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~ Featuring ~
Can President Trump Shoot Jim Comey? 
by Judge Andrew Napolitano
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Why is Sessions DOJ Ignoring Open 
and Shut Case Against Dems' Pakistani Spies?
{ rickwells.us } ~ With DOJ corruption everywhere you look, it’s no surprise that the leader of a Pakistani espionage ring that obtained wide open... unfettered access to the IT systems of 44 House Democrats, including members of the Intelligence, Homeland Security, and other committees dealing with classified information is reportedly being offered a plea deal so he can escape justice. Imran Awan and his wife have a hearing set for July 3rd, a date that helps to guarantee minimal press coverage due to its proximity to the Independence Day holiday, on conspiracy and bank fraud charges, not to mention the little problem with espionage, considered to be a victimless non-crime by corrupt Democrats. Lou Dobbs notes, with his guest Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller, “the delays, the peculiar posture that’s been assumed by the prosecutors, and the defendants in this case and the role of the former DNC head, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.” Rosiak, who has been all over this case since the beginning, believes the explanation is tied to Democrat rigging of the election and the Russia hoax...   https://rickwells.us/sessions-doj-dems-pakistani-spies/
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Traitor Ryan Again Rushing a Bill Americans 
Don't Want Before We Can Stop It - Amnesty
{ rickwells.us } ~ It seems as though the method by which the corruptocrats abuse their power and impose their will upon America is always the same... The corrupt leadership and members of the House and Senate wait until the last minute, until they can claim to be up against some kind of contrived deadline, like a government shutdown, and then force  a bill they should never have supported upon the people because “they have no choice, they have to act quickly.” That “legislation through contrived crisis” system has replaced the normal budgetary process, was utilized to Gruber the American people with liar-nObamacare, and is now the favored method of corrupt politicians for meeting the demands of their special interests as they are “being forced” to ignore the needs of their constituents, their campaign promises and what’s best for the nation. Swamp sleazebag Paul Ryan and some of his favorite House RINOs have maneuvered a plan to pass amnesty under the guise of choosing the best variation out of four, the now infamous “discharge petition.” It certainly smells like some sort of discharge. The scheme involves the uniparty RINOs pretending to cede power to their brethren Democrats, with the amnesty that will be the only variation supported by Democrats being the one that garners the most votes and the one Americans, if it passes the Senate and President Trump signs it, are stuck with...  https://rickwells.us/traitor-ryan-rushing-amnesty/
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Iran’s Deceptive Financial Practices 
-Qw5aUyUrahqPZBPLMHivJwnrSSNWTu1b42Zh-2_8HVR5Wtoa7BG8oG4McnX9KEx8Yu5StDrl8O60r5L1SGNCZ_3HqAqisOP4uAr9tzQrR1AzmTLnsQ43RGBd-n-Vt7BVsw=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=450by Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg
{ defenddemocracy.org } ~ FDD’s Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance (CSIF) hosted a by-invitation-only lunch event on Iran's Deceptive Financial Practices... featuring remarks by Sigal Mandelker, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence on Tuesday, June 5, 2018. Her remarks were followed by an expert panel discussion featuring Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of FDD; Richard Goldberg, Senior Advisor at FDD; Carlton Greene, Partner at Crowell & Moring; and Elizabeth Rosenberg, Senior Fellow at CNAS. Following the president’s announcement of U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA, Under Secretary Mandelker and her team at Treasury have been tasked with applying “the strongest sanctions in history” by rebuilding the financial pressure architecture against the Iranian regime and its financiers. What actions have been taken thus far and what additional measures should the policy community, compliance officials, and the private sector expect to see in the coming weeks and months? How is Treasury working with our European, Gulf, Asian, and Latin American allies to promote a productive and effective approach in deterring Iran’s illicit financial activities? As the Iranian people have taken to the streets decrying the failures of their government, what role can Washington play in combating the corrupt Iranian regime and supporting a prosperous future for the Iranian people?...
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How Al-Qaeda Works: 
The Jihadist Group’s Evolving Organizational Design
RBL8NDZF9eB-F2zD9NgJZUcM2DFyS2MmO1IZUyreFDiX1KY2H3pV3-BBuFW_EWplVG3GOaseIbYrsWrs3I0OqZFNdy8CbKrA8t5r3rPHs7yOBmEkIS03cUvvs2HkJ5vW4gyJkNPxGxmIwGcTQudiO_0=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=450by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Nathaniel Barr
{ hudson.org } ~ The years following the 9/11 attacks and preceding the Arab Spring marked a period of tumult for al-Qaeda... The jihadist organization lost a number of key commanders after the United States invaded Afghanistan, including several involved in planning operations outside the region. Though al-Qaeda did prepare a credible large-scale plot against commercial aviation in August 2006 and nearly brought down an international flight over Detroit in December 2009, the organization went multiple years without a successfully  executed terrorist attack in the West. For an organization that had to a certain extent staked its credibility on its ability to sustain an armed struggle against the “far enemy,” this hiatus damaged its reputation. Compounding these problems was al-Qaeda’s Iraq affiliate, which had stubbornly ignored the al-Qaeda leadership’s guidance to tone down what they deemed to be excessively violent methods. After overplaying its hand, which provoked an organized backlash from Iraqi Sunni communities, al-Qaeda in Iraq collapsed. In turn, its collapse was a blow to the al-Qaeda organization as a whole. In his 2008 book Leaderless Jihad, psychiatrist and former C.I.A. case officer Marc Sageman reflected on the al-Qaeda of the 2000s. Sageman argued that the capabilities of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership had declined sharply, and to such an extent that the organization no longer exercised command and control over either its nominal affiliates or over like-minded jihadists operating outside Afghanistan and Pakistan...
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Blind Hate Drives a Wedge Among "Islamophobia" Hunters 
{ investigativeproject.org } ~ Wajahat Ali thinks we're a bunch of hate mongers. Islamophobes... Part of a handful of groups "primarily responsible for orchestrating the majority of anti-Islam messages polluting our national discourse," he wrote in a 2011 report for the Center for American Progress called "Fear, Inc., the Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America." But Ali also is part of a dialogue with liberal Zionists as part of the Shalom Hartman Institute's Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI). The program includes travel to Israel to meet with Israelis and Palestinians to learn about their perspectives. For this, he is deemed insufficiently hateful about Israel. He is pilloried on social media for "faithwashing," and as "selfish parasite" willing to "throw the Palestine cause for freedom under the bus" and placed among "Muslim sell-outs who tickle Islamophobes pink but whom no other Muslims listen to." And now, he's been disinvited from speaking at this summer's annual Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention – touted as the largest gathering of Muslims in the country...   https://www.investigativeproject.org/7477/blind-hate-drives-a-wedge-among-islamophobia
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Can President Trump Shoot Jim Comey? 
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by Judge Andrew Napolitano
{ townhall.com } ~ Last weekend, the White House leaked a copy of a letter sent by President Donald Trump's legal team on Jan. 29 to special counsel Robert Mueller. The letter set forth the president's legal strategy, arguing essentially that he is immune from prosecution for any crime.

To soften the tone of this poorly received letter, the White House dispatched Rudy Giuliani, the president's most visible legal spokesperson, to address the issues that his colleagues had raised. He made matters worse when he suggested that if the president ordered Jim Comey "shot in the Oval Office," he couldn't be prosecuted because the president can pardon himself and because the president's personal and presidential behavior is beyond the reach of the criminal justice system.

Giuliani was supposed to be making a principled case for why the president cannot be subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, and he ended up discussing absurd hypotheticals about a self-pardon and shooting the former FBI director in the White House.

Here is the back story.

Trump's lawyers' letter argued that obstruction of justice refers to interference with a judicial proceeding and that an FBI investigation is not a judicial proceeding. That was the law before 2002, but an amendment adopted that year provided that any corrupt interference with an FBI investigation that is aimed at producing evidence for a grand jury constitutes obstruction of justice.

The letter's second argument offered that Trump could not have committed obstruction of justice because he controls all that is done in the executive branch and decides what is just, whom to prosecute and whom to overlook. This is the Nixonian argument that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal," which was rejected by the lessons of Watergate.

The president is not a king. He took an oath to uphold the Constitution. That includes the rule of law. The rule of law has three unassailable elements. 1) No one is beneath the law's protections. 2) No one is above the law's requirements. 3) No one can be a prosecutor or judge in his own case. The Giuliani argument over the weekend that Trump could have Comey shot in the Oval Office with impunity is not only needlessly tasteless and patently absurd but also contrary to the rule of law, and it is an invitation to presidential lawlessness.

In Giuliani's hypothetical, Trump would be arrested for murder if Comey died. He would be indicted for murder, but he would not be tried until his term in office is complete. That's because the judicial system must respect the president's prerogatives of office while he is in office.

If Trump fired Comey as FBI director because he couldn't stand to be in a room with a guy taller than he is, Trump committed no wrong. But if he fired Comey because he wanted to stop the Russia investigation -- which is essentially what he told NBC News' Lester Holt -- that was using the machinery of the presidency for a corrupt purpose, which is the essence of obstruction.

The president can be charged with obstruction anytime a grand jury finds probable cause of his guilt, but just as in the Giuliani shooting hypothetical, he cannot be tried until the day after he leaves office.

The Trump team letter committed a third error by failing to address United States v. Nixon, a 1974 Supreme Court case that addressed subpoenas to the president. The Nixon case makes clear that the president enjoys broad and wide executive privilege -- the ability to keep presidential documents and testimony away from Congress and the courts -- in his ordinary work.

But the Nixon case also makes clear that executive privilege is reduced radically in a criminal investigation. If subpoenaed in that context, the president must surrender documents and give testimony on all relevant matters demanded by the prosecutors, except for military secrets, diplomatic secrets and sensitive national security matters. None of those pertains to Mueller's likely subpoena to Trump, and Giuliani knows that.

Can the president pardon himself?

The short answer is: No one knows. The longer answer is: Why would the president's lawyer be offering this argument? The president has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, so why discuss pardoning oneself? The president's pardoning power has no limits in the Constitution. Yet the rule-of-law principle that one cannot be the prosecutor or judge in one's own case suggests that the president's pardoning power is limited to people other than himself. It is hard for me to believe that a court confronted with an indictment of Trump would dismiss it in deference to Trump's self-pardon.

After Giuliani offered his views on a presidential self-pardon and a presidential shooting, the president jumped into the fray and tweeted that he can pardon himself; and by the way, the United States Office of Special Counsel is unconstitutional. I was shocked to see that opinion because that office is authorized by the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which Congress adopted and has been validated by six federal judges. Moreover, the president himself sanctioned Russian intelligence agents that one of the special counsel's grand juries indicted. If that office is unconstitutional, why are the president's lawyers interacting with it?

I am unhappily surprised and deeply disappointed by the poor quality of public lawyering in Trump's behalf that we have seen thus far. The Jan. 29 letter would have flunked a law school course in criminal procedure. The Giuliani hysterics have substantially diminished the professional reputation of one of the country's more formidable ex-prosecutors, have offered known untruths and have become the legal equivalent of throwing gasoline on a fire.

None of this is good for Donald Trump, whose legal woes continue to grow in spite of his legal team's efforts to minimize them.

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