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The Department of Justice has concluded that the Obama-era FBI should have discontinued its surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page far earlier than they did, and that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court was shown insufficient evidence to show that Page was a foreign spy, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The DOJ delivered its conclusion to the FISA court in December filing unsealed on Thursday.

The Justice Department now appears to have concluded that there was “”insufficient predication to establish probable cause” in the last two renewals in 2017. Probable cause is the legal standard to obtain a secret warrant against suspected agents of a foreign power. The letter is classified, but is referenced in a new order declassified by a judge on Thursday. The Justice Department said it would sequester all the material it collected against Mr. Page pending further internal review of the matter. –Wall Street Journal

“The court understands the government to have concluded, in view of the material misstatements and omissions, that the court’s authorizations in (two applications) were not valid,” wrote Judge James Emanuel Boasberg, a federal district judge in Washington who also sits on the FISA court.

As The Federalist notes, this could have far-reaching consequences for special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings.

“The final warrant against Page overlapped with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The final three-month authorization to spy on Page was signed nearly six weeks after Mueller was appointed, meaning that Mueller may have had real-time access to and utilized nearly five months worth of surveillance of Page during the course of Mueller’s investigation. If his office used any of the information in subsequent cases, the declaration that the final two spy warrants against Page were invalid could potentially nullify previous or future convictions sought by Mueller’s office.“

In a blockbuster ruling, the FISA court declared that least two of the four Carter Page spy warrants were illegal, meaning ANY evidence collected from that surveillance is now invalid.

This could have huge implications for every case brought by Mueller. https://t.co/XIIVBKf7XI

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) January 23, 2020

Judge Boasberg set a Jan. 28 deadline for the government to show the court what steps they have taken to avoid similar abuses in the future.

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

In most times and places, crime tends to be a highly localized phenomenon. I have covered this for Mises.org at the national level, pointing out that homicide rates in, say, the Mountain West and New England are far lower than homicide rates in the Great Lakes region or the South. Gun-control laws clearly don’t explain these differences, since many places with rock-bottom homicide rates such as Idaho and Maine also have few controls on private gun ownership.

Thus, discussion of the “US homicide rate” tells us precious little about general trends since US homicide rates are kept relatively high by only a small number of cities. Baltimore city, for example, has a homicide ten times higher than the nation overall, and seventeen times larger than the Baltimore suburbs. In 2018, Baltimore reported more than three hundred homicides while similarly sized Denver reported about 67. These are huge differences.

Clearly, speaking generally of homicides as a problem in the United States or even in the State of Maryland tells us little about conditions experienced by most of the population in these places.

Given the very low homicide rates that prevail throughout most of the US, it is clear that enormous swaths of the US population are able to obtain, own, and use firearms freely without turning their cities and towns into war zones.

Given the recent drive for more gun control in the state of Virginia, it may be helpful to look and see whether homicides are a general problem for Virginians or limited to only certain parts of the state.

Regional Differences in Homicides in Virginia

In 2018, the homicide rate in Virginia was 4.6 per 100,000. That’s below the national rate of 5 per 100,000, but is well above that of many states such as Iowa, Utah, and Minnesota.

But, of course, homicides are not spread evenly across Virginia. As with many other states, homicide rates are far higher in some cities and metro areas than in others.

For example, according to the FBI’s 2018 crime statistics, the homicide rate in the city of Richmond (i.e., not the overall Richmond metro area) was nearly five times higher, with 22.9 homicides per 100,000 people. But among cities with more than 10,000 people, the highest rate was found in Petersburg, which in 2018 had a homicide rate nearly ten times that of the state overall, with 45 homicides per 100,000. Other especially violent cities (proportionally speaking) were Danville, Portsmouth, Norfolk, Newport News, and Hampton. These can be contrasted with some large cities with very few homicides, including Charlottesville and Virginia Beach.

Source: Table 8, Offenses Known to Law Enforcement, by City (2018)

And, of course, the FBI report lists more than one hundred Virginia cities—ranging in size from 300 to 44,000 residents—with zero homicides.

What would homicide rates look like in Virginia without some of these cities?

Well, according to the FBI’s report, there were 391 total homicides in Virginia in 2018. Of those, 122 were in the Virginia Beach-Norfolk metro area, and 100 were in the Richmond metro area. These two metros alone contributed more than half (57 percent) of all the state’s homicides. Combined, these two metros (which amount to only 2.9 million of the state’s 8.5 million residents) had more homicides than all the rest of the state.

Source: Table 6, Crime in the US by Metropolitan Statistical Area (2018)

By removing just these two metro areas from Virginia, the homicide rate for the remainder of the state would be reduced from 4.6 per 100,000 to 3 per 100,000.

Political Implications

Since Democrats won a majority in both houses of the state legislature last election day, legislators have begun to push through new restrictions on gun ownership in Virginia. Proposals include limiting the number of guns bought per month, a ban on “assault” weapons, and so-called red flag laws.

Supporters insist the laws are necessary for the safety of residents statewide. But it is unclear that the issue of homicides in Virginia ought to be addressed by statewide policies.

The new push for gun control in the state has been pushed largely by advocates claiming the new measures are necessary to prevent shootings like the 2019 Virginia Beach mass shooting. It is unclear why any of the proposed rules would address the factors behind the Virginia Beach shooting given that the shooter had no criminal record. Moreover, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of homicides in the state are ordinary homicides tied to specific areas and municipalities—and the conditions therein.

If policymakers wish to address these issues, it is not at all clear why general statewide legislation would provide any solutions. After all, as we have discovered in a great many local governments, policies tends to focus on nonviolent crime, with most resources devoted to petty drug enforcement or similar infractions. In Baltimore, for example, the police department assigns less than three percent of its police force to homicide investigations. Yet, this sort of neglect by city personnel has been shown to be a key factor in fostering an environment of lawlessness.

Moreover, since we have no data on how often firearms are used to deter crime, it is impossible to know what the likely effect of additional prohibitions on legal gun ownership will be.

Not surprisingly, however, state lawmakers have taken the easy way out. Rather than address the serious and unexciting steps necessary to truly address violence at the local level, policymakers have opted to do the politically expedient thing and pass statewide laws designed to pander to specific interest groups. Whether or not these laws have the desired effect, of course, is politically unimportant. Some politicians have decided that it is “worth it” to burden much of the state’s population—millions of whom own firearms without ever using them for violent ends—with a wide array of new regulations that could render many residents criminals for owning devices which had been purchased legally in the recent past.

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) conducted its second Elephant Walk within weeks, this time with ten Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II fighters at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, located in Harrison Township, Michigan, said Defense Blog. 

Earlier this month, we reported 52 Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters conducted an Elephant Walk down a runway at Hill Air Force base in Utah. It was a show of massive force against Iran as the world was on edge for war. Since then, tensions have receded but are still elevated. 

Elephant walks are generally conducted right before a minimum interval takeoff (MITO), a technique used by USAF to scramble all jets to take off at twelve- and fifteen-second intervals.

The objective of the exercise is to get all fighters and bombers in the air within fifteen minutes of an alert of an incoming missile attack.

“A-10 Thunderbolt II fighter aircraft flown here by pilots of the 107th Fighter Squadron, perform an, “Elephant Walk,” on the runway as they deploy for Snowbird January 21, 2020,” according to a press release issued by the 127th Wing Public Affairs.

Defense Blog noted that an Elephant Walk “is a fundamental training element when preparing for global strike missions.”

The 127th Wing’s motto is “We Stand Ready,” as the latest training exercise suggests the A-10s could be preparing for combat in the Middle East. 

We’ve noted in the last several weeks the Pentagon has sent thousands of troops, B-52 bombers, stealth fighters, and other military equipment to the Middle East as a show of force against Iran. 

Earlier this month, Iranian state media tweeted a promotional war video of its defensive missile systems, the same one that shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, going against a wide range of U.S. warplanes. 

عاجل : التلفزيون الإيراني بث قبل قليل نشيد الحرب الإيرانية – العراقية في إشارة إلى حالة الحرب التي قد تشهدها المنطقة بعد مقتل سليماني . هذا النشيد ومترجم إلى اللغة العربية. pic.twitter.com/2NnNxYDOKW

— محمد مجيد الأحوازي (@MohamadAhwaze) January 6, 2020

Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

There have been two completely different Americas in U.S. history.

Let’s examine twelve ways in which they differ.

1. For more than a century after the United States came into existence, there was no income taxation or IRS. People were free to keep everything they earned and decide for themselves what to do with it.

Today, income taxation and the IRS are a core feature of American life. The government essentially owns everyone’s income and decides how much people will be permitted to keep, much as a parent permits his children to have an allowance.

2. No Social Security. Earlier Americans rejected the concept of mandatory charity. People were left free to decide for themselves whether to help out their parents and others.

Today, Social Security is a core feature of American life. The federal government forces younger people to help out seniors by forcibly taking their money from them and giving it to seniors. Social Security is a classic example of a socialist program, one in which the government forcibly takes money from people to whom it belongs and gives it to people to whom it does not belong.

3. No Medicare and Medicaid. Americans had a free-market healthcare system, one in which there was no government involvement. The result was the finest healthcare system in the world, one in which healthcare prices were low and stable, innovations were soaring, doctors loved what they did in life, and the poor were receiving free healthcare services from doctors and hospitals.

Today, seniors and the poor are dependent on Medicare, another socialist program that is characterized by massive dysfunction, soaring prices, perpetual crisis, and physicians who hate what they do in life.

4. No centrally managed economy. Americans believed that people should be free to manage their own economic activities.

Today, whoever happens to be president assumes the role of centrally managing the economy, taking credit when the economy is going well and blaming the Federal Reserve when the inevitable crashes come. Central planning is, of course, a socialist principle.

5. No Federal Reserve or paper money. The official money of the country consisted of gold coins and silver coins. There was no central bank (i.e., Federal Reserve) to inflate or debase the currency.

Today, the Federal Reserve continues to destroy people’s money through monetary central planning, inflation, and debasement. The official money is now paper Federal Reserve notes, which promise to pay nothing. 

6. Very few economic regulations, including minimum-wage laws. Americans favored a free-enterprise economic system, one in which economic enterprise was free of government control and management.

Today, economic regulation, including minimum-wage laws, form a core feature of American economic life.

7. No immigration controls. Americans believed in the right of people to freely cross borders in the pursuit of happiness.

Today, Americans maintain an enormous apparatus that centrally plans the movements of people into the United States. To enforce the system, the federal government has brought a brutal police state into existence in the American Southwest. This socialist immigration system is characterized by death, suffering, and perpetual crisis.

8. No drug laws. Americans believed that people have the right to ingest whatever they want, no matter how harmful or destructive.

Today’s Americans believe that it is a rightful role of government to punish people for ingesting harmful substances, much as a parent punishes a child for putting bad things into his mouth.

9. No national-security state, including a Pentagon, military-industrial complex, empire of domestic and foreign military bases, CIA, NSA, or FBI. Our ancestors used the Constitution to call into existence a governmental structure known as a limited-government republic.

Today, the centerpiece of American life is the national-security state, along with its sordid, dark-side practices of state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, kangaroo military tribunals, and mass secret surveillance.

10. No empire, foreign interventionism, or foreign wars.

Today, military empire, foreign interventionism, coups, foreign aid, alliances with dictatorial regimes, regime-change operations, sanctions, embargoes, invasions, and occupations are an ongoing central part of American life.

11. No public-schooling systems. Education was, by and large, based on free-market principles.

Today, Americans are required to subject their children to a state-approved education. There are compulsory school-attendance laws, government schoolteachers, government-approved textbooks, government-established curricula, and compulsory taxation to fund it all. Public schooling is another example of a socialist, centrally planned program.

12. No gun control. Americans believed that the right to keep and bear arms is a natural, God-given right that cannot be controlled and regulated, much like such other rights as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.

Today, the right to keep and bear arms is controlled, regulated, and even nullified in certain areas of the country.

These twelve major differences naturally give rise to an important question: Was the abandonment of America’s sound founding principles the reason for the massive chaos, crises, and dysfunction that riddle our society today?

Stephan Halper, the longtime CIA and FBI operative who conducted espionage on the 2016 Trump campaign, was feeding information to Washington Post reporter David Ignatius through his handler, according to The Federalist, which describes his actions as “more evidence that the intelligence community has co-opted the press to push anti-Trump conspiracy theories.”

According to a court filing by Michael Flynn’s defense team, Halper’s ‘handler’ in the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), Col. James Baker, “regularly lunched with the Washington Post reporter.“

(Also leaking to Ignatius was Christopher Steele)

As we noted in May of 2018, Halper was paid over $1 million by the Obama administration through the Office of Net Assessment – nearly half of which came during ‘Russiagate’ – in which he not only surveilled multiple Trump campaign aides, he was involved in an effort to tie General Flynn to a Russian academic, Svetlana Lokhova, as part of a smear campaign.

Svetlana Lokhova, the Russian-born English citizen and Soviet-era scholar, told The Federalist that she only realized the significance of her communications with and about Ignatius following the filing of attorney Sidney Powell’s reply brief in the Michael Flynn case.

In last week’s court filing, Powell highlighted how the CIA, FBI, Halper, and possibly James Baker used the unnamed and unaware Lokhova and the complicit Ignatius to destroy Flynn. This James Baker is not the one who worked under James Comey at the FBI, but a James Baker in the Department of Defense Office of National Assessment. –The Federalist

Powell wrote:

Stefan Halper is a known long-time operative for the CIA/FBI. He was paid exorbitant sums by the FBI/CIA/DOD through the Department of Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment in 2016. His tasks seem to have included slandering Mr. Flynn with accusations of having an affair with a young professor (a British national of Russian descent) Flynn met at an official dinner at Cambridge University when he was head of DIA in 2014. Flynn has requested the records of Col. James Baker because he was Halper’s ‘handler’ in the Office of Net Assessment in the Pentagon, and ONA Director Baker regularly lunched with Washington Post Reporter David Ignatius. Baker is believed to be the person who illegally leaked the transcript of Mr. Flynn’s calls to Ignatius. The defense has requested the phone records of James Clapper to confirm his contacts with Washington Post reporter Ignatius—especially on January 10, 2017, when Clapper told Ignatius in words to the effect of ‘take the kill shot on Flynn.’ It cannot escape mention that the press has long had transcripts of the Kislyak calls that the government has denied to the defense.

Lokhova sued Halper and multiple MSM outlets for defamation after Halper-fuelled rumors that she was a Russian spy who had ‘honeypotted’ Flynn, which were first promoted by Lokhova’s mentor at Cambridge University – Professor Christopher Andrew, who wrote in the London Sunday Times in February 2017 that her brief meeting with Flynnn during a 2015 dinner event was the beginning of the former National Security Adviser’s relationship with a Russian spy.

Prior to Andrew’s article, other outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the New York Times had published rumors of a Flynn connection to a supposed Russian spy, however Lokhova had no clue it was her until she was outed.

“Halper had been pushing the story that I was a Russian spy and Flynn’s mistress since December of 2016,” Lokhova told The Federalist. “The New York Times’ Mathew Rosenberg told me a source had been circulating these stories since December 2016,” she said, adding “but they held the story until they could find a second source and someone at the Cambridge dinner.”

In his book “The Plot Against the President,” Lee Smith confirms that the story about a Flynn-Lokhova intrigue was circulated to the press starting in December 2016.

But it wasn’t until the Wall Street Journal published its March 17, 2017, article suggesting she had inappropriate contacts with Flynn that Lokhova discovered the earlier article Andrew had written about her for the Sunday Times, Lokhova said. Before then, within days of February 28, 2017, several journalists reached out to her for comment, including two working for the Wall Street Journal, but Lokhova didn’t know why.

She also didn’t comprehend who the inquiring journalists were at the time. That remained true even after her mentor and unknown betrayer, Andrew, wrote Lokhova telling her that “David Ignatius of Washington Post is in UK at moment. I’ve known him for years and trust him. I’ve given him your email and he accepts that if you don’t wish to respond, that an end to it.” –The Federalist

It is unknown what Andrew meant by Ignatius’s “inside track,” however the above email was sent to Lokhova just one month after Ignatus reported the illegally leaked details of Flynn’s conversation with Russia’s ambassador – leading to his firing.

Read the rest of the report here.