Judicial Watch Sues for Soros Documents – Files FOIA Lawsuits Against State Department and USAID for Records about Funding and Political Activities of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations in Romania and Colombia

Judicial Watch now has four FOIA lawsuits relating to the Obama administration’s funding for Soros’ Open Society Foundations operations 

 

Judicial Watch

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for records relating to their funding of the political activities of the Soros Open Society Foundations of Romania (Judicial Watch v. U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:18-cv-00667)) and the Soros Open Society Foundations of Colombia (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:18-cv-00668)).

The Soros Open Society Foundations of Romania lawsuit was filed after State and USAID failed to substantively respond to an October 16, 2017, FOIA request seeking among other records:

• All records relating to any contracts, grants or other allocations/disbursements of funds by the State Department to the Open Society Foundation – Romania and/or its personnel and/or any OSFR subsidiary or affiliate.
• All assessments, evaluations, reports or similar records relating to the work of Open Society Foundation – Romania and/or its subsidiaries or affiliated organizations.

The Soros Open Society Foundations of Colombia lawsuit was filed after State failed to respond to an October 23, 2017, FOIA request seeking among other records:

• All records regarding any contracts, grants or other allocations/disbursements of funds by the State Department to the Open Society Foundation – Colombia and/or any OSF subsidiaries/affiliates, and/or OSF personnel operating in Colombia, as well as the following entities: Fundacion Ideas para la Paz; La Silla Vacia; DeJusticia; Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris; Paz y Reconciliacion; Global Drug Policy Program; and news portal Las Dos Orillas.
• All records of communication, whether by e-mails, text messages, or instant chats, between any officials, employees or representatives of the State Department in Colombia, including Ambassador Kevin Whitaker and any officials, employees or representatives of the Open Society Foundation, its subsidiaries/affiliates, and/or those entities identified in the first bullet.

As in other parts of the world, a number of Soros-funded entities and projects in Romania are also funded by the United States Government. The Romanian Center for Independent Journalism, which is supported by the Open Society Institute in New York, recently received $17,000 from the State Department.

In February 2017, Laura Silber of Open Society Foundations reportedly condemned “illiberal governments” in the Balkans, such as Macedonia, Albania and Romania, for working against the Soros NGOs. In Romania, in March 2017, the leader of the governing party reportedly charged that the Soros foundations “that he has funded since 1990 have financed evil.”

Soros’ NGOs in Colombia are reportedly receiving millions from USAID:

Verdad Abierta, a web-based portal created by Teresa Ronderos, director of the Open Society Program on Independent Journalism, boasts on its website that it receives support from USAID. Abierta has helped rewrite Colombia’s history, elevating terrorists to the same level as the legitimate police and military forces, and rebranding decades of massacres, kidnappings, child soldiering, and drug trafficking by a criminal syndicate as simply “50 years of armed conflict.”

Fundacion Ideas para la Paz, once led by peace negotiator Sergio Jaramillo, now a member of the oversight “junta,” is funded by the Open Society Foundations and has received more than $200,000 in U.S. tax dollars.

The left-wing news portal La Silla Vacia, another Open Society initiative, also boasts of being a USAID grantee. Its columnist, Rodrigo Uprimny, whose NGO DeJusticia also partners with USAID and Open Society, is considered one of the architects of the peace deal.

Former National Liberation Army terrorist Leon Valencia—Open Society collaborator and grantee—has received at least $1,000,000 in USAID funding through his NGOs Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris and Paz y Reconciliacion, and left-wing news portal Las Dos Orillas, which he co-founded.

In 2016, Soros’ Open Society Foundations gave more than $3.3 million to organizations operating in Colombia. Several of those organizations have also been financially supported by the United States government, having received more than $5 million from the Department of State, USAID, and the Inter-American Foundation (a federal agency) in recent years. One of the Soros-funded entities, an LGBT advocacy organization, was also selected by the Inter-American Foundation as a partner organization in its Colombia peace project initiative.

“It is time for Americans to be allowed to see State Department documentation regarding the public funding of Soros’ Open Society Foundations,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The billionaire George Soros needs zero assistance from taxpayers to promote his far-left agenda abroad.”

Judicial Watch now has three FOIA lawsuits relating to the Obama administration’s funding for Soros’ operations. Judicial Watch is pursuing information about Soros’ activities in Macedonia and Albania, as well. The former Prime Minister of Macedonia Nikola Gruevski reportedly called for a “de-Sorosization” of society. In February 2017, Judicial Watch reported that the U.S. government has quietly spent millions of taxpayer dollars to destabilize the democratically elected, center-right government in Macedonia in collusion with George Soros.

In a March 2017, letter to Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, six U.S. Senators (Sens. Lee (R-UT), Inhofe (R-OK), Tillis (R-NC), Cruz (R-TX), Perdue (R-GA) and Cassidy (R-LA)) called on the secretary to investigate the relations between USAID and the Soros Foundations and how U.S. tax dollars are being used by the State Department and the USAID to support left-of-center political groups who seek to impose left-leaning policies in countries such as Macedonia and Albania.

Hamas Mobilizes 30,000 Terrorists For Two-day Military Drill

Jim Campbell's

By Jim Campbell

March 28, 2018

Despite a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Hamas carried out a two-day, large-scale military drill in Gaza earlier this week featuring 30,000 terrorist operatives, according to a Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center report.

Operatives from across Hamas’ military wing, including air, land, and sea units participated in the military exercises, demonstrating the terrorist organization’s efforts to improve interoperability among its various components.

Fighters practiced attacking armored vehicles depicting IDF tanks, while test firing missiles into the Mediterranean Sea. Hamas also deployed drones with “– one of Iran’s signature unmanned aerial vehicles.

Iran is actively enhancing its terrorist proxies’ capabilities, including drone arsenals for groups like Hezbolah and Hamas to improve their offensive operations.

Terrorists also practiced emerging from underground tunnels and kidnapping Israeli soldiers.

The drill took place days before Land Day, in anticipation of more Palestinian demonstrations across Israel.

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Something to think about………..

Image via Right Bias

Why the Second Amendment?

American Thinker

by Anna L. Stark

Once again and on cue, the gun-control zealots are calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment.  Former Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens parroted the gun-grabber narrative in his recently published New York Times article: “[t]he demonstrators should seek more effective and lasting reform.  They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.”  He further bloviates that the Second is a relic of the 18th century.  It’s a sorry state of affairs when a Supreme Court justice who was tasked with upholding the U.S. Constitution – including the Bill of Rights – must be reminded why the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.  You’d think a constitutional scholar would know these things.  It’s also proof positive that advanced age and wisdom are not necessarily synonymous.

The Bill of Rights Institute provides an excellent brief background on the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.  Simply put and stated eloquently, “[t]he Bill of Rights is a list of limits on government power.”  Unfortunately, not only are there those in favor of surrendering their Second Amendment right, but these same people believe that government forces are incapable of oppression, subversion, coercion, or any number of other forms of tyranny.  My advice to this particular group of naïve, nattering nabobs?  Pick up any American history book and revisit why America’s Founding Fathers were familiar with government oppression – they lived it, and many gave their lives fighting it.  As history has shown time and time again, tyrants conquer the populace by instilling fear.  They rely on killing or sinister threats of harm and injury to control the masses.  Heinous killing sprees and wretched oppression of the citizenry are the result of a people unable to defend themselves.

There I was……….

Hogg Hitler! The little dictator in the making.

CBS NEWS BOMBSHELL:STUDENT LEADER WASN’T AT SCHOOL ON DAY OF THE MASS SHOOTING

silence is concent

by OL Hickory

A new documentary by CBS News reveals that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student David Hogg, who has become the face of the student body’s push for gun control, was not at the school at the time of the shooting.

The bombshell comes from David Hogg himself, who made the admission to a CBS News interviewer as part of the documentary “39 Days.”

“39 Days”: How Parkland shooting survivors turned grief into action

At 4 minutes 55 sec. of video Hogg says:

DAVID HOGG: “On the day of the shooting, I got my camera and got on my bike and road as fast as I could three miles from my house to the school to get as much video and to get as many interviews as I could because I knew that this could not be another mass shooting.”

NC Democratic Sheriff Candidate Jokes About Killing Gun Owners

Townhall

by Matt Vespa

Once again, we’re reminded how the Left just hates us, and that they can’t be trusted on gun control. Enough with the lies that they just want common sense gun control.  They either want to lay down the foundation to ban and confiscate guns, or they just want to kill you—or at least joke about it. In North Carolina, a Democrat running for sheriff joked about just that during a meeting with Moms Demand Action. The race is in Buncombe County (via NTK Network):

https://players.brightcove.net/5539867204001/default_default/index.html?videoId=5758272871001

Democrat Daryl Fisher, a candidate for Buncombe County Sheriff in North Carolina, joked that he would be fine with prying guns from owners’ “cold, dead hands” at a meeting with Moms Demand Action earlier in March.

“How far do we go?” Fisher asked rhetorically. “Any weapon that’s designed for use by the military, I think we should ban.” He told the gun control group that they shouldn’t be intimidated by right-wing “scare tactics.”

“You’ve heard people say, ‘You’ll have to pry my guns from my cold, dead hands,’” Fisher said. The Democrat then shrugged his shoulders and commented, “Ok!”

For those quarterbacking this latest gun control push, are they aware of what’s happening in their backyard? I think they are. They say one thing to the cameras to not scare the country, but their supporters, the Democratic base, and obviously the rabid progressive wing of America want to ban guns—and they’ll probably have zero problems with gun owners being killed. Killing people to save people—granted what else would you expect from a political movement that thinks it’s perfectly fine to kill babies. It’s par for the course. At the same time, it just shows why every election at every level is important.

The grand political espionage plot against Trump

 

Flopping Aces

There are two parts to the anti-Trump conspiracy. The first was to stop him from being elected. The second ongoing part is to take him down.

The day before yesterday it was reported that Andrew McCabe, at the request of two democrat Senators, opened a criminal investigation into Jeff Sessions in 2017.

Nearly a year before Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired senior FBI official Andrew McCabe for what Sessions called a “lack of candor,” McCabe oversaw a federal criminal investigation into whether Sessions lacked candor when testifying before Congress about contacts with Russian operatives, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly accused Sessions of misleading them in congressional testimony and called on federal authorities to investigate, but McCabe’s previously-unreported decision to actually put the attorney general in the crosshairs of an FBI probe was an exceptional move.

The probe was requested by two democrats of highly questionable ethics:

Maybe they should have stayed in School

 via Katie Schubauer on Twitter