It’s Not Collateral Damage To The Victims Of The Mueller Witch Hunt

Now that the Mueller investigation has cleared President Trump and demonstrated beyond any doubt that the entire affair was a hoax founded upon lies perpetrated by the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Obama administration, Democrat political operatives and the Deep State political class embedded in the government, conservatives and other fair-minded Americans ought to demand that those whose lives and reputations have been shattered by this hoax be made whole.

We’re talking about those whom the establishment media and the vile instigators of the Trump – Russia collusion narrative have dismissed as “collateral damage” in the investigation.

Honest, hardworking patriotic men like Michael Caputo, who served in the Army, worked for conservative luminaries such as Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, and advised numerous Republican political candidates before signing-on to the Trump campaign.

Caputo was dragged through hell by the Mueller investigation and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence merely because he had lived in Ukraine and Russia and had done public relations and campaign work in those countries… and worked for Donald Trump.

Caputo was forced to liquidate his children’s college fund to pay his legal expenses for the “crime” of being associated with Donald Trump.

Likewise, longtime conservative pundit, bestselling author and media personality Jerome “Jerry” Corsi was threatened with what amounted to life in prison and mired in untold thousands of dollars of legal fees for the “crime” of exchanging email with Roger Stone and correctly predicting the Wikileaks dumps on Podesta and the DNC and trying get in touch with Julian Assange to confirm his hypotheses.

Corsi was never charged with any crime, although special counsel Robert Mueller's team offered Corsi a proposed plea agreement, which would have required him to admit to one criminal charge with two components: lying to investigators and obstruction of justice before congressional or grand jury proceedings.

Corsi refused to sign the plea deal. He then released drafts of his plea agreement and indictment, went on a media tour slamming Mueller's team and published a book detailing his experiences with the special counsel.

Corsi accused Mueller's team of trying to push him to plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit.

"I went in there to cooperate with them. They treated me as a criminal," Corsi told CNN. In the end, Mueller concluded his investigation without ever bringing charges against Dr. Corsi.

But there are others who didn’t fare quite so well as Dr. Corsi, especially Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos.

Papdopoulos, the young energy policy expert and volunteer Trump advisor who was set-up by the Obama administration to give them a pretext to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil the Trump campaign was arguably the most ill-used of all the figures in the Mueller investigation.

A neophyte in presidential politics, Papdopoulos was lured to London and set-up by Obama administration consultant Stephan Halper to pass along the bait that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton to the Australian Ambassador, Alexander Downer.

Why and how the Ambassador found his way into contact with a junior figure like George Papadopoulos has never been explained, nor has the path of transmission of the information from Papadopoulos to Downer to the Obama intelligence apparatus ever been disclosed.

What is clear, based on what has been disclosed, is that the basis for the surveillance and interrogation of Papadopoulos was a closed loop system of false information being generated by Obama and Clinton connected operatives who then fed the information to Papadopoulos through Halper and then back through Downer to the Obama intelligence apparatus.

Again, after being threatened and swamped with legal bills, Papadopoulos pled guilty to the process crime of making false statements to FBI agents relating to contacts he had with agents of the Russian government while working for the Trump campaign. The guilty plea was part of a plea bargain reflecting his cooperation with the Mueller investigation.

However, after Papadopoulos pled guilty and served 12 days in prison, no other indictments or convictions have ever been attributed to Papadopoulos’ cooperation with the Mueller investigation.

Perhaps the most egregious “collateral damage” has been the bankrupting and recent indictment of longtime conservative political strategist, best-selling author, media personality, style and public relations guru extraordinaire Roger Stone.

Mr. Stone, who helped launch the Trump campaign, left any official capacity long before the set-up of George Papadopoulos and the Russian collusion narrative were put in motion.

Stone’s “crime” was exchanging emails about Wikileaks with Jerome Corsi and using his considerable skills at generating media buzz to promote the narrative that what had been leaked by Wikileaks before the election was just the tip of the iceberg of dirt Assange had on the Democrats and Hillary Clinton.

That some of Stone’s predictions were unsubstantiated or inaccurate mattered not to the Congressional committees that called Stone in, nor did it matter that Stone voluntarily appeared before Congress. What mattered were perceived inconsistencies in his recollections – and perhaps his vigorous advocacy of Donald Trump and his unwillingness to kowtow to Trump’s persecutors.

After a lengthy and financially debilitating dangling over the hot coals by Mueller’s team of angry Democrats, Mr. Stone was indicted on one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering.

Again, as in the Papadopoulos case, these are all process crimes that would not have occurred had the unjustified Special Counsel investigation never taken place.

Caputo, Corsi, Papadopoulos and Stone are just four of the most prominent and obvious case of “collateral damage” from the Mueller investigation. Many others, such as former Navy officer Carter Page (who was surveilled but never indicted), longtime Trump staffer Hope Hicks and former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer have also been dragged through the mud and been forced to spend untold thousands of dollars to defend their freedom and their reputations.

Unlike Democrat and Far Left figures, such as Christine Blasey Ford, there is no million-dollar GoFundMe pot of gold at the end of the ordeal for Caputo, Corsi, Papadopoulos, Stone and the rest of those caught up in the hoax that became the Mueller investigation.

And that’s the vilest part of the Democrat strategy, first tried and perfected against former Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin: Mire the target in legal fees that will punish them with bankruptcy if they are lucky enough to survive the gantlet of perjury traps Democrats set for them.

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Why Democrats must go back to school on taxes

Try explaining marginal tax cuts to a room of 5th graders.

Once, on Ronald Reagan’s birthday, I tried to explain what the top rate was like before our 40th president took office. “Imagine doing some chores for your grandparents,” I said, “and your grandma gives you $10. Then, when you get home, your parents take $7 from you. That’s what the tax rates were like before President Reagan took office.

The students immediately said that wasn’t fair.

Even 5th graders get it.

The last time the top tax rate was 70 percent was back in the days when President Jimmy Carter talked about a country in a malaise. Now, socialists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Sen. Ed Markey want to bring that top tax rate back as part of the so-called “Green New Deal.”

AOC’s response when I tweeted about the fact that even 5th graders realized that wasn’t fair was to suggest that only a limited number of people would pay the tax. It reminded me of when former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, “the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” to spend.

Politicians in Maryland helped make that point years ago when they passed a “millionaire tax” presumably to soak the “rich.” Apparently, the targeted taxpayers decided to flee and revenue projections were not met. Eventually, the governor proposed a new tax on households making $100,000 or more.

Think about that: The income of a fire fighter and a nurse could easily exceed $100,000 (particularly on the East Coast). Hardly wealthy. Uncontrolled spending in Maryland eventually hurt the middle class. Sooner or later they ran out of other people’s money to spend.

History is full of examples like that.

Remember the federal budget deal in 1990 that increased taxes on “luxury” items?

So who got hurt by the tax? According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, “Yacht retailers reported a 77 percent drop in sales that year, while boat builders estimated layoffs at 25,000.” All of the fuss about sticking it to the rich really just ended up hurting the thousands of middle-class workers and their families who got pink slips.

The taxes also took in $97 million less than had been projected for the first year. Consumers were buying fewer of the “luxury” items — or at least not buying them in America. In effect, the socialist dream of taking from the wealthy ended up hurting sales, which lead to massive layoffs and revenue projections that missed the mark.

Conversely, tax reductions have consistently had a positive impact on the economy.

Tax rates were cut several times during President Reagan’s tenure and America enjoyed many years of economic recovery. Plus, revenues continued to go up.

Revenues also continued to grow under the tax cuts proposed by President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s and during and around the Coolidge era in the 1920s. Liberals and many in the media (sometimes hard to discern which is which) mistakenly believe that lower taxes produce a reduction in revenues. History suggests otherwise.

But taxes are about more than just fiscal and economic policy. They are really about freedom.

Take Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Tax, for example. It’s not enough to just raise taxes on income, now they want to tax your savings, too.

To me, that is like telling a straight “A” student that she must share her grades with the other students. Rightly so, she would say this is not fair.

Instead of stealing from her, why not help each of the other students do better?

As President Reagan said, “the weakness in this country for too many years has been our insistence of carving an ever-increasing number of slices from a shrinking economic pie. Our policies have concentrated on rationing scarcity rather than creating plenty.”

Instead of fighting over who gets the last piece of shrinking economic pie, let’s help the people of our country produce a bigger pie so that everyone will have a chance to live a better life. That is a uniquely American idea.

We are blessed to live in the land of equal opportunity, but the outcome is still up to each of us. True freedom and prosperity do not come from the clumsy hand of the government. They come from people being able to control their own life and their own destiny through the dignity that is born of work.

As policy makers consider tax increases or tax cuts, I hope they will remember these simple facts. Lest they forget we celebrate the 4th of July and not April 15th, because, in America, we celebrate our independence from the government and not our dependence on it.

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GOP launches path to nuclear option rules change in Senate

Senate Republicans took the first step Thursday toward triggering the “nuclear option” and cut down on the amount of time Democrats can obstruct presidential nominees.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scheduled a test vote next week on a change to Senate rules that would trim the 30 hours of debate allowed on each nominee once a filibuster is defeated.

That vote is expected to fail — and the GOP is then likely to use the nuclear option, a shortcut to change the rules by majority vote.

Mr. McConnell said he’s been forced into the move by Democrats who, he said, have blocked President Trump’s nominees “out of spite.”

“The Senate is going to do something about it,” he said.

The Kentucky Republican didn’t specifically mention the nuclear option on the floor, but did obliquely refer to it, urging Democrats to accept the rules change without having to resort to the more extreme option.

Mr. McConnell told colleagues earlier this month that Republicans have the votes for the nuclear option — though it does not appear any Democrats will back the normal rules change.

Some Democrats have said they agree that the Senate has gotten off track, but said they won’t approve any change that would help Mr. Trump — a standard that Mr. McConnell said is unsustainable.

“Fair is fair,” he said.

Republicans say Democrats have treated Mr. Trump unfairly by any yardstick.

They’ve had to face attempted Democratic filibusters on more than 120 of Mr. Trump’s nominees — easily swamping any previous administration’s total. Once a filibuster is surmounted, the rules call for up to 30 hours of debate to follow.

That means that if the full time is used, a single nominee can take more than a day’s worth of floor time, crowding out any other substantive legislative business.

Multiple times over the last two years the Senate has spent entire weeks approving four or five nominees.

Democrats acknowledge they’re treating Mr. Trump differently, but say it’s deserved because of the quality of his nominees.

The GOP’s rules change would still keep a maximum of 30 hours of debate on major nominees such as Cabinet-level positions, Supreme Court justices and circuit court judges. But other picks would only face a maximum of two hours’ additional debate once a filibuster has been surmounted.

The Senate experimented with a similar rules change in 2013, when Mr. McConnell led Republicans to join Democrats in lowering debate time for President Obama’s nominees. That experiment expired in 2015.

Thirty-five members of the Democratic Caucus who are still in the Senate voted for the change in 2013. Among them was Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, who is now Democrats’ floor leader.

On Thursday, he accused Mr. McConnell of changing his position to suit his own needs.

“Senator McConnell’s approach has always been to manipulate Senate rules when it helps him and then change Senate rules when the tables turn,” Mr. Schumer said. “This is just another step in his effort to limit the rights of the minority and cede authority to the administration.”

The only member of the Democratic Caucus to oppose the rules change in 2013 was Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent.

Ten Republicans who opposed that 2013 temporary rules change are also still in the Senate.

The nuclear option was used by Democrats in 2013, when they triggered it to reduce the threshold for overcoming a filibuster on most nominees from 60 to only a simple majority. That paved the way for Mr. Obama to stack an important appeals court in Washington, D.C., with his nominees.

GOP senators then used it in 2017, finishing Democrats’ work by applying the majority standard to Supreme Court picks. That paved the way for the confirmation of Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

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