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Did Hillary Commit Perjury By Lying to The FBI? Or to Congress?

The FBI is expected to release notes from its July 1 interview with former Secretary of State and current Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton about her use of private email servers to transmit and store top secret, classified information. According to the FBI, the interview wasn’t electronically recorded and was conducted just three days before FBI Director James Comey announced charges would not be brought against Clinton despite her “extremely careless” mishandling of classified information.

Now, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte are making the case Clinton committed perjury by either lying to the FBI or lying under oath during Congressional testimony.

In a letter sent to U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Channing Phillips Monday, Chaffetz and Goodlatte outlined their case by highlighting numerous examples of Clinton’s own conflicting statements about her private email server.

“The evidence collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during its investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn testimony,” the letter states. “During a House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing on October 22, 2015, Secretary Clinton testified with respect to (1) whether she sent or received emails that were marked classified at the time; (2) whether her attorneys reviewed each of the emails on her personal email system; (3) whether there was one, or more servers that stored work-related emails during her time as Secretary of State; and (4) whether she provided all her work-related emails to the Department of State.”

“Although there may be other aspects of Secretary Clinton’s sworn testimony that are at odds with the FBI’s findings, her testimony in those four areas bears specific scrutiny in light of the facts and evidence FBI Director James Comey described in his public statement on July 5, 2016 and in testimony before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on July 7, 2016,” the letter continues.

The Ted Cruz Speech and the Attack on the Conservative Movement

By Richard Moss MD

The great controversy of the Republican Convention recently over Senator Ted Cruz’s failure to endorse Donald Trump and the media pile-on that followed was a well-orchestrated ruse that served one purpose. To attack and marginalize the conservative movement and concentrate power in the hands of Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the RNC itself. It succeeded, much to the detriment of the party and the country. In effect, the GOP establishment has joined with and co-opted the Donald Trump Presidential campaign for the purpose of trampling the conservative base, which the party apparatus despises. Conservatives are the real target of the RNC, not Democrats or the left. It is not a good harbinger for the country, or Republican election prospects in November. And while it may benefit Trump temporarily, it will not last if he loses in November.

The controversy centered around the Texas Senator’s speech in which he spoke of general conservative principles, an uplifting speech that dwelled on themes that should resonate with the audience at a Republican National Convention. They included such conservative ideas as inalienable rights, liberty, freedom, and the Constitution, popular concepts amongst Republican voters. He also advised the audience to “vote your conscience,” something that should not be controversial in the least. Yet it was at that moment that the uproar against Cruz reached a crescendo.

The lead-up to the speech demonstrated just how coordinated this was. Three days before Cruz gave his speech, he met Trump, the man who invited him to speak in the first place, and told Trump he would not endorse him. Trump was okay with this. Trump, his team, and the media had a copy of Cruz’s “embargoed” speech the day before or sooner and still agreed to allow him to speak. Reince Priebus and the RNC also had a copy of the speech. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. So did his surrogates including Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Chris Christy. There was no surprise. Everyone knew he was not going to endorse Trump but agreed to allow him to speak anyway.

But this was much ado about nothing. This is, after all, America not a banana republic. No one has to endorse anyone, even at a convention. Ronald Reagan never endorsed Gerald Ford at the 1976 convention or beyond. Reagan and his wife Nancy were angered by Ford’s rhetoric bashing Reagan as a warmonger. Cruz of course was angry at Trump for the personal attacks on him, his wife, and father. Trump accused Cruz of having an affair with five women. He questioned his US citizenship. He insulted his wife’s looks and association with Goldman Sachs. He mentioned, based on a National Enquirer story and photo, that Cruz’s father was involved with Lee Harvey Oswald in the assassination of JFK.

The orchestration of attacks by Trump surrogates and the media was full throated. Paul Manafort, the Trump Campaign Manager, along with Newt Gingrich, Chris Christy, Mike Huckabee, and others, all parroted the same contentious rhetoric. “Cruz did not keep his pledge to endorse the Republican nominee,” they said. They questioned his “integrity and loyalty.” None remembered that on March 29 2016, Trump himself in an interview claimed that he might not keep his pledge and endorse the Republican winner. “It depends,” he said. Further, they conveniently overlooked that Trump had insulted Cruz’s wife and father, and so Cruz could not in good conscience endorse him. Forgotten also was that not only did John Kasich, Jeb Bush and other prominent Republicans and presidential candidates not endorse him, they did not even show up. Nor did John McCain and Mitt Romney, the two Republican Presidential candidates in 2008 and 2012.

The reality was that Cruz gave an excellent speech. He congratulated Trump on his victory and then spoke of bedrock Republican principles. For his trouble, he was booed off the stage and trashed in the media. Of the many speakers who addressed the convention including Trump himself, none spoke of such principles. Nor was there a word anywhere by Trump or anyone else about faith, family, traditional values, and protection of the unborn.

The purpose of this attack on Cruz by the Trump Campaign and the RNC was to discredit him and the conservative movement. It was a concerted effort to split the party and cut it off from its conservative base rather than unify it. The GOP, in other words, does not want to be a conservative party. It wants to be something else. A liberal, progressive, “populist,” big government party. But not a conservative party.
Furthermore, the Republican establishment never attacks Obama, Clinton, the Democrat Party and the left the way they attack Cruz and conservatives. The reason is simple.

Republican Party leaders are threatened by the conservative base far more than by Democrats, hence hostile to it, for conservatives seek the one thing Party Elders fear more than anything else, even more than Democrats: to shrink the power of the federal government and thus halt the gravy train that Party Elders and their preferred candidates, lobbyists, and crony capitalists all feed from. Democrat victories do not concern them. They will still have a place at the table. Elections and issues come and go. What matters is continued access to power, even if Rome is burning. Tea Party Constitutional types that actively seek to diminish the federal government and devolve power back to the states, balance budgets, and pay down the debt – now that is a threat. They prefer instead to continue the charade, the borrowing, spending, and growing of government, heaping massive burdens of debt upon future generations until the laws of economics assert themselves, and the federal enterprise collapses, leaving vast social upheaval in its wake. But by then the ruling class will be long gone, and our children and grandchildren will be left to reap the whirlwind. (Paraphrased from an earlier writing)

Principles such as liberty, limited government, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and preserving our culture and heritage mean little or nothing to the Republican Establishment beyond election year sloganeering. They are not discomfited by the lurching of the nation to the left, the size of government, the debt, the broken entitlements, the expanding welfare state, open borders, the unchecked power of the administrative state, the judicial oligarchy, Obamacare, the EPA, the assault on our culture, institutions, and values, and the breakdown of the civil society. Rather they have funded and supported it, often enabling Democrats to get more than they could have on their own.

The issue for conservatives is that the party that was supposed to be the vehicle for conservative principles, the Republican Party, has failed us over and over again and has done so now for 28 years, since the end of the second Reagan term. Not only have they not moved the ball forward on countless issues important to us, they have acquiesced and cooperated with Democrats in advancing fully their agenda.

As for our issues such as limiting the size of government, liberty, restoring Congress and the separation of powers, defending the Constitutional system, the Bill of Rights, free market capitalism, and traditional values, they have been inept and uninterested.

Even on crucial cultural issues where the left has pursued a radical social engineering agenda that has undermined our traditions and civil society, Republicans have been missing in action. The federal government has imposed such controversial policies as gay marriage, mixed-gender frontline combat units, requiring women to register for the draft, and the transgendering of bathrooms, showers, and lockers in schools throughout the land. There has been a federal assault on religious liberty, in particular the Christian faith, and an attempt to nationalize (and smear) our local police and suburbs, while undermining the rule of law.

Much of this has been achieved through the bureaucracy or the courts, without a single vote in Congress, a breakdown in our constitutional system – and no discernable pushback from pulseless Republicans.
It is time to recognize that the conservative/liberty movement does not have a political party, a vehicle with which to press its agenda. With the union of the GOP and the Trump team (which is already fraying), and the shenanigans at and after the Republican Convention, it is clear that conservatives have no place in today’s GOP.

Brief Bio: Richard Moss MD is a practicing Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon, author, and columnist who resides in Jasper IN. He recently lost his bid for the Republican nomination for Congress in Indiana’s 8th district. Find more of his essays and blog posts at exodusmd.com. Also find him on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Local Deputy Prosecutor Sarah Brinkley Wins State Award

A local deputy prosecutor recently earned state recognition after she was named this year’s Outstanding Young Lawyer through the Indiana State Bar Association.

Sarah Brinkley, who moved to Evansville this year, was chosen by the Young Lawyers Section and nominated based on her dedication and professionalism.

“[Sarah] is not only intelligent, hard-working and dedicated, but has the ability to deal with opposing counsel in a manner that is respectful and pleasant,” according to an excerpt from an anonymous nomination. “She is not cut from the ‘win at all costs’ mold that so many attorneys seem to believe the practice of law should be, but rather practices a type of law where congeniality and professionalism means opposing counsel is not your enemy.”

The recipient of the award is given once a year to a single young lawyer practicing in Indiana. Nominated candidates must exemplify the virtues embodied in the oath required of all Indiana attorneys when admitted to the bar and also must be under 36 years old or have less than six years of legal experience. He or she is selected by the ISBA Young Lawyers Section Awards and Scholarship Committee.

“This award is an amazing honor,” Sarah said. “I am so thankful and appreciative to be recognized as the recipient.”

Sarah, who graduated from Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law, previously held a deputy prosecutor position in La Porte County before moving to Vanderburgh County. She now prosecutes defendants who commit Level 5 and 6 felonies.

Sarah will be honored at an awards luncheon at the Conrad Hotel in downtown Indianapolis on Sept. 9.