Remembering
James Robison

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The Brew: Just Weeks Away from a New Administration

By Al Perrotta Published on December 11, 2024

Happy Wednesday!

Let’s get Brewing. Our theme? Cleaning house.

DOJ Spied on Congressional Staffers Investigating Trump-Russia Hoax, Including Kash Patel

As if we didn’t have enough reason to believe the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI need to be cleaned out from top to bottom like a building covered in toxic mold, we have a new report from the Inspector General outlining how the DOJ spied on more than 40 congressional staffers and two members of Congress who were investigating the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Among their targets was the man recently nominated to run the FBI, Kash Patel, who at the time headed former Congressman Devin Nunes’s unraveling of the hoax.

You can read the report here.

The DOJ claims the snooping was done to investigate leaks. (That’s hysterical, considering that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) was leaking about the Trump-Russia investigation like a submarine made of chicken wire.) However, the agency didn’t bother to get approval to spy on Congress from any court, despite its apparent violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Last year, Patel sued DOJ officials and the man he will likely replace, FBI Director Christopher Wray, over the searches. Meanwhile, Wray is planning to hightail it out of the Hoover Building in the coming weeks. The Washington Times reports that Wray will resign on or before Inauguration Day to spare himself the indignity of being fired by incoming President Donald Trump.

DHS and Secret Service Refused to Cooperate With House Investigation of Second Assassination Attempt

The House Select Committee investigating the two assassination attempts on Donald Trump earlier this year released its final report Tuesday.

The committee concluded what was obvious within minutes of the first shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July: The incident was “preventable and should not have happened.” In other words, it was a debacle attributable not to one error, but to “various failures in planning, execution, and leadership … [that] coalesced to create an environment in which the former President — and everyone at the campaign event — [was] exposed to grave danger.”

What the task force could not definitively determine is why 20-year-old Thomas Crooks shot Trump.

“There is one area, as you point out, that we weren’t able to get to,” Rep. Jason Crow, the top Democrat on the task force, told Face the Nation Sunday. “And that is, why did the shooter do this? What drove him to do it? Was he a lone wolf shooter? Did he have associates or affiliates? What was his motivation? How was he radicalized?”

So five months later, we know less about Crooks than we do Luigi Mangione.

Perhaps we’ll get some answers once Patel takes over the FBI, Pam Bondi heads the DOJ, and Kristi Noem gets her mitts on the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service. These changes can’t come soon enough.

The task force report also detailed how the DHS, Secret Service, FBI, and Bureau of Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “have not produced any documents responsive to the Task Force’s requests regarding the preparation for, events of, and response to the second assassination attempt that occurred on September 15.”

What have they been doing the past three months? Decorating for Christmas?! Twice in two months, Trump was nearly murdered. And Joe Biden’s security and law enforcement agencies are playing cute with the documents?

Every delay tactic adds to the stinking pile of evidence that either one or both of these assassination attempts was an inside job.

United Healthcare Shooting Suspect Denied Bail, Shouts at Reporters

Luigi Mangione made his first court appearance Tuesday while being arraigned for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Mangione did not enter a plea and was denied bail. On his way into the courtroom, the shackled Mangione turned and yelled at the press, “That’s completely out of touch, and an insult to the intelligence of the American people!”

What question by a reporter triggered that response is unknown, but would seem to apply to pretty much anything coming out of the mainstream media.

This Is Going to Be Fun: Trump Calls PM Trudeau “Governor”

As much as Trump wants to “Make America Great Again,” it appears he is equally determined to make America laugh again. In a Truth Social post Monday night, Trump referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor of the Great State of Canada.”

When meeting recently at Mar-a-Lago, the Canadian leader had complained that Trump’s tariff threat would ruin Canada’s economy. Trump, only half in jest, responded that Canada could become the 51st state with Trudeau as its governor.

Whether boogying across America like a back-up dancer for Beyonce, using Jill Biden’s goo-goo eyes for him in a humorous fragrance ad, or teasing foreign leaders, Trump seems determined to have fun in office this time around.

Anyone can be elected president. Joe Biden proved that. But becoming world leader and class clown? That takes some skill.

Matt Gaetz Headed to OAN While Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Hits Broadway?

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who recently withdrew from consideration to become the next U.S. Attorney General, has a new gig: He’s becoming an anchor for One America News. He certainly has the hair to be a news anchor. The Matt Gaetz Show, airing at 9 p.m. Eastern, premieres in January.

More from the Washington Show Biz newswire: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will be making her Broadway debut Saturday in a one-time only walk-on role in the hit musical & Juliet.

As Fox News reports, Jackson described her long-held Broadway fantasy in her new memoir Lovely One. “I, a Miami girl from a modest background with an unabashed love of theater, dreamed of one day ascending to the highest court in the land — and I had said so in one of my supplemental application essays,” Jackson wrote. “I expressed that I wished to attend Harvard as I believed it might help me ‘to fulfill my fantasy of becoming the first Black, female Supreme Court justice to appear on a Broadway stage.'”

Was it not Juliet’s creator, William Shakespeare, who said, “Women may fall when there’s no strength in men”?

To which Brown Jackson responded, “What is a woman?”

Seriously, why did she aim to become the “first black female” justice on Broadway? Do Supreme Court justices have a habit of hitting the boards on 42nd Street? Did I miss Clarence Thomas in Phantom of the Opera? Earl Warren in Damn Yankees? Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Wicked?

A Stream Poll: Is Die Hard a Christmas Movie?

On yesterday’s Christmas Tea, we mentioned the people who insist that Die Hard is a Christmas movie. The Stream is taking a poll on X if you want to weigh in.

Along the Stream…

Raymond Ibrahim sets the record straight in “Media Employs Fake History to Demonize ‘Crusader Fanboy’ Pete Hegseth.”

Meanwhile, Wanda Alger details how “The Refiner’s Fire Is Exposing Sins of the Heart, Making Way for His Glory.”

 

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.