July 30, 2019
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Another brick in the wall as Supreme Court upholds Trump reprogramming funds for southern border wall. Democrats whine after they voted for it.
Brick by brick,
figuratively, with a serious assist from the Supreme Court ruling that
reprogramming $2.5 billion of counter-narcotics monies may be used towards the
southern border wall, Donald Trump is fulfilling his promise to get the wall
built. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi complained on Twitter, “This evening’s
Supreme Court ruling allowing @realDonaldTrump to steal military funds…” Here’s
the best part: Democrats voted for all of it. Specifically, the National
Defense Authorization Act of 2019, the bill which allowed the $2.5 billion for
counter-narcotics barriers to be built, passed with 185 Democrats voting in the
affirmative in the House. Every Democrat except for Sen. Bernie Sanders voted
for it in the Senate. Similar overwhelming Democratic majorities voted for
another $6.1 billion for the wall and another $4.5 billion to address the humanitarian
crisis on the border the Trump administration requested.
Cartoon: Aqua Man
New York City
Mayor Bill DeBlasio is dunking on New York City Police.
Jonathan Turley: The mysterious Mister Mifsud and why no one wants to discuss him
“While Democrats
have been highly emotive in demanding answers to the “full” story about Russian
efforts, they have consistently opposed any effort to investigate such contacts
within their own party or associates, dismissing that as a distraction.
Likewise, documented anti-Trump bias by key players in the Russia investigation
is treated as “unfortunate” or “not relevant.” There is every reason to be
concerned that these same key players used people such as Mifsud to launch an
investigation during the Obama administration against figures in the opposing
party. If the Bush administration had launched secret surveillance of Clinton’s
campaign staff, the media would hardly have been so cavalier.”
Another brick in the wall as Supreme Court upholds Trump reprogramming funds for southern border wall. Democrats whine after they voted for it.
By Robert Romano
Brick by brick, figuratively speaking, with a serious assist from the Supreme Court ruling that reprogramming $2.5 billion of counter-narcotics monies may be used, Donald Trump is fulfilling his promise to get the southern border wall built.
In a 5 to 4 decision to stay an injunction by a federal district court that sought to slow down usage of the funds from the Department of Defense, the nation’s highest court said, “the Government has made a sufficient showing at this stage that the plaintiffs have no cause of action to obtain review of the Acting Secretary’s compliance with Section 8005” of the Department of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, 2019.
That’s because the law is clear. It states in part “Upon determination by the Secretary of Defense that such action is necessary in the national interest, he may, with the approval of the Office of Management and Budget, transfer not to exceed $4,000,000,000 of working capital funds of the Department of Defense or funds made available in this Act to the Department of Defense for military functions (except military construction) between such appropriations or funds or any subdivision thereof, to be merged with and to be available for the same purposes, and for the same time period, as the appropriation or fund to which transferred…”
The $2.5 billion specific to the court case were to be used for enforcing 10 U.S.C. Section 284(B)(7), entitled, “Support for counterdrug activities and activities to counter transnational organized crime,” which explicitly authorizes “Construction of roads and fences … to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States.”
In other words, the case was such a slam dunk for the federal government that Supreme Court majority chuckled it out of court stating there was simply “no cause of action” to enjoin the spending of the monies. The plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the case in the first place. The outcome is that the money will be spent and Trump will get some new wall built.
It also likely means that the legal cases for the rest of the $5.6 billion Trump reprogrammed from military construction and other funds will similarly be upheld. The White House had also identified “[a]bout $601 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund… [and u]p to $3.6 billion reallocated from Department of Defense military construction projects under the President’s declaration of a national emergency (Title 10 United States Code, section 2808)…” that is reprogrammable under federal law.
That comes atop the $1.6 billion that Congress passed in 2018 for replacing existing fencing with new steel barriers and the $1.375 billion in 2019 for more steel barriers that was approved after the partial government shutdown earlier this year.
It also comes after Congress voted for another $4.5 billion the Trump administration had requested to deal with the humanitarian crisis on the border.
While some critics are moaning about the decision, given the law it was all but inevitable. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi complained on Twitter, “This evening’s Supreme Court ruling allowing @realDonaldTrump to steal military funds to spend on a wasteful, ineffective border wall rejected by Congress is deeply flawed. Our Founders designed a democracy governed by the people — not a monarchy.”
Here’s the best part: Democrats voted for all of it. Specifically, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019, the bill which allowed the $2.5 billion for counter-narcotics barriers to be built, passed with 185 Democrats voting in the affirmative in the House. Every Democrat except for Sen. Bernie Sanders voted for it in the Senate. Similarly, overwhelming Democratic majorities voted for all the aforementioned bills as well.
Meaning, in 2020 when Democrats are promising to tear down Trump’s wall, which is getting built — the Army Corps of Engineers reports about 450 miles will be completed by the end of 2020 — they’ll have to first explain why they voted for it in the first place.
They built that.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
Cartoon: Aqua Man
By A.F. Branco
Click here for a higher level resolution version.
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from The Hill’s Jonathan Turley, the Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud who set up George Papadopoulos with Russians is the Keyser Söze of the Mueller hearings:
The mysterious Mister Mifsud and why no one wants to discuss him
By Jonathan Turley
Joseph Mifsud: The name of the generally unknown character in the Russia investigation came up, over and over, in the long-awaited House committee hearings with former special counsel Robert Mueller. Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio invoked the name as if it legally required the accompaniment of horror movie theme music; Mueller immediately snapped back that he would not discuss that man. Yet that did not deter Republicans. “Joseph Mifsud,” “Joseph Mifsud” — the mantra continued until the shadowy professor had emerged as the Keyser Söze of the Mueller hearings.
Söze was the mysterious figure in the film “The Usual Suspects.” Another of the film’s characters, “Verbal” Kint, explained to an FBI agent that Söze was a criminal mastermind who committed horrible acts and then disappeared: “Nobody has ever seen him since. He becomes a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night. Rat on your pop, and Keyser Söze will get you.”
Mifsud appears to be the story that Republicans tell their kids at night. However, it is a new story for most of us. Political analyst David Gergen acknowledged as much during CNN’s live coverage of hearings, saying that Republicans “presented things, frankly, we haven't talked about much on CNN, aspects of this that are on the right but we don't — you know — we haven't visited because we don't put much stock in a lot of what they're arguing.”
Indeed, despite the nonstop coverage of the Russia investigation, most news shows have rarely “visited” the allegations linked to Mifsud. Certain subjects are rarely visited by CNN or other networks, at least not substantively. Media largely dismisses the fact that the Clinton campaign also solicited political dirt from foreign intelligence sources, including Russian intelligence, through investigator and British ex-spy Christopher Steele and the research firm Fusion GPS. Few programs mention that Glenn Simpson, a co-founder of Fusion GPS, had dinner with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya both the day before and the day after she met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016.
Many figures are now household names, such as resigned Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. But not Mifsud, despite his central role as a catalyst of the original investigation. For Republicans, it is like what Kint said about Söze: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
Two years ago, I wrote about Mifsud and his curious role in the unfolding scandal. He was variously described as a “Russian stooge,” a “KGB cutout” or an intelligence handler. Mifsud had worked as a “full-time professorial teaching fellow” at the University of Stirling in Scotland and was a professor at the London Academy of Diplomacy. He had a degree from the University of Malta and ran in diplomatic circles as a type of dealmaker for grants and conferences. He was said to be a fan and claimed acquaintance of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
For Republicans, if there was a Garden of Eden in the Trump campaign, Mifsud was the snake. It was Mifsud who, in a 2016 meeting in London with then-Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, suddenly broached the possibility that the Russians might have emails and dirt on Hillary Clinton. Notably, he had that meeting just after returning from Moscow and allegedly referred to “thousands of emails.” Papadopoulos later repeated what he had been told to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in a London pub, and Downer reported that to the U.S. government.
Ultimately, Mueller concluded there was no evidence supporting a conspiracy theory against the Trump campaign, and he found no evidence that any Trump official knowingly worked with Russian hackers or trolls. Yet Mifsud appears to be there at the genesis. What remains a curiosity is that Mueller indicted various people for false statements. Most were relatively minor criminal cases in terms of sentencing, leading to a few weeks in jail for people like Papadopoulos. The Mueller report indicates Mifsud lied repeatedly to investigators on sensitive national security issues — and yet Mueller did not charge him with a single count. Cooperating witnesses were sentenced for lying but not Mifsud. And if, perhaps, Mifsud acted on behalf of U.S. officials to create the foundation for the Russia investigation, then that raises a host of other questions.
As acknowledged by CNN’s Gergen, this is all very interesting — and it was not (as widely treated by the media) ridiculous for Republicans to raise with Mueller. The most credible point about Mifsud is that his relative anonymity in news coverage reflects a broader problem: There is a consistent effort to preserve a narrative that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. That was demonstrably true. However, it is not the only story. The Russians also had contacts and shared information with the Clinton campaign.
While Democrats have been highly emotive in demanding answers to the “full” story about Russian efforts, they have consistently opposed any effort to investigate such contacts within their own party or associates, dismissing that as a distraction. Likewise, documented anti-Trump bias by key players in the Russia investigation is treated as “unfortunate” or “not relevant.” There is every reason to be concerned that these same key players used people such as Mifsud to launch an investigation during the Obama administration against figures in the opposing party. If the Bush administration had launched secret surveillance of Clinton’s campaign staff, the media would hardly have been so cavalier.
That is how we end up with the mysterious Mr. Mifsud. He is unknown precisely because he is unwelcome in mainstream stories. The “usual suspects” do not “visit” that part of the story, particularly the absence of any criminal charge in a sea of indictments of Russian trolls and hackers. Even Mueller walled off that story. Mueller was supposed to investigate all Russian interference in the elections, and his inquiry took him to bank fraud and tax violations entirely unrelated to the election or to Russians. Yet there is no evidence that he ever investigated Russian intelligence efforts directed at Clinton campaign officials and associates.
While Mueller would say there is an ongoing investigation into such matters, that investigation did not start until long after Mueller’s appointment. The question is, what will happen when that investigation is completed? Will Democrats demand the same full disclosure of the facts, to get to the bottom of those contacts and efforts to influence our elections? In “The Usual Suspects,” Kint told the FBI agent that another character “always said, ‘I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him.’ Well, I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Söze.” Söze feared precisely because he was so obscure.
Democrats have made Joseph Mifsud scary in the same way. He could just be a rumor-spreading, Putin-loving professor from Malta. Or he could be a master spy working for the Russians — or for Western intelligence. What makes him so scary is not what we know but what we don’t know ... that and the fact that no one on Mueller’s team or in the political establishment wants to talk about him
