NEW YORK CITY – New Yorkers admit to feeling the impacts of rising crime but told Fox News they expect “absolutely nothing” to come from President Biden’s meeting with the mayor Thursday.

Biden will travel to New York City Thursday to discuss a “comprehensive strategy to combat gun crime” with Mayor Eric Adams.

The president’s trip comes after thousands of police officers from across the nation traveled to Manhattan to pay their respects to fallen NYPD officers Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora, who were shot and killed while responding to a domestic violence call last.

“I think it’s a total waste,” one woman said of the president’s visit to the city. “He’s going to do absolutely nothing to help New York City.”

“Political – it’s all political,” the 75-year-old lifelong New Yorker continued. “That’s why he’s coming. No other reason.”

The Biden administration on Thursday morning rolled out a strategy to stop the flow of guns, bolster law enforcement and increase funding for community policing ahead of the visit.

New York City saw 485 people murdered last year, a slight increase from 2020. It also experienced a sharp rise in hate crimes and an increase in almost all categories of major crimes. Additionally, subway crimes are up 65% so far in 2022.

“I cannot believe what’s happened in this city,” one resident of the Big Apple told Fox News. “Crime is out of control.”

“I know people who won’t get on the subway,” another woman said. “People rearrange their day around it…it definitely has an impact, especially for women.”

One woman who owns a business in Manhattan said, “My customers, they’re very afraid, after 5 o’clock, to walk in the city.”

“My mom calls me every night, she’s scared to go out,” a construction worker told Fox News. “Unfortunately, where she lives at, crime is up in the Bronx.”

“A lot of people are doing bad,” the man continued. “You know, COVID – when people don’t have money, crime goes up.”

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One woman said the rise in crime started even before the pandemic hit.

“When they passed the bail and discovery laws, the state legislature passed them, Cuomo pushed them through, and it’s changed everything,” she said, referring to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“Sadly, no one is caring, nobody’s taking care of these issues,” she continued.

When asked if they thought the president’s visit would bring positive change, many were skeptical: “Every president, they sell dreams. Let’s see what happens,” one said.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-yorkers-expect-nothing-bidens-visit-mayor

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The New American previously reported that on August 16, then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that staff at hospitals, nursing homes, and other long-term care facilities would be required to get their first dose of COVID jab by September 27 or face termination. The actual order, issued by the New York State Department of Health (DOH), allowed for “limited exceptions for those with religious or medical reasons.”

However, on August 26, the DOH board approved the implementation of emergency authorization of a vaccine mandate for all healthcare workers in the state, while also removing the planned religious exemption as an alternative to inoculation.

As a result, thousands of nurses and other healthcare workers across the state have lost their jobs or been suspended because of their refusal to comply with the state’s mandate to get experimental gene therapeutics, aka COVID vaccines. That, in turn, caused the disruption of healthcare services: Some of nursing homes stopped admitting new patients, and hospitals warned patients of longer waiting times, and some have suspended elective inpatient surgeries and have stopped accepting intensive-care patients from other hospitals.

On September 12, 17 medical professionals filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York to halt enforcement of the state’s draconian vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, arguing the order invalidates legal protections for sincerely held religious beliefs.

The plaintiffs stated that they hold the sincere religious belief that they “cannot consent to be inoculated … with vaccines that were tested, developed or produced with fetal cell line[s] derived from procured abortions.” Yet, the New York top officials did not care.

On Tuesday, siding with the healthcare workers, the U.S. District Judge David Hurd in Utica, New York, issued a preliminary injunction that extended a September 14 restraining order, barring the state from sanctioning a healthcare facility that honored religious-exemption requests.

The judge ruled the mandate “clearly” conflicted with the individuals’ federally protected right to seek religious accommodation from their employers.

Per the ruling:

Plaintiffs have established that § 2.61 [an August 26 mandate] conflicts with longstanding federal protections for religious beliefs and that they and others will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief.… Plaintiffs have also satisfied the remaining elements necessary to obtain preliminary relief.

The decision also indicated that the health professionals are likely to succeed on their claims that the mandate violates their rights. It also noted that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers “to entertain requests for religious accommodations and to ‘reasonably’ accommodate those requests absent a showing of undue hardship.” At the same time, the current state mandate “has effectively foreclosed the pathway to seeking a religious accommodation that is guaranteed under Title VII.”

The judge concluded that “the public interest lies with enforcing the guarantees enshrined in the Constitution and federal anti-discrimination law” and not the general “public health.”

While the ruling keeps the rest of the vaccine mandate in place, it reinstates the right of the healthcare workers to claim a religious exemption until the matter is fully settled in a trial.

Christopher Ferrara of the Thomas More Society, which represented the healthcare workers in the case, stated, “The court rightly recognized that yesterday’s ‘front line heroes’ in dealing with COVID cannot suddenly be treated as disease-carrying villains and kicked to the curb by the command of a state health bureaucracy.”

Commenting on the court decision, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who was one of the defendants, has said she does not believe a religious exemption is a valid reason to not get the COVID shot.

Calling the decision “disappointing,” Hochul claimed it would “impact our ability to help people.” The governor said she plans to appeal the ruling in the Second Circuit Court.

Listening to Hochul, one could experience cognitive dissonance. First, she falsely claimed that the unvaccinated healthcare workers pose a threat to those who seek medical help since the unvaxxed can infect them with COVID. Then later, the governor admitted the creeping number of “breakthrough” cases of COVID among the vaccinated and encouraged the eligible cohorts to get a booster shot, confirming the fact that the vaccinated can still catch the virus and spread it to others.

According to the New York Department of Health, as of October 6, 49,000 hospital workers have not been inoculated against COVID. A local media report adds that there are also tens of thousands of unvaccinated staffers at nursing homes and other select medical fields.

On September 27, in preparation for staffing shortages, the governor declared a state of emergency in the Empire State. On September 25, Hochul issued a “plan” to tackle the issue, which included making the healthcare workers fired due to the noncompliance with the vaccination mandate ineligible for unemployment insurance; calling on the feds to deploy medically trained National Guard members, as well as Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMATs); and allowing anyone who has a license in another state, or even another country, to take medical care of New Yorkers.

Source: https://thenewamerican.com/judge-rules-ny-must-allow-religious-exemptions-to-covid-vax-mandate/

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(CNN)Parts of the Northeast began to feel Hurricane Henri’s first impacts Saturday evening as the storm barreled toward the coast ahead of an anticipated Sunday landfall, threatening to bring damaging winds, dangerous storm surge and flooding to an already saturated area.

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Legal experts are warning that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s alleged undercounting of nursing-home deaths amid the COVID-19 pandemic may rise to the level of a criminal offense.

Cuomo has found himself at the center of a federal investigation into whether his administration sought to hide the true toll of the pandemic.

The New York Post reported earlier this month that Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo’s top aide, told lawmakers it had withheld the numbers for fear of them being “used against us.”

FILE: Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference against a backdrop of medical supplies at the Jacob Javits Center that will house a temporary hospital in response to the COVID-19 outbreak in New York.  (AP)

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Rice’s made the claim after top Democrats insisted for years that the White House had conspired with Russia, although Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to support any conspiracy with Russia by any U.S. actor to influence the 2016 election. Her remarks also came amid efforts by Democrats to pin the blame on outside white supremacist agitators, even though data suggests the vast majority of arrested protesters in recent days are local.

“To designate Antifa a terrorist organization, fine, but let’s also focus on the right-wing terrorist organizations,” Rice told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, referring to President Trump’s decision earlier in the day to brand the left-wing militant group as a terrorist organization. “The white supremacists that he’s called, in the past, very fine people.”

Rice’s claim that Trump praised white supremacists has been debunked. Like Rice, Trump specifically made a distinction between peaceful political protesters and white supremacists, whom Trump said he condemned “totally.” (“Very fine people” were protesting the censorship and removal of a Civil War statue, Trump said.)

Rice continued: “We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we’re all wrestling with that have to be addressed, and then we have extremists who’ve come to try to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different. And they’re probably also, I would bet based on my experience, I’m not reading the intelligence these days, but based on my experience this is right out of the Russian playbook as well.”

“I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media,” Rice said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form.”

NY POST: SUSAN RICE’S BLATANT BID TO COVER OBAMA’S BUTT

Even left-of-center commentators were bewildered by Rice’s claim, which was not supported by any evidence. Although Mueller concluded that Russian-linked actors sought to use social media to influence the 2016 election, no evidence surfaced to show that their effort was successful in any measurable way. Earlier this year, the DOJ abruptly dropped Mueller’s once-heralded prosecution of a Russian troll farm, just days before trial.

Journalist Aaron Mate tweeted, “Apparently Susan Rice just told CNN that Russians might be backing or financing this week’s protests in the US.”

“You cannot make this sh– up,” added Eoin Higgens, a journalist at the progressive outlet Common Dreams, in a post retweeted by Mate. “F—ing deranged.”

Protesters demonstrate police brutality in front of Dallas City Hall in downtown Dallas, Saturday, May 30, 2020. Protests across the country have escalated over the death of George Floyd who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers on Memorial Day. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

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Scattered efforts by the Democrats to condemn some of the protesters have relied on inaccurate information and unfounded assertions that contradict available data and video evidence. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, for example, said Saturday that officials thought “white supremacists” and “out-of-state instigators” could be behind the protests in the wake of Floyd’s death, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz also claimed most of the protesters arrested were from outside Minneapolis and sought to take advantage of the chaos.

“We are now confronting white supremacists, members of organized crime, out of state instigators, and possibly even foreign actors to destroy and destabilize our city and our region,” Frey had tweeted Saturday.

BIG-CITY DEMS LET PROTESTERS FLOUT CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWNS

However, a report by KARE 11 showed “about 86 percent” of the 36 arrests listed their address in Minnesota, and that they live in Minneapolis or the metro area, according to data the outlet analyzed from the Hennepin County Jail’s roster. Five out-of-state cases came from Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, and Missouri.

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter later admitted he was wrong when he falsely claimed that “every person” arrested in Minneapolis protests was from out of state. Frey has not issued a similar retraction, and multiple calls by Fox News to his office seeking comment were met with a busy signal. An emailed message was not immediately returned.

Frey, like many other Democratic local leaders, have struggled to square their push for coronavirus lockdowns with their encouragement for protesters. Frey had warned that in-person worship services would be a “public-health disaster,” disregarding constituents’ concerns that he was violating their First Amendment rights. Now, his administration has been distributing masks to rioters, even though public gatherings of 10 or more are still ostensibly banned.

“The city encourages everyone to exercise caution to stay safe while participating in demonstrations, including wearing masks and physical distancing as much as possible to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” a news release read. “The city has made hundreds of masks available to protesters this week.”

And, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo previously lashed out at protesters calling to reopen the state earlier this month, saying at a news conference, “you have no right to jeopardize my health … and my children’s health and your children’s health.” Cuomo’s directives have been enforced throughout the state: A New York City tanning salon owner told Fox News he was fined $1,000 for reopening briefly last week, calling the situation “insane” and saying he already was “broke.”

CORONAVIRUS TIMELINE SHOWS MEDIA, POLITICIANS’ CHANGING RHETORIC

On Friday, though, Cuomo said he “stands” with those defying stay-at-home orders: “Nobody is sanctioning the arson, and the thuggery and the burglaries, but the protesters and the anger and the fear and the frustration? Yes. Yes, and the demand is for justice.”

In April, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told the Jewish community that “the time for warnings has passed” after he said a funeral gathering had violated social distancing guidelines. On Sunday, the mayor asserted, “We have always honored non-violent protests.”

The mayor of Washington D.C., Muriel Bowser, vowed $5,000 fines or 90 days in jail for anyone violating stay-at-home orders. This weekend, though, Bowser defended the protests: “We are grieving hundreds of years of institutional racism. … People are tired, sad, angry, and desperate for change.” An angry mob of rioters in the city turned its rage on a Fox News crew early Saturday, chasing and pummeling the journalists outside the White House in a harrowing scene captured on video.

And, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti threatened in March to cut power and water for businesses that reopened, saying he wanted to punish “irresponsible and selfish” behavior. In recent days, he has encouraged mass gatherings, even as he condemned the violence. “I will always protect Angelenos’ right to make their voices heard — and we can lead the movement against racism without fear of violence or vandalism,” he said.

Protesters stop and chant “I can’t breathe” as they march northbound on 288 just south of Tuam Street during a demonstration related to the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who died Memorial Day while in the custody of the Minneapolis police, in Houston, Friday, May 29, 2020. (Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle via AP)

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These officials were just some of the most prominent politicians to have adopted strikingly different rhetoric on mass gatherings over Floyd’s death, including several protests that have triggered property damage, injuries, beatings, and several deaths. The mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, has been one of the few politicians to keep up her coronavirus admonitions. “If you were out protesting last night, you probably need to go get a COVID test this week,” she told CNN on Sunday. “There is still a pandemic in America that’s killing black and brown people at higher numbers.”

“Democratically elected officials have now all-but destroyed any remaining political deference in terms of policies needed to enforce social distancing, limit crowd size and the like,” journalist Michael Tracey said.

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He also suggested the protests obfuscated key data, pointing to statistics from The Washington Post showing that a total of 41 unarmed people were shot and killed by U.S. police in 2019 — 19 of them white, nine black and nine Hispanic. Others noted that the “Grim Reaper” who patrolled Florida’s beaches to shame swimmers and sunbathers amid the pandemic was nowhere to be seen at the protests.

“WE LITERALLY STAYED IN OUR HOUSES FOR A MONTH BECAUSE OF FEAR OF A VIRUS WITH A 99.74% SURVIVAL RATE AND NOW ARE SUPPOSED TO IGNORE NATIONAL COP-KILLING RIOTS?!!” Kentucky State political science professor Wilfred Reilly tweeted. “SERIOUS question, as re these riots – where are all these Governors that gave daily three hour press conferences about whether you could walk down the beach or visit your dying relatives? Is the COVID-19 crisis over?”

Four officers have been fired in the Floyd case, and one has been arrested. A video showed the arrested officer kneeling on Floyd for several minutes as he screamed that he could not breathe, although an initial medical examiner’s report found “no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation” — and cited Floyd’s “underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease,” as well as the “potential intoxicants” in his system.

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New York requires people to wear face coverings when in close proximity to others in public. As people grow wearier of the extended lockdown, some residents complain that requirement infringes on individual liberties.

Residents are caught in the middle of a debate over when and where, exactly, it is necessary to wear a mask in a city where COVID-19 has now claimed more than 20,000 lives.

In this Monday, May 11, 2020 photo, a man walks his dog without a face mask in Tompkins Square Park in New York. New York’s governor has ordered masks for anyone out in public who can’t stay at least six feet away from other people. Yet, while the rule is clear, New Yorkers have adopted their own interpretation of exactly when masks are required, especially outdoors. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

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Since April 17, everyone in New York state has been required to wear a face-covering in any place where they can’t stay at least 6 feet away from people who don’t live with them. Only children younger than 2 and people with a medical excuse are exempt.

Yet, while the rule is clear, New Yorkers have adopted their own interpretation of when masks are required.

It isn’t unusual to see groups of park goers and essential workers, even police officers, leaving their masks dangling as they squeeze past people on sidewalks or chat with friends. Masks are, perhaps, most rarely used among people trying to exercise.

In this Monday, May 11, 2020 photo, a jogger wearing a face mask runs in between a biker and a pedestrian not wearing masks as they make their way over the Williamsburg bridge in New York. New York’s governor has ordered masks for anyone out in public who can’t stay at least six feet away from other people. Yet, while the rule is clear, New Yorkers have adopted their own interpretation of exactly when masks are required, especially outdoors. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

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Eric Leventhal, 36, felt a sneeze coming and panicked.

The Brooklynite left his cloth face mask at home for a morning run in a park last week. Walking home, he turned toward an empty street and let the sneeze out, hoping no one would notice.

“I picked my head up and I caught eyes with a woman who was wearing a mask, an older woman,” Leventhal recently said. “She was just kind of shaking her head.”

As warmer weather beckons people outside, more chances emerge for confrontations between mask-wearers and mask doubters.

“Everything is fraught with life and death consequences, and it’s just hard to grapple with that at any one moment,” Leventhal said. “That’s a long way of saying, I should be wearing one, probably, but it’s difficult when you run, so I don’t.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who says people are fine not wearing a mask if they are out walking alone but need to put one on if someone approaches, on Tuesday called the act of masks “reciprocal responsibility.”

Warning that the state isn’t out of danger yet, Cuomo on Tuesday urged New Yorkers to wear masks out of respect for the nurses and doctors who have died to protect people from the pandemic.

He said people should be aware that masks, which are worn to reduce the wearer’s chance of infecting others, are a sign of respect to everyone they walk past, as well as to workers pulling society through the outbreak.

“This mask says, ‘I respect the nurses and doctors who killed themselves through this virus to save other people. And I respect the nurses and the doctors, so I’m not going to infect anyone or allow anyone else to be infected unnecessarily so I don’t cause more stress on the nurses and the doctors,’” Cuomo said.

In this Monday, May 11, 2020 photo, men play ping pong without face masks at Tompkins Square Park in New York. New York’s governor has ordered masks for anyone out in public who can’t stay at least six feet away from other people. Yet, while the rule is clear, New Yorkers have adopted their own interpretation of exactly when masks are required, especially outdoors. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

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Elissa Stein, a 55-year-old activist and graphic designer living in Manhattan, went as far as to make T-shirts with a more profane version of the message “Wear Your Mask.” Stein gets stares when she wears the shirt, but she said it’s worth it given the stakes.

“It shouldn’t be something that you take lightly,” she said. “This is not a joke.”

There are no fines, under the state rule, for not wearing a mask. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he favors education over enforcement, pledging to distribute 7.5 million masks to the public.

The personal politics of masks caught up to Norm Scott, 63, of Brooklyn, when he got heat on one website for saying studies show the risk of the virus spreading outdoors, compared to indoors, is minimal. Scott said he merely wanted to bring perspective to the situation.

“I’m not telling people to not wear a mask,” said Scott, who says he, too, wears one in public.

But, he added, “posting on a public forum about how runners or millennials are going to infect us is ridiculous. … I believe in social responsibility. I don’t believe in social shaming.”

CORONAVIRUS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

In this Monday, May 11, 2020 photo, a couple, not wearing face masks, sit at a distance from each other on a park bench in Tompkins Square Park in New York. New York’s governor has ordered masks for anyone out in public who can’t stay at least six feet away from other people. Yet, while the rule is clear, New Yorkers have adopted their own interpretation of exactly when masks are required, especially outdoors. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

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In Brooklyn, Dovid Shlomo Halevi Kurtz, 69, said he doesn’t feel any guilt about being barefaced. He is confident in God’s plan, he said. Also, the mask fogs up his glasses.

“I can’t breathe and then I can’t see, what good is that?” Kurtz said after finishing a walk in Prospect Park with gloves on — but no mask. “Should I wear them? No. I don’t have (COVID-19), I’m not giving it to anybody and I’m not getting it.”

Besides, he said, “It’s like a car accident, God forbid, or a lightning bolt. If God wants you to have it, you’ll have it. If God doesn’t want you to have it, you won’t have it.”

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The state Senate voted 38-24 in favor of the so-called “Reproductive Health Act” Tuesday evening, the Albany Times-Union reports, a bill that has repeatedly cleared the state Assembly in years past but been blocked by the formerly-Republican Senate. Following the Senate vote, the Assembly passed it 92-47.

The bill declares that “Every individual who becomes pregnant has the fundamental right to choose to carry the pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to have an abortion,” erases the state’s recognition of preborn babies older than 24 weeks as potential homicide victims, removes abortion from the penal code entirely, and allows licensed health practitioners other than full doctors to commit abortions.

URGENT: Tell Gov. Cuomo to apologize for using World Trade Center to celebrate abortion. Sign the petition here.

“We have a president who’s made it very, very clear that he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins declared before the vote. “Today, here in New York, we are saying no […] and we’re not just saying no. We’re saying that here in New York, women’s health matters. We’re saying here in New York, women’s lives matter. We’re saying here in New York, women’s decisions matter.”

The Times-Union suggests the bill would allow “late-stage” abortions only if the mother’s “health” is endangered or if the baby is deemed non-viable, but the New York State Right to Life Committee warns that the bill would go much further in practice.

Declaring abortion a “fundamental right” opens the door to invalidating “any limits on abortion” and “mandat[ing that everyone take part in the culture of death,” the group warns. The bill would also prevent pregnant women whose babies are killed in violent attacks from seeing justice, and have the effect of “authorizing infanticide” by repealing the requirement that a second physician be on hand in the event that an attempted abortion past 20 weeks yields a live infant.

The bill is also part of a broader trend of left-wing states codifying a “right” to abortion in anticipation of a future Supreme Court ruling that could reverse Roe, restoring states’ ability to ban abortion themselves and automatically banning it in the handful of states with pre-Roe bans still on the books.

“To see New York pass a bill so that right is protected, is just a dream come true,” said Sarah Ragle Weddington, an attorney who represented Norma “Jane Roe” McCorvey in the original case. The Times-Union does not mention that Weddington’s former client became pro-life in 1995 and dedicated the rest of her life to opposing Roe.

New York’s Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has vowed to promote abortion as part of “the most progressive agenda this state have ever seen,” is expected to sign the bill.

Source: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/new-york-legislature-votes-to-protect-roe-legalize-abortion-up-to-birth

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Watching FBI agent Peter Strzok battle with Congress, my initial reaction was pure anger. His repeated, arrogant insistence that he had done nothing wrong despite tons of evidence to the contrary convinced me he deserved immediate firing — if not the firing squad.

Gradually, though, anger gave way to amazement as Strzok grew increasingly combative and condescending. Given his predicament, the sneering and smirking were stupid, and yet he persisted.

Who is this jerk, I wondered, and how in the hell did he get to be a big shot at the FBI? And why are taxpayers still paying for the privilege of his malignant presence on the FBI payroll?

My answers can be summarized in four names: James Comey, Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray. They are chief culprits in the death of public trust in the Department of Justice.

The cause of death was murder, and it was an inside job.

Strzok, whose voluminous texts with his office lover show him to be a king of partisan bias, rose to leadership positions under former FBI Director Comey — and it shows. Comey’s self-righteousness was his ultimate undoing, but not before he led the agency into a double death grip of corruption and rank partisanship.

Blinded by his own ambition, Comey brushed aside superiors, rules and maybe laws while giving Hillary Clinton a free pass and turning the screws on Donald Trump. Comey defends himself by saying he sought to protect the FBI’s independence, as if it — and he — are a fourth branch of government that is beyond accountability from the other three.

In the end, he disgraced the agency and himself, though he gained consolation in the millions he made by selling his book to Trump haters.

But the FBI didn’t stink only from the head — Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, also was fired, and could be prosecuted for allegedly being dishonest with investigators about a media leak.

Strzok appears to be a chip off the Comey/McCabe block. Like them, he insists he is committed to the FBI’s high standards, but his reprehensible conduct makes a mockery of his claims.

His stated contempt for Trump and his promise to stop him from becoming president render Strzok unfit to be a dogcatcher.

But, aping his mentors, he nonetheless demands his denials of wrongdoing be accepted as if his integrity is self-evident. All three believe they are entitled to trust and respect, without having to earn or return either.

Which brings us to Sessions, Rosenstein and Wray. How can they stomach the likes of Strzok and refuse to clean the stables?

Sessions, as attorney general, is nominally the boss over his deputy, Rosenstein, and FBI Director Wray. But by recusing himself from anything related to the 2016 campaign, Sessions abdicated the most important part of his job.

As I have said, his appointment was Trump’s biggest mistake, one that denied the president and the nation a functioning attorney general. The most critical result is the unchecked and apparently endless investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Speaking of which, breathes there a soul who believes the timing of Mueller’s latest batch of ghost indictments of Russians has nothing to do with Trump’s planned meeting with Vladimir Putin? The timing shows Rosenstein, who announced the charges, and Mueller are neck deep in politics by trying to force Trump to confront Putin about the meddling charges.

Is that their job? Would they embarrass and try to box in Barack Obama or any other president?

Their decision persuades me both harbor suspicion of Trump’s legitimacy, and thus feel entitled to abuse their powers to wade into issues that are none of their business. In that way, they are no better than Comey, McCabe and Strzok — applying a double standard of law enforcement based on their personal views. That makes them, at the least, allies of the resistance.

Rosenstein’s stonewalling conduct toward Congress over Russia-probe documents is especially suspicious. Claims he threatened members and their staffs ring true, and, if they are, it means he lied under oath when he denied making any threats.

But, thanks to the somnolent Sessions, we can add Rosenstein to the long list of those above accountability. A real attorney general — oh, what’s the use? Sessions is not a real attorney general and never will be.

Then there is Comey’s successor, Wray. He looks as if he wandered into the wrong movie theater and can’t find the exit.

He defined himself as unwilling to tackle the mess he inherited by downplaying the devastating inspector general report on the handling of the Clinton investigation. While conceding the findings made it “clear we’ve got some work to do,” he minimized them by saying, “It’s focused on a specific set of events back in 2016, and a small number of FBI employees connected with those events. Nothing in the report impugns the integrity of our workforce as a whole, or the FBI as an institution.”

Baloney. While it’s true only a fraction of the total employees were singled out, they were the director of the FBI, his top deputy, the deputy’s top lawyer and Strzok, the head of counterintelligence.

Others were also faulted, but not named, including an agent who tried to get his son a job on Clinton’s campaign while sending campaign boss John Podesta “heads up” emails.

And so the corruption of the Justice Department proceeds, unmolested by actual justice. The voter revolution of 2016 has more work to do.

In up to his wa$te

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is a slow learner. Despite two massive corruption cases growing out of his economic development boondoggles, the governor continues to act as if he knows the secret sauce for revitalizing local economies across the state. And reflecting his re-election campaign, he’s inflating the rhetoric.

Cuomo’s office recently sent a flurry of press releases announcing “transformational projects” and taxpayer-funded developments. Batavia, Cortland, Hudson, Hicksville, Rome, Kingston and even the South Bronx got his magic wand waved over their problems.

If past is prologue, scammers, especially Cuomo confidants and big donors, will reap the benefits, followed by investigations, indictments and convictions.

Can’t he just stop?

Blas schooled

Comes now another sign that Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is waking up to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s education shell games.

Following a lawsuit, City Hall reneged on a plan to allow a Success Academy middle school to occupy the same space one of its elementary schools used, leaving students and families in limbo. Adams, a Democrat, met with parents and blasted City Hall for making the “situation worse.”

Earlier, Adams initially supported de Blasio’s attempt to end the specialized high school test. But after meeting with Asian parents angered over the plan, Adams withdrew his support.

Speak up, parents. Finally, somebody is listening.

Source: https://nypost.com/2018/07/14/peter-strzoks-arrogance-is-the-product-of-a-corrupt-fbi/

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