Conservative Musings

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Showing posts with label Trey Gowdy. Show all posts

Friday, August 23, 2019

Nothing More True Has Ever Been Said

Trey Gowdy Issues Heartbreaking Plea to US Congress That Democrats Plan to Ignore

The world we live in is full of heartbreak.

And former congressman Trey Gowdy is no stranger to grief and misery, either.

So, to prevent future tragedy, Trey Gowdy issued a heartbreaking plea to the US Congress that Democrats plan to ignore.

In an emotional interview (that you may have missed), the former South Carolina congressman said that he can’t stand to see mass shooters mow down droves of civilians.

Nearly every single person can agree with that sentiment.

Unfortunately, far too many people become overly emotional when it comes to the subject of guns and gun violence. Which is why there’s a tendency for people to instantly scream out for more gun laws to prevent future murder.

It’s hard to blame them for wanting to stop mass shootings.

But passing new gun laws certainly isn’t the answer.

Which is why a heartbroken Gowdy practically begged the American people and the legislators who represent them to rethink their positions on passing more gun control to stop shootings.

On FOX News, Gowdy said, “the right-to-life is the most fundamental, basic, primary right that we have. It is the right from which all other rights emanate.”

And because that right is so important, he doesn’t believe it should be abridged.

Gowdy went on to say that there are plenty of laws on the books already meant to “solve” the issue of gun violence. Gun control failed to stop these tragedies and more attempts to grab guns will only result in law abiding gun owners seeing their freedoms attacked.

“More laws that are not going to be enforced is a panacea and it won’t work,” he said.

Gowdy hammered the point home when he said, “Show me a law that will prevent the next Sandy Hook and sign me up as a husband and father…and I’ll give up any other right I have.”

What at first might be construed as an anti-gun statement is actually Gowdy illustrating a point.

No law is going to stop a shooting… laws don’t stop bad guys from doing bad things. And so creating more laws that limit freedom don’t benefit anyone – other than psychopaths who are willing to exploit these laws.

Consider the manifesto of the El Paso shooter. In it, he wrote explicitly about his decision to choose a gun-free zone as his target of choice.

He wrote:

“Remember: it is not cowardly to pick low hanging fruit. AKA (sic) Don’t attack heavily guarded areas to fulfll (sic) your super soldier COD [Call of Duty first person shooter video game] fantasy. Attack low security targets. Even though you might out gun a security guard or police man, they likely beat you in armor, training and numbers. Do not throw away your life on an unnecessarily dangerous target. If a target seems too hot, live to fight another day.”

Gowdy is well aware this is how insane people act.

And his emotional plea for Americans to think rationally about gun laws proves he doesn’t think more gun control is the answer.

Sadly, Democrats don’t believe the same things Gowdy and the rest of America believe.

Gun grabbers don’t see mass shootings as tragedies.

They view the loss of innocent life as an opportunity to attack the Second Amendment and strip away the right to keep and bear arms.

No fewer than half a dozen gun laws are on the table right now, all of which will strip us of freedoms endowed to us by the Constitution and our Creator. Democrats are salivating at the chance to pass them even when Gowdy rightfully pointed out the current ones aren’t working as is…

Thursday, July 12, 2018

Strzok Should Be Jailed For Insurrection

BREAKING: Goodlatte

Says FBI's Peter Strzok

Will Be Recalled For

Contempt

Katie Pavlich

@KatiePavlich

Posted: Jul 12, 2018 11:14 AM

BREAKING: Goodlatte Says FBI's Peter Strzok Will Be Recalled For Contempt

After a contentious exchange between Democrats and Republicans during a House Judiciary and Oversight Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte informed FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok he will be recalled later today and voted in contempt.

The move comes after Strzok refused to answer a question from Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy. Gowdy asked Strzok how many people he had interviewed as part of the Special Counsel before discussed impeachment for President Trump. Strzok discussed impeachment of President Trump in a text message to FBI lawyer Lisa Page just one day after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Bob Mueller to lead the Special Counsel Russia investigation.

Friday, June 29, 2018

Will Rosenstein Be Brought Up On Charges Or Will Congress Cave?

Republicans set Rosenstein deadline

June 28, 2018

Image via Drop of Light / Shutterstock.com

Congress has finally had enough of Rod Rosenstein’s games.

After months of having him refusing to turn over documents to Congress, Rosenstein now has a date of July 6, 2018, on the docket to comply or face impeachment.

Turn Them Over

For some reason, Rosenstein is refusing to hand over documentation to Congress in both the Russia collusion investigation and the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Congressional members of the House Oversight Committee want answers.

Unfortunately, they need those documents in order to get them.

Since Rosenstein has been uncooperative, House members are about to give him an option: turn over the documentation or be impeached.

Measure on the Floor

To show they are serious, members of Congress are going to vote on a measure to impeach Rosenstein.

According to Rep. Mark Meadows, that measure is up for a vote this week.

“I think indeed if all of the documents are not complied with by July 6, providing we vote on that resolution tomorrow, which I believe we do, the speaker, as indicated, we will vote on the House floor tomorrow on that resolution,” Meadows said.

“If they’re not here by July 6, then certainly contempt and impeachment will be in order,” Meadows added.

It’s About Time

For far too long, congressional subpoenas have been treated like nothing more than requests by the Justice Department.

In fact, the long-standing frustration on this very matter is one of the reasons Rep. Trey Gowdy is leaving office.

Should Rosenstein Be Impeached?

Earlier this year, Gowdy went public with how useless he actually thinks these congressional hearings really are, simply because they are rarely capable of getting all relevant facts for their investigations.

Hopefully, Meadows is true to his word, and Rosenstein is staring down the barrel of an impeachment hearing if he doesn’t turn over the documentation to Congress.

Monday, June 18, 2018

FBI And Justice Department Have NO Constitutional Reason To Decline Documents To Congress

Gowdy Threatens FBI, DOJ with ‘Full Arsenal of Constitutional Weapons’

By Joe Saunders
June 17, 2018 at 11:50am

An open clash between Congress and the Justice Department could be coming – and soon.

In a “Fox News Sunday” interview, Rep. Trey Gowdy vowed that the House Republican leadership is willing to use its “full arsenal of constitutional weapons” to get documents it’s seeking from the Justice Department related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the FBI’s investigation of the Donald Trump campaign.

And the Justice Department knows it.

In the interview, Gowdy said House Speaker Paul Ryan had gathered top House officials in a meeting Friday night with Justice officials to make the House position clear.

Besides Gowdy and Ryan, the meeting included Rep. Devin Nunes, the California Republican who chairs the Intelligence Committee, and Robert Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray were among those on the Justice side, Gowdy said.

“Under the heading of minor miracles, you had members of the House working on a Friday night,” Gowdy said. “Paul Ryan led this meeting. You had Devin Nunes, Bob Goodlatte, myself and everyone you can think of from the FBI and the DOJ, and we went item by item on both of those outstanding subpoenas.

“And Paul (Ryan) made it very clear; there’s going to be action on the floor of the House this week if the FBI and DOJ do not comply with our subpoena request,” he said.

Are the Dept. of Justice and FBI being completely honest about the campaign controversies?

“So, Rod Rosenstein, Chris Wray, you were in the meeting, you understood him just as clearly as I did. We’re going to get compliance or the House of Representatives is going to use its full arsenal of constitutional weapons to gain compliance.”

It wasn’t clear what specific subpoenas he was referring to.

The words might have particular impact coming from Gowdy, who made headlines at the end of May when he defended the FBI’s handling of its investigation into “Russian collusion” with the Trump campaign.

While Gowdy stated outright then that the FBI did exactly what “my fellow citizens would want them to do” when it came to investigating whether Russian agents were involved with the Trump campaign, he’s now indicating there is more to know.

In an interview Thursday on Fox News’ “Special Report with Brett Baier,” Gowdy called the report that had just been released by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz a “dark day for the FBI and the DOJ.”

The report emphasized just how strongly biased some FBI personnel – particularly agent Peter Strzok and now-former FBI lawyer Lisa Page – were against Trump. Gowdy said that reflected badly on institutions Americans must be able to trust.

“We desperately need to have confidence in them,” Gowdy told Baier.

And the House wants to get its hands on the documents it’s demanding from Justice and the FBI, even if that takes the “full panoply of constitutional weapons available to the people’s house,” Gowdy said Sunday, according to Fox News.

“I don’t want the drama,” he said. I want the documents”

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Friday, June 1, 2018

The Spying On Trump Campaign Was Illegal, Immoral And Should Be Prosecuted!

Andrew McCarthy: If the FBI spied on a mosque for the same reasons they spied on Trump campaign...STORY TOPICS

By Larry O'Connor - The Washington Times - Friday, June 1, 2018

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Andrew C. McCarthy has been one of the most important voices analyzing the Spygate story from the very beginning. His byline at National Review has been essential reading and his arguments regarding how the FBI and DOJ have operated in this escapade versus what the law, the Constitution and Justice Department protocols dictate have been factual and unassailable.

He appeared on my radio program on WMAL in Washington DC Thursday to refute Trey Gowdy and James Clapper’s argument that the Trump campaign was not actually investigated and there was nothing improper about the use of surveillance against President Obama’s political opponent during the 2016 campaign.

He was able to lay out an important and compelling argument as to why, despite all of the backtracking and excuses, the Spygate scandal is a very serious constitutional issue.

McCarthy: The use of an informant to the extent that they said there’s a tight protocol and all that stuff … I must tell you I was a prosecutor for 20 years, and I had national security cases and pretty high level organized crime cases, there’s a lot about using informants that’s the wild west, it’s really not all that regulated and a lot of it has to do with common sense. So if there’s certain situations where it’s perfectly appropriate and it’s the best thing to do to use an informant and there there are other situations where it is really inappropriate to use an informant even though it’s not illegal. And just to be more concrete about it, if you remember the big arguments that we had over the Patriot Act for all these years…

O’Connor: Sure

McCarthy: There were many provisions in the Patriot Act that said, this or that government tactic can’t be used if the reason for using it is First Amendment protected activity.

What that means is, for example, let’s say I, as a national security counter-terrorism prosecutor, I’m concerned about a mosque. And I don’t really have any reason to think that there are jihadist activity going on in there or there is incitement, but there is a bunch of Muslims in a room that they are calling a mosque. So I get an informant and I say, ‘I want you to go in there and listen and report back to me about what’s going on’.

Now, there’s nothing illegal about me using an informant, there’s no privacy interest that somebody has in being protected from speaking with somebody who can report what they said back to the government, but I imagine that people would be pretty angry if they knew the only reason I put an informant in a mosque was because there were Muslims in there. You know, they would say, ‘You need more’.

And if I came back and said, ‘But look, I complied with all of the very important protocols we have in dealing with informants’, they’d look at me like I had three heads and they’d say, ‘This was not an appropriate circumstance to use a government spy to inquire about what was going on in a location because you’re infringing on people’s First Amendment right’.

Now we have an important protocol in this country that you do not, as the incumbent administration, use the awesome powers that you were given under counterintelligence law and even the criminal law to investigate and harass your political opposition. The fact that using an informant doesn’t infringe on anybody’s rights to privacy, under those circumstances, is kind of beside the point.

The reason that we have that standard, or the reason we have that norm, is because we don’t want our law enforcement and intelligence enmeshed in our politics unnecessarily and we want our politics to proceed without the heavy hand of the incumbent administration being able to use that to political advantage. I mean that’s common sense.

Listen to the entire interview here:

Friday, May 25, 2018

Of Course It Was Squelched!

Comey Disaster: Agent Who Quit Over Rigged Hillary Investigation Heads to Congress

BY CILLIAN ZEAL
MAY 25, 2018 AT 6:50AM

An FBI agent who allegedly quit the bureau over his belief that the Hillary Clinton email investigation was rigged will testify before the House of Representatives, The Hill reported.

The joint investigation between the House Judiciary and the Oversight Committees — led by Republican Reps. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, respectively — has been a source of consternation for Republicans and Democrats alike.

Conservatives have complained about the slow pace of the examination into how the Clinton email investigation was conducted, noting that only two witnesses have appeared before it.

Democrats, of course, have complained that it exists at all, since anything that distracts from the endless investigation into how President Donald Trump is really a Russian plant is simply frivolous — particularly if it implicates former FBI Director James Comey, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or former President Barack Obama in any wrongdoing.

Well, now we’re finally about to see some fireworks. Three top witnesses are going to testify before lawmakers: John Giacalone, who was in charge of the Clinton investigation for the first seven months; Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division; and Michael Steinbach, former head of the FBI’s national security division and the man who succeeded Giacalone.

All three are of particular interest, especially since Priestap was the supervisor of FBI agent Peter Strzok, whose anti-Trump text messages have thrown the objectivity of the entire investigation into doubt.

However, the real headliner here may be Giacalone. Shortly after then-FBI Director Comey announced he wouldn’t be pursuing charges against Hillary Clinton for the email server, Fox News pundit Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote a column in which he claimed Giacalone had quit the bureau because he believed the investigation was rigged.

In the Oct. 28, 2016 column, Napolitano claimed at that at the start of the Clinton email investigation, “agents and senior managers gathered in the summer of 2015 to discuss how to proceed. It was obvious to all that a prima-facie case could be made for espionage, theft of government property and obstruction of justice charges. The consensus was to proceed with a formal criminal investigation.”

Do you think that the Hillary Clinton investigation was rigged?

“Six months later, the senior FBI agent in charge of that investigation resigned from the case and retired from the FBI because he felt the case was going ‘sideways’; that’s law enforcement jargon for ‘nowhere by design,'” Napolitano wrote.

“John Giacalone had been the chief of the New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., field offices of the FBI and, at the time of his ‘sideways’ comment, was the chief of the FBI National Security Branch.”

“The reason for the ‘sideways’ comment must have been Giacalone’s realization that DOJ and FBI senior management had decided that the investigation would not work in tandem with a federal grand jury. That is nearly fatal to any government criminal case. In criminal cases, the FBI and the DOJ cannot issue subpoenas for testimony or for tangible things; only grand juries can,” Napolitano continued.

“Giacalone knew that without a grand jury, the FBI would be toothless, as it would have no subpoena power. He also knew that without a grand jury, the FBI would have a hard time persuading any federal judge to issue search warrants.”

Napolitano speculated there were several possible reasons that the case went “sideways.” One was that Obama feared having to testify if Clinton went to trial (he had sent emails to the private server, after all, meaning he was aware of it). There was also the fact that a Clinton indictment could have led to Trump becoming president, and Obama simply couldn’t countenance that. (Less than two weeks after Napolitano’s column was written, it must be noted, that reason became moot.)

Either way, if the investigation had indeed gone “sideways,” it would need to have done so with approval from the highest levels — certainly James Comey and possibly Barack Obama.

Whether or not Giacalone has any concrete evidence of this or not is another issue entirely. My guess would be no, given that we’re going on two years since Comey’s infamous news conference and we still haven’t heard anything to that effect from Giacalone.

However, of all of the congressional testimonies we’ve seen over the past few years, this could be one of the most underreported. John Giacalone may open up a gigantic can of worms for Comey and Clinton — one that drags them back in the spotlight for reasons significantly less pleasant than their book tours.