Russia Thinks The Cold War Is Back, But Americans Aren’t Paying Attention

By M.G. Oprea

Monday, October 31, 2016

Imagine Russian school children practicing putting on gas masks and transporting dummies onto stretchers. TV stations show Russian emergency workers in hazmat suits working on bomb shelters. Huge numbers of the population rehearse what to do in case of a nuclear attack. It sounds like a scene from “The Americans” or a video from Soviet-era Russia. But it’s not. This is what’s been going on in Russia in the past few weeks.

Russia is engaged in mass-scale nuclear attack preparations. Moscow is upgrading its civil defense plans, including making an inventory of all underground spaces to ensure it could shelter 100 percent of the population if a nuclear bomb hit. Current bomb shelters are being rehabbed and ventilation systems checked. Forty million Russians were involved in a drill simulating what to do in the event of a chemical or nuclear weapons strike.

This might seem surprising or unthinkable. But if you’ve been paying attention to the escalation of tensions between Russia and the United States, this fits perfectly into Russia’s intensifying belligerence and assertion of power.

It’s Been Getting Worse for Years

In the last few months, Russia’s relationship with America has begun to fray. But this mounting antagonism began much earlier, with Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and incursion in the Ukraine in 2014. Russia was testing how the West, including Europe and the United States, would react to it making land grabs in Eastern Europe. To its delight, the West did nothing. This set the stage for Russia to begin increasing its global show of force, and was a precursor to the inevitable invasion of one of the Baltic States.

Tensions further rose when Russia began fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al Assad in the ongoing brutal civil war. Under the auspices of attacking ISIS, Russia’s air force has helped Assad pummel Syrian rebels and civilians, creating a humanitarian crisis in Aleppo. Despite numerous efforts at diplomacy by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the diplomatic process has completely deteriorated. Adding to the chaos, after a mistaken American strike on Syrian troops, Russia threated to shoot down American planes if its troops felt threated.

As a reaction to crumbling negotiations in Syria, Russia declared earlier this month that it was withdrawing from a 2000 nuclear security agreement with the United States that called for disposing plutonium. The now-defunct treaty also required Russia not to use any plutonium for nuclear activities.

Russia is also putting its military capabilities on display. This week, Russia launched an advanced hypersonic glider warhead that is nearly undetectable to U.S. anti-missile systems. This was done in preparation of a new nuclear weapon, named “Satan 2,” that could reportedly destroy all of Texas with one strike. Putin has also moved nuclear-ready missiles to the Kaliningrad region that are capable of striking Poland and parts of Germany. In addition, last week, Russian warships heading through the English Channel toward Syria skimmed the Dover coast with machine guns aimed at the shore and fighter pilots sitting at the ready in their jets.

Russia has also been asserting itself in the realm of electronic warfare. The American government has accused Russia of interfering with the presidential election, including hacking the computers of the Democratic National Committee. There’s further fear that Russian hackers will tamper with election results. Russia’s trying to discredit our democratic system, and it seems to be working. Only 43 percent of Americans think their votes will be counted accurately in the presidential election. Donald Trump, of course, is encouraging these fears.

We’re Not Afraid of You

With these acts of hostility Russia is signaling to us, and the rest of the world, that they’re not afraid of confrontation with the West. Does this mean they’re on the cusp of starting a nuclear war? Doubtful. But they certainly mean for us to take them seriously as a major world power, and one that isn’t afraid to get its hands dirty. The nuclear attack drills fit neatly into these recent escalations. They’re Russia’s way of saying, “We’re ready. Are you?”

The answers seems to be “no.” In 2012, President Obama mocked Mitt Romney in a presidential debate for having suggested that Russia is our primary national security threat. Obama condescendingly told Romney that the 1980s were calling and they want their foreign policy back. It’s remarkable that just four years ago our president considered the idea of an aggressive Russia laughable.

Fast-forward to today, and Obama’s words seem naïve and ignorant. But it’s not clear that much has changed. Russia is resurrecting Soviet-era tactics and moving, with allies like Iran, to change the international order, and we’re still acting like they’re our partners in places like Syria.

Putin’s recent actions, especially the nuclear attack drills, could also be seen as a way to distract the Russian people from a declining economy. By whipping them up into a national security frenzy, Putin can deflect criticism about domestic policies. This is a tried and true tactic of leaders who fear losing power. Tell citizens they’re under threat of attack, and they’ll rally to the cause of their country. Their sense of national pride will soar, and so will the government’s approval ratings.

Putin is stoking national pride and anti-American sentiments to keep the loyalty of the people, and this isn’t hard to do. The Russian people already hold overwhelmingly negative views toward America and are nostalgic for the Soviet era. But just because these drills and other displays of force are being used to manipulate the Russian people doesn’t mean they don’t also represent a genuine threat to America and other NATO allies. The two scenarios aren’t mutually exclusive, as some seem to think.

While Russia is preparing for a nuclear attack and beefing up their military presence, the American people view ISIS, not Russia, as the number one threat to their country. Russia was ranked seventh—below climate change. Are Americans ready for a belligerent Russia, or do they, like Obama in 2012, scoff at the very idea?

The Russian government and its people seem to think the Cold War is back (or that it never really ended). But our own disbelief in this threat won’t change the fact that Russia aims to misbehave.

Democrats Don’t Care About The Health Of Democracy, They Care About Hillary

By David Harsanyi

Monday, October 31, 2016

Though it slipped the mind of the media this weekend, FBI Director James Comey’s letter informing Congress that the bureau had found new evidence relating to the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton was entirely the fault of Hillary Clinton. She’s the one who used a secret server to circumvent transparency. She’s the one who sent unsecured classified documents on that server. She’s the one responsible for attempts to destroy the evidence related to her server. And she’s the one who lied to the American people about the entire scheme.

So it’s laughable to hear Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta and his allies demand the FBI release all new evidence in the case. After all, no one had better access to the information Hillary is seeking than Hillary.

Let’s also remember that Comey had no choice but to send his letter to Congress after being notified that pertinent evidence had been uncovered on a computer used by both Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin.

If Comey was in possession of this information and then sat on it until after the election, all the accusations panicky Democrats are now leveling against him would actually be true. Comey would have been acting in a political manner rather than reacting to events. As he made clear in his congressional testimony, new leads would be examined. He had an ethical duty to inform Congress.

The mass media’s reaction to this event, though completely expected, was breathtaking in its swiftness and synchronization. It started, appropriately enough, with a Clintonian freakout over semantics.

Republicans had the temerity to claim that Comey had “reopened” the Clinton investigation. This led to hackish attacks on the veracity of their phrasing. Technically speaking, conservatives weren’t exactly right. The investigation could not have been reopened because it had never been “closed” in the first place — even though the Left threw around that word plenty when Comey announced he would not recommend that the DOJ prosecute. The New York Times, for instance, was forced to go back and correct its initial misleading story.

Once we learned that Attorney General Loretta Lynch had tried to dissuade the FBI director from sending Congress a letter about the new emails in the investigation, citing protocol, journalists quickly became experts on official DOJ procedure. Forget the email protocol Hillary ignored for years or the protocol she circumvented when it came to her favor-trading foundation (though rarely reported, it too is under criminal investigation). This was big. Lynch was now held up as paragon of ethical law enforcement.

Hey, did we ever learn what the Justice Department’s protocol is on AGs having off-the-record meetings with the spouses of those under investigation by the FBI? What about the precedent of a FBI director conducting a press conference to explain to the public why the DOJ shouldn’t prosecute a presidential candidate though every shred of evidence points to her guilt?

Really, this news reaffirms that Lynch is a political operative. Think about this: The chief lawyer of the U.S. government attempted to pressure the nation’s top law enforcement agency to suppress news of evidence in a high-profile case, for political reasons. This is the same Lynch who, when it was convenient, claimed that she would not get involved in the email investigation to avoid any appearance of political interference.

The Clinton campaign is right about one thing: the Comey letter, and many events surrounding the investigation, are “unprecedented.” There hasn’t been a major presidential candidate in long time with this kind of ethical cloud hanging over him. This is new for all of us.

Still, many reporters acted confused and indignant, as if they couldn’t wrap their heads around Comey’s actions. As the weekend progressed, unconfirmed reports began to coagulate into facts on social media. Like so:

Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald, one of the nation’s leading Hillary apologists, wrote an entire press release fed to him by a “source” offering similar claims about the insignificance of the evidence no one had yet seen. “Also,” Eichenwald explained, “none of the emails were to or from Clinton.”

For starters, even if this were true it doesn’t necessarily matter. The new cache could be nothing, but it could be email discussions between Hillary aides who covered up illegal server activities. The cache could contain emails that might prove someone lied under oath or obstructed justice. Remember, Comey maintains the reason the FBI didn’t recommend prosecution was that the investigators lacked proof of intent, not a lack of wrongdoing.

Moreover, The Wall Street Journal's reporting conflicts with much of the information liberal journalists circulated all weekend. Rather than investigators running across “may be only 3 emails” sent by Huma — and by the way, Clinton’s top aide swore under oath that she’d handed over all devices with emails on them — the Journal’s source maintains that federal agents are probably looking at more like 650,000 emails. I’m no math whiz, but that seems like a lot more. Many of them are likely from Hillary’s server.

From the WSJ:

Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter.

Again, none of this is to say that the new information will lead to a prosecution. It seems unlikely, in fact. I suspect Comey will let Hillary skate because he thinks blowing up an election would hurt the nation. It’s going to take a smoking gun to change that outcome. Yet even that’s not enough for liberals. Now they demand Comey ignore evidence or reassure voters that this discovery means absolutely nothing — when, in fact, he doesn’t know that to be the case.

And when someone at the FBI starts pushing back against misinformation, many in the media are suddenly concerned about irresponsible “leaks” — leaks!

Without someone somewhere leaking information to a reporter, there would be no journalism. Shouldn’t the journalist’s primary concern be providing Americans with properly vetted and accurate information — one year out from an election or one day out? Or is their job to worry about how information will influence voters? Because that’s its own form of bias.

Now, I won’t lie. Watching these holier-than-thou, concern-trolling media types who’ve spent months pretending to be distressed about the health of our institutions have a collective meltdown is probably my favorite part of this horrible, caustic presidential election. When their own atrocious candidate is threatened, the Paul Krugmans and Norm Ornsteins start sounding a lot more like Alex Jones. Rigged elections, indeed.

When Harry Reid lies, smears, and destroys reputations, he proves himself no better than Donald Trump’s functionaries. And when liberals claim Comey is endangering democracy, they mean he’s endangering the prospects of Hillary winning — which to them is the same thing. They sound a lot like Trump fans who make no distinction between “patriotism” and voting for their own candidate. Both brands of hyper-partisanship are a threat to the republic.

Comey Is Not the One Whose Unorthodox Actions Are Casting a Cloud over the Election

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Monday, October 31, 2016

How rich of Hillary Clinton to complain now that FBI director James Comey is threatening the democratic process by commenting publicly about a criminal investigation on the eve of an election.

Put aside that Comey did not say a single thing last week that implicates Clinton in a crime. The biggest coup for Clinton in the waning months of the campaign has been Comey’s decision not to prosecute her — a decision outside the responsibilities of the FBI director and publicly announced in a manner that contradicts law-enforcement protocols. There has been nothing more irregular, nothing that put law enforcement more in the service of politics, than that announcement. Yet, far from condemning it, Mrs. Clinton has worn it like a badge of honor since July. Indeed, she has contorted it into a wholesale exoneration, which it most certainly was not.

Just to remind those whose memories seem so conveniently to fail, Comey is the FBI director, not a Justice Department prosecutor, much less the attorney general. The FBI is not supposed to exercise prosecutorial discretion. The FBI is not supposed to decide whether the subject of a criminal investigation gets indicted. The FBI, moreover, is not obligated to make recommendations about prosecution at all; its recommendations, if it chooses to make them, are not binding on the Justice Department; and when it does make recommendations, it does so behind closed doors, not on the public record.

Yet, in the Clinton e-mails investigation, it was Comey who made the decision not to indict Clinton. Comey, furthermore, made the decision in the form of a public recommendation. In effect, it became The Decision because Attorney General Loretta Lynch had disgraced herself by furtively meeting with Mrs. Clinton’s husband a few days before Comey announced his recommendation. Comey, therefore, gave Mrs. Clinton a twofer: an unheard-of public proclamation that she should not be indicted by the head of the investigative agency; and a means of taking Lynch off the hook, which allowed the decision against prosecution to be portrayed as a careful weighing of evidence rather than a corrupt deal cooked up in the back of a plane parked on a remote tarmac.

Now, suddenly, Mrs. Clinton is worried about law-enforcement interference in politics. And her voice is joined by such allies as Jamie Gorelick (President Bill Clinton’s deputy attorney general) and Larry Thompson (Comey’s predecessor as President George W. Bush’s deputy attorney general and an outspoken opponent of Donald Trump). Like Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Gorelick and Mr. Thompson were delighted by Director Comey as long as his departures from orthodoxy were helping Clinton’s candidacy. But now, as they wrote in the Washington Post on Saturday, they are perturbed by the threat Comey purportedly poses to “long-standing and well-established traditions limiting disclosure of ongoing investigations . . . in a way that might be seen as influencing an election.”

I will repeat what I said yesterday (at PJ Media) about the Justice Department’s received wisdom that the election calendar should factor into criminal investigations:

Law-enforcement people will tell you that taking action too close to Election Day can affect the outcome of the vote; therefore, it should not be done because law enforcement is supposed to be apolitical. But of course, not taking action one would take but for the political timing is as political as it gets. To my mind, it is more political because the negatively affected candidate is denied any opportunity to rebut the law-enforcement action publicly.

The unavoidable fact of the matter is that, through no fault of law enforcement, investigations of political corruption are inherently political. Thus, I’ve always thought the best thing to do is bring the case when it’s ready, don’t bring it if it’s not ready, and don’t worry about the calendar any more than is required by the principle of avoiding the appearance of impropriety.

Now, as I also discussed in that same column, the problem with which we are currently grappling is caused by Comey’s initial flouting of protocol back in July — the one that thrilled the Clinton camp. There should never be any law-enforcement commentary at any time about a criminal investigation in which charges have not been filed publicly. The FBI and Justice Department should resist confirming or denying the existence of investigations; and if (as frequently happens) it becomes publicly known that an investigation is being conducted, law enforcement should still refuse to comment on the status of the investigation or any developments in it.

The public does not have a right to know that an investigation is under way. The subjects of an investigation do not have a right to know whether the investigation is continuing or has been “closed” — a status I must put in quotes because any dormant investigation can be revived at the drop of a hat if new information warrants doing so.

As Director Comey and the rest of us are being reminded, the demands of ethical law enforcement are forever in tension with the currents of partisan politics. In law enforcement, one is always required to correct the record if a representation made to a court, Congress, or some other tribunal is rendered inaccurate by new information. To put it kindly, correcting misrepresentations is not a habit of our politicians.

There is a very good argument — I would say, an irrefutable argument — that Comey should never have pronounced that the Clinton e-mails investigation was closed (in fact, it would have been appropriate if he had made no public statement about the investigation at all). But having made that pronouncement — which, again, Mrs. Clinton was thankful to have and which she has ceaselessly exploited — he was obliged by law-enforcement principles to amend it when it was no longer true. What if he hadn’t done so? Then, after the election, when it inevitably emerged that the investigation was actually open, those who had relied on his prior assertion that it was closed would rightly have felt betrayed.

For now, everyone ought to take a deep breath. All we have here is a statement that an investigation is ongoing. No charges have been filed, and none appear to be on the horizon, let alone imminent.

The Clinton camp is in no position to cry foul about anything. In announcing his recommendation against indictment, Comey not only gave Clinton the benefit of every doubt (preposterously so when one reads the FBI’s reports). He also based his decision primarily on his legal analysis of a criminal statute, which is far removed from the responsibilities of the FBI. Indeed, Comey gilded the lily by claiming that no reasonable prosecutor would disagree with his analysis — which was a truly outrageous claim coming from an investigator with no prosecutorial responsibilities, even if it did not inspire a lecture from Ms. Gorelick and Mr. Thompson on Justice Department traditions.

On the other hand, Comey hasn’t said anything more than that the investigation of the mishandling of classified information by Mrs. Clinton and her underlings remains pending. That is a true statement. Again, it does not mean charges will be filed. Indeed, I didn’t hear Director Comey say he had changed his mind about the requirements for proving guilt under the espionage act. The fact that I think he is dead wrong on that subject is beside the point, since the Justice Department has endorsed his reasoning. So it’s not like the recovery of additional classified e-mails from a Weiner/Abedin computer — if that happens, which we are not likely to know for a while — would automatically result in indictments.

It is fair enough to say that Director Comey should not have started down the wayward road of making public comments about pending investigations in which no charges have been filed. Such comments inexorably lead to the need to make more comments when new information arises. Not that the director needs advice from me, but at this point, he ought to announce that — just as in any other investigation — there will be no further public statements about the Clinton investigation unless and until charges are filed, which may never happen.

As for the election, Mrs. Clinton is under the cloud of suspicion not because of Comey but because of her own egregious misconduct. She had no right to know back in July whether the investigation was closed. She has no right to know it now. Like any other criminal suspect, she simply has to wait . . . and wonder . . . and worry.

There were other worthy Democrats, but the party chose to nominate the subject of a criminal investigation. That is the Democrats’ own recklessness; Jim Comey is not to blame. And if the American people are foolish enough to elect an arrantly corrupt and compromised subject of a criminal investigation as our president, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.