Kimberley Strassel: Insubordination and Bias at FBI
Posted: June 17, 2018 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, U.S. News | Tags: Bias, Bill Clinton, FBI, Hillary Clinton, Investigation, James Comey, Kimberley Strassel, Loretta Lynch, Michael Horowitz Leave a comment
The inspector general report is careful in its conclusions, but damning on the facts.
Kimberley A. Strassel Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 500-page report covers plenty, but it can be distilled to two words he uses to describe the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the 2016 election: insubordination and bias. Two terms that are chilling in connection with such a powerful agency.That won’t be the message from Democrats and most of the press, who will focus on a few episodes they will claim cost Hillary Clinton an election. Watch for them to blame former FBI Director James Comey, whom the report faults for “a serious error of judgment,” for having “concealed information” from superiors, and for “violation of or disregard for” departmental and bureau policies.
True, the report is damning about the man who lectures Americans on “higher loyalty.” It describes how an “insubordinate” Mr. Comey was, as early as April 2016, considering how to cut his Justice Department bosses from a public statement exonerating Hillary Clinton. He hid this scheme for fear “they would instruct him not to do it”—and therefore was able to “avoid supervision.” He then “violated long-standing Department practice and protocol” by using his July 5 press conference for “criticizing Clinton’s uncharged conduct.” In October, he made public that the FBI had reopened the investigation, even though the Justice Department recommended he not do so. Mr. Comey went rogue, and President Trump had plenty of justification in firing him in May 2017.
Yet it is the report’s findings on the wider culture of the FBI and Justice Department that are most alarming. The report depicts agencies that operate outside the rules to which they hold everybody else, and that showed extraordinary bias while investigating two presidential candidates.
There’s Loretta Lynch, who felt it perfectly fine to have a long catch-up with her friend Bill Clinton on a Phoenix tarmac and whom the inspector general slams for an “error in judgment.” Read the rest of this entry »
Bill Clinton Lost President’s Nuclear Codes, and Nobody Found Out
Posted: January 8, 2018 Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Mediasphere, War Room, White House | Tags: Bill Clinton, Democrats, Gen. Hugh Shelton, nuclear, Nuclear Codes, Nuclear Football Leave a comment
A military aide carries the “football,” a leather briefcase holding classified nuclear war plans, onto Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, April 7, 2010. Cliff Owen/AP
The codes needed to launch a nuclear strike are never far from the president’s side — at least they’re not supposed to be.
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The codes needed to launch a US nuclear strike are supposed to be kept close to the president at all times.
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A department within the Defense Department is tasked with overseeing all aspects of the nuclear-launch process, including the codes.
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During Bill Clinton’s presidency, officials from that department discovered the codes had gone missing.
Christopher Woody reports: The process the president has to go through to launch the US’s nuclear weapons isn’t as simple as pressing a button, but the key component of that process — the codes needed to authorize the launch — are never far from the president.
At least they’re never supposed to be.
According to Gen. Hugh Shelton, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1997 to September 2001, the number of redundancies in the nuclear-launch process “is staggering.” All of steps are “dependent on one vital element without which there can be no launch,” he wrote in his 2010 autobiography, “Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior.”
That element, the president’s authorization codes, is supposed to remain in close proximity to the president at all times, carried by one of five military aides, representing each branch of the military. The codes are on a card called the “biscuit” carried within the “football,” a briefcase that is officially known as the “president’s emergency satchel.”
President Bill Clinton, with Defense Secretary William Cohen, left, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry “Hugh” Shelton, in Washington, DC, September 15, 1998. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
However, around 2000, according to Shelton, a member of the department within the Pentagon that is responsible for all pieces of the nuclear process was dispatched to the White House to physically look at the codes and ensure they were correct — a procedure required to happen every 30 days. (The set of codes was to be replaced entirely every four months.)
That official was told by a presidential aide that President Bill Clinton did have the codes, but was in an important meeting and could not be disturbed.
The aide assured the official that Clinton took the codes seriously and had them close by. The official was dismayed, but he accepted the excuse and left. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Fox News Reporting: The Tangled Clinton Web
Posted: October 21, 2017 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Bill Clinton, Bret Baier, Clintons, Enriched uranium, Fox News, Hillary Clinton, Uranium, video 1 Comment
Introducing: The Roman Polanski Center
Posted: October 11, 2017 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Entertainment, Humor, Mediasphere | Tags: Bill Clinton, Bill Cosby, Donald Trump, harassment, Harvey Weinstein, Parody, Rape, Rehab, Rehabilitation, Roman Polanski, satire, Sex, Sex Therapy, Sexual Health, Show Business Leave a comment
Amazon Studios lands Monica Lewinsky-Linda Tripp Bill Clinton Movie
Posted: June 5, 2017 Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, George W. Bush, James Comey, Lewinsky scandal, Monica Lewinsky, Movies Leave a comment
Mike Fleming Jr reports: Amazon Studios has acquired Linda And Monica, the Black List script by Flint Wainess that details the budding friendship between D.C. pals Linda Trippand Monica Lewinsky that imploded when it led to the revelation of the scandalous relationship between the White House intern and President Bill Clinton.
The film will be produced by Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal and Steve Tisch, the Escape Artists trio that produced the Best Picture nominated Fences and the upcoming sequel to The Equalizer.
[Read the full story here, at Deadline]
Lewinsky was a 22-year old White House intern and Tripp a White House aide who secretly recorded her young pal’s revelations of sexual liasons with then President Bill Clinton in the White House. Tripp, who later said she was acting in her former friend’s best interests, leaked the tape to Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who was investigating Whitewater. It became a tawdry scandal complete with a subpoena of her blue semen-stained dress, and it later a congressional call for impeachment. It severely crushed the career and life of Lewinsky, and her family — I remember her father once speaking out publicly when the NBC series Law & Order took to calling a certain sex act a “Lewinsky.” Lewinsky said the notoriety made it impossible for her to find work, and she stayed out of the limelight until briefly resurfacing as an anti-bullying advocate several years ago. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] House of Clintons
Posted: May 29, 2017 Filed under: Humor, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Bill Clinton, Clintons, Free Beacon, Hillary Clinton, House of Cards, media, satire, video 1 Comment
John Fund: Trump Derangement Syndrome May Help Trump
Posted: February 5, 2017 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: ABC News, America Ferrera, Bill Clinton, Cheetos, CNN, Democratic Party (United States), Derangement, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Institutional Left, John Fund, National Review, President of the United States, Unhinged Leave a comment
Permanent outrage and hysterical doom-mongering do not attract moderate voters.
John Fund
writes: The good news for Democrats is that the apathy of many of their voters — which contributed to Hillary Clinton’s losing in November — is gone now that Donald Trump is president.
“We have never in living memory seen an electorate as fired up and angry and engaged as they are right now, Ben Wikler, Washington director of the left-wing group Moveon.org, told RealClearPolitics.
The bad news for Democrats is that the fires of protest could burn so brightly that they alienate moderate voters and threaten any Democrats who decline to throw gasoline on the fires.
The anger of the liberal base is such that “a firestorm of criticism . . . awaits [Democratic lawmakers] when they don’t stand up to Trump,” Wikler says. As for primary challenges for Democrats who won’t confront Trump at every turn: “Everything is on the table.”
[Read the full story here, at National Review]
It certainly has been when it comes to the ceaseless efforts to delegitimize Trump. As soon as the election was over, state recounts were mounted, with the approval of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, angry demands were made that members of the Electoral College go against the results of their state votes and dump Trump, and wild charges were hurled that Russian hacking swung the election. FBI chief James Comey, an Obama appointee, was accused of tilting the election against Clinton, and blue-collar voters in the Midwest were smeared as “racists” who were easily manipulated by Trump.
Gallup Poll: President Obama’s Average Approval Rating was Among the Worst of the Post-War Presidents
Posted: January 26, 2017 Filed under: Censorship, History, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Clintons, Donald Trump, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Laura Bush, United States Capitol 1 Comment
Only three presidents scored worse than Obama since Gallup started doing these surveys in 1945.
As President Obama left the White House, the mainstream press was falling over itself proclaiming how popular he was.
“Obama leaving office on a very high note,” was a typical headline.
Yet despite the media’s fixation with polls, the press completely buried one of the more newsworthy poll findings — a Gallup report that came out last Friday, which took a final look at the President Obama’s popularity over his eight years in office.
“Obama even did worse overall than Richard Nixon, whose average approval was 49%, and was less popular overall than George W. Bush, who got an average 49.4%.”
That poll found that Obama’s overall average approval rating was a dismal 47.9%.
Only three presidents scored worse than Obama since Gallup started doing these surveys in 1945: never-elected Gerald Ford (47.2%), one-termer Jimmy Carter (45.4%), and Harry Truman (45.4%).
Obama even did worse overall than Richard Nixon, whose average approval was 49%, and was less popular overall than George W. Bush, who got an average 49.4%.
That sounds newsworthy, doesn’t it? But you’d never know this if you relied on the mainstream press for information. That’s because not one of them reported on Gallup’s finding. Read the rest of this entry »
47.9%: Obama Had Lower Average Approval Rating Than Nixon or Bush
Posted: January 23, 2017 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Clintons, Donald Trump, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Laura Bush, United States Capitol 1 Comment
Terence P. Jeffrey reports: President Barack Obama had an average approval rating of 47.9 percent during his time in office, according to the Gallup poll.
That puts him behind Richard Nixon, who resigned, and George W. Bush, who saw his approval rating drop as low as 25 percent near the end of his term.
“Obama’s approval ratings also fell to 38% in September 2014, shortly after the Islamic State terrorist group released videos showing the beheadings of U.S. journalists captured overseas.”
It puts him ahead of only Gerald Ford (47.2 percent), Jimmy Carter (45.5 percent) and Harry Truman (45.4 percent).
Gallup, in an analysis released Friday, published the average approval rating for all twelve presidents who have served since World War II.
“After his first year he received sustained majority approval only once more during his first term in office. Fortunately for him, that came during his 16th quarter in office — around the time he was re-elected in the fall of 2012.”
— the Gallup analysis said of Obama’s poll numbers
John F. Kennedy ranks highest with an average approval rating of 70.1 percent. He is followed by Dwight Eisenhower (65.0 percent), George H.W. Bush (60.9 percent), Bill Clinton (55.1 percent), Lyndon Johnson (55.1 percent), Ronald Reagan (52.8 percent), George W. Bush (49.4 percent), Barack Obama (47.9 percent), Gerald Ford (47.2 percent), Jimmy Carter (45.5 percent) and Harry Truman (45.4 percent). Read the rest of this entry »
The Hostile Takeover Rolls On
Posted: January 20, 2017 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, CNN, Donald Trump, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President of the United States, Republican Party (United States), Ronald Reagan Leave a comment
THE BIG IDEA: President Trump completed his hostile takeover of the Republican Party last July, and on Friday he completed his hostile, if temporary, takeover of Washington.
In some significant ways, Trump is more like a corporate raider of the 1980s, when he came of age, than a typical politician of 2017. Thirty years ago, Gordon Gekko might have been more likely to deliver the speech that the billionaire businessman did today than Ronald Reagan.
No president has ever before referred to “the establishment” in his inaugural address nor declared that every country in the world ought to pursue its own self-interest. But the guy who ended the Bush dynasty and then vanquished the Clinton machine, in a period of 17 months, put “the establishment” of both parties on notice once more.
“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost,” he said, as leaders from each side of the aisle looked on stoically. “The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. … What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.” Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Clinton Global Initiative Shutting Down
Posted: January 16, 2017 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Global, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Clinton Fatigue, Clinton Foundation, Clinton Global Initiative, Hillary Clinton, media, news, Pay for Play, video 1 Comment
[VIDEO] #ThanksObama: 5 Scary Powers Trump Will Take Over as President
Posted: January 16, 2017 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Clintons, Donald Trump, Due Process, Executive order, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Journalists, Kill Lists, Reason (magazine), Spying, Total Information Awareness, War Powers, Whistleblowers, White House Leave a comment
As Barack Obama bids farewell to his presidency, keep in mind these five scary powers that President Trump will inherit from him.
Remember when those pesky other branches of government wouldn’t bow down to Obama’s whims, and the president famously bragged about going it alone? Now Obama’s out and it will soon be Donald Trump wielding his pen and phone.
As Barack Obama bids farewell to his presidency this week, keep in mind these five scary powers that President Trump will inherit from him.
1. War Without Congress
During the Libya intervention, Obama decided that he didn’t need Congress to approve massive bombing campaigns and regime change.
Obama has done legal gymnastics to justify using the same authorizations that George W. Bush got to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban to send our armed forces to places like West Africa, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria —not to mention staying in Pakistan and Afghanistan and going back to Iraq—all without Congress.
So if the Mexicans won’t pay for his wall, President Trump could just as well decide to bomb them.
2. Kill Lists
Obama made up his own rules on targeted killings, denying that courts could review his “kill list” and only paying lip service to drone guidelines when he thought Mitt Romney might win in 2012. That never actually happened, and even in his last months in office, Obama has continued to expand the reach of our flying robots and special operations forces.
In the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency, the U.S. dropped 26,171 bombs in seven countries.
— UberFacts (@UberFacts) January 16, 2017
So President Trump can now vaporize any person he puts on his kill list, even American citizens, even outside of acknowledged battlefields, even if civilians die—all without due process.
3. Access to All of Your Information
Obama expanded the powers of secret courts that provide little more than a rubber-stamp for mass surveillance of Americans.
He supports weakening encryption, general warrants that cover millions of people, and a host of powers with the ultimate goal of giving spooks what the NSA has called “Total Information Awareness“—access to your every word, move, purchase, and relationship, all without your knowledge.
Orwell would have been impressed, and Trump certainly will be.
4. Prosecuting Whistleblowers and Journalists
The leader of the self-anointed “most transparent administration” in history has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all other presidents in history, put together. His administration exploded the number of classified documents and fought the ACLU and New York Times in court to keep its legal interpretations secret.
Oh, and Obama’s Justice Department spied on journalists and investigated them as co-conspirators.
Based on what Trump thinks of the media, reporters should take care not to violate any secret laws going forward, especially in secret drone zones.
5. Screwing Immigrants
Many undocumented immigrants trusted Obama with their personal information in exchange for his promise not to deport them. That may have been a huge mistake. First off, he’s deported more people than any president in history, so that should have been a red flag. Read the rest of this entry »
U.S. Government Attacks Drudge Report? Conservative Website Down Because of DDoS Attack, Matt Drudge Tweets
Posted: December 29, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Authorization, Barack Obama, Ben Briscoe, Benghazi, Bill Clinton, Breitbart News, Classified information, Condoleezza Rice's tenure as Secretary of State, Gateway Pundit, Hillary Clinton Leave a comment
Cristina Silva reports: A tweet from conservative media icon Matt Drudge’s verified Twitter account Thursday night appeared to accuse the government of interfering with his website, DrudgeReport.com, just hours after the Barack Obama administration announced new sanctions against Russia over election hacking.
Is the US government attacking DRUDGE REPORT?
Biggest DDoS since site’s inception. VERY suspicious routing [and timing].
— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) December 30, 2016
“Is the US government attacking DRUDGE REPORT? Biggest DDoS since site’s inception. VERY suspicious routing [and timing],” the tweet to Drudge’s 457,000 followers read. There were no other tweets from the account at the time.
A large-scale distributed denial of service attack, or DDoS, can cause major Internet disruptions. In the past, such attacks have shut down major websites such as Twitter, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Tumblr, and Reddit. The attack sends a server many illegitimate requests to make it hard for real requests to get through, effectively shutting down the site.
Drudge Report was down briefly around 7 p.m. EST, but working hours later. The top headline read: “MOSCOW MOCKS OBAMA ‘LAME DUCK'” Meanwhile, the conservative Washington Times wrote: “Matt Drudge suggests U.S. government cyberattack on Drudge Report website. DDoS attack comes same day Obama announced countermeasures against Russia for hacking of Democrats.”
Numerous reports of Russian state-run Network RT being unavailable. Drudge Report also under “Biggest DDoS attack since site’s inception” pic.twitter.com/okysbtDEKv
— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) December 30, 2016
Conservatives on Twitter also accused the government of shutting down the Russian news website, RT. “Numerous reports of Russian state-run Network RT being unavailable. Drudge Report also under ‘Biggest DDoS attack since site’s inception,'” wrote one user. Read the rest of this entry »
A Super-Power Presidency Is Unconstitutional
Posted: December 26, 2016 Filed under: Education, History, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, LBJ, Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States, Republican Party (United States), Rex Tillerson, Ronald Reagan 2 Comments
Incoming president Donald J. Trump inherits a presidential office more powerful than it has ever been.
Sarah Burns writes: Now that the Electoral College has made Trump’s 2016 win final, this a good time to start thinking about what powers he will have when he comes into office in January. While the Constitution technically provides certain constraints on presidential actions, many of these formal and informal restrictions have fallen by the wayside.The Growth of Presidential Power
Eisenhower warned that this was a problem.The dramatic increase in government services and departments during the Great Depression, coupled with the expansionary effects of a world war, left the federal government, and the president in particular, with new and broad powers. Gazing upon the redesigned government, Eisenhower warned of a military-industrial complex, saying, “Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.”
Nonetheless, many citizens did not worry as Johnson to create “The Great Society.”
With Nixon, however, Americans awakened to the real problem of providing presidents with so much control over foreign and domestic affairs. Nixon claimed the power to unilaterally authorize the bombing of Cambodia (after Congress explicitly condemned any action in that country) and he authorized the NSA to spy on American citizens without a warrant.
Congress attempted to check these actions, creating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court intended to provide government oversight of domestic surveillance. Instead, it provided the government with judges they needed to rubber stamp warrants for domestic surveillance.
[Read the full story here, at Foundation for Economic Education]
They also passed the War Powers Resolution intended to contain presidential discretion over military affairs. Instead, it served to provide the executive with a way to legally justify unilateral action that falls below the 60-90 day threshold. Presidents came to have legal authority to engage in actions without having to go through Congress.
For this reason, Reagan saw a genuine opportunity to maintain popularity and achieve his objectives as president by using the power of his office to dramatically increase the arms race in order to defeat the Soviet Union. His gamble paid off as the Soviet Union fell.
Both George H.W. Bush and Clinton followed this model, seeing major domestic policies frustrated while enjoying heightened popularity when they intervened internationally.
By the time George W. Bush came to power, the executive branch had an established focus on international crises, only paying lip service to any sweeping legislative changes. The War on Terror served as a shot of steroids to presidential unilateralism and continues juicing it to this day.
While the president today has a variety of powers (enumerated, implied, discretionary and — more controversially — inherent ones), none are more controversial and disconcerting than the commander-in-chief power and the ability to authorize executive orders.
The Commander-in-Chief Power
As we all know from reading the Constitution (that’s something everyone does, right?) the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. This provides him with the ability to initiate hostilities against any organization or country around the world at any time by ordering the armed forces into action.
They are duty-bound to follow his orders. Even if the president orders an illegal action, such as waterboarding suspects or targeting the families of terrorists, it is likely that the military would have the same reaction as they did when George W. Bush ordered illegal actions — they obeyed and simply wrote memos outlining their legal and moral concerns. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Jake Tapper Grills Loretta Lynch On Her Meeting With Clinton
Posted: December 18, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, CNN, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jake Tapper, John Podesta, Twitter Leave a commentKevin Daley reports:
CNN’s Jake Tapper grilled outgoing Attorney General Loretta Lynch for her notorious tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton in June…
“I do regret sitting down and having a conversation with him, because it did give people concern.”
“It didn’t cross your mind that sitting there like ‘Oh somebody’s going to make a big deal about this?’” he asked.
“I do regret sitting down and having a conversation with him, because it did give people concern,” Lynch responded. “And as I said, my greatest concern has always been making sure that people understand that the Department of Justice works in a way that is independent and looks at everybody equally.”
[Read the full story here, at The Daily Caller]
“And when you do something that gives people a reason to think differently, that’s a problem. It was a problem for me. It was painful for me, and so I felt it was important to clarify it as quickly and as clearly and as cleanly as possible.”
“My greatest concern has always been making sure that people understand that the Department of Justice works in a way that is independent and looks at everybody equally. And when you do something that gives people a reason to think differently, that’s a problem. It was a problem for me. It was painful for me, and so I felt it was important to clarify it as quickly and as clearly and as cleanly as possible.”
[VIDEO] NAFTA Works. Just Look at Texas
Posted: December 13, 2016 Filed under: Economics, Global, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Austin, Austin History Center, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton, Charles Whitman, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Economic Policy Institute, Reason (magazine), Texas, Texas Monthly, Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Leave a comment
Former Texas Monthly senior editor Erica Grieder explains why international deals like NAFTA have been good for the economy.
[VIDEO] THRILLA IN CAMBRIDGE: Conway & Palmieri’s Screaming Post-Election Forum
Posted: December 2, 2016 Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: 2016, Bill Clinton, Campaign manager, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Donald Trump presidential campaign, Early voting, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Kellyanne Conway, Robby Mook Leave a comment
Kellyanne Conway, Trump-Pence campaign manager, left, looks towards Robby Mook, Clinton-Kaine campaign manager, prior to a forum at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
New Pew Research Poll: 38% Give the Press a Big Fat ‘F’ for Campaign Coverage
Posted: November 22, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Al Gore, Americans, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Gallup (company), George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, journalism, media, Pew Research Center, The Press, United States Leave a comment
Evidence keeps piling up that the American people have a very low opinion of how the media reports on our elections. The latest Pew Research Center opinion survey revealed “Just 22% give the press a grade of an A or B, while 38% give it a failing grade” – an F. The approval of the media has been declining for years. After the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush, 33 percent of voters gave the press an A or a B, compared to just 16 percent picking “F.” Read the rest of this entry »
Paul ‘Black Helicopters’ Krugman Speculates on an FBI Virtual ‘Alliance with Putin’
Posted: November 21, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton, CNN, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Freedom of Information Act (United States), Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Paranoia, propaganda, Twitter Leave a comment
Bob Bryan reports: Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist, suggested Thursday that an “alliance” between a faction of the FBI and Russian President Vladimir Putin swung last week’s election in favor of Donald Trump.
“So it looks more and more as if we had an election swung, in effect, by a faction of our own security sector in alliance with Putin.”
— Paul Krugman, during a psychotic break, on Twitter
Krugman said that given the small margin in swing states that decided the election, the FBI’s reactivation of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was just enough to change the minds of some voters.
“The economist has frequently taken to Twitter in the days after the election to bemoan the outcome and to draw concern over early policies of Trump.”
FBI Director James Comey announced the discovery of new emails “pertinent” to the case on October 28 — 11 days before the election — before clearing her again a week later.
[Read the actual news item here, at Business Insider]
“As evidence accumulates that Trump benefited from a lot of late deciders breaking his way, the case that it was Comey gets stronger,” Krugman wrote in a tweet.
The US intelligence community publicly accused the Russian government of being behind the hacks of emails of members of Democratic Party organizations and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, whose electronic communications were released in droves by WikiLeaks during the final weeks of the campaign. Read the rest of this entry »
Fashion Designers Are Boycotting Melania Trump. Shouldn’t Bakers and Florists Have the Same Right?
Posted: November 19, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Censorship, Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: 2008 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton, Bruce Springsteen, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, Republican Party (United States), United States, White House 2 Comments
Free association should not be for powerful liberals only
Stephanie Slade writes: “As one who celebrates and strives for diversity, individual freedom, and respect for all lifestyles, I will not participate in dressing or associating in any way with the next First Lady,” wrote fashion designer Sophie Theallet in an open letter this week.
“Personally, I applaud Theallet’s design to disassociate herself with the next occupant of the White House. I see Donald Trump as a shameful human being with few redeeming qualities as a leader and even fewer as a person, and if I were a business owner, I too would decline to serve his administration.”
People magazine reports Theallet, who has designed and donated clothes for outgoing First Lady Michelle Obama numerous times over the last eight years, may not be alone: “A source tells People, ‘This has already been going on for months. Designers wouldn’t lend to Melania, Ivanka or Tiffany, so they either bought the items themselves or wore Ivanka’s brand. … There was a lot of shopping their own closets.'”
Sophie Theallet
As Theallet put it, ‘we consider our voice an expression of our artistic and philosophical ideals.’ I suspect Barronelle Stutzman, the white-haired grandmother who owns Arlene’s Flowers, feels the same way about her craft.”
Personally, I applaud Theallet’s design to disassociate herself with the next occupant of the White House. I see Donald Trump as a shameful human being with few redeeming qualities as a leader and even fewer as a person, and if I were a business owner, I too would decline to serve his administration.
“But instead of assuming a live-and-let-live attitude on the matter, Washington state has systematically worked to destroy Stutzman’s business unless she agrees to take part in a celebration to which she is morally opposed.”
Likewise, I support Bruce Springsteen‘s right to cancel his concerts in North Carolina in protest of the state’s transgender-bathroom policies.
[Read the full story here, at Reason.com]
Both are examples of associational freedom—the right to make decisions for yourself about how and with whom you spend your time and energy. This includes the right not to take on a client or project that elevates, in your view, a value you disagree with. Read the rest of this entry »
BREAKING: After NY Talks, Abe Confident He Can Build Trust-Based Ties with Trump
Posted: November 17, 2016 Filed under: Asia, Breaking News, Diplomacy, Global, Japan, White House | Tags: -elect, Associated Press, Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Israel, New Balance, President of the United States, Trans-Pacific Partnership, United States, United States Congress Leave a comment
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the two talked about various issues but refrained from disclosing the contents of the meeting with Trump because the talks were unofficial.
He made the comments in New York after a meeting that was intended to smooth relations following Trump’s campaign rhetoric that cast doubt on long-standing U.S. alliances.
Abe became the first world leader to meet Trump on Thursday, seeking reassurances over the future of the U.S.-Japan security and trade relations.
Abe met with Trump in New York, where the incoming president is working on setting up an administration after his surprise election victory last week that has injected new uncertainty into old U.S. alliances.
“I do believe that without confidence between the two nations (the) alliance would never function in the future and (after) the outcome of today’s discussion I am convinced Mr. Trump is a leader in whom I can have great confidence,” Abe said following the meeting.
Trump’s campaign rhetoric caused consternation in many world capitals, including Tokyo. Trump has said he would demand that allies such as Japan and South Korea contribute more to the cost of basing U.S. troops in their countries.
Such comments have worried Japan at a time when the threat from North Korea is rising, and China is challenging the U.S.-led security status quo in the Pacific. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Former White House Press Secretary: ‘The Clinton Era Is Gone’
Posted: November 11, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Ari Fleischer, Bill Clinton, Fox News, Hillary Clinton, media, news, The Clinton Era, The Clinton Foundation, video, While House Press Secretary Leave a comment
Friday News Dump: Clinton’s Charity Confirms Qatar’s $1M Gift While She was at State Dept
Posted: November 4, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: 2016, Bill Clinton, Clinton Foundation, Democratic National Committee, Donald Trump, Ecuador, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, John Podesta, The New York Times, United States Department of State, WikiLeaks 1 Comment
Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s husband, and sought to meet the former U.S. president in person the following year to present him the check, according to an email from a foundation official to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email, among thousands hacked from Podesta’s account, was published last month by WikiLeaks.
Clinton signed an ethics agreement governing her family’s globe-straddling foundation in order to become secretary of state in 2009. The agreement was designed to increase transparency to avoid appearances that U.S. foreign policy could be swayed by wealthy donors.
If a new foreign government wished to donate or if an existing foreign-government donor, such as Qatar, wanted to “increase materially” its support of ongoing programs, Clinton promised that the State Department’s ethics official would be notified and given a chance to raise any concerns.
Clinton Foundation officials last month declined to confirm the Qatar donation. In response to additional questions, a foundation spokesman, Brian Cookstra, this week said that it accepted the $1 million gift from Qatar, but this did not amount to a “material increase” in the Gulf country’s support for the charity. Cookstra declined to say whether Qatari officials received their requested meeting with Bill Clinton.
Officials at Qatar’s embassy in Washington and in its Council of Ministers in the capital, Doha, declined to discuss the donation.
The State Department has said it has no record of the foundation submitting the Qatar gift for review, and that it was incumbent on the foundation to notify the department about donations that needed attention. A department spokeswoman did not respond to additional questions about the donation.
According to the foundation’s website, which lists donors in broad categories by cumulative amounts donated, Qatar’s government has directly given a total of between $1 million and $5 million over the years.
The Clinton Foundation has said it would no longer accept money from foreign governments if Clinton is elected president and would spin off those programs that are dependent on foreign governments. Read the rest of this entry »
OH YES HE DID: Thrush Gets Caught AGAIN Emailing A Staffer For Approval
Posted: November 4, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: 2016, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Cheryl Mills, Clinton Foundation, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, John Podesta, Robby Mook, WikiLeaks Leave a comment
The eight paragraphs that Thrush sent Palmieri were filled with glowing sentences about her. She wrote in the forwarded email to Clinton staffers, ‘He did me courtesy of sending what he is going to say about me. Seems fine.’
Alex Pfeiffer reports: For the second time in less than a month Politico chief political correspondent Glenn Thrush has been caught sending stories to Hillary Clinton staffers for approval.
Thrush sent an email to Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri on April 17, 2015 with the subject line: “pls read asap — the [Jennifer Palmieri] bits — don’t share.” This was revealed in Thursday’s WikiLeaks release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails. It is included in Podesta’s emails as Palmieri shared the email with several other Clinton staffers, including campaign manager Robby Mook and Podesta.
[Read the full story here, at The Daily Caller]
The eight paragraphs that Thrush sent Palmieri were filled with glowing sentences about her. She wrote in the forwarded email to Clinton staffers, “He did me courtesy of sending what he is going to say about me. Seems fine.”
The paragraphs about Palmieri ended up largely unchanged in the column, “Quiet, please. Hillary’s running,” a piece focused on Clinton’s press strategy.
In a previous email chain released by WikiLeaks, Thrush asked Podesta to look over a portion of a story pertaining to him. The Politico reporter in the email called himself a “hack” and said “please don’t share.” Read the rest of this entry »
Most Dangerous Man in America: FBI Director James Comey
Posted: October 28, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: 2016, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Cheryl Mills, Clinton Foundation, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Donald Trump presidential campaign, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Republican Party (United States), Robby Mook, United States 1 Comment
FBI Director James B. Comey decided to inform Congress that he would look again into Hillary Clinton’s handling of emails during her time as secretary of state for two main reasons: a sense of obligation to lawmakers and a concern that word of the new email discovery would leak to the media and raise questions of a coverup.
“Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”
— Director Janes Comey, in a memo to FBI employees
The rationale, described by officials close to Comey’s decision-making on the condition of anonymity, prompted the FBI director to release his brief letter to Congress on Friday and upset a presidential race less than two weeks before Election Day. It placed Comey again at the center of a highly partisan argument over whether the nation’s top law enforcement agency was unfairly influencing the campaign.
“It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election. The Director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining.”
— John Podesta, chairman of Clinton’s presidential campaign
In a memo explaining his decision to FBI employees soon after he sent his letter to Congress, Comey said he felt “an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed.”
“Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record,” Comey wrote to his employees.
The last time Comey found himself in the campaign spotlight was in July, when he announced that he had finished a months-long investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information through the use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. After he did so, the denunciation was loudest from Republican nominee Donald Trump and his supporters, who accused the FBI director of bias in favor of Clinton’s candidacy. There was also grumbling within FBI ranks, with a largely conservative investigative corps complaining privately that Comey should have tried harder to make a case.
[Read the full story here, at The Washington Post]
Republicans and Democrats respond as the FBI makes new inquiries related to Hillary Clinton’s private email server. (Dalton Bennett, Alice Li, Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)
This time the loudest criticism has come from Clinton and her supporters, who said Friday that Comey had provided too little information about the nature of the new line of investigation and allowed Republicans to seize political ground as a result. The inquiry focuses on Clinton emails found on a computer used by former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), now under investigation for sending sexually explicit messages to a minor, and top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, who is Weiner’s wife. The couple have since separated. Read the rest of this entry »
FBI Sued Over Records of Bill Clinton, Loretta Lynch Meeting
Posted: October 28, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: 2016, ABC News, Access Hollywood, Bill Clinton, Clinton Foundation, Democratic National Committee, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Government of Russia, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Republican Party (United States), Vladimir Putin, White House 1 Comment
Judicial Watch filed a FOIA on July 7 for documents that included “all records related to the meeting between Attorney General Lynch and former President Bill Clinton on June 27, 2016.”
Bill Clinton and Lynch met privately on a Phoenix tarmac in the final days of the email probe after they said their jets unexpectedly landed near each other.
[Read the full text here, at the Washington Examiner]
While both parties claimed the meeting was purely social in nature, their visit sparked a fierce backlash among critics who accused Bill Clinton of attempting to tilt the outcome of the investigation in favor of his wife. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Krauthammer: Clinton Foundation Corruption Motivated Private E-mail Server
Posted: October 27, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Clinton Cash, Clinton Foundation, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, United States Department of State 1 Comment
“Look, this brings us back full-circle to where we started. The original question was: ‘Why does she have a private e-mail?’ She said convenience — obviously, that was ridiculous, she’s carrying around a whole lot of devices — it was obvious she was hiding something. Think about it: She set it up in 2009, before becoming secretary of state. So she anticipated having exchanges that she would not want anyone to see.”
“We have been asking ourselves on this set for a year almost, “What exactly didn’t she want people to see? Well now we know. As we speculated, the most plausible explanation was the rank corruption of the Clinton Foundation and its corrupt — I don’t know if it’s illegal, but corrupt relationship with the State Department. And her only defense, as we saw earlier, the Democrats are saying, ‘Well, there was nothing that she did — as in the Raytheon case — that was corrupted by donations.’ You can believe that if you want, there’s a reason that people give donations in large amounts. That’s to influence the outcome of decisions. We are getting unfolding to us exactly what she anticipated having to hide. And it’s really dirty business.”
Source: National Review
[VIDEO] Clinton Surrogate Says ‘Nothing New Here’ Four Times in Response to Clinton Foundation Stories
Posted: October 27, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: 2016 Presidential Election, Adult Video News, Bill Clinton, Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton, media, news, Pay for Play, Surrogate, The Pantsuit Report, video Leave a comment
[VIDEO] Bill Clinton Struggles as Hillary’s Surrogate
Posted: October 23, 2016 Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, media, news, Presidential Election 2016, video 1 Comment
[VIDEO] REWIND: Hillary Threatening Bill’s Sex Assault Victims In 1998
Posted: October 16, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Bill Clinton, Christopher Ruddy, Clinton Foundation, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, John McCain, Lewinsky scandal, Matt Lauer, Monica Lewinsky, Vast Right Wing Conspiracy 1 Comment
The Clinton campaign (Washington Post) released audio on Friday of Donald Trump talking about hitting on a hot woman in 2005. Hillary Clinton tweeted out that she was “shocked!” in response to the audio! HillaryClinton – “This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president.” Really, Hillary? This is the same woman who threatened Bill Clinton’s accusers in 1998. It is commonly believed by Clinton victims that Hillary was behind the siccing of private investigators on the many women who accused her husband of rape, sexual assault or infidelity in the 1990s. Hillary Clinton revealed her hidden hand when she menacingly issued a clear warning of intimidation to her husband’s accusers (and those who would pursue their charges) on the nationally broadcast Today Show in early 1998 in the days after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.
The Today Show interview with Matt Lauer on January 27, 1998 is famous for Hillary’s claim that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was behind the allegations of an affair between her husband President Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky. “This is—the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president. A few journalists have kind of caught on to it and explained it. But it has not yet been fully revealed to the American public. And actually, you know, in a bizarre sort of way, this may do it.” Later in the interview, Hillary bluntly issued her threat: “I think we’re going to find some other things. And I think that when all of this is put into context, and we really look at the people involved here, look at their motivations and look at their backgrounds, look at their past behavior, some folks are going to have a lot to answer for.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Press Buries Hillary Clinton’s Sins
Posted: October 15, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Andrea Mitchell, Bill Clinton, Charlie Rose (TV series), Clinton Foundation, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Republican Party (United States), The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, United States Leave a comment
As reporters focus on Donald Trump, they miss new details on Hillary Clinton’s rotten record.
Kimberly A. Strassel writes: If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands accused of groping women.
“But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much everything she has been accused of.”
But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much everything she has been accused of.
“The Obama administration—the federal government, supported by tax dollars—was working as an extension of the Clinton campaign. The State Department coordinated with her staff in responding to the email scandal, and the Justice Department kept her team informed about developments in the court case.”
It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders. The media has almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote its front pages to the Trump story. So let’s review what amounts to a devastating case against a Clinton presidency.
Start with a June 2015 email to Clinton staffers from Erika Rottenberg, the former general counsel of LinkedIn. Ms. Rottenberg wrote that none of the attorneys in her circle of friends “can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents.”
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
She added: “It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc.”
[ALSO SEE – Rigged Debates: Wikileaks Confirm Media’s in Clinton’s Pocket]
A few months later, in a September 2015 email, a Clinton confidante fretted that Mrs. Clinton was too bullheaded to acknowledge she’d done wrong. “Everyone wants her to apologize,” wrote Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress. “And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles’ heel.”
“In a series of 2010 emails, a senior aide to Mrs. Clinton asked a foundation official to let her know which groups offering assistance with the Haitian earthquake relief were “FOB” (Friends of Bill)…Those who made the cut appear to have been teed up for contracts. Those who weren’t? Routed to a standard government website.”
Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs. Clinton’s emails—three weeks before a technician deleted them. The campaign later employed a focus group to see if it could fool Americans into thinking the email scandal was part of the Benghazi investigation (they are separate) and lay it all off as a Republican plot.
“Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs. Clinton’s emails—three weeks before a technician deleted them. The campaign later employed a focus group to see if it could fool Americans into thinking the email scandal was part of the Benghazi investigation…”
A senior FBI official involved with the Clinton investigation told Fox News this week that the “vast majority” of career agents and prosecutors working the case “felt she should be prosecuted” and that giving her a pass was “a top-down decision.” Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Protester Interrupts Bill Clinton With A ‘Bill Is A Rapist’ Sign
Posted: October 6, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: 2016 Presidential Campaign, Bill Clinton, media, news, Protest, Rape, video Leave a comment
[VIDEO] Trey Gowdy: Hillary Clinton’s E-Mail Scandal Erodes Trust in the FBI
Posted: September 29, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Attorney general, Bill Clinton, Classified information, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Message transfer agent, Prosecutor, United States Department of Justice 1 Comment
Paul Crookston writes:
…Gowdy laying out the ways in which all the grounds for prosecuting Clinton were there:
Intent is awfully hard to prove. Very rarely do defendants announce ahead of time, “I intend to commit this crime on this date, go ahead and check the code section — I’m going to do it.” That rarely happens. So you have to prove it by circumstantial evidence, such as whether or not the person intended to set up an e-mail system outside the State Department. Such as whether or not the person knew or should have known that his or her job involved handling classified information. Whether or not the person was truthful about the use of multiple devices.
I think you would agree with this, Director: False exculpatory statements are gold in a courtroom. I would rather have a false exculpatory statement than a confession. I would rather have someone lie about something — and it be provable that that is a lie — such as, that “I neither sent or received classified information.” Such as that “I turned over all my work-related e-mails.” All of that, to me, goes to the issue of intent.
[Read the full story here, at National Review]
For those who may have to prosecute these cases in the future — what would she have had to do to warrant your recommendation of a prosecution?
Comey defended his definition of intent, and added another protection against Clinton that the lack of previous prosecutions somehow absolves Clinton of violating the statute:
We’d have to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt a general awareness of the unlawfulness of your conduct — you knew you were doing something you shouldn’t do. Obviously that is on the face of the statute itself. Then you need to consider who else has been prosecuted in what circumstances, because it is all about prosecutorial judgment. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Bill Clinton: Hillary Has the Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu
Posted: September 15, 2016 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Bill Clinton, Flu, Hillary Clinton, Influenza, Jerry Lee Lewis, media, news, Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu 1 Comment
[VIDEO] Krauthammer: Powell Shows Resentment toward Clintons, Along with ‘Scathing Remarks’ on Trump
Posted: September 15, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Bill Clinton, Charles Krauthammer, Clintons, Colin Powell, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, United States, United States Department of State, United States Secretary of State 2 Comments
With all the attention on the leaked Colin Powell e-mails, Charles Krauthammer noted how the former secretary of state has been critical of both presidential candidates.
“Well he’s an equal-opportunity skeptic. He’s been near, particularly, to the Clintons, so he’s seen them in action. I can understand why he’d be particularly upset that he is dragged into this saga of e-mail, of cover-ups, of destroyed documents, and somehow associated with it in a very tenuous way by Clinton. And I can understand his resentment; it makes total sense.”
[VIDEO] Krauthammer on CBS Clinton Edit: ‘Makes You Want to Walk Away in Disgust’
Posted: September 13, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Bill Clinton, Charles Krauthammer, Hillary Clinton, United States Department of State 2 Comments
“This is a real day for: ‘If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.’ It makes you really want to walk away in disgust from politics and the media. That is an outright — well, I won’t call it a lie — that is not a believable statement.”
“As you say, it’s a second or two. It isn’t a question of time; they were covering for them! And the reason it’s important — it’s a slip, yes — but it’s in the context of a couple who hide stuff. They have been hiding stuff for 30 years, and what everyone is asking: are they hiding something more serious? The ‘frequently’ and the ‘rarely’ is a huge difference, and he said both. So which is true? You have to see them if you are going to make a choice.”
Read more at The Corner
[VIDEO] Bill Clinton Really Wishes He Was 20 Years Old Again
Posted: September 9, 2016 Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Bill Clinton, media, news, video Leave a comment
Jim Geraghty: ‘Picture Comey’s Office When the Complete 68 Pages of the FBI Investigation Comes to his Desk’
Posted: September 9, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton, Clinton Foundation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Muslim Brotherhood, Sexting, United States Department of State 2 Comments
Jim Geraghty writes:
…Picture Comey’s office when the complete 68 pages of the FBI investigation comes to his desk. It’s a mess for her:
- Despite many public denials, 110 of her e-mails contained classified information. This, by itself, is a crime.
- She and/or her team destroyed e-mails that were under congressional subpoena.
- Her team used BleachBit to erase e-mails that were required to be preserved under public-records laws.
- She had not turned over work-related e-mails as she claimed; several thousand work-related e-mails were not given to the State Department, as required by law.
- Despite her continued insistence that her system was secure, an unknown individual using the encrypted privacy tool Tor to hide their tracks accessed an e-mail account on a Clinton family server.
- The evidence pointed to a deliberate, ongoing effort to keep all of her communications off of the secure State Department system, which would be subject to subpoenas and Freedom of Information Act requests. She used several different e-mail servers on her private system, as well as 13 mobile devices and five iPads.
- At no time did she get permission, as required, to do official work on her mobile devices. Clinton frequently lost her phones — which included her e-mails with classified information — and she and her staff could not account for them. An assistant to former president Bill Clinton lost a laptop holding Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. Again, as secretary of state, she swore an oath to protect that information. As Comey declared in his statement, “even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.”
- Either she or her staff lied to the FBI; Clinton said she never had a computer in her Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility (basically, a room that is nearly impossible to bug or eavesdrop). Huma Abedin said she did.
- During the interview with the FBI, Clinton said she “couldn’t recall” more than three dozen times. One portion of the report suggests Clinton could not remember whether or not she received security briefings. But she had previously signed official documents declaring she had been properly briefed.
[Read the full text here, at National Review Online]
Comey looked at that report and saw plenty of potential reasons to recommend impaneling a grand jury. But had the FBI recommended seeking an indictment of Hillary Clinton, it undoubtedly would have created a political earthquake.
The entire Democratic Party would have exploded in rage at the bureau. Comey would have instantly been painted as worse than Ken Starr, worse than Inspector Javert, worse than Torquemada. Clinton defenders would charge that the FBI was torpedoing her presidential campaign, and they might just be right: At the time of Comey’s decision, the Democratic convention was just three weeks away. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Comey’s Agents Were Forgiving About Some Incriminating Evidence’
Posted: September 8, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: Bill Clinton, Cheryl Mills, Classified information, Clinton Foundation, CNN, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Emmet G. Sullivan, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Freedom of Information Act (United States), Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Judicial Watch, United States Department of State 5 Comments
The FBI’s Blind Clinton Trust.
The closer we look at the FBI’s investigative file on Hillary Clinton’s emails, the more we wonder if Director James Comey always intended to let her off the hook. The calculated release before the long Labor Day weekend suggests political favoritism, and the report shows the FBI didn’t pursue evidence of potential false statements, obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence.
“The notes also show the G-men never did grill Mrs. Clinton on her “intent” in setting up her server. Instead they bought her explanation that it was for personal convenience. This helped Mr. Comey avoid concluding that her purpose was to evade statutes like the Federal Records Act. Mr. Comey also told Congress that indicting her without criminal intent would pose a constitutional problem.”
Mr. Comey’s concessions start with his decision not to interview Mrs. Clinton until the end of his investigation, a mere three days before he announced his conclusions. Regular FBI practice is to get a subject on the record early then see if his story meshes with what agents find. In this case they accepted Mrs. Clinton’s I-don’t-recall defenses after the fact.
“Ms. Mills has a particular reason for denying early knowledge of the server: She became Mrs. Clinton’s personal lawyer after they both left State. If Ms. Mills knew about the server while at State, she’d be subject to questions about the server. But if she didn’t know about the server until leaving State, she can argue that conversations with Mrs. Clinton are protected by attorney-client privilege. The FBI ignored all this, and it even allowed Ms. Mills to accompany Mrs. Clinton to her FBI interview as Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer.”
The notes also show the G-men never did grill Mrs. Clinton on her “intent” in setting up her server. Instead they bought her explanation that it was for personal convenience. This helped Mr. Comey avoid concluding that her purpose was to evade statutes like the Federal Records Act. Mr. Comey also told Congress that indicting her without criminal intent would pose a constitutional problem. But Congress has written many laws that don’t require criminal intent, and negligent homicide (for example) has never been unconstitutional.
The FBI notes also blow past evidence that Clinton advisers may have engaged in a cover-up. Consider page 10 of the FBI report: “Clinton’s immediate aides, to include [Huma] Abedin, [Cheryl] Mills, Jacob Sullivan, and [redacted] told the FBI they were unaware of the existence of the private server until after Clinton’s tenure at State or when it became public knowledge.”
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
That’s amazing given that Ms. Abedin had her own email account on the private server. It is also contradicted by page 3: “At the recommendation of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s long-time aide and later Deputy Chief of Staff at State, in or around fall 2008, [ Bill Clinton aide Justin] Cooper contacted Bryan Pagliano . . . to build the new server system and to assist Cooper with the administration of the new server system.”
The FBI must also have ignored two emails referred to by the State Inspector General showing Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin discussing the server while they worked at State: “hrc email coming back—is server okay?” Ms. Mills asked Ms. Abedin and Mr. Cooper in a Feb. 27, 2010 email. Read the rest of this entry »
The Devil’s Cupcake: Meet the Mastermind Behind Clinton’s Massive Email Coverup
Posted: September 4, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, New York Post, Paul Sperry, United States, United States Department of State, White House, White House Chief of Staff 4 Comments
Despite signs Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills obstructed efforts by investigators to obtain Clinton’s emails, the FBI invited Mills to attend Hillary’s interview at FBI headquarters as one of her lawyers.
Paul Sperry reports: Newly released FBI documents detailing the bureau’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails reveal the aide who would likely follow her into the White House as chief counsel was central to a cover-up of evidence sought by investigators.
“It’s absolutely outrageous. The FBI saw massive document destruction and clear intent to withhold material evidence,” he added, “and they just ignored that obstruction, and even let her sit in on the interview.”
— Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch President
Yet despite signs Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills obstructed efforts by investigators to obtain Clinton’s emails, the FBI invited Mills to attend Hillary’s interview at FBI headquarters as one of her lawyers.
[Kaine Hammered Over Clinton Email Report, Falsely Claims She Used One Device for Email]
“It’s absolutely outrageous,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.
“The FBI saw massive document destruction and clear intent to withhold material evidence,” he 
added, “and they just ignored that obstruction, and even let her sit in on the interview.”
[Order Paul Sperry’s book “The Great American Bank Robbery: The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Great Recession” from Amazon.com
The smoking gun is on page 16 of the FBI’s 47-page report. It details how Mills ultimately made the determinations about which emails should be preserved before she and Clinton decided to delete the rest as “personal.” Clinton conducted both government and personal business using a personal email account — clintonemail.com — tied to an unsecured server set up in the basement of her New York home.
The FBI makes clear the procedure Mills used to sort out the emails was suspicious.
“The whole thing was designed to keep Clinton Foundation emails away from investigators.”
For starters, Mills was the one who ordered the server host to move the emails from the server to a laptop where she could screen them. She told investigators she could “not recall” if emails with non-gov addresses were included in the transfer. It’s unlikely they were, because an aide who helped her search told the FBI she only screened for emails sent to or from Clinton with .gov and .mil — not .com — addresses.
[Read the full story here, at the New York Post]
That means messages involving government business between Clinton and her then-deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin — the only aide who had an email account on the clintonemail.com system— were not likely captured. Nor were messages sent between Clinton and Mills and other aides using personal email addresses.
“The FBI saw massive document destruction and clear intent to withhold material evidence and they just ignored that obstruction, and even let [Mills] sit in on the interview.”
– Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch President
Correspondence between Clinton and Abedin (who regularly emailed her boss from huma@clintonemail.com and HAbedin@hillaryclinton.com) is crucial, Fitton says, because Abedin acted as the go-between on requests for access to Clinton from shady foreign Clinton Foundation donors. He says the mushrooming “pay-for-play” scandal is the real reason the former secretary of state set up a private email system in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
pundit from another planet 