U.S. Subsidizes Soros Radical Leftist Agenda Worldwide, New Judicial Watch Special Report Shows

The U.S. government subsidizes billionaire George Soros’ radical leftist agenda dedicating hundreds of millions of dollars to his deeply politicized Open Society Foundations (OSF) worldwide, records uncovered by Judicial Watch show. In a special investigative report Judicial Watch documents the financial link between U.S.-funded entities and OSF affiliates to further the Hungarian-born philanthropist’s agenda seeking to destabilize legitimate governments, erase national borders, target conservative politicians, finance civil unrest, subvert institutions of higher education, and orchestrate refugee crises for political gain. The special report also illustrates the financial and staffing nexus between OSF and the U.S. government.


In 2018 OSF projected expending more than $530 million to promote Soros’ radical globalist agenda in every corner of the world under the guise of supporting democratically elected governments, strengthening the rule of law and promoting fairness in political, legal and economic systems. The reality is far different, the report shows. Soros, with the help of American taxpayer dollars, bolsters a radical leftwing agenda that in the United States has included: promoting an open border with Mexico and fighting immigration enforcement efforts; fomenting racial disharmony by funding anti-capitalist racialist organizations; financing the Black Lives Matter movement and other organizations involved in the riots in Ferguson, Missouri; weakening the integrity of our electoral systems; promoting taxpayer funded abortion-on-demand; advocating a government-run health care system; opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts; promoting dubious transnational climate change agreements that threaten American sovereignty; and working to advance gun control and erode Second Amendment protections.


The Soros network is engaged in an active effort to affect politics, economics, and societies globally, including in Europe (Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary) and Latin America (Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico). Judicial Watch has successfully investigated and litigated to document the paper trail left by the OSF network as it operates, at taxpayer expense, to subvert and manipulate the sovereignty of constitutional republics and allies of the United States. Last year Judicial Watch exposed a collaborative effort between the U.S. government and Soros to destabilize the democratically elected, center-right government in Macedonia. Records obtained by Judicial Watch in that investigation show that the U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia worked behind the scenes with OSF to funnel large sums of American dollars for the cause, constituting an interference of the U.S. Ambassador in domestic political affairs in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The cash—about $5 million—flowed through the State Department and USAID.


The new report identifies OSF affiliates worldwide that receive U.S. government funding as well as the alarming figures. The Soros operations are highly sophisticated and work across academia, the legal system, labor, agriculture and “social justice” organizations as well as religious and political groups. Key personnel in the multi-faceted OSF network are former American government officials known to leverage their status and access to benefit the OSF’s goals. The report identifies a number of them, including Barack Obama’s Domestic Policy Council Director, Cecilia Muñoz, who currently serves on OSF’s U.S. Programs board and OSF President Patrick Gaspard, Director of Political Affairs in the Obama White House and the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa. Others include OSF Director of Global Security Denis Reynolds, a former Supervisory Special Agent with the Diplomatic Security Service at the State Department, and OSF Senior Policy Advisor Emily Renard, a former State Department Foreign Service Officer and Africa Policy Officer.


OSF-funded groups reportedly promoting, organizing and supporting the illegal immigrant caravan that started in Honduras are also identified in the report. Many of the leftist groups also get hefty sums from Uncle Sam. They include the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), the American Constitution Society, Centro para la Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos (Center for Legal Action in Human Rights, CALDH) and a multitude of others, including those named in a special report published by Judicial Watch earlier this year focusing on OSF in Guatemala. The big question is, why are American taxpayers funding Soros and his highly politicized OSF. Judicial Watch will continue investigating and litigating to get answers.

SOURCE
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2018/12/u-s-subsidizes-soros-radical-leftist-agenda-worldwide-judicial-watch-special-report-shows/?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=corruption%20chronicles

James Comey: “I don’t recall”—8 times, “I don’t remember”—71 times, “I don’t know”—166 times

... AND he said he didn’t know that Christopher Steele was passing information to Bruce Ohr, who was giving it to the FBI.
- Rep Jim Jordan

https://twitter.com/Jim_Jordan/status/1071540992627671040
--------------------------

Donald J. Trump:  "Leakin’ James Comey must have set a record for who lied the most to Congress in one day. His Friday testimony was so untruthful! This whole deal is a Rigged Fraud headed up by dishonest people who would do anything so that I could not become President. They are now exposed!"

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1071764777679114240

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Donald J. Trump:  On 245 occasions, former FBI Director James Comey told House investigators he didn’t know, didn’t recall, or couldn’t remember things when asked. Opened investigations on 4 Americans (not 2) - didn’t know who signed off and didn’t know Christopher Steele. All lies!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1071760971088228352

-------------------------------------

Was this man even an FBI Agent? Take a look folks..you are looking at the ONLY FBI Agent in the history of the United States that has less memory capacity than a six year old! Can't recall.. can't remember.. doesn't know..sure knows how to leak though!

COMEY CONGRESSIONAL INTERVIEW DEC. 7, 2018:

https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Comey-interview-transcript-12-7-18_Redacted-1.pdf

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Guardian FAKE NEWS “give the UK and Ecuador political cover to arrest Assange and for the U.S. to extradite him.

The Persecution of Julian Assange: WikiLeaks Editor Says Media Is Giving the U.S. Cover to Extradite Him

Last week, The Guardian published a "bombshell" front-page story asserting, without producing any evidence, that Julian Assange had secretly met the recently convicted former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in 2013, 2015 and 2016. The Guardian's attack on Assange came only days after it was confirmed that he has been indicted some time ago, under seal, and that the U.S. will seek his extradition from the U.K. The story was published just hours before a hearing brought by media groups trying to stop the U.S. government from keeping its attempts to extradite Assange secret.


The story went viral, repeated uncritically by many media outlets around the world, including Newsweek. This falsely cast Assange into the center of a conspiracy between Putin and Trump. The Guardian even had the gall to post a call to its readers to donate to protect "independent journalism when factual, trustworthy reporting is under threat."


These three meetings with Manafort did not happen.


As The Guardian admitted, the Embassy's visitor logs show no such visits. The Guardian claims they saw a separate internal document written by Ecuador's Senain intelligence agency that lists "Paul Manaford [sic]" as one of several well-known guests.'


Manafort, through his spokesman, has stated: “This story is totally false and deliberately libelous. I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him.”


It appears The Guardian editors tried to backpedal from the original story with post-publication stealth edits, but they have not issued a correction or apology.

The journalists who wrote this story must surely know that guests who enter the embassy must be registered in logs, as pointed out by the former first secretary at the Ecuadorian Embassy from 2010 to July 2018.


Ecuadorian intelligence has spent millions of dollars on setting up security cameras inside its embassy in London to monitor Julian Assange and his visitors. The Guardian has previously published still shots from those cameras. However, in the case of the claimed Manafort visit, they apparently demanded no such verification.


They also overlooked the simple fact that millions of pounds have been spent over the years by the Metropolitan police and secret services on monitoring the entrances of the embassy 24/7.


This is part of a series of stories from The Guardian, such as its recent claim of a "Russia escape plot" to enable Assange to flee the embassy, which is not true.


What do these stories have in common? They all give the U.K. and Ecuador political cover to arrest Assange and for the U.S. to extradite him. Any journalists worth their salt should be investigating who is involved in these plots.

 

 Julian Assange gestures as he speaks to the media from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, on May 19, 2017. Jack Taylor/Getty Images


Mike Pompeo, when he was CIA director, said the U.S. was "working to take down" WikiLeaks. This was months after WikiLeaks released thousands of files on the CIA, the "largest leak of CIA documents in history," called Vault 7. The Guardian seems determined to link Assange to Russia, in full knowledge that such claims are prejudicial in the context of Mueller's probe in the U.S. and the Democratic National Committee lawsuit against WikiLeaks.


Numerous commentators have criticized The Guardian for its coverage of Assange. Glenn Greenwald, former columnist for The Guardian, writes that the paper has "...such a pervasive and unprofessionally personal hatred for Julian Assange that it has frequently dispensed with all journalistic standards in order to malign him." Another former Guardian journalist, Jonathan Cook, writes: "The propaganda function of the piece is patent. It is intended to provide evidence for long-standing allegations that Assange conspired with Trump, and Trump's supposed backers in the Kremlin, to damage Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race."


Hours before The Guardian published its article, WikiLeaks received knowledge of the story and "outed" it, with a denial, to its 5.4 million Twitter followers. The story then made the front page, and The Guardian asserted they had not received a denial prior to publication—as they had failed to contact the correct person.


A simple retraction and apology will not be enough. This persecution of Assange is one of the most serious attacks on journalism in recent times.

SOURCE
https://www.newsweek.com/julian-assange-wikileaks-editor-us-extradite-opinion-1249871

Bill Clinton falls asleep, mouth agape; Hillary rocks back and forth, stares at ceiling during Bush funeral

Did Bill Clinton fall asleep during the funeral service for former President George H.W. Bush?
During the service on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., the former president was seen shutting his eyes and nodding off several times.


While historian Jon Meacham was delivering his remarks to the audience, the cameras turned toward the front row, which featured the Trumps, Obamas, Clintons, and Carters.


“His life code, as he said, was tell the truth, don’t blame people, be strong, do your best,” Meacham said as the camera slightly zoomed in on Clinton with his eyes closed for several seconds.


Several users on social media also caught the moment.

#GeorgeHWBushFuneral @BillClinton is already falling asleep pic.twitter.com/8MI7q7MLnN

— Elmer's World (@realElmerHall) December 5, 2018

@BillClinton is definitely asleep rn pic.twitter.com/WTLgNUosz9

— Shaina Poore (@shainapoore) December 5, 2018

The former president was also seen making weird facial expressions throughout the service.

Bill Clinton embarrassing himself and the rest of the criminal cabal by falling asleep at #GeorgeHWBushFuneral. President Trump’s hair steals the show. #GeorgeHWFuneral #maga #bush #BushFuneral pic.twitter.com/l1i5k7yk3v

— futureprovespast (@futureproves) December 5, 2018

Watch this video of Clinton seemingly unable to close his mouth:



Meanwhile, Hillary was acting strangely, too.


She could be seen rocking in her seat, her eyes drifting up to the ceiling before she held the program only inches from her face so she could read it.



Aside from the former president apparently taking a nap and Hillary’s bizarre behavior, the service began with a little bit of drama.


One of the front row pews was reserved for the Trumps, Obamas, Clintons, and Carters.

When President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were escorted to their seats, they shook hands and spoke with both former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
As they were speaking with the Obamas, Hillary Clinton furiously stared forward and refused to even acknowledge the Trumps.


Neither Bill or Hillary Clinton spoke to or shook hands with the Trumps, who were sitting just a few feet away from them.

“President Trump shaking the hands of the Obamas. The Clintons did not acknowledge President Trump,” the CBSN anchor said, with the camera positioned on the front row.
While the Trumps and Obamas were able to put their differences aside and be cordial, it appears the Clintons are still very bitter.

http://www.theamericanmirror.com/mystery-bill-clinton-falls-asleep-during-bush-funeral/

Census confirms: 63 percent of ‘non-citizens’ on welfare, 4.6 million households

　

A majority of "non-citizens," including those with legal green card rights, are tapping into welfare programs set up to help poor and ailing Americans, a Census Bureau finding that bolsters President Trump’s concern about immigrants costing the nation.

In a new analysis of the latest numbers, from 2014, 63 percent of non-citizens are using a welfare program, and it grows to 70 percent for those here 10 years or more, confirming another concern that once immigrants tap into welfare, they don’t get off it.


The Center for Immigration Studies said in its report that the numbers give support for Trump’s plan to cut non-citizens off welfare from the "public charge" if they want a green card that allows them to legally work in the United States.

"The Trump administration has proposed new ‘public charge’ rules making it harder for prospective immigrants to qualify for lawful permanent residence -- green cards -- if they use or are likely to use U.S. welfare programs," said CIS.

"Concern over immigrant welfare use is justified, as households headed by non-citizens use means-tested welfare at high rates. Non-citizens in the data include illegal immigrants, long-term temporary visitors like guest workers, and permanent residents who have not naturalized. While barriers to welfare use exist for these groups, it has not prevented them from making extensive use of the welfare system, often receiving benefits on behalf of U.S.-born children," added the Washington-based immigration think tank.

The numbers are huge. The report said that there are 4,684,784 million non-citizen households receiving welfare.

And nearly all, 4,370,385, have at least one worker in the house..

In their report, Steven A. Camarota, the director of research, and Karen Zeigler, a demographer at the Center, said that in census data, about half of those are in the United States illegally.

Their key findings in the analysis:
In 2014, 63 percent of households headed by a non-citizen reported that they used at least one welfare program, compared to 35 percent of native-headed households.
Welfare use drops to 58 percent for non-citizen households and 30 percent for native households if cash payments from the Earned Income Tax Credit are not counted as welfare. EITC recipients pay no federal income tax. Like other welfare, the EITC is a means-tested, anti-poverty program, but unlike other programs one has to work to receive it.
Compared to native households, non-citizen households have much higher use of food programs (45 percent vs. 21 percent for natives) and Medicaid (50 percent vs. 23 percent for natives).
Including the EITC, 31 percent of non-citizen-headed households receive cash welfare, compared to 19 percent of native households. If the EITC is not included, then cash receipt by non-citizen households is slightly lower than natives (6 percent vs. 8 percent).
While most new legal immigrants (green card holders) are barred from most welfare programs, as are illegal immigrants and temporary visitors, these provisions have only a modest impact on non-citizen household use rates because: 1) most legal immigrants have been in the country long enough to qualify; 2) the bar does not apply to all programs, nor does it always apply to non-citizen children; 3) some states provide welfare to new immigrants on their own; and, most importantly, 4) non-citizens (including illegal immigrants) can receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children who are awarded U.S. citizenship and full welfare eligibility at birth.
SOURCE

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/census-confirms-63-percent-of-non-citizens-on-welfare-4-6-million-households

Global warming data FAKED by government to fit climate change fictions

---

(NaturalNews) When drug companies are caught faking clinical trial data, no one is surprised anymore. When vaccine manufacturers spike their human trial samples with animal antibodies to make sure their vaccines appear to work, we all just figure that's how they do business: lying, cheating, deceiving and violating the law.

Now, in what might be the largest scientific fraud ever uncovered, NASA and the NOAA have been caught red-handed altering historical temperature data to produce a "climate change narrative" that defies reality. This finding, originally documented on the Real Science website, is detailed here.

We now know that historical temperature data for the continental United States were deliberately altered by NASA and NOAA scientists in a politically-motivated attempt to rewrite history and claim global warming is causing U.S. temperatures to trend upward. The data actually show that we are in a cooling trend, not a warming trend (see charts below).

This story is starting to break worldwide right now across the media, with The Telegraph now reporting (1), "NOAA's US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been 'adjusting' its record by replacing real temperatures with data 'fabricated' by computer models."

Because the actual historical temperature record doesn't fit the frenzied, doomsday narrative of global warming being fronted today on the political stage, the data were simply altered using "computer models" and then published as fact.

Here's the proof of the climate change fraud

Here's the chart of U.S. temperatures published by NASA in 1999. It shows the highest temperatures actually occurred in the 1930's, followed by a cooling trend ramping downward to the year 2000:



The authenticity of this chart is not in question. It is published by James Hansen on NASA's website. (2) On that page, Hansen even wrote, "Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought."

After the Obama administration took office, however, and started pushing the global warming narrative for political purposes, NASA was directed to alter its historical data in order to reverse the cooling trend and show a warming trend instead. This was accomplished using climate-modeling computers that simply fabricated the data the researchers wished to see instead of what was actually happening in the real world.

Using the exact same data found in the chart shown above (with a few years of additional data after 2000), NASA managed to misleadingly distort the chart to depict the appearance of global warming:



The authenticity of this chart is also not in question. It can be found right now on NASA's servers. (4)

This new, altered chart shows that historical data -- especially the severe heat and droughts experienced in the 1930's -- are now systematically suppressed to make them appear cooler than they really were. At the same time, temperature data from the 1970's to 2010 are strongly exaggerated to make them appear warmer than they really were.

This is a clear case of scientific fraud being carried out on a grand scale in order to deceive the entire world about global warming.

EPA data also confirm the global warming hoax

What's even more interesting is that even the EPA's "Heat Wave Index" data further support the notion that the U.S. was far hotter in the 1930's than it is today.

The following chart, published on the EPA.gov website (4), clearly shows modern-day heat waves are far smaller and less severe than those of the 1930's. In fact, the seemingly "extreme" heat waves of the last few years were no worse than those of the early 1900's or 1950's.

Short-sighted agricultural practices cause more global warming than CO2

Seeing these charts, you might wonder how the extremely high temperatures of the 1930's came about. Were we releasing too much CO2 by burning fossil fuels?

Nope. That entire episode of massive warming and drought was caused by conventional agricultural practices that clear-cut forests, poisoned the soils with chemicals and plowed the top soil away. Lacking trees to retain moisture, areas that were once thriving plains, grasslands and forests turned to desert. Suddenly, the cooling effects of moisture transpiration from healthy plant ecosystems was lost, causing extreme temperatures and deadly drought.

Shortsighted agricultural practices, in other words, really did cause "warming," while a restoration of a more natural ecosystem reversed the trend and cooled the region.

Reforestation is the answer

This brings us to the simple, obvious solution to all this. If you want to cool the planet, focus on reforestation efforts. If you want to retain moisture and keep your soils alive, you need diverse plant-based ecosystems, not clear-cut fields running monoculture operations.

Forests act like sponges that soak up rainwater, and then they turn around and slowly release that water back into the air, "moisturizing" the atmosphere and keeping humidity levels high enough to support other nearby grasses, shrubs and plants. When you clear-cut forests -- as has been done all across the world to make room for mechanized agriculture -- you effectively raise temperatures by eliminating nature's plant-based water retention and cooling systems.

Industrialized farming, in other words, has already been historically shown to radically increase continental temperatures and "warm" the region. So why isn't the White House warning the world about the dangers of industrialized agriculture?

The answer: Because it doesn't accomplish anything that's politically important to this administration. It's far more important to use the false panic of global warming to shut down clean coal power plants (U.S. coal plants are FAR cleaner than China's) and drive the population into a state of subservient obedience through doomsday scare tactics.

Now we conclusively know the government is lying about global warming

As an environmentalist, I'm always concerned about pollutants and emissions, especially heavy metals being dumped into the atmosphere. But I've also learned over the years that almost everything the federal government aggressively promotes to the public is a blatant lie. Rarely does anything resembling the truth ever come out of Washington D.C.

These people are experts at lying with bad science, hiding their deceptions behind the cover of "scientific thinking" and making outlandish claims such as saying that anyone who doesn't believe their fabricated data must also believe the Earth is flat. Remember, the people who are telling you that burning fossils fuels is causing runaway global warming are the very same people who also claim mercury in vaccines is safe to inject in unlimited quantities, toxins in GMOs are safe to eat, chemotherapy works great for cancer patients and that there's no such thing as any food or nutrient that prevents disease.

These are the same government people who build massive networks of underground bunkers and caves in complete secrecy while publicly claiming preppers are conspiracy theorists. It's the same government that lied about running inhumane medical experiments on prisoners via the National Institutes of Health, then got caught and had to apologize decades later.

If you think this same government is telling you the truth about global warming, you probably need to have your head examined. But not by a government-licensed psychiatrist, or she'll dose your head full of psychiatric medications that cause you to lose so much of your cognitive function, you'll actually start to believe CNN's broadcasts.

Sources for this article include:
(1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment...

(2) http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/han...

(3) http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/...

(4) http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/ind...

(5) http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/2...

 

SOURCE

https://www.naturalnews.com/045695_global_warming_fabricated_data_scientific_fraud.html

 

 

 

 

U.S. Navy admiral Scott Stearney found dead in apparent suicide

Vice Adm. Scott Stearney, who oversaw U.S. naval forces in the Middle East, was found dead Saturday in his residence in Bahrain, officials said. Defense officials told CBS News they are calling it an "apparent suicide."


Stearney was the commander of the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. Rear Adm. Paul Schlise, the deputy commander of the 5th Fleet, has assumed command, the Navy said in a statement.


"This is devastating news for the Stearney family, for the team at 5th Fleet, and for the entire U.S. Navy," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said. "Scott Stearney was a decorated Naval warrior. He was a devoted husband and father, and he was a good friend to all."


The Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Bahraini Ministry of Interior are investigating Stearney's death, the Navy said, but foul play is not suspected.


Stearney, a native of Chicago, joined the Navy in 1982 after graduating from the University of Notre Dame, according to his official biography. He became an aviator in 1984 and flew the FA-18 Hornet in several fighter squadrons and logged more than 4,500 "mishap free" hours of flight.


Previously the director of operations for U.S. Central Command, Stearney became commander of the 5th Fleet in May 2018, relieving Vice Adm. John C. Aquilino.


The 5th Fleet operates in the Arabian Gulf, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean, including the critical strategic choke points of the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal.


SOURCE



https://www.cbsnews.com/news/scott-stearney-us-navy-admiral-found-dead-apparent-suicide-2018-12-01/

Minneapolis installs Sharia hotline to report Americans who criticize Islam.

　
The city of Minneapolis has set up a hotline for residents to report citizens who criticize Islam, in order to investigate them for "hate speech", according to statements on the city’s website.

The city, run by Democrat Mayor Besty Hodges, a non-Muslim who regularly wears a hijab in public, will operate the "service" through its 3-1-1 helpline, and claims it is targeting any "harassing behaviors motivated by prejudice", according to a press release.


According to the local newspaper, the Star-Tribune, "the announcement comes amid signs of a recent surge of such incidents affecting Muslims and Jews across the country, many of which go unreported."


The city’s Department of Civil Rights clearly states on its website that it only enforces hate crimes against certain "protected classes." Muslim imams, as members of the "protected class," can preach the destruction of America from a Minneapolis mosque, and they will not be prosecuted.


A city official also admitted the motivation behind establishing the hotline was the election of President Trump and the city government are targeting are his supporters.


"Since the general election, many of us have experienced, witnessed firsthand or heard of actions of: racism, xenophobia, sexism and bigotry directed at people here and in cities across the United States," Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights Director Velma Korbel wrote in a statement posted on the city’s website.


"In no uncertain terms, hate-motivated speech and actions have no place in Minneapolis nor will they be tolerated."




SOURCE



https://newspunch.com/minneapolis-hotline-report-americans-islam/

CIA Intercepts Underpin Assessment Saudi Crown Prince Targeted Khashoggi

WASHINGTON—Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent at least 11 messages to his closest adviser, who oversaw the team that killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the hours before and after the journalist’s death in October, according to a highly classified CIA assessment.

The Saudi leader also in August 2017 had told associates that if his efforts to persuade Mr. Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia weren’t successful, "we could possibly lure him outside Saudi Arabia and make arrangements," according to the assessment, a communication that it states "seems to foreshadow the Saudi operation launched against Khashoggi."

Mr. Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom’s leadership who lived in Virginia and wrote columns for the Washington Post, was killed by Saudi operatives on Oct. 2 shortly after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he sought papers needed to marry his Turkish fiancée.

Excerpts of the Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment, which cites electronic intercepts and other clandestine information, were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The CIA last month concluded that Prince Mohammed had likely ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, and President Trump and leaders in Congress were briefed on intelligence gathered by the spy agency. Mr. Trump afterward questioned the CIA’s conclusion about the prince, saying "maybe he did; and maybe he didn’t."

The previously unreported excerpts reviewed by the Journal state that the CIA has "medium-to-high confidence" that Prince Mohammed "personally targeted" Khashoggi and "probably ordered his death." It added: "To be clear, we lack direct reporting of the Crown Prince issuing a kill order."

The electronic messages sent by Prince Mohammed were to Saud al-Qahtani, according to the CIA. Mr. Qahtani supervised the 15-man team that killed Mr. Khashoggi and, during the same period, was also in direct communication with the team’s leader in Istanbul, the assessment says. The content of the messages between Prince Mohammed and Mr. Qahtani isn’t known, the document says. It doesn’t say in what form the messages were sent.

It is unclear from the excerpts whether the 2017 comments regarding luring Mr. Khashoggi to a third country cited in the assessment are from Prince Mohammed directly, or from someone else describing his remarks.

Saudi Arabia has acknowledged Mr. Khashoggi was murdered in the consulate. But it has denied Prince Mohammed had any role and blamed the operation on rogue operatives. The Saudi Public Prosecutor’s office last month announced charges against 11 Saudis in connection with Mr. Khashoggi’s death, saying it would seek the death penalty in five cases. The office didn't release their names.

The U.S. Treasury Department in mid-November slapped sanctions on 17 Saudis whom it linked to the killing. But Mr. Trump, in a statement days later, said he intended to maintain strong relations with the crown prince because of Saudi Arabia’s opposition to Iran, its investments in the U.S. and its role in the oil market.

The Trump administration’s posture has angered many in Congress, and the intercepts and intelligence gathered by the CIA may complicate Mr. Trump’s efforts to maintain relations with Prince Mohammed, the de facto leader one of the world’s biggest oil producers. The two are among the world’s leaders meeting this weekend in Buenos Aires for a summit of Group of 20 nations.

Earlier this week, the Senate voted to begin consideration of a resolution to withdraw U.S. support for a Saudi-led military coalition fighting against Houthi rebels in Yemen, with senators venting their frustration over Mr. Trump’s reluctance to hold Prince Mohammed responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, seen here in London on Sept. 29, days before he was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Photo: Middle East Monitor/Reuters

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who met with senators Wednesday to try to forestall the resolution, has said that he had read every piece of U.S. intelligence regarding Mr. Khashoggi’s killing and that the agency didn’t find a so-called smoking gun. "There is no direct reporting connecting the crown prince to the order to murder Jamal Khashoggi," Mr. Pompeo told reporters.

The judgment on Prince Mohammed’s likely culpability, the CIA assessment says, is based on the crown prince’s personal focus on Mr. Khashoggi, his tight control over the Saudi operatives sent to Istanbul to kill him, "and his authorizing some of the same operators to violently target other opponents."

Mr. Qahtani has led Prince Mohammed’s efforts to crack down on dissent internally and abroad. He is one of the 17 sanctioned by the Treasury.

After this article’s initial publication online, a Saudi official, responding to an earlier request for comment to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, said, "HRH the Crown Prince communicates regularly with various senior officials within the Royal Court on different matters. At no time did HRH correspond with any Saudi officials in any government entity on harming Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen. We continue to categorically reject any accusations based on speculations."

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the report. A White House official said Friday the White House doesn’t comment on intelligence matters. Mr. Qahtani didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump last week said the CIA only had "feelings" about Prince Mohammed’s involvement, a statement that irked current and former U.S. intelligence officials. U.S. intelligence assessments are rarely black-and-white, often relying on fragments of information gathered clandestinely.

The highly classified CIA assessment says that the Saudi team sent to kill Mr. Khashoggi was assembled from Prince Mohammed’s top security units in the Royal Guard and in an organization run by Mr. Qahtani, the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Royal Court, the Saudi royal court’s media department.

"We assess it is highly unlikely this team of operators…carried out the operation without Muhammed bin Salman’s authorization," it says.

The document says that Mr. Qahtani "explicitly requested the Crown Prince’s permission when he pursued other sensitive operations in 2015, which reflects the Crown Prince’s command and control expectations."

Mr. Qahtani was fired by King Salman, the crown prince’s father, in the aftermath of the murder. But Mr. Qahtani informally continued some of his former functions as royal-court adviser, such as issuing directives to local journalists and brokering meetings for the crown prince, according to people familiar with the matter.

A U.S. official said that the U.S. government has recently developed information that under Mr. Qahtani, personnel from the Center for Studies and Media Affairs have for two years engaged in the kidnapping—sometimes overseas—and detention and harsh interrogation of Saudis whom the monarchy perceives as a threat. The interrogations have led to repeated physical harm to the detainees, the official said.

The CIA assessment said that since 2015 Prince Salman "has ordered Qahtani and CSMARC to target his opponents domestically and abroad, sometimes violently."

Five employees of the center were involved in the Khashoggi operation, the assessment says. All five were also involved in abusive treatment of prominent Saudis detained at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel in the fall of 2017 as part of what the Saudi government described as an anticorruption drive, it says.


SOURCE
  https://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-intercepts-underpin-assessment-saudi-crown-prince-targeted-khashoggi-1543640460




　

Trump Lawyer Giuliani Demands Supervision of Mueller: ‘Out of Control!’

Rudy Giuliani lashed out at special counsel Robert Mueller‘s probe on Friday, as President Donald Trump attends the G20 summit in Argentina.

The Trump lawyer accused Mueller of timing his indictments in the probe to occur before Trump’s visits to G20 summits.

"Out of control!" Giuliani wrote in a tweet that discriminated against spaces. "Supervision please?"

Giuliani made the same accusation in a statement earlier this week.

"It is hardly coincidental that the Special Counsel once again files a charge just as the President is leaving for a meeting with world leaders at the G20 Summit in Argentina," he wrote. "The Special Counsel did the very same thing as the President was leaving for a world summit in Helsinki."

Giuliani’s call for "supervision" of the probe is vague, but notable. Since Trump fired Jeff Sessions as his attorney general, Matt Whitaker has been in charge of the Mueller investigation — a probe the acting attorney general once described as a "witch hunt."

SOURCE
  https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-lawyer-giuliani-demands-supervision-of-mueller-out-of-control/#disqus_thread

WATCH: Jamaican minister belts out Bob Marley to celebrate UNESCO’s recognition of reggae

© Jamaican Culture Minister Olivia Grange / Facebook

A Jamaican UN delegation was so overjoyed to have reggae recognized as a UNESCO cultural treasure, its members burst into a rousing sing-along of Bob Marley’s ‘One Love’.  

  

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recognized the Jamaican music as a cultural treasure this week. Jamaica’s Culture Minister Olivia Grange was so delighted to hear the news at a committee meeting on Thursday, she burst into tears of happiness before encouraging the room of hundreds to join her – and the rest of the Jamaican delegation – in a rendition of one of reggae icon Marley’s best-loved tracks.

The group had the song ready to play on speakers, turning the formal event into a very chilled and joyous one. People in the room soon jumped to their feet and clapped along with the catchy beat.




READ MORE: 'Boh-b Marley': Irish football team Bohemians banned from using reggae legend image on away strip




Reggae, known for its promotion of peace and love, originated in Kingston, Jamaica in the 1960s and was tied to class struggle and protest.




UNESCO has declared its “contribution to international discourse on issues of injustice, resistance, love and humanity underscores the dynamics of the element as being at once cerebral, socio-political, sensual and spiritual.”


SOURCE
https://www.rt.com/news/445279-jamaica-unesco-reggae-marley/

Trump declares Alaska state of emergency after 7.0 quake damages roads & infrastructure

©  Reuters / Nathaniel Wilder

Thousands of people remain without power and it will take weeks to repair all infrastructure wrecked by a huge 7.0 quake, though President Donald Trump has allowed funds for federal agencies to coordinate disaster relief efforts.

   

The 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck just outside Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, on Friday, prompting Governor Bill Walker to deem it a disaster, after which the US president “declared that an emergency exists in the State of Alaska” and ordered the government to free up federal funding to battle “emergency conditions in the areas affected by an earthquake.”




To help the state deal with substantial damage, the president also authorized the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate “all disaster relief efforts.”


SOURCE
https://www.rt.com/usa/445303-alaska-quake-state-emergency/

Former US President George H.W. Bush dead at 94

Former US President George H.W. Bush, credited for helping to end the Cold War, passed away on Friday at the age of 94, a family spokesperson confirmed. Bush governed the nation from 1989 to 1993


   

The 41st president died at 10:10pm on Friday and funeral arrangements will be announced sometime later, the spokesperson for the Bush family, Jim McGrath said in a statement.




Statement by the Office of George H. W. Bush on the passing of the 41st President of the United States of America this evening at 10:10pm CT at the age of 94.









https://twitter.com/jgm41/status/1068728578890653696




https://www.rt.com/usa/445305-george-hw-bush-dead/

Firm with $297 Million Government Contract to Boost Border Patrol Hires Only 15 Agents

In a fleecing of American taxpayers, a company with a $297 million government contract to hire Border Patrol agents has only managed to enlist 15. No joke. A year ago, the Trump administration contracted the Arlington, Virginia-based firm, Accenture Federal Service, to recruit 7,500 new agents to help fortify the famously porous border. A year — and millions of dollars later — the company has fallen shamelessly short of fulfilling the terms of the deal. Apparently, 33 additional candidates have accepted job offers but they haven’t officially started working for the agency.


The embarrassing figures were provided by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) this week to an online news site that covers the federal government. Penned last November, the government’s five-year contract with Accenture calls for bringing 5,000 Border Patrol agents, 2,000 CBP officers, and 500 air & marine officers. So far, the agency has doled out $43 million and the cash will keep flowing until it reaches the contract’s nearly $300 million limit unless the government terminates the agreement. Those who bother doing the math will discover that under the deal it will cost Uncle Sam around $40,000 for each new hire, a figure that’s roughly equal to a Border Patrol agent’s starting annual salary.


The online news article that exposed this travesty quotes several unnamed sources at the Homeland Security agency, including a genderless CBP “spokesperson” who said Accenture has 3,700 additional candidates in the hiring process and that the company expects a “gradual increase of candidates.” Another CBP source trashed the Accenture deal, saying the following in the story: “This really has been a huge waste of money since Accenture received a large up-front amount, regardless of if they hired anyone,” said the person who called the deal “flawed from the beginning.” The reporter reached out to Accenture but a spokeswoman declined to comment and referred all inquiries to the government.


Earlier this year a senator, who is a ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, questioned the controversial multi-million-dollar Accenture contract. In a letter to CBP’s acting commissioner, Senator Claire McCaskill points out that the agency will still pick up the bill for the most expensive of the hiring costs. This includes medical exams, physical fitness tests, background questionnaires and investigations, interviews, polygraphs, and drug tests. “This means that CBP’s own hiring components may need additional resources to accommodate the increase in personnel,” McCaskill writes, not imagining that only 15 new agents were hired in a year. At the time the agency employed 19,437 Border Patrol agents, 947 Air and Marine interdiction agents, and 23,079 CBP officers.


CBP has long been plagued with corruption and many worry a hiring frenzy could make things worse because the agency will lower standards to meet President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating thousands of new border agents. In the last two years, more than 3,000 CBP employees were disciplined, reprimanded, suspended, or terminated, according to agency records. In 2016, 251 CBP employees were arrested, the records show, and in 2017, the agency reveals that 245 were arrested. In the records, CBP writes that “49 percent of all employee arrests were attributable to criminal conduct.” The stats are processed through the agency’s Joint Intake Center (JIC), a central clearinghouse for receiving, processing and tracking allegations of misconduct involving personnel and contractors employed by CBP. In 2016, JIC saw a 34% increase in misconduct cases over 2015 and a 46% increase in 2017 over the previous year.

SOURCE
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2018/11/firm-with-297-mil-govt-contract-to-boost-border-patrol-hires-only-15-agents/

Why big media is addicted to fake news: a lesson from the opioid crisis

MSM Is Like Big Pharma: The Rewards Of Malpractice Outweigh The Penalties






"As part of the plea bargain, Purdue agreed to pay the federal government $600 million and 27 states $20 million. The three executives agreed to $34.5 million in fines but avoided jail-time. By contrast, Purdue has earned an estimated $31 billion in total revenues from extended-release oxycodone since its launch. Rather than deterring fraudulent marketing, the penalties simply became a cost of doing business."

A cost of doing business. The preceding is an excerpt from a Harvard study published last year titled "The Opioid Epidemic: Fixing a Broken Pharmaceutical Market". It describes the illicit marketing practices advanced by Purdue’s executives for its wildly profitable opioid Oxycontin, and how the criminal and civil cases brought against the company for those practices weren’t consequential enough to prevent those practices from remaining highly profitable.

Big pharma has the highest profit margins of any industry in the United States and is also the number one lobbying industry in the United States, a correlation which won’t surprise anyone who knows anything worth knowing about politics in capitalist societies. One of the many, many ways that the US government has collaborated with these massive pharmaceutical corporations to increase their profit margins has been to put into place laws which make them obscenely difficult to sue, therefore rendering the cost of the few lawsuit settlements which get through a mere drop in the bucket of profits made by unethical marketing practices. Even fines for downright illegal practices can be chalked up to mere overhead, with the largest fine ever levied against a drug company being $3 billion against GlaxoSmithKline, which sounds like a lot if you don’t know that Glaxo raked in $27.5 billion just that year.

Which, if you think about it, is kind of like the business practices we’re seeing implemented by corporate media with the establishment-authorized Russiagate conspiracy theory.

If you haven’t heard already, the Guardian has published an article titled "Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy". The story went insanely viral and dominated the trending topics on Twitter yesterday, despite the fact that it contains zero proof for its central claim that Paul Manafort met multiple times with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, despite the fact that the story defies all logic since there’s no reason there wouldn’t be public record of those meetings, and despite the fact that the story’s central figures are aggressively denying its claims. Both Manafort and WikiLeaks have stated that they are interested in taking legal action against the Guardian, with the WikiLeaks Twitter account also going so far as to bet the news outlet "a million dollars and its editor’s head that Manafort never met Assange."

The accusations in the article will never be proven true. Definitive proof that Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange will never surface. There are far too many gaping plot holes in the narrative, far too aggressive a denial from the accused parties, a ridiculous absence of anything resembling proof, as well as the fact that the Guardian has already walked back its headline with the addition of "sources say" and softened some language in the article, and the fact that the article’s author, Luke Harding, is a sniveling establishment sycophant with no interest in truth and an already established history of lying about Assange. The Guardian cannot prove the article’s central claims, and it won’t.

So why publish it? There are a number of possible reasons to consider, but former Guardian employee Glenn Greenwald published an article for The Intercept about the latest Luke Harding debacle in which he brings up one reason that’s probably worth poking at.

"The Guardian does not bother to question, interrogate or explain any of this," Greenwald writes. "It just tosses the word ‘Russians’ into its article in connection with Manafort’s alleged visits to Assange, knowing full well that motivated readers will draw the most inflammatory conclusions possible, thus helping to spread the Guardian’s article all over the internet and generate profit for the newspaper, without bothering to do any of the journalistic work to justify the obvious inference they wanted to create with this sloppy, vague and highly manipulative paragraph."

"In sum," Greenwald adds, "the Guardian published a story today that it knew would explode into all sorts of viral benefits for the paper and its reporters even though there are gaping holes and highly sketchy aspects to the story."

Generate profit, worry about facts and consequences later. The Guardian committed journalistic malpractice to advance a popular conspiracy theory for viral views and profit, and if it’s forced to print a retraction or settle a lawsuit out of court it will be a drop in the bucket of the profits made. A cost of doing business.

In that same article Greenwald writes that apart from its seething institutional hatred of Assange, the Guardian is "an otherwise solid and reliable paper," which I would say is a very charitable view for anyone to take today. In the last few years this outlet has been aggressively trafficking in the Russiagate conspiracy theory to sometimes absurd degrees, like the time it claimed people who are demonstrably real were Russian "bots". It has been viciously and deliberately undermining Jeremy Corbyn with a despicable smear campaign, and has become what is surely the single most virulent promulgator of imperialist war propaganda against Syria on the entire planet. Legendary Australian journalist John Pilger said in an interview earlier this year that anti-imperialist writers like himself had been de-platformed by the paper in a "purge" some three years prior.

"But my written journalism is no longer welcome — probably its last home was The Guardian, which three years ago got rid of people like me and others in pretty much a purge of those who were saying what The Guardian no longer says anymore," Pilger said on the Flashpoint radio show.

At least up until the time of its decision to publish Harding’s deceitful screed, the Guardian has managed to maintain a somewhat respected image as a mainstream outlet which markets itself to the political left. I would say that its doing so is exactly as legitimate as a pharmaceutical company which markets oxycodone as a non-addictive painkiller or markets antidepressants to children despite knowing the disastrous side effects it can give them. The Guardian, at this point, serves no agenda other than those of the intelligence and defense agencies of the western empire, as do the rest of the mass media outlets whose plutocratic owners have a vested interest in manipulating the public into supporting the status quo.

UPDATE: The Guardian has issued an unsurprisingly pathetic statement: "This story relied on a number of sources. We put these allegations to both Paul Manafort and Julian Assange’s representatives prior to publication. Neither responded to deny the visits taking place. We have since updated the story to reflect their denials."

WikiLeaks has responded to this statement by saying that it did indeed deny the claim hours before publication, publicly on its Twitter account. The statement is essentially a suggestion that the Guardian has a right to publish any libelous fabrication it wants about anyone if they don’t quickly send a denial to the proper email address. This may be the closest we’ll ever get to a retraction of this story by this toxic outlet.

SOURCE
  https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/msm-is-like-big-pharma-the-rewards-of-malpractice-outweigh-the-penalties-339836f24558


https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1068143494806626304

At U.S. Supreme Court Argument, Indiana Claims It Can Forfeit Cars For Speeding, Minor Drug Crimes

 

Arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, Indiana’s solicitor general was already trying to defend confiscating a $42,000 Land Rover taken from Tyson Timbs, who sold less than $400 worth of drugs. Before the day was through though, Solicitor General Thomas Fisher found himself arguing that the Constitution would let him forfeit luxury cars caught going five miles over the speed limit.

Both scenarios involved civil forfeiture, which allows law enforcement agencies to seize and keep property, even over the most tenuous links to wrongdoing, as well as the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines. During Wednesday’s oral argument, Fisher claimed that the latter didn’t apply to the former.

Incredulous of Fisher’s position, Justice Stephen Breyer asked him, “So what is to happen if a state needing revenue says anyone who speeds has to forfeit the Bugatti, Mercedes, or a special Ferrari or even jalopy?”

Fisher responded that “there is no excessive fines issue” for in rem civil forfeitures, and were completely outside the protection of this constitutional safeguard. So a speeding Bugatti would be “forfeitable,” adding that in rem forfeitures “have always been harsh.”


The argument was literally laughable: Breyer and Fisher’s exchange earned some of the biggest laughs that day in court.  But Justice Sonia Sotomayor quickly rebuked Fisher, and reminded him that “up to a certain point in our history, we didn’t apply the Bill of Rights to the states,” which “did things that under incorporation were unconstitutional.”

Initially, the Supreme Court held that the Bill of Rights only limited the power of the federal government. But following the Civil War and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the High Court began applying, or “incorporating,” those rights against the states. Today, most of the Bill of Rights has been explicitly incorporated, including the rest of the Eighth Amendment (i.e. its bans on cruel and unusual punishment and excessive bail). Yet the Excessive Fines Clause, along with a handful of other rights, like the Third Amendment’s bar on quartering soldiers, hasn’t been fully incorporated.

The last incorporation case the court decided was back in 2010, when it ruled that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms for self-defense applies to the states. As Justice Samuel Alito explained in McDonald v. Chicago, incorporation hinges on “whether a particular Bill of Rights guarantee is fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty and system of justice.”


In the Timbs oral argument on Wednesday, Justice Neil Gorsuch pointed out that the ban on excessive fines has a “pretty deep history,” with “guarantees against them go[ing] back to Magna Carta and 1225, the English Bill of Rights, the Virginia Declaration of Rights.”


He also seemed bemused that there was even up for debate. “We all agree that the Excessive Fines Clause is incorporated against the states,” Gorsuch said to Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher. “Most of the incorporation cases took place in like the 1940s. And here we are in 2018, still litigating incorporation of the Bill of Rights. Really? Come on, General.”


In a similar vein, Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked Fisher, “Isn’t it just too late in the day to argue that any of the Bill of Rights is not incorporated?”

Strong Supreme Court precedent presented another obstacle to Indiana’s arguments. More than 25 years ago, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Austin v. United States that civil forfeitures could be considered fines under the Excessive Fines Clause, if they served, at least in part, as punishment.

As an amicus brief filed by multiple Eighth Amendment scholars noted, “the terms ‘fines’ and ‘forfeitures’ were used interchangeably” in colonial laws and during the Founding era. And in the Timbs case, the state even conceded that the forfeiture statute used was partly punitive.


Little surprise then that Wesley Hottot, the Institute for Justice senior attorney who argued on behalf of Timbs, called the case “constitutional housekeeping” with a “straightforward answer.”

MORE:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2018/11/29/at-u-s-supreme-court-argument-indiana-claims-it-can-forfeit-cars-for-speeding-minor-drug-crimes/#27445eeb2406

Chris Farrell: How the State Dept. Outsources YOUR Tax Dollars to George Soros Front Groups

 

Judicial Watch https://www.judicialwatch.org/t/images/judicial_watch-logo_schema.jpg https://www.judicialwatch.org

Judicial Watch

https://www.judicialwatch.org/t/images/judicial_watch-logo_schema.jpg

 

November 29, 2018- JW Director of Investigations and Research Chris Farrell appeared on “No Spin News” on billoreilly.com to discuss the caravan and its potential source of funding.


View Article
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/in-the-news/chris-farrell-how-the-state-dept-outsources-your-tax-dollars-to-george-soros-front-groups/

 

Jeff Flake’s Sad Exit

He blocks judicial nominees in a futile anti-Trump gesture.



Usually when Congress cancels a committee meeting the country misses nothing more than grandstanding. But this week the Senate Judiciary Committee had to halt progress on confirming talented judges thanks to GOP Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona.

The committee was scheduled to meet Thursday to move some 20 judicial nominees. But Mr. Flake has said he will block all judicial nominees until he receives a vote on a bill that would insulate Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation from normal political accountability. The GOP’s one-seat majority on Judiciary means the party can’t report judges out of committee with a favorable recommendation without Mr. Flake’s vote.

Mr. Flake tried to bring up the Mueller bill on Wednesday but Republicans objected. Then he voted against a procedural motion to move forward on district judge nominee Thomas Farr, which meant Vice President Mike Pence had to break the 50-50 tie on the Senate floor. Judiciary canceled the committee meeting on Wednesday evening.

The judges who won’t move out of committee include six circuit nominees, not least Bridget Bade for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She’s from Arizona. Ms. Bade was nominated in August, but now she may have to wait until January for the committee’s blessing. She probably isn’t feeling the hometown camaraderie from Mr. Flake.

Mr. Flake’s stunt will have zero effect on President Trump or Mr. Mueller, and he’s compromising a substantive principle to make a futile political gesture. Mr. Flake is hurting the cause of confirming conservative judges who would enforce the Constitution in the name of a bill that is unconstitutional.

The legislation violates the Constitution because it would prevent the special counsel from being fired except by a Senate-confirmed Justice Department official for "good cause." But Article II allows the President to fire inferior officers of the executive branch at will.

Defenders point to the Supreme Court’s 1988 Morrison v. Olson ruling that upheld the late and unlamented independent counsel statute. But Congress let that law expire because it had become a constitutional travesty, as Antonin Scalia so memorably wrote in dissent ("this wolf comes as a wolf"). Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in 2016 that he thought Morrison should be overturned.

Even worse is a provision that would let Mr. Mueller appeal his dismissal to a federal judge. Making Article III judges arbiters of the President’s appointment power undermines the separation of powers and dilutes political accountability. There is no such judicial power in the Constitution unless a President acts unlawfully, and firing Mr. Mueller would be a political mistake but it wouldn’t be unlawful.

Perhaps Mr. Flake, who didn’t run for re-election, is making a political statement in advance of the primary run he says he may make against Mr. Trump in 2020 in New Hampshire. But Republicans are likely to notice that he put his personal feelings about Mr. Trump above confirming judges that any GOP President would be proud to nominate.

Recall that John McCain scuttled the Republican effort to repeal ObamaCare, in part because of his personal distaste for the President. But in the long run he will have harmed the institution he spent his career trying to protect: the military, which is squeezed by unreformed health-care entitlements. Mr. Flake’s self-indulgence is another example of how hostility to Mr. Trump has caused so many people to lose their own political bearings.

SOURCE
  https://www.wsj.com/articles/jeff-flakes-sad-exit-1543534198