As usual, in part because of persistent judicial overreach and in part because the Democrats’ desire to keep getting in Court what they cannot win at the ballot box, the courts are the main focus of attention this week as they are in so many weeks. There’s a vacancy on the Supreme Court to be filled and the Michael Flynn dismissal motion is due for a hearing on the 29^th before Judge Emmet Sullivan. In the first instance, I think the Democrats’ disgusting performance in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation and the restrictions on the conduct of the hearing due to COVID-19 precautions will hamper their usual soap-opera theatrics. Of course, by now, too, more people surely have wised up to the game. In the second, Judge Sullivan opened up the door, and Attorney General William Barr and Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell burst into the courtroom with blazing guns. 

The Supreme Court Vacancy

In a tell that they will lose this fight, the Democrats are throwing silly proposals up in the air -- everything from court packing to setting limits on the terms of justices to the Court to demanding any nominee recuse herself from any cases involving this election -- in advance of the hearings. The hearings will be held online with no spectators and the gals in handmaiden outfits that lined the Capitol halls during the Kavanaugh hearing will have to do so without an audience.  Perhaps Dianne Feinstein, who played such a low-handed role last time, has no longer the stomach for a repeat as members of her party are whispering to reporters that she’s not up to the job this time, something I read as a concession that she cannot be relied upon to further besmirch her once more attractive, more sober image.

Babylon Bee, that wonderful satire site, underscores the nonsensical, evidence-free hearings in Kavanaugh.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In anticipation of Trump's upcoming announcement of who he will nominate to the Supreme Court, the Democrats have posted a nationwide job listing for believable accusers to tarnish the reputation of whoever Trump nominates...

"We know that whoever Trump nominates will be an evil, mean, bad person," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. "That's just the kind of man Trump is. He hangs around evil, mean, bad people and he nominates them too. To prove this and save our democracy, we are hiring several believable witnesses to accuse Trump's nominee of whatever they probably did."

Listings have been purchased on ZipRecruiter, Monster, LinkedIn, and Craigslist.

(Actually, they have so many wonderful posts about the filling the vacancy, it’s  very hard to pick just one. Check them out.)

As expected, the President named as his nominee U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett. This well-researched article by Deion Kathawa is a useful primer on the charges likely to be made against her candidacy and a defense of them.  It’s my experience that, too often -- actually, almost always -- reports in the press about judicial actions are written to support or attack a decision without a thorough understanding of the way in which the cases reached the court involved and under what restrictions the judges were operating. Here’s one example from the article  

In the 2019 case, Kanter v. Barr, the 7th Circuit upheld the mail-fraud conviction of the owner of an orthopedic footwear company and as a result, his right to keep and bear arms was abrogated. He contended that laws prohibiting people convicted of felonies from having guns violate a person’s Second Amendment right to bear arms. The majority rejected that argument, explaining that the government had shown that such laws are related to the government’s important goal of keeping guns away from people convicted of serious crimes.

Judge Barrett dissented (start at p. 27), arguing that at the Founding, legislatures took away the gun rights of people who were believed to be dangerous, not of just anyone who had committed any felony. So, for Barrett, the laws at the heart of Kanter are too broad because they ban nonviolent persons from possessing a firearm without any evidence that they pose a risk. Barrett stressed that the Second Amendment “confers an individual right, intimately connected with the natural right of self-defense and not limited to civic participation.”

It would be incredible to watch Democrats try to paint Judge Barrett as an extremist on guns given the way they -- for the past three months -- have excused, downplayed, ignored, and even tacitly encouraged violent mobs’ looting businesses, destroying property, and even murdering supporters of the president -- all with revolting impunity.

The Flynn Case Dismissal Motions

With the D.C. Court of Appeals having denied mandamus and sent the joint defense-DoJ Motions to Dismiss the case back to the District Court, the matter is once again before Judge Sullivan, who has scheduled a hearing for this coming Tuesday. 

As the case is still pending and the obligation of the DoJ to produce newly found evidence continues, Attorney General Barr this week released what Mollie Hemingway characterized accurately as “some of the most explosive documents about the special counsel probe yet.” Barr promises more will be forthcoming soon. The short summary of this material by Ari Fleischer is letter perfect:

Knowing what we know now, it’s fair to conclude: 1. Clinton campaign colluded w someone suspected of being a Russian spy. 2. MSM fell for it & got duped by Steele dossier. 3. FBI, knowing Steele sub-source was thought to be a Russian spy, conducted an improper investigation. 

Here is the filing so you can judge for yourself.

Judge Sullivan’s dilemma now is clear, as “I am Spartacus” posts in a comment at the new Neo.

I am Sparticus on September 25, 2020 at 11:43 pm said:
This disclosure seals the doom of the prosecution of Michael Flynn. Barr is using this avenue to release information into the public square about the corruption and criminality that is the Obama administration without the political connotation of a press conference or a DOJ release. The deep state is caught not being able to use one of its defense mechanisms of “this is a political hit job” and ignore.

The deep state is now caught on the horns of dilemma. Continue the faux prosecution and have even more damaging information released or dismiss the case and Michael Flynn is allowed to speak publicly. Just imagine the scene of Michael Flynn appearing alongside Trump at a rally after his acquittal. Imagine now he is allowed to speak about what he saw in the Obama administration. If there is one more damaging release before the dismissal I bet Sullivan will dismiss the case. The Obama administration can’t take much more criminality exposed.

Flynn has been put through hell but now the tables are about to turn. He can now pursue in civil court malicious prosecution charges and RICO conspiracy with treble damages. That is why Trump never pardoned him. His case is dismissed with prejudice and he is free to pursue civil damages where the evidence standard is “preponderance of evidence” not “clear and convincing”. Remember the OJ trial and civil trial afterwards. A pardon would have negated this avenue. Imagine the discovery process in this now that Jenson has it all. Any trial lawyer would salivate at this case if Sidney [sic] doesn’t stay with it. 

Former FBI agent Mark Wauck offers up a lengthy discussion of the damaging revelations from the standpoint of someone well informed on FBI investigative and bureaucratic regularities. From his analysis we can see the trajectory of U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen’s investigation into the work of the FBI and Special Counsel on “Russian collusion.” Reviewing Barnett’s recorded interview, he notes the following:

1.   The Russian Collusion and Crossfire Hurricane investigations were operated by a small cadre of people in the FBI headquarters -- run from “the top down.”

2.  No real investigation of Flynn ever took place -- it was a matter left open “just in case,” a practice out of line as it lacked predication and actual investigative activity.

The focus, then seems to be on Strzok  “and possibly others above Strzok”

The focus of Jensen on the Special Counsel’s office seems to be twofold as well, per Wauck. He sees -- and the interview transcript provides substantial basis of his view:

[A] prosecutive theory in which a small group of highly partisan political actors misdirected government resources for a purely partisan end that lacked any plausible predication. This could, with proper factual support, be argued to be part of a conspiracy to defraud the government of honest services -- and possibly other violations, as well. If you look back at what Barnett is describing with regard to Team Mueller, you can see that at bottom the common denominator has to do with issues of basic honesty, i.e., fraud. That's something to keep in mind as we go forward.

The aim of the Flynn prosecution and the Special Counsel investigation was the same: hogtie Trump.

Mueller team’s attack dog, Andrew Weissmann, has admitted as much in his book, an excerpt of which Politico carried: "Barr’s letter (March 24, 2019) was a shot across the bow, signaling that the checking function Mueller provided on the actions of the president had come to an abrupt end."

“Checking" the president was not their portfolio and never could be in a lawful government. Their job was to see if Donald J. Trump had colluded with Russia to get elected. Despite spending years and millions of dollars at this task, they could find none.

But the FBI 7th-floor biggies and the Special Counsel team were not alone in this seditious endeavor. We learned this week, that intelligence analysts believed -- not at all unreasonably -- that Russia favored Hillary in 2016, but that the CIA’s head John Brennan overruled them and forwarded his own fact-free cockamamie theory that it was Trump they were helping.

Former CIA Director John Brennan personally edited a crucial section of the intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and assigned a political ally to take a lead role in writing it after career analysts disputed Brennan's take that Russian leader Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump clinch the White House, according to two senior U.S. intelligence officials who have seen classified materials detailing Brennan’s role in drafting the document. 

The explosive conclusion Brennan inserted into the report was used to help justify continuing the Trump-Russia “collusion” investigation, which had been launched by the FBI in 2016. It was picked up after the election by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who in the end found no proof that Trump or his campaign conspired with Moscow.[snip] The review, conducted by the House Intelligence Committee, culminated in a lengthy report that was classified and locked in a Capitol basement safe soon after Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff took control of the committee in January 2019.

The official said the committee spent more than 1,200 hours reviewing the ICA and interviewing analysts involved in crafting it, including the chief of Brennan’s so-called “fusion cell,” which was the interagency analytical group Obama's top spook stood up to look into Russian influence operations during the 2016 election.

Informed citizens are growing weary of these revelations in the absence of actions taken against the wrongdoers. Let’s hope the recently discovered information will move this along to a meaningful end. Soon.