. She was responding to a request from the foundation’s vice president Rina Kirshner. Clinton Foundation donor Eddie Trump sent the request to Abedin. The foundation received more than $260,000 in grants for “public diplomacy” from the State Department during Clinton’s tenure.

Some of the wrongdoing that came out was less serious, but still unethical. In July 2010, Abedin arranged for Chelsea Clinton to fly to Germany. She would get to be part of the official delegation to watch the U.S. women’s soccer team play. Bari Luri, Chelsea’s Clinton Foundation chief of staff, was also included. Chelsea was to “fly on official govt plane both ways and they will take care of hotels and all transportation.”

Investigations Pile On

In January, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz began looking into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email probe. He said it would include claims that the FBI “improperly disclosed non-public information.” He also said he would look into whether officials like Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe should have removed themselves from the probe.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed his concern recently about how slow the State Department has been reviewing the email scandal. In March, he sent a letter to the agency asking for an update on Clinton’s security clearance. He found out that Clinton and seven members of her former staff still have them. Yet they are no longer at the agency. In order to retain this status, they were labeled “research assistants.”

Clinton recently called the probe into her email server “the biggest nothing-burger ever.” In contrast, Judicial Watch refers to Clinton as a “serial violator of various laws.” As the evidence continues to pile up, one of them will prove to be right. Although Comey did not suggest charges, the new FBI director could. (For more from the author of “SERVERGATE: Hillary Clinton’s Email Scandal Getting Worse” please click HERE)

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N Korea Releases US Hostage Otto Warmbier After Putting Him in a Coma

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North Korea has released Otto Warmbier, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced Tuesday.

But the parents of the 22-year old American college student say their son is in a coma and was on a Medivac flight on his way home.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier said in a statement to The Associated Press that they have been told their son has been in a coma since March 2016, but they had just learned about his condition only one week ago.

“We want the world to know how we and our son have been brutalized and terrorized by the pariah regime in North Korea,” they said.

Warmbier was serving a 15-year prison term with hard labor for alleged anti-state acts. (Read more from “N Korea Releases US Hostage Otto Warmbier After Putting Him in a Coma” HERE)

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Parents of Idaho Girl Raped by Muslim Refugees Get New SICK Surprise

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By Derrick Wilburn. Last summer, five-year-old Jayla Peterson –yes, just five years old!– was raped and then urinated upon by three Muslim migrant boys, two from Iraq one from Sudan, in the town of Twin Falls, Idaho as one of the boys videoed the attack . . .

Of all the quotes and sayings from America’s founding, there’s one known to almost all of our citizens, it ends with “and justice for all.” Images of a blindfolded lady liberty holding the scales of justice (supposedly) symbolize the fact that the American judicial system does not see age, color or creed. The judge in this tragic case seems to have tossed all that, with a shocking decision on the guilt of the attackers and then a gag order for everyone involved. There’s a politically correct cover-up going on, and it’s despicable.

Pamela Gellar from Jihad Watch wrote the following account of the courtroom drama:

“Judge Thomas Borreson of Idaho’s 5th Judicial District ordered the little victim’s parents, Lacy and Levi Peterson, to say nothing to anyone – ever – about what was said in the courtroom Tuesday, or to disclose the sentence that he gave to the savage attackers. He did allow them to say that they were unhappy with the sentencing, but threatened to jail them for contempt of court if they disclosed why they were unhappy with it.

But even though the victim’s parents were not allowed to talk to me, there were twelve to fifteen people in the courtroom who saw and heard the whole sorry business. I was nevertheless informed of what happened by an anonymous source inside the courtroom – and the more I heard, the more I understood why this judge wanted to keep all the proceedings secret.

(Read more from “Parents of Idaho Girl Raped by Muslim Refugees Get New SICK Surprise” HERE)
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Pamela Geller Provides Account of Outrageous Sentencing for Sexual Assault of 5-Year Old Idaho Girl by Muslims

By Pamela Geller. Janice Kroeger, the Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, who was supposed to be trying these boys for their crimes, defended the boys and repeatedly attacked Lacy, the victim’s mother. A therapist for the boys was present, as well as a parole officer and a detective. Everything that was said was designed to portray the perpetrators as victims. Throughout the proceedings, they were repeatedly called victims, and the youngest one was called “the biggest victim of them all.”

The court heard all about how the attackers are doing well in school, and about how smart they are. They were praised for the supposed ordeal they had to go through. It was claimed that all three are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from having to go through courtroom proceedings.

After this lovefest, which lasted for five hours in the courtroom, all three boys were sentenced, one after the other. All three were given probation. They were not found guilty of rape, but of sexually lewd conduct.

In the midst of this judicial mugging, every time Lacy’s lawyer tried to speak up, he was silenced. The little victim, Jayla, was never even mentioned once by Kroeger or the judge – or by the police or anyone else. Only Lacy mentioned her, when she made her statement. Lacy detailed how the poor girl is still suffering the effects of this attack: she is wetting the bed and having bad dreams, and more.

Yet when Lacy completed her statement, Kroeger lashed out not at the perpetrators or their parents, but at Lacy. She viciously tongue-lashed Lacy for a full fifteen minutes, until finally Judge Borreson had to stop her. (Read more from this story about the abused Idaho girl HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

BOMBSHELL LAWSUIT: Comey Part of Massive Domestic Surveillance of Trump, Judges, Candidates; Gathered 600 Million Pages; “Can You Imagine That Kind of Power?!”

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The Senate Judiciary Committee is considering whether to subpoena former FBI Director James Comey to appear before the committee following his testimony [last week]. Should Comey appear before the Judiciary Committee, he may . . . face questions about the bombshell lawsuit, filed Monday by a former U.S. intelligence contractor, that accused the FBI and CIA of illegally spying on millions of Americans, including Donald Trump, and accuses Comey of covering it up.

Dennis Montgomery, the former contractor, reportedly passed his findings on to the FBI and is now alleging that the intelligence agencies buried the follow-up investigation[. His] suit attempts to prove there was a “pattern and practice” of conducting “illegal, unconstitutional surveillance” of millions of Americans, including Supreme Court justices, 156 federal judges, prominent businessmen, and others such as Donald Trump, as well as the plaintiffs themselves.

Montgomery claims that he obtained 600 million pages of classified documents contained on 47 hard drives detailing how the FBI surveilled millions of Americans —on a far larger scale than whistleblower Edward Snowden uncovered.

“This domestic surveillance was all being done on computers supplied by the FBI,” Montgomery told Circa. “So these supercomputers, which are FBI computers, the CIA is using them to do domestic surveillance.”

“They’re doing this domestic surveillance on Americans, running a project on U.S. soil,” Montgomery continued. “Can you imagine what someone can do with the information they were collecting on Americans, can you imagine that kind of power?” (Read more from “BOMBSHELL LAWSUIT: Comey Part of Massive Domestic Surveillance of Trump, Judges, Candidates; Gathered 600 Million Pages; “Can You Imagine That Kind of Power?!” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump Bashes Court for Upholding Travel Ban Block

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President Donald Trump chastised the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Twitter early Tuesday morning for upholding a Hawaii Judge’s March ruling that blocked the implementation of Trump’s proposed travel ban.

Ironically, the court’s opinion cited one of Trump’s tweets in an effort to demonstrate the president believes it is the seven predominantly Muslim nations included in the executive order that are “inherently dangerous,” rather than considering the 180 million individuals who he barred from entering the country.

(Read more from “Trump Bashes Court for Upholding Travel Ban Block” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.