Federal Court Cheats Boston Marathon Jihadi Out of His 72 Virgins

Frontpage mag

Robert Spencer

 

This is more about the state of American society today than it is about Boston Marathon jihad murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The Boston Globe reported Friday that “in a 182-page ruling that infuriated some victims [no kidding], the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that George A. O’Toole Jr., the judge in Tsarnaev’s 2015 trial, ‘did not meet the standard’ of fairness while presiding over jury selection.” The appeals court accordingly overturned Tsarnaev’s death sentence. Aside from cheating Tsarnaev out of his 72 virgins, this appeal denies justice to his victims.

Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote in her ruling that “a core promise of our criminal justice system is that even the very worst among us deserves to be fairly tried and lawfully punished.” That is undeniably true, as is Thompson’s observation that the bombings were “one of the worst domestic terrorist attacks since the 9/11 atrocities.”

But how unfair was the trial in fact, and how unfair could it have been? There is no question that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is guilty. His actions were captured on video and abundantly documented. What’s more, he remained defiantly unrepentant for a considerable period after the attack. As prosecutors argued in April 2015 that he deserved the death penalty, they released a video of Tsarnaev three months after his attack, looking into the security camera in his cell, primping his hair in the reflection, and then flashing the V sign and then giving his middle finger to his jailers.

And why not? He believed he had done a righteous deed. The motivations of Dzhokhar and his brother and fellow jihad murderer Tamerlan Tsarnaev became clear very quickly after Dzhokhar was apprehended. CNN reported a week after the bombings that “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, wounded and held in a Boston hospital, has said his brother—who was killed early Friday—wanted to defend Islam from attack.”

And just before he was captured, when he was hiding out inside a pleasure boat, Dzhokhar wrote a long self-justification on the inside of the boat, including the line: “When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims.”

It came to light soon after the bombings that on a Russian-language social media page Dzhokhar had featured a drawing of a bomb under the heading “send a gift,” and just above links to sites about Islam. Tamerlan’s YouTube page contained two videos by Sheikh Feiz Mohammed. According to a report published in The Australian in January 2007, in a video that came to the attention of authorities at the time, Feiz Mohammed “urges Muslims to kill the enemies of Islam and praises martyrs with a violent interpretation of jihad.”

Tamerlan also said, “I’m very religious.” His friend Donald Larking affirmed this. “Tamerlan Tsarnaev was my friend and we talked about everything from politics to religion,” according to Larking. “He was very, very religious. He believed that the Qur’an was the one true word and he loved it.” Tamerlan did not drink alcohol because Allah forbade it—“God said no alcohol”—and his Italian girlfriend had converted to Islam, as his American wife did later.

The Boston Marathon bombs were similar to IEDs that jihadis used in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a jihad car bomb in Times Square in the summer of 2010, also used a similar bomb. The instructions for making such a bomb had even been published in al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine.

Not only were the motivations of the Tsarnaev brothers abundantly clear; it is likely that they were actually tied in somehow to the international jihad network—as was indicated by how they fought off Boston police early on the Friday after the Marathon bombings with military-grade explosives. The question of where they got those explosives has never been answered. Nor has it ever been explained where the brothers got the military training that they reportedly displayed during the fight against police before Tamerlan was killed and Dzhokhar was captured.

“I ask Allah to have mercy on me, my brother, and my family,” Tsarnaev said in 2015. But what about mercy for those he murdered and maimed? His victims have no chance to appeal the death penalty that he gave to them. But American society does not have the will anymore to take a strong stand against criminals of this kind, and that means there will be more of them.

The Ground Zero Mosque Project Is Back

American Thinker

By Pamela Geller

The news was buried under two dense paragraphs and five large photos in an article in New York YIMBY about a different project: “Construction has also yet to begin on 51 Park Place, which is slated to become a 71-foot-tall, 16,000-square-foot Islamic cultural center.”  The infamous Ground Zero Mosque project, a long buried effort to build a triumphal mosque at the site of the worst jihad terror attack in American history, is back.

Construction has yet to begin, but it will: the shady developer behind the Ground Zero Mosque scheme, Sharif El-Gamal, has been working to build this sinister structure for years.

We defeated the Ground Zero Mosque project once before.  The 16-story mosque that El-Gamal initially planned to build there has not been built.  Our efforts in showing what an insult it was to the American people and to the victims of 9/11, and how many Muslims worldwide would inevitably view it as a triumphal mosque built on the site of a jihad attack, defeated it.  Tens of thousands of people came out for our rallies in lower Manhattan against this celebration of this 9/11 attacks, and El-Gamal was beaten in the court of public opinion.

It was a long battle.  President Obama announced his support for the mosque at an Iftar dinner, no less.  Then-mayor of New York City and current presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg supported the mosque as well, claiming hysterically that “if we don’t build it, the terrorists will win!”  The media actively campaigned for it — the elites in their increasingly fragile ivory towers relentlessly stumped for the Cordoba mosque (euphemistically called an Islamic center with a prayer space) for years.

And yet despite all this opposition and much more, the people stood up and fought the Ground Zero Mosque and won.  An army of Davids.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.  Crains New York reported on El-Gamal’s new project in 2015 in a story that demonstrated how the developer was hoping to sneak his triumphal mosque into existence: “Mr. El-Gamal’s Soho Properties has proposed a 667-foot condominium tower at lower Manhattan’s 45 Park Place.  The glass skyscraper, which has yet to break ground, will include at least 15 full-floor units of 3,200 to 3,700 square feet, and average prices higher than $3,000 a square foot, according to plans released to Bloomberg by the developer.”

That sounded normal enough.  But then the article added: “Adjacent to the tower, Soho Properties will build a public plaza connected to a three-story Islamic museum and prayer space.”  An Islamic prayer space is a mosque.  The article also said: “An Islamic museum ‘is just as much of an insult,’ Pamela Geller, a blogger and one of the center’s most vocal opponents, wrote in an email.  ‘It will be like having a museum touting the glories of the Japanese Empire at Pearl Harbor.'”

I think an Islamic museum at Ground Zero dedicated to the half-billion victims of jihadi wars, land appropriations, sharia, cultural annihilations, enslavements, and sharia enforcement is an excellent idea, but is that what Sharif El-Gamal had in mind?  Of course not.  And how did El-Gamal plan to finance this?  The answer was predictable.  The New York Post reported in May 2016 that “the developer of the failed Ground Zero Mosque has nailed down ‘Sharia-compliant financing’ for a new, luxury condominium tower and Islamic cultural museum on the same site, he and his banking partners said.”

Then in May 2017, the New York Times ran a story entitled “Condo Tower to Rise Where Muslim Community Center Was Proposed.”  The Times said that “45 Park Place, a 43-story condominium that will soon rise three blocks from the World Trade Center,” was “something of a consolation prize for the developer,” as it “replaces the developer’s 2010 plan to build a 15-story Islamic mosque and cultural center on this site, an idea that erupted into a national controversy and cable news network bonanza.”

In the last couple of years, there has been virtually no news about this “Islamic museum.”  But the New York YIMBY story shows that the project has been advancing under cover of darkness.  A 71-foot-tall structure is three stories high, as in the revised plans announced in 2015.

El-Gamal has many friends and allies among New York City’s political and media elites.  It is likely that de Blasio city officials and the New York Times and other city papers all met with El-Gamal and agreed to keep the reporting on this project to an absolute minimum, so that it could get built without incurring the righteous anger of the public again.  The first time around, they courted publicity and tried to make El-Gamal a hero.  We demolished that and destroyed their plans.  So now they’ve clearly decided to go ahead surreptitiously.

It is disgusting that El-Gamal continues to taunt Americans and poke at America’s most egregious recent memory.  El-Gamal was there when we had tens of thousands in the streets opposing his Ground Zero mosque.  He knows how angry and upset people get at these Islamic structures on the site of jihad war.  The 9/11 Muslim terrorists extolled Allah no fewer than 90 times in their last letters.  Will those letters be on display at this Islamic cultural center/museum?

There is an important lesson to be learned here — and one we would be wise to adopt.  They never stop.  No matter how absolutely they lose, how many setbacks they suffer, they keep on pursuing their supremacist goals.

The Ground Zero Mosque project was and is a middle finger to the American people.  There has never been a mosque of reconciliation and healing built on the site of a jihadi attack.  Ever.  It is, on the other hand, an Islamic pattern to build triumphal mosques on the cherished sites of conquered lands.  History is riddled with triumphal mosques built on the sites of jihad attacks or appropriated from other religions: the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, and innumerable mosques built on the sites of Hindu temples that were demolished by Muslims all attest to that.

And now it looks as if Sharif El-Gamal is going to be able to build his own triumphal mosque at Ground Zero after all.

Did We Learn Anything From 9/11?

Or are we still sleeping?

 

Frontpage mag

Daniel Greenfield

Two things happened in 2001.

Islamic terrorists carried out their most successful attack on America with the murder of 2,977 people. And the number of immigrants obtaining permanent residency passed a million for the first time in a decade. Before 2001, a million plus was a streak that might linger for a few years before falling back.

These days it’s the new normal. Aside from one blip, we’ve been riding the million plus train for over a decade. The resistance to that trend is currently the one thing we seem to have learned from 9/11.

After decades of being massacred by terrorists who have come here as tourists, refugees and immigrants, we are finally trying to close the door on travelers from Islamic terrorist states.

And it only took 16 years.

That’s because learning nothing from the past has been our specialty.

ISIS Fighter Affirms What JW Exposed Years Ago—Terrorists Enter U.S. Via Mexico

Judicial Watch

Five years after a Judicial Watch investigation uncovered evidence of Islamic terrorists infiltrating the United States through Mexico, a captured ISIS fighter is providing details of a plot in which jihadists enter the country through the southern border to carry out an attack. The terrorists begin their journey in Central America and exploit vulnerabilities in the Mexican border to reach the U.S., according to Abu Henricki, an ISIS soldier captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces in Rojava, Syria. Henricki and 160 of his fellow terrorists were interviewed at length by a research group called the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. The nonpartisan organization published its findings recently in an alarming report that includes a video of the interview with the captured terrorist, who is Canadian and has dual Trinidadian citizenship

“They were going to move me to the Mexican side [of the U.S. southern border] via Puerto Rico,” Henricki says about the ISIS plot. “This was mastermind[ed] by a guy in America. Where he is, I do not know. That information, the plan came from someone from the New Jersey state from America. I was going to take a boat [from Puerto Rico] into Mexico. He was going to smuggle me in,” Henricki explains. “I don’t know where I’d end up.” In the report, the researchers reveal that the ISIS fighters were to travel from Syria to penetrate the U.S. southern order by infiltrating migration routes. “Whatever one thinks of President Donald Trump’s heightened rhetoric about the U.S.- Mexico border and his many claims that it is vulnerable to terrorists, ISIS apparently also thought so, as knowledge of this ISIS plot came from the mouth of a now-repentant ISIS cadre,” the report states.

Judicial Watch has reported this for years as part of an ongoing investigation into the national security crisis created by the dangerously porous southern border. Judicial Watch has interviewed local, state and federal law enforcement officials as well as U.S. and Mexican military sources and has traveled to remote Mexican border towns to interview American ranchers. When the Central American caravan got started last fall, Judicial Watch deployed an investigative team to the Guatemala-Honduras border after Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales confirmed that nearly 100 Isis terrorists had been apprehended in the impoverished Central American nation. Judicial Watch’s reporting has confirmed that ISIS has a training cell just a few miles from El Paso, Texas in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. We also verified that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist links to stash areas in a rural Texas town (Acala) near El Paso. Back in 2014 Judicial Watch reported that four ISIS soldiers, who entered the U.S. through the Mexican border, were arrested in McAllen and Pharr Texas.

Two years ago, Judicial Watch exposed a plot involving Mexican drug traffickers that help Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the U.S. to explore targets for future attacks. Among the jihadists that travel back and forth through the porous southern border is a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen and at the time lived in Mexico for more than a year, according to information provided to Judicial Watch by high-ranking Homeland Security officials. Khabir trains thousands of men—mostly Syrians and Yemenis—to fight in an ISIS base situated in the Mexico-U.S. border region near Ciudad Juárez, the intelligence gathered by Judicial Watch’s sources reveals.

The U.S. government—under both Republican and Democrat administrations—has long possessed intelligence indicating that Islamic terrorists exploit the southern border. In fact, Judicial Watch uncovered State Department records confirming that, for more than a decade, the government has known that “Arab extremists” are entering the country through Mexico with the assistance of smuggling network “cells.” Among them was a top Al Qaeda operative wanted by the FBI. Some Mexican smuggling networks actually specialize in providing logistical support for Arab individuals attempting to enter the United States, the government documents obtained by Judicial Watch say. The top Al Qaeda leader in Mexico was identified in the September 2004 cable from the American consulate in Ciudad Juárez as Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah. The cable was released to Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.

Just last year a Jordanian man was arrested by federal authorities for smuggling six citizens of Yemen—an Al Qaeda hotbed—into the U.S. through Mexico. The smuggler, 31-year-old Moayad Heider Mohammad Aldairi, conspired with others to sneak the six Yemeni nationals across the Texas border for a fee, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) statement. Weeks later a group of migrants from a terrorist nation managed to infiltrate the U.S. through Mexico, though the Border Patrol subsequently apprehended the men. All were from Bangladesh, a south Asian Islamic country that’s well known as a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Earlier in the year, Judicial Watch had reported on the epidemic of Bangladeshi nationals getting smuggled into the country via the porous southern border, especially through Texas.

Omar launches bid to protect world’s terrorists from ‘tyrannical regimes’

Image via Right Bias

 

American Thinker

Monica Showalter

Is there nothing Rep. Ilhan Omar won’t do to make terrorists’ lives easier?  This latest scheme she’s up to, according to CNS, is a doozy:

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and ten other House Democrats have written to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, requesting information about how information from the FBI-administered terrorist watchlist is shared with foreign governments — including governments with poor human rights records.

In doing so, she pointed to the support of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a sometimes controversial group that has mounted legal challenges against the watchlist, formally known as the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).

In a release Friday about the letter to Pompeo, Omar quoted CAIR national Executive Director Nihad Awad, who said the TSDB was “dangerous enough” in itself, but even more so when shared with “tyrannical regimes.”

Now, bear in mind that many of the world’s most tyrannical places — think of places such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines — have been made that way by repeated terrorist attacks.  Lawlessness and terrorist thuggery can often turn what were rising democracies into hunkered down military regimes.

So what we are seeing here is a bid from her to game the system — to use the inevitable human rights violations that occur as states try to avoid disintegration — as leverage to keep them in the dark about the actual terrorists plotting against them.  Advantage: terrorists, who are no doubt celebrating having such a lobbyist working for them on the Hill.  Human rights are great for terrorists — and never mind about the victims of terrorists.

Left unsaid most of all is that the U.S. isn’t giving innocent people’s names to these regimes, let alone the names of actual Americans — it’s giving committed global foreign terrorists’ names in what may be an imperfect but necessary bid to enable these places to fight the terrorists trying to kill them.

Omar wants these foreigners protected.

It jibes with her other shenanigans so very helpful to the terrorist-American community, such as asking for lighter sentences for the “Minnesota Men” so abundant in her district, who’ve opted to join ISIS and are in the dock for being caught.

The 9 Minnesota men charged with planning to join ISIS are scheduled to be sentenced next week. Ahead of those court dates, 13 letters were sent to Judge Michael Davis in the case of defendant Abdirahman Yasin Daud, including a letter from state Rep. Ilhan Omar, who on Election Night became with first elected Somali-American lawmaker in the nation.

Rep. Omar asked Judge Davis for “compassion” and a “restorative approach to justice,” concluding that “this ruling can set a precedent and has the potential to be a landmark case in addressing extremism.”

Nothing like letting that bunch off scot-free.

Obviously, she’s becoming quite handy for CAIR and all the other terrorist-first activists out there.  She’s not even embarrassed by the idea of being tarred by the terrorist connection, despite coming from terrorist-infested Somalia and a congressional district famous for its terrorist recruits.  If anyone brought up that creepy cozy connection, she’d protect herself from criticism by yelling “racist.”  She also has a history of Jew-hatred, same as the terrorists.  She actually seems to like the whole role of terrorist-defender.  And with more concern about terrorists’ “rights” than the acts of “some people did something,” it’s pretty obvious she’s rapidly becoming the terrorist’s best friend in Congress.

Why, again, is this person on the Democrat-led House Foreign Affairs Committee?

You said you’d never forget……

Obama State At Center of Anti-Trump Coup Cabal

New Emails Show Obama State Department’s Role in Anti-Trump Coup Cabal
Judicial Watch Investigates Left-wing Assault on Electoral College
Christopher Steele’s Cozy Relationship with the State Department
ISIS Fighter Affirms What JW Exposed Years Ago—Terrorists Enter U.S. Via Mexico

 

Judicial Watch

New Emails Show Obama State Department’s Role in Anti-Trump Coup Cabal

John Kerry, President Obama’s secretary of state, seems to be having trouble staying within the legal bounds of the Logan Act, so it’s not surprising that his State Department lieutenants were getting their hands dirty in the conspiracy to bring down Donald Trump.

We now received more evidence of this anti-Trump conspiracy. With The Daily Caller News Foundation, we just released 16 pages of documents revealing senior State Obama officials – Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer – coordinated with incoming House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer’s (D-MD) national security advisor, Daniel Silverberg, to work on Russia dossier information provided by Christopher Steele.

Steele was surreptitiously paid by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to create the infamous anti-Trump dossier used to justify a series of FISA spy warrants targeting Carter Page. Winer is a former Obama State Department deputy assistant secretary who was implicated in working with Steele and Clinton associate Sidney Blumenthal to circulate the anti-Trump dossier.

We obtained the documents in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on April 25, 2018, on behalf of ourselves and The Daily Caller News Foundation against the State Department after it failed to respond to three separate FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:18-cv- 00968)). The lawsuit seeks:

• All records of communications between State Department officials, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, on the one hand, and British National Christopher Steele and/or employees or contractors of Steele’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence, on the other hand.
• All records and/or memoranda provided by Christopher Steele and/or his firm Orbis Business Intelligence or by others acting on Steele’s/Orbis’s behalf, to State Department officials.
• Any and all records in the custody of the State Department related to the provision of documents to British national Christopher Steele and/or his firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, or the receipt of documents from Steele or his firm.  Time period is January 20, 2009 through the present.
• All records created in 2016 by Jonathan M. Winer relating to research compiled by Christopher Steele.

Here is some of what we learned from these documents.

In an email exchange on September 19, 2016, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS asks Winer if he is “in town?” Winer replies “For a couple of hours.”

In an email exchange on September 26, 2016, Winer emails Nuland asking for “15 minutes of your time today if possible,” to discuss a “Russia related issue” from his “old O [Orbis Business Intelligence] friend.” Orbis was co-founded and run by Russia dossier author Christopher Steele. Nuland’s assistant suggests a secure call for the discussion and Winer asks his aide to postpone a meeting he was to have with the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) to accommodate.

In an exchange beginning in November 2016, Hoyer top-aide Silverberg emails a “thank you” to Nuland, calling her a “warrior on these issues” and stating that he looks forward to pursuing “some of the things we discussed yesterday, albeit on the system integrity side.” Nuland forwards this email to Winer who adds that he wants to talk about “some new info.”

From: Silverberg, Daniel [mailto:Daniel.Silverberg@mail.house.gov]
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2016 10:57 PM
To: Nuland, Victoria J
Subject: Thank you

Toria,

It was a delight to speak today, notwithstanding the context. You’ve been a warrior on these issues, and I look forward to speaking further to preserve and wherever possible strengthen the important work you have done. I’ll follow up regarding a possible working group meeting.

On Nov 29, 2016, at 10:07 AM, Nuland, Victoria J <nulandvi@state.gov> wrote:

Thanks, Daniel. I look forward to continuing our collaboration in whatever capacity life brings. Copied here is Jonathan Winer, who has some legal ideas that may be of interest to you and Cong. Hoyer.

From: Nuland, Victoria J
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2016 10:08 AM
To: Winer, Jonathan
Subject: RN: Thank you

They want to pursue some of the things we discussed yesterday, albeit on the system integrity side.

From: Winer, Jonathan
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2016 10:12 AM
To: Nuland, Victoria J
Subject: Re: Thank you

Want to talk briefly further. Some new info want you to be aware of. [Redacted] Phone call ok sometime this am? Five minutes is enough.

From: Nuland, Victoria J <nulandvj@state.gov>
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2016 10:23 AM
To: Winer, Jonathan <WinerJ@state.gov>
Subject: RE: Thank you

Of course, [redacted] Send me good number and time.

From: Silverberg, Daniel
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2016 10:52 AM
To: Nuland, Victoria J
Cc: Winer, Jonathan
Subject: Re: Thank you

Great. Jonathan, I am all ears.

From: Winer, Jonathan
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2016 2:10 PM
To: Silverberg, Daniel <Daniel.Silverberg@mail.house.gov>
Subject: Re: Thank you

I’ve reached out per our call yesterday. Please call me to talk further at your early convenience. Weekend best but can also talk Monday.

In a November 2016 exchange with the subject line “Would like to catch up on something at your convenience,” Winer reaches out to Nuland for a meeting, which gets booked in the Truman building on November 28. 

In an email exchange dated December 12, 2016, Winer requests a brief meeting with Nuland saying, “Something new has come up of which I want you to be aware.” Nuland replies, “Ok,” and adds her assistant to the exchange. Winer’s assistant then emails Nuland’s assistant looking for a time to meet.

In February 2018, Winer wrote an op-ed claiming anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele and Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal approached him with separate dossiers. Winer wrote: “In the summer of 2016, Steele told me that he had learned of disturbing information regarding possible ties between Donald Trump, his campaign and senior Russian officials.” Also, “While talking about that hacking, Blumenthal and I discussed Steele’s reports. He showed me notes gathered by a journalist I did not know …”

Christopher Bedford, editor in chief of The Daily Caller News Foundation, had this to say about these documents: “Every day of digging reveals more and more political collaboration on this hit job, and at the highest levels. While so much of the media is content to chase Russian conspiracies, The Daily Caller News Foundation and the fantastic lawyers at Judicial Watch are going to keep doing the hard work of holding power accountable.”

Here’s what else we’re pursuing in this area:

We recently released 43 pages of documents from the State Department revealing that its “Special Coordinator for Libya,” Jonathan Winer, played a key role in facilitating Steele’s access to other top government officials, prominent international business executives. Winer was even approached by a movie producer about making a movie about the Russiagate targeting of President Trump.

We previously released two sets of heavily redacted State Department documents showing classified information was researched and disseminated to multiple U.S. senators by the Obama administration immediately prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The documents reveal that among those receiving the classified documents were Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Sen. Robert Corker (R-TN).

We are also suing the State Department for communications between Nuland and employees of Fusion GPS, as well as top ranking Department of Justice, FBI, and State Department officials.

These new documents further confirm that the Obama State Department was a way station for Steele’s smear dossier and other anti-Trump activism.

Judicial Watch Investigates Left-wing Assault on Electoral College

The organized Left has invested much recently in “reforming” the Electoral College, established by the U.S. Constitution. Judicial Watch, again, is manning the wall against this assault on our election system.

We just filed a Colorado Open Records Act lawsuit on behalf of reporter Todd Shepherd against Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold for records of communications related to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (Todd Shepherd v Jena Griswold in her official capacity as Colorado Secretary of State (No. 2019-cv-032310))

This “compact” would award Colorado’s presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of whether Colorado’s voters chose that candidate.

We sued after Griswold refused to turn over certain documents in response to a February 4, 2019, open records request for records about the Electoral College debate.

On February 21, 2019, the Colorado House passed a National Popular Vote bill and sent it to Governor Jared Polis. Colorado Secretary of State Griswold is a critic of the Electoral College and applauded Gov. Polis’s signing of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact legislation.

Currently, most states award all their Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state. But, as described here by the National Conference of State Legislatures, when a state, such as Colorado, “passes legislation to join the National Popular Vote Compact, it pledges that all of that state’s electoral votes will be given to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote nationwide, rather than the candidate who won the vote in just that state. These bills will take effect only when states with a majority of the electoral votes have passed similar legislation and joined the compact.”

Five times a presidential candidate has won the “popular vote” but lost the election, most recently Hillary Clinton. Many opponents of President Trump have proposed undoing the Electoral College. Supporters of the Electoral College point out that it balances the interests of citizens in both large and small states by requiring candidates to seek votes in less populous states whose interests might otherwise be ignored. In addition, under the reform, a state could award its Electoral College votes to a presidential candidate who lost the state’s popular vote.

Leftists in Colorado and other states want to undo the Electoral College and the U.S. Constitution in the hopes of guaranteeing control of the presidency. This attack on the Electoral College would give large left-leaning states and the perpetrators of voter fraud an unconstitutionally outsized impact on the outcome of our presidential elections.

This emerging threat to free and fair election is on your Judicial Watch’s radar screen and you can be sure this lawsuit is the just the beginning of our educational efforts to alert Americans about this important policy challenge.

Christopher Steele’s Cozy Relationship with the State Department

The case of Obama State Department official Jonathan Winer just gets curiouser and curiouser (see our lead story above). He was President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry’s point man on Libya, but it seems he was freelancing in another area.

We released 43 pages of documents revealing that Winer played a key role in facilitating dossier author Christopher Steele’s access to other top government officials and prominent international business executives. Winer was even approached by a movie producer about making a movie about the Russiagate targeting of President Trump.

We obtained the documents in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on April 25, 2018, on behalf of The Daily Caller News Foundation against the State Department after it failed to respond to three separate FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:18-cv- 00968)).

In an email on December 11, 2014, Winer places pressure on his colleague Nina Miller to assist Steele by getting “O Reports” [likely Orbis] to Toria [Victoria] Nuland and Paul Jones ASAP.” Nuland at the time was the State Department Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs; Jones the European and Eurasian Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary.

From: Winer, Jonathan

Sent: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 17:41:32 +0000

To: Miller, Nina A

Subject: Please get “O Reports” to Toria Nuland and Paul Jones ASAP – they are time [sp]

I know you have other burdens, but this one needs to get done if you can as soon as possible.

In a series of emails on November 20, 2014, Winer openly acts as a liaison for Steele, attempting to set up meetings for “Chris” and referencing “Three Orbis Reports” in the subject line of the email. This meeting was scheduled to be with Marialuisa Fotheringham, office manager to the principal deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian affairs and, again, Paul W. Jones.

In a series of emails on November 20, 2014, Winer negotiates a time with Ariuna Namsrai, APCO Worldwide’s senior director and managing director for Russia, CIS and Central Asia for her to meet Christopher Steele at “lunch or dinner.” APCO bills itself as one of the world’s leading advisory and advocacy communications consultancies.

In a series of emails on January 13-14, 2015, with the subject line “Morocco immediate need,” Winer introduces Steele to Marc Ginsberg, former Ambassador to Morocco under Bill Clinton, former APCO Worldwide Senior Vice President and Managing Director and former CEO of One Voice Movement Foundation.

Weiner writes to Ginsberg: “Marc, Chris Steele is a friend of mine who has a very, very high­ end business intelligence service based in London. He formerly worked for the UK government.”

Ginsberg replies to Winer: “I spoke to Chris… complicated!”

In an email on April 13, 2015, to Steele and his partner Chris Burrows titled “Request for contacts with WB and IMF” Winer appears to ask Steele and Burrows to act unofficially on behalf of the United States with World Bank and the International Monetary Fund:

Winer writes: Chris and Chris, advice is that you brief the country team…. it would be best that this not come in from or through any US official, but be a straight-on request from you in light of impact on Mongolia and there [sic] need to know.”

On July 13, 2015, while trying to schedule a dinner in London with Steele, Winer discloses to Steele from an unsecure BlackBerry that he is scheduled to have a Secure Video Teleconference Call [SVTC] with “higher ranked people than I am at the NSC.” Steele later confirms their dinner appointment, and says, “I shall wait for you on the park bench in the main square facing the front of the embassy building.”

In an email exchange on November 20, 2014, Winer attempts to introduce Steele to Nelson Cunningham, President of McLarty Associates, an international consulting firm co-founded by former Clinton White House Counselor Thomas ‘Mack’ McLarty. In the email to Nelson, Winer describes Steele as “An old friend of mine,” and “a former senior British intelligence officer focusing on former Soviet Union with a number of US and European private sector clients these days…”

In an email on January 12, 2017, Hollywood producer Eric Hamburg forwards an article about the Steele dossier to Winer, asking him if he would be interested in working on a movie about it:

“Dear Jonathan, I have been meaning to write to you, and just came across this article which mentions your name… Let’s do a movie about this!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-who-is-christopher-steele-man-behind-the-trump-dossier-perverted-sexual-acts-mi6-agent-a7524191.html

I was wondering if you have decided what your next position will be after leaving government. I’d like to keep in touch and get together next time I’m in Washington. I’m currently working on a mini-series about Watergate for ABC with John Dean.

Assessing this new information, Daily Caller News Foundation President Neil Patel said: “It’s amazing how hard our government tries to keep the truth from the American people. Thankfully, with Judicial Watch filing a lawsuit on our behalf, we have been able to uncover phony dossier author Christopher Steele’s previously hidden contacts with the Obama State Department. These guys at Judicial Watch are bulldogs and we can’t thank them enough.”

Let there be no doubt: Fusion GPS and Clinton spy Christopher Steele had a close relationship with the Obama State Department. The State Department under John Kerry is emerging as another center of the Spygate conspiracy against President Trump.

Perhaps Hollywood would like to do a movie about that.

ISIS Fighter Affirms What JW Exposed Years Ago—Terrorists Enter U.S. Via Mexico

No one has done more to expose the dangers created by our unsecure border than your Judicial Watch. Recent news confirms Judicial Watch early warnings about the national security threat at the border were on the money. As our latest Corruption Chronicles blog confirms:

Five years after a Judicial Watch investigation uncovered evidence of Islamic terrorists infiltrating the United States through Mexico, a captured ISIS fighter is providing details of a plot in which jihadists enter the country through the southern border to carry out an attack. The terrorists begin their journey in Central America and exploit vulnerabilities in the Mexican border to reach the U.S., according to Abu Henricki, an ISIS soldier captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces in Rojava, Syria. Henricki and 160 of his fellow terrorists were interviewed at length by a research group called the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. The nonpartisan organization published its findings recently in an alarming report that includes a video of the interview with the captured terrorist, who is Canadian and has dual Trinidadian citizenship

“They were going to move me to the Mexican side [of the U.S. southern border] via Puerto Rico,” Henricki says about the ISIS plot. “This was mastermind[ed] by a guy in America. Where he is, I do not know. That information, the plan came from someone from the New Jersey state from America. I was going to take a boat [from Puerto Rico] into Mexico. He was going to smuggle me in,” Henricki explains. “I don’t know where I’d end up.” In the report, the researchers reveal that the ISIS fighters were to travel from Syria to penetrate the U.S. southern order by infiltrating migration routes. “Whatever one thinks of President Donald Trump’s heightened rhetoric about the U.S.- Mexico border and his many claims that it is vulnerable to terrorists, ISIS apparently also thought so, as knowledge of this ISIS plot came from the mouth of a now-repentant ISIS cadre,” the report states.

Judicial Watch has reported this for years as part of an ongoing investigation into the national security crisis created by the dangerously porous southern border. Judicial Watch has interviewed local, state and federal law enforcement officials as well as U.S. and Mexican military sources and has traveled to remote Mexican border towns to interview American ranchers. When the Central American caravan got started last fall, Judicial Watch deployed an investigative team to the Guatemala-Honduras border after Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales confirmed that nearly 100 Isis terrorists had been apprehended in the impoverished Central American nation. Judicial Watch’s reporting has confirmed that ISIS has a training cell just a few miles from El Paso, Texas in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. We also verified that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist links to stash areas in a rural Texas town (Acala) near El Paso. Back in 2014 Judicial Watch reported that four ISIS soldiers, who entered the U.S. through the Mexican border, were arrested in McAllen and Pharr Texas.

Two years ago, Judicial Watch exposed a plot involving Mexican drug traffickers that help Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the U.S. to explore targets for future attacks. Among the jihadists that travel back and forth through the porous southern border is a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen and at the time lived in Mexico for more than a year, according to information provided to Judicial Watch by high-ranking Homeland Security officials. Khabir trains thousands of men—mostly Syrians and Yemenis—to fight in an ISIS base situated in the Mexico-U.S. border region near Ciudad Juárez, the intelligence gathered by Judicial Watch’s sources reveals.

The U.S. government—under both Republican and Democrat administrations—has long possessed intelligence indicating that Islamic terrorists exploit the southern border. In fact, Judicial Watch uncovered State Department records confirming that, for more than a decade, the government has known that “Arab extremists” are entering the country through Mexico with the assistance of smuggling network “cells.” Among them was a top Al Qaeda operative wanted by the FBI. Some Mexican smuggling networks actually specialize in providing logistical support for Arab individuals attempting to enter the United States, the government documents obtained by Judicial Watch say. The top Al Qaeda leader in Mexico was identified in the September 2004 cable from the American consulate in Ciudad Juárez as Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah. The cable was released to Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.

Just last year a Jordanian man was arrested by federal authorities for smuggling six citizens of Yemen—an Al Qaeda hotbed—into the U.S. through Mexico. The smuggler, 31-year-old Moayad Heider Mohammad Aldairi, conspired with others to sneak the six Yemeni nationals across the Texas border for a fee, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) statement. Weeks later a group of migrants from a terrorist nation managed to infiltrate the U.S. through Mexico, though the Border Patrol subsequently apprehended the men. All were from Bangladesh, a south Asian Islamic country that’s well known as a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Earlier in the year, Judicial Watch had reported on the epidemic of Bangladeshi nationals getting smuggled into the country via the porous southern border, especially through Texas.

 

Until next week …

ISIS at the Border

Terrorist infiltration threat increases the stakes.

 

Frontpage mag

Joseph Klein

The staggering numbers alone prove there is an unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. In just May of this year, 132,887 people were apprehended between ports of entry on the southwest border with Mexico, the highest monthly figure since March 2006. The number of U.S. Border Patrol southwest border apprehensions for the first 5 months of 2019 is more than 2.6 times greater than the number of apprehensions during the same period last year. “We are bursting at the seams,” Randy Howe, executive director of Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations, told reporters last week. “It’s unsustainable and this can’t continue.”

As far as open border Democrats are concerned, however, the only crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico is the plight of the many thousands of migrants themselves as they try to manipulate our loophole-ridden asylum system or otherwise try to enter the country illegally. The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives refuses to fix the asylum mess, or to provide monies for effective border security that must include barriers erected in vulnerable locations. Instead, they passed an amnesty bill last week for more than 2 million so-called “dreamers” whose parents brought them to this country illegally as children and individuals who had been designated for “Temporary Protected Status.”

Beyond the sheer number of illegal migrants overrunning the border and straining our resources, the surging flow of migrants traversing Mexico into the United States poses a serious national security risk. Open border Democrats could care less. They say not to worry about terrorists crossing the U.S.-Mexico border since no terrorist attack linked to such migration has happened yet. Beto O’Rourke said during a campaign rally, for example, “[Z]ero, precisely zero, terrorists, terrorist groups, or terror plots have ever been connected with the U.S.-Mexico border to do harm to people within the United States.” Proponents of such a pre-9/11 attitude are either clueless or, in the case of the radical left, are part of the red-green axis. 

The hate-Trump media are just as reckless. The Washington Post, for example, tried to dismiss concern about possible Islamist terrorist exploitation of southern border migration routes as much ado about nothing. The fact-challenged “Fact Check” writer for the New York Times, Linda Qiu, criticized President Trump for reviving “an old and still unproved rumor that hints that Islamic migrants were entering the United States through Mexico and could pose a terrorism threat.”

Fortunately, diligent researchers at the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) have taken the terrorist threat seriously. They went into the field and conducted interviews with ISIS defectors, returnees and imprisoned ISIS cadres.

Jihad At The Border

Frontpage Mag

Michael Cutler

 

 

On Sunday, April 28, 2019, CBS News program, 60 Minutes reported on The Situation At The Southern Border.

Here is how the 60 Minutes’ report began:

Earlier this month, President Trump placed Kevin McAleenan in charge of the Department of Homeland Security. The president fired his previous DHS chief, Kirstjen Nielsen, because he said he wanted to go in a tougher direction. As the new acting secretary, McAleenan is facing the largest wave of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border in a decade. 100,000 migrants were detained just last month. So we went to McAllen, Texas, one of the busiest sections on the border, to see for ourselves. We were surprised how many families were crossing, where they were detained and how quickly they were released. We asked Secretary McAleenan how he plans to manage the crisis and navigate what may be the most difficult job in Washington.

It is worth noting that 60 Minutes described the situation as a “crisis” a reality denied by many Democrats.

The 60 Minutes team was given access to the McAllen Border Patrol Station where, at the time, was housing 551 aliens who were being processed after they crossed into the United States.

Here is an excerpt from the 60 Minutes report:

 

Chief Patrol Agent Rudy Karisch says they are struggling to care for the increasing numbers of families.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What are the agents having to do to deal with this new population that’s coming across?

Agent Rudy Karisch: Forty percent of my workforce right now is dedicated to the processing, to the care and feeding, to the hospital watch. So that takes that 40 percent away from their border security mission.

Thus the ability of the already beleaguered U.S. Border Patrol to secure our porous and dangerous southern border has been diminished by 40%.

Those who study history, specifically World War II know that “D-Day,” also known as “Operation Overlord” was only successful because of a diversion created by the Allies known as the “Calais Deception” that was officially labeled “Operation Fortitude.”

General George Patton was put in charge of a phantom division that consisted of inflatable tanks and trucks that from the air, created the elaborate but false illusion of a large contingent of soldiers preparing to attack Germany at the Pas-de-Calais rather than at Normandy where the attack would actually be mounted.

The Germans were thus conned into splitting up their defensive forces, leaving Normandy vulnerable to the Allies on June 6, 1944.

Today our Border Patrol and, indeed, the entire immigration system, is being inundated by huge numbers of illegal aliens forcing the Border Patrol to deploy many of its agents to assignment that remove them from the primary mission of securing vast stretches of unsecured border.

Consequently, stretches of our southern border suffer a lack of resources to prevent the un-inspected entry of aliens and like narcotics and other contraband, including potentially weapons.

While the media focuses on “migrant families” seeking entry to flee poverty and violence in their home countries, they ignore that not all families are actually families but may be committing fraud.  In fact, DHS is now sending ICE agents to the border who have expertise in identifying fraud documents because children are being, in a manner of speaking, “re-cycled” arriving at the border with adults who claim to be their parents.  Once released in the United States, the children are sent back to Mexico where they then return to the border with another set of “parents” who have no relationship to them.

6 Dem Senators Sell Out Jewish Terror Victims to Restore Cash to Islamic Terrorists

Frontpage mag

In 2002, Shmuel Waldman, an American from New Jersey, was shot while boarding a bus in Israel. The terrorist attack killed 2 people and left 40 injured. Among that 40 was Shmuel whose leg was blown apart, forcing him to undergo multiple surgical procedures, and leaving him suffering from PTSD.

The terrorist who shot him was Said Ramadan, a “police officer” working for the terrorists who run the Palestinian Authority. The attack had been planned by senior Palestinian Authority officials and the Palestinian Authority viewed Ramadan as a hero. Waldman joined other victims of terrorism in a lawsuit against the terrorist group, which is funded by American taxpayers, under the Antiterrorism Act.

Waldman v. PLO resulted in a record award of $655 million in damages against the Palestinian Authority terror network. But the verdict was thrown out because an American court lacked jurisdiction over the terrorist group even though the United States provides much of the cash flow that its terrorists rely on.

The Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act was introduced and approved to make it clear that accepting security assistance for its “police force” would place the Palestinian Authority under judicial jurisdiction for lawsuits such as these. The PA could stop funding terrorism or face lawsuits from its victims.

A ruthless battle was waged against ATCA by a variety of groups which understood that the Palestinian Authority would not stop funding and promoting terrorism under any circumstances. These groups falsely claimed that ATCA would undermine American and Israeli security. That was a blatant lie.

The only thing that ATCA would undermine was the flow of tax dollars to Islamic terrorists.

 

Last year, the Palestinian Authority informed the United States that the terror group would no longer accept any aid from the United States that would expose it to ATCA lawsuits. The terror group’s letter suggested that it might revisit its refusal if the law were changed. That’s just what 6 Democrat senators, led by Senator Dianne Feinstein have set out to do, using the false claim of a humanitarian disaster.

“President Trump’s refusal to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people is a strategic mistake,” Senator Feinstein claimed, accusing him of “denying funding for clean water, health care and schools in the West Bank and Gaza.”

Senator Chris Coons urged that, “It is critical that we restore lifesaving aid to the West Bank and Gaza.” Senator Jeff Merkley insisted that, “Aid to innocent civilians should not be caught up in broader geopolitical battles. We can and should restore aid to children and other vulnerable populations at the same time as we stand steadfastly by Israel’s security.”

But the real agenda revealed by their resolution shows that it’s not about humanitarian aid, but about restoring funding to the Islamic terrorists of the Palestinian Authority.

While Feinstein claims that Trump is preventing “clean water” and “health care” aid, her own resolution actually begins by admitting that, “the Palestinian Authority’s interpretation of the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act… led the Palestinian Authority to reject all forms of United States assistance.”

The problem isn’t Trump. It isn’t the United States. It’s that the Palestinian Authority is a terror group.

The Palestinian Authority, on whose behalf Senator Feinstein is advocating, rejected the money that Dianne wants to give the terror group, because it doesn’t want to face American terror victims in court.

Rather than telling the truth about that, Senator Feinstein and her five accomplices start out by lying about the problem, and about what they want to accomplish, while assuming that the media will never report the truth. They are almost certainly right about that. But wrong about everything else.

The resolution, “Expressing the sense of Congress regarding restoring United States bilateral assistance to the West Bank and Gaza”, specifically demands $196 million for the Economic Support Fund, $60 million for International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement; and another million for anti-terrorism.

But the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist coalition. Some of its components, such as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, are even officially listed as terrorist groups by the United States. Palestinian Authority “police” deserve the name the same way that ISIS cops did. They’re armed members of a terrorist network with a history of participating in terrorist attacks. This network was set up with United States aid in the Clinton era. Senator Feinstein is vocally insisting that we continue funding terrorists.

If Feinstein, Coons and Merkley were really just concerned about humanitarian assistance, they would not have pushed for funds for the armed components of a terrorist network. This is not about “clean water”, it’s about dirty cash flowing to the enforcers for a terrorist group while leaving their victims out in the cold.

The six senators want the PA’s thugs to get paid, while their victims are left unable to sue them.