The NY Times and the Wall Street Journal both reported on Monday morning that an FBI warrant application to a federal judge over the weekend for permission to search Huma Abedin's emails and laptop had been granted. The application was made on the basis of the Clinton email investigation. Necessarily, that application (as required by the Constitution's Fourth Amendment) would have been supported by FBI affidavits.
This new fact is a development of immense potential significance – both for Mrs. Clinton personally and for us as American citizens. It is also unprecedented in American history.
At a minimum, it enables us to pierce the thick cloud of black ink and disinformation released over the weekend by Team Hillary and which is being widely misreported in the current news cycle.
The FBI agents had to make this warrant application because their existing Fourth Amendment search authority was on the basis of Anthony Weiner's (unrelated) suspected misconduct with an underage girl. That investigation was already a grand jury matter. However, that grand jury's authority – which is supervised by a federal judge -- did not authorize the Bureau to pursue information which might be pertinent to the inquiry into Mrs. Clinton's use of a personal email server while she was Secretary of State. Making that application, under standard DOJ protocol, required approval from Main Justice. In this case, the assistant attorney in charge of the Criminal Division, if not the attorney general.
Since the application was made, it's safe to conclude that the Criminal Division at Main Justice authorized the warrant application. Thus, at a minimum, the senior leadership of the Justice Department is not as unanimously condemnatory of FBI director Comey's letter to Congress on Friday as media reports would lead us to believe.
It also explains why Director Comey issued his letter to Congress. The reporting tells us that the FBI's decision to make a warrant application to the supervising judge of the Weiner grand jury triggered Mr. Comey's decision to notify Congress. Having promised Congressional leaders (perhaps unwisely, since he was not required to do so) that, if the Bureau uncovered new evidence relating to Hillarygate which required further inquiry, he would so notify them, he proceeded on Friday to keep his word and do so.
Now he's being condemned by the Democrats and the MSM for not saying why. We'll get to the reason why he's not in a minute. But, first, the granting of the warrant application means several important and new things:
1) A federal judge supervising a grand jury has now made a finding, based on FBI affidavits which present evidence gathered during the preliminary Hillary inquiry (the one which the FBI director stated had been closed back in July), that there's probable cause to believe that a federal crime was committed in connection with Mrs. Clinton's use of a private email server.
We still, however, don't know what crime(s) are suspected to have been committed. Or by whom.
2) The FBI can use this new grant of grand jury authority to investigate Mrs. Clinton's use of a private email server for the first time to issues subpoenaes to obtain testimony from witnesses and compel the production of documents and things. The Bureau and DOJ can, furthermore, use the judge's probable cause finding to support further warrant applications.
This means that, if DOJ authorizes it, a United States attorney now has the ability for the first time to put subpoenaed witnesses before a grand jury. There, without their lawyer in the room, they may be questioned under oath by a federal prosecutor. If the witnesses take the Fifth – and the witness's lawyer is allowed to sit outside the grand jury room and be consulted by the witness before answering a question, they can be immunized and, if they still refuse to testify, a judge can jail them indefinitely until they change their mind.
Huma Abedin, according to prior reporting, received a grant of immunity during the FBI's preliminary investigation. During the first Clinton presidency, Clinton allies chose jail over cooperating with the federal grand jury investigating both Clintons.
We may get to see if a new generation of Clinton allies are willing to do the same.
3) The liberal media's reporting that the Hillarygate email server investigation has not, in fact, been "reopened" is totally false.
Why?
Because, not only is the probe reopened, it has been upgraded and expanded. It has been upgraded from a preliminary inquiry to a formal criminal investigation with grand jury power. That also means that, at least at the level of the federal grand jury itself, assistant U.S. attorneys assigned to that grand jury are now for the first time formally involved.
In other words: the Beast is now fully awake.
4) This weekend's development potentially escalates the threat to Mrs. Clinton. While several other procedural steps and processes are necessary, it is a federal grand jury, not the FBI, which issues indictments. The FBI -- using the the grand jury to obtain testimony, conduct searches and compel the production of documents and things - investigates crimes. The U.S. Attorneys, acting though the grand jury, charge and prosecute those persons whom the grand jury finds probable cause to believe have committed those crimes.
5) This weekend's development also means that, for the first time in American history, a candidate for President of the United States is likely now a subject/target of a federal grand jury investigation.
These facts now enable us to analyze and dispel Team Clinton's attempts to lay down a thick fog of misdirection over the scene.
Here it is: Mrs. Clinton's demand that the FBI be "transparent" is pure posturing -- spinning to the max (which Mrs. Clinton, as the most criminally investigated presidential candidate in U.S. history, well knows). Younger readers, please take note: this is not, to put it mildly, Hillary Clinton's first rodeo.
Not for the first time, Mrs. Clinton is being totally disingenuous with the voters (and the media). She is also making FBI director Comey into her personal punching bag. And she's doing it because she knows that the director can't fight back.
In this, Mrs. Clinton is simply repeating a tactic which she and her catspaw Sidney Blumenthal used to good effect during the Whitewater, Travelgate, and Monica Lewinsky investigations in the 1990s. And that tactic worked.
It’s called grand jury secrecy. Now that Hillarygate is, for the first time, a grand jury investigation, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) prohibits the FBI and prosecutors from saying anything about "matters occurring before the grand jury." Their lips are sealed.
Team Hillary's lips, however, are not. They are neither federal prosecutors nor "agents of the grand jury." So, Mrs. Clinton and her spokesmen -- unlike the federal law enforcement officials they've been targeting all weekend -- are free to tell us everything they know.
Let's see if they do. A reporter should ask them.
And, in the meantime, let's not bother to hold our breaths.
If Hillary really wants "transparency," let her release the FBI's warrant application for permission to search Huma Abedin and Mr. Weiner's emails for evidence relating to whether Hillary's use of a private server violated federal law. Huma's lawyers likely have it. If not, they can certainly get it.
Huma, of course, is also free to release the emails too.
That's why Hillary's demand for "transparency" by the FBI is moonshine. She damn well knows the feds can't do it.
She also now knows that the threat level against her has just been upgraded to ORANGE.
William Safire and Christopher Hitchens, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
October 31, 2016
Hillary did two favors for Morocco and then Clinton Foundation collected $28 million from them
It’s pay-to-play government, period. No doubt, all the principals will claim they were independently acting in the best interest of the Americna people, but the events speak to an inner logic. Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation has the story laid out, explaining that a US industry was crippled, and its Moroccan competitor coughs up millions, in the first favor:
Hillary Clinton did two huge favors for Morocco during her tenure as secretary of state while the Clinton Foundation accepted up to $28 million in donations from the country’s ruler, King Mohammed VI, according to new information obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.
Clinton and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lisa Jackson tried to shut down the Florida-based Mosaic Company in 2011, operator of America’s largest phosphate mining facility.
Jackson’s close ties and loyalty to the Clintons were revealed when she joined the Clinton Foundation’s board of directors in 2013, just months after she left the EPA. Jackson is also close to John Podesta, Clinton’s national campaign chairman.
Morocco’s state-owned phosphate company, OCP, would ostensibly have benefited from Jackson’s move to shut down Mosaic. Mohammed donated up to $15 million to the Clinton Foundation through OCP.
The other favor did not try to destroy American jobs, it merely acquiesced to Morocco’s invasion, rule of, and extraction of the mineral wealth from territory it does not legitimately enjoy sovereignty over. This is known by progressives as the rawest form of colonialism and imperialism. But for Alinsky disciple and champion of the oppressed Hillary Clinton, that was no problem:
Clinton also relaxed U.S. foreign aid restrictions on Morocco, thus allowing U.S. funds to be used in the territory of Western Sahara where OCP operates phosphate mining operations. The aid restrictions stemmed from Morocco’s illegal occupation of the territory since 1974.
Morocco is repeatedly condemned for seizing the territory and for unilaterally extracting the country’s valuable minerals, impoverishing what’s left of the local Sahrawi Arabs.
No nation recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara and the United Nation’s Security Council legal office and the International Court of Justice both demand that Muhammed withdraw his claim over the territory and end illegal extraction of minerals.
An email WikiLeaks made public last week illustrated how Clinton, while acting as secretary of state, negotiated an additional $12 million donation to the Clinton Foundation from Muhammed in return for holding the 2015 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting in Marrakech, Morocco. Another $1 million payment came from OCP to cover the expenses of the CGI meeting.
It’s time for all decent people to recognize that the label “Clinton Crime Family” is not entirely satirical.
October 31, 2016
The presidential race has changed because The Awful Truth about the Clintons is sinking in
I admit that my jaw dropped yesterday as I watched Doug Schoen announce that he is no longer able to support Hillary Clinton for president, as described on these pages by Jeannie DiAngelis. Anyone who has watched national politics closely over the last quarter century knows that Schoen is smart, principled, and has deep connections with the Clintons. That he would withdraw his support is a signal moment, in the literal sense, telling other principled Dems that the stink is just too much. I suspect that he has a lot of comfort with his unease, but it remains to be seen if he will start a cascade of people distancing themselves publicly. My guess is that few Democrat media complex players on the national level have his guts and integrity. For now.
But it takes no guts at all to stay home, or fail to vote for Hillary, if you are a Democrat taken aback by the cumulative effect of the revelations last week. Here is the logical chain of four shocks that I think a big enough (10%?) share of Democrats have pondered.
Shock Number One
The Clintons actively enriched themselves through the Clinton Foundation empire. Doug Band admitting that the same marks were targeted for donations, for speaking fees for Bill, and for consulting work for Teneo (which funneled money back to others in the machine, like Huma). AT readers may have few illusions about the way the Clintons made their fortune, but loyal Democrats always assumed it was incidental reward for their good work championing the oppressed. Clinton’s body man turned bag man Band shattered those illusions. It was deliberate and it was shady.
Shock Number Two
James Comey’s letter to Congress re-opening the email inquiry suddenly negated what Dems took as an all clear signal from him last July. They went ahead and nominated Hillary in the knowledge there was no criminal probe (of the emails – they did not know of the Clinton Foundation probe already underway)= rhanks to Comey’s July 5 presentation ion the evidence and the decision to not recommend prosecution.
The rug has been pulled out from under them.
Shock Number Three
The rifts within the FBI over investigating the Clintons are coming to light, and driving suspicions that a cover up may have been attempted. Loretta Lynch’s notorious tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton in private already planted seeds of doubt. To some degree, insiders and some Dem faithful have understood that the Clintons leave no stone unturned when it comes to protecting themselves from accusers. But what is frightening and threatening is the possibility of a grass roots revolt within the FBI, and the possibility of really serious leaks if the ball is dropped.
Shock Number Four
In combination, the three previous shocks mean we are headed for a constitutional crisis if Hillary is elected, and then indicted. Serious people who love the Republic –and that group includes even some Dem insiders – understand that this is a potential nightmare and a national security threat in an era of terror and unstable great power relations.
Schoen has shown how it is done. Now it is up to other Democrats to take their stand. NeverHillary's moment may have arrived.
October 31, 2016
Doug Schoen Puts His Support for Hillary On Hold
The evening that the FBI reopened its criminal investigation into Hillary’s email server, Democrat political analyst, pollster, author, and Fox News commentator Doug Schoen, together with "Justice" host Judge Jeanine Pirro and Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), all appeared on a segment of the "Sean Hannity Show".
After discussing how during the FBI’s investigation into Anthony Weiner sexting a 15-year-old girl new emails were discovered, Jeanine and Sean agreed that the findings had to be big for the FBI to open an investigation just 11 days prior to an election.
Critical of the FBI’s modus operandi, Jay Sekulow asked the panel how it was that “the FBI [did] not [initially] ask for and demand Huma Abedin's personal e-mail accounts?” Hannity cut in, “How did they agree to destroy evidence of other people. Who destroys evidence in a case?”
Sekulow expounded upon Sean’s question, telling the panel members:
[t]hat is called obstruction of justice if anybody else did it… Tonight, a grand jury needs to be impaneled, number one. Number two; a special prosecutor needs to be appointed immediately. Number three, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, and deputy director of the FBI McCabe need to not be involved in this process. A lot of people are praising James Comey because he opened it up. Let's cut the nonsense. This whole thing is ridiculous.
Sekulow stressed that what the FBI did:
[g]oes to the heart of our constitutional republic. And you don't do this in the United States of America. So if they reopened it, whether it's Wikileaks, whether it's Huma Abedin, it has to be really significant. And I think 11 days out, even though these FBI directors are saying we're just looking at it, for them to do this, it has to be big.
That’s when Hannity turned to Hillary promoter Schoen and asked for his opinion. Sean queried: “Doug?”
Slightly adversarial, Schoen bristled in response to all the criticism by confidently stating “Hillary is going to be elected!” Then Schoen said, “She's been under criminal investigation by the FBI for the bulk of the campaign and, you know, she's had a steady lead. It's 11 days out.”
In other words, Doug was sure that at this late date – 11 days out -- Hillary Clinton would still be elected president.
Hannity shot back:
She may get elected. But if crimes are committed, maybe before she gets into office she's going to be indicted. Maybe while she's in office she's going to be indicted. What, does Barack Hussein Obama give her a pardon as he leaves office? He could. Does she give herself a pardon?
Schoen said, “All of that could happen,” to which Hannity replied, “Really? Is that what you want for your country?”
Schoen responded, “I want her elected!”
Sekulow interrupted the duo and said, “I think we're on the precipice of a constitutional crisis if a grand jury is not empaneled and this is not handled correctly within our judicial system. “
After more banter and discussion between Pirro, Hannity, and Sekulow a bold Doug Schoen closed out the discussion when he recommended, “A special prosecutor needs to look at the FBI. It’s outrageous.”
For those who caught Schoen’s call for a special prosecutor to investigate the FBI, the suggestion seemed outrageous.
Then, much to everyone’s amazement, less than 72-hours later, on Fox Report Weekend hosted by Harris Faulkner, the guy who wanted to see Hillary elected, and who called for a special prosecutor to investigate the FBI, made another unexpected statement.
On a panel made up of Fox Political Insiders former Republican Congressman John LeBoutillier, and Democrat public opinion pollster Pat Caddell, Schoen, the diehard Hillary supporter shocked everyone with a public confession.
A sheepish Schoen spoke directly to Faulkner, saying:
As you know I have been a supporter of Secretary Clinton… but… and the but is a big deal, at least to me, given that this investigation is going to go on for many months after the election, no matter who wins. But, if the Secretary of State wins we will have a president under criminal investigation with Huma Abedin under investigation -- the Secretary of State -- the president-elect, if she should win, under investigation.
Dumbfounded, Faulkner cut in asking, “Whoa, whoa, whoa… wait a minute you’re not going to vote for Hillary Clinton?”
More concerned for country than party, a patriotic Schoen replied back:
Harris, under these circumstances I am actively reassessing my support…I’m deeply concerned that we will have a Constitutional crisis if she’s elected. I want to learn more this week see what we see, but as of today, I am not a supporter of the Secretary of State for the nation’s highest office.
So, two days after the FBI reopened the investigation into the Hillary email server debacle, Democrat faithful, Doug Schoen, who has supported the Clintons for 22 years, publicly denounced his support for the former Secretary of State’s bid for president.
BILL CLINTON SUCKS IN BRIBES FROM
ISIS DONORS!
The Muslim Sheikhdom Qatar is a major sponsor of ISIS and global anti-American terrorism. How disturbing is it that Bill Clinton sucked in a bribe of ONE MILLION DOLLARS under the guise of a birthday gift? There is NO one the Clintons will not sell us out to and have already!
GLOBALIST HILLARY CLINTON’S CONSPIRACY
TO SURRENDER OUR BORDERS TO OBAMA’S
INVADING MUSLIMS LIKE THE GREAT
HISPANDERER DID FOR THE MEXICANS!
THE UGLY, SORDID, CORRUPT AND SLEAZY LIFE OF BILLARY AND HILLARY CLINTON:
Thirty reasons not to vote for Hillary
She would make a terrible president and Bill an equally terrible “First Gentleman” for these thirty reasons.
THE CLINTON MAFIA:
IN THE IMAGE OF THE “HOPE & CHANGE” HUCKSTER BARACK OBAMA, REDEFINING POL CORRUPTION!
When asked to compare Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, D'Souza said no contest. "She is basically Obama plus gangsterism. The Clintons are like Bonnie and Clyde. Their goal is to steal America.
The Global Looting of Bill & Hillary Clinton – unconvicted.
When asked to compare Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, D'Souza said no contest. "She is basically Obama plus gangsterism. The Clintons are like Bonnie and Clyde. Their goal is to steal America.
In Hillary's America, D'Souza documents how Democrats transitioned from pro-slavery to pro-enslavement; the longstanding Democratic political war against women; how Hillary Clinton's political mentor was, literally, a cold-blooded gangster, Saul Alinsky; how the Clintons and other Democrats see foreign policy not in terms of national interest, but in terms of personal profit; and how Democratic-controlled cities have turned into hotbeds of crime and corruption. American Thinker interviewed him about his latest projects
HILLARY CLINTON GLOBAL PREDATOR
A Hillary victory means there won’t be a departure; merely a doubling-down by the elite, as they act with renewed zest to secure their interests -- versus the national welfare. The Great Imposition -- a war waged on average Americans -- will continue with awful consequences. J. ROBERT SMITH - THE AMERICAN THINKER.COM
“Forget the arrogance and corruption -- $153 million in Clinton family speaking fees from 2001, mainly bribes during her State Department years. Forget the lies, the lies about lies, and the perjury. Forget the security breaches. Forget enabling America’s most prominent sexual predator. Forget the trail of bodies stretching from Little Rock to Benghazi. Forget every scandal from Whitewater to deleted e-mails. Forget all of it.”