By Peter Barry Chowka
EXCLUSIVE: On his Fox News program Friday night, June 1, 2018, Sean Hannity made a startling comment. For the past year, Hannity, the #1 host on cable television news, has been doggedly pursuing the truth about the attempts of the previous administration and the Deep State to block and then to negate the election of Donald Trump in 2016. A variety of “kill shots” have been aimed at Hannity’s reputation during the past year, with the intent of having him removed from the air. To date, none of these efforts has succeeded.
On Friday, before he broke major new news with the help of journalists John Solomon and Sara Carter, Hannity stopped and directly addressed his audience. From the program’s transcript:
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: And by the way, great news for me tonight. Pay close attention. Remember when Senator Chuck Schumer said that you better not mess with the Intel Community because they will get you six ways to Sunday? This is great news for me. Best-selling author, Jerome Corsi, he’s the author of this book out now in book stores, on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com. It’s called “Killing the Deep State.”
You might remember him. He was back — remember, the group against John Kerry, Vietnam Vets for Truth? He was one of them. He’s saying that yours truly, that I, Sean Hannity, am the next target of the deep state.
Wow. Isn’t it so great to know that these corrupt officials with their backs against the wall that are desperate people, who do desperate things, and people that have the most powerful tools of intelligence, are now going after me? OK. Really? So sadly, after all we have learned, now we have Jerome Corsi’s prediction. It doesn’t surprise me. Isn’t that sad? Are we the United States of America, or are we going to be the former Soviet Union or are we going to be Venezuela? I promise you this one thing, I’m never stopping ever.
Here to help break down this damming new report, is “The Hill’s” John Solomon.
John, good to see you, sir.
JOHN SOLOMON, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL VIDEO, THE HILL: Good to see you.
HANNITY: Quick question. Do you think that Corsi could be right?
SOLOMON: I don’t know. I hope not. I hope that people stay within the law at all times. Right? You don’t want to see —
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Haven’t you been told by people that you – certain things were happening to you?
SOLOMON: There are times people have raised questions about reporters like myself surveilled. And in the past, the FBI did illegally intercept my mail 10 years ago. There’s a public record of the FBI apologizing to me for taking my mail after I broke all the stories about what the FBI knew before 9/11.
HANNITY: Yes. That’s pretty scary. Again, if that is the case, if people who are trying to get to the truth and exposing corruption then become targets of the deep state and those that have these tools of intelligence, you can say good-bye to the Constitution. It doesn’t exist.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: And by the way –
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: – you might have been unmasked, right?
SOLOMON: Don’t know. I don’t have evidence of it. And I try –
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: You’ve been told it.
SOLOMON: Yes, I got a report.
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. He is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. Follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.
By Peter Barry Chowka
Recently, a question was raised during my appearance on The Hagmann Report. The questioner asked if I saw any parallels between the effort that resulted in President Richard Nixon’s resignation after impeachment hearings that resulted from his involvement in the Watergate scandal and other crimes and the current effort on the part of the Shadow Government, most of the mainstream media, and the left to force President Donald J. Trump from office because of alleged collusion with the Russians, or more recently, alleged obstruction of justice.
The answer is yes – and no. Notwithstanding the 45 years separating the two presidents, there are some major similarities and some differences, as well.
I was a young student journalist in the nation’s capital during the Watergate and impeachment period. Armed with an official D.C. Metropolitan Police press pass, I was able to cover and report on political events in Washington, D.C. like any other accredited journalist. Being young and with a lot of energy and an insatiable interest in politics and current events, I took full advantage of the access.
One similarity of the political climate then vs. now is that the left and much of the mainstream media – but not as much of the media as today – opposed the POTUS – both #37 and #45 – right from when he first declared his candidacy. With Nixon, that was in 1967 and with Trump, June 2015. Nixon was attacked and caricatured by leading commentators and political cartoonists alike, as he had been since he burst on the national scene in 1950. “Tricky Dick,” a label slapped on Nixon by his Democrat opponent in the 1950 race for the U.S. senate in California, was the most commonly used sobriquet. Cartoonists emphasized Nixon’s prominent nose and dark eyebrows to give him a sinister and devious look.
The left, which was extremely powerful and highly visible in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, hated Nixon and routinely attacked him especially in the large, frequent anti-Vietnam War demonstrations that persisted beyond the sixties. One of them in Washington, D.C., in October 1971, was titled “Evict Nixon.” The event’s organizers, including Chicago 7 defendant and leftist superstar agitator Rennie Davis, claimed that hundreds of thousands of demonstrators would descend on the nation’s capital and march to the White House to physically “evict Nixon.” The demonstration was a bust as only a few hundred people showed up, their numbers dwarfed by security forces.
Similarly, Donald J. Trump has been widely mocked and dismissed – not only by the left and the press, but by many members of his own Republican party – since he declared for president in June 2015. The criticism of Trump has escalated since he was elected and took office, on a scale never seen before in modern times. Although the attacks on Trump are more intense than the ones lobbed at Nixon decades ago, the similarity is that both men have been subjected to frequent and sustained attacks by their enemies.
A major difference then vs. now involves the nature of the political climate and the demographic makeup of the country in the early 1970s vs. today. While the left made a lot of noise 4 ½ decades ago, the country as a whole back then was more homogeneous and center right and far less polarized (except among the youth). It had taken a sharp, temporary left turn in 1964 with the election of Lyndon Baines Johnson to his first full term as president but that was due to a number of anomalous factors. President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated less than a year before the 1964 election, and by the time of the 1964 presidential campaign the nation was still in shock. Johnson reassured the nervous and unnerved electorate, promising stability and continuity.
The defining line from Johnson’s first address to the Congress and the nation on November 27, 1963 was “Let Us Continue.” The speech came to be known as the “Let Us Continue” address. From the outset of his accidental presidency, Johnson pretended to be a moderate Democrat when in reality he had transformed himself from a good ol’ boy of the conservative South to a big government ultra liberal statist. In his push for a War on Poverty, Medicare, and civil rights legislation, Johnson, after he was sworn in on January 20, 1965, would really start to show his true colors. Johnson thought that by championing civil rights and poverty programs, more passionately than his predecessor JFK, he would go down in history like a modern day Abraham Lincoln. But instead of finishing the job that Lincoln started but was never able to complete, Lyndon Johnson – in one of the greatest miscalculations of all time – only made it worse by advocating and institutionalizing an endless number of expensive new government programs that in reality compounded the problems facing African-Americans.
Johnson’s Republican opponent in 1964, Arizona Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, was a staunch conservative and was anathema to the Democrat and Republican mainstreams and the powerful East Coast Establishment. Goldwater was demeaned and lied about in 1964, including in MSM stories that were fake. With ongoing help from the media, Johnson won the ‘64 election in a landslide. His subsequent mishandling of the Vietnam War during the next three years, however, helped to destroy his presidency.
Having lost two previous elections – for president in 1960 and California governor in 1962 – in 1967-’68 Richard Nixon in a remarkable comeback had remade himself as the “New Nixon,” and skillfully used the television medium, which had not been kind to him against JFK in 1960, to his advantage. Nixon in 1968 was actually more telegenic than his opponent, the frumpy old school Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, who was saddled with the mistakes of the Johnson Administration that he had loyally served and defended.
After Nixon assumed power in January 1969, the Silent Majority, as his administration termed it – defined as mainstream, traditional center right Americans – notwithstanding all the noise and periodic demonstrations and street violence from the left, was the dominant political force in the country. Proof of this fact was Nixon’s landslide victory in November 1972 against his Democrat opponent, the progressive anti-war Sen. George S. McGovern. McGovern won the popular vote in only one state, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia. Nixon ran as a moderate center right incumbent.
Another similarity between then and now involves the role of the media in unraveling the Nixon presidency and attempting to do the same for President Trump. After the bungled Watergate break in – the attempted bugging of Democrat party headquarters on June 17, 1972 by Republican operatives – it was a slow but inexorable drip drip drip of damaging information until the Nixon regime was taken down. Nixon handed his enemies a smoking gun: the secret tapes he had recorded of his interactions in the White House and on the telephone with his aides over a period of years. Nixon was heard suborning perjury and obstructing justice. It remains to be seen if the ever escalating myopic concentration of the MSM on Trump and his supposed crimes, with purported obstruction of justice now being run up the flagpole, will bear similar fruit.
After the failure of a year of the “Russia collusion” narrative to produce a viable Nixon-like smoking gun to implicate Trump, his enemies are now proffering several new narratives, centering around obstruction of justice involving the POTUS. The latest one as of this writing involves a tweet by Trump in which he wrote that he fired his national security advisor Gen. Michael Flynn last February after he learned that Flynn had lied to Vice President Pence and the FBI. Analysis of the tweet (which the White House said later was written by one of Trump’s attorneys) by Trump’s critics immediately had them suggesting the possibility that Trump had obstructed justice when he asked then-FBI Director James Comey, who he later fired, to go easy on Gen. Flynn.
Where this is all going remains to be seen. Where it will wind up cannot be predicted. Anyone among the commentariat who claims that she can predict the outcome is lying. It seems that we are not even to the mid-point of the relentless and growing attempt to remove President Trump from office, one way or the other. That hoped-for scenario, and the left’s dedication to its success (the left today encompasses almost every major element of American society), is similar to the one that saw Nixon go from a historic electoral victory and high approval ratings in November 1972 to his certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and an ignominious resignation from the presidency less than two years later.
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. Peter’s latest video interview on The Hagmann Report on Dec. 1, 2017 can be watched here. Follow Peter on Twitter @pchowka.
By Peter Barry Chowka
On Tuesday morning, August 1, 2017, the dormant cold case of the violent murder of Seth Rich suddenly came back to life, or to renewed public attention at least, with the filing of a civil complaint, a.k.a. a lawsuit, in a federal court in New York. The plaintiff (accuser) is Rod Wheeler, a Fox News contributor and former Washington, D.C. homicide detective, and the defendants are the Fox News Channel, 21st Century Fox, Malia Zimmerman, a Fox News investigative reporter, and Ed Butowsky.
NPR broke the story in a long article at its Web site at 7:23 PM EDT and in a six-minute report on its Morning Edition program that aired nationally around the same time.
The Fox News Channel and a wealthy supporter of President Trump [Butowsky] worked in concert under the watchful eye of the White House to concoct a story about the death of a young Democratic National Committee aide, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The explosive claim is part of a lawsuit filed against Fox News by Rod Wheeler, a longtime paid commentator for the news network. The suit was obtained exclusively by NPR.
Wheeler alleges Fox News and the Trump supporter intended to deflect public attention from growing concern about the administration’s ties to the Russian government. His suit charges that a Fox News reporter created quotations out of thin air and attributed them to him to propel her story.
This story as it evolved and grew during the day on August 1 is extremely complicated and convoluted. It quickly became a lead story on CNN where it was given an incendiary spin (“Fox News concocted Seth Rich story with oversight from White House”) and was widely and similarly reported in other mainstream media. It looked like it might become a story with legs, another arrow in the quiver of the “Resist Trump” movement. This heightened attention was to be expected as Wheeler’s lawsuit appeared to add weight to skepticism that Seth Rich’s unsolved murder near his apartment in the early morning hours of July 10, 2016 was just a robbery gone bad and not part of a larger conspiracy involving his employer, the Democratic National Committee, at a critical time in the 2016 election campaign.
On the Hagmann Report, Tuesday August 1, 2017, I appeared as a last-minute guest from 8:45 PM until approximately 9:10 PM ET to discuss these latest developments in the case. The recording of the program is here, and I appear at the 1 hour 45 minute and 50 second point. I said then that I would prepare an article with links to primary sources of information for people interested in the case and the new developments. This is the article and the links will come near the end of it.
At this point, as a summary and basic introduction to the subject of the Seth Rich case, I will quote from an article that I wrote for American Thinker on May 30, 2017. That article was primarily about Fox News but it included reporting and analysis of the Seth Rich case up to that point.
What should be kept in mind now on August 1, 2017 is that these latest developments in the story that broke today should not be seen in a vacuum or in isolation, rather as pieces of a larger puzzle involving efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the Fox News channel and ultimately the viability of the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
From May 30, 2017:
The issue here is of the unsolved murder last summer of Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich. Rich, 27, was fatally shot in the back by unknown assailants as he was walking home to his apartment in Washington, D.C. in the early morning hours of July 10, 2016. According to an article in the New York Daily News on July 11, 2016, citing information from Seth Rich’s father, D.C. Metropolitan Police were reported to be investigating Rich’s death as a robbery. But technically a robbery did not occur since nothing of value was taken from Rich after he was shot. Curiously, the same article also states “There is no immediate indication that robbery was a motive in the attack, police said, but it has not been ruled out as a possibility.”
An IT professional with a passion for politics, Seth Conrad Rich was the Voter Expansion Data Director at the DNC. According to Fox News’s January 10, 2017 story, “Rich would have had access to sensitive DNC information. His main duty at the DNC was to build an online system to get out the vote.” Reports began to emerge after the shooting of Rich that he might have been the source of 20,000 embarrassing internal DNC documents, showing collusion between the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign, that wound up being published by Wikileaks on the eve of the Democrat National Convention in late July. Recently, these initially unconfirmed reports about some kind of relationship between Seth Rich and Wikileaks have gained new currency and momentum.
On May 15, 2017, Fox News channel 5 in D.C. reported that Rod Wheeler, a former D.C. police homicide detective and a Fox News contributor who was independently investigating Rich’s death on behalf of the young man’s family, went on the record with allegations confirming many of the suspicions about the official investigation of Seth Rich’s murder, including a new claim that the D.C. police were instructed to “stand down on this case.” On May 16, Fox News in New York also reported the story based on Wheeler’s account. An identical version of the May 16 Fox News story republished the same day by the New York Post, which is owned by the same company that owns Fox News, is archived here, but on May 23, in a highly unusual move, Fox News retracted its story one week after publication and removed it from the Fox News Website.
The Fox News retraction, the “backtracking” on elements of the story by Wheeler himself, and the emotionally charged objections by the Rich family to any more outside investigations and reporting about Seth Rich’s death, provided fuel to the fire stoked by the mainstream media, which had already dismissed any and all questions that were being raised about Rich’s murder and its possible links to the purloined DNC documents and Wikileaks as illegitimate, irresponsible, and “conspiracy theories.”
The mainstream media initially downplayed Rich’s death and only began reporting about it again when new questions began to be asked – while dismissing the questioners in hundreds if not thousands of critical stories. A typical example of the latter appeared May 22 in Foreign Policy, the influential organ of the Council on Foreign Relations, with author Max Boot decrying Fox News in particular for being “morally bankrupt” and guilty of “conspiracy mongering” for its reporting in the Rich murder case. Meanwhile, the reporting that has reopened and advanced the story has been done primarily by alternative conservative media, including most recently by Alicia Powe writing at World Net Daily (WND).
Sean Hannity interviewed Rod Wheeler live on his Fox News channel program on May 16, 2017, giving prominence to the new information that Wheeler was bringing forward. One week later on May 23, after Fox News had retracted its story, Hannity, speaking on his nationally syndicated radio show, insisted “I am not Fox.com or Fox News.com. I retracted nothing.” Later that evening on his Fox News program, after having promised that he would present new information relating to the case, Hannity announced instead that he was backing off the story “for now” in deference to the wishes of the Rich family. These developments set the stage for a doubling down of the onslaught targeting Hannity by the mainstream media and left-wing advocacy groups like Media Matters for America, with Hannity’s enemies moving in for the “kill shot,” as he termed it, by employing the tactic of the sponsor boycott. (Ultimately, the advertiser boycott against Hannity did not succeed.)
Meanwhile, investigations into the death of Rich are proceeding, mainly on the part of independent journalists. An exception were two reports broadcast by One America News Network (OAN) on May 19, “Who Killed Seth Rich? Investigating the DNC Staffer’s Suspicious Murder.” Video of the the first of the two OAN reports can be viewed here (Part 1).
At the conclusion of Part 2, OAN reporter Pearson Sharp said:
For now there are no clear answers as to who killed Seth Rich – or why. Police have called it a robbery, but have no proof. There is growing evidence that it was something much more than a mugging gone wrong… It’s not just one coincidence, or two. It’s dozens. And they trace their way all the way to the highest brains of the DNC. Yes, it could be a coincidence that the officers were wearing body cameras but the footage apparently can’t be found. It could be a coincidence that the attending physician has direct ties to [one of] Hillary’s right hand [men]… And it could be a coincidence that Seth’s father said that a security camera from a small convenience store across the street captured video of their son collapsing at the feet of two men and that the police say that now that footage doesn’t exist. But the question we must ask ourselves now is at what point does one coincidence – or 100 – add up to something approaching the truth.
The Larger Picture
The case of Seth Rich’s death is not simply a footnote in this larger story about Fox News. If it is true that Rich, acting as a principled whistle blower – rather than some Russian government hack colluding with Donald Trump’s associates – was the source of the initial document dump that wound up impeding Hillary Clinton’s chances in her 2016 presidential election campaign against Donald Trump, then that is big news. A confirmed connection between Seth Rich and Wikileaks would seriously challenge the overwhelming and to date largely successful mainstream/Deep State meme that representatives of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians to disseminate internal DNC documents with the intention of harming the Democrat opposition. The whole “Trump has colluded with the Russians” party line that has dominated political discourse for months on end could go up in smoke.
The stakes in terms of how this story ultimately plays out couldn’t be higher and the mind boggles at the possible outcomes.
Back to the future now – August 1, 2017 – and Rod Wheeler has done more today than simply backtrack. Here are some popular current or recent valuable news accounts and links to primary sources that should shed some additional light on the case.
Original Fox5 D.C. story (video) featuring Rod Wheeler May 15, 2017
P.I. hired to investigate the death of Seth Rich says he can prove Rich in talks with Wikileaks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEmlOglCPFE
Original Fox5 D.C. story (print) featuring Rod Wheeler May 15, 2017
http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/254852337-story
New Evidence Suggests Seth Rich Was DNC Leaker
Rich had access to leaked DNC emails – Part 1 of in-depth, investigative report into Rich’s murder
Jerome Corsi | Infowars.com May 30, 2017
https://www.infowars.com/new-evidence-suggests-seth-rich-was-dnc-leaker/
Seth Rich Mystery: DNC Leaks Came From Inside, Not Russian Hackers
Evidence reveals emails leaks an inside job not due to hacking – Part 2 of in-depth, investigative report into Rich’s murder
Jerome Corsi | Infowars.com – May 30, 2017
https://www.infowars.com/seth-rich-mystery-dnc-leaks-came-from-inside-not-russian-hackers/
Evidence Backs Claim Pro-Bernie Seth Rich Was DNC Leaker
Wikileaks emails an inside job to get back at Hillary, evidence suggests – Part 3 of in-depth, investigative report into Rich’s murder
Jerome Corsi | Infowars.com – May 30, 2017
https://www.infowars.com/evidence-backs-claim-pro-bernie-seth-rich-was-dnc-leaker/
Hannity Fox News Channel Transcript May 16, 2017 – Rod Wheeler, guest
http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2017/05/16/where-is-outrage-over-leaks-about-president-gorka-fake-news-now-dishonest-news.html
Video of Rod Wheeler Interviewed by Sean Hannity, Fox News, May 16, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmUOdBda9vU
NB: Audio: Rod Wheeler Explains Fox News Fiasco, Claims Brother Blocked WikiLeaks Inquiries
Tue August 1st, 2017 3:08 pm EST
http://bigleaguepolitics.com/audio-rod-wheeler-explains-fox-news-fiasco-claims-brother-blocked-wikileaks-inquiries/
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who writes about national politics, media, popular culture, and health care. He is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and recently he has started to contribute to the Hagmann Report, including exclusive original articles like this one. His new Web site is AltMedNews.net. Peter’s July 28, 2017 90-minute interview on The Hagmann Report can be watched here.
By Douglas J. Hagmann
If you watch and listen carefully to the 20-minute, 14 April 2011 interview of Barack Hussein Obama by George Stephanopoulos, you will notice something very telling that takes place during that interview when the discussion shifts to the issue of Donald Trump and ultimately, the “birther conspiracy.” Veteran investigators who are experienced in interviewing and interrogating suspects, witnesses, criminals, and non-criminals have undoubtedly identified numerous big red flags of deception precisely when expected, and in textbook fashion. To observe this in action, begin watching the video at about the 13:25 minute mark, when Stephanopoulos lobs the following softball, leading question to Obama and receives his answer[ii]:
George Stephanopoulos: I wonder how you size up your potential opponents? I mean all of us have been struck by Donald Trump rising to the top of the Republican field by feeding fantasies about your background. What do you make of that?
First, note that Stephanopoulos sets a friendly tone for easy rebuttal by Obama to anyone believing that anything might be amiss with regard to Obama’s eligibility. He asks a leading question that automatically suggests that any reference to the “birther issue” as raised by Donald Trump is a “fantasy.” Accordingly, Obama should be able to handle the question without any obvious stress or difficulty. But here’s exactly where the difficult-to-control verbal and non-verbal clues of deception take over. First, read his response:
President Obama: Well you know, I think that over the last two and a half years there’s been an effort to go at me in a way that is politically expedient in the short-term for Republicans. But creates, I think a problem for them when they want to actually run in a general election where most people feel pretty confident the President was born where he says he was, in Hawaii. (LAUGHS) He—he doesn’t have horns. We may disagree with him on some issues and we may wish that you know, the unemployment rate was coming down faster and we want him to know his plan on gas prices. But we’re not really worrying about conspiracy theories or—or birth certificates. And so—I—I think it presents a problem for them. But, look I right now have such a big day job that I am not yet focused on what’s happening on the other side. There’ll be a time where I’m—I’m very focused on it. [emphasis added]
In this answer alone, notice how Obama shifts from speaking in the first person to suddenly referring to himself in the third person or as “the President.” Naysayers, apologists, and supporters of all types will undoubtedly refute or even mock this investigator’s observations and the premise that switching from talking in the first person (i.e., using “I”) to the third person is meaningless. Alone, it might very well be, but now watch the entire interview or consult the transcript and note the number of times Obama answers a question by referring to himself in the first person. Now compare your findings with the above paragraph.
Recently, pundits at Fox News actually counted the number of times Barack Obama used the word “I” in a recent speech about Libya. It was excessive, they opined, and typical of Obama. The number of times Obama referred to himself in the first person in this interview appeared consistent with the subject matter and the questions asked until the issue of his birth certificate was raised.
One of the best indicators of deception is one’s evasiveness of answers or simply not fully addressing the crux of the matter or answering the question posed. Obama knows very well that the issue in this instance, “bracketed” by this question, is his refusal to release his long-form birth certificate, which Trump is known for demanding. Admittedly, Stephanopoulos did not directly ask Obama about his birth certificate and used the general term “background” instead.
Nonetheless, instead of addressing that issue head-on, even in this friendly environment, Obama reverts to the use of a non-sequitur by adding that “…he doesn’t have horns.” He then reverts back to addressing the entire issue as a “conspiracy theory,” specifically mentioning his birth certificate out of the context of the question. His evasiveness is smooth but obvious. Now note that Obama continues to refer to himself as “he” or in the third person for the remainder of the question.
Notice when Obama answers the above question, there is excessive eye blinking, which is an involuntary stress indicator. When answering this question, one can count over sixty-(60) eye blinks during his short answer on this specific topic.
Additionally, note that Obama laughs directly in the middle of his answer and at a critical point in delivering his response, which is also a non-verbal sign of deception. Further analysis of his facial expression, including micro-expressions, indicates a false or forced laugh or one that is not genuine and does not involve all of his facial muscles.
As I’ve previously indicated in various CFP radio segments[iii] and on the nationally syndicated “The Roth Show,” I’ve interviewed a wide range of individuals, from prisoners in Attica State Penitentiary to the residents of some of the most expensive homes in the country during my 26-year career as a professional investigator. I also hold multiple law-enforcement-related certifications, including those involving interviewing and interrogation techniques, the identification of verbal and non-verbal deception, and certifications in numerous other related subjects related to behavioral analysis and the identification of micro-expressions in lie and stress detection.
As the title of this article indicates, it is my professional analysis that the verbal and non-verbal indicators of deception are not only present in this interview but are “off the charts” and offer a classic textbook example of the same. Obviously, Obama did not take this opportunity to clear up this matter when provided the opportunity, even in this non-hostile venue. Clearly then, we should expect nothing different should he ever be compelled to prove his constitutional eligibility in a not-so-friendly venue.
Note to the reader: The basis of my conclusions arise from a complete review of the entire 19-minute, 25-second video, isolating the clips where the camera was pointed directly at Obama and not at the interviewer. Additionally, various clips from Obama’s campaign speeches and candid interviews about general matters were used as a baseline for this analysis.
[ii] Transcript credit ABC News, “George’s Bottom Line”, page two
[iii] CFP Radio, The Hagmann & Hagmann Report, blogtalkradio.com/cfp-radio
