A CNN interview on Wednesday with former FBI assistant director Chris Swecker didn’t work out quite the way the network was probably hoping after Swecker said the recent accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh would not hold up in court.

CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin asked Swecker a series of questions regarding the FBI’s involvement with the accusations of sexual assault made by California university professor Christine Blasey Ford against Kavanaugh.

Discussion of the FBI’s involvement with the case began Tuesday after Ford demanded an FBI investigation into her allegations before she testifies before Congress.

The Senate Judiciary Committee said in an official statement that the FBI wouldn’t handle the decades-old case.

“The FBI has indicated to the committee and in public statements that it considers the matter closed. The FBI does not make credibility determinations. The FBI provides information on a confidential basis in order for decision makers to determine an individual’s suitability,” the statement read.

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Swecker confirmed during the CNN interview that the FBI won’t handle the case.

“The FBI has no independent jurisdiction to open up a stand-alone investigation of rape allegations or assault allegations that may have taken place 36 years ago,” Swecker said. “That’s a local crime. Unless it involves a federal official or on federal land, or has some federal nexus, there’s just no jurisdiction to do it.”

Former FBI assistant director Chris Swecker on Kavanaugh accuser: ” … she doesn’t remember where it happened. She doesn’t remember when it happened. How do you investigate with so few details available? … There is not much there … None of this would hold up in court.” pic.twitter.com/Ys6gT5Q97M

— The Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 19, 2018

The interview got even more disappointing for the left when Baldwin asked Swecker what evidence the agency would look at to investigate Ford’s claims.

“There just can’t be any forensic evidence. I would be shocked if they brought a garment forward that might have DNA or something like that,” Swecker said.

Swecker went on to say that the evidence would be “strictly interviews” of the alleged victim, the alleged perpetrator, anyone else who might have been at the party, her therapist or anyone else she may have confided in about the incident.

Already, three of the four other people Ford claimed were at the party have denied her allegations with the most recent being Kavanaugh’s former classmate, Patrick Smyth.

“I am issuing this statement today to make it clear to all involved that I have no knowledge of the party in question; nor do I have any knowledge of the allegations of improper conduct she has leveled against Brett Kavanaugh,” Smyth said in a statement obtained by CNN.

After explaining the types of evidence available, Swecker noted that Ford’s accusation wouldn’t hold up in court.

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“But it’s all fairly thin. None of this would hold up in court,” Swecker said.

Swecker added that Kavanaugh already passed six rigorous background checks from the FBI.

“These are the most thorough background checks that you can possibly do,” Swecker said.

In other words, there’s virtually no way to definitively prove Ford’s allegations are true. Which creates a sad irony that Democrats are so willing to ignore the basic tenets of due process when it comes to trying to prevent the nomination of Kavanaugh to the highest court in the land.

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When the President made the decision to order the declassification and release of various documents from the Russia, Russia, Russia investigation, there was an immediate uproar. The documents to be declassified included one section of the initial 2017 FISA application against Carter Page, as well as some of the FBI’s notes taken during interviews with Page and Bruce Ohr, having mostly to do with the Steele dossier. The strange aspect of the protests was the fact that they all seemed to be coming from one side of the aisle. Now, the most senior Democrats in Congress are trying to slam the brakes on the process by asking the Justice Department and the FBI to provide an “immediate briefing” to the Gang of Eight. (Daily Caller)

Leading congressional Democrats are looking to stall the process to release documents related to the Russia investigation, which President Donald Trump ordered declassified on Monday.

Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff and Sens. Chuck Schumer and Mark Warner, sent a letter Tuesday asking Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to provide an “immediate briefing” to the Gang of Eight before declassifying and releasing the documents…

The Democrats argue that Trump’s action is a “brazen abuse of power” aimed at undermining the special counsel’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

They further claimed that “absent an indictment,” the subjects of federal investigations “should not be able to access law enforcement or related national security information for any reason.”

The curious part of all this is that some of the people who have been screaming the most loudly about transparency (when they want information damaging to the President to be released) are now suddenly the people who are concerned about protecting sources and methods or compromising the investigation. We should also be reminded that it’s the President and his top intelligence officials who make the final call on what information should be classified. It’s also their responsibility to live with the results of any declassification.

Here’s at least one point to consider. I completely agree that the government should be able to protect sources and methods, but how much would that really apply here? As far as sources go, we already know the identities of the people who were being questioned. That information leaked out ages ago and has been plastered all over the media on a daily basis. (And when the stories looked bad for the White House, none of these security-minded Democrats seemed to be objecting.) If there were any other people involved in connecting the dots to come up with Page and Ohr’s names, their identities can be redacted easily enough.

The same goes for methods. This sounds like a pretty straightforward investigation, but if it involved any particularly clever tricks, they could be blacked out as well. It’s also very difficult to see how declassifying anything that they’ve already discovered is going to somehow imperil the investigation. It’s not as if this is suddenly going to tip off Ohr and Page at this point. I think they’ve figured out that they were being surveilled.

It’s not just the Democrats on the hill, either. I’ve been seeing analysts on CNN commenting on how this request could somehow undercut the Special Counsel or the investigation itself. Really? The media has been joyously accepting leaks from Mueller’s team right and left and running blaring headlines about anything that makes it look as if the noose is closing in on the President. But now, all of a sudden they’re concerned about protecting classified information? Pardon me for guffawing a bit.

The senior Democrats involved in this have been poo-pooing the idea that there was something improper going on in relation to the origins of the investigations into Ohr and Page, as well as the Steele dossier. If that’s the case, why are you worried about the public seeing this information? If they want to keep a lid on it this badly, that makes me suspect it really is material we need to see.

Democrats and their liberal media allies are demanding Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation be delayed until the FBI investigates the accusation from Christine Blasey Ford, who alleges that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school party over 30 years ago.

During an appearance on MSNBC, failed 2016 Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — spouse of a former president notorious for being accused by multiple women of even worse acts of sexual misconduct — recently joined in on the act and called for a full investigation of the allegations by the FBI.

This was duly noted in a tweet by Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who sarcastically wondered if Juanita Broaddrick was watching.

Hillary’s now on @MSNBC talking abt the need for an FBI “investigation” of Ford’s 36yo sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh. I wonder if Juanita Broadderick is watching.

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) September 19, 2018

For those who may have forgotten, Broaddrick was one of the many women to accuse former President Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. In Broaddrick’s case, she claimed Clinton raped her in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the late 1970s. Broaddrick’s allegation at that time was summarily dismissed by Democrats and the media — and Hillary Clinton.

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Broaddrick responded to Ingraham’s tweet with one of her own that read, “The IRONY……@HillaryClinton will go down in history as the most deceitful and dishonest villain in America.”

The IRONY……@HillaryClinton will go down in history as the most deceitful and dishonest villain in America. https://t.co/8iuCiws2Ed

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) September 19, 2018

Clinton — who refused to listen to Broaddrick’s allegations against her husband, not to mention the allegations from several other women, and reportedly issued veiled threats to those women to compel their silence — is now asserting a total belief in the dated claims lodged against Kavanaugh, an ideological foe who was nominated by her political nemesis, President Donald Trump.

As to whether Clinton will go down in history as “the most” deceitful and dishonest villain in American history, that is definitely debatable, but few could legitimately argue that she wouldn’t at least be in the running for that dubious honor.

But Broaddrick wasn’t finished yet.

Moments later she called out Clinton directly in another tweet which read, “If you want the FBI to go back that far @HillaryClinton @MSNBC to investigate Ford’s allegations…. let’s investigate my RAPE allegations against Bill Clinton, too. Seems only fair.”

If you want the FBI to go back that far @HillaryClinton @MSNBC to investigate Ford’s allegations…. let’s investigate my RAPE allegations against Bill Clinton, too. Seems only fair.

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) September 19, 2018

Indeed, it would be “fair” for the FBI to investigate Broaddrick’s claims against Clinton if they were going to dig back that far in time to investigate Ford’s claims against Kavanaugh.

Of course, it is exceedingly unlikely that the FBI will waste the time or resources to look into either claim from so long ago, but Broaddrick’s point remains quite valid — there must be a level of consistency with regard to accusations of sexual misconduct against powerful political and public figures.

RELATED: MSNBC Commentator Throws Logic Out the Window: Doesn’t Care About Facts, Kavanaugh Is Guilty

No longer can the left summarily dismiss allegations lodged against Democrats while wholly accepting allegations against Republicans, at least not without revealing themselves to be unabashed hypocrites with purely partisan motives.

So, if Democrats and the liberal media want to continue to insist that Kavanaugh’s accuser be believed, despite the many gaps and inconsistencies in her story, then they must equally insist that Clinton’s accusers be granted equitable treatment … otherwise, they really ought to just keep quiet on the matter.

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A Russian bill aimed at fake news is making its way through the country’s parliament. According to AFP News, the bill would punish those who post content that a court considers false and refuse to take it down. If made into law, accountability of content would fall on both individual users and reporters.

Russia has never had much of a history of media freedom. Contrary opinions during Soviet times led to lengthy visits to Siberian gulags, and all printed material had to go through government censors before it was published. After the fall of the USSR, freedom of speech was partially restored, with some media still suffering under government censorship.

Critics say the new bill would give dangerous power to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Censorship of journalists and others is already taking place in Russia where current laws make “extreme” content illegal, according to Human Rights Watch. This crackdown has made it difficult and sometimes impossible for those unhappy with the government to get their message out.

Online posts concerning the Russian takeover of Crimea saw increased scrutiny and punishment under the extremism laws. Satire of the Russian Orthodox Church has also been met with this law.

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Social media remains one of the last holdouts of free speech in Russia. The new bill aims to tighten the government’s control of information, narrowing in on anything posted on a site with more than 100,000 daily visitors, The New York Times reported.

Ultimately, the truthfulness of a post falls on a court full of inherently flawed people who could hold a major bias.

Protests are often subject to similar hostility. Many examples of the Russian police brutalizing crowds can be seen in Western media. The videos are not likely to be circulated in Russia.

On top of police brutality, Putin has already shown a pattern of eliminating those who threaten his power. A former Russian spy and vocal critic of Putin died of radiation poisoning after a mysterious dose of polonium-210. Recently, suspected Russian operatives were arrested in the U.K. after allegedly killing a mother-of-three using a nerve agent.

Seeing how Putin can misuse the proposed law doesn’t take much imagination.

Users posting content critical of Russia or members of its government could face prison. Running against someone you can’t criticize would be nearly impossible, further cementing Putin’s reign. And although term limits do exist to reign him in, lawmakers have already begun to bend. Some have submitted proposals to give him more time in office.

If the censorship bill becomes law, it would signal the end of another venue for criticism of Putin. With that, Russia would be taking some major strides toward becoming a full-fledged dictatorship.

Supporters of the law may claim it only affects fake news, but that doesn’t offer much comfort.

The words “fake news” have been in the American vocabulary since the early days of the 2016 Election. Twisting facts, anonymous sources, and outright bad journalism can all lead to accusations of fake news. So can posting content others don’t agree with.

Facebook experimented with fact-checking posts, with disastrous results. A government attempting to do the same thing is guaranteed to be downright deadly.

Truth ultimately can’t be outsourced to somebody else. Freedom of speech comes with the assumption that every person is capable of differentiating fact from fiction and, therefore, doesn’t need a government to make those decisions for them.

Putin isn’t likely to agree anytime soon.

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As part of the Democrat’s effort to derail the Supreme Court confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, California Sen. Kamala Harris — with the aid of the media and allied leftist organizations — attempted to smear Kavanaugh by promoting a dishonestly edited video clip that appeared to attribute certain words and beliefs to Kavanaugh that he had not personally expressed.

Unfortunately, that highly deceptive and ignoble tactic was not just a one-off, as another Democrat — again aided by liberal media outlets — is doing the exact same thing once more in a bid to smear the judge and completely derail his confirmation, according to the Washington Examiner.

Coming on the heels of the late-breaking allegations of sexual misconduct raised against Kavanaugh, Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, CNN, MSNBC and Politico all adopted Harris’ tactic and have run with a deceptively edited and out-of-context clip to smear Kavanaugh’s reputation and make unfounded implications against him.

The clip, which came from a 2015 address by Kavanaugh at the Columbia School of Law, featured the judge appearing to joke about keeping certain events and incidents from his youth secret, which the leftists who assume Kavanaugh is guilty of the allegations against him immediately seized as admitted evidence of his guilt… or something.

In the clip, Kavanaugh said in reference to the high school he attended, “Fortunately we had a good saying that we’ve held firm to to this day, as the Dean was reminding me before, before the talk which is ‘What happens at Georgetown prep, stays at Georgetown prep.’ That’s been a good thing for all of us, I think.”

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MSNBC was the first to run with the clip, followed by others in the media, prior to Warren’s sharing it on Twitter, where it received more than 44,000 likes, nearly 20,000 retweets and innumerable outraged — though some were mockingly snarky toward Warren — comments.

Warren tweeted, “Brett Kavanaugh talking about his high school in 2015: ‘What happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep.’ I can’t imagine any parent accepting this view. Is this really what America wants in its next Supreme Court Justice?”

Brett Kavanaugh talking about his high school in 2015: “What happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep.”

I can’t imagine any parent accepting this view. Is this really what America wants in its next Supreme Court Justice? pic.twitter.com/WhL8YeZQ78

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) September 18, 2018

CNN’s Jim Acosta and Jeffrey Toobin both bought in to the ploy and acted as if the remark were evidence that he was hiding some sort of dark secret. So too did Politico join in, and noted as it published the edited clip that, “Kavanaugh gave no other context for the joke.”

Except, as pointed out by the Washington Examiner’s Becket Adams, there was plenty of context surrounding Kavanaugh’s remark which could have been easily found online in either a transcript of the speech or in a video of the entire speech itself, which showed that the joke was just that … a joke. Perhaps a bad “Dad joke” kind of joke, but a joke nonetheless.

Furthermore, who hasn’t heard the occasional “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” kind of jokes? Anybody? Highly unlikely.

Had Warren, CNN, MSNBC or Politico taken the time to look it up, they would have known that — though more likely they knew the context and chose to ignore it for purposes of the partisan smear.

If they had, they’d have noticed that Kavanaugh was clearly making a joking reference to three of his Georgetown Prep classmates whom he has remained good friends with to that day, and the innocent schoolboy shenanigans those young men no doubt engaged in — not sexually abusive crimes.

Taking the assertion of Warren and the media outlets at face value, one would have to assume that Kavanaugh essentially admitted in a subtle and joking manner to criminal wrongdoing in front of a large crowd in a speech made public.

RELATED: Kavanaugh Accuser’s Lawyer Has a Not-So-Hidden Connection to George Soros

Or, and this is just a suggestion, Sen. Warren, CNN, MSNBC and Politico all have a partisan ax to grind against Kavanaugh and took advantage of the opportunity to deceptively edit a clip of him speaking several years ago to fit within their current manufactured narrative.

If it weren’t already obvious that Kavanaugh has been targeted by certain Democrats and elements of the liberal media in a coordinated smear job, it sure is now. This is nothing short of shameful, but we’ve come to expect nothing better from the left, so it really is just par for the course.

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There are those who believe that The New York Times is biased against President Donald Trump. Some would even say it is a source of “fake news.”

To them, this gem from The New York Times may come as quite the shocker. In a tweet referring to an article they published, The New York Times actually gives Trump some credit for a smart policy move:

When Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the Iran deal, experts feared it would hurt the economy and leave Iran free to restart its nuclear program. But, so far, the policy has been effective without either of those consequences. https://t.co/vIRLdv4gSd

— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 19, 2018

In the article, they note that there were two particular concerns when Trump announced a withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

“If Mr. Trump’s approach worked too well, oil prices would spike and hurt the American economy. If it failed, international companies would continue trading with Iran, leaving the Islamic Republic unscathed, defiant and free to restart its nuclear program.”

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They go on to state that “the policy has been effective without either of those nasty consequences, at least so far.” They have come to the conclusion that Trump was right, “so far,” based on certain observable factors.

First, oil prices. “Remarkably, the price of oil in the United States has risen only modestly while gasoline prices have essentially remained flat. The current global oil price hovers around $80 a barrel, $60 below the highs of a decade ago.”

This may be related to the fact that Iran’s own exports are declining. Even oil companies in counties that still want to work with Iran on the nuclear deal have been “bailing out of deals with Tehran.”

According to CNBC, French energy giant Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne said, “Large energy companies cannot risk doing business in Iran in light of U.S. sanctions on the country.”

He told CNBC, “There’s not a single international company like Total who can work in any country with secondary sanctions. I don’t have the right. It’s just the reality of the world. The reality is that the capital of the world today is in the hands of the U.S.”

“Is it right that in this world the U.S. (is) using that … to impose some rules for other countries? That’s a debate.”

Total is not the only company that sees working with Iran without a waiver from the U.S. wouldn’t make financial sense. The New York Times wrote, “The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington think tank, found that 71 foreign companies planned to withdraw from Iran, 19 intended to stay and 142 were undecided or hadn’t said as of early September.”

The foundation’s director of research, David Adesnik, explained, “Big international companies have to ask themselves what risks are they willing to take on. Even if you don’t have a business in the U.S. you can be cut off from our financial system, and that’s not something a truly global firm can afford.”

Pouyanne told CNBC why the U.S. held the cards when it came to international trade with Iran. “The U.S. could decide that I could not have access to any U.S. financing. It’s impossible, let me be clear, to run an international company like Total without having access to U.S. financing or to U.S. shareholding.”

RELATED: Rubio Unloads on Kerry over Meeting With Iranian Officials, Demands Answers from DOJ

As an example of how devastating a refusal of U.S. financing could be to an international company, he shared data on Total’s financing situation. The numbers are eye-opening.

CNBC reported, “U.S. banks are involved in about 90 percent of the company’s financing operations, while American investors account for more than 30 percent of its shareholding. The company has more than $10 billion deployed in U.S. operations.”

“By comparison, Total spent less than 40 million euros, or roughly $46 million, on its project developing the massive South Pars natural gas field in Iranian waters.” Other international companies may have similar circumstances, which would explain why so many are now playing ball with the U.S. on the Iran sanctions.

So, America is winning, yet again, thanks to Trump. Some credit his “4D chess skills,” but others would simply point to “the Art of the Deal” and his many decades of experience on the international business front as the reason why his strategy is working so far.

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