Wednesday, April 26, 2017

An Indictment List for AG Sessions to Consider -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Susan Rice, Jim Comey

President Trump, turn Attorney General Sessions loose to bring Hillary Clinton before the bar of justice under a criminal indictment. • • • Hillary's evil star just hit a new low. According to a report by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) Investigative Group, Hillary Clinton’s Department of State aides allegedly threatened a South Asian prime minister’s son with an IRS audit in an attempt to stop a Bangladesh government investigation of a close friend and donor of Clinton’s. The story line is that a Bangladesh government commission was investigating multiple charges of financial mismanagement at Grameen Bank, beginning in May 2012. Muhammad Yunus, a major Clinton Foundation donor, served as managing director of the bank. Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and a permanent US resident, told the DCNF about the threatened IRS audit, marking the first known instance in the US that Clinton’s Department of State used IRS power to intimidate a close relative of a friendly nation’s head of state on behalf of a Clinton Foundation donor. • That piece of Hillary & Hacks criminality just makes my stomach sick -- for Bangladesh, and for America and its democratic values trashed once again by a venal woman who could not do anything honorable if she had a gun pointed at ther head. • Wazed told the DCNF it was “astounding and mind boggling” that senior State Department officials between 2010 and 2012 repeatedly pressured him to influence his mother to drop the commission investigation : “They threatened me with the possibility of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service. I have been here legally for 17 years and never had a problem. But they said, ‘well, you know, you might get audited.' They would say over and over again, ‘Yunus has powerful friends’ and we all knew they were talking of Secretary Clinton. Everybody knew it was Mrs. Clinton.” • The Prime Minister originally disclosed in general terms the pressure exerted on her son at a February reception in Munich. A Bangladesh newspaper reported the prime minister's statement : “Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy had to face pressure from the US State Department to keep Muhammad Yunus as the Grameen Bank managing director.” Hasina added that Hillary Clinton phoned me and exerted the same pressure. Even the US State Department summoned my son Joy three times and told him that we would face trouble.” Hasina said State Department officials told Joy that Clinton would not take the matter lightly. • And, as if that disgusting affair weren't enough, the World Bank also decided to rescind a $1.2 billion loan to Bangladesh while the IRS was pressuring Joy in 2012. The money had been requested in order to build a key bridge near the capital city of Dhaka. The World Bank leveled bribery charges against two Canadian officials, but a Canadian court later acquitted both individuals. Former Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni, who twice met with then-Secretary of State Clinton, told the DCNF it was apparent there were links between the World Bank loan cancellation and Hillary's donor, Yunus. Moni now is chairwoman of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs. Moni said : “Whether there was any abuse by the US Government or the Secretary of State, that I cannot say. I can only say we saw two facts : One was the communications from the State Department, and then the other one was the withdrawal of World Bank’s loan.” But, Moni was more direct about Yunus’ role in the World Bank cancellation : “Professor Yunus obviously tried to punish or tried to retaliate and punish the government of Bangladesh, especially [Prime Minister] Sheikh Hasina. He knew how important the Padma [bridge] was for our economy, for our people’s government, and it would revive the whole of south of Bangladesh. Obviously, he tried to use that to get out of the situation he was in, and he wanted to punish the government." • Clinton met with Yunus three times as Secretary of State while the Bangladesh government investigation was underway, according to an August 2016 Associated Press report on Clinton Foundation donors. The AP said : "Throughout the Bangladesh government’s investigation, 'He (Yunus) pleaded for help in messages routed to Clinton, and she ordered aides to find ways to assist him.' ” • Nonprofit government watchdog Judicial Watch obtained Clinton emails that showed her aide Melanne Verveer regularly updated Clinton on Yunus’ ongoing plight. Clinton also supported Yunus in other ways. The US Agency for International Development, part of State Department, partnered with the Grameen Foundation for a $162 million micro-finance project in 2009. The agency separately awarded $2.2 million to the foundation. • Yunus first ran into trouble when a 2010 Norwegian documentary charged that he diverted nearly $100 million of Grameen Bank funds to finance his private enterprises. Yunus presently owns more than 50 private and nonprofit companies, ranging from Grameen Telecom to firms in the fashion industry and even a yogurt company. Wazed said word of the $100 million diversion did not sit well with many Bangladeshis who earn an annual per-capita income of $1,314 : “The whole Grameen Bank embezzlement issue was important for us. You know, he took $100 million from Grameen bank and transferred to his private trust to create 57 personal, private sector projects.” Wazed added that “Yunus eventually paid it back, but that’s not the point. He took the money, and the bank is a state-bank not authorized to provide big business loans.” • After the Bangladesh government commission report came out in 2013, officials removed Yunus as managing director. Prior to the scandal, Yunus was a high-flying bank executive who championed “micro-credits,” small loans to try to lift the poor out of poverty. He won the admiration and later financial and political assistance of the Clintons when the former President was governor of Arkansas. The Clintons also frequently hosted Yunus at the Clinton Foundation annual Clinton Global Initiative galas in New York. He was heavily promoted as a CGI speaker nearly every year from 2008 to 2016, according to the Foundation website. • And, Yunus was awarded the 2006 Noble Peace Prize, reportedly with backroom lobbying by Bill Clinton. As a New York Senator, Clinton successfully pushed Congress to award him the Congressional Gold Medal. Then-President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, in 2010. Yunus, in turn, was a donor to the Clinton Foundation. Grameen America, one of Yunus’ major American organizations, gave between $100,000 to $250,000 to the foundation, according to the Clinton Foundation website. His Grameen Research group donated $25,000 to $50,000. • • • HILLARY CLINTON MUST BE INDICTED. It isn't necessary to review all the offenses Hillary has committed -- they range from Benghazi to misusing classified documents to an unprotected secret email server to selling her office of Secretary of State in a pay-to-play scheme that benefitted her family Foundation. We could toss in suspicions that she misused IRS files of her enemies, used insider trading to make illegal profits, and had the strange facility of finding dead her "friends" who were being difficult. • WHERE IS THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE PERJURY INVESTIGATION? In August 2016, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee told the media that they would in a September hearing question FBI officials about allegations that Hillary Clinton committed perjury. A GOP committee aide confirmed to TheHill that lawmakers intend to question the FBI about the lawmakers’ charges because the Obama Justice Department had announced earlier that it would not indict the former Secretary of State or her aides for mishandling classified information. In August 2016, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz wrote to the US Attorney in Washington with detailed allegations of how Clinton appeared to have misspoken about key details of her email setup before the House Select Committee on Benghazi last October. During her appearance before the Select Committee on Benghazi, Clinton made at least four concrete statements about her bespoke email arrangement that the FBI later proved to be false, the lawmakers claim. For instance, Clinton claimed at the time that none of the messages on her machine were marked as classified, though FBI Director James Comey later asserted that at least three bore some markings indicating they were sensitive. The FBI told the lawmakers earlier in August that it was reviewing their recommendations and “will take appropriate action as necessary.” • • • THE FBI AND COMEY ROLE. Joel Pollack on September 30, 2016, published an article in Breitbart that reported on FBI Director James Comey's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee a few days earlier in September. Comey told the Committee that he could not remember why the agency determined that former Cheryl Mills did not know about Hillary Clinton’s private email server, when there was proof she did. Mills, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, and now her lawyer, wrote personally to Clinton’s private staff about the server, but then told the FBI she did not even know what a “server” was. As the Wall Street Journal‘s Kimberly Strassel noted in a September 2106 column, the deception ought to have earned Mills a prosecution for perjury -- and a deeper probe of Hillary Clinton -- but the FBI chose to look the other way. Instead, not only did Mills receive immunity from the Department of Justice, but she was also allowed to sit in on the FBI’s interview with Clinton -- and to walk out of her own interview with the FBI when she was asked questions about the email scandal that she decided she did not have to answer. Central to Mills’s apparent super-immunity is her assertion of attorney-client privilege. The privilege, which can only be waived by the client, prevents an attorney from disclosing any communications from his or her client. Mills asserted that she did not have to tell the FBI about the server because she only learned about it once she was Clinton’s attorney -- i.e., after she left the State Department, where she had been a “counselor” and chief of staff but did not represent Clinton personally as her lawyer. • The only way to make sense of these contradictory facts, sqys Pollack : "is to believe the incredibly unlikely theory that Mills knew about the server when she was at the State Department, but forgot about it when she left, then was reminded about it by Clinton once she was her attorney, but could not talk about it without permission from Clinton at that stage, thanks to the attorney-client privilege she conveniently enjoyed." • That stretches even the expansive Washington imagination. And, it's not the first time Mills has been linked to a cover-up. In 2013, a State Department diplomat who had been in Libya during the Benghazi attacks told Congress that Mills had instructed witnesses not to cooperate with Congress. She is also alleged to have interfered with other investigations. • That is the last official information or journalistic rpeorting on Hillary's perjury probe. Has the House Judiciary Committee simply given up? Did Attorney Gereral Lynch write to the House Judiciary Committee to say the DOJ would look at the perjury allegations the Committee raised? Did Comey take another dive? Or has Hillary dodged another bullet?? • • • WHY IS COMEY STILL AT THE FBI? Jim Comey testified before the House Intelligence Committee in March, and, according to LawNewz, his testimony boiled down to this : "Obama’s wiretapping is 'fake news,' and the Trump-Russia connection isn’t (or at the very least they are investigating)." Although the FBI almost never discusses ongoing investigations, Director Comey had shattered that rule, blabbing to TV cameras and Congress like the local gossip. Comey explained that in “unusual circumstances where it is in the public interest,” he would share what information he could about what’s been going on with our President. Comey began his hours of testimony with the confirmation that Trump’s campaign is being investigated, and that the investigation is a criminal one : “I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 Presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.” Trump handled that long-winded explanation with a short tweet : "James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. This story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!" • But, Comey had more to say. Representative Adam Schiff and Comey discussed President Trump’s Saturday-morning tweet accusing then-President Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower. Here is the exchange : SCHIFF: First, the President claimed, quote, “Terrible. Just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism,” unquote. Director Comey, was the President’s statement that Obama had his wires tapped in Trump Tower a true statement? COMEY: With respect to the President’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets and we have looked carefully inside the FBI. The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components. The department has no information that supports those tweets. SCHIFF: The President accused Mr. Obama and presumably the FBI of engaging in McCarthyism. As you understand the term McCarthyism, do you think President Obama or the FBI was engaged in such conduct? COMEY: I’m not to try and characterize the tweets themselves. All I can tell you is we have no information that supports them. SCHIFF: Were you engaged in McCarthyism, Director Comey? COMEY: I try very hard not to engage in any isms of any kind, including -- including McCarthyism. • Ouch. President Trump probably had today blocked out on his calendar for some fist-bumping over the opening of the Neil Gorsuch confirmation hearings. Those hearings were wildly overshadowed by Comey’s testimony, which painted pictures of Trump as everything from foolish to criminal. Comey’s hearing may have been the ultimate full-circle. Or perhaps the ultimate penance. James Comey, as LawNewz put it : "intentionally or not, almost certainly helped Trump secure his win in November. And now, his statements suggest Trump to be a liar at best and a traitor at worst. While Trump may have amused himself with tweeting in real-time today, as if the Congressional Hearing was some kind of reality show finale, I’d bet a search of his Google history would show, “can the President fire the FBI director?” • And, after the whopper Comey told Congress about Obama and Co. not "wiretapping" Trump and his team, maybe the FBI Director himself could be indicted for perjury to Congress. • • • COMEY HAD TO KNOW SUSAN RICE USED NSA SURVEILANCE FOR DOMESTIC POLITICAL PURPOSES. Former President Barack Obama’s national security advisor Susan Rice ordered US spy agencies to produce “detailed spreadsheets” of legal phone calls involving Donald Trump and his aides when he was running for president, according to former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova, who told the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) : “What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals. The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with. In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.” Fox News and Bloomberg News, citing multiple sources, reported that Rice had requested the intelligence information that was produced in a highly organized operation. Fox said the unmasked names of Trump aides were given to officials at the National Security Council (NSC), the Department of Defense, James Clapper, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, and John Brennan, Obama’s CIA Director. Joining Rice in the alleged White House operations was her deputy Ben Rhodes, according to Fox. Colonel (Ret.) James Waurishuk, an NSC veteran and former deputy director for intelligence at the US Central Command, told the DCNF that many hands had to be involved throughout the Obama administration to launch such a political spying program : “The surveillance initially is the responsibility of the National Security Agency. They have to abide by this guidance when one of the other agencies says, ‘we’re looking at this particular person which we would like to unmask.' The lawyers and counsel at the NSA surely would be talking to the lawyers and members of counsel at CIA, or at the National Security Council or at the Director of National Intelligence or at the FBI. It’s unbelievable of the level and degree of the administration to look for information on Donald Trump and his associates, his campaign team and his transition team. This is really, really serious stuff.” Michael Doran, former NSC senior director, told the DCNF that “somebody blew a hole in the wall between national security secrets and partisan politics.” This “was a stream of information that was supposed to be hermetically sealed from politics and the Obama administration found a way to blow a hole in that wall,” he said. Doran charged that potential serious crimes were undertaken because “this is a leaking of signal intelligence. That’s a felony. And you can get 10 years for that. It is a tremendous abuse of the system. We’re not supposed to be monitoring American citizens. Bigger than the crime, is the breach of public trust.” Waurishuk said he was most dismayed that “this is now using national intelligence assets and capabilities to spy on the elected, yet-to-be-seated President. We’re looking at a potential constitutional crisis from the standpoint that we used an extremely strong capability that’s supposed to be used to safeguard and protect the country. And we used it for political purposes by a sitting president. That takes on a new precedent.” • On Wednesday, we learned that Justice Department rules limit supplying politically sensitive information to the White House, under Attorney General guidelines : The attorney general guidelines for the FBI state that “compromising information concerning domestic officials or political organizations, or information concerning activities of United States persons intended to affect the political process in the United States, may be disseminated to the White House only with the approval of the attorney general.” The sharing of compromising FBI information also must be “based on a determination that such dissemination is needed for foreign intelligence purposes, for the purpose of protecting against international terrorism or other threats to the national security, or for the conduct of foreign affairs.” • The prohibitions in guidelines may explain why the FBI so far has refused to cooperate with the House committee’s investigation of Susan Rice. Specifically, as of Wednesday, the FBI still has not responded to a request for documents that could explain how the White House was able to “unmask” the names of Americans incidentally spied on during a foreign electronic intelligence operation that ran from November to January -- the same months the Trump transition team was working. FBI spokesman Andrew Ames would not say why the bureau has not met the House committee’s document request. But, he added : “The FBI will continue to work with our congressional oversight committees on their requests.” According to congressional sources, the investigation is trying to determine if Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security advisor, was involved in a clandestine political spying operation using foreign surveillance as cover. Rice is expected to be a central witness in the coming weeks before committee investigators to explain the unmasking and wide dissemination of what the committee chairman, Representative Devin Nunes, has called improper electronic surveillance of Trump transition team officials. Nunes has said dozens of electronic intelligence reports appear to have revealed that information on Americans was improperly and widely disseminated throughout government during the presidential transition. The acting attorney general at the time was Sally Q. Yates, and the House committee is expected to question her in addition to Rice about the FBI’s role in the intelligence-gathering controversy. The guidelines also list six categories of sensitive information that can be routinely shared with the White House -- information on foreign spy activities in the United States, signs of an imminent foreign attack or cyberattack, data on foreign leadership changes and information about foreign economic or political events that could have an impact on national security. • The New York Times reported in March that the Obama administration officials were “scrambling” during the final days to collect and disseminate intelligence on any ties between Mr. Trump and his team and Russia, fearing that once in office the President would destroy compromising information gathered by US spies. Obama also loosened rules on sharing raw electronic intelligence gathered by the National Security Agency on December 15 -- weeks before Obama left office. A 26-page directive signed by then-Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has been criticized by privacy groups as posing new risks that Americans’ rights will be violated. • • • DEAR READERS, while we are urging Attorney General Sessions to indict Hillary Clinton on any number of alleged criminal offenses, we can also add several other name in the hope that AG Sessions will get his staff working on indictments for Rice, Comey , Clapper, and Brennan. • And we might snag Barack Obama at the saame time. The question is whether it is a crime for a President to nominate a federal dsitrict judge in the expectation that he will later go after the President's political foes. That seems to be what happened when US District Judge William Orrick, appointed by Obama, in 2012, for the Northern District of California, ruled this week that the US government can’t withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities. According to Public Citizen, while working as a lawyer in the private sector, Orrick raised $200,000 for Obama and personally gave $30,800 to various committees working on behalf of Obama. Bias? Ideological conflict of interest? Judge Orrick also, in 2015, blocked the release of the notorious underground recordings of Planned Parenthood, in which the sale of harvested organs from aborted fetuses was discussed. Public Cicizen asks ; "Could you find a better Judge to defend 'the rights' of sanctuary cities? Given Obama’s stance on sanctuary cities, he may as well have issued today’s judicial order himself. Judge Orrick is his proxy." President Trump tweeted : "First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous rulings. See you in the Supreme Court!" • And, this time, dear readers, the Supreme Court will have Justice Gorsuch on the conservative side.

1 comment:

  1. Republican elected lawmakers seem to be afraid to rock the boat.

    There is simply no circumstance that allows the lines of the Clintons, Obama, Rice and 2 handfuls of other Soros operatives from being in. Federal Courthouse today on a bastion of charges.

    Any elected body has had more than sufficient time to investigate and bring charges. Court dates for them all are long overdue.

    ReplyDelete