Radio America Online News Bureau

2016 elections

Toensing: Cohen Testimony Shows Dems Moving on from Russia

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Listen to “Toensing: Cohen Testimony Shows Dems Moving on from Russia” on Spreaker.

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen savaged the president as a “racist, a con man, and a cheat,” but also may have provided important evidence that Trump did not conspire with Russians during the 2016 campaign.

While slamming Trump as a corrupt businessman who broke campaign finance laws, cheated on his wife, lied about a Trump project in Moscow, and treated his presidential bid like an infomercial, Cohen also admitted he had no direct evidence that Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia.

He does believe Trump knew about Roger Stone’s contacts with Wikileaks around the time that emails from Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee were released.

Former Justice Department official Victoria Toensing says this hearing is a turning point as the Democrats pivot away from Russia and look for other reasons to investigate the president.

“The Democrats now know that there’s nothing in the Mueller report.  So what are they going to do?  They’re going to go after his finances.  That’s what this is all about laying the groundwork to impeach the president,” said Toensing.

Beyond that, Toensing says Democrats are trying to turn two non-issues into scandals.  She says Trump was perfectly free to negotiate business dealings in Russia up until his inauguration.  She also says the payments to adult film performer Stephanie Clifford, while unseemly, were also legal since Trump paid Cohen from personal funds rather than campaign coffers.

Listen to the full podcast as Toensing explains why she believes neither of those matters were criminal and why Cohen ended up pleading guilty for those payments if there was no crime.

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‘You Cannot Unring A Bell’

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A former high-ranking CIA official says President Trump’s refusal to stand by the U.S. intelligence community while on stage with Russia’s Vladimir Putin is “devastating” and believes Trump’s efforts to walk back those words on Tuesday was thoroughly meaningless.

Herbert E. Meyer served as special assistant to Reagan-era CIA Director William Casey and also as vice chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.  He’s also an accomplished producer and author, most recently writing the booklet, “Why is the World So Dangerous.”

As a Trump voter, Meyer says the president’s inability to decide whether U.S. intelligence or Vladimir Putin is telling the truth about meddling in the 2016 campaign, is deeply disappointing.

“He’s done a lot of good things and I’m supporting him.  What he said in Helsinki was appalling.  There’s just no way around it.  He can apologize.  He can back off, but you cannot unring a bell.  What he said, the entire world heard it.  Sorry, that was devastating,” said Meyer.

Meyer says Trump’s logic in granting equal weight to multiple U.S. intelligence reports and Putin’s denials would be considered ludicrous in any era of U.S. history.

“If somebody got up and said, ‘I don’t know, some people say the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor, but I was talking with the Japanese Prime Minister and he says they didn’t do it.  I have complete confidence in our military, but I’m not sure who attacked us at Pearl Harbor,’ we would say that man’s an idiot,” said Meyer.

In addition to the lack of confidence Trump’s comments inflict among the various intelligence agencies, Meyer says the president isn’t even consistent with his own allies in Congress.

“He trashed not only our intelligence community, but the committees in Congress, Devin Nunes’ committee for example, that issued an extensive report a month ago on what happened,” said Meyer.

Nunes, R-Calif., chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Meyer says a damage to morale is significant damage to any organization and the intelligence agencies are no exception, but he says the repercussions are far more broad.

“It’s devastating, not just to the intelligence community.  It’s devastating to the United States.  If you are an ally of our country now, you can’t pay any attention to what he says, because if it bounces badly he’ll just say something else,” said Meyer.

On Tuesday, Trump read a statement indicating he did accept the conclusions of intelligence professionals that there was meddling in the 2016 campaign.  But Meyer says the clarification still carries two problems, starting with the fact that it comes too late.

“When he walks it back today, it’s meaningless.  It’s like saying, ‘I think you’re a liar.  Oh no, I don’t think you’re a liar.’  It just means that words don’t mean anything anymore,” said Meyer.

“Why should anybody pay attention to what he said (Tuesday)?  He’s only issuing a clarification because it blew up in his face.  I was just watching it on TV when you called me.  He doesn’t believe a word he’s saying.  He’s sort of mumbling it and reading it.

“He’s not only the country’s president, he’s the guy I voted for, and what he’s saying is just awful,” added Meyer.

Meyer is confident Putin is loving every minute of the controversy.  Her doesn’t believe Putin is changing any major policy or plans based on his perceived diplomatic victory, but there’s little doubt that the Russian leader considers Trump’s comments a big win.

“Putin’s primary objective in office is to humiliate the United States.  That’s what he wants to do.  Now you and I can say that doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what he wants to do.  If he could throw a banana peel under our feet, he would rather do that than have another one percent economic growth in Russia,” said Meyer.

Meyer says Trump is causing all sorts of trouble for himself by conflating Russian meddling with political collusion in his own campaign, when the two are distinctly separate issues.

“He folded the two of them together and made everything confused,” said Meyer.

So, is there an avenue for Trump to repair relations with our intelligence agencies?  Meyer’s short answer is no.

“The president and I are the same age.  Guys our age don’t change.  Sorry, what you see is what you get.  Words don’t mean anything.  He could say anything.  He can go out to Langley and give a speech and all that.  It doesn’t mean anything.  He stood on stage with the leader of Russia  and trashed American intelligence,” said Meyer, who finds himself wincing as an American and as a Trump supporter.

“He’s wounded himself and that’s very bad for the United States, whether you’re Republican or Democrat.  We have a president with a self-inflicted wound and that’s bad,” he said.

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Russia Probe Needed, But Not A Special Counsel

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Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russians, accusing them of hacking key individuals and institutions and even, stealing the information of some 500,000 voters.

However, a former federal prosecutor says while it’s vital to know how Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 campaign, there’s still no connection to the Trump campaign and still no basis for why a special counsel is on this case.

Andrew C. McCarthy served as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and led the successful prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and others for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and plots against other New York-area landmarks.

He says the biggest question in his mind following the announcement of the indictments was whether Trump knew this announcement was coming.

Knowing now that Trump was aware, McCarthy finds it very interesting that Trump gave the green light for the news to go public just before his Monday meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland.

“It seems to me, since he was given a heads-up that this was happening, he had an opportunity to direct that the indictment not be unsealed.  He didn’t do that, which suggests to me that he and his advisers actually think that having this will strengthen their hand when they meet with Putin,” said McCarthy.

On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictments against a dozen figures connected to the Russian intelligence and military communities.

The Trump administration quickly released a statement pointing out that no Americans, much less any Trump campaign figures, had any connection to Russia’s alleged meddling.

“Today’s charges include no allegations of knowing involvement by anyone on the campaign and no allegations that the alleged hacking affected the election result,” said White House spokesperson Lindsay Walters in a statement.

“This is consistent with what we have been saying all along,” she added.

McCarthy says Trump’s argument that no campaign official has been charged when anything related to a Russian conspiracy clearly holds true.

“It’s perfectly natural and appropriate for them to say yet again that there are no indications in this indictment of any conspiratorial relationship between the Russians and the Trump campaign,” said McCarthy.

Just as when Mueller issued indictments against 13 Russian entities in February, known as the troll farm indictments, McCarthy says no evidence has turned up yet to justify the existence of a special counsel on this matter.

“When I see this indictment, I thought what I thought when I saw the troll farm indictment, which is why do we need a special counsel for this?  It doesn’t seem to me that there’s any reason that we needed a special counsel.

“The Justice Department, which was investigating Russian interference in the election – with the FBI – before Mueller was appointed, certainly could have handled these cases,” said McCarthy.

But McCarthy is also clear that he believes an investigation into Russian activity during the 2016 cycle is highly warranted.

“I don’t think anyone sensible has ever questioned the legitimacy of the investigation as it pertains to Russian interference in the 2016 election.  That ought to be something that everybody agrees needs to be done and needs to be run down,” said McCarthy.

He’s also chiding the president for regularly tweeting condemnations of the Mueller team.  While McCarthy believes Trump sees the investigation is a ‘witch hunt’ specifically as it relates to his campaign and not to possible Russian involvement, he says the persistent denunciation of Mueller is a bad move.

“I think we all know when he says that what he’s talking about is the allegation that his campaign colluded with the Russians, of which there remains no evidence, much less charges.

“But I don’t think it’s helpful that if he knows you’re about to release a set of charges that confirm what all of us have suspected for some time, which is that the Russians did conduct this operation against our election, I don’t know that that’s the best time to be taking shots at the prosecutor,” said McCarthy.

But do these indictments advance the plot much into the Russian meddling?  McCarthy doesn’t think so.

“Other than putting some names and some interesting specifics like the Bitcoin aspect of it and the fact that they made that into a money laundering conspiracy, I don’t think that we’ve learned a lot that we didn’t know already on the basis of what we’ve been told by the intelligence community regarding its investigation,” said McCarthy.

But while we may not have learned much today, McCarthy says Mueller clearly has learned some new tactics.  After the troll farm indictments, the special counsel got a bit of a surprise that he made sure didn’t happen again this time.

“The problem that Mueller ran into in the troll farm case is that he indicted three of these companies that really turned out to be Kremlin fronts.  Much, I think, to his surprise and chagrin, one of them retained counsel in Virginia and showed up and demanded to get the discovery and get ready to go to trial,” said McCarthy.

McCarthy says it’s highly unlikely that any of the 12 Russians indicted on Friday will ever face prosecution.

So why go through the indictments?

“I think the point is to try to file a conclusive U.S. government investigative document that puts to rest any claim that Russia is not responsible for any of this,” said McCarthy.

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Hillary ‘Still Operating in Fantasy Land’

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Hillary Clinton suggests two U.S. Supreme Court decisions contributed to her loss in the 2016 presidential race, but an election law expert says there is no merit to the former Democratic Party nominee’s allegations and believes she is “still operating in fantasy land.”

During a Thursday appearance at Rutgers University, Clinton said the Supreme Court’s decisions to allow more independent expenditures on campaigns (known as Citizens United) and it’s ruling to amend the Voting Rights Act both worked against her.

“I was the first person to run for president who had to deal with both Citizens United and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act,” said Clinton.

“With Citizens United it was all bets are off, more money than we’ve ever seen and being spent in ways we still to this day don’t know.  I mean the NRA spent more money against me than they’ve ever spent against anybody, and all these other groups were just pumping it out because with the Citizens United decision, we can’t stop it and we can’t even follow it and we often don’t even know after the fact,” said Clinton.

“Then the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted, opened the door to voter suppression like we haven’t seen in 50 years.  So people are being turned away from the polls because they don’t have the exact right ID, although they bring everything else they possibly can bring.

“And they’re being purged from voter rolls because maybe they haven’t voted in a year or two,” she added.

Hans von Spakovsky directs the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation and served on the President Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.  He says Clinton’s assertions are baseless.

“Just about everything Hillary Clinton said is wrong and she’s apparently still operating in fantasy land,” said von Spakovsky.

Von Spakovsky says the Supreme Court only changed one aspect of the Voting Rights Act, and that was to no longer require southern states to get permission from the Justice Department before changing election laws.  He says all the critical protections for all voters remain intact and there were no allegations of voter suppression in the wake of the election.

“If anything like that had occurred, you would have seen lawsuits filed by all kinds of groups under the Voting Rights Act because suppressing and intimidating voters is illegal under the Voting Rights Act.  Not a single lawsuit like that was filed.  No lawsuit was filed by the U.S. Justice Department either,” said von Spakovsky.

He also says no one was turned away over not having the proper identification.

“She obviously is not familiar with federal law, which says that no one can be turned away from a poll.  If you show up and there’s some sort of problem, say you’re not on the voter registration lists, you are given a provisional ballot and you are allowed to vote.

“She also said that people were being purged (because) they hadn’t voted in a year or two.  That is also completely and totally false.  Federal law, through the Motor Voter Law, does not allow that to be done.  So she is basically making up these claims,” said von Spakovsky.

But what about Clinton’s claim that shadowy, unaccountable money made it’s way into the campaign in amounts never seen before as a result of the Supreme Court broadening the definition of political speech in the Citizens United decision?

“The independent spending, and by independent spending we mean spending by groups that are not associated with the campaigns or the political parties – that’s something that’s been going on in our elections for a very long time and it’s a tiny, tiny percentage of the amount of money that was raised and spent by the presidential campaigns, including her campaign,” said von Spakovsky.

“By the way, most of that independent spending is entirely disclosed.  Political groups – PAC’s and others that engage in that type of spending – have to include all of it including all of their donors to the Federal Election Commission,” said von Spakovsky.

In addition, the spending from the 2016 campaign shows that the Clinton campaign vastly outspent the Trump campaign and the Democratic National Committee plus outside liberal groups easily outspent the Republican National Committee and right-leaning advocacy groups.

So why is Clinton blaming these court decisions for the results in 2016?

“She just can’t get over the fact that Donald Trump won the election,” said von Spakovsky.

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Dems Feel Heat on Shutdown, FBI Loses Key Emails, Paul Attacker’s Bogus Reason

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Chatting before the much-anticipated Senate vote to end the government shutdown, Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are glad to see Democrats feeling the heat on refusing to fund the government and taking some steps to get things fully up and running, but they also warn listeners what Democrats and some Republicans really want in an immigration bill to go along with reopening the government.  They also don’t believe the FBI’s explanation that it somehow lost five critical months worth of text messages from Peter Strzok, the agent fired form the Mueller special counsel team and bragged about an “insurance policy” against a Trump victory.  And they also call BS on the explanation from Sen. Rand Paul’s neighbor for attacking Paul, namely that the senator was assaulted from behind and had five ribs broken because he was stacking brush close to their shared property line.

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Hillary Rigged the System, Northam’s Troubling Ties, Trump’s Twitter Turned Off

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David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile’s revelations that Hillary Clinton funded and controlled virtually every aspect of the 2016 Democratic primaries, concluding that the system was rigged against Bernie Sanders.  They also pop some popcorn after Virginia election filings show the Ralph Northam campaign considered media work from the Latino Victory Fund an in-kind contribution, which seems to include the horrific ad showing a supporter of Ed Gillespie trying to murder dark-skinned children.  And they are stunned and a bit amused as a departing Twitter employee briefly shuts down President Trump’s Twitter account.

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Mueller Looks at Podesta, Right Needs to Reject O’Reilly, CNN’s Rotten Apple

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David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America welcome the news that special counsel Robert Mueller is looking at possible criminal activity by the Podesta Group, which not only shows Mueller is looking at activities on the left but also highlights the fact Russia and the Soviet Union have meddled in U.S. politics for decades.  They also discuss the latest reports of former Fox News allegedly shelling out $32 million to settle a lawsuit from a former Fox contributor who alleged a “non-consensual sexual relationship” with Bill O’Reilly, and David concluding the political right should treat O’Reilly as a pariah akin to Harvey Weinstein.  And they roll their eyes as CNN unveils its new “Facts First” campaign by showing an apple and saying that some people – clearly referring to President Trump – insist the apple is a banana.  They explain why CNN’s does not have the moral high ground in this debate.

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Helping Puerto Rico, Michelle Slams Pro-Trump Women, Chuck Todd Whiffs on Rights

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After cheering the return of Steve Scalise to Congress more than three months after being shot, Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud President Trump for lifting the ban on foreign ships bringing critical supplies to Puerto Rico from the U.S. and they discuss the problem of getting the supplies form the ships to the people who desperately need them.  They also fire back at former First Lady Michelle Obama for suggesting that women who voted for Trump “voted against their own voice” and just liked the candidate they were told to like.  And they hammer NBC’s Chuck Todd for mocking Roy Moore’s beliefs that out rights come from God rather than government, apparently without reading the Declaration of Independence.

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