ISIS’s Killer Drones Are a Threat, but the Pentagon Is Bracing to Face More-Advanced ‘Suicide’ Aircraft

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The Pentagon, concerned about the danger that small, armed drones pose to U.S. troops, is moving forward with a project that looks beyond remote-control aircraft used by the Islamic State to an even more complex problem: an aerial raid of autonomous suicide bombers.

The unmanned bombers have not yet appeared in combat, but defense officials already are researching how to stop them. Laden with explosives or other dangerous materials, they would operate by crashing into U.S. troops in a combat zone and would not be as easy to detect as existing drones used by the Islamic State, because they would not rely on radio frequencies for remote controlling. Instead, they would be programmed to carry out a specific mission, making them especially hard to see coming.

The effort to stop the aircraft is known as the Mobile Force Protection Program and is overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which examines ways that technology can help the U.S. military. DARPA anticipates awarding contracts within weeks for the first of three phases of testing and research, said J.C. Ledé, who oversees the program . . .

Early stages of the research were launched in October with a solicitation to industry, and final proposals for the first phase are due in January, according to DARPA documents. The program is focused specifically on going beyond using electronic jamming to stop unmanned planes and helicopters of to 200 pounds. Each company picked is expected to get about $3 million in the first phase, with the possibility of continuing on to two subsequent phases of work that are longer and more lucrative. (For more from the author of “ISIS’s Killer Drones Are a Threat, but the Pentagon Is Bracing to Face More-Advanced ‘Suicide’ Aircraft” please click HERE)

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Bombshell: Trump Team Surveilled During Obama Admin, Says House Intel Chair

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It turns out that President Trump’s transition team may have been surveilled after all.

Politico reports, “Members of the Donald Trump transition team, possibly including Trump himself, were under surveillance during the Obama administration following November’s election, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes told reporters Wednesday.”

Rep. Nunes, R-Calif., said that “sources” informed him of possible surveillance that appears to have been legal and unrelated to the Trump-Russia collusion theories.

Politico’s Eric Geller provided more details from the Nunes press conference.

The mainstream media initially dismissed their own reporting of Obama administration surveillance, and its “police-state tactics.”

Will we see an apology from the media elites for mockingly dismissing the questions Mark Levin has raised for weeks, as mere “conspiracy theories”? (For more from the author of “Bombshell: Trump Team Surveilled During Obama Admin, Says House Intel Chair” please click HERE)

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As the Media Focuses on Russia, Government’s Own Data Shows US Interfered in 81 Elections

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Ask an average American who makes a habit of following government-mouthpiece corporate media about interference in national elections and you’ll likely elicit a nebulous response concerning Russian hackers and a plan to install Donald Trump in the White House — but you probably won’t hear a single syllable pertaining to United States government’s actual attempts to do the same.

On Monday, FBI Director James Comey confirmed for the first time publicly that the bureau is officially investigating hotly contentious allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election — but, even if proven true, such geopolitical escapades better characterize the routine behavior of accuser than of accused.

“The F.B.I., as part of our counterintelligence effort, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 president election,” the director announced, adding the bureau would conduct a probe to discern whether Trump’s associates had contact with Russian officials.

Despite that the U.S. has hypocritically exerted influence over foreign elections in all corners of the globe — in fact, it has arrogantly done so a whopping 81 times between 1946 and 2000, alone — with just one-third of those operations undertaken overtly.

For months, mainstream media parroted murky accusations hurled by politicians — keen to point a finger of blame for the apparently stultifying victory of a former reality television host on someone — that The Russians had somehow surreptitiously undermined the election-centric foundation of American Democracy.

While that has yet to prove true, this new Red Scare constitutes a duplicitous attempt by the pot to call the kettle … an election meddler.

Researcher Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy — an expert on the topic at hand — discussed the lengthy but incomplete list of times the U.S. government has interfered in other nations’ elections with NPR’s Ari Shapiro.

Asked for examples where this tampering tangibly altered results, Levin stated,

One example of that was our intervention in Serbia, Yugoslavia in the 2000 election there. Slobodan Milosevic was running for re-election, and we didn’t want him to stay in power there due to his tendency, you know, to disrupt the Balkans and his human rights violations.

So we intervened in various ways for the opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica. And we gave funding to the opposition, and we gave them training and campaigning aide. And according to my estimate, that assistance was crucial in enabling the opposition to win.

Levin reiterated the more blatant methods with which the U.S. asserts dominance — through the overt coups or all-out regime changes branding the nation a notorious interventionist — are not among the list of the 80-plus attempts to manipulate the electoral outcome.

As for the issue of pot versus kettle, Levin explained that — although Russia and other powerful nations indisputably employ similar tactics — the United States has been quite prodigious in its effort.

Well, for my dataset, the United States is the most common user of this technique. Russia or the Soviet Union since 1945 has used it half as much. My estimate has been 36 cases between 1946 to 2000. We know also that the Chinese have used this technique and the Venezuelans when the late Hugo Chavez was still in power in Venezuela and other countries.

As sanctimoniously as U.S. politicians cry foul about The Russians, it would behoove the new McCarthyites to reflect on the nation’s sticky imperialist fingerprints around the globe — like that time in 1996, when the United States undertook an extensive, secret operation to ensure the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.

That is, of course, former President Boris Yeltsin — of the Russian Federation. (For more from the author of “As the Media Focuses on Russia, Government’s Own Data Shows US Interfered in 81 Elections” please click HERE)

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Why the CIA, the MSM, and Other Globalists Are Committed to All out War Against Trump

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In a recent article, I described how Trump is up against both the media and the CIA. The CIA started infiltrating media with Operation Mockingbird, soon after Harry Truman created the Agency in 1947— and the infiltration has continued to this day.

The crossover point occurred about five minutes after President Truman launched the Agency. The CIA’s mandate was: collect information about what was going on around the world, so it could advise the president.

But CIA directors, starting especially with Allen Dulles, had a different vision.

Why just collect information?

Since the Agency’s job was digging up secrets, why not invent secrets?

Why not invent entire patterns and platforms of information to support an agenda of US global domination?

Why not invent endless enemies who needed to be conquered?

After all, domination was the objective of the super powerful Council on Foreign Relations, coming out of World War 2. The CFR stood outside and above the government in the shadows. It was a Rockefeller operation. The Rockefeller family was uncrowned royalty. Shouldn’t the CIA align itself with that REAL power?

It took some years for the CIA to fully realize the Rockefeller agenda was global government—not US hegemony. So the CIA adjusted its sights and its motives and its invention of data, to fit the Globalist picture.

Flash forward. Trump, suddenly signaling NATIONALISM NOT GLOBALISM, in 2016, was a distinct threat. That signal could wake up millions of people who hadn’t thought about either Nationalism or Globalism.

The point wasn’t about whether Trump meant what he advocated. The point was: what effect would he have on the American people and other nations around the world, who could revert to Nationalism?

The CIA threw together a bunch of invented data about Russia influencing the election for Trump. Thoroughly in bed with the Washington Post and the NY Times, the Agency put out the word, and within a day the media echo chamber was alive with “Russia hacked the election.”

It was a typical discredit and destroy op. Delegitimize the Trump presidency. Focus on the man, not the message. Wipe out the Nationalism message by defaming the messenger.

“The cat is out of the bag. Now we have to put it back in the bag.”

Not so easy, particularly with thousands of online independent media outlets humming at full force.

Those who exclusively focus on whether Trump is a true Nationalist, a secret Globalist, or a neocon, are missing a key point. Trump woke up millions of people with his Nationalist messages. Those people are now moving outside the CIA-media nexus. They are springing from that trap.

A new sensation and feeling and thought-process is loose in the world. It was there before Trump, but he pumped it up to a full roar.

The CIA invents, every day, a world in which Globalism must win and should win. It turns its out propaganda 24/7. It thus saturates media.

It is Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.

JFK and RFK were obstacles to the forward motion of the CIA? Get them out of the way.

Trump is an impediment? At the very least, destroy his persona.

The CIA has no particular interest in who Trump “really is.” They only care about what effect he could have on the population.

After years of compliance from Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, and Bush the Elder (a former CIA director), the Agency suddenly saw this swaggering cowboy appear strolling over the horizon. The Donald.

What did he think he was doing? Where did he get this Nationalism? What was going on?

Trump started right in, attacking the media. Did he know something he wasn’t supposed to know? Did he know the media were a branch of the CIA propaganda tree?

Did he know the CIA considered itself the true president of the United States?

Did he know the CIA had been carrying out a monster covert op for 70 years, pretending to be the eyes and ears for the president—but actually consolidating its stranglehold on the Oval Office and the Congress?

Was it possible Trump knew that the CIA, while claiming to forward US interests around the world, was, behind that pose, actually positioning Globalism as the ultimate international victor?

Was Trump aware that all traces of Nationalism, across the planet, were being censored and erased by major media?

Could he see that?

In his cavalier, off-the-cuff, impulsive, egoistic, boastful way, was he waking up a sleeping giant?

Was there a deep tidal wave, gathering force far out in the ocean, a wave of Nationalism, percolating, as if waiting for a signal to proceed toward many shores?

Had decades of routine lying and data-invention at the CIA made the smartest minds there complacent and inattentive?

Was the Agency about to receive a titanic blindsiding blow?

The CIA sent out the word to its many minions in the press, government, think tanks, foundations, and Globalist organizations: say anything and do anything to discredit this crazy president NOW. Don’t wait. It doesn’t matter what you accuse him of. Throw everything you’ve got at him and hope enough of it sticks. If saying he comes from Mars works, say he comes from Mars.

The CIA was caught asleep at the wheel. It had no coordinated plan to take down the fast-talking cowboy in the White House. It had to be all hands on deck and HIT IT HARD RIGHT AWAY.

“If we can take down Trump, we can take down Nationalism and restore Globalism to its rightful place.”

Really?

Is that true?

Or are thousands more people all over the world waking up every day, realizing that one global management system for humanity is the covert agenda—and that this plan is about nothing less than complete top-down control, and the decimation of life lived in freedom?

Does Nationalism, as a massive decentralization away from Globalism, come circling back to THE INDIVIDUAL, and his utter refusal to be enslaved?

Is that possible?

Because I’m here to tell you, if it is possible, then the fact of Donald Trump, in the fullness of time, doesn’t matter. What matters is the personal truth that every person knows: HIS OWN LIBERTY.

And trying to dislodge and erase THAT resistance and that hunger for freedom is more than the CIA and all its horses and all its men can achieve.

We are not Humpty-Dumpty.

They are.

And fallen, they won’t be able to put themselves back together again.

Certainly, they’ll get no help from us. (For more from the author of “Why the CIA, the MSM, and Other Globalists Are Committed to All out War Against Trump” please click HERE)

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Secret Service Removes Agent Who Didn’t Want to Do THIS for Trump

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The Secret Service will permanently remove a top special agent from her position after an investigation into her Facebook comments that she would rather not defend President Trump or take “a bullet” for him, but some agents are concerned she will simply be transferred to another government job.

About two weeks ago, the Secret Service placed the agent’s prior post — the special agent in charge of the Denver District, the top job in that office — on a list of agency openings, according to two Secret Service sources.

Kerry O’Grady, the agent in question, is on administrative leave amid an internal Secret Service investigation into her Facebook comments about Trump.

Current and former Secret Service agents and officers are worried that top officials at the agency are working to shield O’Grady from being fired.

They are worried that she will be transferred to another division of the Homeland Security Department and allowed to serve out her time until she can retire with a pension as the agency has done with other officials in the public crosshairs. (For more from the author of “Secret Service Removes Agent Who Didn’t Want to Do Something Major for Trump” please click HERE)

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Trump Makes Next Move to Shape Federal Judiciary

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President Donald Trump has tapped a federal district judge from his list of potential Supreme Court picks to be his first nominee to a federal appellate court—putting Trump slightly behind President Barack Obama, but ahead of President George W. Bush in shaping the judiciary.

The White House announced Tuesday that Trump intended to nominate U.S. District Judge Amul R. Thapar to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

Thapar, son of Indian-American immigrants and a former federal prosecutor, now serves as a federal judge in the Eastern District of Kentucky. Bush appointed him in 2008.

The announcement for a nomination comes as Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, is going through his confirmation hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Appeals court judges can be nearly as important as Supreme Court judges since the high court is limited in the number of cases it accepts.

There are 19 appellate court vacancies across the United States that Trump could fill, and 96 on federal district courts, according to Elizabeth Slattery, a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

There are also two vacancies on the U.S. Court of International Trade and six on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. There are a total of 677 authorized district judgeships and 179 total court of appeals judgeships.

“This is a great sign that President Trump takes lower courts seriously,” Slattery told The Daily Signal. “The last administration did not make lower court judges a priority, and that ended up being good for conservatives because it has left Trump with a lot of opportunities. There was a lot of thought that the president would wait until the Gorsuch nomination reached its conclusion.”

Given his position on the Trump campaign’s Supreme Court list of 21 names, this could be grooming Thapar for the Supreme Court, said Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative legal group, and a senior legal fellow for FreedomWorks.

“Everyone on that list was ranked somewhere from good to great as far as being a constitutionalist,” Levey told The Daily Signal. “Certainly if he is qualified to be on the Supreme Court, he is qualified to be on an appeals court. He would be the first Indian-American on the Supreme Court. There is no better way to give him credentials.”

Obama’s first appeals court nomination was on March 17, 2009, naming David Hamilton to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Obama had 49 appeals court judges confirmed to the bench during his two terms. Obama made his first district court nomination on June 25, 2009, naming Jeffrey Viken to the U.S. District of South Dakota. A total of 270 Obama district court nominees were confirmed.

Bush’s first appeals court nomination did not happen until May 9, 2001, when he named Roger Gregory to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That same month, Bush nominated Richard F. Cebull to serve as the judge for the U.S. District of Montana. Bush named a total of 61 appeals court judges that the Senate confirmed and filled a total of 263 vacancies on district courts.

President Bill Clinton outdid both Bush and Obama, naming 62 appeals court judges and 306 district judges.

As for Thapar, before serving on the bench, he was the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. He was previously an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Ohio and in the District of Columbia.

Thapar began his legal career in private practice. He clerked for Judge S. Arthur Spiegel on the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio and then with Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, to which Trump has selected Thapar to serve on. Thapar received his bachelor’s degree from Boston College in 1991 and his Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley. (For more from the author of “Trump Makes Next Move to Shape Federal Judiciary” please click HERE)

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Neil Gorsuch Shows Christians Why We Need to Build up Our Own Elites

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Judge Neil Gorsuch’s performance before the Senate has been very encouraging. His knowledge, training and intellectual rigor put the demagogic Democrats to shame. So far he seems like a worthy heir to Antonin Scalia. Let’s hope that America watches these hearings and learns that there is a strong and substantive intellectual case for respecting the Constitution as it was written.

And let’s be thankful for a moment for the existence of Christian or pro-Christian elites. It’s a gravely endangered species, as ruthlessly hunted and rare as white rhinos or tigers, and arguably even more important.

Populism Is Great, But It’s Not Enough

I have written quite a bit in defense of the impulse behind today’s populism, both in Europe and America. Donald Trump’s victory in the primaries over “made man” Jeb Bush, wunderkind Marco Rubio, and self-made legal genius Ted Cruz (among others) was stunning. His defeat of Hillary Clinton was nothing less, I think, than divine intervention. It gave our country what might be its last chance to step back from the brink.

Both victories were possible because Trump saw that our country’s anointed elites — and even the elites within the GOP — are profoundly out of touch with the views, worries, and day-to-day experience of ordinary Americans. That’s true on issues from culture and foreign policy to mass, low-skill immigration.

Europe’s dominant classes are even more disconnected. They shrug at the Continent’s plummeting birth rate, tell their drivers to avoid the “no-go” areas now dotting their countries’ major cities, and count on millions of sullen, barely employable radical Muslims to fund their collapsing pension plans. Yeah, that will work out just fine.

We Need Faithful Elites

As someone who backed Pat Buchanan in 1992, 1996, and 2000, I think have the populist street cred to say this: We also need elites.

We need the right people, with top talent and the best training, to take on the worst that our enemies have to throw at us, and give as good as they get.

We need Christians and conservatives who can argue with icy logic before the Supreme Court, and lovingly stroke the heart strings when speaking to the public.

We need academics rigorously trained in the humanities to pass on the glorious culture that is Christian humanism.

We also need research scientists who can analyze and debunk the grandiose claims of techno-utopians. When some guy in a white lab coat from MIT promises us that mixing the DNA of humans and pigs will allow us to upload our souls onto the Internet and live forever as gods (or something), we need another guy in an even whiter coat who can dismantle those ideas in detail. Just waving the Bible or the Summa Theologica isn’t enough. That’s how we lose.

Learn from the Scopes Monkey Trial

Watch that great piece of anti-Christian (and largely fictional) propaganda, Inherit the Wind. The film shows how in the Scopes “Monkey Trial,” atheist Clarence Darrow used his very slight advantage in scientific knowledge to paint the great William Jennings Bryan as a scripture-blinkered rube.

In fact, historians have pointed out that Bryan’s deepest concern was not for the inerrancy of scripture, but the wicked uses that eugenicists were already making of Darwin. Even as that trial unfolded, Margaret Sanger was conspiring with misanthropic elitists to impose forced sterilization laws in a dozen American states. Their “scientific” basis? Appropriated Darwinism. This toxic pseudo-science even made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, as Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in defense of such forced sterilization laws that “three generations of imbeciles is enough.”

It’s too bad that Bryan didn’t have the science background to put the pseudo-science of eugenics itself on trial.

Where Will the Next Neil Gorsuch Go to Law School?

Imagine if Neil Gorsuch had not been trained in legal and moral thinking at (among other places) Oxford University, by a brilliant scholar and consistent thinker like John Finnis. How would he be doing under hostile questioning by ax-grinding Democrats armed with carefully crafted talking points by dozens of left-wing judicial activists?

Actually, you don’t need to make the imaginative experiment. Just read up on the performance of the poorly prepared attorney picked by the Trump team to defend its first Executive Order on immigration. It was embarrassing. When a conservative administration’s representative can’t out-perform the clowns on the Ninth Circus Court, you know you have a personnel problem.

That problem’s about to get much, much worse. We need to figure out what to do about it. I worked for ten years with Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a nexus for conservative faculty in a dozen different fields. We had members with brilliant records in history, English, law, political science, you name it. One thing those people have in common: Most of them are over 50. A lot are over 60. Some of the best have already retired, or gone to God.

As graduate schools in such fields become more radicalized, as tenure committees use both affirmative action and blatantly political standards in picking future faculty, they are strangling the next generation of conservative elites in the cradle.

Would the next Neil Gorsuch, or Ted Cruz, even get into a top-tier law school? (Harvard Law just eliminated the requirement for the LSATs, freeing its admissions staff to be more arbitrary.)

Would they get recommendations to work at a top law firm? Would such a law firm hire them, given that it was almost impossible to find attorneys willing to oppose the LGBT lobby in Obergefell v. Hodges, for fear of boycotts and harassment? How long will it before membership in the Federalist Society, the lawyers group that drew up President Trump’s “short list” of potential SCOTUS nominees, is a crippling career impediment? Where will find the people with credentials in the humanities to train future mainstream scholars in social sciences and the humanities?

We Need Graduate Schools and Law Schools of Our Own

Conservatives and Christians have made attempts to work around the legal bottleneck, with mixed success. A faithfully Christian law school in Canada, Trinity Western, lost its accreditation because of its commitment to biblical values. While American “alternative” law schools such as Ave Maria and Regent University law schools turn out very competent lawyers, I doubt very much that we’ll be seeing Supreme Court nominees who graduated from either one anytime soon.

We’re about to enter a cultural, political, and legal desert, as the left’s stranglehold over elite institutions exerts its long-term intended effect. Christians and conservatives need to wake up and start pouring money and thought into how we can smuggle our future leaders past the left’s starvation blockade. (For more from the author of “Neil Gorsuch Shows Christians Why We Need to Build up Our Own Elites” please click HERE)

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Immigrants Charged in Rape of Girl as Rockville Debates Becoming Sanctuary City

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Rockville, Md., the city home to the recent immigrant high school rape scandal, is considering declaring itself a sanctuary city to hide illegals.

Although Rockville police have had a long-standing policy neither to question suspected illegals about their immigration status, or to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, the city is now considering the process of formalizing that informal standard by becoming a sanctuary city.

Rockville City Councilmember Julie Palakovich Carr introduced an ordinance in early March in response to President Donald Trump’s pledge to beat back illegal immigration.

Carr forwarded the ordinance at a hearing March 6 overflowing with local residents, including those in favor of turning Rockville into an official sanctuary city, and those vehemently against.

But the discussion has now become much more complicated, as recently, two immigrants, Henry E. Sanchez from Guatemala, and Jose O. Montano, from El Salvador, were charged Thursday for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl at Rockville High School. (Read more from “Immigrants Charged in Rape of Girl as Rockville Debates Becoming Sanctuary City” HERE)

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FBI Director Confirms Investigation of Russia’s Meddling in US Election, Including Any Links to Trump Campaign

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For the first time, the director of the FBI publicly revealed Monday that the bureau is conducting a counterintelligence investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the presidential election and whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

“I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts,” FBI Director James Comey said during testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.

“As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.”

Comey said the bureau decided to go against convention and publicize the existence of an ongoing FBI investigation because it considers the Russia probe to be an “unusual circumstance” that “is in the public interest.”

Comey and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers, who also testified before the House committee, said they stand by a report the intelligence community issued in January that concluded with “high confidence” that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S presidential election.”

The report said the Russians had deployed computer hackers to undermine the presidential campaign, with the goal of harming Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton while boosting the candidacy of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

“Putin hated Clinton so much that the flip side is he had a clear preference for the person she was running against,” Comey said at Monday’s hearing.

The House and Senate intelligence committees are conducting separate investigations into Russia’s actions during the presidential campaign.

Comey and Rogers confirmed the Russian effort did not succeed in affecting actual vote tallies.

The White House sought to focus on this detail, although Comey and Rogers acknowledged they could not determine whether Russia’s actions had any influence on voters’ decisions.

“Following this testimony it’s clear that nothing has changed,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said during his daily press briefing Monday. “The president is happy that they are pursuing the facts in this.”

Spicer predicted the FBI probe will “vindicate” the Trump team.

He referred to statements by former acting CIA Director Michael Morell and James Clapper, President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, that they have seen no evidence of collusion between Trump associates and Russia.

Comey said the FBI investigation into Russia’s actions, and possible ties between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Moscow, began in July—months before Election Day.

The FBI director would not say whether investigators are probing the actions of Trump himself.

Nor would Comey say how long the FBI’s investigation may last.

The New York Times and other media organizations have reported that some of Trump’s associates were in repeated contact with Russian officials and others close to Putin during the presidential campaign.

Comey and Rogers also testified that their respective agencies have “no information” and “no evidence” to support Trump’s claims via Twitter that his predecessor, Obama, ordered surveillance of Trump Tower toward the end of the campaign.

“The answer is the same for the DOJ and all its components,” Comey said, emphasizing that “no one individual” in the U.S., including the president, can direct electronic surveillance without approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA). “The department has no information that supports those tweets [by Trump].”

Comey declined to say whether any government officials requested an application for surveillance of Trump or any of his associates with the FISA court.

Republican lawmakers at Monday’s hearing mostly focused their questions on their concerns over a proliferation of government leaks of classified material that have distracted and angered the Trump administration.

Last month, Trump said he had directed the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into leaks, to find their source.

Comey on Monday did not confirm the existence of such an investigation. He and Rogers condemned the practice of leaking, noting that such unauthorized disclosures have been more frequent in recent months.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., asked Comey: “Unauthorized dissemination is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison?”

“Yes, as it should be,” Comey said. “It’s a serious, serious crime.”

Gowdy alleged during the hearing that Obama administration officials were behind the leaks, which among other things, included classified intercepts of calls between Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s choice for national security adviser, and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, weeks before Trump took office. Flynn resigned as national security adviser after the White House determined he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

Comey said he is particularly worried about “an unusually active” stream of recent leaks because, he said, the leakers are revealing incomplete intelligence.

“A lot of it is dead wrong,” Comey said. “Often times, [the leaked information] doesn’t come from people who know the secrets, but people who heard about it. That’s why the information is often wrong.”

As Republicans and Democrats on the Intelligence Committee took different approaches to their questioning, Comey and Rogers stressed the serious implications of Russia’s campaign to undermine Western democracies.

The intelligence leaders said they expect Russia to continue to try to meddle in upcoming European elections—including campaigns in France and Germany—and that Moscow could target the U.S. again.

“They’ll be back,” Comey said. “They’ll be back in 2020, they may be back in 2018 [for the midterm elections]. One of the lessons they may draw from this is that they were successful.” (For more from the author of “FBI Director Confirms Investigation of Russia’s Meddling in US Election, Including Any Links to Trump Campaign” please click HERE)

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Neil Gorsuch Draws Praise From Democrats as Confirmation Hearings Open

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Judge Neil Gorsuch’s dedication to upholding the rule of law became the focus of the Supreme Court nominee’s first day of Senate confirmation hearings.

“My decisions have never reflected a judgment about the people before me—only my best judgment about the law and facts at issue in each particular case,” Gorsuch said in his prepared statement Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “For the truth is, a judge who likes every outcome he reaches is probably a pretty bad judge, stretching for the policy results he prefers rather than those the law compels.”

President Donald Trump nominated Gorsuch, 49, in January to fill the seat of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died just over 13 months ago. In 2006, the Senate confirmed him by voice vote as a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Gorsuch appeared to listen intently to the concerns of Democrat and Republican senators alike, even when under attack, smiling during more light-hearted moments. He is scheduled to answer questions beginning Tuesday in hearings expected to last through Thursday.

Those who introduced Gorsuch echoed his commitment to adhering to the rule of law.

“I have no doubt … that Judge Gorsuch has profound respect for an independent judiciary and the vital role it plays as a check on the executive and legislative branches,” said Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, in introducing his fellow Coloradoan. “I may not always agree with his rulings, but I believe Judge Gorsuch is unquestionably committed to the rule of law.”

Neal Katyal, who also introduced Gorsuch, is a professor of national security law at Georgetown University and former acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama from 2010-2011.

Katyal called Gorsuch a “first-rate” judge who is committed to upholding the rule of law.

“I have seen Judge Gorsuch in action and I have seen him hearing cases and have studied his written opinions,” Katyal said. “This is a first-rate intellect and a fair and decent man. … The judge’s work reflects his dedication to the rule of law.”

Katyal previously had spoken out in support of Gorsuch.

In an op-ed published in The New York Times in January headlined “Why Liberals Should Back Neil Gorsuch,” Katyal wrote that he was confident of Gorsuch’s ability to serve as an unbiased judge:

I was an acting solicitor general for President Barack Obama; Judge Gorsuch has strong conservative bona fides and was appointed to the 10th Circuit by President George W. Bush. But I have seen him up close and in action, both in court and on the Federal Appellate Rules Committee (where both of us serve); he brings a sense of fairness and decency to the job, and a temperament that suits the nation’s highest court.

Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who also introduced Gorsuch, called the nominee for the high court a mainstream judge who adheres to the dictates of the law.

“When you look at his record, his writing, his statements, it’s easy to see why Judge Gorsuch has such overwhelming appeal,” Gardner said. “Judge Gorsuch is not an ideologue,” adding:

He is a mainstream jurist who follows the law as written and doesn’t try to supplant it with his own personal policy preferences. As he said, personal policies or policy preferences have no useful role in judging. Regular and healthy doses of self skepticism, and humility about one’s own abilities and conclusions always do. Judge Gorsuch is not an activist judge but rather a faithful adherent to and ardent defender of our Constitution.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, quoted Gorsuch’s own words in citing the judge’s unbiased nature.

“The judge’s job, our nominee says, is to deliver on the promise that ‘all litigants, rich or poor, mighty or meek, will receive equal protection under the law and due process for their grievances’” Grassley said in a prepared statement.

Senate Democrats voiced their disappointment in opening statements about how Republicans chose not to hold a hearing or vote for Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee last year to the Supreme Court following Scalia’s Feb. 13 death.

“The Judiciary Committee once stood against a court-packing scheme that would have eroded judicial independence,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the senior Democrat on the committee. “That was a proud moment. Now, Republicans on this committee are guilty of their own ‘court un-packing scheme’ … The blockade of Chief Judge Merrick Garland was never grounded in principle or precedent.”

Garland is the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., also expressed disappointment about the lack of a hearing and vote for Garland.

“Merrick Garland was widely regarded as a mainstream, moderate nominee,” Feinstein said in her prepared opening statement. “However, President Trump repeatedly promised to appoint someone ‘in the mold of Justice Scalia’ and said that the nomination of Judge Gorsuch illustrates he’s ‘a man of his word.’”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, reiterated Senate Republicans’ decision last year that an outgoing president should not decide the next Supreme Court nomination.

“Let the American people choose,” Cornyn said, noting also that Gorsuch would become the only Westerner on the high court.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, praised Gorsuch’s record, stating he had personal experience to stand behind his praise.

“In a former life, when I was a practicing attorney, I had the good fortune of appearing before you,” Lee said in a prepared statement. “So, I know from personal experience that you are one of the very best judges in the country. You come to oral argument prepared and you ask probing, fair questions that help you understand the arguments.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he is concerned that Gorsuch won’t be independent from Trump.

“We need to know what you will do when you are called upon to stand up to this president,” Durbin said.

Gorsuch himself suggested he would not be beholden to a particular person, party, or ideology:

When I put on the robe, I am also reminded that under our Constitution, it is for this body, the people’s representatives, to make new laws. For the executive to ensure those laws are faithfully enforced. And for neutral and independent judges to apply the law in the people’s disputes. If judges were just secret legislators, declaring not what the law is but what they would like it to be, the very idea of a government by the people and for the people would be at risk.

(For more from the author of “Neil Gorsuch Draws Praise From Democrats as Confirmation Hearings Open” please click HERE)

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