OpEd by: Daniel Bobinski
Choose any football game. It’s fourth down and ten and you’re deep back in your own territory. Your team is down by seven points and there’s only three seconds left on the game clock. Everyone in the stadium knows you’ll be sending your receivers downfield, you’ll throw, and you’ll pray someone from your team catches the ball. But the truth is your team is back on its heels and about to be embarrassed with a loss, so you need to make it look like you’re still trying. You throw a Hail Mary – a last-ditch effort with little-to-no chance of success.
This is pretty much what the Democrats in the House are doing by starting impeachment proceedings. Those that stay on top of the headlines know that damning facts about high level players are about to come into the light. A final consideration of those damaging facts by the Democratic offensive coordinator, Nancy Pelosi, leaves her no other options but to call a Hail Mary.
Remember the news last week when the well-connected Washington Post folk-hero Carl Bernstein said his sources had a scoop about Attorney General Bill Barr? They said Barr was going to start pushing the idea that there is a deep state conspiracy as an effort to protect Trump. First of all, Barr’s investigation has been going on for a long time. Second, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that if Bernstein knew Barr was about to let the hammer drop, so did the Democratic leadership.
Bernstein and others in the legacy media are spinning their “insider” news to imply that Barr is doing this to deflect from the so-called “real time” evidence (Bernstein’s words) of corruption by President Trump. In fact, in Daniel Chaitin’s Washington Examiner piece on the subject, his title puts the word evidence in quotes, as if to imply that any evidence produced by Barr won’t be real evidence.
Frankly, I find all of this spin intellectually dishonest. Anyone watching the actions and attitudes of Barr since he became Trump’s AG knows he’s been building a case against Deep State players for a long time. To suggest that Barr is going after Deep State players merely as a retaliatory action because the Left opened an impeachment inquiry against Trump is manipulative spin to try to sway public opinion. I expect to hear that kind of stuff from playground bullies trying to get out of trouble, not from someone as intelligent as Bernstein.
It’s almost like Bernstein and most of the legacy media forgot that the Inspector General found that former FBI Director James Comey improperly used his FBI safe and personal devices; that he failed to surrender FBI documents stored in his home safe (and didn’t even tell the FBI about them); that he gave FBI memos to a friend so his friend could leak info to the New York Times; that he failed to tell the FBI he gave that memo to his friend as well as to his own personal attorneys; that he violated the terms of his FBI employment agreement by making sensitive investigative information public; and that he was not forthright when giving his Congressional testimony. You and I would get nailed to the wall for doing these things. Why is Comey above the law?
And it’s almost like Bernstein and most of the legacy media forgot that Representative Adam Schiff and other high-ranking Democrats were acting rather defensively when Congress voted to release the “Nunes memo.” Can we ask why Schiff or other House Democrats didn’t go read those highly classified documents when they were made available? Did they already know what was in them?
By the way, it would be nice if we didn’t have to boil things down into sound bites, because the term “Nunes Memo” is shorthand for an official memorandum entitled, “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Read that title again and let it sink in.
And it’s almost like Bernstein and most of the legacy media forgot that less than a day after FBI Director Christopher Wray read that same official memorandum, the deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, resigned. Yes, the man who served directly under the previous FBI Director, Mr. James Comey. Have Bernstein and his legacy media friends ever told us why?
And, it’s almost like Bernstein and most of the legacy media forgot about the video of former Vice President of the United States, the honorable Joe Biden, bragging to a Council on Foreign Relations audience about how he threatened to withhold more than $1 Billion (with a “B”) worth of loan guarantees to the Ukrainian government unless a particular Ukrainian prosecutor (who happened to be investigating criminal activity involving Joe Biden’s son, Hunter) was fired.
According to John Solomon, a contributor for The Hill, “U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month … during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.”
It’s almost like Bernstein and most of the legacy media forgot the Joe Biden was laughing as he told his CFR audience how he threatened Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko: “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.”
And it’s almost like Bernstein and most of the legacy media forgot AG Barr’s interview with Jan Crawford on CBS back in May of this year, during which Barr stated he was investigating counterintelligence activities undertaken against the Trump Campaign. Barr also pointed out that, “one of the core responsibilities of the Attorney General is to make sure that government power is not abused and that the right of Americans are not transgressed by abusive government power. That’s the responsibility of the Attorney General.”
Have Bernstein and most of the legacy media forgotten that it is the right and responsibility of the Attorney General of the United States to make sure people in high positions are not abusing their power?
And have they forgotten it is the right and responsibility of the President of the United States to make sure that laws which are enacted by Congress are carried out? As the Chief Executive – the person overseeing the Executive Branch of the government – President Trump has the right and the responsibility to ask that potential crimes committed by high level US Government office holders be investigated.
Perhaps Bernstein and his kind and Pelosi and her kind have forgotten all of these things.
Then again, maybe they haven’t. Maybe they’re just ignoring them.
They want us to ignore them, too, and that’s the reason for the Hail Mary impeachment proceedings.
Deflect. Distract. Deflect. Distract.
The truth is that the damage about to be done by Barr to Deep State Leftists was not going to play well on the front page. Pelosi’s team was about to see some key players get injured in the court of public opinion – maybe including herself – and there was no way to soften the blow. She called the only play she could: A Hail Mary … otherwise known as a last-ditch effort with very little chance of success.
Footnote: AG Barr recently stated that he personally asked President Trump to make the necessary introductions to foreign leaders so the AG’s ongoing investigations could gather more information about possible misconduct. Maybe Congress would appear more intelligent if they collected and evaluated actual information before calling for impeachment proceedings.
Also, I keep hearing one question asked by just about every media outlet when they’re interviewing anyone who’s not a Democrat: “So, you're okay with our President asking another country’s President to dig up dirt on an opposing candidate?”
Here’s the answer that every person should give: “Trump wasn’t asking anyone to dig up dirt, the dirt had already been dug. Biden himself confessed to his crimes, and we have it on video. As the chief executive, President Trump has the right and the responsibility to ask that potential crimes committed by high level US Government office holders be investigated. Just because a President also happens to be in a re-election campaign doesn’t mean he is not supposed to do his job.”
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Daniel Bobinski, M.Ed. is a certified behavioral analyst, best-selling author, columnist, corporate trainer, and a popular speaker at conferences and retreats. In addition to working with teams and individuals to help them achieve workplace excellence through improving their emotional intelligence and improving the way they do training, he's also a veteran and a Christian Libertarian who believes in the principles of free market capitalism while standing firmly against crony capitalism. Daniel writes on both workplace issues and political issues for multiple publications. Reach Daniel through his website, www.MyWorkplaceExcellence.com
