RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
March 24 to March 30 Featured Investigation: Probes Old, New, Ukrainian and Blue Did he or didn't he? For two years the nation waited for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to settle the question of whether Donald Trump or his team colluded with the Russians. But when Mueller finally answered no last week, both sides agreed on just one thing: We need more investigations. Democrats vowed to keep digging for a solid case of obstruction or other incriminating evidence that's gottagottagotta be there even though it has eluded the Special Counsel and two congressional committees - while supporting a series of other ongoing Trump probes in the Democrat-controlled House and New York. President Trump and jubilant Republicans are demanding that the investigators be investigated - including the Justice Department and Obama administration. There are also calls to reopen the Hillary Clinton email probe. A column by John Solomon in the Hill this week suggests an entirely new avenueof inquiry: whetherthe Obama administration tried to kill an investigation in Ukraineinto whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted. At the center of that probe was a Ukrainian nonprofit known as theAnti-Corruption Action Centre- co-funded by the Obama administration and liberal mega-donor George Soros. Solomon reports that "the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group." One source told Solomon that the U.S. ambassador "gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute." Solomon says this raises larger questions because after the Obama Administraton launched itsKleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiativea decade ago to prosecute corruption in other countries, the Obama State Department, Justice Department and FBI outsourced some of the work in Ukraine to groups funded by Soros. The Ukrainian connection is intriguing because it has figured so prominently - yet quietly - in theRussiagateprobe. Mueller's biggest win, the case against PaulManafort, did not involve his time as Trump's campaign manager but, among other things, his political consulting work in Ukraine.In addition, recently released testimony reveals thatNellieOhr, who developed anti-Trump opposition research for Fusion GPS- which created the Steele dossier -told congress that aUkranianpolitician was one of the sources. AndPeterSchweizer's2018 book "Secret Empire"is receiving renewed attention because of its reporting on lucrative financial ties between the Ukraine and Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden.Highlighting the many other instances where Ukraine and Ukrainians figured in the "Russia" probe, legal analyst Jonathan Turley wrote a February column with the headline:"Could Robert Mueller actually be investigatingUkrainiancollusion?" At this point is seems clear that if Mueller didn't look into it, someone else will. The Trump Investigations: Top Articles Inside Story of the Alleged Plot to Take Down Trump, Epoch Times
Summary of Special Counsel's Report, Attorney General William P. Barr
Dems Seize on Obstruction Riftin Barr's Summary, Washington Post
Post-Mueller, Trump and Allies Look to Turn Tables, New York Times
Gen. Flynn's Legal Bill Said to Be $5 Million, ABC News
In Case You Missed It: Simpson-SteeleOppoResearch, Continued, RCI
How Trump Dodged a Special Counsel Interview, Washington Post
NellieOhrTestimony: 'I Favored Hillary', Daily Caller Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
The Underground Railroad of North Korea
GQ
For over two decades, a secret network has worked to help thousands of refugees escape the world's worst dictatorship. Thisarticle recounts one woman's journey, with her two small children and five other refugees. Here's the opening: First, the woman called "Faith" would have to evade the soldiers and surveillance cameras on the border. But even once she'd sneaked into China, the danger would only have just begun. To reach a South Korean embassy, where she could receive asylum, she would still have to clandestinely journey thousands of miles across China and then several Southeast Asian countries. If she was discovered anywhere along that trek, she would likely be repatriated to one of her nation's infamous gulags, where prisoners slave with so little food they capture rats to eat. But after more than 30 years of never daring to criticize the dictatorship out loud, even after enduring a famine, she was willing to risk anything to free herself. Office Depot Rigged PC Malware Scans to Sell Tech Help
ArsTechnica
Office Depot and a partner company tricked customers into buying unneeded tech support services by offering PC scans that gave fake results, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Consumers paid up to $300 each for unnecessary services. The stores offered PC Health Check scans for free, while claiming the value of the scans was between $20 and $60. At the beginning of each scan, consumers were asked if they experienced PC problems such as repeated crashes or slowness. Any yes answer in that survey guaranteed that the program would flag a problem with the user's computer. How Chief Justice Roberts Negotiated to Save Obamacare
CNN
Chief Justice John Roberts, once seen as a conservative,stunned much of the country when hecast the deciding vote in 2012 to uphold President Obama's signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act. This article, adapted from author Joan Biskupic's new book on Roberts, reports on the events that led to that decision. Roberts changed course multiple times. He was part of the majority of justices who initially voted in a private conference to strike down the individual insurance mandate -- the heart of the law -- but he also voted to uphold an expansion of Medicaid for people near the poverty line.Biskupicdoes not say this directly, but her reporting suggests that the man who promised Congress he would only call balls and strikes felt driven to step up to the plate with a rationale for a specific outcome. She writes: "Viewed only through a judicial lens, his moves were not consistent, and his legal arguments were not entirely coherent. But he brought people and their different interests together. His moves may have been good for the country at a time of division and a real crisis in health care, even as they engendered, in the years since, anger, confusion and distrust." Investigative File of Jussie Smollett Case
Chicago Police Response to Records Request
An Illinois state attorney's decision to drop all charges against Jussie Smollett - the gay black "Empire" actor accused of staging a hate crime against himself - has angered Chicago's mayor and its police. That may explain the speed with which the city responded to a request for Smollett's case file, which is availablehere. The Church's Plan to Quietly Pay Sex Abuse Victims
Vice
In an apparent effort to stave off lawsuits and maintain secrecy regarding claims of sexual abuse against priests, the Catholic Church is setting up compensation programs across the country. This article reports that that while the programs have led to some charges being investigated, substantiated, and revealed publicly, on the whole they are a mechanism for the Church to maintain secrecy. At least in most cases, the offers from the compensation programs do not include an admission of guilt. Quote: "The Church's continual refusal to make records public, particularly those that could implicate its more senior officials, is one of the enduring hallmarks of the Catholic sex abuse crisis, according to Tim Lennon, president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests." Mob Underboss Sonny Franzese, 102, Speaks
Newsday
It would be interesting to hear what the families of the victims of John "Sonny"Frazese- a brutal Mafia leader now age 102 - think of this article. It might take some work tracking them down because this piece does not mention any of the "dozens of people" he "personally killed or ordered the murders of."Never mindthe people he allegedly beat, raped, and robbed. While this article dutifully alludes to the only reason anyone should care about this murderer, much of the text is boilerplate mobster mythology: a "Goodfellas"-esquetale of a man who had glamorous friends - Marilyn Monroe! Jayne Mansfield! Frank Sinatra! - but who loved his family most of all: "He worries about his grandchildren." He is also presented positively throughout the piece for not ratting on his fellowmuderersand thieves. Linked by law enforcement to multimillion-dollar bookmaking, loan sharking and extortion rackets, and caught on tape alluding to multiple murders he claimed to have committed, he remained mute through more than 35 years behind bars as mob boss after mob bossviolated the mob's code of silence in exchange for lighter prison sentences. He was silent, even though he hated prison. "I could never give a guy up because I knew what jail was," he said. "I wouldn't put a dog in a jail pod." |
