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DAVID MARCUS: There are no more innocent explanations for Democrats' Russiagate lies

DAVID MARCUS: There are no more innocent explanations for Democrats' Russiagate lies

Fox News2 days ago
Amid last week's bomb-cyclone news cycle, which included a major summit with Russia and the takeover of the Washington, D.C., police force by the Trump administration, one could be forgiven for missing yet another Russiagate bombshell.
In December of 2016, just before the unthinkable was about to happen in the form of Donald Trump becoming president, Director of the National Security Agency Mike Rogers emailed then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper with concerns he had over a report outlining Trump's ties to Russia.
Rogers wrote of the report, meant to get in front of then-President Barack Obama in short order, "My folks aren't fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments."
But the clock was ticking, you see. Soon, Trump would be in the White House to try to bring these sketchy efforts to smear him as having worked with Russia to steal the presidency to a crashing halt. So Clapper made clear that was not what he wanted to hear.
"'Understand your concern,' Clapperreplied, according to newly released documents. "It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page, and are all supportive of the report – in the highest tradition of 'that's OUR story, and we're sticking' to it.'"
If this email is accurate, and there has been no denial, then this isn't just a smoking gun, it's a signed confession.
Clapper would go on to say, "We will facilitate as much mutual transparency as possible as we complete the report, but, more time is not negotiable. We may have to compromise on our 'normal' modalities, since we must do this on such a compressed schedule."
Compromising normal modalities? Orwell himself would blush at such ornate and vile double speak. The entire paragraph reads like a soft coup attempt, not honest officials following actual leads.
Of course, these are not the first damning emails that show a conspiracy among Obama officials, even during the campaign of 2016.
Remember this gem, allegedly from the vice president of the George Soros-backed Open Society Foundation, sent around the time of the 2016 Democratic National Convention?
"HRC approved Julia's idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections," it read. "That should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level."
About six months later, HRC, aka Hillary Clinton, had lost and the clock was, as Clapper noted, ticking. It was now or never to smear Trump as a Russian asset and thereby frustrate his elected term as president.
And it worked. The rest, as they say, was history.
Let's be clear: What is apparent now is that Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and the whole clown car of Obama appointees hellbent on destroying Trump didn't fail to see the stop sign. They saw it, and they hit the gas.
There are many Trump supporters, including some of his most passionate, who want to see arrests right now, and frankly, it does look more and more like laws were broken. But the law takes time to work.
What should not take any time at all now is a universal acknowledgment from those in our media and government that the conspiracy against Trump was absolutely real, and tore our country apart needlessly.
Were the Pulitzers worth it? As they collect dust like some sick portrait of Dorian Gray as a journalist, growing uglier and more twisted by the day as these same water-carrying scribes sip fancy cocktails by night?
No. There are no more innocent explanations here. This wasn't a case where honest Obama officials acting in good faith got it wrong. They lied. This wasn't a case in which the news media demanded real answers; They lied, too.
The gravity of deceit in the Russiagate scandal from Democrats seeking to thwart the will of the American voters is shocking, and yet most of our news outlets, the ones who weren't so much snookered but complicit, will never admit it.
For now, our current DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, who is hopefully a whole more honest than James Clapper was, must continue to shine a light on what looks more and more like an attempt to overthrow a duly elected president.
It is not enough that the plot against President Trump failed. We must now make sure that nothing like this can ever happen again.
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Authorities in Iowa sealed the court documents after the AP asked about the investigation earlier this month, before details of the federal charge were made public Friday. Gardner, Qiao and Gardner's former employer in Mississippi did not respond to AP requests for comment. Chow's Gymnastics is best known as the academy where US gymnasts Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas trained before becoming gold medalists at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. Qiao opened the gym in 1998 after starring on the Chinese national team and moving to the United States to coach at the University of Iowa. The gym became a draw for top youth gymnasts, with some families moving to Iowa to train there. Gardner moved to Iowa in September 2018, jumping at the opportunity to coach under Qiao. 'This is the job that I've always wanted. Chow is really someone I have looked up to since I've been coaching,' Gardner told the ABC affiliate WOI-TV in 2019. 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A girl reported to SafeSport in March 2022 that Gardner used 'inappropriate spotting techniques' in which he would put his hands between her legs and touch her vagina, the affidavit said. It said she alleged Gardner would ask girls if they were sexually active and call them 'idiots, sluts, and whores.' She said this behavior began after his hiring in 2018 and continued until she left the gym in 2020 and provided the names of six other potential victims. SafeSport suspended Gardner in July 2022 – four months after the girl's report – a provisional step it can take in severe cases with 'sufficient evidentiary support' as investigations proceed. A month after that, the center received a report from another girl alleging additional 'sexual contact and physical abuse,' including that Gardner similarly fondled her during workouts, the FBI affidavit said. The girl said that he once dragged her across the carpet so hard that it burned her buttocks, the affidavit said. 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According to a summary of her statement provided in Lyon's affidavit, she said Gardner fondled her during exercises, repeatedly touching her vagina; rubbed her back and butt and discussed his sex life; and made her do inappropriate stretches that exposed her privates. She told police she suspected he used his cellphone to film her in that position. Reached by the AP, the teen's mother declined comment. The mother told police she was interested in a monetary settlement with Chow's because the gym 'had been made aware of the complaints and they did nothing to stop them,' according to Lyon's affidavit. The gym didn't return AP messages seeking comment. It took 16 months after the teen's 2024 report for the FBI to arrest Gardner, who made an initial court appearance in Des Moines on Friday on a charge of producing visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, which can carry up to 30 years in prison. A public defender assigned to represent him didn't return AP messages seeking comment. It's unclear why the case took so long to investigate and also when the FBI, which had to pay $138 million to Nassar's victims for botching that investigation, got involved in the case. Among evidence seized by investigators in late May were a cellphone, laptop and a desktop computer along with handwritten notes between Gardner and his former pupils, according to the sealed court documents. They found images of girls, approximately 6 to 14 years in age, who were nude, using the toilet or changing into leotards, those documents show. Those images appear to have come from a hidden camera in a restroom. They also uncovered 50 video files and 400 photos, including some that appeared to be child pornography, according to the FBI affidavit. One video allegedly shows Gardner entering the bathroom and turning off the camera. Investigators also found images of an adult woman secretly filmed entering and exiting a bathtub, and identified her as Gardner's ex-girlfriend. That woman as well as the gym's owner, Candi Workman, told investigators the images appeared to come from Jump'In Gymnastics' facility in Purvis, Mississippi, which has since been closed. SafeSport has long touted that it can deliver sanctions in cases where criminal charges are not pursued as key to its mission. However, Gardner's ability to land a job in health care illustrates the limits of that power: It can ban people from sports but that sanction is not guaranteed to reach the general public. While not commenting about Gardner's case directly, it said in a statement provided to AP that a number of issues factor into why cases can take so long to close, including the 8,000 reports it receives a year with only around 30 full-time investigators. It has revamped some procedures, it said, in an attempt to become more efficient. 'While the Center is able and often does cooperate in law enforcement investigations,' it said, 'law enforcement is not required to share information, updates, or even confirm an investigation is ongoing.' USA Gymnastics President Li Li Leung called the center's task 'really tough, difficult to navigate.' 'I would like to see more consistency with their outcomes and sanctions,' Leung said. 'I would like to see more standardization on things. I would like to see more communication, more transparency from their side.' As the investigation proceeded, Gardner said on his Facebook page he had landed a new job in May 2024 as a surgical technologist at MercyOne West Des Moines Medical Center. It's a role that calls for positioning patients on the operating room table, and assisting with procedures and post-surgery care. Asked about Gardner's employment, hospital spokesman Todd Mizener told the AP: 'The only information I can provide is that he is no longer' at the hospital. Meanwhile, the case lingers, leaving lives in limbo more than three years after the SafeSport Center and police first learned of it. 'SafeSport is now part of a larger problem rather than a solution, if it was ever a solution,' said attorney Silvey. 'The most fundamental professional task such as coordination with local or federal law enforcement gets botched on a daily basis, hundreds of times a year now.'

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