The Justice Department Inspector General found evidence “that an FBI lawyer manipulated a key investigative document related to the FBI’s secretive surveillance” of former Trump aide, Carter Page, according to Fox News.
The outlet reports that the edit was “enough to change the substantive meaning of the document.”
The revelation represents the first in what is expected to be a parade of details from the report, which is due out in full next week, according to sources within the Justice Department. Attorney General William Barr alluded to the report early last week, telling media that Inspector General Michael Horowitz had completed his investigation, authored his report, and spoken with officials named in the report in order to clear the way for publication.
The full report, which will hit shelves on December 9th, is also expected to demonstrate a number of irregularities with the FBI’s investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign, and, subsequently, the Trump transition team, coordinated with Russian officials to first alter the outcome of the 2016 presidential election and then install an information and communication pipeline between the Kremlin and President Trump in the West Wing.
In House Intelligence Committee hearings last year – commanded by Republicans who were then in charge – witnesses revealed that the FBI and DOJ relied on a now-discredited dossier on Donald Trump, authored by foreign agent Christopher Steele, to obtain permission to wiretap key Trump transition officials through the FISA courts.
Then Attorney General Jeff Sessions commanded the Inspector General undertake an investigation into the incident, and, it seems, Horowitz found at least some evidence of FBI malfeasance.
“Horowitz reportedly found that the FBI employee was involved enough in the FISA process to falsely state that he had ‘documentation to back up a claim he had made in discussions with the Justice Department about the factual basis’ for the FISA warrant application,” according to Fox News, quoting the Washington Post. “Then, the FBI employee allegedly ‘altered an email’ to substantiate his inaccurate version of events. The employee has since been forced out of the bureau.”
Neither the Post nor Fox News identified the official, and both suggested the report doesn’t identify him either, but Fox News says, the Post initially reported that the “person under scrutiny…worked beneath former deputy assistant director Peter Strzok,” the FBI agent whose clear bias against Trump tainted the investigation.
The Post, Fox News reports, later removed that tidbit for unknown reasons.
Horowitz’s report has very specific boundaries, and will cover only the FISA application and the events leading up to the FBI’s pursuit of warrantless wiretaps against a handful of specific Trump transition aides, but it is expected to come in handy for investigators, led by U.S. Attorney John Durham, looking into “Justice Department misconduct in the run-up to the 2016 election through the spring of 2017” – a much wider probe.
Durham is specifically looking into whether multiple investigations into the Trump transition team and the fledgling Trump Administration – specifically investigations into whether President Donald Trump and his team were in the pocket of the Russians — were politically motivated.
That investigation is said to be producing shocking results, potentially enough for a criminal probe.
(AP) — The watch towers, double-locked doors and video surveillance in the Chinese camps are there “to prevent escapes.” Uighurs and other minorities held inside are scored on how well they speak the dominant Mandarin language and follow strict rules on everything down to bathing and using the toilet, scores that determine if they can leave.
“Manner education” is mandatory, but “vocational skills improvement” is offered only after a year in the camps.
Voluntary job training is the reason the Chinese government has given for detaining more than a million ethnic minorities, most of them Muslims. But a classified blueprint leaked to a consortium of news organizations shows the camps are instead precisely what former detainees have described: Forced ideological and behavioral re-education centers run in secret.
The classified documents lay out the Chinese government’s deliberate strategy to lock up ethnic minorities even before they commit a crime, to rewire their thoughts and the language they speak.
The papers also show how Beijing is pioneering a new form of social control using data and artificial intelligence. Drawing on data collected by mass surveillance technology, computers issued the names of tens of thousands of people for interrogation or detention in just one week.
Taken as a whole, the documents give the most significant description yet of high-tech mass detention in the 21st century in the words of the Chinese government itself. Experts say they spell out a vast system that targets, surveils and grades entire ethnicities to forcibly assimilate and subdue them — especially Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim Turkic minority of more than 10 million people with their own language and culture.
“They confirm that this is a form of cultural genocide,” said Adrian Zenz, a leading security expert on the far western region of Xinjiang, the Uighur homeland. “It really shows that from the onset, the Chinese government had a plan.”
Zenz said the documents echo the aim of the camps as outlined in a 2017 report from a local branch of the Xinjiang Ministry of Justice: To “wash brains, cleanse hearts, support the right, remove the wrong.”
China has struggled for decades to control Xinjiang, where the Uighurs have long resented Beijing’s heavy-handed rule. After the 9/11 attacks in the United States, Chinese officials began justifying harsh security measures and religious restrictions as necessary to fend off terrorism, arguing that young Uighurs were susceptible to the influence of Islamic extremism. Hundreds have died since in terror attacks, reprisals and race riots, both Uighurs and Han Chinese.
In 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping launched what he called a “People’s War on Terror” when bombs set off by Uighur militants tore through a train station in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, just hours after he concluded his first state visit there.
“Build steel walls and iron fortresses. Set up nets above and snares below,” state media cited Xi as saying. “Cracking down severely on violent terrorist activities must be the focus of our current struggle.”
In 2016, the crackdown intensified dramatically after Xi named Chen Quanguo, a hardline official transferred from Tibet, as Xinjiang’s new head. Most of the documents were issued in 2017, as Xinjiang’s “War on Terror” morphed into an extraordinary mass detention campaign using military-style technology.
The practices largely continue today. The Chinese government says they work.
“Since the measures have been taken, there’s no single terrorist incident in the past three years,” said a written response from the Chinese Embassy in the United Kingdom. “Xinjiang is much safer….The so-called leaked documents are fabrication and fake news.”
The statement said that religious freedom and the personal freedom of detainees was “fully respected” in Xinjiang.
The documents were given to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists by an anonymous source. The ICIJ verified them by examining state media reports and public notices from the time, consulting experts, cross-checking signatures and confirming the contents with former camp employees and detainees.
They consist of a notice with guidelines for the camps, four bulletins on how to use technology to target people, and a court case sentencing a Uighur Communist Party member to 10 years in prison for telling colleagues not to say dirty words, watch porn or eat without praying.
The documents were issued to rank-and-file officials by the powerful Xinjiang Communist Party Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the region’s top authority overseeing police, courts and state security. They were put out under the head official at the time, Zhu Hailun, who annotated and signed some personally.
The documents confirm from the government itself what is known about the camps from the testimony of dozens of Uighurs and Kazakhs, satellite imagery and tightly monitored visits by journalists to the region.
Erzhan Qurban, an ethnic Kazakh who moved back to Kazakhstan, was grabbed by police on a trip back to China to see his mother and accused of committing crimes abroad. He protested that he was a simple herder who had done nothing wrong. But for the authorities, his time in Kazakhstan was reason enough for detention.
Qurban told the AP he was locked in a cell with 10 others last year and told not to engage in “religious activities” like praying. They were forced to sit on plastic stools in rigid postures for hours at a time. Talk was forbidden, and two guards kept watch 24 hours a day. Inspectors checked that nails were short and faces trimmed of mustaches and beards, traditionally worn by pious Muslims.
Those who disobeyed were forced to squat or spend 24 hours in solitary confinement in a frigid room.
“It wasn’t education, it was just punishment,” said Qurban, who was held for nine months. “I was treated like an animal.”
___
WHO GETS ROUNDED UP AND HOW
On February 18, 2017, Zhu, the Han Chinese official who signed the documents, stood in chilly winter weather atop the front steps of the capital’s city hall, overlooking thousands of police in black brandishing rifles.
“With the powerful fist of the People’s Democratic Dictatorship, all separatist activities and all terrorists shall be smashed to pieces,” Zhu announced into a microphone.
With that began a new chapter in the state’s crackdown. Police called Uighurs and knocked on their doors at night to take them in for questioning. Others were stopped at borders or arrested at airports.
In the years since, as Uighurs and Kazakhs were sent to the camps in droves, the government built hundreds of schools and orphanages to house and re-educate their children. Many of those who fled into exile don’t even know where their children or loved ones are.
The documents make clear that many of those detained have not actually done anything. One document explicitly states that the purpose of the pervasive digital surveillance is “to prevent problems before they happen” — in other words, to calculate who might rebel and detain them before they have a chance.
This is done through a system called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform or IJOP, designed to screen entire populations. Built by a state-owned military contractor, the IJOP began as an intelligence-sharing tool developed after Chinese military theorists studied the U.S. army’s use of information technology in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“There’s no other place in the world where a computer can send you to an internment camp,” said Rian Thum, a Xinjiang expert at the University of Nottingham. “This is absolutely unprecedented.”
The IJOP spat out the names of people considered suspicious, such as thousands of “unauthorized” imams not registered with the Chinese government, along with their associates. Suspicious or extremist behavior was so broadly defined that it included going abroad, asking others to pray or using cell phone apps that cannot be monitored by the government.
The IJOP zoomed in on users of “Kuai Ya,” a mobile application similar to the iPhone’s Airdrop, which had become popular in Xinjiang because it allows people to exchange videos and messages privately. One bulletin showed that officials identified more than 40,000 “Kuai Ya” users for investigation and potential detention; of those, 32 were listed as belonging to “terrorist organizations.”
“They’re scared people will spread religion through ‘Kuai Ya,’” said a man detained after police accused him of using the app. He spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to protect himself and his family. “They can’t regulate it….So they want to arrest everyone who’s used ‘Kuai Ya’ before.”
The system also targeted people who obtained foreign passports or visas, reflecting the government’s fear of Islamic extremist influences from abroad and deep discomfort with any connection between the Uighurs and the outside world. Officials were asked to verify the identities even of people outside the country, showing how China is casting its dragnet for Uighurs far beyond Xinjiang.
In recent years, Beijing has put pressure on countries to which Uighurs have fled, such as Thailand and Afghanistan, to send them back to China. In other countries, state security has also contacted Uighurs and pushed them to spy on each other. For example, a restaurateur now in Turkey, Qurbanjan Nurmemet, said police contacted him with videos of his son strapped to a chair and asked him for information on other Uighurs in Turkey.
Despite the Chinese government’s insistence that the camps are vocational training centers for the poor and uneducated, the documents show that those rounded up included party officials and university students.
After the names were collected, lists of targeted people were passed to prefecture governments, who forwarded them to district heads, then local police stations, neighbor watchmen, and Communist Party cadres living with Uighur families.
Some former detainees recalled being summoned by officers and told their names were listed for detention. From there, people were funneled into different parts of the system, from house arrest to detention centers with three levels of monitoring to, at its most extreme, prison.
Experts say the detentions are a clear violation of China’s own laws and constitution. Maggie Lewis, a professor of Chinese law at Seton Hall University, said the Communist Party is circumventing the Chinese legal system in Xinjiang.
“Once you’re stamped as an enemy, the gloves go off,” she said. “They’re not even trying to justify this legally….This is arbitrary.”
The detention campaign is sweeping. A bulletin notes that in a single week in June 2017, the IJOP identified 24,612 “suspicious persons” in southern Xinjiang, with 15,683 sent to “education and training,” 706 to prison and 2,096 to house arrest. It is unknown how typical this week might be. Local officials claim far less than a million are in “training,” but researchers estimate up to 1.8 million have been detained at one point or another.
The bulletins stress that relationships must be scrutinized closely, with those interrogated pushed to report the names of friends and relatives. Mamattursun Omar, a Uighur chef arrested after working in Egypt, was interrogated in four detention facilities over nine months in 2017. Omar told the AP that police asked him to verify the identities of other Uighurs in Egypt.
Eventually, Omar says, they began torturing him to make him confess that Uighur students had gone to Egypt to take part in jihad. They strapped him to a contraption called a “tiger chair,” shocked him with electric batons, beat him with pipes and whipped him with computer cords.
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” Omar said. “I just told them what they wanted me to say.”
Omar gave the names of six others who worked at a restaurant with him in Egypt. All were sent to prison.
___
WHAT HAPPENS INSIDE THE CAMPS
The documents also detail what happens after someone is sent to an “education and training center.”
Publicly, in a recent white paper, China’s State Council said “the personal freedom of trainees at the education and training centers is protected in accordance with the law.” But internally, the documents describe facilities with police stations at the front gates, high guard towers, one-button alarms and video surveillance with no blind spots.
Detainees are only allowed to leave if absolutely necessary, for example because of illness, and even so must have somebody “specially accompany, monitor and control” them. Bath time and toilet breaks are strictly managed and controlled “to prevent escapes.” And cell phones are strictly forbidden to stop “collusion between inside and outside.”
“Escape was impossible,” said Kazakh kingergarten administrator Sayragul Sauytbay, a Communist Party member who was abducted by police in October 2017 and forced to become a Mandarin camp instructor. “In every corner in every place there were armed police.”
Sauytbay called the detention center a “concentration camp…much more horrifying than prison,” with rape, brainwashing and torture in a “black room” were people screamed. She and another former prisoner, Zaomure Duwati, also told the ICIJ detainees were given medication that made them listless and obedient, and every move was surveilled.
AP journalists who visited Xinjiang in December 2018 saw patrol towers and high walls lined with green barbed wire fencing around camps. One camp in Artux, just north of Kashgar, sat in the middle of a vast, empty, rocky field, and appeared to include a police station at the entrance, workshops, a hospital and dormitories, one with a sign reading “House of Workers” in Chinese.
Recent satellite imagery shows that guard towers and fencing have been removed from some facilities, suggesting the region may have been softening restrictions in response to global criticism. Shohrat Zakir, the governor of Xinjiang, said in March that those detained can now request time and go home on weekends, a claim the AP could not independently verify.
The first item listed as part of the curriculum is ideological education, a bold attempt to change how detainees think and act. It is partly rooted in the ancient Chinese belief in transformation through education — taken before to terrifying extremes during the mass thought reform campaigns of Mao Zedong.
“It’s the dark days of the Cultural Revolution, except now it’s powered by high-tech,” said Zenz, the researcher.
By showing students the error of their former ways, the centers are supposed to promote “repentance and confession,” the directive said. For example, Qurban, the Kazakh herder, was handcuffed, brought to an interview with a Han Chinese leader and forced to acknowledge that he regretted visiting abroad.
The indoctrination goes along with what is called “manner education,” where behavior is dictated down to ensuring “timely haircuts and shaves,” “regular change of clothes” and “bathing once or twice a week.” The tone, experts say, echoes a general perception by the Han Chinese government that Uighurs are prone to violence and need to be civilized — in much the same way white colonialists treated indigenous people in the U.S., Canada and Australia.
“It’s a similar kind of savior mentality — that these poor Uighurs didn’t understand that they were being led astray by extremists,” said Darren Byler, a scholar of Uighur culture at the University of Washington. “The way they think about Uighurs in general is that they are backward, that they’re not educated….these people are unhygienic and need to be taught how to clean themselves.”
Students are to be allowed a phone conversation with relatives at least once a week, and can meet them via video at least once a month, the documents say. Trainers are told to pay attention to “the ideological problems and emotional changes that arise after family communications.”
Mandarin is mandated. Beijing has said “the customs of all ethnic groups and the right to use their spoken and written languages are fully protected at the centers.” But the documents show that in practice, lessons are taught in Mandarin, and it is the language to be used in daily communication.
A former staffer at Xinjiang TV now in Europe was also selected to become a Mandarin teacher during his month-long detention in 2017. Twice a day, detainees were lined up and inspected by police, and a few were questioned in Mandarin at random, he told the AP. Those who couldn’t respond in Mandarin were beaten or deprived of food for days. Otherwise, speaking was forbidden.
One day, the former teacher recalled, an officer asked an old farmer in Mandarin whether he liked the detention center. The man apologized in broken Mandarin and Uighur, saying it was hard for him to understand because of his age. The officer strode over and struck the old man’s head with a baton. He crumpled to the ground, bleeding.
“They didn’t see us as humans,” said the former teacher, who declined to provide his name out of fear of retribution against his family. “They treated us like animals — like pigs, cows, sheep.”
Detainees are tested on Mandarin, ideology and discipline, with “one small test per week, one medium test per month, and one big test per season,” the documents state. These test scores feed into an elaborate point system.
Detainees who do well are to be rewarded with perks like family visits, and may be allowed to “graduate” and leave. Detainees who do poorly are to be sent to a stricter “management area” with longer detention times. Former detainees told the AP that punishments included food deprivation, handcuffing, solitary confinement, beatings and torture.
Detainees’ scores are entered in the IJOP. Students are sent to separate facilities for “intensive skills training” only after at least one year of learning ideology, law and Mandarin.
After they leave, the documents stipulate, every effort should be made to get them jobs. Some detainees describe being forced to sign job contracts, working long hours for low pay and barred from leaving factory grounds during weekdays.
Qurban, the Kazakh herder, said after nine months in the camp, a supervisor came to tell him he was “forgiven” but must never tell what he had seen. After he returned to his village, officials told him he had to work in a factory.
“If you don’t go, we’ll send you back to the center,” an official said.
Qurban went to a garment factory, which he wasn’t allowed to leave. After 53 days stitching clothes, he was released. After another month under house arrest, he finally was allowed to return to Kazakhstan and see his children. He received his salary in cash: 300 Chinese yuan, or just under $42.
Long an ordinary herder who thought little of politics, Qurban used to count many Han Chinese among his friends. Now, he said, he’s begun to hate them.
“I’ve never committed a crime, I’ve never done anything wrong,” he said. “It was beyond comprehension why they put me there.”
On this week’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Rep. Devin Nunes (D-CA) denied the “fake news” reports that he met with former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin to get dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.
He added he was taking CNN and the Daily Beast to federal court.
Nunes said, “I have been used to this for the last three years. The House Intelligence Committee Republicans, we continue to expose Democrat corruption over and over again. And what always happens is right when we expose them, what do they do? They go out to kill the messenger. So this week another fake news story. The problem with this week’s fake news story, then we actually caught him. And we caught them badly and also involves criminal activity and so what we are going to do, I gave a statement on Friday night, we are going to take both CNN and the Daily Beast likely into federal court right after Thanksgiving. And we hope to cooperate because were also going to be working with the appropriate law enforcement authorities because it is not okay to work with someone who has been indicted on serious federal crime to build a media narrative and dirty up a member of Congress. You’ve seen it, the American people have seen it over the last three years. We out them, and then they, with the media narrative to try to dirty up the people who are doing the work on behalf of the American people. We hope that CNN and the Daily Beast will cooperate with the court, they should comply with the subpoenas once we file this and go through different depositions. It should be fun.”
When asked if he was in Vienna with Shokin, Nunes said, I really want to answer all of these questions, and I promise you I absolutely will come back on the show and answer these questions. But because there is criminal activity here, we’re working with the appropriate law enforcement agencies, we’re going to file all this, everyone is going to know the truth, everybody is going to know all the facts, but I think you can understand that I can’t compete by trying to debate this out with the public media when 90% of the media are totally corrupt. And because this is criminal in nature and because it’s so bad, it’s so slanderous, we’ve got all the facts on our side, and we’re going to file in federal court because I’m not going to sit here and try to compete against the media that I have no chance of winning this. I will win in court in, and they’ll have a chance to cooperate, and they’ll have to show how they work with somebody who has been indicted, which is likely conspiring to obstruct justice here.”
Bartiromo asked, “Just to be clear — you’re saying your suing CNN, you’re suing Daily Beast, I know you sued Twitter in the past, do you think this is going somewhere, you’re telling me that CNN committed criminal activity?”
Nunes said, “It’s very likely. Or they’re an accessory to it, right? So none of this is true.”
He added, “The sad part is, I’m the last guy that wants to go into the courts, but the media has become totally corrupt that now they’re willing to actually engage and help with criminals, indicted criminals. These people are sick, and the only way they’re going to be held accountable is through the court system. And It’s the only chance I have to actually get the facts out for the American people because they can’t lie to a court.”
The left-wing juror gave large amounts to Beto O’Rourke and Jill Stein, spent years working under liberal donor Bill Gates at Microsoft.
Seth Cousins, juror number 3 in Roger Stone’s recent trial, just couldn’t resist the limelight. In an op-ed published by the Washington Post, Cousins claimed that the jury, who handed down a guilty verdict on all counts against Stone, acted independently and with no bias towards Mr. Stone for his previous political activities or the fact that he is one of President Trump’s most ardent defenders and longtime friends.
Reading Mr. Cousins op-ed is like reading a summation of the trial as if it were prepared by the left-wing team of prosecutors. The op-ed drips with self-righteous indignation against Roger Stone and accepts the premise of every allegation made by the federal prosecutors as if those allegations were as legitimate and solid as the Ten Commandments.
Before we review who Seth Cousins is, and what likely formed his pre-determined stance on Roger Stone and the allegations made against him by politically motivated prosecutors, we should address some of the dubious claims Mr. Cousins made in his op-ed published by the Washington Post. After that we will delve into the ethical and moral violations of profiteering from your jury service.
CLAIM #1: Our jury was diverse in age, gender, race, ethnicity, income, education and occupation.
At first glance, many might view this as a fair and honest statement. But why didn’t Mr. Cousins also add in that the jury was diverse in political beliefs and voting patterns as well? He didn’t mention that because it would not be true. Being Washington DC, this jury was made up entirely of Democrats. The one thing that unites today’s Democrat party more than anything, across gender/race/ethnicity/income/education/occupation, is a hatred and desire to punish people like Roger Stone and Donald Trump. We see it as they engage in deranged violence on Trump supporters. We see it as they work to deplatform and digitally erase conservatives. We see it with their ongoing illegal coup efforts that they dress up as an “impeachment inquiry.” Seth Cousins purposefully left out any commentary on the political background of the jurors and how that effected their decision making process because that’s all that effected their decision making process. Every other word out of the prosecution team was “Trump” or “Russia”.
CLAIM #2: The evidence in this case was substantial and almost entirely uncontested. Stone’s testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in September 2017 was a matter of record; both the prosecution and defense agreed on the facts. The real dispute was whether Stone had lied under oath and whether that mattered. The defense offered by Stone’s attorney can be summed up in to two words: So what? Our unanimous conclusion was this: The truth matters.
The evidence in the case was neither substantial and was certainly not uncontested. The government made so many inferences about so many different things. Stone called Trump and therefore they must have talked about this. Someone called someone days after something and therefore this proves they talked about something. No Mr. Cousins, the prosecution and defense did not agree on “the facts.” If they did there would have been no trial and your service as a member of the jury would not have been needed.
There was no evidence presented in the case that Corsi communicated with Wikileaks or Assange. Do your homework. https://t.co/DDgPaMEOGC
No the debate was not about whether or not Stone had lied under oath. The debate was about the context, meaning, and relevance of matters discussed and if those matters were anything but political posturing and political trade-craft. Neither of those things are illegal or improper.
Also there are phrases in this that are almost lifted verbatim from the prosecution closing statement. Interesting https://t.co/A4Bg65cUdy
Cousins’ conclusion is plucked from United States Attorney Michael Marando’s closing statement. What the heck is going on here?
CLAIM #3: We came close to rejecting one charge that we believed was written ambiguously; our question was whether Stone had actually made a particular statement. In the end, we were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Stone had in fact made that statement.
WOW! They briefly thought about not giving Roger Stone what amounts to spending his final years in jail for an hour or so! Mr. Cousins wants you to believe that because the jury deliberated over one of the seven counts against Mr. Stone for a short period of time that it must demonstrate that they were fair. Does he really believe people are this stupid? We were going to hang you anyways because we are all diametrically opposed to your political beliefs… but we paused for a moment to think about it… so it looked like we cared. How kind.
CLAIM #4: After the trial was over, Judge Amy Berman Jackson came to the jury room to thank us for our service. This was the only time any of us had any contact with her outside of the courtroom.
Why would Seth Cousins feel the need to explain that he and the jury only came in contact with Judge Amy Berman Jackson once during the course of the trial, albeit it after the decision was rendered. Nobody has alleged any wrongdoing on behalf of Judge Amy Berman Jackson during the trial. Nobody has alleged that the jury had any improper contact with Judge Amy Berman Jackson. The need to say that seems odd to say the least. It brings Judge Amy Berman Jackson into this politically divisive equation unnecessarily and for no good reason. We have to believe that she finds the fact that Mr. Cousins efforts to engage in political posturing with this op-ed to be less than ethical to say the least.
Now, let’s discuss who Seth Cousins really is. He has donated to radical presidential candidates over the past four years, including $1,000 to Beto O’Rourke and $250 to Green Party political figure Jill Stein, according to campaign finance reports publicly available on OpenSecrets. He has nearly ten years of his professional life working in high-level software development positions with Microsoft, one of the most powerful tech companies in the world founded by anti-Trumper Bill Gates. But, of course, Mr. Cousins never let his political bias and hatred of President Trump or his allies like Roger Stone cloud his judgment?
All of this really makes you think? Who are the other jurors who rendered an all guilty verdict against Roger Stone? Are they also high-level Democrat donors? Did they express personal hatred or animus towards Roger Stone or Donald Trump during the jury selection process? Further, why would prosecutors resist releasing the information gathered during the jury selection process about their political beliefs?
If Mr. Cousins serves as an example of how the other jurors felt when it came to our political system, the jury was almost certainly poisoned against Roger Stone. Johnnie Cochran in his prime would have had no chance at securing a not guilty verdict from this jury.
From the get, the idea that Roger Stone was going to get a fair trial from a jury pool selected exclusively from residents of the nearly 91% Democrat DC area was a canard and a fairy tale. Nonetheless, the check has been cashed and there’s no stopping it now.
While I was in DC to observe and report on the trial, I remember seeing Seth Cousins in the courtroom. It was bizarre how he seemed to be attentively paying attention and engaged when the prosecution was presenting their case. When the defense was on deck? I was surprised that Mr. Cousins hadn’t smuggled in ear-plugs and blue-blockers to tune them out. It seemed like he could didn’t give a rip about what Roger Stone’s attorneys had to say. In his op-ed he practically admits to NOT PAYING ATTENTION to the defense’s arguments. This alone gives Roger Stone legally sufficient cause to challenge the decision.
Why is it allowed that Seth Cousins is able to make heavily biased statements about the case before the sentencing phase while Roger Stone remains under a complete and total gag order from the judge?
Is Judge Amy Berman Jackson happy about this juror going public with an opinion editorial in the Washington Post?
None of this commentary would have been necessary or needed if Mr. Cousins had been able to resist the urge to out himself. He decided to go on-the-record with his recollection of events and subject his opinions to scrutiny. Seth Cousins made that choice. He couldn’t control himself and he has decided to make himself a public figure. To those that say this article is an attempt to intimidate him or attack him… it is not. Seth Cousins made his bed and he has to sleep in it now.
And now… the American people must make their own choice. Do we really believe that Roger Stone was judged by a politically diverse jury of his peers? Or is it more likely that he faced a jury of all Democrats who hated Donald Trump and were willing to punish Roger Stone in order to hurt Donald Trump?
Lavrenity Beria, Joseph Stalin’s brutal Secret Police Chief, is widely reported to have embodied and coined the following phrase.
“Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”
From the investigation to conviction, I don’t think there is a more fitting quote to describe what happened to Roger Stone. His crime? Helping Donald J. Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
Author’s note: I WROTE THIS ARTICLE. I WAS NOT ASKED TO OR ENCOURAGED TO DO SO BY ANYONE. ALLEGATIONS INSINUATING OTHERWISE ARE FALSE*
Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” is one of the most controversial poems in the American canon, at least when it involves teaching it in high school.
The first words are famous: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”
Iconic, yes. Fewer know the words that follow: “starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.” It gets worse from this depiction of heroin addiction, mind you.
And that’s a problem when it’s being presented to teenagers in public schools without alternative assignments.
According to Fox News, a music teacher at Steamboat Springs (Colorado) High School is under fire after filling in the most explicit parts of the poem — already included in a district-approved textbook — during a part of his “Music Literature” class.
When Brett Cason found out that his 16-year-old daughter, Skylar, was assigned the poem — complete with the excised language being included and no warning provided to parents — he was irate. Irate enough to hire a lawyer.
“Students should never feel shame and guilt as part of an assignment at school,” Jeremy Dys, special counsel for the religious freedom group First Liberty, told Fox News. He’s representing Cason.
“Ryan Ayala, the teacher who crafted a lesson around the poem ‘Howl’ by Allen Ginsberg, apologized in a letter to the Casons saying it was the ‘most offensive’ material covered in his class, after he didn’t get parental consent requiring students to fill in blanks such as ‘f—ed in the a–‘ and ‘c–t’ and other lewd language,” Fox News reported.
Ginsberg was openly gay when the poem was published in the mid-’50s, a time when such a personal declaration would be considered shocking.
Now, of course, this wouldn’t be considered remotely controversial, even in high school. Yet, “Howl” remains a divisive and salacious piece of literature, particularly because of its frank depictions of sexual conduct and drug use.
In one infamous snippet, Ginsberg invokes the Canaanite god Moloch in a depiction of gay sex, using the god who required child sacrifice (as many have) as a metaphor for an idol to which adherence required costly sacrifice.
“Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! C—s—-r in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!” Ginsberg wrote.
Ayala also required students to fill in the graphic parts that were omitted by the approved text, as previously mentioned — meaning the parts about individuals “who let themselves be f—ed in the a– by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy” were filled in.
In another assignment, students were instructed to write about underage sexting, or minors sending sexually explicit texts.
“If they want to teach on controversial materials, they can, but they should warn parents and give them an opportunity to choose an alternative assignment,” Dys said.
You can guess how this is being covered in LGBT media. Britain’s PinkNews painted the father as a retrograde homophobe being represented by an “[a]nti-LGBT+ law firm.”
Do you think this poem should have been assigned?
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“I was just blown away… This is not high school material. I mean, we’re talking about a minor. It’s pornography from the ’50s,” he’s quoted as telling KMGH in Denver.
There are also parts of the poem that extol the virtues of drunken pederasty and public sex in — among other places — cemeteries in terms that cannot be printed here and shouldn’t be printed in high school textbooks
Here I must confess: I read “Howl” in high school, and not because it was assigned. It’s an important piece of American literature. My parents were also the kind of people who not only allowed me to read “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” as a 15-year-old but let me dress up as Hunter Thompson/Raoul Duke for Halloween senior year.
If you’re unfamiliar with that piece of literature, I’ll link the book’s most famous quote; it’s nothing as graphic as “Howl” but it shows where I was coming from during my teen years and what my parents would countenance.
(And yes, while I still own these works and take them down from the shelf on not infrequent occasions, I was a conservative when I read these books and became a Pentecostal conservative slightly later on. Reality and the Lord, it seems, are still more persuasive than subversive lit. But I digress.)
Even at that age, however, I knew that assigning “Howl” to teens would have been an eye-opening stretch, and not just because of the stuff that presumably needed to be asterisked.
Even in the days before #MeToo, I was decidedly uncomfortable with the idea that Ginsberg thought pederasty and public sex were OK. This is what happens when you allow cultural leftists to make parental decisions for students — and they make profoundly bad ones.
“Howl” is undoubtedly important but, like so many parts of American literature, it ought to be discovered either in college electives or by one’s own. “Howl,” “Fear and Loathing,” “American Psycho” — these are important pieces of our cultural history, but they’re also works no one ought to be forced to read. This is especially true for high schoolers.
Brett Cason is not a homophobe for not wanting his daughter to read this poem. Period. If you don’t believe me, the entirety of “Howl” (WARNING: Very graphic) is available here.
You ask yourself whether this should be assigned to high schoolers, even with asterisks, particularly without alternative assignments being offered. I can guarantee you that even liberals and LGBT individuals, looking at this in an objective light, would find themselves hard-pressed to agree.
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Millennials aren’t interested in participating in the office “Secret Santa,” according to a new study by the British job-hunting website, Jobsite, because the practice is “stressful” and anxiety-inducing.
“Secret Santa” is, of course, a regular practice among work colleagues during the holidays. It’s often preferred to other practices because organizers can limit the budget spent on gifts, and it doesn’t align with any specific religious holiday, so it doesn’t leave anyone out of the loop (though, of course, jolly ol’ St. Nick is identified with Christmas).
But Millennials – facing the blame for killing everything from home ownership to landline telephones to sit-down Pizza Hut – are tired of participating in mandatory holiday activities at work and would rather corporate America keep the gift-giving private.
Jobsite’s study focused on the “negative effects” of Secret Santa and “it found that some millennials – Yes, of course, it’s millennials – have been suffering from anxiety as a result of their workplace Secret Santa,” reports viral news site Twenty-Two Words.
The study, they say “found that younger workers are often spending more than they can afford on presents for their colleagues” in order to avoid being “judged” for their selection or thought “cheap” by their peers. Even though most Secret Santa groups set a budget, Millennials say they feel pressure to “up their game” in order to fit in with their colleagues.
Beyond that, Millennials apparently report that they feel “angry” at office party organizers who don’t take Millennials’ much-reported dire financial straits into consideration when instituting a Secret Santa game. That builds resentment among Millennial workers which can lead to inter-office tiffs and a decline in workplace morale among Millennial colleagues.
A psychologist who spoke to Twenty-Two Words agrees – at least with regard for temperamental Millennials.
“I think there’s the potential for the whole range of human emotions, right from humiliation when you give someone a gift,” the psychologist said. “It’s important to us how others feel about our behavior and how it comes across.”
Unfortunately for the office busybody and the office party-planning committee, its not just Secret Santa that puts Millennials on edge, either. Jobsite found that all forced workplace socializing has the same effect, even office birthday parties (and yes, even if they feature free cake).
Millennials are just generally worried about being judged, and it leaks into all aspects of their work lives.
Jobsite suggests that up to 35% of Millennials say they want to see Secret Santa banned – holiday cheer be damned! — and a similar number is aiming straight at office birthday parties.
Instead, psychologists and workplace moral experts suggest that bosses and party-planners take “mental health” into consideration when organizing work events and plot holiday-themed activities that will appear to workers across the board, regardless of salary or rank. Perhaps a “non-denominational totally-not-a-holiday-party” might work well.
Secret Santa, of course, is just the latest target in a more widespread “war” on holiday fun and frivolity. As the holiday season rolls around, expect to be inundated with requests to tamp down holiday cheer in the name of inclusion across the spectrum.
The heads of two Senate committees are asking the FBI and the Department of Justice for records related to a reported scheme by Democrats to get “dirt” on the Trump campaign from Ukraine in 2016.
According to reporting in Politico in 2017, the alleged efforts by Democrats and Ukraine to “sabotage” the Trump campaign in 2016 did impact the race, even though Trump won in the end.
Both Politico and Yahoo News interviewed a Democratic National Committee (DNC) consultant named Alexandra Chalupa.
Democrats have repeatedly claimed the reporting on Chalupa, her work for the DNC, her meetings with Ukrainians, and her meetings with reporters in Ukraine and the U.S., is “debunked” and a “conspiracy theory.” In public accounts since the original news articles, Chalupa has claimed her role and intentions have been misrepresented.
A Ukrainian-American, Chalupa reportedly acknowledged in a 2017 interview with Politico that she worked as a consultant for the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 campaign to publicly expose Trump campaign aide Paul Manafort’s links to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.
Chalupa reportedly told Politico that she began researching Manafort in 2014.
A well-known Lowndes County Sheriff was killed in the line of duty Saturday night in Hayneville, Alabama.
Sheriff John Williams, also known as “Big John,” was killed outside a QV convenience store at the intersection of Highway 21 and Highway 97 on Saturday around 8 p.m., according to AL.com.
Williams had responded to a call from the store owner who asked officers to disperse a group of people that were standing around outside the building.
Just after 10 p.m., the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) issued a Blue Alert for the suspect identified as 18-year-old William Chase Johnson, who was reportedly driving a stolen vehicle which he later abandoned.
However, Johnson returned to the scene of the alleged crime just after midnight carrying a handgun and was taken into custody. The ALEA then canceled the manhunt, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.
Saturday evening, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced the tragic loss on Twitter.
Tonight, Alabama mourns the loss of Lowndes County Sheriff “Big John” Williams, who was killed in the line of duty. Sheriff Williams dedicated over 40 years of his life to public safety, including 19 years as Sheriff. Please pray for his family and fellow officers. #ThinBlueLinepic.twitter.com/5o8EytjjVz
The attorney general also issued a press release that read:
Sheriff Williams is the fifth line-of-duty death of an Alabama law enforcement officer to gun fire this year and the sixth to lose his life overall in our state over the last 11 months. Serving the public in the role of a peace officer is a difficult calling, fraught with peril, yet thankfully many Alabama men and women choose to answer the call, often time putting their lives in danger to protect us. It simply cannot be said enough that we owe these heroes our gratitude and our support.
I know all Alabamians join me in passing along our condolences and prayers to Sheriff Williams’ family and to the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office.
Johnson, who is from Montgomery and the son of a law enforcement officer, was arrested and charged in August for possession of brass knuckles and being a minor in possession of alcohol. However, those charges were later dismissed, court records said.
Michael Jackson, the district attorney for Alabama’s Fourth Judicial Circuit, called Williams a “great friend,” adding that “he was a great sheriff but an even better person.”
“He really cared about the Black Belt. He came over to Selma many times to help fight the gang problem,” Jackson concluded.
Republican congressional candidate Irina Vilariño, who is running for the U.S. House of Representatives in Florida’s 26th District, slammed left-wing signer Ariana Grande on Thursday over a tweet from Grande that praised Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and showed Grande embracing the 28-year-old socialist.
“MY GUY. thank you Senator Sanders for coming to my show, making my whole night and for all that you stand for !” Grande tweeted on Wednesday. “@headcountorg and i are doing our best to make you proud. we’ve already registered 20k+ young voters at my shows alone. also i will never smile this hard again promise.”
Vilariño, a successful business owner, came to the United States as a refugee when her family escaped communist Cuba after being persecuted by the government.
“.@ArianaGrande this ideology your [sic] promoting has caused more problems than you will ever know,” Vilariño tweeted. “We must do a better job educating our youth. In this social media society of ours, we don’t have the luxury of allowing time to play its part. Young & dumb today has major consequences.”
.@ArianaGrande this ideology your promoting has caused more problems than you will ever know. We must do a better job educating our youth. In this social media society of ours, we don’t have the luxury of allowing time to play its part. Young & dumb today has major consequences. https://t.co/wFCip5fYE1
“Socialists always breed on vulnerable ground,” Vilariño told The Daily Wire. “They disguise their heinous ideology as social justice in order to attract the Idealistic Utopian searching youth.”
“It seems everyone wants to be a social hero or at least appear as one. Celebrities even more so. It’s almost as if that is their way of contributing to society for taking a bigger bite out of the apple than they can chew.
“What Bernie, AOC and the likes of them are proposing to turn this country into has already been tried in many countries around the world and failed,” Vilariño continued. “Even in our very own hemisphere, we have examples … socialism disguised as social justice.”
“However, the only thing they’ve effectively accomplished is to turn these countries into poverty stricken misery ridden repressive states. It is no coincidence people are willing to risk their lives in order to make it to the United States at all costs and not the other way around,” Vilariño added. “The United States has fought socialism around the world; it’s unconscionable that they are proposing such a destructive ideology in our very own mainland. In the end, it’s a model that goes against individual freedom and against the essence of what is America.”
Vilariño, 43, is the co-owner of Las Vegas Cuban Cuisine restaurants, the first of which opened up in 1984 which was just a few years after her family arrived in the U.S.
“My grandparents emigrated to Cuba from Spain to escape socialism. My parents came to the United States from Cuba to escape communism,” Vilariño said. “If we don’t fight to preserve our freedoms here, there is no place left in the world for my daughter to go. We must preserve the American Dream. This is the cause that will define the success of our generation, and I urge you to join with me on this mission.”
Vilariño’s campaign has been successful so far as she significantly out-raised her Republican primary opponents.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Wire a couple of weeks ago, Vilariño said that she decided to run for Congress after seeing that “the same policies that wrecked my world in Cuba were beginning to take hold in the Democrat Party.”
The three most prolific members of the so-called “squad” of freshman Democratic congresswoman face allegations of violating campaign finance laws and House ethics rules for their personal or political benefit 10 months into their terms.
Below are the Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaints and House ethics inquiries that have been filed against Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan since they took Washington, D.C., by storm in January with the promise of bringing about a more equitable and just world.
