The coup attempt on Trump

OK, so now Donald Trump is a Russian agent? You’d think so by the mainstream media coverage. The New York Times ran a story that the FBI was investigating Trump right after his firing of James Comey for wittingly or unwittingly being a secret agent for the Russians. It was ridiculous on its face, but given the timing and who was involved it makes sense.

Andrew McCabe

Andrew McCabe became acting FBI director in the wake of Comey’s firing. He launched the investigation between the time of the firing and the time Rod Rosenstein named Robert Mueller as the special counsel. We now know from discovered text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his lover, Lisa Page, that there was essentially a coup attempt going on. They reference “Andy” in their text messages. It’s presumed they’re talking about McCabe. Two hours after Comey’s firing Strzok sent Page this message: “We need to open the case we’ve been waiting on now while Andy is acting (director). Page replied, “We need to lock in (redacted). In a formal chargeable way. Soon.”

Strzok and Page refused to clarify the exchange in testimony before Congress. I can imagine so. If the texts reference what we think they reference it could very well be treasonous. What’s interesting is James Comey appears not to be part of this plot. The man most vilified in all of this was apparently not open to trying to unseat Trump. Note that Strzok said they needed to open the case against Trump now that Comey was gone and McCabe was acting director. They knew their window would be short since the president would be naming a permanent replacement for Comey soon. 

A case can also be made that Rod Rosenstein was part of the conspiracy. Remember it was Rosenstein, according to McCabe’s notes, who floated the idea of secretly taping Trump and using the 25th Amendment to oust him from office. Apparently once McCabe’s fellow traveler had put his man, Mueller, in place there was no longer a need to investigate Trump as a Russian agent. The cabal had their full hooks in the investigation once Mueller was on board.

What the mainstream media chose to omit when serving as an echo chamber for the Times was the FBI found no evidence that Trump was a Russian agent, either wittingly or unwittingly. This was simply a vehicle used by rogue elements inside the FBI to try and topple the Trump presidency.

But where’s the investigation of that? The spineless Republicans who had every opportunity to build a wall and fully repeal Obamacare also fumbled the biggest story so far this century. There is ample evidence that key people inside the FBI were doing everything they could to end the Trump presidency. No one in the mainstream media is the least bit curious. The Republicans who run the national apparatus of the party in Washington appear to be equally disinterested. It’s probably because they don’t like Trump any more than the media or the Democrats. He’s an embarrassment. Why? Because he’s actually getting things done. He’s actually going about the task of fulfilling his campaign promises.

The dirty little secret in Washington is the people who pull the strings love the status quo. They have a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-your-back mentality. This is why, on the key issues, there’s rarely ever much movement. The Republicans in charge want to continue that status quo just as much as the Democrats do.

Donald Trump came to town to bust up the club. And he must be stopped at any cost.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Ivanka and Hillary: They're both wrong

A public records request has revealed that Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of e-mails regarding government business from her personal e-mail account. This has prompted cries of “Lock her up!” from the left and defense of the violation from the right. Allow me to be the adult in the room.

First, it’s unconscionable that anyone in government, on the right or the left, is so unaware about government e-mail protocol that this could happen. Least of all the daughter of the man who made this a major campaign issue in the 2016 election. One would think that after the media attention of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails that everyone in the Trump administration would make doubly sure they were following the letter of the law. Apparently they didn’t. This is an embarrassment to the president and Ivanka should face the consequences just like anyone else.

There are two major distinctions between Ivanka’s scandal and Hillary’s. First, Ivanka wasn’t using a private server. Using one would appear to be a deliberate attempt to deceive. The second distinction—and this is a big one—is that there’s no evidence at this time that anything Ivanka e-mailed through her private account was classified. The fact that a secretary of state did that is monumental.

But what’s interesting is how the left circled the wagons around Hillary and are now demanding full prosecution of Ivanka. That reeks of hypocrisy. They had completely moved past Hillary’s debacle and now are fixated on Ivanka’s. That’s part of what’s wrong with today’s political discourse. It’s all about “gotcha” as long as the one being “got” ain’t their own.

And this applies to the right as well. While it’s proper to draw distinctions between the two cases, it’s not at all fair to ignore Ivanka’s and point to Hillary’s. Especially someone who should’ve known better. She claims to have not understood the protocol. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Another related story got very little traction in the press. Turns out James Comey used his personal e-mail to conduct official FBI business, as we learned from another Freedom of Information request. That story got virtually no play in the mainstream media. Anyone who looks at this objectively would have to concede that the FBI director doing this is certainly more serious than an unpaid advisor to the president. It also brings more into focus Comey’s actions in July of 2016 when he made the unilateral decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton despite revealing that she had sent or received 110 classified e-mails to and from her private servers. Yes, that’s plural because they discovered more than one. Perhaps prosecution of such a crime hit a little too close to home for Mr. Comey.

Letting someone skate because the investigator found himself in a similar situation does not mean that someone is innocent. It only means she wasn’t prosecuted at the time. The more serious laws Hillary may have broken have a statute of limitations of ten years. That means if laws were broken during her first year as secretary of state the clock is winding down on prosecution.

The solution to all of this is we investigate both Hillary and Ivanka. And I would throw James Comey in the mix while we’re at it. If either of those three is found to have violated federal statutes then they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Hiding from the law should not be determined by what position you hold in government. Nor should it be determined by who your daddy is.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

More than Kavanaugh, this is for November

The Democrats insist that the confirmation proceedings surrounding Brett Kavanaugh are not a trial. They could not be more wrong. But it’s not a trial of Brett Kavanaugh. This is the trial of the Republican Party writ large. That’s why I went against the grain of many of those on my side of this issue to call for an FBI investigation even before Sen. Jeff Flake did. This is seen as capitulation by many. In actuality it’s a necessary step toward justice.

By noon on the day of the infamous dueling testimony of Dr. Christine Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh it was clear Kavanaugh’s nomination had taken a torpedo under the water line. To simply ignore Dr. Ford’s testimony or hope its impact would subside was folly. Her testimony was compelling. That’s not to say that the events as she described them were believable, but she, herself, was. How can that be? How can someone be lying and simultaneously believable? There are multiple explanations.

Some believe that something traumatic happened to Dr. Ford. Could it be something really did happen? If so, how could she so vividly remember the details of the layout of the inside of the house yet have no idea where the house was? I haven’t given up on the theory of false memory syndrome. We may never know. The inconsistencies of her testimony, however, did not erase the doubt about Brett Kavanaugh in many people’s minds.

Kavanaugh’s testimony was equally compelling. The left attacked him for being so forceful, but if you had been accused of the atrocious crimes he was accused of you would lash out too. Kavanaugh’s testimony may have tilted public opinion back toward him, but it did not undo the damage that had been done that morning by Dr. Ford’s testimony. So why is public opinion so important? Because this is not just about another seat on the Supreme Court. This is about November. And that’s why Republicans should not only have welcomed an FBI investigation, they should have insisted on one.

You lawyers know testimonial damage when you see it. Kavanaugh took a direct hit, and thus so did the Republican Party. When such damage is done you don’t simply clean up the debris and move on, you have to repair the damage.

What will an FBI investigation accomplish? If you’re a Republican you hope it accomplishes two things. First, it must corroborate what the Senate Judiciary Committee already uncovered. That being that Dr. Ford has one memory of the night in question, the witnesses she identified have an entirely different account. In other words, it’s not he said/she said, it’s she said/they said. The second thing the Republicans hope to accomplish is to get the FBI’s seal of approval stamped on the facts as we know them. Peter Strzok notwithstanding, the majority of Americans still have a tremendous amount of faith in the FBI.

The Democrats already are learning this can blow up in their faces. A recent poll in Missouri shows half the voters are now less likely to re-elect Democrat Claire McCaskill because of her opposition to Judge Kavanaugh. Her GOP opponent has slipped ahead by two points. In Tennessee, senate candidate Phil Bredesen is afraid to take a side. This is not quite going as the Democrats had envisioned.

If Republicans allow Lindsey Graham to make a point-by-point presentation of the FBI’s findings to the Senate just prior to the vote then this thing’s over. If several Democrats end up voting in favor of Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation then so, perhaps, is November.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

What you need to know about the FISA app and the FBI

The release of the heavily redacted FBI application for a FISA warrant to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump foreign policy advisor, fell with a thud in the mainstream media. For one, it was released on a Saturday when the fewest number of eyeballs were watching. The normally sensationalized headlines that greet news of the Russian investigation were absent.

Some, like New York magazine, even went so far as to say the FISA app debunked Trump’s ‘witch hunt’ claims. The truth is, as Byron York from the Washington Examiner so artfully laid out, the FISA app to spy on Carter Page vindicates Devin Nunes’s contention that there was serious misconduct on behalf of the FBI.

Here’s pretty much the problem in a nutshell. The FISA warrant against Page relied heavily on the now-debunked Steele Dossier. James Comey, as director of the FBI, signed off on the application three times before he was booted from his job. Running concurrently with those application renewals was his telling President-elect Trump in early January of 2017 that the Steele Dossier was “salacious and unverified.” The mainstream media run interference on this point claiming Comey wasn’t talking about the entire dossier, just the parts that were “personally sensitive” to the incoming president. You be the juWhat dge. This is the full sentence in context of what Comey said under oath when recounting his meeting with Trump.

“The IC (Intelligence Community) leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming president to the existence of this material even though it was salacious and unverified.”

Let’s assume for the moment that the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media are right. If portions of intelligence you’re receiving on something as serious as a political candidate colluding with a foreign power to rig an election are unverified how can you believe anything else in the document? In other words, what constitutes verified? Well, as we now know nothing in the Steele Dossier has been verified. If that’s the case now it was certainly the case when they filed the application. That would indicate that there was a concerted effort to mislead the court in order to allow them to literally tap into the Trump campaign surreptitiously.

The main point that’s being ignored by everyone is in spite of a FISA warrant and at least five or six renewals at 90-day intervals they found nothing on Carter Page. What they did find is Russian intelligence tried to recruit him as an agent and he didn’t take the bait. More importantly, they found nothing on Trump and any kind of collusion. Surely we’d know by now. Those wiretaps started almost two years ago in October of 2016. Carter Page stepped down as an advisor in September of 2016. He wasn’t even with the Trump campaign when he was being wiretapped.

Don’t forget it was Peter Strzok who was tasked with heading up the investigation into Trump-Russia collusion. He was involved with the Steele Dossier. When asked to join the Mueller investigation he sent a text to his lover, Lisa Page, telling her there’s “no big there there.” Then why did he join the investigation? The answer is obvious. It was all about getting Trump.

Keep this in mind too. Lisa Page gave two days of closed-door testimony to Congress. The only people talking to the press about that testimony were the Republicans who called it “enlightening” and “very useful.” We haven’t heard a word from the Democrats on that committee. That is the story to watch in the coming weeks.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

The real story of Trump and Putin in Helsinki

The news media went hysterical over President Trump’s comments at a press conference in Helsinki after meeting with Russian President Putin. It’s instructive to first examine what it is the president actually said.

What got the media stirred was this answer to a question about Russian meddling in the election. Trump said, “All I can do is ask the question—my people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be but I really want to see the server but, I have confidence in both parties.”

The Trump haters seized on that line of “both parties” and spun it that Trump was trashing our intelligence services. Keep in mind this is while Congress is investigating the possibility that several FBI agents were involved in a plot to first block his election to the presidency and then bring him down once he won. It’s important at this point to break the issue of Russian interference down into two distinct categories.

First, there’s no doubt that the Russians have been buying ads on platforms like Facebook to sow discontent in the country. What is not widely reported is they bought ads both pro-Trump and anti-Trump. They bought ads both pro-Hillary and anti-Hillary. They play both sides of the Black Lives Matters issue as well as Texas and California secession movements. In other words, the Russians take the opportunity to drive the wedge deeper on any issue that divides us. Why? Nobody really has a good answer. There could be a geopolitical strategy to topple us as the world’s superpower. It could be as simple as Putin’s hatred for America. Whatever it is, they’re certainly active on every side of the issues.

In the indictment of the twelve Russians unsealed recently by Robert Mueller’s team they contend that the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency set up shop to interfere with the U.S. presidential election in the spring of 2014. That was over a year before Donald Trump jumped into the race. It is inconceivable that such an operation was devised to get Trump elected president.

But it’s the second part of this equation that Trump is questioning. The part about the Russians hacking the DNC servers, or as the left-wing media like to say it, “hacking the election.” There’s no evidence at all that the Russians or anybody else “hacked the election.” Whatever the Russians did had no bearing on the outcome of the election. That’s one of the reasons why Trump is so defensive. The left is trying to convince the American people that his presidency is illegitimate because the Russians got him elected. That is utter bovine scatology. 

The real issue is the DNC server itself. This is the point Trump was making when he said, “I really want to see the server.” Something most Americans don’t even know is the FBI has never examined the DNC server that was supposedly hacked. How incredible is that? The whole investigation hinges on testimony from a company, CrowdStrike, hired by the DNC to say the server was hacked. Until our intelligence agencies have actually examined the server themselves how on Earth can they definitely say who hacked it, or if it was hacked at all?

That is the point Trump was making in Helsinki, and the left-wing media chose to ignore the real story in favor of flogging the dead mule of Trump-Russia collusion.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Trump Derangement Syndrome is a disease

They first tried to keep Donald Trump from being president. That conspiracy reached the highest levels of the FBI, maybe the highest levels of our government. When that didn’t work they demanded a recount. Then they demanded the Electoral College not seat him. That failed and they moved to impeachment talk, impeachment over nothing remotely resembling an impeachable offense. Then they tried to shout down his policies. The tax cuts would be ‘Armageddon,’ remember? Again they were wrong and the economy is at the best place it’s been in decades.

They thought they had created a lethal issue in family separation at the border. The left-wing media have been exposed for lying to the American people about it. They didn’t tell them that Obama detained children in far worse conditions. They didn’t tell them that 80 percent of the children held in detention came with no parent at all. They didn’t tell them that the viral photo of a little boy in a cage was a fraud or that the little girl, looked down upon menacingly by the president on the cover of Time, was never separated from her mother. In fact, her mother had kidnapped her from her father in Honduras. They didn’t tell them, but word got out. Now a majority of Americans, according to a CBS poll, favor building the wall. This isn’t how this issue was supposed to end.

What’s more troublesome to the left is now, according to a CNBC survey, the majority of Americans favor the president’s handling of the economy. That’s a tipping point in American politics. Pocketbook issues usually hold the strongest sway over American voters. Pretty soon some of the staunchest opponents of Trump will say, “I still think Donald Trump is a vulgarian, but…” Once that ‘but’ creeps into the conversation, it’s all over.

So, there’s only one thing left for those with Trump Derangement Syndrome to do. Sow utter chaos in the country.

Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, is kicked out of a Virginia restaurant because the owner says she works for an ‘inhumane’ administration. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is screamed at and harassed out of a Mexican restaurant in Washington, DC. Florida’s AG, Pam Bondi, can’t even attend a screening of a Mister Rogers movie without being accosted by deranged anti-Trump fanatics. Maxine ‘Mad Max’ Waters throws gasoline on the fire by encouraging everyone everywhere to harangue Trump administration officials. “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

They’ve lost. Not just their minds, they’ve lost the cause. It’s no coincidence that the better the country does the more deranged they become. America’s prosperity through tax cuts and capitalism is the worst news these people could get. They felt they were so close to fundamentally transforming this country under eight years of Obama only to see most of what he built on sand washed away in a torrent of supply-side economics.

If you’ve been waiting for these Never-Trumpers to calm down it should be clear to you that they’re not going to. The more they see their precious socialist utopia slipping away the more hysterical they become. Many of these people are ashamed of what made this country great. They think capitalism is cruel and capitalists are evil. They despise the direction we’re going.

They see only one option left, and that is to burn society to the ground.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Is it time for Mueller to go?

Outlets like The Daily Beast are panting over prospects of impeachment for President Trump. What has them so excited? The firing of Andy McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI. They believe the firing of McCabe means the dismissal of Robert Mueller is just a matter of time. Trump would be foolish to fire Mueller. More on that in a moment, but Trump didn’t fire McCabe. He was already being allowed a graceful way out by retiring. Jeff Sessions fired McCabe on the advice of the inspector general because McCabe leaked sensitive information to the press then lied about it under oath.

(Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

We’re starting to see a picture of what McCabe was up to at the FBI. I won’t call it a conspiracy, but it appears McCabe, Peter Strzok, and his mistress, Lisa Page, coordinated to try and keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office. When he won in spite of their efforts they attempted to bring him down. That’s nothing less than an attempted coup d’état.

Ironically, that’s where all this Russia investigation is leading. Liberals have been out of their minds with rage against this president ever since the election. They’ve been hanging their hopes on the Mueller investigation to right the perceived wrongs of the electoral process. What these short-thinking people don’t realize is a President Pence would be their worst nightmare. I’ve even seen surveys where an alarming number of these people actually believe Hillary Clinton would get to be president if Trump were removed from office. Their ignorance is breathtaking.

The further Mueller digs the more we realize that there was no collusion with Russia by Trump or his campaign. What we do learn is there was an insatiable desire by so many—including some inside the FBI—to make it so. That’s why it’s imperative that the president not interfere with the Mueller investigation.

Were Trump to fire Mueller he would forever be labeled a Nixonian character who used his office to keep the wolves at bay and cling to his power. If Trump does fire Mueller it will be because the investigation has dragged on ridiculously long with nothing to show for it. It’s a huge distraction to the White House and Trump’s agenda to get America back on the right track. There are still those Republicans in Congress who hold out hope that Trump will be impeached. They continue to stonewall on some of the more contentious issues like building a wall. With the Mueller investigation over they’ll be resigned to the fact that Trump will be in office for at least the next three years. Holding the ball for that long would no longer be an option.

Let Mueller finish, but finish he must. The only question is what is a reasonable timeframe? Trump is not known for his patience. That’s one of the traits that pushes him to get things done. I would think Mueller should surely be finished by the end of this summer. If he’s not, it may be time for Trump to make his case to the American people that Mueller either put up or shut up.

The liberals are lying in wait for him to do something foolish that they can hang around his neck. Firing Mueller prematurely would be one of those foolish things. If President Trump is confident that Mueller will never find anything illegal then he should have the good sense to let the process play out. Doing otherwise will create a crisis of confidence with his administration.

And imagine what November looks like if Mueller ultimately finds absolutely nothing.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

FISA memo blows the lid off liberal corruption

Well, what an interesting turn of events. The whole “Trump colluded with the Russians” brouhaha has boomeranged. The hunters have become the hunted. And is it not interesting how frantic the Democrats were in keeping a lid on the FISA memo? This is what I call the cheating girlfriend syndrome. (Sorry, ladies. Feel free to substitute cheating boyfriend. It’s just that I’ve never dated a boy. How last century of me.)

The cheating girlfriend syndrome goes as follows. Your girlfriend is super suspicious. Every girl you even glance at has her giving you the third degree. How do you know her? I don’t. Why were you looking at her? I was just looking around. She happened to be in my line of sight. Are you sleeping with her? No.

Andrew McCabe

The reason she’s asking so many questions is because she’s the one sleeping around.

The Democrats have been accusing President Trump of colluding with the Russians for 18 months now. There’s been not one shred of evidence to back it up. Now the story is beginning to take shape. They were colluding with the Russians. Let me explain.

We now know that Hillary Clinton paid for the Trump dossier by, in essence, laundering money through her attorney to Fusion GPS. We also know that Christopher Steele, the former British agent who authored the dossier, got his info from who? The Russians. It’s hard to know who was zooming who, but somebody was lying. It could’ve been Steele making it all up, or it could’ve been the Russians feeding him a line of baloney. One thing seems certain. Hillary must’ve known it was a load of bovine scatology or she would’ve used the dirt in one of the presidential debates. Instead, she feed it to gullible media folks and politicians like John McCain. Anybody who hated Trump.

It was also fed to the FBI. That’s where it gets interesting. They used it to obtain FISA warrants to spy on Trump and his campaign. Surely they knew it was bogus. Either that or we have the Keystone Cops in charge at the Bureau. If they didn’t tell the FISA court that their warrant requests were based, at least in part, on the Trump dossier, of which they couldn’t confirm the contents, then we’re only left with one theory. They were crooked instead of incompetent.

If they used their vast power to spy on a political campaign then Watergate looks like jaywalking by comparison. If they also used their vast power to try and unseat a sitting president then we have treason. I don’t use that term lightly. It was an attempted coup d’état. 

As I’ve written here before, I’m sure those involved convinced themselves and each other that it was the best thing for the country. Changing governments by illegal means is never good for this country. Some tinhorn dictatorship? Sure. But we have a civilized and proven way of transferring power that’s worked for over 200 years. It’s called the vote. Problem is the vote didn’t go their way. Too bad. The vote didn’t go my way in 2008 or 2012. Heck, it didn’t go my way in 1992 or 1996. It would never dawn on me that fabricating a story of collusion with a foreign government would be the proper course of action.

The question is where do we go from here? There needs to be a top-down purging of hostile elements in our intelligence community. I don’t mean everybody who voted for Hillary. I mean everybody who thinks the end justifies the means in removing Donald Trump from office.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

The real story of Fusion GPS is beginning to emerge

I’ve never bought this notion that the Russians hacked the DNC servers. To me, the story carries about as much weight as the Trump dossier. As we dig deeper into this bizarre story, we find the two are indubitably intertwined. 

The now-debunked dossier accuses Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev of hacking into the DNC computers. Gubarev is suing BuzzFeed News for publishing the dossier. In such a lawsuit, the defense is allowed to provide documentation to defend itself. Surely Gubarev wouldn’t be suing if the civil lawsuit risked exposing him to criminal charges.

Fusion GPS, the company Hillary Clinton hired to compile the dossier, is suing to try and stop a subpoena from Gubarev’s lawyers seeking everything they have related to the dossier. Think about this for a moment. If the dossier were really legit there’s no way Fusion would be suing to stop documentation that would confirm its legitimacy. Quite the contrary. They would be providing all the evidence they have to the press to make their case against Trump.

The most powerful argument against the veracity of the Russian hacking story is the fact that no U.S. intelligence agency has ever inspected the DNC servers. Is that not incredible? James Comey said they were taking the word of a company called CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is company that protects clients from data breaches. The mission statement on their website states, “We don’t have a mission statement—we are on a mission to protect our customers from breaches.” Their most high-profile client was the DNC. It’s unlikely they would be bragging that their only mission is to stop data breaches when they couldn’t stop the data breach at the DNC. In fact, it’s unlikely they would still be in business if that were really the case.

I believe the whole Russia hacking story was a cover-up for the real story that this was an inside job from a disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter. The fact that the dossier that supposedly uncovered the Russian breach has now been largely discredited adds credence to that theory. In fact, there’s no evidence at all that the Russians hacked the DNC other than what we’re being told by CrowdStrike, a company founded and run by Hillary supporters.

What’s even scarier is the FBI may have used the Trump dossier to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page, a man described as a Trump advisor. If the dossier is what FBI agent Peter Strzok described as an “insurance policy” in case Trump got elected president, we have a disturbing conspiracy that goes way beyond campaign dirty tricks.

And if the Russians didn’t really hack into the DNC servers is there even a Trump/Russian collusion story to investigate? No. The breached servers is the pretense used by the FBI and now the Mueller team to investigate Russian collusion. Otherwise, they have nothing. That means that the entire affair is predicated on information taken from a piece of paid-for campaign propaganda from Hillary Clinton that is demonstrably false.

Strzok was the point man on the Trump dossier at the FBI. He was also the guy who facilitated Hillary being let off the hook for the illegal computer server scandal. And he was the man who entrapped Michael Flynn. He’s also a fierce political partisan who had such animus against Donald Trump that he just might do anything to bring him down. And he conveniently found himself in a position on the Mueller team to do just that. But only if we take the basic premise of hacking as fact. Which we can’t.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Unraveling the conspiracy at the FBI

I wrote in this space two weeks ago that what we were witnessing was nothing short of an attempted coup. Some thought that was simply hyperbole. Now we’re seeing the ugly underbelly of the entrenched bureaucracy in Washington, DC.

Peter Strzok, the now disgraced FBI agent who seemed to be trying to cook the presidential election last year, has been outed for the political hack he is. How he’s still employed with the Bureau is anyone’s guess. He sent a text message to his mistress, an FBI lawyer, regarding a comment she apparently made in Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s office claiming there was no way Trump could win the election. “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

What the “insurance policy” was is the subject of much speculation, but it seems obvious it’s the Trump dossier the FBI got from Fusion GPS, a company hired by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats to dig up dirt on Trump. Colluding with Democrats to bring down a sitting president is nothing short of a coup.

Strzok will tell you he was only doing what’s best for the country. That’s what they all say. Watergate was all about a break-in to ensure George McGovern didn’t become president—for the good of the country. Governments are toppled in the name of what’s good for the country. What’s not good for the country is a handful of rogue FBI employees toppling the duly elected president “for the good of the country.”

This calls into question the entire Mueller investigation. It’s all predicated on work done by the FBI, an FBI we now know had a political agenda. We’ll have to see where this leads us, but it appears Mr. Strzok and possibly others at the FBI may be guilty of treason and sedition. Those are serious charges but these are serious actions. If people inside the FBI were conspiring to remove Trump from office then what else would one call it? And we know Mr. Strzok was a Hillary partisan in charge of investigating her e-mail scandal. He changed James Comey’s now-famous statement regarding Hillary’s actions from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.” As you’ll recall, Comey let Hillary off the hook.

It was Peter Strzok who interviewed Hillary and her aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills. We know Mills and Abedin lied to the FBI, something that got Mike Flynn in a lot of hot water. Mills and Abedin skated. Why weren’t they prosecuted like Flynn?

The irony is the FBI launched an investigation to discover if the Russians colluded with Trump to influence the election when it was they who were doing the colluding and influencing. It was the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse. And what’s also ironic is the investigation that so many on the left have been cheering may very well be the investigation that brings down the Clinton machine within the FBI. It may also bring down Hillary herself.

Once we fully understand the lengths to which Hillary supporters inside the FBI went to get her elected, the appetite of the American people may very well change. It was Hillary who was colluding with a foreign agent to change the outcome of the election. Christopher Steele is a British citizen. Paying a foreign entity for opposition research in an election is against the law. It’s time the American people were told the truth.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Mr. 'Nobel Peace Prize' not so noble

Something’s not quite right with the Syrian situation.  As we go to war with the Assad regime under the assumption of their use of chemical weapons the facts just don’t add up.  Consider that Assad’s troops had been routing the rebels in the days leading up to the attack.  Also consider that Assad had been warned, in no uncertain terms, that his use of chemical weapons would incur the wrath of the United States and other western powers.  Why would he do it?

It’s my belief that he didn’t.  Who had the most to gain from a chemical weapons attack?  The rebels.  We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Syrian rebels are being led by al Qaeda.  They have committed some unspeakable atrocities in Syria.  If al Qaeda wanted to take control of Syria their best option would be to the have our military bombard Assad’s troops from off-shore.

Which begs the question: What are we doing aiding al Qaeda?  Last time I checked we were at war with them.  The whole ‘Arab Spring’ debacle has resulted in undesirables seizing power in the Middle East.  The Muslim Brotherhood, itself a terrorist organization, took control of Egypt, suspended the constitution, instituted Sharia law and had to be ousted by the military.

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham flew to Egypt to meet with senior officials of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Obama has invited them to a meeting at the White House.  FBI Director Robert Mueller testified before a House committee that the Muslim Brotherhood has supported terrorism not only overseas but right here in America.  And our elected officials are meeting with these people?

Don’t believe the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization?  Consider their motto: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."  Sounds like a peaceful bunch, doesn’t it?

We can argue over whether the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist group but there’s no arguing that al Qaeda is and they’re the ones in charge of the Syrian rebels.  The rebels have declared their allegiance to al Qaeda.  And now we’re helping them take over the country.

So, we’re aiding the terrorists in Syria.  We helped bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt.  We supported the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in Libya which our own State Department and the U.N. Security Council have listed as an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group.  Have we lost our minds!?!

What on earth could be the motivation?  I’ll toss out one theory.  What’s the shortest route to getting Americans on the green energy bandwagon?  High gas prices.  What’s the quickest way to raise global oil prices through the roof?  Putting a bunch of terrorists in charge of oil-producing countries in the Middle East.  If you have a better theory I’d love to hear it.  Frankly, I think that’s the least damning theory for this administration.  All others range from outright incompetence to blatant support for radical Islam’s quest to rule the world.

It’s by no coincidence that we have been systematically toppling regimes that have, for decades, kept the terrorists in check only to replace them with the terrorists themselves.  

Like Mohamed Zrig.  He was denied refugee status in Canada because of terrorism.  He was the leader of the Movement of the Islamic Tendency which later became Ennahda.  Ennahda is the ruling party in Tunisia, where this whole Arab Spring began.

And the Arab Spring could not have sprung without the aid of Barack Obama.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.