High-Ranking Chinese Defector Working With DIA Has ‘Direct Knowledge’ of China’s Bioweapons Program—and It’s Very Bad

AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

PJ Media

By Paula Bolyard

In an exclusive story at RedState, Jen Van Laar reports that sources inside the intelligence community say a high-ranking defector from China has been working for months with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). According to Van Laar’s confidential sources, that high-ranking defector claims to have knowledge of special weapons programs in China—that include bioweapons.

Adam Housley first reported via Twitter on Thursday that “the increased pressure on China in recent days is due to a defector with intimate knowledge” of the program. According to Housley, FBI director Christopher Wray “didn’t know right away because they wanted to make sure they got all they needed before telling him.”

In fact, Wray was “ambushed” with the information, according to Van Laar’s sources, as was the CIA. “Sources say DIA leadership kept the defector within their Clandestine Services network to prevent Langley and the State Department from accessing the person, whose existence was kept from other agencies because DIA leadership believes there are Chinese spies or sources inside the FBI, CIA, and several other federal agencies,” according to the report.

Why was the defector so important that he had to be kept under wraps?

Housley says it’s because the defector has information on the origins of the Wuhan virus: “China is trying to produce variants that suggest it came from bats to cover up that coronavirus originally came from a lab.” He later clarified: “US intelligence has a Chinese defector with Wuhan info. AND China is trying to produce variants that suggest it came from bats to cover up that coronavirus originally came from a lab.”

According to RedState’s sources, “the defector has been with the DIA for three months” and has provided “an extensive, technically detailed debrief to US officials.”

“In DIA’s assessment, the information provided by the defector is legitimate,” wrote Van Laar. “Sources say the level of confidence in the defector’s information is what has led to a sudden crisis of confidence in Dr. Anthony Fauci, adding that U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) personnel detailed to DIA have corroborated very technical details of information provided by the defector.”

All of this raises many questions. Why, “suddenly,” did the U.S. legacy media en masse turn-tail and start pointing fingers at China and doubting Fauci?  Why did left-wing outlets like the Washington Post and BuzzFeed “suddenly” decide it was the right time to drop Fauci’s emails—just days after the lab-leak story was “suddenly” no longer verboten on social media? Fauci’s emails revealed what we’ve been reporting here at PJ Media for months (mostly behind the paywall for our VIP subscribers to avoid the Gestapo social-media censors): that Fauci was working with a Chinese scientist from the Wuhan lab; that he asked Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg to help with COVID messaging; and that he signed off on funding for dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

One gets the sense that a dam the size of Three Gorges on the Yangtze River is about to blow. The question will be, as it almost is when political figures are caught in a coverup: What did they know and when did they know it? And who knew what was really going on?

If any of this turns out to be true—particularly the suggestion that China may have intentionally unleashed the most deadly bioweapon in world history—you might want to begin thinking about where you’re going to spend the U.S.-Sino War. If, as Housley claims, the FBI, CIA, and other federal agencies are swarming with Chinese spies, it would constitute the biggest national security failure in U.S. history—and the most deadly.

The implications are terrifying.

Stop Calling Them Progressives!

Leftists are totally something else.

Frontpage mag

Joy Overbeck

When I hear prominent conservative media commentators and brainy columnists call America-haters bent on destroying our noble Constitutional Republic “progressives” I feel the top of my head may fly up and stick on the ceiling. They should know better. The sickening behavior of these tyrannical anarchists are the very opposite of progressive which Webster defines as “continuous improvement; the development of an individual or group in a direction considered more beneficial than and superior to the previous level.” There’s nothing beneficial for us as citizens or our nation about lawlessness, destruction of private property by black-masked Antifa terrorists, attacks on the First and Second Amendments, cancelling the voices of those who disagree with WOKE dogma, and shrill Maxine Waters-esque calls for personal attacks. Yet as long as we let them get away with calling themselves progressives, they can claim moral and intellectual superiority over the rest of us. 

Call them radical leftists, fascists, socialists, Marxists…or Democrats. But anointing them progressives automatically makes those of us on the flip side “regressives” – backward-thinking, slack-jawed, snaggle-toothed, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. Which gives know-nothings like Joe Biden carte blanche to label the governors of Texas and Mississippi lifting Covid mask mandates “Neanderthal thinking…”  Of course, the governors were vindicated when disease cases and deaths in both states dropped dramatically after masks were gone.  

For the radical left, deceptive language is a kind of performance art. They cynically use shiny, promising words to convince the uniformed to line up behind their latest fraud. For example, Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” was a lie from the jump, leading as it did to higher premiums and astronomical deductibles that left millions of suffering Americans paying more but ending up literally without any healthcare insurance at all. Similarly, the “For the People Act” (HB1) in reality allows the gorilla of the federal government to crush the peoples’ voice that the Constitution gives to individual state legislatures in creating election law.  

Rather than advancing progress, the “progressive” credo hearkens back to the bad old days of dictators Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot and the moldy stink of their failed ideas: oppressive government control and stealing from productive citizens under the guise of “leveling the playing field” and “equality.” How curious that the innocents on the receiving end of these marvelous systems, variously known as socialism, Communism, or Marxism, have died in the millions at the hands of their governments rather than enter the earthly utopia they were promised. According to historians, those gullible believers in progressivism amount to between 100 and 120 million lost souls.   

And yet here it comes again, bolting upright from its pool of blood with new life like a horror film villain we thought was slain. This new form of class struggle isn’t the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie of traditional Marxist cant; now all white people are the oppressors and black and brown minorities are cast as the victims. Mix into this ugly lie the social stresses of the China virus which has allowed clueless bureaucrats to paralyze the producers of the richest economy in the world for over a year, plus anarchy and violence in our cities increasing as police presence fades, and we have an unsettled and bewildered people the like of which we have never seen in America. 

What to do? First, fight back against the “progressive” racism that demonizes people for the color of their skin. Organize with other parents and citizens to forbid your local school board to impose “critical race theory” and “gender fluidity,” including the promotion of transgenderism, on children’s education curricula. Help Trump’s prosperous economy return by pressuring politicians to stop sending fat government checks that amount to more than a paycheck for many Americans. 

Economists say people earning less than $32,000 can potentially make more from unemployment aid than from their previous jobs, and that stark fact is delaying the return of a normal healthy economy. Under Biden’s recently enacted $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, workers who lost their jobs to the pandemic shutdowns are now making more in unemployment benefits than they did in wages. And that is stopping people from returning to work — just when employers are trying to reopen across the nation. Combined federal and state unemployment benefits add up to an average of $638 per week, encouraging people accustomed to staying home for the last year to keep staying home. That’s why, with 7.4 million jobs available nationwide, the anemic 266,000 jobs added in April were a dismaying indicator of a real problem with the government’s misplaced generosity. 

The year-plus of no work has robbed Americans of their sense of purpose and added to the malaise depressing so many of us. The satisfaction of work, almost any kind of work, is essential for a healthy sense of self-worth in humans. Even FDR, the Democrat president who created the New Deal to aid the jobless in the Great Depression, warned against the habit of welfare; “relief” as it was called then. “The lessons of history show that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber,” he said in 1935. “To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. The federal government must and shall quit this business of relief.” 

Yes it must – and it must now for us to reclaim our national character: industriousness, personal responsibility, and eagerness for future achievement that have made us the most dynamic and successful nation on earth.

The Real Reason Hillary Isn’t in Jail

American Liberty Report

Hillary Clinton isn’t in jail. She isn’t under investigation or review. In fact, no charges were ever brought against her. These statements probably represent the most holistic failure of justice in the history of America. This woman has proven herself a criminal time and again, and there is still a strong segment of the population that praises her.

While we’ve known the real reason she remains free, we’ve been left scratching our heads about how she actually got away with it. Well, some new evidence helps shed a little light on that situation.

WikiLeaks is at it again. And, as per usual, their leaks seem only to spell bad news for the DNC and the left. In the newest batch, we find that the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton was even worse than we thought. Isn’t that something! The corrupt, obviously biased miscarriage of justice that was the Hillary Clinton investigation was actually worse than what you know up to this point. That is no small statement.

Here’s what we learned. When the probe began, the FBI confiscated Hillary’s email server. This is the infamous server that was kept in her home, and it was the device that housed, sent and received virtually every email of her career as Secretary of State. Considering that, it was a pretty crucial piece of evidence.

It was in storage for just shy of two months before investigators were ready to comb through it and see what there was to find. This in itself is not entirely unusual. Investigators face red tape all the time, and that’s exactly why the FBI uses a chain of custody to keep track of things that have to sit in storage for a while.

This is where we get to the problem. When investigators took the server out of storage, they found that it had no chain of custody. What does that really mean? For two months, the FBI was unaware of the server’s existence. Now, this does not prove that anyone tampered with the server before it was investigated, but it does prove that anyone could have messed with it and the FBI would be unaware.

For perspective, if the same thing happened with a drug sample or a murder weapon, people would be fired. Then, they would be prosecuted for obstruction of justice. Losing a chain of custody is a big deal, and in this case, it’s a catastrophe. If nothing else, it shows exactly how tens of thousands of emails were able to disappear right under the nose of the FBI.

And, above all else, this case was too high profile for such a problem to be an honest mistake. The chain of custody was missing for a reason, and it is another strong piece of evidence that shows complete corruption within the FBI and the Clinton investigation.

Recapping Missteps

If this were the only problem with the Clinton investigation, it would make the entire thing suspect. Unfortunately, it’s actually a minor piece of the puzzle. There are greater injustices by far. For starters, Hillary never had to testify under oath. That’s pretty irregular, but it pales in comparison to the FBI preparing their statement before even hearing what she had to say. That alone demonstrates that they weren’t looking for evidence of wrongdoing.

Instead, they were looking for ways to create the appearance of an investigation while really aiming to protect her from prosecution. And, we’re still in the minor injustices.

What really boggles the mind is that Hillary’s staff was literally caught on video destroying evidence. They smashed phones and other devices with hammers, and this was done after those devices were subpoenaed. If you did that, you’d be in jail immediately. It is an open and shut case of obstruction of justice, and no one even pushed for prosecution. It’s kind of like when Bill lied under oath on national television and everyone just let it go. Except this is more extreme. Do you want to know the worst part? This still isn’t the pinnacle of this debacle.

What really caps the whole thing is that enough emails were found to show that Hillary knowingly mishandled classified information. There were emails, found on her insecure server, with unmistakable classification headings. They were shared with individuals who did not have sufficient clearance, and there is strong evidence that these actions directly endangered American lives. We have absolute, unquestionable proof that she was completely guilty of the charges in the probe, and no prosecution moved forward.

One would think that at least a single lawyer out there would want to be the one to publicly bring down Hillary Clinton. Instead, she walks free after we saw beyond any shadow of a doubt that she acted criminally. On multiple counts.

Why Isn’t She in Jail?

There is only one word to describe what happened: corruption. We’ve seen proof of this too. Leaked emails and memos show that everyone involved in the investigation assumed she would be the next President and didn’t want to cross her. Besides that, Obama inundated the FBI with yes men who would do his bidding.

The complicit mainstream media might be the most disgusting part of the whole deal. Hollywood recently released a movie praising the media’s involvement in bringing down Nixon. Something no one had the journalistic integrity, or even the blind ambition, to do to Hillary.

Instead, they all worked together to shield her just so she could be the first female president. For roughly half the country, scoring a win against sexism is more important than honesty, rule of law or the safety of men and women serving our country in dangerous capacities.

It is disgusting. Inexcusable. Draining the swamp almost feels like a hopeless endeavor at this point. What would it take to actually bring Hillary to justice? Could she murder someone on live TV and still walk free? Sadly, that doesn’t seem far-fetched.

Federal Court Cheats Boston Marathon Jihadi Out of His 72 Virgins

Frontpage mag

Robert Spencer

 

This is more about the state of American society today than it is about Boston Marathon jihad murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The Boston Globe reported Friday that “in a 182-page ruling that infuriated some victims [no kidding], the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that George A. O’Toole Jr., the judge in Tsarnaev’s 2015 trial, ‘did not meet the standard’ of fairness while presiding over jury selection.” The appeals court accordingly overturned Tsarnaev’s death sentence. Aside from cheating Tsarnaev out of his 72 virgins, this appeal denies justice to his victims.

Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote in her ruling that “a core promise of our criminal justice system is that even the very worst among us deserves to be fairly tried and lawfully punished.” That is undeniably true, as is Thompson’s observation that the bombings were “one of the worst domestic terrorist attacks since the 9/11 atrocities.”

But how unfair was the trial in fact, and how unfair could it have been? There is no question that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is guilty. His actions were captured on video and abundantly documented. What’s more, he remained defiantly unrepentant for a considerable period after the attack. As prosecutors argued in April 2015 that he deserved the death penalty, they released a video of Tsarnaev three months after his attack, looking into the security camera in his cell, primping his hair in the reflection, and then flashing the V sign and then giving his middle finger to his jailers.

And why not? He believed he had done a righteous deed. The motivations of Dzhokhar and his brother and fellow jihad murderer Tamerlan Tsarnaev became clear very quickly after Dzhokhar was apprehended. CNN reported a week after the bombings that “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, wounded and held in a Boston hospital, has said his brother—who was killed early Friday—wanted to defend Islam from attack.”

And just before he was captured, when he was hiding out inside a pleasure boat, Dzhokhar wrote a long self-justification on the inside of the boat, including the line: “When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims.”

It came to light soon after the bombings that on a Russian-language social media page Dzhokhar had featured a drawing of a bomb under the heading “send a gift,” and just above links to sites about Islam. Tamerlan’s YouTube page contained two videos by Sheikh Feiz Mohammed. According to a report published in The Australian in January 2007, in a video that came to the attention of authorities at the time, Feiz Mohammed “urges Muslims to kill the enemies of Islam and praises martyrs with a violent interpretation of jihad.”

Tamerlan also said, “I’m very religious.” His friend Donald Larking affirmed this. “Tamerlan Tsarnaev was my friend and we talked about everything from politics to religion,” according to Larking. “He was very, very religious. He believed that the Qur’an was the one true word and he loved it.” Tamerlan did not drink alcohol because Allah forbade it—“God said no alcohol”—and his Italian girlfriend had converted to Islam, as his American wife did later.

The Boston Marathon bombs were similar to IEDs that jihadis used in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a jihad car bomb in Times Square in the summer of 2010, also used a similar bomb. The instructions for making such a bomb had even been published in al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine.

Not only were the motivations of the Tsarnaev brothers abundantly clear; it is likely that they were actually tied in somehow to the international jihad network—as was indicated by how they fought off Boston police early on the Friday after the Marathon bombings with military-grade explosives. The question of where they got those explosives has never been answered. Nor has it ever been explained where the brothers got the military training that they reportedly displayed during the fight against police before Tamerlan was killed and Dzhokhar was captured.

“I ask Allah to have mercy on me, my brother, and my family,” Tsarnaev said in 2015. But what about mercy for those he murdered and maimed? His victims have no chance to appeal the death penalty that he gave to them. But American society does not have the will anymore to take a strong stand against criminals of this kind, and that means there will be more of them.

Communism is here

image via rightbias

Time to take a Stand

Radical Muslim Group ICNA Honored by US Congressman, Governor

Joe Kaufman, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is Chairman of the Joe Kaufman Security Initiative and the 2014, 2016 and 2018 Republican Nominee for U.S. House of Representatives (Florida-CD23).

 

Frontpage mag

Joe Kaufman

The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) has a long history rooted in terror. However, recently the group has been giving out food, in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Can a few bags of fruits and vegetables remove ICNA’s horrors of the past and threat to the present? Two lawmakers, US Congressman Lou Correa and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, seem to think so, as they have showered ICNA with praise and commendations, while ignoring the organization’s extremism and bigotry. Correa and Whitmer should rescind their unwarranted words and awards immediately.

ICNA was established, in September 1968, as the American arm of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), the largest Islamist group in South Asia. Not long after ICNA’s founding, JI’s then-paramilitary wing, al-Badr, was helping to massacre people in East Pakistan, what is now called Bangladesh, in a genocide that took the lives of up to three million individuals. One of al-Badr’s commanders, Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, who was sentenced to death (in absentia), in November 2013, for multiple murders, held the positions of Vice President of ICNA National and President of ICNA-New York and, according to his LinkedIn page, is still involved with ICNA.

In August 2006, JI announced on its website that its charitable apparatus, the Al-Khidmat Foundation (AKF), had taken a delegation to the Damascus, Syria home of then-global head of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, presenting Mashal with a check for $100 thousand. Mashal thanked the delegation and said that Hamas would continue terrorist activities against Israel. At the time of the transaction, ICNA was a partner to AKF and topped the list of donors on AKF’s website. AKF’s current President, Muhammad Abdus Shakoor, is a former Secretary General of ICNA; ICNA continues to be a partner to AKF; and JI continues to openly support Hamas.

In December 2017, ICNA’s overseas relief function, Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), organized an event masked as something to help people with disabilities that featured representatives from AKF as well as the Timergara, Pakistan chief of Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), Qari Rehmatullah. In November 2010, the US government designated FIF a front for the Pakistani terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

In October 2000, on the homepage of the website for ICNA’s South East Region, links could be found to the official websites of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban. The group also published a link to qoqaz.net, a now-defunct financing and recruitment website for al-Qaeda. The webmaster of the ICNA site, Syed Khawer Ahmad, was also a webmaster for Hamas, itself.

Syed Ammar Ahmed is the Government Affairs Specialist for ICNA Relief USA, the division of ICNA that has been giving out food during the coronavirus pandemic. In February 2010, following a debate he participated in at a school, Ahmed wrote on Facebook, “I hate white people” and joked that he “should have threatened to blow up the school.”

None of this should be overlooked. Yet, two powerful lawmakers have ignored all of it.

Last month, on May 21st, US Representative Jose Luis Correa presented ICNA with a Congressional Certificate of Special Recognition. And not only did he honor the group, but he made it seem as if the entire US Congress did so as well. With the Congressional Seal atop the certificate, Correa wrote, “I join with Congress to recognize your outstanding and invaluable service to the communities of Anaheim in hosting food distributions for families in need during the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

On May 27th, Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer penned a letter of praise to ICNA. It says in part, “On behalf of the state of Michigan, I would like to extend my utmost gratitude for the caring and compassionate services you have provided to people across our state and nation during the COVID-19 pandemic… ICNA Relief’s sacrifice and service reflect the compassion, generosity, and leadership of its members and have been crucial to providing valuable resources… to those in need of help. Your actions have made a positive difference in the lives of many people and have become an inspiration to myself and to countless others.”

While it is indeed commendable to provide food to the needy, for ICNA it is only seen as a method of whitewashing the group’s extremist and bigoted past and present. Congressman Correa and Governor Whitmer, who is also reportedly a consideration for Vice Presidential running mate of Democrat Joe Biden, should consider this and rescind the certificate and letter immediately. By not recognizing the terrorist and hateful relations of ICNA, the two lawmakers are legitimizing it.

Congressman Correa and Governor Whitmer, do the right thing. Rescind your awards and words honoring the terror-linked ICNA, now!

For those who wish to contact Congressman Lou Correa to demand he rescind his certificate, call (202) 225-2965 and/or (714) 559-6190. To contact Governor Gretchen Whitmer to demand she take back her letter, call (517) 373-3400. Please be respectful in any and all communications with these individuals and their offices.

The Senate Dem Rape Culture That Made Biden

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

 

Frontpag Mag

Daniel Greenfield

When Joe Biden allegedly sexually assaulted Tara Reade in the hallway of the Russell Senate Office Building, the storied building was home to an entire culture of Senate Democrat sexual predators.

The Russell Building is the home of the Kennedy Caucus Room. After Senator Ted Kennedy’s death, the ‘Kennedy’ part was added to the Caucus Room to honor the notorious sexual predator whose actions had led to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. Mary Jo was one of the many young women drawn to public service by the idealistic speeches of the Kennedy clan’s political scions only to suffer at their hands.

The renaming of the Caucus Room to honor one of the Senate’s worst predators was spearheaded by Senator Chris Dodd, his longtime friend and the other man in the infamous story of the ‘Waitress Sandwich’. The ungentlemanly tale detailed in GQ began with Kennedy and Dodd getting their dates, “two very young blondes”, drunk. Blonde and young, sometimes underage, was how Ted liked them.

A waitress quoted in the story, notes, “They’d always get their girls very, very drunk.”

With the girls away, Dodd and Kennedy reportedly decided to have some fun with their waitress.

“As Gaviglio enters the room, the six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on the table. She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and cutlery and the lit candles… Kennedy then picks her up from the table and throws her on Dodd, who is sprawled in a chair. With Gaviglio on Dodd’s lap, Kennedy jumps on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers, supporting his weight on the arms of the chair,” the story of the waitress sandwich continued.

Dodd wasn’t just a good friend of Ted Kennedy, but of Joe Biden.

Traitor

Flopping Aces

By DrJohn

 

Definition of traitor

1: one who betrays another’s trust or is false to an obligation or duty

2: one who commits treason

During the theater known as the Donald Trump Impeachment hearings Adam Schiff conducted a number of interviews with “witnesses.”  He conducted them in a SCIF – Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.

Talk of the impeachment inquiry is everywhere in America, but Americans have no idea what it actually looks like.

That’s because House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) has so far conducted the entire impeachment inquiry in a secret room in the basement of the Capitol building that is not accessible by the general public.

 

Just to the south of the Capitol Visitor Center underneath the dome and down one spiral staircase is a room hidden behind two heavy wooden doors.

On the doors are red signs with white letters that say: “Restricted Area. No public or media access. Cameras and recording devices prohibited without proper authorization.”

Behind those doors is a hallway, which leads to the secret room where Schiff is conducting the impeachment inquiry of President Trump.

The House Intelligence Committee has a huge hearing room in the Longworth House Office Building where they can hold hearings that do not concern classified material, which members of the public and journalists can attend.

But the impeachment inquiry is taking place in the committee’s Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) — a room for members to use when discussing and viewing classified material.

 

And here’s why

Our Russia Collusion Nightmare: All Hillary’s Fault?

 

American Thinker

By J.B. Shurk

The biggest political scandal in the history of the United States.  Three years of constant lies told by government agents, political operatives, and deceitful news personalities.  Thousands of hours of criminal investigative interviews; thousands of written stories and television segments; thousands of leaks and insinuations and threats.  All to take down the legitimately elected American president, Donald J. Trump.

Now that some light is finally revealing just how rotten this whole nonsense has been from the very beginning, the most maddening aspect of all is the one thing not said nearly enough: every bit of this frame-up job to hang the American president for being a Russian agent and traitor to his nation began as a way to inoculate Hillary Clinton from her largest political vulnerabilities going into the 2016 campaign.

Aside from her questionable health and a lifetime of scandal, Hillary had two sizable liabilities (of her own creation) that threatened her ability to win the general election: (1) her use of the Clinton Foundation as a vehicle for laundering bribes from foreign governments and moneyed interests and (2) her decision to conduct the business of the State Department (as well as to discuss our nation’s most guarded secrets) on an unsecured private email server that had been hacked by known and unknown foreign governments and adverse entities.  Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash did a remarkable job exposing the Clinton Foundation as a spectacular pay-to-play operation that had allowed Hillary to trade the powers of her office for personal aggrandizement (including the sale of 20% of America’s uranium to Russia for, among other things, $145 million transferred to her foundation).  And even though the Obama Justice Department was doing its best to minimize the revelation of Hillary’s gross breach of national security and slow-walk any repercussions, the American people were discovering that life-and-death secrets had been entrusted to a person with such disregard for our well-being that she stored them on a personal server in a downstairs bathroom.

For a normal person with a modicum of ethical concern, sense of shame, or patriotic duty, these crimes would have been more than sufficient to prompt withdrawal from an election for the country’s highest office.  This type of honest self-reflection and private admission of guilt is alien to the Clintons, though, so what would have represented immovable obstacles to anyone else became just another set of political variables that had to be neutralized in her favor.