Jeff Bezos Invented a Trump-Saudi Collusion Hoax. What Are the Consequences?

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The beginning of February was a rough stretch for Jeff Bezos. The National Enquirer obtained evidence that he was engaged in a long-running extramarital affair, and he knew the paper was moments away from publishing exclusive details from the hugely embarrassing saga. Bezos had a decision to make. He could do the decent thing and apologize for his wrongdoing. Instead, he chose a different path — the warpath.

Far from owning up to his misdeeds, the billionaire founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post went on offense. In a Medium post published February 4, Bezos concocted a mind-blowing conspiracy involving the Trump administration, Saudi Arabia, and international espionage. He claimed that President Trump and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were attempting an extensive “extortion and blackmail” campaign against him. He proposed that his ownership of the Washington Post put a target on his back. As owner of the Post, Bezos claimed that he was on Trump’s enemies list. He also insisted that it was no coincidence that President Trump and David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer, had a professional working relationship. Moreover, Bezos claimed that Saudi Arabia must be targeting him due to the Washington Post’s “unrelenting coverage” of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

“For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve,” Bezos added.

Team Bezos then launched a campaign in the media, going so far as to accuse the government — on orders from President Trump — of stealing his information. It seemed that Bezos was trafficking the Trump-Saudi-Pecker conspiracy directly through his own reporters at the Washington Post.

The seriousness of the Bezos allegation set off a media firestorm. A who’s who of legacy media and NeverTrump personalities, without evidence, began accusing the president, Saudi Arabia, and David Pecker of colluding, sometimes through extrajudicial means, to bring down Mr. Bezos.

Evidence never surfaced that the accused entities engaged in an anti-Bezos conspiracy. President Trump and Saudi Arabia have legitimate grievances with the Washington Post’s extremely biased coverage. The Post has been at the forefront of pushing the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory since day one of the Trump administration..

As for Saudi Arabia, the Washington Post has used the death of its columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, to continue to take shots at Riyadh. I explained their nonstop campaign against the Saudi monarchy in a February 12 column for Conservative Review:

The Washington Post has taken to extreme measures in publishing unrelentingly negative stories against Saudi Arabia. Following Khashoggi’s death, The Post became weaponized into an open forum for foreign governments and radical Islamist and jihadi groups opposed to Saudi Arabia’s role in the Middle East. The Post routinely falsely categorized its deceased Islamist columnist Khashoggi as a democracy advocate, a journalist, and a voice for reform, none of which is even remotely true.

As the campaign continued, Bezos never provided any evidence to support his grand conspiracy theory involving hacking, spying, and revenge. Moreover, all of the parties accused of wrongdoing unequivocally denied that they were behind anything having to do with Bezos.

On Monday evening, the Wall Street Journal cleared up all remaining doubt in what some have come to label Peckergate. The Journal found that there was no grand conspiracy involving President Trump, foreign entities, or Pecker. There was no evidence that Bezos’ information was stolen or that he was hacked.

“The reality is simpler: Michael Sanchez, the brother of Mr. Bezos’ lover, sold the billionaire’s secrets for $200,000 to the Enquirer’s publisher, said people familiar with the matter,” the Journal reported. This added to other media reports, which also pointed to Sanchez as the man who fed the story to the Enquirer. They were published about one week after Mr. Bezos published his Medium post.

By all accounts, Jeff Bezos invented a Trump-Pecker-Saudi collusion conspiracy theory out of thin air. Not even the world’s richest man should be allowed to get away with spreading incriminating hoaxes. After all, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” (For more from the author of “Jeff Bezos Invented a Trump-Saudi Collusion Hoax. What Are the Consequences?” please click HERE)

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Why Aren’t We Deporting Illegal Aliens Who Already Have Deportation Orders?

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We are told by the legal profession that nothing can be done to block bogus asylum-seekers from entering our country en masse, obtaining catch-and-release, and remaining here pending the outcome of a court decision that may be years in coming. But why is the DHS not at least deporting those who already went through this tedious process and have been ordered to be deported? Doing so would not only help eliminate public charge and potential gang members and drug runners for MS-13, it would deter the current and future wave waiting at the “conveyor belt” through Mexico from making the trip north.

According to new data obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) via a FOIA request, there are 644,488 illegal aliens remaining in our country who have already been served final deportation orders. And those are just from the top four countries of origin – El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. The IRLI shared much more data with CR. The total number of illegal aliens who remain in the country despite final deportation orders is 1,009,550.

In addition, there are roughly 1.1 million others from those four counties who have “pending final orders” and are close to receiving deportation orders. Those with pending final orders are usually individuals who have already been ordered deported by immigration judges but are appealing their case to the Bureau of Immigration Appeals (BIA), the appellate body of the DOJ’s administrative immigration courts.

That is a total of 1.7 million illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America with final or near-final orders of deportation. Those numbers are as of June 2018, right before the largest surge in Central Americans began over that summer and intensified in the fall of 2018 and winter of 2019. The total number of those ordered deported or with pending deportation orders for nationals of all countries of origin is 2.55 million.

Putting aside the debate over admissions at our front door, shouldn’t there be a comprehensive effort to empower and direct ICE to begin deporting as many of these people as possible?

The entire reason why Central Americans are now coming in record numbers is because they know that, even though their flawed asylum claims will ultimately be rejected, so long as they obtain entry and are released pending the court dates, they will not be deported. But there is nothing reasonable keeping us from carrying out deportation orders that have already been issued.

It’s quite evident that if we begin deporting specifically the Central American families and teenagers, it will stop the flow of newcomers. By my count, there have been close to one million Central American family members and unaccompanied teens who have come since 2013. Very few have been deported. In fiscal year 2017, only 1.1 percent of non-Mexican family unit aliens had been repatriated and only 1.8 percent of non-Mexican unaccompanied alien minors had been repatriated. Those are pretty good odds to bank on for people seeking to flee poverty and enter the protection of America. What if we began to deport the 450,976 Central Americans with final deportation orders and accelerated the cases of the 715,930 who are close to final deportation orders?

If we prioritized both DOJ adjudicative resources and ICE deportation resources for these people more than for anyone else, it would immediately send the signal back to the next wave in Central America that we actually enforce our laws, according to Thomas Homan, former ICE associate director in the Obama administration. “ICE should do a nationwide operation to locate, arrest, and remove those who have entered the U.S. illegally, including family units, who have had their due process, lost their cases, and have been ordered removed by a judge, said Homan in a statement to CR. “If a final order issued by a federal judge doesn’t mean anything and it isn’t executed, then there is no integrity in the entire system.”

Of course, in general, it makes sense for ICE to prioritize the deportation of the two million known criminal aliens. But it is well worthwhile to divert resources for a few months to deport those who are fueling the current boundless migration.

Why does it seem like Central American families are being treated like a protected class over and above even the benefits that the radical judges are conferring on them – to the point that we are not even bothering to deport those who already have gone through the process? “We did that about three years ago, and it had a significant impact on illegal border crossings,” said Homan, remembering how even Obama eventually shut down the first wave of Central American teens that began in 2013-2014. “It worked to slow down the surge in subsequent years in FY15 and FY16. For those in Central America that knowingly enter the US in violation of law to take advantage of the loopholes, they need to realize that we are a nation of laws and after you have been afforded due process at great taxpayer expense, you must abide by the decisions of our court system.”

There are a total of 1.7 million individuals who have already exhausted all of their options to game our loopholes. Pursuant to law, they must be deported, yet enough illegal aliens to fill up the entire city of Philadelphia remain in this country against the will of the American people.

How is it that, in 1954, President Eisenhower directly and indirectly removed over one million illegal aliens in just a few months without any lawfare, yet we don’t have the resources to remove the million with final deportation orders or the two million known criminal aliens, and certainly not both? Where there is a will, there is a way. (For more from the author of “Why Aren’t We Deporting Illegal Aliens Who Already Have Deportation Orders?” please click HERE)

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SHOCKER: Newly Unsealed Court Documents Reveal Who Shared the Russia Dossier With the FBI and Media

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By Townhall. Previously sealed court documents reveal how Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and one of his associates, former State Department official David Kramer and McCain Institute fellow, shared the Democratic National Committee-funded Russia dossier with the FBI and various media outlets. McCain previously denied being BuzzFeed’s source after the outlet published the dossier.

According to Fox News, “former senior counterintelligence FBI agent Bill Priestap confirmed that the FBI received a copy of the first 33 pages of the dossier in December 2016 from McCain.”

In a 2017 court filing, Kramer confirmed that British spy Christopher Steele provided the dossier to him. Kramar then turned around and provided the dossier to reporters at McClatchy, NPR, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed and CNN’s Carl Bernstein, The Daily Caller reported.

The report was also shared with State Department official Victoria Nuland, Obama National Security Council official Celeste Wallander and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).

It is speculation that Fusion GPS sought out McCain because of his political standing. (Read more from “Newly Unsealed Court Documents Reveal Who Shared the Russia Dossier With the FBI and Media” HERE)

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Court Files Reveal Role of McCain, Associate in Spreading Anti-Trump Dossier

By Fox News. Newly unsealed court filings show how the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and an associate shared with the FBI and a host of media outlets the unverified dossier that alleged the Russians had compromising information on now-President Trump.

McCain had denied being the source for BuzzFeed after it published the dossier, which was funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, but had acknowledged giving it to the FBI.

In a newly unsealed declaration from September, former senior counterintelligence FBI agent Bill Priestap confirmed that the FBI received a copy of the first 33 pages of the dossier in December 2016 from McCain.

In another filing, David Kramer — a former State Department official and McCain associate — said in a Dec. 13, 2017, deposition that the dossier was given to him by author and former British spy Christopher Steele, which he then provided to multiple journalists at outlets including CNN, BuzzFeed and The Washington Post. The details were first reported by The Daily Caller. (Read more from “Court Files Reveal Role of McCain, Associate in Spreading Anti-Trump Dossier” HERE)

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Trump Slams McCain for Second Straight Day

President Trump on Sunday criticized late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for a second consecutive day amid reports that one of McCain’s associates had shared a dossier of allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia with the media.

“So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) ‘last in his class’ (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election,” Trump tweeted. “He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!”

. . .Sunday marked the second straight day Trump went after McCain, who died in August after a lengthy battle with brain cancer. . .

“He had far worse ‘stains’ than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!” the president tweeted, referring to the Arizona lawmaker’s vote against the GOP Senate majority during the Republican attempt to repeal ObamaCare in 2017. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Devin Nunes Is Suing Twitter and a Conservative Strategist for Millions

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Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) on Monday filed a lawsuit against Twitter, Republican strategist Liz Mair and multiple anonymous accounts for “shadow-banning conservatives” in an attempt to influence the outcome of his 2018 Congressional reelection campaign. Nunes is seeking $250 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages in the lawsuit. He also wants Twitter to hand over the identities of numerous anonymous accounts, including @DevinNunesMom and @DevinCow, who he says harassed and defamed him.

“Twitter created and developed the content at issue in this case by transforming false accusations of criminal conduct, imputed wrongdoing, dishonesty and lack of integrity into a publicly available commodity used by unscrupulous political operatives and their donor/clients as a weapon,” the suit stated. “Twitter is ‘responsible’ for the development of offensive content on its platform because it in some way specifically encourages development of what is offensive about the content.”

The lawsuit also cites former Republican National Committee online communication director Liz Mair’s tweets and videos about the Congressman, saying she attempted to push the idea that

The lawsuit seeks to hold Twitter equally accountable for the content because the social media platform “has a duty to exercise reasonable care to avoid hosting outwardly defamatory content,” Fox News reported. As Twitter takes a more active role in censoring conservative content, they should be held responsible for the content they do allow on their platform, the lawsuit suggests. (Read more from “Devin Nunes Is Suing Twitter and a Conservative Strategist for Millions” HERE)

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Democrats Faced With Health Care Challenge

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By The Daily Caller. Months after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared “health care won” in the midterm elections, Democrats are divided on what their next legislative step is when it comes to health care.

Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Debbie Dingell of Michigan unveiled their Medicare for all bill on Feb. 27. It would place virtually all health care payments in the government’s hands.

But Medicare for all and its climate counterpart the Green New Deal have stalled in the House after being rolled out as “ambitious proposals,” reported The Washington Examiner Sunday. . .

Many Democrats centered their platforms on ensuring protections for patients with pre-existing conditions, but the “full” House has not yet voted on any legislation on that topic, according to The Times.

Tensions between the Medicare for all faction and centrist faction is likely to continue as House Democrats try to craft their agenda-setting budget, the first of the session. (Read more from “Democrats Faced With Health Care Challenge” HERE)

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Medicare for All Is Divisive (in the Democratic Party)

By New York Times. No issue animated the Democrats’ 2018 congressional campaigns like health care and the promises to expand access to insurance and to lower costs. But as House Democrats sit down to draft their vision of governance in the coming weeks, lawmakers find themselves badly divided on the issue that delivered their majority.

Centrists from swing districts, with the tacit support of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, favor incremental moves to shore up the Affordable Care Act and to lower the out-of-pocket costs of prescription drugs and medical care. They are pushing a variety of measures, such as shutting down cheap, short-term insurance plans that do not cover pre-existing medical conditions and allowing people to buy into Medicare at age 50 or 55. . .

But they are butting up against an aggressive and expanding group of more than 100 outspoken Democrats — as well as at least four of the party’s presidential candidates — who want to do just that, upend the whole system with a single government insurance plan for all Americans — the old concept of single payer, now called Medicare for all. (Read more from “Medicare for All Is Divisive (in the Democratic Party)” HERE)

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Democrats Tell ICE to Take ‘Very Ill’ Baby to Hospital, but There’s a Major Problem With Their Demand

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) disputed claims Monday that they are refusing medical care for a severely sick infant that is currently being detained with his father at the border.

The claim that ICE is housing a sick infant originated in a tweet thread over the weekend by RAICES, a nonprofit that provides legal services to illegal immigrants. RAICES asserted that they are in contact with a father who said his baby is suffering from “nonstop diarrhea,” “stomach pain” and is unable to eat. The family is allegedly being kept in the Karnes detention center in Texas. . .

ICE, however, denied that they are in custody of any sick child.

(Read more from “Democrats Tell ICE to Take ‘Very Ill’ Baby to Hospital, but There’s a Major Problem With Their Demand” HERE)

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President Trump Donates His First Quarter Salary

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By Breitbart. President Donald Trump announced Monday that he donated his first quarter salary of 2019 to the Department of Homeland Security.

“While the press doesn’t like writing about it, nor do I need them to, I donate my yearly Presidential salary of $400,000.00 to different agencies throughout the year, this to Homeland Security,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “If I didn’t do it there would be hell to pay from the FAKE NEWS MEDIA!”

(Read more from “President Trump Donates First Quarter Salary” HERE)

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Trump Tweets Donation Check of Salary to Homeland Security

By Associated Press. Trump pledged as a candidate in 2016 to not accept the $400,000 annual presidential salary he would be due if elected.

Trump says the press doesn’t like writing about his donations “nor do I need them to.” . . .

By law, he must be paid, so Trump has donated the quarterly payments to various federal departments and agencies. (Read more from “Trump Tweets Donation Check of Salary to Homeland Security” HERE)

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Trump Praises His Supporters: ‘They’re Smarter and They’re Tougher’

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President Donald Trump told Breitbart News that he is confident his 2016 voters will be even more supportive of him in 2020.

“They’re smarter and they’re tougher and they work their asses off,” Trump said about his base in response to a question from Senior Breitbart News White House Correspondent Charlie Spiering during an Oval Office interview. “And that’s what came out; they came out of the valleys and the rivers, and they came all over the place. Honestly, you remember. Nobody knew they existed. They’re the real people. They’re the real great people.” . . .

When Breitbart News Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle asked Trump if he thinks they will come back out in 2020 to support him again, Trump said he thinks even more will back his re-election. . .

“Oh, I see it,” Trump added. “We went to Alabama, and from the airplane to the site where the tornado was there were people lined up five deep—you see it, you were there with us? Did you see the pictures? I mean, like, thousands and thousands of people from the plane all the way out to the site—like it was a Fifth Avenue parade. But just to finish, when I was campaigning, I said I was going to do this, I was going to do that, I was going to do things. Now I’ve done them.” . . .

“You look at what we’ve done, we’ve done far—actually a liberal commentator said, whether you like him or not he’s done far more than he said he was going to do,” Trump said. “Right to Try? I never talked about Right to Try but we got Right to Try—great thing. We’ve done a lot more. We’ve got Choice. I never really said I was going to get Choice because most people said we couldn’t, but I got Choice. We got things done that nobody thought were possible.” (Read more from “Trump Praises His Supporters: ‘They’re Smarter and They’re Tougher'” HERE)

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Court Rules Against Bed and Breakfast Owner Who Turned Away Lesbians

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The U.S. Supreme Court handed a defeat on Monday to a bed and breakfast owner in Hawaii who turned away a lesbian couple due to her Christian beliefs, but it could soon take up another major case on the conflict between gay and religious rights.

The justices refused to hear an appeal by Phyllis Young, who runs the three-room Aloha Bed & Breakfast in Honolulu, of a lower court’s ruling that she violated a Hawaii anti-discrimination law by refusing to rent a room to Diane Cervilli and Taeko Bufford in 2007.

A state court ruled that Young ran afoul of Hawaii’s public accommodation law, which among other things bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Litigation will now continue to determine what penalty Young might face.

The Supreme Court’s action came nine months after it sided on very narrow grounds with a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for two men, citing his Christian beliefs. The justices could decide as soon as next week whether to take up a strikingly similar case from Oregon in which a bakery refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple for religious reasons. . .

Young, who is Catholic, said her decision to turn away Cervilli and Bufford was protected by her right to free exercise of religion under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. Young also argued that Hawaii did not give her fair notice that her business was covered by the public accommodation law. (Read more from “Court Rules Against Bed and Breakfast Owner Who Turned Away Lesbians” HERE)

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Here’s How Many Americans Think Trump Is the Victim of a ‘Witch Hunt’

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Amid signs that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference may be near its conclusion, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds that trust in Mueller has eroded and half of Americans agree with President Donald Trump’s contention that he has been the victim of a “witch hunt.”

Support for the House of Representatives to seriously consider impeaching the president has dropped since last October by 10 percentage points, to 28 percent.

Despite that, the survey shows a nation that remains skeptical of Trump’s honesty and deeply divided by his leadership. A 52 percent majority say they have little or no trust in the president’s denials that his 2016 campaign colluded with Moscow in the election that put him in the Oval Office. . .

Twenty-eight percent say they have a lot of trust in former FBI director Mueller’s investigation to be fair and accurate. That’s the lowest level to date and down 5 points since December. . .

Mueller indicted 34 people, including Russian intelligence operatives and some of Trump’s closest aides and advisers. The indictments detailed the eagerness of the Trump campaign to benefit from a sophisticated Russian effort to influence the 2016 election but have not accused the president’s aides of participating in that operation. Last week, Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was sentenced to a total of 7.5 years in federal prison for financial crimes. (Read more from “Here’s How Many Americans Think Trump Is the Victim of a ‘Witch Hunt'” HERE)

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