In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

A little over a week ago , Former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey are under criminal investigation for potential wrongdoing related to the Trump–Russia probe, including allegedly making false statements to Congress, Justice Department sources told Fox News Digital. CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred evidence of wrongdoing by Brennan to FBI Director Kash Patel for potential prosecution, DOJ sources told Fox News Digital. . . . As for Comey, DOJ sources told Fox News Digital that an investigation into the former director is underway, but could not share details of what specifically is being probed. This past Friday , Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard detailed "striking" findings from declassified documents released Friday, claiming to showcase "overwhelming evidence" that an Obama-era cabal laid the groundwork for what would be the years-long Trump-Russia collusion probe after the 2016 election. . . . ...

Flashback to January 3, 2017 : New Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump is “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia’s cyber activities. “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.” Trump said Tuesday evening that an intelligence briefing on Russia’s cyber activities “was delayed until Friday” and suggested that intelligence agencies weren’t prepared. NBC News reported, however, that the briefing was always planned for Friday. “The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on so-called ‘Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!” the president-elect wrote on Twitter. Intelligence officials have reportedly determined that...

Michael Lebron, a legal analyst, sometime conspiracy theorist, and standup comic who posts as Lionel on his YouTube channel, had been off the Trump train for a few weeks, convinced Bondi and Bongino were covering something up. No longer, at the post embedded above: We are hitting a Twilight Zone level of disconnect that I never even thought was possible. . . . I mean, if you'd have told me that we'd be talking about pube doodles, I'd think you were out of your mind. What is this story? What is it? What does it have to do with anything? He wrote, if you believe it, Trump wrote, a birthday note, jotted something, typewritten, I guess, to Jeffrey Epstein, and it's this weird kind of a cryptic -- he's writing this down, and he does doodle by the way. You know, Trump does doodle. . . . We're actually breaking down the word "enigma", whether he's used it or not, I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing in the world, and they said...

Alt media has been slow on the uptake over The Wall Street Journal's report of a 2003 birthday letter from Trump to Epstein : The letter revealed by The Wall Street Journal was reportedly collected by disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell as part of a birthday album for Epstein years before the wealthy financier was first arrested in 2006 and subsequently had a falling-out with Trump. The letter bearing Trump’s name includes text framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman and ends with, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” according to the newspaper. The outlet described the contents of the letter but did not publish a photo showing it entirely. My first reaction is to wonder why the WSJ is messing around with stuff at this level. Trump has had allegations of a tryst with Stormy Daniels; he's been found liable for sexually abusing E Jean Carroll; he's spoken of grabbing women on the Acce...

On news that the rescissions package had passed the Senate early this morning, including elimination of federal money to public broadcasting, I decided to check how long the idea of "killing big bird" had been in the public imagination. It's been at least since the 1990s : “Every time Congress comes at public broadcasting, Big Bird is held up,” Sesame Street creator Joan Ganz Cooney told an interviewer in 1998, “as a crucifix is to a vampire.” Three years prior, when Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) took the floor to argue against proposed cuts to public broadcasting funding, he brandished a small Big Bird doll. “Don’t kill Big Bird,” he extolled, “because public broadcasting works, public broadcasting is good for the American taxpayer, and good for the American people.” From the Tampa Bay Times in 1992 : Columnist George Will has had his fill of Sesame Street. "Does Big Bird need a subsidy?" he asks...

The sign in the photo above is a bit of 1990s nostalgia, it was prominent on San Diego area freeways back then as a warning that illegals might dash across traffic, but eventually the highway department seems to have decided the warnings were redundant, or maybe just a bad look, and it removed the signs. As I thought about those signs recently, I suddenly recognized that Californians have been adjusting to the conditions of mass migration ever since I've been out here, starting in the 1960s. But the other day I saw a news item that made me think things are changing: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed an executive order Friday to bolster protocols and support immigrant neighborhoods, including offering cash assistance, in response to raids by the Trump administration targeting those living in the United States illegally. . . . In addition, Bass said a plan is being worked out to provide cash assistance to those affected by the enforcement opera...

Alan Dershowitz, after feeding confusion for several days with remarks like ". . . hand to God, I know. I know the names of people whose files are being suppressed in order to protect them, and that's wrong", has finally clarified what he means. In an interview with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation yesterday embedded above, he says at 0:12, No, there is no client list, there never has been a client list. A "client list" suggests that Jeffrey Epstein made a list of people to who0m he trafficked women. What there is is a redacted FBI affadavit from accusers -- there are several of them -- from accusers that accuse various people of having improper sex, and that has been redacted. The names of the people accused have beern blacked out. This is what I've been saying for a week. It's absurd to imagine that Epstein would create any document, that could be found via a search warrant or discovered in a civil suit, that confirmed the details ...