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Sunday, May 13, 2018
Saturday, May 12, 2018
Rosie O'Donnell should be prosecuted for violating campaign finance law
Another title for this article could be.
The Double Standard
Let me state further nothing will happen to O’Donnell because our judicial system is set up to benefit liberals... that and the weak-kneed Republicans won't do a damn thing about it.
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On a tip from Ed Kilbane
Originally posted at Fox News by Dinesh D’Souza.
The New York Post recently reported that “Rosie O’Donnell made illegally over-sized campaign donations to at least five Democratic federal candidates, according to a Post analysis of campaign filings.”
The Post story goes on to state: “The liberal comedian has regularly broken Federal Election Commission rules limiting the total any one person can give to an individual candidate at $2,700 per election. The limit applies separately to primaries, runoffs and general elections.”
If the Post story is accurate, federal prosecutors have an obligation to charge O’Donnell with violating campaign finance law and to put her on trial. And if she’s found guilty, my advice to the sentencing judge would be to give her a sentence including confinement and a sizable fine – just as I received for violating campaign finance law.
If I – a prominent conservative – can be labeled a criminal for donating too much to a campaign, then far-left, Trump-bashing O’Donnell should get the same treatment.
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If I must endure being a lifelong felon while O’Donnell gets off scot-free, can we say that Lady Justice is truly blind?
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Lots of people in every election give more than they’re supposed to. In other words, campaign finance violations are extremely common. And they are almost never seriously prosecuted.
The New York Post article quoted prominent campaign finance lawyer Jan Witold Baran as saying: “Donors are rarely fined for excess contributions and then only if they are hiding the donations from the recipients.”
I was an exception to the rule and that has made me particularly interested in how campaign finance violations are handled. In the 2012 case, I gave $20,000 over the limit to a single candidate – Wendy Long, a college friend of mine running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in New York.
For that I was sentenced in U.S. District Court in New York City to eight months of overnight confinement, a $30,000 fine, five years of probation and one day of community service per week for five years. I’m still on probation and still doing the community service, which doesn’t expire until October 2019.
Now Rosie O’Donnell has been caught exceeding the campaign finance limit by giving more than the maximum permitted donation of $2,700 to victorious Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Doug Jones in Alabama, victorious Democratic congressional candidate Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, and to three other candidates, the Post reported.
O’Donnell’s defense, as she wrote in an email to the Post, is that she didn’t know she was exceeding the limits. She wrote that candidates “should refund the money” if she donated too much, and added that “I just donate assuming they do not accept what is over the limit.”
I find this defense implausible because O’Donnell used four different – though similar –variations of her name and five different addresses.
If she's as pure as the driven snow like she claims why would she deliberately attempt to deceive with variations of her name and five different addresses?
The way O’Donnell choreographed her contributions clearly suggests that she was trying to conceal the fact that they were all coming from the same person. I suspect she knew she was breaking the law.
But even if O’Donnell was telling the truth, the law doesn’t work like that. Her defense is about as logical as the guy who thinks he can go just as fast as he wants on the highway, and believes that if he’s going too fast the cops can stop him and tell him to slow down. Try that the next time you get stopped and you’ll see it’s a futile defense.
Now in the old days, say the 1980s, if you had told me about O’Donnell’s offense and asked me whether I thought she should go to jail for it, I would have said she should not. Why?
First, because these campaign finance limits don’t make a whole lot of sense. Why set an arbitrary $2,700 limit when millionaires and billionaires can easily get around them and give huge amounts through political action committees?
Second, justice demands that the penalty fit the crime. Campaign finance prosecutions make the most sense when there is corruption involved: when someone is trying to get a quid pro quo, which is to say, get appointed to a position, or obtain favors from candidates upon their election. This was obviously not the case with O’Donnell.
Normally, O’Donnell’s type of offense is punished with community service and a fine. But we are not living in normal types, as my own campaign finance case illustrates.
Mine was a clear instance of politically motivated prosecution. Two indications of that are contained right in my FBI file, which is now in the hands of a congressional oversight committee.
In the FBI file, I’m red-flagged as a political conservative who made a movie critical of President Obama. Why mention this? The FBI did it to signal to the Obama Justice Department and its stooges that I was a political enemy they might want to prosecute.
The FBI also made an initial outlay of $100,000 to investigate my $20,000 case. Again, this is odd. But it is also consistent with a political hit. Clearly, the FBI was working in cahoots with Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and his prosecutorial team in New York City to make sure that they nailed their target.
Finally, the injustice of the case can be seen in the verdict. No American has been even charged, let alone received such a severe penalty, for doing what I did. And no prominent person on the other side of the aisle had a similar case until O’Donnell’s situation was recently brought to light.
O’Donnell seems by all accounts to have broken the law and broken it five times. This makes her offense five times worse than mine, in my view.
I’m not saying she deserves five times the penalty I received, but I am saying that assuming the facts are true as reported by the Post – as O’Donnell herself seems to admit – she should receive at least a severe a penalty as mine. She is, after all, a serial or repeat offender and repeat offenses are always taken more seriously than a first and one-time offense.
Yet the same people who are jubilant over my conviction have gone dead silent on O’Donnell. They know my prosecution was political, and they approve. But now they want O’Donnell to get off with the normal treatment that usually goes with offenses uncontaminated by corrupt motives.
Yet justice isn’t just a matter of whether someone broke the law, but also about whether other similarly situated people are treated the same way. If I must endure being a lifelong felon while O’Donnell gets off scot-free, can we say that Lady Justice is truly blind? Of course not.
In an earlier time, President Jimmy Carter would no more dream of locking me up for exceeding a campaign limit than Ronald Reagan would consider locking up left-wing activist Michael Moore for the same offense. It was a kinder, gentler America.
But we don’t live in that America. The Democratic Party has been gangsterized by the likes of President Obama and Hillary Clinton, who were not above using the instruments of the state to put their political adversaries behind bars. And this course of action is generally approved by the progressive left in the media and groups like Media Matters.
There is only one solution to this: Do the same to them! And maybe this will show them that two can play at this game and that if they don’t want their team being locked up for minor offenses, stop doing this to the other side. Paradoxically, the best hope for a return to civility and normalcy is to prosecute Rosie O’Donnell to the full extent of the law.
The Trump Justice Department should work with the U.S. attorneys in every district that O’Donnell may have broken the law. I’d like to see her face multiple indictments. And I won’t be especially sorry if she suffers the same fate I did, or worse, because I expect that she was one of those who cheered the loudest when I had my sentence read out to me.
Friday, May 11, 2018
Sarah Palin responds to McCain's regrets revealed in new book
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., and U.S. Republican vice-presidential nominee Alaska Governor Sarah Palin wave to the crowd at a campaign rally in Hershey, Penn., October 28, 2008. (REUTERS)
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and John McCain’s 2008 running mate, reportedly said she feels a “perpetual gut-punch” every time she hears about McCain’s regret in picking her for his team.
“That’s not what Sen. McCain has told me all these years, as he’s apologized to me repeatedly for the people who ran his campaign,” Palin told The Daily Mail. She said over the years, "I stop him all the time and say, 'Please don't apologize.'"
McCain wrote in his book, “The Restless Wave,” that he regretted not choosing his friend, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, as his running mate, calling it “another mistake that I made,” according to The New York Times. McCain reportedly wrote that his advisers warned him against picking her a vice-presidential candidate who caucused with Democrats.
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Lieberman, what does that tell you?
Want to talk about mistakes? Here's a doozy. Trump won Arizona's major counties right?
| Vote by county | Trump | Clinton |
|---|---|---|
| Maricopa |
747,361
|
702,907
|
| Pima |
167,428
|
224,661
|
| Pinal |
72,819
|
47,892
|
| Yavapai |
71,330
|
35,590
|
| Mohave |
58,282
|
17,455
|
| Coconino |
21,108
|
32,404
|
| Yuma |
25,165
|
24,605
|
| Cochise |
28,092
|
17,450
|
| Navajo |
20,577
|
16,459
|
| Apache |
8,240
|
17,083
|
Oh...10 to 1 he voted for Hillary.
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His advisers picked Palin, the Alaska governor and Tea Party favorite.
“I attribute a lot of what we're hearing and reading regarding McCain's statements to his ghostwriter or ghostwriters,” Palin said. “I don't know unless I heard it from Sen. McCain myself.”
Thursday, May 10, 2018
John McCain: Senate should reject Gina Haspel for CIA director
With his last dying breath...
Of course, had Trump nominated someone different he would have gotten McCain's full support.
WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain urged his Senate colleagues Wednesday night to reject Gina Haspel's nomination for CIA director, saying she failed to adequately answer questions about her role in the agency's torture program at a confirmation hearing earlier in the day.
On May 9th this story broke:
McCain did for the Republican party what Benedict Arnold did for the American Continental Army.
Another fine example:
Senator McCain reveals 'it was his duty' to give infamous golden showers dossier to the FBI and slams Trump for his 'reality show facsimile of toughness' in upcoming memoir
Another fine example:
Senator McCain reveals 'it was his duty' to give infamous golden showers dossier to the FBI and slams Trump for his 'reality show facsimile of toughness' in upcoming memoir
The Arizona senator is the second Republican to come out against Haspel's confirmation, meaning that GOP leaders may not have enough votes to confirm her. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has vowed to oppose Haspel because of her role in the agency's now-outlawed torture program.
Republicans hold a slim 51-49 majority in the Senate, and "no" votes by two Republicans could sink Haspel's nomination. So far, no Democrats have announced that they will support her.
McCain's opinion carries great weight because he is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former prisoner of war who was tortured by the Viet Cong in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. He has been an outspoken critic of the CIA's past use of torture, which was banned during the Obama administration.
McCain, who is undergoing cancer treatment in Arizona, could help defeat Haspel's nomination even if he is not well enough to fly to Washington, D.C., to vote. His absence also could deprive Republicans of the 51 votes they need to confirm Haspel.
"I believe Gina Haspel is a patriot who loves our country and has devoted her professional life to its service and defense," McCain said. "However, Ms. Haspel's role in overseeing the use of torture by Americans is disturbing. Her refusal to acknowledge torture's immorality is disqualifying. I believe the Senate should exercise its duty of advice and consent and reject this nomination."
Haspel testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that, if confirmed, she would not restart the CIA's controversial interrogation. After the 9/11 attacks on America, the agency used waterboarding and other torture techniques to try to get information from suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush administration.
"Having served in that tumultuous time, I can offer you my personal commitment, clearly and without reservation, that under my leadership, on my watch, CIA will not restart such a detention and interrogation program," she told the senators. However, she stopped short of condemning the agency's past actions as immoral.
McCain said he doesn't believe Haspel went far enough in providing details about her CIA experience and her involvement in torture.
"Like many Americans, I understand the urgency that drove the decision to resort to so-called enhanced interrogation methods after our country was attacked," McCain said. "But as I have argued many times, the methods we employ to keep our nation safe must be as right and just as the values we aspire to live up to and promote in the world."
The Intelligence Committee is expected to recommend Haspel's confirmation to the full Senate. Republicans make up eight of the 15 members of the panel, and they all indicated Wednesday that they would support Haspel when the committee votes in the next few weeks.
CIA director nominee Gina Haspel says she wouldn't allow the agency to undertake "immoral" activities, even at the request of President Donald Trump. USA TODAY, USA TODAY
The only GOP senator on the committee who had expressed serious reservations about Haspel — Sen. Susan Collins of Maine — announced after Wednesday's hearing that she would support her confirmation.
"At the hearing, I questioned Ms. Haspel regarding the enhanced interrogation program that was started after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks," Collins said in a statement. "I have long believed — and have consistently stated— that this program was completely unacceptable and that waterboarding is tantamount to torture."
However, Collins cited Haspel's testimony that she "played no role in the creation of the interrogation program and that she wasn't even aware of its existence until more a year after it began."
"Furthermore, she said that she supported the 2015 law changes and made clear that she does not believe that the CIA should be in the 'interrogation business,'" Collins said. "She testified that under her leadership, the CIA would follow the law and would not resume enhanced interrogations and that she would not seek to repeal the law."
Democratic committee members focused much of their questioning on Haspel's oversight in 2002 of a secret "black site" in Thailand where suspected terrorists were subjected to waterboarding and confined in coffin-shaped boxes for hours.
Haspel, who spent more than 30 years as a covert agent before becoming the CIA's deputy director last year, also faced questions about her involvement in the destruction of 92 videotapes that showed prisoners being waterboarded.
She testified that she drafted the order to destroy the tapes at the direction of her boss, who decided to issue the directive on his own.
Sunday, May 6, 2018
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