Media Ignores Election Law Violations Related to Facebook’s Obama Campaign Connection

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Facebook is feeling the wrath of left-wing organizations and mainstream media outlets as a result of a recently publicized data breach, which involved the unauthorized gathering of Facebook users’ data by a British consulting firm that worked for then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump.

When it publicly became known that Cambridge Analytica, a firm that worked for the Trump campaign, harvested data from 50 million Facebook users, the news triggered intense reactions from a broad range of Democrats and others of a liberal persuasion. Curiously, there was no such similar anger expressed when former President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was supplied Facebook data to use for political purposes.

The media quickly glommed on to the Cambridge Analytica story, using it as one more opportunity to excuse Hillary Clinton for her embarrassing presidential campaign loss.

Virtually ignored by the mainstream media, however, was and still is the manner in which the Obama campaign extensively utilized social network data in previous election cycles.

Recently, the hashtag #DeleteFacebook broke out on the social media, and a sizable number of celebrities and high-profile companies suspended their Facebook advertising and some even ceased using Facebook altogether.

–In a Facebook post, actor and comedian Will Ferrell announced that he was going to delete his Facebook account. “I’m reaching out to let you know that in 72 hours I will be deleting my Facebook account,” Ferrell wrote, indicating that he was not deleting it immediately, in order to give his message enough time to reach his fans and followers. He specifically cited, in his words, Cambridge Analytica’s “misuse of millions of Facebook users’ information in order to undermine our democracy and infringe on our citizens’ privacy.”

–Singer-actress Cher used her Twitter account to inform her followers that she was deleting her Facebook account.

–British hip-hop duo Massive Attack made an exit from the social platform.

–Elon Musk deleted the Facebook pages of his companies, Tesla and SpaceX.

–Playboy followed suit.

–Mozilla, creator of the Firefox browser, stated it would stop advertising on Facebook. The company also launched a new Firefox browser extension, which blocks Facebook’s ability to track activities on other websites that have integrated with the social network.

–Auto parts giant Pep Boys, Germany’s second-largest bank Commerzbank, and Electronics manufacturer Sonos halted their advertising on the social media platform as well.

It appears as though the indignation expressed by liberals and the mainstream media has little to do with Facebook’s misuse of data but almost everything to do with their visceral hatred for President Trump.

Meanwhile, what appears to continually be being given a pass is a far more egregious breach of privacy.

In 2012 Facebook presented to the reelection campaign of then-President Obama the data, free of charge, of about 190 million people. This is four-times the amount of people whose privacy was breached in the Cambridge Analytica matter.

Carol Davidsen, former media director for Obama for America, publicly stated that Facebook freely allowed the 2012 Obama campaign “direct access to the personal data of Facebook users, in violation of its internal rules, making a special exception for the campaign.”

Davidsen posted on Twitter that Facebook “came to [the] office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.”

Political campaigns customarily must pay for access to the above-referenced kind of data. Under federal law, corporations cannot make contributions to federal candidates. This prohibition includes not only cash, but “anything of value.” Corporations therefore cannot provide federal candidates with free services of any type. Such free services are categorized under election law by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as “in-kind contributions.”

When Facebook gave the Obama campaign free access to data, when it would have customarily charged fees for such access, the social media giant may conceivably have violated a federal prohibition on corporate in-kind contributions. Additionally, the Obama campaign may have broken the law by accepting the in-kind corporate contribution.

In contrast, the Trump campaign does not appear to have this kind of legal exposure because it actually did pay Cambridge Analytica for its services.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the FEC, contends that the data transfer by Facebook to the Obama campaign is unlawful, and could even be a matter for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate.

These potential violations of federal campaign finance laws by Facebook and the Obama campaign are serious enough to warrant a much deeper investigation. Campaign finance laws are enforced administratively by the FEC, and civil fines can be imposed; however, the DOJ has concurrent criminal jurisdiction over violations of campaign finance laws.

As von Spakovsky reasoned, “It [the Facebook transfer of data to the Obama campaign] should be investigated by the Federal Election Commission and potentially the U.S. Department of Justice.”

The Celebrities Behind the Anti-Gun March

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Lending support to the recent anti-Second Amendment march, which was misleadingly called the “March for Our Lives,” was a sizable roster of Hollywood elites.

The participating celebrities, who are routinely shielded 24/7 by their own armed security guards, were among those who were financing and supporting the nationwide protests.

The goal in mind was a singular one—to get other people to give up their God-given and constitutionally protected right to defend themselves and their families with firearms.

The Washington, D.C. protest, along with its so-called “sibling” events, was organized and funded with a considerable amount of help from Hollywood liberals and leftist organizations. Thousands of high school students were bussed to various locales via groups and individuals with links to the Democratic Party.

Despite its official noble sounding name, numerous media outlets, including BuzzfeedNews, reported that organizers were really pushing for full-on gun control legislation. It has also become increasingly clear that the march was specifically designed to gin up the voter registration rolls for the upcoming mid-term elections.

Democratic groups in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia boosted the number of attendees by providing free transportation for participants to Washington, D.C. According to Bethesda Magazine, a Maryland Democratic House member hosted a pre-march rally and bussed supporters to the march. And the Washington Post reported that the Democrat mayor of Baltimore arranged for thousands of students to be driven to the march by bus. Democratic groups in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania also reportedly provided buses to participants.

As a further incentive for the younger demographic, organizers put together a free concert with an all-star billing, which included Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, Common, Demi Lovato, Jennifer Hudson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Vic Mensa, and Ben Platt.

During the concert, performers proceeded to supplement their music with politically loaded protest visuals.

– Cyrus performed “The Climb” while holding a sign that read “Never Again.”

– Lovato concluded her performance with a raised fist and the words “MSD strong!”

– After Grande sang “Be Alright” she was joined on stage by some attendees who engaged in a group hug and selfie snaps.

– Hudson closed out the show in 1960s protest fashion with a version of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”

A number of entertainment figures provided money to the organizers of the event, including Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, and George Clooney. Taylor Swift, who has made it a point to remain apolitical, indicated that she, too, had donated to the march.

Clooney and Spielberg took to the streets to join the protesters. Other celebrities who made their presence at the march known included Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Jimmy Fallon, Dennis Rodman, and Julianne Moore.

Paul McCartney joined in a march in New York and Amy Schumer spoke at a rally in Los Angeles.

Celebrities who used social media to digitally participate included Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Justin Bieber, Alyssa Milano, Michael Moore, and Debra Messing.

It is apparent that organizers of the march harbor ambition that extends far beyond the initial event. Plans are in the making to lobby lawmakers to achieve desired ends. The finance vehicle for the protest, “The March for Our Lives Action Fund,” is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, which, according to records, was registered on March 8, 2018.

The majority of non-profit groups are registered as 501(c)(3) charitable organizations; this allows donors to receive a charitable tax deduction for their gifts.

However, 501(c)(4) organizations are formed in order to conduct lobbying and legislative advocacy. The choice of this nonprofit vehicle means that donors actually lose tax deductibility for their donations.

On the group’s website, “The March for Our Lives Action Fund” has telegraphed its intent to pursue lobbying, indicating that funds will be used “to fight for comprehensive gun safety legislation at the local, state, and federal level.”

The website also offers a “March for Our Lives voter registration toolkit,” which appears to be a blatant effort to boost Democratic candidates at the polls.

Sexual Harassment Allegations Surface against the President of the Motion Picture Academy

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The last thing Hollywood needs is another high-profile scandal. Unfortunately, this is exactly what recently landed at the doorstep of a once respected institution.

The president of the Motion Picture Academy, who was at the organization’s helm in the midst of the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct disclosures, is himself now the subject of an investigation involving multiple accusations of sexual harassment.

According to Variety, John Bailey, the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, is under investigation for sexual harassment allegations. The probe was launched after the Academy received three separate claims of impropriety.

For months the entertainment industry has been in deep distress as a result of the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, which were revealed in reports in outlets such as the New York Times and the New Yorker.

As a means of responding, Hollywood set up a sexual harassment commission and embraced the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

The revelation involving the head of the Academy comes right on the heels of the immensely unentertaining 90th Academy Awards ceremony, which is now infamous for garnering the most disastrous ratings in the show’s history.

Bailey, a cinematographer and film director, is best known for collaborating with big-name film directors including Paul Schrader, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Apted. His list of film credits includes “The Big Chill,” “Ordinary People,” “American Gigolo,” “As Good As It Gets,” and “Groundhog Day.” In 2015 he was awarded the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award.

The longtime Academy member was elected to the post of Academy president in August 2017 and had previously been president of the Cinematographers branch. During Bailey’s tenure, the Academy voted to revoke Weinstein’s membership just days after the first reports of sexual misconduct surfaced.

The choice of Bailey raised the eyebrows of some high-profile liberals in the entertainment industry, particularly because vociferous Academy members had been pushing for, among other things, a more inclusive Oscar organization.

Consequently, the then-newly elected 75-year-old Caucasian male president received a substantial degree of disapproval over his age as well as his skin color.

At the time Bailey told Variety, “What you just said is [expletive],” adding, “I was born a white man, and I can’t help it that I’m 75 years old. Is this some sort of limiting factor?”

Under Bailey’s leadership, the Academy established a new code of conduct, which provides for disciplining or expelling members over abuse, harassment, or discrimination and also sets up procedures by which such accusations can be adjudicated administratively.

Such claims are to be forwarded by the Membership Department to the Academy’s Membership and Administration Committee, a committee currently led by David Rubin.

If the allegations are deemed to be credible and serious, the matter is sent to the Board of Governors, which then determines whether to suspend or expel the member, in this case, Bailey.

One of the members of the Board of Governors happens to be Bailey’s wife, Carol Littleton, who presumably would have to recuse herself from the proceedings.

If Bailey were ultimately suspended or removed due to the investigation and adjudication, he would be replaced by Academy first vice president and makeup artist Lois Burwell.

A couple of weeks ago Bailey told the annual luncheon for Oscar nominees that the “fossilized bedrock” of Hollywood would be “jack-hammered into oblivion.”

The claims against the Academy president, the subsequent investigation, and adjudication are occurring at a most inopportune time, especially when one factors in the omnipresence of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

Any due process Bailey might receive is jeopardized by the profound embarrassment that plagues Hollywood elites over their roles in the ongoing scandal.

Oprah’s New Age “Wrinkle”

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Hollywood recently managed to take a classic fantasy novel and strip away its soul.

Author Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time,” a book published in 1962, is clearly written from a Christian perspective and eloquently communicates the author’s biblical worldview.

Ava DuVernay is the director of a current film adaptation of L’Engle’s work. Unfortunately, it is likely that the author would scarcely recognize her own story as a result of Hollywood’s reverse Midas touch that materializes in the form of New Age mysticism.

The screen version of the literary tale is simply a heavy-handed piece of contemporary cinematic propaganda with an apparent purpose of spreading a superficial New Age theology and one-dimensional feminist ideology.

Winfrey stars as a deity of sorts and appears to use the Disney movie, which is clearly designed to appeal to a younger audience, to preach a form of pagan self-worship.

In an apparent quest for praise from the politically correct crowd in the entertainment industry and film critic community, the big-screen version of “A Wrinkle in Time” places front and center the primary tenet of liberal theology, that being a highly redacted notion of diversity.

Both the original book and the current film adaptation utilize a basic plotline of a teenage girl, Meg, who along with a male friend and Meg’s little brother, embark on an intergalactic multi-dimensional search to find Meg’s longtime missing scientist father.

Mrs. Which (played by Winfrey), Mrs. Whatsit (played by Reese Witherspoon), and Mrs. Who (played by Mindy Kaling) are three mystery women with supernatural powers who magically appear in Meg’s life. The trio facilitates Meg’s access to a space-time transportation medium called a tesser, which allows an Oz-like journey to be set in motion.

In L’Engle’s original work, the three women are described as ancient star-beings, who function as guardian angels. However, in the current film adaptation they are depicted as characters similar to that of Glenda in “The Wizard of Oz,” conveying the concept that the three basically comprise a group of good witches.

As is representative of the modern payback currency of Hollywood’s brand of superficial thought, the male characters in the movie are either evil or inept.

Meg demonstrates that she is much more capable than her male counterparts in the tale. The supernatural character of male gender seems to be included for the sole purpose of bringing the element of humor to the scenes in which he appears. Known as Happy Medium (played by Zach Galifianakis) he is somewhat ambiguous in nature and wholly non-toxic in his masculinity.

At the conclusion of the movie, Meg is able to complete the story arc by securing the attendant treasured liberal value of self-esteem, and she does so by embracing the New Age and feminist ideology of the real-life Winfrey.

What is cinematically and artistically tragic is that L’Engle, much like the style of the beloved Christian literary icon C. S. Lewis, wrote her fantasy work through the lens of an explicit Christian worldview. She was an official writer-in-residence at a cathedral, and she possessed the kind of love and reverence for the Bible that so many in the film-going audience share.

L’Engle even sprinkled across the pages of her fantasy novel numerous scriptural passages from both the Old and New Testaments. But the makers of the movie somehow saw fit to surgically remove L’Engle’s quotations from the Good Book and her mention of the name Jesus, as well as any notion of the Judeo-Christian God contained in her novel.

Instead the film added “the universe” as an object of worship and did so in the prototypical New Age manner that for decades Winfrey has fostered and promulgated.

In the film, Winfrey’s character poses the following question: “What if the universe is all inside each of us?”

In order to move magically throughout time and space to the various exotic destinations embedded in the story’s plotline, one must, according to Winfrey’s character, “…become one with the universe and yourself.”

In an apparent effort to give the impression the film is in touch with current personalities, the movie adds references that are not in the book, including the names of Nelson Mandela, Oskar Schindler, Indira Gandhi, and Maya Angelou, as well as a nod to a hip hop play with the inclusion of a line from the Broadway show “Hamilton.”

With the biblical principles stripped away, “A Wrinkle in Time” is essentially a naked attempt at New Age propaganda. It is a fable cloaked in the moth-eaten fabric of cunning deception and hollow self-worship.

Huckabee Withdraws from the Board after Haters Intimidate the CMA

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Left-wing hatred, in of all places Nashville, has just politicized a country music institution.

Rather than learn a lesson from the NFL and Hollywood, a small but highly vocal group of people in Music City has managed to pressure the Country Music Association (CMA) into having former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee withdraw as a board member from the group’s educational arm, the CMA Foundation. Last week the CMA announced two new members of the board of this charitable foundation, Huckabee and singer Chris Young.

Following the announcement, the CMA was the recipient of a hate-filled backlash over its choice of Huckabee because of the former governor’s political and religious views and solid support of President Donald Trump, as well as the fact that he is the proud father of President Trump’s current press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Despite the fact that Huckabee’s appointment to the board was completely separate and apart from his political activity and cultural views, some in the industry for which Nashville is best known targeted their personal animus directly at the former governor.

The most vicious public statement came from country music manager Jason Owen, who happens to own Sandbox, a management company that represents Faith Hill, Little Big Town, and Kacey Musgraves, and co-owns, along with songwriter-producer Shane McAnally, the record label Monument Records. McAnally has written and produced songs for Musgraves, Kelly Clarkson, Kenny Chesney, Luke Bryan, The Band Perry, Lady Antebellum, Keith Urban, Dierks Bentley, and Miranda Lambert.

Owen labeled Huckabee’s appointment “grossly offensive” and “a shameful choice” by the CMA and its leaders. The music industry manager withdrew the support of Sandbox and Monument, declaring that the artists he handles would not work on behalf of the CMA Foundation.

Owen also intimated that he would pull his support and artists away from the entire CMA over Huckabee’s appointment, specifically focusing on the former presidential candidate’s views on marriage and his support of the NRA.

Since Karen Fairchild, who sits on the foundation board, is also one of the group members of Little Big Town, a client of Owen’s, the CMA leadership feared that Fairchild would resign from the board.

Being the consummate professional and gentleman that he is, Huckabee resigned a mere 24 hours after the announcement of his appointment in order to save the organization from having to deal with any potential turmoil.

Huckabee’s departure occurred a few hours after Owen published his screed on an industry website.

Huckabee provided an explanation for why he had decided to resign, and he did it in the form of a posting on his website, which read as follows: “I genuinely regret that some in the industry were so outraged by my appointment that they bullied the CMA and the Foundation with economic threats and vowed to withhold support for the programs for students if I remained.”

Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, has impeccable credentials as a public servant, and his involvement in charitable endeavors is highly commendable. As a former presidential candidate, Huckabee won the 2008 Iowa Republican caucuses and finished in delegate count just behind John McCain and Mitt Romney. He additionally has to his credit the accomplishment of having hosted a successful television talk show on the Fox News Channel and currently hosts a television show on TBN.

Huckabee has been an avid musician since he was 11 years old. He is an accomplished bass guitar player and made his playing of the bass guitar a trademark practice on both his Fox News Channel show and on his current TBN show.

When he served as the governor of Arkansas, Huckabee developed a reputation as an effective leader in the area of education policy, and he is recognized as an expert in helping to integrate the arts into the school curriculum.

The small but vociferous group that derailed Huckabee’s appointment to the board of the CMA Foundation has ended up depriving the organization of having a highly qualified member serve with distinction. Since music education is so central to the CMA Foundation mission, losing an individual of Huckabee’s caliber, someone who would have made germane and invaluable contributions to the CMA board’s primary objectives, is an outrage.

Through their actions and rhetoric, certain hate-filled individuals have provided the ugliest of illustrations of exactly what discrimination looks like.

It is difficult to fathom that the country music capital of the world is lacking in individuals who are willing to speak out on behalf of an individual whose faith parallels that of country music legends Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Reba McEntire, Randy Travis, Josh Turner, and so many others.

“The message here is ‘Hate Wins,’” Huckabee wrote on his web site. “Bullies succeeded in making it untenable to have ‘someone like me’ involved. I would imagine however that many of the people who buy tickets and music are not that ‘unlike me.’”

The truth of the matter is Huckabee’s religious, political, and cultural views are shared by an enormous segment of the American population, many of whom were, up until now, country music consumers.

When these folks find out about the manner in which Huckabee has been treated, they just might adjust their music playlists as well as their buying habits, which may bode poorly for some contemporary country music artists and products.

How to Get Real News in a World of Fake News

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There was a time when three dominant television networks had the power to control the news and information narrative. Societal sources of information, though, have been constantly shifting over the past several decades due in great part to changes in technology.

The widespread reliance on digital information today has allowed ta trio of technology companies to be in a position to increasingly influence cultural and political conversations in a host of ways.

When it comes to establishing the news narrative, the big three consist of Google, Facebook, and Twitter. It is the tech giant Google, however, that has managed to morph into a monolithic kingdom of web search.

Google has become a digital pathway to information for almost the entire world, having secured approximately 70 percent of the global search market share. The usage of the search site for exploring the net is almost double the amount of its nearest competitor, Bing.

Additionally, as the owner of the principal video sharing site YouTube, Google is second only to Facebook as a social media platform.

Using its extraordinary algorithms and artificial intelligence, search giant Google unfortunately displays blatant and explicit biases against conservative viewpoints, all the while favoring left-leaning positions.

This partiality is underscored by discrimination lawsuits filed by former Google employees James Damore and David Gudeman against their prior employer. Damore alleges that he was fired for writing a memo criticizing Google’s diversity policies, while Gudeman claims he was blacklisted and let go for holding conservative beliefs, particularly for his support of now President Donald Trump.

The lawsuits describe a systemic ultra-liberal atmosphere at the tech giant. What is of major concern for the unknowing public is the fact that the radically left-leaning Google culture has manifested itself in distorted and biased search results.

In 2017 researchers from Northeastern University and the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology presented a paper that demonstrated a pervasive bias favoring Hillary Clinton existed in Google search results regarding the 2016 election.

Later in the year a research report written by Leo Goldstein of the group Defeat Climate Alarmism used data from Alexa.com to determine that Google searches were biased in favor of liberal domains and against conservative domains.

Using a current news story that broke over this past weekend concerning the Democratic memo, which was released to counter the Republican FISA abuse memo, a search on Google was conducted by this article’s author using the term “democrat memo.”

The results of the search were as follows: Two articles that appeared on the first line as “Top Stories” were one-sided pro-Democrat pieces from the The New York Times and Vox.

It was not until halfway down the third page of the Google search listings that a single article with a divergent point of view appeared. The article titled “What The Democrats Left Out Of Their Memo” was from the Daily Caller website.

The Google search exhibited the results, despite the fact that a plain reading of the Democratic memo indicated significant facts set forth in the Republican memo were left unanswered.

Particularly disturbing was the lack of any mention in the Democratic memo of the DNC and Clinton campaign funding of the infamous Steele dossier, or any mention or explanation of why that information was not provided to the FISA Court.

Assuming that Google’s bias is extensive and is unlikely to be addressed, conservatives cannot sit idly by and continue to use the search site.

In the business world, there are antitrust laws that exist to protect consumers from monopolies, which artificially raise prices and stifle innovation. Perhaps people who are seeking objectivity should consider using an alternative approach when conducting Internet searches.

Considering the fact that Google and most other search engines track and mine personal information without an individual’s knowledge or consent, it becomes even more important to adopt an alternative approach.

This brings us to some Google alternatives that may surprise the reader. DuckDuckGo.com not only provides unbiased news and information, it also maintains personal privacy by not engaging in tracking, data mining, or retention of search history. It is as comprehensive as Google and allows customization of its interface. It enables searches to be free from adult content via a safe setting similar to Google.

Ixquick’s Start Page claims to be the world’s most private search site. The site does not participate in data mining or tracking and additionally offers users the ability to visit sites via proxy, thus rendering searchers the protection of invisibility to the sites that appear in the search results.

Yippy is a search engine that also protects privacy with the added benefit of delivering child-friendly results. Yippy pulls search results from other search engines and groups topics together, organizing the results in clusters. Although the site filters out topics to which children ought not be exposed, including gambling, pornography, and other inappropriate material, adept teenagers may still find a way to obtain unsuitable results.

Conservatives may enjoy the experience of a search engine that gives results of a right-leaning nature. 4conservatives.com will do just that. The search engine delivers content from a conservative perspective and uses reputable sources.

By using more objective search alternatives, we can move toward a world with less fake news and more real news.

Russian Indictments Could Be a Decoy

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The timing of the recent announcement by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein regarding the indictments of thirteen Russians appears to be part of an effort to provide possible cover for the FBI, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and the Democratic Party-aligned mainstream media.

The hasty public release occurred via a press statement by Rosenstein on an unusual choice of days, a Friday afternoon that was a lead-in to a three-day holiday weekend.

It is highly possible that the intention was to have the public focus on the headlines coming out of the press conference rather than zeroing in on the underlying facts of the matters at hand.

In other words, there may have been an attempt to employ a frequently used technique of diversion to direct public attention away from the admitted wrongdoing on the part of government, which was rapidly taking over the social media and conventional headlines.

In this case, it would be the effort to direct attention away from the FBI’s failure to investigate warnings that the man accused of the atrocious killing of 17 high school students had expressed a desire to kill innocent people and was in possession of a weapon to carry out his threat.

The second part of the tactical equation is to divert public attention toward a preferred calculated target that in this instance would be “Russia,” which in a puzzling way for many seemed in the present day world of scandals to arrive with a thud.

All of the above having been stated, there was a very palpable manipulation of public perception that occurred across the cultural, political, and demographic spectrum.

The FBI indicated in a statement that, in January 2018, an individual described as someone close to the accused shooter called an FBI tip line to report concerns about the alleged perpetrator mere weeks before the nightmare carnage took place at the Florida high school.

According to the FBI, the caller provided information about the shooter’s gun ownership, his desire to kill, his erratic behavior, and his peculiar social media posts. The caller also specifically brought up the young man’s potential to engage in a school shooting.

The recorded information should have been promptly given to the FBI’s Miami field office for further actions; however, the FBI admitted that “these protocols were not followed.”

Adding to the FBI’s public relations problems is the fact that, in September 2017, the agency had been notified of a YouTube comment in which an individual under the same name as the accused wrote, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”

In an absurd response, the FBI claimed that the agency was unable to trace the origin of the YouTube post and therefore closed the investigation.

The announcement of the indictment of the Russians may have been timed to provide the media with the desired talking points that would lead a susceptible public to conclude that the special counsel’s probe was in no way a hoax, a witch hunt, or any other “unfair” characterization. This would have been another important part of the tactical equation, since many Americans had been increasingly viewing it as if it were less than above board.

Interestingly, this is an indictment of thirteen people who will never see the inside of a U.S. courtroom or ever even contest the charges, be arrested, or be extradited. Additionally, it was made clear by Rosenstein that no allegations in the indictment indicate that the activities by the Russians had “any effect on the outcome of the election.”

What the indictments did do, though, was allow the liberal partisan media to crow about Russian “meddling,” which they predictably and dutifully did.

The Obama State Department allowed some of these very same Russians to come into the country via tourist visas and to ultimately use fake identities to troll the social media. Although the indictments set forth the defendants’ organized activities going back to 2014, former President Barak Obama did not stop them or even address the issue.

The indictments helped to eclipse another inconvenient developing story, which would be a major embarrassment for the special counsel’s probe, and that is, that former National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn’s guilty plea is likely to be set aside.

The judge who originally accepted Gen. Flynn’s plea for lying to the FBI has recused himself from the case, since he was also a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the very court that accepted from the Obama Justice Department the Steele dossier as evidence to support the issuance of a FISA warrant to spy on members of the Trump campaign.

The new judge assigned to Gen. Flynn’s case has ordered Mueller to release to Gen. Flynn’s lawyers any exculpatory evidence in Mueller’s possession. The judge has also directed that any information which is favorable to Gen. Flynn be submitted to the court, even if the Mueller team believes that it is not material to the case.

This means that even if Mueller claims that his evidence is classified or not relevant, it still must be provided to the judge so that the judge can decide what can be released. This takes away the ability of the prosecutor to withhold or redact evidence on his own.

Mueller’s indictment of the Russians claims criminality because the defendants, as foreign citizens, attempted to use media to influence voters but failed to report their financing to the Federal Elections Commission or register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Using the template and reasoning of this indictment, others who tried to influence an election could be charged, including Christopher Steel and his accomplices, FusionGPS, the DNC, and the Clinton Campaign, while the Israelis and British could bring criminal prosecutions against former President Obama for meddling in their elections.

During the announcement of the Russian indictments, Rosenstein emphasized that there are no allegations in the indictment of any Americans (including any members of the Trump campaign) having knowledge of the Russian activities.

In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” enduring talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh warned, “The danger for the president” is that it would be very seductive “to totally embrace” and take at face value the notion that it means he has been “vindicated.”

In Limbaugh’s assessment, the president most certainly needs to continue to “be very careful.”