Bill Clinton and Monica Cartoons

Sex scandal boomerang: Is the left ready for a Bill Clinton 'reckoning'?

When Jeff Sessions testified on the Hill yesterday, he was grilled about the Justice Department's disclosure that it may seek a special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton.

Was it political retribution? Perhaps there should be a probe of whether donations to the Clinton Foundation were tied to a 2010 Obama administration decision, in which Clinton participated, to allow a Russian agency to buy a company that had uranium rights in America.

But after President Trump repeatedly urged such an investigation, critics say that naming a prosecutor would undermine DOJ’s independence. The attorney general said the decision would not be made on political grounds.
There is, at the moment, another drive under way to look back at Clinton — in this case, Bill Clinton.
In light of the intense focus on sexual assault and harassment allegations involving Roy Moore, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., business leaders and prominent journalists, the question arises: What about Bubba? And that question is being posed by liberal commentators.
Having covered all the Clinton sex controversies, it's generally not true that the mainstream media gave the 42nd president a pass. The Washington Post investigated the Paula Jones story and broke the news about the Monica Lewinsky probe. Kathleen Willey appeared on "60 Minutes." The Post and Wall Street Journal reported on Juanita Broaddrick, although NBC held an interview with her until after Clinton was acquitted at his Senate impeachment trial.
But a number of liberals defended Clinton during the 1990s against the allegations, blaming them on what Hillary famously called a "vast right-wing conspiracy."
Chris Hayes, the liberal prime-time host on MSNBC, tweeted the other day: "As gross and cynical and hypocritical as the right’s 'what about Bill Clinton' stuff is, it’s also true that Democrats and the center left are overdue for a real reckoning with the allegations against him."
In a piece called "The Reckoning," Atlantic contributing editor Caitlin Flanagan wrote Monday that we should "not forget the sex crimes" of which "Bill Clinton was very credibly accused in the 1990s. Juanita Broaddrick reported that when she was a volunteer on one of his gubernatorial campaigns, she had arranged to meet him in a hotel coffee shop. At the last minute, he had changed the location to her room in the hotel, where she says he very violently raped her. She said she fought against Clinton throughout a rape that left her bloodied.
At a different Arkansas hotel, he caught sight of a minor state employee named Paula Jones, and, Jones says, he sent a couple of state troopers to invite her to his suite, where he exposed his penis to her and told her to kiss it. Kathleen Willey said that she met him in the Oval Office for personal and professional advice and that he groped her, rubbed his erect penis on her, and pushed her hand to his crotch.
"It was a pattern of behavior; it included an alleged violent assault; the women involved had far more credible evidence than many of the most notorious accusations that have come to light in the past five weeks. But Clinton was not left to the swift and pitiless justice that today’s accused men have experienced. Rather, he was rescued by a surprising force: machine feminism."
As Exhibit A, Flanagan points to this 1998 New York Times op-ed by feminist leader Gloria Steinem.
If the allegations were true, Steinem wrote, "President Clinton may be a candidate for sex addiction therapy. But feminists will still have been right to resist pressure by the right wing and the media to call for his resignation or impeachment."
On Kathleen Willey’s tale of Oval Office groping, Steinem said: "Even if the allegations are true, the president is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb, and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took 'no' for an answer."
In the case of Paula Jones, "Mr. Clinton seems to have made a clumsy sexual pass, then accepted rejection." His relationship with Lewinsky, despite the "power imbalance," was not coerced.
And he should stay in office, writes Steinem, because he was "vital" to "reproductive freedom."
This is hugely embarrassing to read now, nearly two decades later.
New York Times liberal columnist Michelle Goldberg now writes that she believes Juanita Broaddrick, that revisiting the Clinton scandals is "painful," and that "Democrats are guilty of apologizing for Clinton when they shouldn’t have."
With a lament that Hillary had to pay the price for Bill’s misdeeds, Goldberg says:
"It's fair to conclude that because of Broaddrick's allegations, Bill Clinton no longer has a place in decent society."
In the cauldron of impeachment politics, some liberals were as wedded to defending Clinton despite the mounting evidence as some conservatives today are to defending Roy Moore.
But there is a defend-our-guy-at-all-costs mentality in such cases that at least some liberals are belatedly attempting to confront.
Footnote: Sessions, whose old Senate seat is at stake in the Roy Moore race, made no attempt to defend his fellow Alabamian at yesterday’s hearing. "I have no reason to doubt these women," he said.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m.). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. 

Congressional Russia probes likely to head into 2018

Some Republicans are hoping lawmakers will soon wrap up investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election that have dragged on for most of the year. But with new details in the probe emerging almost daily, that seems unlikely.
Three congressional committees are investigating Russian interference and whether President Donald Trump's campaign was in any way involved. The panels have obtained thousands of pages of documents from Trump's campaign and other officials, and have done dozens of interviews.
The probes are separate from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mueller can prosecute for criminal activity, while Congress can only lay out findings, publicize any perceived wrongdoing and pass legislation to try to keep problems from happening again. If any committee finds evidence of criminal activity, it must refer the matter to Mueller.
All three committees have focused on a June 2016 meeting that Trump campaign officials held in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer and others. They are also looking into outreach by several other Russians to the campaign, including involvement of George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty this month to lying to the FBI as part of Mueller's probe. New threads continue to emerge, such as a recent revelation that Donald Trump Jr. was messaging with WikiLeaks, the website that leaked emails from top Democratic officials during the campaign.
A look at the committees that are investigating, and the status of their work when they return from their Thanksgiving break:
SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE
The Senate intelligence panel, which has been the most bipartisan in its approach, has interviewed more than 100 people, including most of those attending the Trump Tower meeting. Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina and the panel's top Democrat, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, have said they plan to bring in Donald Trump Jr. The president's son was one of several Trump campaign officials in the meeting.
The committee has looked broadly at the issue of interference, and called in executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google, pushing them to take steps to prevent Russian election meddling on their platforms. Warner told The Associated Press the committee is still looking for more information from those companies, which were initially reluctant to cooperate.
Burr has said that he wants to wrap up the probe by early spring, when congressional primaries begin. While there are many areas of bipartisan agreement on the meddling, it's unclear whether all members will agree to the final report. It's also unclear if the report will make a strong statement on whether the Trump campaign colluded in any way with Russia.
Warner said it's plain there were "unprecedented contacts" as Russians reached out to the Trump campaign but what's not established is collusion.
HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE
In the House, Democrats hope the intelligence committee can remain focused on the Russia probe as the panel's GOP chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, and other Republicans have launched new, separate investigations into Democrat Hillary Clinton and a uranium deal during President Barack Obama's administration. Nunes stepped back from the Russia probe in April after criticism that he was too close to the White House, but remains chairman of the committee.
Some Republicans on the panel have grown restless with the probe, saying it has amounted to a fishing expedition and pushing for it to end. Still, the committee has continued to interview dozens of witnesses involved with the Trump campaign, among them several participants in the 2016 meeting. On Nov. 30, the panel will interview Attorney General Jeff Sessions behind closed doors. Lawmakers are interested in Sessions' knowledge about interactions between Trump campaign aides and Russians, and also his own contacts.
The top Democrat on the panel, California Rep. Adam Schiff, told AP the committee has multiple interviews before the New Year. He said the Republican investigations into Clinton and Obama could be "an enormous time drain," but they have not yet fully organized. He says the committee must be thorough and he doesn't believe the Russia investigation should end soon.
SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
The Senate Judiciary Committee has also divided along partisan lines as Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the panel's top Democrat, haven't agreed on some interviews and subpoenas. But as in the House, the panel has proceeded anyway, conducting bipartisan, closed-door interviews with several people who were in the 2016 meeting.
The panel is showing recent signs that it is aggressively pursuing the investigation. The committee is the only one to have interviewed Trump Jr. And just before the Thanksgiving break, it sent Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a letter asking him to be more forthcoming with the committee.
Grassley has been focused on a law that requires foreign agents to register and the firing of James Comey as FBI director. Along with the other committees, Judiciary is also looking into a dossier of allegations about Trump's own connections to Russia.
It's not known if the panel will issue a final report, or if its probe will conclude before next year's elections.

New Manafort travel docs reveal closer ties to Russia: report

Paul Manafort had taken 18 trips to Moscow and was in contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s allies for more than a decade before running President Trump’s 2016 election campaign, a new report said Thursday.

Manafort, who was indicted by a federal grand jury last month on 12 counts including conspiracy against the United States, had also taken at least 19 trips to Kiev to work with a pro-Kremlin political faction before joining Trump’s team, McClatchy reported.

The news outlet cited flight records they obtained from Ukrainian authorities as well as intelligence gathered from current and foreign government officials. The new evidence suggests Manafort’s ties to the Kremlin go much deeper than previously thought.
Even after the February 2014 fall of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych, Manafort continued to go to Kiev another 19 times in fewer than two years while working for the smaller, pro-Russian Opposition Block party, McClatchy reported.
Some have suggested Manafort had been turned into an asset acting on Moscow’s behalf.
“You can make a case that all along he ...was either working principally for Moscow, or he was trying to play both sides against each other just to maximize his profits,” Daniel Fried, a former assistant secretary of state who communicated with Manafort during Yanukovych’s reign in President George W. Bush’s second term, told McClatchy.
“He’s at best got a conflict of interest and at worst is really doing Putin’s bidding,” Fried, now a fellow with the Atlantic Council, said.
A central question for Justice Department Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and several congressional committees has been whether Manafort collaborated with Russia’s cyber meddling aimed at giving Trump the electoral edge over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
A source familiar with the matter told McClatchy that investigators are looking over information they obtained as part of a deeper dive into Russian influence in the U.S. presidential elections.
Manafort resigned on Aug. 19, 2016 after The New York Times reported handwritten ledgers showed $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments to Manafort from Yanukovych. Investigators in Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau contend the payments were part of an illegal off-the-books system.
FBI agents raided Manafort’s Virginia home in July, taking documents that included financial and tax records.
Manafort and his associate Rick Gates were indicted and last month pleaded not guilty to all 12 counts.
A judge set bond at $10 million for Manafort, and $5 million for Gates. Both were put on house arrest.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson gave Manafort and Gates permission to leave their home and have Thanksgiving with their families, but said they must wear a GPS ankle monitor and not consume alcohol.

Michael Flynn lawyers cut ties with Trump legal team, report says

Attorneys for former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn have informed President Donald Trump's legal team that they can no longer discuss Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian activities during the 2016 election campaign, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The move could indicate that Flynn's legal team either is cooperating with Mueller's investigators or is negotiating to do so.

The Times story, which cited four anonymous sources, reported that the president's attorneys have been bracing for Flynn to be indicted in recent weeks.

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Mueller probing Flynn's contact with Turkish officials

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, resigned as national security adviser in February after admitting that he "inadvertently" gave top White House officials incomplete information about conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Former FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress in June that Trump asked him to end the bureau's investigation into Flynn's conversations with Kislyak they day after Flynn's resignation, telling him, "I hope you can let this go." Trump fired Comey as FBI director in May.
In August, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mueller was investigating whether Flynn tried to obtain Hillary Clinton's deleted emails from Russian hackers.

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WSJ: Mueller investigators looking into Kushner's contacts

Earlier this month, the Journal reported that Mueller was looking into a meeting where Flynn allegedly discussed a plan that would pay him and his son up to $15 million to kidnap a U.S.-based Muslim cleric and hand him over to Turkey's government.
Flynn's attorney's disputed the Journal report, calling the allegations "outrageous and prejudicial."

Thanksgiving Turkey Day Cartoons

Erick Erickson: This Thanksgiving, we should all be thankful for Trump. I know I am

For more reasons that you might expect, I think we should all be thankful for the President. I know I am thankful.

President Trump is not perfect. He was not my choice to be President. But I am thankful for him in many ways.
I appreciate that President Trump has brought about the great sorting of the conservative movement. Though disappointing to see, it has confirmed for me that the nation is not as conservative as I once thought and also that there are a lot of people who have made a lot of money in the conservative movement who do not really believe in the ideals of conservatism.
President Trump has made me recommit to my faith. I could be distracted by politics for the longest time, but seeing the country headed toward the darkness with many so called conservatives cheering on the dark, I have been forced to reprioritize things. I have realized how much of my politics and faith do not align and how many Christian conservatives have worked very hard to conform their faith to their politics instead of the other way around.

The richest reward in the age of Donald Trump is a clearer vision of the country and a greater appreciation for the necessity of relying on God, not men.

I am thankful he put Neil Gorsuch on the bench. I am thankful for many of the President's policies and stellar personnel appointments like Ajit Pai, Justice Willett, Nikki Haley, Rick Perry, General Mattis, etc.
Though it has not happened to the extent I would like, President Trump's election has forced some Democrats to finally realize what conservatives were talking about when they said character counted. It has not been good on the GOP side now, but some Democrats are finally having to recognize it. Likewise, Democrats are starting to realize that defending President Obama's legacy at the expense of reality may not be the greatest thing. It will take further time for this to shake out, but from Iran to Russia to North Korea, at least privately Democrats are starting to acknowledge Barack Obama's failures.
Though not an exhaustive list, there is one last thing I am thankful of because of President Trump. There are people in the old center-right coalition who I may not see eye to eye with at times, but I have a new appreciation for their willingness to stand up. Even now, we do not always agree on things, but it has been nice to see people make it through the great sorting with their integrity intact. I have always had respect and rare disagreement with people like Jonah Goldberg and Bill Kristol, but add into mix with them people like Charlie Sykes and others it is refreshing to see people focus on ideas on the right, not just the cult of personality.
The richest reward in the age of Donald Trump is a clearer vision of the country and a greater appreciation for the necessity of relying on God, not men. This clarifying moment would not have come except for Donald Trump's election and it is clear the turmoil, problems, and opportunism of many were always there festering.
Erick Erickson is a Fox News contributor. He is founder/editor of The Resurgent. His new book is "Before You Wake: Life Lessons From a Father to His Children”. Follow him on Twitter @EWErickson.

NFL national anthem protests are teaching our children to NOT be thankful for America

The continuing protests by multimillionaire NFL players who refuse to stand for our national anthem – disrespecting our flag and the brave patriots in our armed forces – are setting a terrible example for America’s children as Thanksgiving approaches.

The message?  Don't be thankful for the many blessings America has given you. Instead, act ungratefully, disrespectfully and unpatriotically

And sadly, some children are now following that example.
To cite just a few examples of protests around the country:
Four high school football players from Michigan were benched when they said they planned a kneeling protest. In Texas, two high school players were kicked off their team after protesting during the anthem. Good decisions in both cases.
And football players on a team made up of boys 8 and younger were joined by their coach in kneeling during the playing of our anthem in Illinois, after the coach told them about the protests started by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Unbelievably, the coach said: “I felt like it was a good teaching moment for me.”
Teaching what? Hatred of America?
Schools are hyper-vigilant nowadays about not tolerating student expressions that might offend anyone. For example, a school in Texas shut down a voluntary Bible discussion during the lunch hour. God – oops, pardon that expression – forbid that any atheist child should be offended.
If students banded together in a planned show of disrespect for a rainbow flag – the symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pride – you’d better believe they’d be punished for intolerance.
And if students held a protest objecting to radical political Islam, there’s no doubt they’d be disciplined for bigotry. The same would happen if students denounced and disrespected any country on Earth – with one exception.
When student football players disrespect America, our anthem and our flag, what happens? They get applauded by the left. That’s because the left hugs First Amendment language like an endangered tree when it comes to disrespecting the American flag and our anthem.
In 2010 the Department of Justice began studying bullying in school based upon “national origin” and other differences. That’s no surprise. There’s been a federally recognized prohibition against discriminating against national origin since the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The federal government’s website dedicated to eradicating direct and indirect bullying noted this example of prohibited conduct from North Carolina: "Bullying or harassing behavior includes … acts ... motivated by any actual or perceived differentiating characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin.”
Bullying of this kind is frequent. A New York survey this year of middle and high school students showed that 65 percent of respondents said bullying occurred because of “race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, or citizenship/immigration status.”
So what does the federal government do with a local bullying incident in the United States? The Justice Department, explaining on its website about an LGBT student it helped, said it intervenes:
“The School District knew of the harassment ... neither fully investigated the allegations, nor followed its anti-harassment policies and procedures. The failure to address and prevent this kind of bullying from occurring violates Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
Let’s examine how a recent real-life incident of anthem kneeling could still play out.
On Sept. 28, football players at Monroe Township High School in New Jersey knelt during the national anthem. Two referees walked off in protest, leaving the legitimacy of the game in doubt. Only the refs were punished, being suspended for the rest of the season.
Monroe has a bullying policy. In pertinent part it defines and prohibits as follows:
“Harassment, intimidation, or bullying means any gesture ...  motivated by either any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression; that ... has the effect of insulting or demeaning any student or group of students.”
What should happen next is that a parent of any American student insulted by the disrespect for America should demand that the school enforce Monroe’s bullying policy and discipline the kneelers.
If the school doesn’t act, the parent has a private right of action to sue the school under Title IX. The parent can have the Justice Department intervene to enforce their child’s rights.
Normally I don’t encourage making a federal case out of school disciplinary matters, but if the left keeps jumping us with culture rumbles, we have to take their own weapons to use on them.