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Daily Archives: August 26, 2018
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Bombshell: FEC Records Indicate Hillary Campaign Illegally Laundered $84 Million
The mainstream media took no notice of a federal court filing that exposes a $84 million money-laundering conspiracy Democrats executed during the 2016 presidential election.
The press continues to feed the dying Russia collusion conspiracy theory, spending Friday’s news cycle regurgitating Democrat talking points from the just-filed Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act lawsuit against the Trump campaign, WikiLeaks, and Russia.
Yet the mainstream media took no notice of last week’s federal court filing that exposes an $84 million money-laundering conspiracy the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign executed during the 2016 presidential election in violation of federal campaign-finance law.
That lawsuit, filed last week in a DC district court, summarizes the DNC-Clinton conspiracy and provides detailed evidence from Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings confirming the complaint’s allegations that Democrats undertook an extensive scheme to violate federal campaign limits.
As FBI Director Mueller Helped Cover Up Fla. 9/11 Probe, Court Docs Show
Court documents recently filed by the government further rock the credibility of Russia Special Counsel Robert Mueller because they show that as FBI Director Mueller he worked to cover up the connection between a Florida Saudi family and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The documents reveal that Mueller was likely involved in publicly releasing deceptive official agency statements about a secret investigation of the Saudis, who lived in Sarasota, with ties to the hijackers. A Florida journalism nonprofit uncovered the existence of the secret FBI investigation that was also kept from Congress.
Under Mueller’s leadership, the FBI tried to discredit the story, publicly countering that agents found no connection between the Sarasota Saudi family and the 2001 terrorist plot. The reality is that the FBI’s own files contained several reports that said the opposite, according to the Ft. Lauderdale-based news group’s ongoing investigation. Files obtained by reporters in the course of their lengthy probe reveal that federal agents found “many connections” between the family and “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.” The FBI was forced to release the once-secret reports because the news group sued in federal court when the information wasn’t provided under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The disingenuous statements were issued by FBI officials in Miami and Tampa in a desperate effort to disparage a 2011 story exposing the agency’s covert investigation of the Sarasota Saudis as well as reporting that it had been concealed from Congress. Mueller is referenced in a document index that was ordered by a federal judge to be created in late November 2017. The south Florida judge, William J. Zloch, a Ronald Reagan appointee, asked the FBI to explain where it had discovered dozens of pages of documents in the public-records case filed six years ago. The index reference to then-FBI Director Mueller appears in an item involving an agency white paper written a week after the publication of a news story about the abrupt departure of Saudis Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji from their Sarasota area home about two weeks before 9/11. The couple left behind their cars, clothes, furniture, jewelry and other personal items. “It was created to brief the FBI Director concerning the FBI’s investigation of 4224 Escondito Circle,” the al-Hijjis’ address, the index says.
Though the recently filed court documents reveal Mueller received a briefing about the Sarasota Saudi investigation, the FBI continued to publicly deny it existed and it appears that the lies were approved by Mueller. Not surprisingly, he didn’t respond to questions about this new discovery emailed to his office by the news organization that uncovered it. Though the mainstream media has neglected to report this relevant development, it’s difficult to ignore that it chips away at Mueller’s credibility as special counsel to investigate if Russia influenced the 2016 presidential election. Even before the Saudi coverup documents were exposed by nonprofit journalists, Mueller’s credentials were questionable to head any probe. Back in May Judicial Watch reminded of Mueller’s misguided handiwork and collaboration with radical Islamist organizations as FBI director.
Back in 2013 Judicial Watch exclusively obtained droves of records documenting how, under Mueller’s leadership, the FBI purged all anti-terrorism training material deemed “offensive” to Muslims after secret meetings between Islamic organizations and the then-FBI chief. Judicial Watch had to sue to get the records and published an in-depth report on the scandal in 2013 and a lengthier, updated follow-up in 2015. As FBI director, Mueller bent over backwards to please radical Islamist groups and caved into their demands. The agency eliminated the valuable anti-terrorism training material and curricula after Mueller met with various Islamist organizations, including those with documented ties to terrorism. Among them were two organizations— Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)—named by the U.S. government as unindicted co-conspirators in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing case. CAIR is a terrorist front group with extensive links to foreign and domestic Islamists. It was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine.
Trump Is Not Only Right To Criticize Jeff Sessions, It’s His Constitutional Duty
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By Adam Mill
Recently, an interesting debate erupted on Twitter between Donald Trump (the 45th President of the United States) and his subordinate Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump, who is the head of the executive branch and the boss of Sessions, publicly criticized the Department of Justice, which is not only his right as president, but also his responsibility as the only thin connection tying the ballot box to the DOJ. We should fear a world in which the DOJ, which has the vast power of the FBI and a monopoly over federal prosecutorial authority, does not listen to the voice of its elected master.
Trump said, “I put in an attorney general who never took control of the Justice department.” He then complained that Sessions surrendered control by recusing himself from participating in matters important to the president.
Sessions fired back, writing, “While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”
When our attorney general publicly responds to his boss that he will not “be influenced by political considerations,” one has to wonder whether he means that he feels empowered to ignore the “political consideration” that his boss wants him to manage the DOJ differently. We’re supposed to live in a representative democracy. Under Article II of the Constitution, the voters exercise their control over the government through the president.
Sessions went on to write,
Weekly Update: JW Sues on Behalf of Pentagon Whistleblower over Spygate Figure and Clinton Crony
Judicial Watch in Court for Fusion GPS Records
Judicial Watch Sues on behalf of Pentagon Official Who Blew the Whistle on Spygate Figure and Clinton Crony
Deep State Pushes Housing Welfare with Help of Key Trump Official
The Russian Collusion Peter Strzok and James Comey Ignored
Judicial Watch in Court for Fusion GPS Records
We were in court this week before U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton regarding communications of the Office of the Attorney General with Nellie Ohr, the wife of former Senior DOJ Official Bruce Ohr, who was critical to the creation of the Clinton/DNC dossier.
The subject of the hearing was the lawsuit we filed on March 1 this year after the Department of Justice failed to respond to our December 12, 2017, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No.1:18-cv-00491)). We are seeking:
All records of contact or communication, including but not limited to emails, text messages, and instant chats, between DOJ officials in the Attorney General’s Office and Fusion GPS employee or contractor Nellie Ohr.
Judge Walton shares our frustration with a bureaucracy trying to keep its secrets.
On June 14 he ordered the Justice Department, which had been resisting our FOIA request, to “immediately commence its search for responsive records and produce responsive records …”
Judge Walton had previously criticized the Justice Department, saying:
I think if it’s been almost, since December when the initial request was made more should have been done by now. And it seems to me if you have someone who’s going to come into office and they say they’re going to be a disrupter, that they should appreciate there’s going to be a lot of FOIA requests and therefore, should gear up to deal with those requests. So I’m not real sympathetic to the position that you have limited staff and therefore, you can’t comply with these requests. So I think you’re going to have to get some more people.
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I mean FOIA is considered to be very important. I keep getting from the government, from various agencies we can’t do this, we can’t do that because we don’t have the resources. I’m not real sympathetic to that. FOIA is important. Open government is important, and government has to comply with FOIA in order to make it an open government.
In December 2017, Bruce Ohr was removed from his position as U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General after it was revealed that he conducted undisclosed meetings with anti-Trump dossier author (British spy) Christopher Steel and Glenn Simpson, principal of Fusion GPS. A House Intelligence Committee memo released by Chairman Devin Nunes on February 2 noted that Ohr’s wife, Nellie, was “employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump” and that Bruce Ohr passed the results of that research, which was paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign, to the FBI.
In a related case, we released FBI records showing that Steele was cut off as a “Confidential Human Source” after he disclosed his relationship with the FBI to a third party. The documents show at least 11 FBI payments to Steele in 2016 and that he was admonished for unknown reasons in February 2016.
Recently, Republican lawmakers indicated that Bruce Ohr is becoming more central to their investigation. And, emails and memos show that Bruce Ohr continued to receive information from Steele in 2017 after the FBI had terminated its relationship with Steele in 2016 for leaking to the media.
On August 14, the DOJ wrote us a letter claiming that searches were conducted up through December 2017, and no responsive records were located. The DOJ also claims that it has experienced “technical issues which may have affected the searches.”
While at this time we have no indication that records responsive to your request will be located, we cannot provide you with a final response to your request until the technical issues are resolved. [Office of Information Policy] has been working closely with our electronic search support team to resolve these issues and to re-run searches as appropriate to ensure that no records were missed in the original searches. We anticipate issuing an additional response to you in one month.
So, the DOJ explained to the court during the hearing that this “glitch” would delay for a time any final response to Judicial Watch about this scandal. (Color me suspicious about this “glitch,” which we will we continue to investigate.) In the meantime, we await Ohr/Fusion GPS documents that are due to us today in another Judicial Watch lawsuit.
As you can see in this brief video, your Judicial Watch is on top of the Ohr-Clinton-Fusion GPS targeting of President Trump!
Judicial Watch Sues on behalf of Pentagon Official Who Blew the Whistle on Spygate Figure and Clinton Crony
John Brennan, the disgraced former CIA director, has made security clearances an issue, so let’s go with that. Let’s have a look at how Deep State officials stripped a security clearance from someone for raising questions about government corruption.
We just filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of former Pentagon analyst and White House National Security Council (NSC) senior director Adam S. Lovinger, whose security clearance was pulled after he raised concerns regarding lucrative government contracts awarded to Stefan Halper (Adam S. Lovinger v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:18-cv-01914)). Halper has subsequently been identified as being used an informant used by the Obama administration against President Trump’s campaign.
Mr. Lovinger also raised questions about Long Term Strategy Group, a consulting firm owned by Chelsea Clinton’s friend Jacqueline Newmyer Deal.
The Washington Times reported on the contracts in question: “According to USASpending.gov, Mr. Halper was paid $411,000 by Washington Headquarters Services on Sept. 26, 2016, for a contract that ran until this March.” Also, “a string of contracts totaling $11 million [was granted] to D.C. consulting firm Long Term Strategy Group. It is headed by Jacqueline Newmyer Deal, a self-described ‘best friend’ of Chelsea Clinton.”
Lovinger filed his complaint in the fall of 2016. In May 2017, Lovinger’s security clearance was initially suspended by Barbara Westgate, the Director of Washington Headquarters Services and an Obama appointee. A few months later, the Pentagon’s Consolidated Adjudications Facility (CAF) “issued an unfavorable clearance determination and Mr. Lovinger’s clearance was revoked,” a Defense Department spokesman informed The Washington Times. The CAF is part of the Washington Headquarters Services (WHS) and reports directly to Westgate.
In September 2017, Lovinger filed a whistleblower reprisal complaint against the CAF, which determines security clearance eligibility of non-intelligence personnel, Westgate and James H. Baker, the DOD’s Director of Net Assessment, who recommended the contract awards to Halper and Long Term Strategy Group.
In December 2017, Lovinger filed a Privacy Act request seeking:
Any and all emails or similar electronic messaging transmissions referencing the word “Lovinger;” whether in the title or body of said communications(s); between May 1, 2017 and present; to, from, or copied to the following individuals:
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Mr. Edward Fish, Director DoD CAF
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Mr. Daniel Purtill, Deputy Director DoD CAF
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Mr. Ronald Freels, Adjudications Directorate Chief.
In March 2018, the DOD responded, treating his request as both a Privacy Act and a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request and admitting it found 75 pages of responsive documents but was withholding them all in their entirety. Lovinger was informed that Fish, against whom the whistleblower complaint had been filed, had also been the official who determined the documents should be withheld.
In April 2018, Lovinger appealed the DOD’s determination. Over four months later, the appeal has not been addressed. Washington Headquarters Services has refused repeated requests to recuse itself from further involvement in this case despite an apparent conflict of interest. Under existing DOD policy, WHS officials reporting to Westgate will be the final arbiter of Lovinger’s case, which cannot be appealed to the courts.
Also, the DOD has yet to comply with Lovinger’s Privacy Act Request.
Before his work on the NSC, Lovinger was a strategic affairs analyst in the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon, where he specialized in issues related to U.S.-India relations, the Persian Gulf, and sub-Saharan Africa. He also is an attorney and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and McCort School of Public Policy.
Lovinger was targeted because he blew the whistle on Stefan Halper and a Clinton crony getting suspicious Defense contracts. It is disturbing that the Defense Department may now be implicated in Spygate targeting of President Trump.
Deep State Pushes Housing Welfare with Help of Key Trump Official
Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports exposes how the Left runs our government, sometimes with the help of Trump appointees:
Citing a shortage of affordable housing in “higher opportunity neighborhoods,” the Trump administration is strong-arming private landlords nationwide into renting to low-income tenants that get government vouchers. This week the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched a special Landlord Taskforce to coerce more property owners to accept the taxpayer-funded subsidies (Housing Choice Voucher—HCV) issued to millions of poor people around the country. HUD Secretary Ben Carson created the special task force after studies conducted by leftist entities found that most landlords don’t accept the government vouchers, especially in nicer neighborhoods.
One of the studies was conducted by the Urban Institute, which is funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) along with a roster of other leftist supporters. It measured the prevalence and extent of voucher-related discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities and differences between low and high-poverty neighborhoods. “Voucher holders who want to find housing in an opportunity area—perhaps close to high-quality schools, jobs, and transportation— face even more rejection,” the study reads. “We learned that even if landlords said they accepted vouchers, they may treat voucher holders differently during apartment showings—standing them up at higher rates than control testers.” Researchers also determined that landlords were more likely to deny government voucher recipients in low poverty areas compared with high poverty areas. The Urban Institute suggests that the government create legal protections for voucher holders and recruit landlords to participate in the program, particularly in low poverty neighborhoods.
The other study, conducted by the Poverty and Inequality Research Lab at John Hopkins University, examined the role landlords play in shaping the residential experience of low and moderate income renters. It focused on Baltimore, Maryland, Dallas, Texas and Cleveland, Ohio and found that recipients of government housing vouchers encounter tremendous discrimination in the private sector because landlords associate significant stigma with the program. “In theory, the HCV program has the potential to help families move to lower poverty neighborhoods and to access higher quality schools, but it has fallen short of this ideal in part because of a lack of landlords in low-poverty neighborhoods who will accept voucher tenants,” the study reads. Researchers claim that, unlike dozens of studies that examine economic, cultural and institutional mechanisms that trap poor families in low-quality housing and high-poverty neighborhoods, they focused on the role of landlords. The Poverty and Inequality Lab researchers suggest the government expand the pool of voucher landlords.
Trump’s HUD secretary is following the orders of these leftist groups. “These studies tell us that we have a lot of work to do to engage more landlords, so our Housing Choice Voucher Program can offer real choice to the families we serve,” Carson said in an agency statement announcing the new task force. “We will be traveling the country to hear directly from landlords about how we can make this critical program more user friendly.” To push more private landlords to take the vouchers, HUD will conduct listening forums around the country to figure out ways to expand the program, specifically in “higher opportunity neighborhoods where landlord participation is lowest.” The landlord engagement campaign will kick of on September 20 in Washington, D.C. before heading to Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Oregon, Philadelphia and Salt Lake City. “After completing these landlord forums, the Landlord Task Force will provide policy recommendations to the Secretary on programmatic changes to increase landlord participation in the HCV Program,” according to the agency press release.
Even after the Trump administration took over, HUD has continued funding many of Barack Obama’s wasteful, socialist programs. Among them is a multi-million-dollar experiment that aims to transform slums into desirable middle-class neighborhoods. Earlier this year, the initiative, known as Choice Neighborhoods, got a $5 million infusion from the Trump administration. Before that Trump’s HUD gave dozens of leftist groups that purport to fight housing discrimination $37 million. The biggest chunk—$999,962—went to NFHA, which had just attacked the president for terminating an Obama program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—DACA) that protects hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants living in the U.S.
The Russian Collusion Peter Strzok and James Comey Ignored
In our Judicial Watch Weekly Update video last week I related an amazing story I want to share with you here:
In 2016 we hired someone to investigate whether the Clinton emails were on the Dark Web, basically a publicly available part of the Internet that you normally don’t access. And we went to the FBI with information suggesting that the Russians had compromised her server.
The vendor we hired found a document that looked to be classified – it wasn’t marked classified but it looked pretty sensitive – and it looked as though it came from Clinton’s server. It was partly in Russian. It had to do with terrorism. The indications were, therefore, that that document had been hacked from her server.
We went to the FBI. We met with them for four hours. The meeting was initially set up through Peter Strzok. Now Strzok wasn’t at the meeting, interestingly, even though he set up the meeting. He sent two of his underlings.
And the FBI never did anything with that information. It happened just a few weeks before James Comey’s email press conference, where he said Hillary shouldn’t be prosecuted. Given the volume of information we shared with the FBI, we knew they hadn’t fairly evaluated it before Comey’s press conference. So we had alerted the FBI to a potential breach of Hillary’s servers by, it looks like, Russian interests in 2016, and they never did anything with it.
It’s just one more demonstration that Obama’s FBI was determined to whitewash Hillary Clinton’s blatantly illegal “private” email system. As your Judicial Watch does the heavy lifting, the DOJ is AWOL. When will the Sessions Justice Department take action on the Clinton email scandals?
Until next week …
The News You Didn’t Hear This Week
Image via electclifton.wordpress.com
So, President Trump had a terrible week. CNN, and the rest of the prestige press, told us so. It’s only a matter of time before Trump is brought down. A crisis of the regime is imminent. You can tell things are serious because the stock market . . . hit a record high! Strange how, aside from the Cheerleaders of the Tape at CNBC, we heard so little about this during the Week of Trump’s Doom. What does the market know that the media don’t? Well, of course the answer to that “well, duh” question is—a lot.
Actually the strength of the stock market may not tell us much at all except that the animal spirits of capitalism, which rallied despite Obama’s best attempt to depress the markets, are bigger than our political circus, which is a reassuring thought. Actually a close look—and the data back this up—shows that what is really holding the market back from even bigger gains at the moment is the fear and uncertainty about how the trade tensions Trump has unleashed will play out. The market always rallies hard on news that trade tensions may be resolved, and slumps when tensions ratchet up again. I am reliably informed that this has been brought directly to Trump’s attention, to which he responds, “Just think how big the stock market will boom when we win the trade war.” Gotta like that kind of confidence and moxey. Even if tariffs are stupid.
But markets should be heeded, and the strength of the market is perhaps a leading indicator of why the Trump Impeachment Processional is unlikely to succeed. As I said yesterday, it seems like we’re doing a re-enactment of the Clinton scandals of the 1990s, which also had its high quotient of bimbos, perjury, and media frenzy. And I can clearly recall that with every new revelation of Clinton perfidy—Whitewater, travelgate, Vince Foster, Rose Law Firm billing records, Kathleen Willey, the MacDougals, Juanita Brodderick, Paula Jones, ad nauseum, ad infinitum—we Clinton haters on the right were sure that this is it!—surely this scandal will prove the tipping point that will get him at last. But by the time Monica Lewinski flashed her thong, Clinton scandal fatigue had set in with the American people. Oh, and don’t forget: the economy was ripping along with robust growth and record highs in the stock market. Sort of like today. Hmmm. I wonder if any Democrats have pondered this. Historical literacy is not their strong suit.
Meanwhile, did you hear anywhere that Australia’s ruling Liberal Party (which, remember, is the conservative party, because they still have the old-fashioned understanding of “liberal” in place, God bless them), has ousted their prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and replaced him with Scott Morrison, who is best known as being the cabinet minister who was the architect of Australia’s tough immigration policy. But lost in most of the media coverage was that a key issue in the ouster of Turnbull was climate policy. Turnbull was committed to the usual theology of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and this generated a backlash in the party.
Only the Wall Street Journal seems to have noted this aspect of the story:
With the resource-rich nation facing spiraling power bills and unreliable supply, Mr. Turnbull’s government last year proposed a policy that aimed to deliver affordable electricity while reducing emissions in line with a target set by the Paris climate agreement.
Some conservative lawmakers wanted to abandon Australia’s commitment to cut emissions by at least 26% below 2005 levels by 2030, and to provide more support for the coal industry.
Mr. Turnbull attempted a compromise to secure support from his own party, including dropping plans to legislate the emissions target in favor of regulating it. On Monday, the prime minister acknowledged those efforts had failed. “We aren’t going to present a bill into the House of Representatives until we believe it will be carried,” he told reporters. . .
Climate policy has proved a hot-button issue in Australia, where exports of coal and other commodities have underpinned 27 years of economic expansion. Some of the most closely contested electoral districts are in coal-rich regions. Coal is the source of 63% of Australia’s power, down from roughly 80% at the turn of the century.
Socialism is not the Answer 