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In The Wall Street Journal’s latest poll of swing states, 74% of respondents said inflation has moved in the wrong direction in the past year. This assessment, which holds across all seven states, is startling, sobering—and simply not true. I’m not stating an opinion. This isn’t something on which reasonable people can disagree. If hard economic data count for anything, we can say unambiguously that inflation has moved in the right direction in the past year. In the 12 months through February, inflation, according to the century-old consumer-price index, was 3.2%, compared with 6% a year earlier. Use a slightly...

Last week the Wall Street Journal published an unsigned op-ed unworthy of one of the best teams of commentators in the country. The subject was some comments Donald Trump made on Truth Social that, by surprise, displayed his trademark turbo-charged hyperbole. The Journal is usually a reliable source of sober, judicious, and fact-based analysis, but this editorial is a troubling portent that Republican Trump-Derangement Syndrome hysteria may have a negative impact on next year’s election. Trump’s heinous sin, according to the editors, is saying “that Gen. Mark Milley, the nation’s highest military officer, deserves execution—as in death. He said NBC...

The trial of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann is coming to an end [ZH: has now ended with Sussman’s acquittal] but rather than provide definitive answers to the origins of the Russiagate hoax, the trial has thrown up many new mysteries and unanswered questions.Special Counsel John Durham arrives at federal court in Washington on May 16, 2022. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)Durham’s overarching trial narrative was that the FBI was duped by Sussmann when he presented them with data purportedly tying Trump to the Kremlin via the Russian Alfa Bank. It may have been Durham’s only viable strategy given the fact he...

On Tuesday, trial in United States v. Sussmann began. Michael Sussmann’s theory of defense has major factual holes.The Hillary Clinton campaign did not want its attorney, Michael Sussmann, to share the Alfa Bank data with the FBI, jurors were told yesterday during the defense’s opening arguments in the special counsel’s criminal case against Sussmann. But the information known to date, as well as the modus operandi of the Spygate players throughout the years they peddled the Russia-collusion hoax, render this argument laughable. On Tuesday, trial in United States v. Sussmann began in earnest following a day of jury selection. At...

Day 2 of the Michael Sussmann trial started with some housekeeping. Here are the rulings of note: Robby Mook, who has a scheduled vacation in Spain, will testify on Friday. He’s a defense witness. Evidence of Steele’s meetings with Sussmann and Fusion GPS in July 2016, and his tasking to conduct research on Alfa Bank, according to the judge, “can come in.” The judge observed they are “relevant to Mr. Sussmann’s activities for the campaign and his attorney-client relationship, as far as it went, with the campaign as it relates to Alfa-Bank.” Onto the witnesses. We start with the short...

In a coordinated legal action between a number of Hillary Clinton operatives and associates, almost two dozen separate documents were simultaneously filed on April 19 in special counsel John Durham’s case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. This sudden flurry of mass filings included responses from former Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook, Clinton campaign lead lawyer Marc Elias, contractors Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign itself, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The trigger for the flurry of filings was a request by Durham to unseal a number of emails involving the parties. The emails are...

Armed Services panel secretly fought court battle this summer to quash subpoena seeking records of contacts with ex-FBI official Daniel Jones and liberal-funded The Democracy Integrity Project nonprofit. ================================================================================= The efforts to disseminate a now-discredited theory that the Trump campaign had secret computer communications with the Kremlin extended beyond the FBI, CIA, and State Department to the U.S. Senate. Under the late Sen. John McCain, the Armed Services Committee engaged a former FBI official and his progressive-funded nonprofit to produce a report on the matter, according to court records obtained by Just the News. The Senate committee, now under Democrats'...

The efforts in both countries had much in common. They were aided by a transatlantic cast of characters loosely organised around the Trump and Brexit campaigns. Many of them worked in concert and interacted with Russians close to the Kremlin. The outcome in both countries was also eerily similar. Both countries have been at war with themselves in the three years since, pulling them back from the international stage at a time when Putin has consolidated his position in Crimea, Ukraine, Syria and beyond. ***** "Glenn R Simpson and Peter Fritsch, both former journalists, are the founders of the research...

he renewed focus on the Steele dossier are cementing the case that the special counsel probe served as a taxpayer-funded political hit on President Trump. In April, when the special counsel’s report on Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election was released to the public, a glaring omission quickly made clear indicating Robert Mueller was either incompetent or a political hack. As I wrote at the time: “Not once in the 448-page tome does Mueller mention an investigation into whether Russia interfered with the U.S. presidential election by feeding dossier author Christopher Steele misinformation.” Today’s release of Glenn Simpson and...

It’s a little like the proverbial child killing its parents and throwing itself on the mercy of the court because he's now an orphan, but, with the wheels of Barr-Durham-Horowitz justice inexorably turning on them, there are Fusion GPS founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, on a media book tour claiming they are the victims of right-wing vengeance for their role in orchestrating a criminal fraud upon the FISA court and a coup against a sitting president of the United States. Holy Michael Avenatti!

FULL TITLE: Fusion GPS founders 'horrified' Steele Dossier was published but say 'if you...tell fake stuff about us, we’re going to fire back'. The “Steele dossier” at the heart of the investigation into President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia was never supposed to be seen by the public, according to those who commissioned it, who told ABC News they were “horrified” when it was published in full. “This is just not what we do,” said Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, while reflecting on the publication of the memos that made up the dossier. Simpson and Fusion GPS co-founder Peter...

Book includes how Steele was commissioned to write dossier Robert Reich: Trump is an international mobster The former journalists Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch are to publish a book on Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia, including an account of how they commissioned the British ex-spy Christopher Steele to write his dossier on the future president. Crime in Progress: The Secret History of the Trump-Russia Investigation will be published in December by Penguin Random House in the US and UK. Simpson and Fritsch founded the Washington intelligence firm Fusion GPS. In summer 2015, it began investigating Trump and Moscow. It hired...

The co-founders of political research firm Fusion GPS plan to release a book next month on the "never-before-told inside story" about President Trump's relationship with Russia. The book, entitled "Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump," will tell the story of how Fusion GPS helped put together the infamous "Steele dossier," The Associated Press reported on Monday. Co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch's book, which is due out Nov. 26, is being called an " 'All the President's Men' for the Trump era" by publisher Penguin Random House. "After four years on...

 May 10, 2019  The Sentinel reported part of the story of the Kavalec memo May 9th but we have more information now — and it is confirmed. Rep. Mark Meadows confirmed the State Department notes exposing Christopher Steele’s lies and more were transmitted to the FBI before submitting the application for the spy warrant of Carter Page.The FBI had four pieces of “derogatory information” about Steele from State Department official Kathleen Kavalec: Steele broke his FBI agreement and went to the State Department, he gave State false information, his political deadline was election day, and lastly, he was leaking to The...

THINNER GRUEL [Jonah Goldberg] Salon.com has a "defense" of Joe Wilson. For the most part, the piece is a dull, he-said she-said about the controversy so far, generally sympathetic to Wilson, with some sneaky bits hid in the dull prose in order to make them seem more reasonable. For example the author, Mary Jacoby, says "But no sale of uranium ever took place, Wilson reported, and that conclusion is not in dispute." That's true, but Bush never said Iraq purchased the uranium, he merely said Iraq sought it. Wilson said Iraq didn't and that his cryptic sweet-tea swilling conversations proved...

Put aside Russian collusion for a moment. Press pause on possible presidential obstruction of justice. Forget Stormy Daniels. The most significant recent development involving the president may be that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has subpoenaed Trump Organization business records as part of his inquiry into Russian interference in the presidential election. Those documents — and records recently seized by the F.B.I. from the president’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen — might answer a question raised by the president’s critics: Have certain real estate investors used Trump-branded properties to launder the proceeds of criminal activity around the world? We pored over...

Fusion GPS founders Peter Fritsch and Glenn R. Simpson urge the public to set aside the “Russia collusion” theory and to focus instead on President Donald Trump’s business practices, which they say could have aided global money-laundering.

WASHINGTON – As part of their ongoing oversight efforts to ensure that the FBI’s law enforcement activities are free of improper political influence, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) yesterday sent six letters seeking information and documents regarding Christopher Steele’s work on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary for America. The letters seek information and documents relating to those political organizations’ knowledge of and involvement in Mr. Steele’s work and his reported interactions with the FBI while he was working on behalf of these political organizations....

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (Iowa-R) is pushing back on Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that helped assemble the controversial "Steele dossier" about President Trump. The co-founders of Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, wrote a blistering op-ed for The New York Times on Tuesday slamming the GOP's investigations into the dossier. They accused Republicans of selectively leaking details of their testimony to the press and demanded that full transcripts be released. But Grassley, whose panel interviewed Simpson in August, in a statement Wednesday said Simpson has already been invited to testify publicly about the dossier, adding that...

Two of the co-founders of the opposition research firm behind the infamous Steele dossier say they are “extremely proud” of their work investigating Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. But, writing at The New York Times, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, two partners at Fusion GPS, provide little in the way of evidence to support the core allegations made in their salacious report... They also write: “We don’t believe the Steele dossier was the trigger for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russian meddling"...