“By the Book,” Says President Obama

by

Gadfly

On January 20, 2017, inauguration day for President Trump, outgoing National Security Advisor Susan Rice wrote an email to herself, using her government computer in order to memorialize an event as a government record.  In the email, Rice summarized a meeting that took place in the Oval Office on January 5, two weeks earlier, which included discussion of the Russian Dossier.  Rice said:

On January 5, following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office.  Vice President Biden and I were also present.

President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book”.  The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective.  He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.

From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.

[Classified portion redacted]

The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team.  Comey said he would.

If Rice’s summary was an accurate portrayal, and “The President” actually said “the next few weeks” as opposed to “the next two weeks,” then there are serious implications of the unfolding plot.  The “next few weeks” included the official transition and turnover of administrations.  Yet, Obama seemed to want to retain control even after the inauguration.  If President Trump suspected this dynamic, it likely explained why Comey was asked about loyalty.  When acting Attorney General Sally Yates instructed the Department of Justice to disobey an Executive Order, this was blatant evidence regarding control of the administration.

In February 2017, Senators Grassley and Graham discovered the Rice email and confronted her about it.  The questions they posed seem reasonable for establishing the context and motivation for memorializing this meeting.  If answers were provided, they have not been made public. In May, Rice refused to testify when invited to do so.  Perhaps Republicans lacked a sense for the gravity of the situation.  They certainly are meek compared to their Democrat counterparts.  On the other hand, the difference between the two Parties might reveal to what extent an elected office serves the will of the people through legislative action or special interests through political action.  If this is true, then Republicans are clearly more principled in accordance with our Constitution.

Speaking of political action and principles, these concepts can shed more light on the current political contest.  The current impeachment frenzy is organized political action by the Democrat Party.  Organized action requires focus, and that focus is the organizing principle.

 

For definition purposes, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines principle as “a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption.”  Dictionary.com provides a different definition within the context of moral behavior: “an accepted or professed rule of action or conduct.”  Oxford’s Lexico.com defines principle as “A fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.”

 

Given these definitions, can we derive the organizing principle that has shaped the current political action?  We do not need to derive it.  Democrats have already declared it:  President Trump is guilty of the crime of quid pro quo (Latin meaning “something for something”), implying that Trump promised something for something in return.  The Democrats claim the quo was millions in military aid for Ukraine. The quid was dirt on an opposing presidential candidate, (i.e., Joe Biden) to give President Trump an advantage going into the 2020 election.

   

Here’s where “by the book” becomes important.  To organize political action around the principle of quid pro quo, there needs to be evidence of such an exchange.  Is there evidence?  A recent whistle-blower complaint alleges such an exchange (the link to the complaint is to a New York Times presentation, which includes biased editorial comments that accept the whistle-blower on face value).  The New York Times also provides a link to a transcript of the President’s call (again with editorial comments that infer intentions or motivations).  Yet, despite having access to the transcript, Adam Schiff elected to manufacture and blatantly distort what the President actually said.

What the Times and Democrats refuse to acknowledge, let alone understand, is that the phone call was based on Trump’s actual constitutional authority as the President of the United States, courageously fulfilling his oath of office.  He is not above the law, nor is he below it.  Unfortunately, his request to pursue corruption involving a former Vice President and his son happens to be a legal and moral obligation.  A video of Biden boasting about how he got a Ukrainian prosecutor (who apparently was investigating an energy company that included Biden’s son as a board member) fired by withholding a billion dollars is a clear example of quid pro quo.  While Democrats love to say Trump is not above the law, they seem to have a different standard for Biden.

      

Admitting that he or she was not a direct witness to a July 25 telephone call between President Trump and the newly elected Ukrainian President, the whistle-blower complaint was based on hearsay from other parties.  The whistle-blower stated:

In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.  This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.

The whistle-blower attempts to establish the “urgent concern” provision in the following statement:

I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute “a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or Executive Order” that “does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters,” consistent with the definition of an “urgent concern” in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(G). I am therefore fulfilling my duty to report this information, through proper legal channels, to the relevant authorities.

In other words, the whistle-blower has provided a principle for political action “by the book.”

Unfortunately, the whistle-blower cites a provision in the statute but misrepresents the actual intent and meaning.  Here is the actual wording:

 

 A serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law or Executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters.

It does not take legal training to understand that this provision applies ONLY to “an intelligence activity within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence.”

Ironically, the whistle-blower met with staff aides in the office of the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Adam Schiff BEFORE drafting the written complaint, which was sent to the Congressional Intelligence Committee Chairs on August 12.  It was not until two weeks later that the IC IG submitted the whistle-blower to Joseph Maguire, the Acting Director of National Intelligence, on August 26.  Schiff apparently knew about this action well before Maguire and the IC IG, Michael Atkinson.

Michael Atkinson changed the policy for IC IG whistle-blower complaints to no longer require “first-hand” evidence in order to accommodate the hearsay evidence provided by the whistle-blower.  What do we know about Atkinson?  There is an old adage, “follow the money,” to understand the motivation behind corruption.  I propose another adage, “follow the relationships.” Or would "birds of a feather flock together" be more appropriate?    Atkinson has a history as revealed here.  His relationships, especially within the context of deep state actions against Trump and members within his political orbit, reveal a significant anti-Trump animus.

    

Democrats want to run with the whistle-blower complaint even though at this point the principle justifying political action is merely an assumption or proposition presumed to be true.  For additional legal background, here is the statute addressing the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG).  The scope of the IC IG authority is the intelligence community, which does not include the President of the United States.  Aside from this major condition (beyond his jurisdiction), the IC IG proceeded in accordance with the IG IC statutory process—in other words, “by the book.”

If you want to see a similar travesty of justice, watch the HBO documentary, Indictment:  The McMartin Trial.  This case consumed seven years and $15 million with no convictions but lives were destroyed in the process.  The case mushroomed from a single child molestation charge that maliciously accused an innocent person into a circus of accused victims.  The players involved in perpetrating this scandal and nationwide hysteria walked away with no accountability.  Power-hungry individuals had little to no remorse about the collateral damage in the process.  Themes include wishful thinking (allegations in place of evidence), collaboration with the media, and so forth.  Someday, a similar movie may portray Robert Mueller, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, the whistle-blower, and media collaboration in their orchestrated attempt to remove a duly elected President regardless of the road kill in their wake.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is still pursuing a deeper understanding of issues related to the infamous dossier that justified spying on political opposition.  President Trump asked the new Ukrainian President for assistance in the “alleged” Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers (the DNC refused to let the FBI examine the servers for actual evidence; instead, they hired Crowdstrike to claim Russia hacked the servers).  For credible evidence that debunks Russian hacking of the DNC server, please see my May 29, 2019 article, “One’s Name Is Mud.”

 

Democrats are fully aware of Justice Department actions.  This explains their urgency to move forward with the impeachment narrative.  If Trump survives the current contest, which I frame as power for Democrats and truth and justice for most Republicans (Romney is still a self-promoter; Sass can’t keep up, then the Justice Department is likely to move on criminal prosecution of crimes committed going into the 2016 election.  As mentioned in a previous article, “Flotsam with a Voice,” Democrats did not capitulate when the Mueller report was released.  As predicted, Democrats will sustain an offensive for four main reasons:

Run out the clock under statute of limitations provisions to protect those who conspired to undermine President Trump.

Keep pressure on Trump via Congressional hearings to make him and any Republican supporters unattractive candidates going into the 2020 elections.

Maintain positive control of the public narrative, knowing they can count on a complicit, duplicitous, and mendacious main stream media who share the same progressive (shall we say socialist) agenda.

.

When indictments begin to surface from Attorney General Barr’s investigation into the “investigators” and Russian collusion hoax “perpetrators,” the Democrats will argue these actions are intended as political retribution despite actual, not merely “alleged,” illegal activity.

            In closing, we can essentially predict Democrat strategy and actions because they operate “by the book.”  What exactly is “the book”?  Does it mean due process in accordance with the law?  Or is it Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals?

 

Based on the Democrat organizing principle and political action, I contend “the book” is Rules for Radicals.  After all, it is all about taking power away from those who have it.  Alinsky’s rule 13 seems to clearly describe the concerted cabal by Democrats and a complicit media:  “Pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

A Judas Gene . . . or Meme

IM (an American citizen with an inquiring mind):  Gadfly, did you hear about Senator McConnell’s comments about Ashley Judd? 

Old Gadfly:  Yes.  What did you think about the nature of this news?

IM:  Well, first of all, it did not sound good to hear someone making judgments about another person.  So, emotionally it made me feel contempt for McConnell and compassion for Judd.

Old Gadfly:  Do you think, not feel, that your reaction was intended by the report?

IM:  Yes, and your question relates to the second point I wanted to make.  The sound bite that made the news cycle was a form of eavesdropping.  Someone was secretly recording the conversation.

Old Gadfly:  So, how do you react to the notion of spying on someone else without their knowledge or permission?

IM:  It’s unethical, possibly illegal.

Old Gadfly:  Isn’t this practice similar to what got Nixon in trouble with the Watergate break-in?

IM:  Absolutely.

Old Gadfly:  Yet, those on the left who are outraged at what McConnell said are not concerned with the tactic employed to get the sound bite.

IM:  This is sad, Gadfly.  What can be done about it?

Old Gadfly:  Unfortunately, we’re dealing with religious zealotry, based on secular humanism.  According to Nobel laureate Joseph Schumpeter, Marx is the prophet of this religion.[1]  Schumpeter claimed:  “The religious quality of Marxism also explains a characteristic attitude of the orthodox Marxist toward opponents.  To him, as to any believer in a Faith, the opponent is not merely in error but in sin.  Dissent is disapproved of not only intellectually but also morally.  There cannot be any excuse for it once the Message has been revealed.”[2]  Two of Marx’s American apostles are Saul Alinsky (recall our conversation on engineering public sentiment) and George Lakoff.  Alinsky was more of a soldier in the crusade to take power away from those who have it to those who did not.  His approach was very similar to Lenin’s in Russia.  Both were community organizers, agitating masses for the purpose of uniting them for political power.  By the way, community organizing is the extent of Barack Obama’s professional experience before his meteoric rise in American politics. 

IM:  Your points about Marx, Alinsky, Lenin, and Obama are not trivial.  How about Lakoff?

Old Gadfly:  Lakoff is still alive, teaches our impressionable youth as a professor at UC-Berkeley, and serves as one of the theologians for Marxist-inspired secular humanism.  In our discussion on engineering public sentiment we mentioned Lakoff’s book, Whose Freedom?  The Battle over America’s Most Important Idea.  He explained why wealth created by individuals belongs to the commonwealth to be distributed by political elite.  Yet, it was his book, Moral Politics:  How Liberals and Conservatives Think, where he laid out many of the religion’s doctrines.  Of course, the book was not intended to simply characterize differences in worldviews.  The intent was to explain why the conservative worldview is wrong and that it is immoral, that is, sinful.

IM:  I skimmed through Lakoff’s Whose Liberty and noted he considered himself to be a progressive Christian.

Old Gadfly:  Very observant, IM.  There is a difference between a progressive Christian and a Christian progressive.  Remember, we discussed this distinction in our conversation on political prostitution.  A progressive Christian adjusts religious positions based on a political worldview.  A Christian progressive adjusts political positions based on a religious worldview.  This is why many who claim to be Catholic will vote for a Democrat candidate who happens to be pro-choice (i.e., in favor of abortion).  We’ll get into this subject in more detail in a future conversation because it deals with the political cooptation of the Catholic Church based on a concept called social justice.

IM:  It’s interesting that the McConnell sound bite led to a discussion on religion in modern American politics.

Old Gadfly:  Let’s get back to the McConnell news item.  Who broke the news?

IM:  I watched the segment on ABC News, and the anchor attributed the source to Mother Jones.

Old Gadfly:  Do you see a pattern?

IM:  Let me think about this. . . . Didn’t Mother Jones break the news about Romney’s 47% comment?

Old Gadfly:  Yes.  But, I first read about this scandalous comment in Slate.  Keep thinking.

IM:  Wasn’t it Mother Jones that broke the news about Valerie Plame’s CIA cover being violated to the Chicago reporter Robert Novak?

Old Gadfly:  Possibly.  I read about it in The Nation.  Ironically, there was no real news that Plame was no longer qualified for undercover protection, nor any interest that Richard Armitage was the source for Novak.  But, by then there was enough news cycle damage regarding the imagined crime committed by someone close to Bush, like Karl Rove.  The smoking gun nailed Scooter Libby for perjury because his recollections differed from the late Tim Russert’s.  But let’s follow this pattern some more.  Do you recall who it was that broke these three items related to Plame, Romney, and McConnell?

IM:  Yes, David Corn.

Old Gadfly:  Corn suffers from what I call the Judas gene.

IM:  That’s an interesting notion, given our religious analogues.

Old Gadfly:  The difference is that Judas Iscariot had remorse following his betrayal of Jesus on behalf of reigning elite that wanted to silence and visibly and brutally torture and execute a person with a competing worldview.  Corn, on the other hand, is not capable of remorse. 

IM:  Why do you think he is not capable of remorse?

Old Gadfly:  If Schumpeter is correct, Corn and those of his ilk are at the vanguard of “utopia creators.”  Here is what Schumpeter argued:

It was not by a slip that an analogy from the world of religion was permitted to intrude into the title of this chapter.  There is more than analogy.  In one important sense, Marxism is a religion.  To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved.  We may specify still further:  Marxist socialism also belongs to that subgroup which promises paradise on this side of the grave.[3]

IM:  Given this logic, Corn is not betraying one of his own.  Yet, his guerilla tactics may be more consistent with Judas the Maccabean, who ironically fought against paganistic secularism.  So, Corn may in fact be genetically predisposed to his behavior due to a Judas Maccabean gene, a modern soldier fighting against a competing religion.

Old Gadfly:  Yes, but the Judas you describe has been celebrated as a hero throughout history by the likes of Dante in The Divine Comedy and even Shakespeare in Love’s Labor’s Lost.  Corn's behavior is not heroic. 

IM:  Genes can mutate.  So can memes.

Old Gadfly:  That reminds me, do you want to join me for a brandy while we watch “Planet of the Apes” later this evening?  I particularly enjoy the version with Charlton Heston.

IM:  My mind is spinning.  Just last week I watched Heston in the movie version of Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy.  So, within the span of a week, I’ll get to vicariously experience the difference between the manifestation of individual greatness inspired by faith in a divine entity and the manifestation of a mediocre collective identity instituted by utopian-inspired, and somewhat hairy, elite.

Old Gadfly:  We can only speculate the direction of our evolution.

IM:  Amen to that Gadfly.  Darwin closed his epoch work, On the Origin of Species, with: 

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher animals, directly follows.  There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.[4]

Old Gadfly:  So, if the “the Creator” breathed life in the form of genetic material, then who breaths life in the form of memetic material?

IM:  I think we’ll get a sense for it in tonight’s movie.

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[1] Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.  (New York, NY:  Harper Perennial, 1975; originally published in 1942).

[2] Ibid, p. 5.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, Second Edition, (London:  John Murray, 1860), p. 490.  Accessed at http://darwin-online.org. uk/contents.html