Monday, August 5, 2019

BANKSTER-OWNED DIVISIONIST BARACK OBAMA BLAMES PRESIDENT TRUMP FOR MASS SHOOTINGS - WHO DOES THE OBOMB BLAME FOR THE STAGGERING MURDER RATES IN OBAMAVILLE CHICAGO???

They Destroyed Our Country
“They knew Obama was an unqualified crook; yet they promoted him. They knew Obama was a train wreck waiting to happen; yet they made him president, to the great injury of America and the world. They understood he was only a figurehead, an egomaniac, and a liar; yet they made him king, doing great harm to our republic (perhaps irreparable.)”


Barack Obama Blames Donald Trump, Guns, ‘White Supremacist’ Websites for Mass Shootings

Angry Obama points (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press
2:27

Former President Barack Obama delivered a lengthy response to the dual mass shootings that killed 31 people in Texas and Ohio over the weekend. He blamed guns, white supremacist websites, and President Donald Trump’s rhetoric for the ongoing violence in the United States.

In a message shared on Twitter, the former president specifically called for more gun control to help prevent more mass shootings.
“Until all of us stand up and insist on holding public officials accountable for changing our gun laws, these tragedies will keep happening,” Obama said in a statement, citing “evidence” that proved that more gun control could stop “some killings.”
Obama lamented that “no other nation on Earth” experienced the level of gun violence the United States does.
The former president also called for more censorship of “white nationalist websites” to prevent radicalization.
“[T]here are indications that the El Paso shooting follows a dangerous trend: troubled individuals who embrace racist ideologies and see themselves obligated to act violently to preserve white supremacy,” he wrote.
He compared the radicalization of white nationalists to that of followers of Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists.
“That means that both law enforcement agencies and internet platforms need to come up with better strategies to reduce the influence of these hate groups,” he wrote.
While Obama did not cite President Trump’s rhetoric specifically, he called Americans to “soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments.”
He also criticized rhetoric meant to “demonize those who don’t look like us” or suggest that immigrants were “sub-human” or threatened the American way of life.
Obama indicated that rhetoric, such as the kind Trump voiced, was the root of the worst moments in human history — citing Jim Crow laws, the Holocaust, Rwanda Genocide, and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.
“It has no place in our politics and our public life,” he wrote. “And it’s time for the overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and political party, to say as much — clearly and unequivocally.”
The president also shared a link to a Vox.com article calling for a bold plan to enact gun control:


Pollak: Barack Obama Wrote 

the Playbook on Political 

Division


Barack Obama at Osawatomie (Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty)
Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty
4:13

Left-wing pundits have accused President Donald Trump of using his tweets last weekend to launch a divisive re-election campaign.

David Axelrod, former adviser to President Barack Obama, tweeted: “With his deliberate, racist outburst, @realDonaldTrump wants to raise the profile of his targets, drive Dems to defend them and make them emblematic of the entire party. It’s a cold, hard strategy.”
That is debatable — but if so, Axelrod should know; Obama did it first.
By 2011, Obama knew that re-election would be difficult. The Tea Party had just led the Republicans to a historic victory in the 2010 midterm elections, winning the House and nearly taking the Senate. The economy was only growing sluggishly, and Obama’s stimulus had failed to keep unemployment below eight percent, as projected. Moreover, the passage of Obamacare had provoked a backlash against Obama’s state-centered model of American society.
Facing a similar situation in the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton had “triangulated,” moving back toward the middle, frustrating the GOP by taking up their issues, such as welfare reform.
But Obama rejected that approach. Having watched his icon, Chicago mayor Harold Washington, settle for an incremental approach when faced with opposition in the 1980s, only to die of a sudden heart attack before fulfilling his potential, Obama chose the path of hard-left policy — and divide-and-rule politics.
The first hint of his strategy emerged during the debt ceiling negotiations in the summer of August 2011. As Bob Woodward recounted in his book about the crisis, The Price of Politics, then-Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) had wanted to reach a “grand bargain” with the president on long-term spending cuts. But Obama blew up that agreement by demanding $400 billion in new taxes, to his aides’ surprise. Obama wanted an opponent, not a deal. (Last week, Boehner told Breitbart News Tonight that Obama’s decision was his worst disappointment in 35 years of politics.)
In the fall of 2011, a new left-wing movement, Occupy Wall Street, was launched. A mix of communists, anarchists, and digital pranksters, the Occupy movement cast American society as a struggle between the “99 percent” and the “one percent.”
Obama and then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) embraced the movement — and failed to distance themselves from it even as it collapsed into violence, sexual assault, and confrontations with police.
Instead, Obama picked up on Occupy’s themes and used them to shape his campaign.
In December 2011, Obama gave a speech at Osawatomie, Kansas — a place steeped in radical symbolism — at which he doubled down on his left-wing policies. He focused on the issue of economic inequality, and attacked the idea that the free market could lift the middle class to prosperity. “This isn’t about class warfare. This is about the nation’s welfare,” he insisted.
Then, in the spring of 2012, Obama made a controversial play on race. When a black teen, Trayvon Martin, was killed in Florida during a scuffle with neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, Al Sharprton — who was serving as an informal adviser to Obama at the time — made the local crime story into a national racial controversy. Obama, following Sharpton’s lead, weighed in: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said at the time.
Poll numbers suggest that race relations, which had been improving, dropped precipitously after that. But to Obama, it was worth it: the campaign needed to find a way to motivate minority voters. (Vice President Joe Biden did his part, telling black voters that GOP nominee Mitt Romney was “gonna put y’all in chains.”)
Trump is pushing a non-racial, nationalist message. But if he actually wanted to divide America for political gain, he could learn from the master.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.





HE OBOMBS HAVE ALWAYS LIVED LIKE THE 1% WHOM THEY SERVED AND GROVELED AT THE FEET OF.  

Diamond Life: Michelle Obama rents out $23-million Hollywood Hills mansion for a night



Apparently, a hotel, even a luxury hotel, was not good enough.
Former first lady Michelle Obama had to go big, renting out a $23-million Hollywood Hills mansion for...a night.  The New York Post has the pictures of it here.  Several news accounts explained it as possibly a rental to try and buy, something most home-buyers don't get to do.  Whether she actually paid is also a big question mark, and if so, whether she paid market value (which would have cost more than a fancy hotel) or received her night there a "gift," which presents its own ethics problems.
The Shark House, which is located in the 9200 block of Swallow Drive, is thus named due to its open air shark aquarium. It also has a full spa, a humidor room, movie theater and walk-in wine room.
It's on the market, currently listed for a cool $22.9 million.
A source told TMZ the Obamas may be looking at real estate in the Hollywood Hills area, but that was not confirmed.
If they're in the market to buy that, they've got a lot more money than the press is reporting.  We know they're loaded.  But not that loaded.  Not Louis XIV loaded, which is about the range for this sort of place.  Or is it a sweetheart deal in the works we're talking about?  Maybe they'll end up buying it for "a dollar."  Don't know yet, but neither possibility makes them look good.
It's all part and parcel of the Obamas' long, luxurious post-presidency, a nonstop vacay that costs taxpayers millions.  It's as though we're financing kings now, not retired presidents.  For a while there, the Obamas were jetting around with billionaires and staying on private islands.  Then they bought that expensive Kalorama mansion in Washington, D.C., all supposedly for the benefit of their daughter Sasha, who was finishing high school.  Surprise, surprise, it actually seems to primarily serve as a political watch post for longtime Obama loyalist and consigliere Valerie Jarrett.  They did some audience tours and hung out with more billionaires.  There were those lucrative Goldman Sachs speeches by the celebrity president (which certainly weren't based on economics anyone would want to trade on).
And all of this has been financed by taxpayers, who pay his $207,000 pension, along with bennies such as unlimited air travel, transition expenses, office expenses, presidential library funds, and lifetime Secret Service detail.
Apparently, to the Obamas, there's no reaching that "certain point" at which "you've made enough money."
For Michelle, just call her "Mooch."  Is this really what an ex-presidency is supposed to be like?  Hitting the money jackpot?  What he makes on his own is his own business (subject to bribery laws), but taxpayers shouldn't be financing this level of movie-star billionaire luxe life.  Maybe it's time for some pension reform from Congress.  Would be quite a thing to see that idea presented to the House's ruling Democrats.

 

 

OBAMAnomics:

 

Billionaire Class Enjoys 15X the Wage Growth of American Working Class



AFP
23 Dec 20181,726
3:00

The billionaire class — the country’s top 0.01 percent of earners — have enjoyed more than 15 times as much wage growth as America’s working and middle class since 1979, new wage data reveals.

Between 1979 and 2017, the wages of the bottom 90 percent — the country’s working and lower middle class — have grown by only about 22 percent, Economic Policy Institute (EPI) researchers find.
Compare that small wage increase over nearly four decades to the booming wage growth of America’s top one percent, who have seen their wages grow more than 155 percent during the same period.
Breitbart TV
The top 0.01 percent — the country’s billionaire class — saw their wages grow by more than 343 percent in the last four decades, more than 15 times the wage growth of the bottom 90 percent of Americans.
In 1979, America’s working class was earning on average about $29,600 a year. Fast forward to 2017, and the same bottom 90 percent of Americans are earning only about $6,600 more annually.
The almost four decades of wage stagnation among the country’s working and middle class comes as the national immigration policy has allowed for the admission of more than 1.5 million mostly low-skilled immigrants every year.
(Public Citizen)
In the last decade, alone, the U.S. admitted ten million legal immigrants, forcing American workers to compete against a growing population of low-wage workers. Meanwhile, employers are able to reduce wages and drive up their profit margins thanks to the annual low-skilled immigration scheme.
The Washington, DC-imposed mass immigration policy is a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, and multinational conglomerates as every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of an occupation’s labor force reduces Americans’ hourly wages by 0.4 percent. Every one percent increase in the immigrant workforce reduces Americans’ overall wages by 0.8 percent.
Mass immigration has come at the expense of America’s working and middle class, which has suffered from poor job growth, stagnant wages, and increased public costs to offset the importation of millions of low-skilled foreign nationals.
Four million young Americans enter the workforce every year, but their job opportunities are further diminished as the U.S. imports roughly two new foreign workers for every four American workers who enter the workforce. Even though researchers say 30 percent of the workforce could lose their jobs due to automation by 2030, the U.S. has not stopped importing more than a million foreign nationals every year.
For blue-collar American workers, mass immigration has not only kept wages down but in many cases decreased wages, as Breitbart News reported. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues importing more foreign nationals with whom working-class Americans are forced to compete. In 2016, the U.S. brought in about 1.8 million mostly low-skilled immigrants.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

 

Study: Elite Zip Codes Thrived in Obama Recovery, Rural America Left Behind


Getty Images
10 Dec 2018549
4:49

Wealthy cities and elite zip codes thrived under the slow-moving economic recovery of President Obama while rural American communities were left behind, a study reveals.

The Economic Innovation Group research, highlighted by Axios, details the massive economic inequality between the country’s coastal city elites and middle America’s working class between the Great Recession in 2007 and Obama’s economic recovery in 2016.
Between 2007 and 2016, the number of residents living in elite zip codes grew by more than ten million, with an overwhelming faction of that population growth being driven by mass immigration where the U.S. imports more than 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants annually.
The booming 44.5 million immigrant populations are concentrated mostly in the country’s major cities like Los Angeles, California, Miami Florida, and New York City, New York. The rapidly growing U.S. population — driven by immigration — is set to hit 404 millionby 2060, a boon for real estate developers, wealthy investors, and corporations, all of which benefit greatly from dense populations and a flooded labor market.
The economic study found that while the population grew in wealthy cities, America’s rural population fell by nearly 3.5 million residents.
Likewise, by 2016, elite zip codes had a surplus of 3.6 million jobs, which is more than the combined bottom 80 percent of American zip codes. While it only took about five years for wealthy cities to replace the jobs lost by the recession, it took “at risk” regions of the country a decade to recover, and “distressed” U.S. communities are “unlikely ever to recover on current trendlines,” the report predicts.
A map included in the research shows how rich, coastal metropolises have boomed economically while entire portions of middle America have been left behind as job and business gains remain concentrated at the top of the income ladder.
(Economic Innovation Group) 
(Economic Innovation Group)
Economic growth among the country’s middle-class counties and middle-class zip codes has considerably trailed national economic growth, the study found.
For example, between 2012 and 2016, there were 4.4 percent more business establishments in the country as a whole. That growth was less than two percent in the median zip code and there was close to no growth in the median county.
The same can be said of employment growth, where U.S. employment grew by about 9.3 percent from 2012 to 2016. In the median zip code, though, employment grew by only 5.5 percent and in the median county, employment grew by less than four percent.
“Nearly three in every five large counties added businesses on net over the period, compared to only one in every five small one,” the report concluded.
Elite zip codes added more business establishments during Obama’s economic recovery, between 2012 and 2016, than the entire bottom 80 percent of zip codes combined. For instance, while more than 180,000 businesses have been added to rich zip codes, the country’s bottom tier has lost more than 13,000 businesses even after the economic recovery.
(Economic Innovation Group) 
(Economic Innovation Group)
The gutting of the American manufacturing base, through free trade, has been a driving catalyst for the collapse of the white working class and black Americans. Simultaneously, the outsourcing of the economy has brought major wealth to corporations, tech conglomerates, and Wall Street.
The dramatic decline of U.S. manufacturing at the hands of free trade—where more than 3.4 million American jobs have been lost solely due to free trade with China, not including the American jobs lost due to agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS)—has coincided with growing wage inequality for white and black Americans, a growing number of single mother households,  a drop in U.S. marriage rates, a general stagnation of working and middle class wages, and specifically, increased black American unemployment.
“So, the loss of manufacturing work since 1960 represents a steady decline in relatively high-paying jobs for less-educated workers,” recent research from economist Eric D. Gould has noted.
Fast-forward to the modern economy and the wage trend has been the opposite of what it was during the peak of manufacturing in the U.S. An Economic Policy Institute studyfound this year that been 2009 and 2015, the top one percent of American families earned about 26 times as much income as the bottom 99 percent of Americans.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

 

 

 

Record high income in 2017 for top one percent of wage earners in US

In 2017, the top one percent of US wage earners received their highest paychecks ever, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Based on newly released data from the Social Security Administration, the EPI shows that the top one percent of the population saw their paychecks increase by 3.7 percent in 2017—a rate nearly quadruple the bottom 90 percent of the population. The growth was driven by the top 0.1 percent, which includes many CEOs and corporate executives, whose pay increased eight percent and averaged $2,757,000 last year.
The EPI report is only the latest exposure of the gaping inequality between the vast majority of the population and the modern-day aristocracy that rules over them.
The EPI shows that the bottom 90 percent of wage earners have increased their pay by 22.2 percent between 1979 and 2017. Today, this bottom 90 percent makes an average of just $36,182 a year, which is eaten up by the cost of housing and the growing burden of education, health care, and retirement.
Meanwhile, the top one percent has increased its wages by 157 percent during this same period, a rate seven times faster than the other group. This top segment makes an average of $718,766 a year. Those in-between, the 90th to 99th percentile, have increased their wages by 57.4 percent. They now make an average of $152,476 a year—more than four times the bottom 90 percent.
Graph from the Economic Policy Institute
Decades of decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell to only 61 percent.
Even more, while the bottom 90 percent of the population may take in 61 percent of the wages, large sections of the workforce today barely pull in any income at all. For example, Social Security Administration data found that the bottom 54 percent of wage earners in the United States, 89.5 million people, make an average of just $15,100 a year. This 54 percent of the population earns only 17 percent of all wages paid in America.
However unequal, these wage inequalities still do not fully present the divide between rich and poor. The ultra-wealthy derive their wealth not primarily from wages, but from assets and equities—principally from the stock market. While the bottom 90 percent of the population made 61 percent of the wages in 2017, they owned even less, just 27 percent of the wealth (according to the World Inequality Report 2018 by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman).
The massive increase in the value of the stock market, which only a small segment of the population participates in, means that the top 10 percent of the population controls 73 percent of all wealth in the United States. Just three men—Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates—had more wealth than the bottom half of America combined last year.
Wages are so low in the United States that roughly half of the population falls deeper into debt every year. A Reuters report from July found that the pretax net income (that is, income minus expense) of the bottom 40 percent of the population was an average of negative $11,660. Even the middle quintile of the population, the 40th to 60th percentile, breaks even with an average of only $2,836 a year.
As the Social Security Administration numbers show, 67.4 percent of the population made less than the average wage, $48,250 a year in 2017, a sum that is inadequate to support a family in many cities—especially, with high housing costs, health care, education, and retirement factored in.
For the ruling class, though, workers’ wages are already too much. The volatility of the stock market and the deep fear that the current bull market will collapse has made politicians and businessmen anxious of any sign of wage increases.
In August, wages in the US rose just 0.2 percent above the inflation rate, the highest in nine years. Though the increase was tiny, it was enough to encourage the Federal Reserve to increase the interest rate past two percent for the first time since 2008. Raising interest rates helps to depress workers’ wages by lowering borrowing and spending. As the Financial Times noted, stopping wage growth was “central” to the Federal Reserve’s move.
Further analysis of the Social Security Administration data shows that in 2017, 147,754 people reported wages of 1 million dollars or more—roughly, the top 0.05 percent. Their combined total income of $372 billion could pay for the US federal education budget five times over.
These wages, however large, still pale in comparison to the money the ultra-rich acquire from the stock market. For example, share buybacks and dividend payments, a way of funneling money to shareholders, will eclipse $1 trillion this year.
Whatever the immediate source, the wealth of the rich derives from the great mass of people who do the actual work. Across the United States and around the world, workers, young people, and students have entered into struggle this year over pay, education, health care, immigration, war and democratic rights. This growing movement of the working class must set as its aim confiscating the wealth and power of this tiny parasitic oligarchy. Society’s wealth must be democratically controlled by those who produce it.




THE STAGGERING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY UNDER OBAMA'S ADMINISTRATION SERVING THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS.

THE ENTIRE REASON BEHIND AMNESTY IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND PASS ALONG THE REAL COST OF "CHEAP" MEXICAN LABOR TO THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS.

AND IT'S WORKING!


SEN. BERNIE SANDERS

“Calling income and wealth inequality the "great moral issue of our time," Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive program to transfer wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1 trillion public works program to create "13 million good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid sick leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. Expanded Social Security benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON EXAMINER

YOU THOUGHT OBAMA INVITED OBAMANOMICS and started the assault on the American middle-class?
NOPE!

“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”



Clinton Foundation Put On Watch List Of Suspicious ‘Charities’






OBAMA: SERVANT OF THE 1%


Richest one percent controls nearly half of global wealth


The richest one percent of the world’s population now controls 48.2 percent of global wealth, up from 46 percent last year.



The report found that the growth of global inequality has accelerated sharply since the 2008 financial crisis, as the values of financial assets have soared while wages have stagnated and declined.

Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019

By Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million (US) dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

This large percentage, however, only includes cash, savings, money market funds and listed securities held through managed investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves out businesses, residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial portion of the rich’s net worth.

At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.

In total, the world added $17.5 trillion of new private wealth between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three quarters of all these gains came from previously existing wealth. In other words, the vast majority of money gained has been due to pre-existing assets increasing in value—not the creation of new material things.

This trend is the result of the massive infusions of cheap credit into the financial markets by central banks. The policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the stock market even while global economic growth has slumped.

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.

Those families with wealth between $20 and $100 million also rose substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in their wealth in twelve short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years they will surpass $14 trillion according to the report.

Coming in last in the “high net worth” population are those with between $1 million and $20 million in private wealth. These households are expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.

The gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth accumulation has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of people have not even begun to recover from the past recession.

An Oxfam report from January, for example, shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went from having about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent of it in 2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48 percent of the world’s wealth.
In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.

As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in the United States “between 2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The 2015 report concludes that “low-income households have not benefited at all from income growth.”

Another report by Knight Frank, looks at those with wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014 these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective wealth by $700 billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.

The report also draws attention to the disconnection between the rich and the actual economy. It states that the growth of this ultra-wealthy population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated global economic growth. During 2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its forecast increase for world output from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”


DICK MORRIS:

On America’s First Family of Crime….. NO! Not the Bushes again!

Clinton global hucksterism – Selling out America like they sold out the Lincoln Bedroom.



HILLARY CLINTON: CRONY CLASS’  “Hope and Change” huckster’s successor!

“I serve Obama’s cronies first, illegals second and together we will loot the American middle-class to double our figures. It’s called BAILOUTS! Evita Peron Clinton



At this point, Clinton is the choice of most multimillionaires to be the next occupant of the White House. A recent CNBC poll of 750 millionaires found 53 percent support for Clinton in a contest with Republican Jeb Bush, 14 points better than Obama’s showing in the 2012 election with the same group.


Sen. Bernie Sanders – America’s answer to Wall Street’s looting, the war on the American middle-class and jobs for legals!



“At this point, Clinton is the choice of most multimillionaires to be the next occupant of the White House. A recent CNBC poll of 750 millionaires found 53 percent support for Clinton in a contest with Republican Jeb Bush, 14 points better than Obama’s showing in the 2012 election with the same group.”

THE CRONY CLASS:

OBAMACLINTONOMICS was created by BILLARY CLINTON!

Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush.



“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”

*

“Calling income and wealth inequality the "great moral issue of our time," Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive program to transfer wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1 trillion public works program to create "13 million good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid sick leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. Expanded Social Security benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON EXAMINER


OBAMA’S WALL STREET and the LOOTING of AMERICA – SECOND TERM

The corporate cash hoard has likewise reached a new record, hitting an estimated $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $1.77 trillion in the previous quarter. Instead of investing the money, however, companies are using it to buy back their own stock and pay out record dividends.

Megan McArdle Discusses How America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The Daily Beast special correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a discussion on America's new Mandarin class.




PATRICK BUCHANAN: OBAMA’S ASSAULT  ON AMERICA BEGINS AT OUR BORDERS


WHO REALLY PAYS FOR THE CRIMES OF OBAMA’S CRONY DONORS???
LAST WEEK BARACK OBAMA CELEBRATED FIVE YEARS OF THE LOOTING BY HIS WALL STREET BANKSTERS… now it’s back to cutting social programs to pay for all that rape by the 1% he represents. The following week it will be back to the AMNESTY HOAX to legalize Mexico’s looting of America and make it legal that Mexicans get our jobs first… they already do!
As in previous budget crises under the Obama administration, the events are being stage-managed by the two corporate-controlled parties to give the illusion of partisan gridlock and confrontation over principles—in this case, whether to go forward with the implementation of the Obama health care program—while behind the scenes all factions within the ruling elite agree that massive cuts must be carried through in basic federal social programs.

OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM – A NATION RULED BY CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA DONORS

GET THIS BOOK
Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies

by Michelle Malkin
In her shocking new book,  Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout his administration.

PATRICK BUCHANAN 
After Obama has completely destroyed the American economy, handed millions of jobs to illegals and billions of dollars in welfare to illegals…. BUT WHAT COMES NEXT?


OBAMANOMICS: IS IT WORKING???

Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019

By Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million (US) dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
This large percentage, however, only includes cash, savings, money market funds and listed securities held through managed investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves out businesses, residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial portion of the rich’s net worth.

At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.

In total, the world added $17.5 trillion of new private wealth between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three quarters of all these gains came from previously existing wealth. In other words, the vast majority of money gained has been due to pre-existing assets increasing in value—not the creation of new material things.

This trend is the result of the massive infusions of cheap credit into the financial markets by central banks. The policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the stock market even while global economic growth has slumped.

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.

Those families with wealth between $20 and $100 million also rose substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in their wealth in twelve short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years they will surpass $14 trillion according to the report.

Coming in last in the “high net worth” population are those with between $1 million and $20 million in private wealth. These households are expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.

The gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth accumulation has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of people have not even begun to recover from the past recession.

An Oxfam report from January, for example, shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went from having about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent of it in 2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48 percent of the world’s wealth.

In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.

As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in the United States “between 2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The 2015 report concludes that “low-income households have not benefited at all from income growth.”

Another report by Knight Frank, looks at those with wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014 these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective wealth by $700 billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.

The report also draws attention to the disconnection between the rich and the actual economy. It states that the growth of this ultra-wealthy population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated global economic growth. During 2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its forecast increase for world output from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”

THE CRONY CLASS:

OBAMACLINTONOMICS was created by BILLARY CLINTON!

Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush.


“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”

*

“Calling income and wealth inequality the "great moral issue of our time," Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive program to transfer wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1 trillion public works program to create "13 million good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid sick leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. Expanded Social Security benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON EXAMINER

OBAMA’S WALL STREET and the LOOTING of AMERICA – SECOND TERM

The corporate cash hoard has likewise reached a new record, hitting an estimated $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $1.77 trillion in the previous quarter. Instead of investing the money, however, companies are using it to buy back their own stock and pay out record dividends.

Megan McArdle Discusses How America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The Daily Beast special correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a discussion on America's new Mandarin class.





POLL: MOST INCOMPETENT AND DISHONEST PRESIDENT SINCE…. Well, isn’t Obama merely Bush’s THIRD and FOURTH TERMS??




OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM

A NATION RULED BY CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA DONORS



PATRICK BUCHANAN

After Obama has completely destroyed the American economy, handed millions of jobs to illegals and billions of dollars in welfare to illegals…. BUT WHAT COMES NEXT?





OBAMANOMICS: IS IT WORKING???

Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019

By Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million (US) dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
This large percentage, however, only includes cash, savings, money market funds and listed securities held through managed investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves out businesses, residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial portion of the rich’s net worth.

At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.

In total, the world added $17.5 trillion of new private wealth between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three quarters of all these gains came from previously existing wealth. In other words, the vast majority of money gained has been due to pre-existing assets increasing in value—not the creation of new material things.

This trend is the result of the massive infusions of cheap credit into the financial markets by central banks. The policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the stock market even while global economic growth has slumped.

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.

Those families with wealth between $20 and $100 million also rose substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in their wealth in twelve short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years they will surpass $14 trillion according to the report.

Coming in last in the “high net worth” population are those with between $1 million and $20 million in private wealth. These households are expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.

The gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth accumulation has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of people have not even begun to recover from the past recession.

An Oxfam report from January, for example, shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went from having about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent of it in 2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48 percent of the world’s wealth.

In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.

As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in the United States “between 2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The 2015 report concludes that “low-income households have not benefited at all from income growth.”

Another report by Knight Frank, looks at those with wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014 these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective wealth by $700 billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.

The report also draws attention to the disconnection between the rich and the actual economy. It states that the growth of this ultra-wealthy population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated global economic growth. During 2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its forecast increase for world output from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”


OBAMA-CLINTONomics: the never end war on the American middle-class. But we still get the tax bills for the looting of their Wall Street cronies and their bailouts and billions for Mexico’s welfare state in our borders.

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

                                                                                                     




In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.


In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between
2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in
the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36
percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the
recession, they are more than making that money back.
Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in
the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted
post-recession income gain on record.






INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA AND HIS WALL STREET CRONIES

collapse of household income in the US… STILL BILLIONS IN WELFARE HANDED TO ILLEGALS… they already get our jobs and are voting for more!


INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA… most jobs go to illegals.

AS HIS CRONY BANKSTERS CONTINUE TO LOOT, INCOMES PLUMMET FOR AMERICANS (LEGALS).

GOOD TIME FOR AMNESTY FOR MILLIONS OF LOOTING MEXICANS?

MORE HERE:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/09/and-still-democrat-party-wants-millions.html

“The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.”
  
"During the month, some 432,000 people in the US gave up looking for a job." EVEN AS JEB BUSH, HILLARY CLINTON and BERNIE SANDERS PREACH AMNESTY! AMNESTY! AMNESTY!

"The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process."


HILLARY CLINTON'S BIGGEST DONORS ARE OBAMA'S CRIMINAL CRONY 

BANKSTERS!

"A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."

Federal Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy

Federal Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy

By Barry Grey
21 July 2015
The US Federal Reserve Board last week released its semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress, providing an assessment of the state of the American economy and outlining the central bank’s monetary policy going forward. The report, along with Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s testimony before both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as a speech by Yellen the previous week in Cleveland, present a grim picture of the reality behind the official talk of economic “recovery.”
In her prepared remarks to Congress last Wednesday and Thursday, Yellen said, “Looking forward, prospects are favorable for further improvement in the US labor market and the economy more broadly.”

She reiterated her assurances that while the Fed would likely begin to raise its benchmark federal funds interest rate later this year from the 0.0 to 0.25 percent level it has maintained since shortly after the 2008 financial crash, it would do so only slowly and gradually, keeping short-term rates well below historically normal levels for an indefinite period.

This was an expected, but nevertheless welcome, signal to the American financial elite, which has enjoyed a spectacular rise in corporate profits, stock values and personal wealth since 2009 thanks to the flood of virtually free money provided by the Fed.

"But as Yellen’s remarks and the Fed report indicate, the explosion of asset values and wealth accumulation at the very top of the economic ladder has occurred alongside an intractable and continuing slump in the real economy."

In her prepared testimony to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen noted the following features of the performance of the US economy over the first six months of 2015:

* A sharp decline in the rate of economic growth as compared to 2014, including an actual contraction in the first quarter of the year.

* A substantial slackening (19 percent) in average monthly job-creation, from 260,000 last year to 210,000 thus far in 2015.

* Declines in domestic spending and industrial production.
In her July 10 speech to the City Club of Cleveland, Yellen cited an even longer list of negative indices, including:

* Growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) since the official beginning of the recovery in June, 2009 has averaged a mere 2.25 percent per year, a full one percentage point less than the average rate over the 25 years preceding what Yellen called the “Great Recession.”
* While manufacturing employment nationwide has increased by about 850,000 since the end of 2009, there are still almost 1.5 million fewer manufacturing jobs than just before the recession.

* Real GDP and industrial production both declined in the first quarter of this year. Industrial production continued to fall in April and May.

* Residential construction (despite extremely low mortgage rates by historical standards) has remained “quote soft.”

* Productivity growth has been “weak,” largely because “Business owners and managers… have not substantially increased their capital expenditures,” and “Businesses are holding large amounts of cash on their balance sheets.”

* Reflecting the general stagnation and even slump in the real economy, core inflation rose by only 1.2 percent over the past 12 months.

The Monetary Policy Report issued by the Fed includes facts that are, if anything, even more alarming, including:

* “Labor productivity in the business sector is reported to have declined in both the fourth quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015.”
* “Exports fell markedly in the first quarter, held back by lackluster growth abroad.”

* “Overall construction activity remains well below its pre-recession levels.”

* “Since the recession began, the gains in… nominal compensation [workers’ wages and benefits] have fallen well short of their pre-recession averages, and growth of real compensation has fallen short of productivity growth over much of this period.”

* “Overall business investment has turned down as investment in the energy sector has plunged. Business investment fell at an annual rate of 2 percent in first quarter… Business outlays for structures outside of the energy sector also declined in the first quarter…”

The report incorporates the Fed’s projections for US economic growth, published following the June meeting of the central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. They include a downward revision of the projection for 2015 to 1.8 percent-2.0 percent from the March projection of 2.3 percent to 2.7 percent.

That the US economy continues to stagnate and even contract is indicated by two surveys released last week while Yellen was testifying before Congress. The Fed reported that factory production failed to increase in June for the second straight month and output in the auto sector fell 3.7 percent. The Commerce Department reported that retail sales unexpectedly fell in June, declining by 0.3 percent.
These statistics follow the employment report for June, which showed that the share of the US working-age population either employed or actively looking for work, known as the labor force participation rate, fell to 62.6 percent, its lowest level in 38 years.
 During the month, some 432,000 people in the US gave up looking for a job.

The disastrous figures on business investment are perhaps the most telling indicators of the underlying crisis of the capitalist system. The Fed report attributes the sharp decline so far this year primarily to the dramatic fall in oil prices and resulting contraction in investment and construction in the energy sector. But the plunge in oil prices is itself a symptom of a general slowdown in the world economy.
Moreover, a dramatic decline in productive investment is common to all of the major industrialized economies of Europe and North America. In its World Economic Outlook of last April, the International Monetary Fund for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis acknowledged that there was no prospect for an early return to pre-recession levels of economic growth, linking this bleak prognosis to a general and pronounced decline in productive investment.

The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process.
The economic crisis in the US and internationally is not simply a conjunctural downturn. It is a systemic crisis of global capitalism, centered in the US. 
A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself.

While the economy is starved of productive investment, entirely parasitic and socially destructive activities such as stock buybacks, dividend hikes and mergers and acquisitions return to pre-crash levels and head for new heights. US corporations have spent more on stock buybacks so far this year than on factories and equipment.
The intractable nature of this crisis, within the framework of capitalism, is underscored by the IMF’s updated World Economic Outlook, released earlier this month, which projects that 2015 will be the worst year for economic growth since the height of the recession in 2009.


WAS THE RUSSIAN HOAX ONLY OBAMA’S ATTEMPT TO PUT ASIDE TRUMP FOR AN OBAMA THIRD TERM FOR LIFE???


They Destroyed Our Country
“They knew Obama was an unqualified crook; yet they promoted him. They knew Obama was a train wreck waiting to happen; yet they made him president, to the great injury of America and the world. They understood he was only a figurehead, an egomaniac, and a liar; yet they made him king, doing great harm to our republic (perhaps irreparable.)”

These people were engaged in a massive political conspiracy. The Democrats made a decision from the outset—beginning with the election campaign of the favored candidate of Wall Street and the CIA, Hillary Clinton—that they would not oppose Trump on his anti-working-class social policy or his authoritarian hostility to democratic rights and promotion of anti-immigrant racism, but on issues of imperialist foreign policy.


“Obama’s new home in Washington has been described as the “nerve center” of the anti-Trump opposition. Former attorney general Eric Holder has said that Obama is “ready to roll” and has aligned himself with the “resistance.” Former high-level Obama campaign staffers now work with a variety of groups organizing direct action against Trump’s initiatives. “Resistance School,” for example, features lectures by former campaign executive Sara El-Amine, author of the Obama Organizing.”



Judicial Watch: Only Crimes in Russia Scandal Are from ‘Obama Gang’


Katie Pavlich's Latest Books, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up are available on Amazon

2020 Democrat Candidates Rip Former President Barack Obama’s Record

WASHINGTON - JANUARY 21: (AFP OUT) President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden greet the delegation from the U.S. Conference of Mayors in the East Room on January 21, 2010 in Washington, DC. The President and Vice President spoke on building up the economy and producing more jobs in …
Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images
3:18

Democrats challenged former Vice President Joe Biden during CNN’s Democrat presidential debate on Wednesday, but in the process, they criticized former President Obama.

Democrats like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio criticized Democrats for continuing to support the concept of private insurance.
“There’s this mythology that somehow all of these folks are in love with their insurance in America,” he said.
Obama’s former secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Julian Castro criticized Obama’s former Department of Homeland Secretary, saying that his concern about decriminalizing crossing the border illegally was merely a “right-wing talking point.”
He also criticized the Obama administration for high rates of deportation of illegal immigrants, challenging Joe Biden for failing to intervene.
De Blasio also pressed Biden on why he did not advise Obama to slow deportation during the administration. “Did you say those deportations were a good idea or did you go to the president and say, ‘this is a mistake, we shouldn’t do it,'” he said. “Which one?”
Biden defended Obama for trying to pass comprehensive immigration reform but vowed that he would “absolutely not” resume similar deportation rates as the Obama administration.
Castro also joined the criticism of the Obama administration, suggesting that the former president had made mistakes in office.
“First of all, Mr. Vice President, it looks like one of us has learned the lessons of the past and one of us hasn’t,” he said to Biden.
Biden reminded Castro that he also served in the Obama administration.
“I never heard him talk about any of this when he was the secretary,” he said pointedly.
But even Biden found himself implicitly criticizing Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal, which Trump killed, when asked if he would rejoin the proposed trade agreement with Asian nations.
“I would not rejoin the TPP as it was initially put forward,” he said.
Biden also criticized the surge of troops in Afghanistan, which took place in 2009 under President Obama.
“I opposed the surge in Afghanistan,” he said, adding that he felt going into Afghanistan was a mistake.
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard also criticized both parties for allowing the war in Afghanistan to continue.
“For too long, we’ve had leaders who have been arbitrating foreign policy from ivory towers in Washington without any idea about the cost and the consequence, the toll that it takes on our service members, on their families,” she said.
Ultimately, Biden reminded his political rivals that Obama was the one that chose him as the vice president.
“Everybody is talking about how terrible I am on these issues. Barack Obama knew exactly who I was,” he said, noting that he was fully vetted as vice president. “He chose me, and he said it was the best decision he made. I’ll take his judgment.”
After the debate, Obama’s former Attorney General Eric Holder cautioned Democrats for their attacks against the Obama administration.
“To my fellow Democrats. Be wary of attacking the Obama record,” he wrote on Twitter. “Build on it. Expand it. But there is little to be gained – for you or the party – by attacking a very successful and still popular Democratic President.”

To my fellow Democrats. Be wary of attacking the Obama record. Build on it. Expand it. But there is little to be gained - for you or the party - by attacking a very successful and still popular Democratic President.








2020 ElectionPoliticsBill de BlasioDemocrat debateJoe BidenJulian CastroTulsi Gabba





Pollak: Barack Obama Wrote the Playbook on Political Division

Barack Obama at Osawatomie (Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty)
Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty
4:13

Left-wing pundits have accused President Donald Trump of using his tweets last weekend to launch a divisive re-election campaign.

David Axelrod, former adviser to President Barack Obama, tweeted: “With his deliberate, racist outburst, @realDonaldTrump wants to raise the profile of his targets, drive Dems to defend them and make them emblematic of the entire party. It’s a cold, hard strategy.”
That is debatable — but if so, Axelrod should know; Obama did it first.
By 2011, Obama knew that re-election would be difficult. The Tea Party had just led the Republicans to a historic victory in the 2010 midterm elections, winning the House and nearly taking the Senate. The economy was only growing sluggishly, and Obama’s stimulus had failed to keep unemployment below eight percent, as projected. Moreover, the passage of Obamacare had provoked a backlash against Obama’s state-centered model of American society.
Facing a similar situation in the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton had “triangulated,” moving back toward the middle, frustrating the GOP by taking up their issues, such as welfare reform.
But Obama rejected that approach. Having watched his icon, Chicago mayor Harold Washington, settle for an incremental approach when faced with opposition in the 1980s, only to die of a sudden heart attack before fulfilling his potential, Obama chose the path of hard-left policy — and divide-and-rule politics.
The first hint of his strategy emerged during the debt ceiling negotiations in the summer of August 2011. As Bob Woodward recounted in his book about the crisis, The Price of Politics, then-Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) had wanted to reach a “grand bargain” with the president on long-term spending cuts. But Obama blew up that agreement by demanding $400 billion in new taxes, to his aides’ surprise. Obama wanted an opponent, not a deal. (Last week, Boehner told Breitbart News Tonight that Obama’s decision was his worst disappointment in 35 years of politics.)
In the fall of 2011, a new left-wing movement, Occupy Wall Street, was launched. A mix of communists, anarchists, and digital pranksters, the Occupy movement cast American society as a struggle between the “99 percent” and the “one percent.”
Obama and then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) embraced the movement — and failed to distance themselves from it even as it collapsed into violence, sexual assault, and confrontations with police.
Instead, Obama picked up on Occupy’s themes and used them to shape his campaign.
In December 2011, Obama gave a speech at Osawatomie, Kansas — a place steeped in radical symbolism — at which he doubled down on his left-wing policies. He focused on the issue of economic inequality, and attacked the idea that the free market could lift the middle class to prosperity. “This isn’t about class warfare. This is about the nation’s welfare,” he insisted.
Then, in the spring of 2012, Obama made a controversial play on race. When a black teen, Trayvon Martin, was killed in Florida during a scuffle with neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, Al Sharprton — who was serving as an informal adviser to Obama at the time — made the local crime story into a national racial controversy. Obama, following Sharpton’s lead, weighed in: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said at the time.
Poll numbers suggest that race relations, which had been improving, dropped precipitously after that. But to Obama, it was worth it: the campaign needed to find a way to motivate minority voters. (Vice President Joe Biden did his part, telling black voters that GOP nominee Mitt Romney was “gonna put y’all in chains.”)
Trump is pushing a non-racial, nationalist message. But if he actually wanted to divide America for political gain, he could learn from the master.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.




(Illustration by The Epoch Times)

Spygate: The Inside Story Behind the Alleged Plot to Take Down Trump

March 28, 2019 Updated: March 29, 2019
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Efforts by high-ranking officials in the CIA, FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and State Department to portray President Donald Trump as having colluded with Russia were the culmination of years of bias and politicization under the Obama administration.
Click on image to enlarge.
The weaponization of the intelligence community and other government agencies created an environment that allowed for obstruction in the investigation into Hillary Clinton and the relentless pursuit of a manufactured collusion narrative against Trump.
A willing and complicit media spread unsubstantiated leaks as facts in an effort to promote the Russia-collusion narrative.
The Spygate scandal also raises a bigger question: Was the 2016 election a one-time aberration, or was it symptomatic of decades of institutional political corruption?
This article builds on dozens of congressional testimonies, court documents, and other research to provide an inside look at the actions of Obama administration officials in the scandal that’s become known as Spygate.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
To understand this abuse of power, it helps to go back to July 2011, when DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was appointed.
From the very start, Horowitz found his duties throttled by Attorney General Eric Holder, who placed limitations on the inspector general’s right to have unobstructed access to information. Holder used this tactic to delay Horowitz’s investigation of the failed sting operation known as Operation Fast and Furious.
“We got access to information up to 2010 in all of these categories. No law changed in 2010. No policy changed. … It was simply a decision by the General Counsel’s Office in 2010 that they viewed, now, the law differently. And as a result, they weren’t going to give us that information,” Horowitz told members of Congress in February 2015.
On Aug. 5, 2014, Horowitz and other inspectors general had sent a letter to Congress asking for unimpeded access to all records. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates responded on July 20, 2015, with a 58-page memorandum, titled “Memorandum for Sally Quillian Yates Deputy Attorney General,” written by Karl R. Thompson, the principal deputy assistant attorney general of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).
Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The July 20, 2015, opinion was widely criticized. But it accomplished what it was intended to do. The opinion limited IG Horowitz’s oversight from extending to any information collected under Title III—including intercepted communications and national security letters. (Notably, The New York Times disclosed that national security letters were used in the surveillance of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign.)
In response, on Aug. 3, 2015, IG Horowitz sent a blistering letter to Congress. The letter was signed not only by Horowitz but by all other acting inspectors general as well:
“The OLC opinion’s restrictive reading of the IG Act represents a potentially serious challenge to the authority of every Inspector General and our collective ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner. Our concern is that, as a result of the OLC opinion, agencies other than DOJ may likewise withhold crucial records from their Inspectors General, adversely impacting their work.
Horowitz continued to push Congress for oversight access and encouraged passage of the Inspector General Empowerment Act. Horowitz would ultimately win his battle, but only as President Barack Obama was leaving office. On Dec. 16, 2016, Obama finally signed the Inspector General Empowerment Act into law.
It is against this backdrop of minimal oversight that Spygate took place.
Ironically, the Clinton email server investigation, known as the “Mid-Year Exam,” originated from a disclosure contained in a June 29, 2015, memo sent by the inspectors general for both the State Department and the Intelligence Community to Patrick F. Kennedy, then-undersecretary of state for management.
The IGs’ memo included an assessment that Clinton’s email account contained hundreds of classified emails, despite Clinton’s claims that there was no classified information present on her server.
On July 6, 2015, the IG for the Intelligence Community made a referral to the FBI, which resulted in the official opening of an investigation into the Clinton email server by FBI officials Randall Coleman and Charles Kable on July 10, 2015.
(L-R) FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and FBI lawyer Lisa Page. (Getty Images/Epoch Times)

A Hand-Picked Team

At this time, Peter Strzok was an assistant special agent in charge at the FBI’s Washington Field Office. The assistant director in charge at the Washington Field Office during this period was Andrew McCabe, a position he assumed on Sept. 14, 2014.
On July 30, 2015, within weeks of the FBI’s opening of the Clinton investigation, McCabe was suddenly promoted to the No. 3 position in the FBI. With his new title of associate deputy director, McCabe was transferred to FBI headquarters from the Washington Field Office, and his direct involvement in the Clinton investigation began.
Strzok would follow shortly. Less than a month after McCabe was transferred, FBI headquarters reached out to the Washington Field Office, saying it needed greater staffing and resources “based on what they were looking at, based on some of the investigative steps that were under consideration,” Strzok told congressional investigators in a closed-door hearing on June 27, 2018.
Strzok was one of the agents selected, and in late August 2015, he was assigned to the Mid-Year Exam team and transferred to FBI headquarters. Strzok, in his comments to lawmakers, acknowledged that the newly formed investigative team was largely made up of hand-picked personnel from the Washington Field Office and FBI headquarters.
Starting in October 2015 and continuing into early 2016, FBI Director James Comey made a series of high-profile reassignments that resulted in the complete turnover of the upper-echelon of the FBI team working on the Clinton email investigation:
·         Oct. 12, 2015: Louis Bladel was moved to the New York Field Office.
·         Dec. 1, 2015: Randall Coleman, assistant director of Counterintelligence, was named as executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, and was replaced by Bill Priestap.
·         Dec. 9, 2015: Charles “Sandy” Kable was moved to the Washington Field Office.
·         Feb. 1, 2016: Mark Giuliano retired as FBI deputy director and was replaced by Andrew McCabe.
·         Feb. 11, 2016: John Giacalone retired as executive assistant director and was replaced by Michael Steinbach.
·         March 2, 2016: Gerald Roberts, Jr. was moved to the Washington Field Office.
Comey is the only known senior FBI leadership official who remained involved throughout the entire Clinton email investigation. McCabe had the second-longest tenure.
On Jan. 29, 2016, Comey appointed McCabe as FBI deputy director, replacing the retiring Giuliano, and McCabe assumed the No. 2 position in the FBI, after having held the No. 3 position for just six months.
It was at this point that FBI lawyer Lisa Page was assigned to McCabe as his special counsel. This was not the first time that Page worked directly for McCabe. James Baker, the FBI’s former general counsel, told congressional investigators that Page had worked for McCabe at various times during McCabe’s career, going back as far as 2013.
By early 2016, the three participants in the infamous “insurance policy” meeting—McCabe, Strzok, and Page—were now in place at the FBI.
In January 2016, Bill Priestap was named as head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, replacing Coleman and inheriting the Clinton email investigation in the process.
According to Priestap, Coleman had “set up a reporting mechanism that leaders of that team would report directly to him, not through the customary other chain of command” in the Clinton email investigation. Priestap, who said he didn’t know why Coleman had “set it up,” kept the chain of command in place when he assumed Coleman’s position in January 2016.
This new structure resulted in some unusual reporting lines that went outside normal chains of command. Strzok, who would not normally fall under Priestap’s oversight, was now reporting directly to him.
As Priestap described it, the team involved in the Clinton investigation comprised three different but intertwined elements: the primary team, the filter team, and the senior leadership team.
The primary team was small, consisting only of Strzok, FBI analyst Jonathan Moffa, and, to varying degrees, filter team leader Rick Mains and FBI lawyer Sally Moyer. Mains reported to Strzok and Moffa, who in turn, along with Moyer, provided briefings to Priestap.
Below Strzok and Moffa was the day-to-day investigative “filter” team of approximately 15 FBI agents and analysts that was overseen by Mains, a supervisory special agent.
The senior leadership team was more fluid, consisting of higher-level FBI officials who provided briefings and updates to Comey and/or McCabe. In addition to Priestap, Strzok, and Moffa, frequent attendees included Moyer, Page, Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson, chief of staff Jim Rybicki, and General Counsel James Baker.
While the elements of the day-to-day investigative team differed for the Clinton email investigation and the Trump–Russia investigation, the primary team remained the same throughout both cases—as did the lines of communication between the FBI and the DOJ. According to testimony by Page, John Carlin, who ran the DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD), was receiving briefings on both investigations directly from McCabe.

Priestap Left in the Dark

Priestap, who testified that he was unaware of the frequency of meetings between McCabe, Strzok, and Lisa Page, seems to have been kept in the dark regarding many of the actions taken by Strzok, who appeared to be exercising significant investigative control. Priestap was asked about this by congressional investigators during a June 5, 2018, testimony:
Rep. Meadows: “It sounds like Peter Strzok was kind of driving the train here. Would you agree with that?”
Mr. Priestap: “Peter and Jon, yeah.”
Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap. (Jennifer Zeng/The Epoch Times)
Additionally, Page often circumvented the established chain of command, not only with McCabe, for whom she reportedly served as a conduit for Strzok, but also with Baker. Additionally, there were concerns that Page bypassed both the executive assistant director for the National Security Branch—first Giacalone, then Steinbach—and Priestap, the head of counterintelligence. Anderson, the No. 2 lawyer, admitted in her testimony to congressional investigators that she had been aware of these concerns, saying, “Neither of them personally complained to me, but I was aware of their concerns.”
A report published by IG Horowitz in June 2018, which reviewed the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton email case, included the notable statement that several witnesses had informed the IG that Page “circumvented the official chain of command, and that Strzok communicated important Midyear case information to her, and thus to McCabe, without Priestap’s or Steinbach’s knowledge.” Steinbach, who was the executive assistant director and Priestap’s direct supervisor, left the FBI in early 2017.
According to Anderson, McCabe was aware of the ongoing concerns regarding Page’s circumventions, but it appears that nothing was done to address them:
Mr. Baker: “Do you know if Mr. McCabe was aware that some of his agent executives were concerned that they were being bypassed on information on what, by all accounts, was a sensitive, critical investigation?”
Ms. Anderson: “My understanding was that he was aware.”

DOJ Prevents ‘Gross Negligence’ Charges

By the spring of 2016, the Clinton email investigation was already winding down. This was due in large part to the fact that the DOJ, under Attorney General Loretta Lynch, had decided to set an unusually high threshold for the prosecution of Clinton, effectively ensuring from the outset that she would not be charged.
In order for Clinton to be prosecuted, the DOJ required the FBI to establish evidence of intent—even though the gross negligence statute explicitly does not require this.
This meant that the FBI would have needed to find a smoking gun, such as an email or an admission made during FBI questioning, revealing that Clinton or her aides knowingly set up the private email server to send classified information.
According to Page, the DOJ played a far larger role in the Clinton investigation than previously had been known:
“Everybody talks about this as if this was the FBI investigation, and the truth of the matter is there was not a single step, other than the July 5th statement, there was not a single investigative step that we did not do in consultation with or at the direction of the Justice Department,” Page told congressional investigators on July 13, 2018.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Comey also had hinted at the influence exerted by the DOJ over the Clinton investigation, at a July 5, 2016,press conference, in which he recommended that Clinton not be charged, stating that “there are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent.”
Notably, Comey had been convinced to remove the term “gross negligence” to describe Clinton’s actions from his prepared statement by, among others, Page, Strzok, Anderson, and Moffa.

CIA Director Instigates Trump Investigation

As the Clinton investigation wound down, interest from the intelligence community in the Trump campaign was ramping up. Sometime in 2015, it appears former CIA Director John Brennan established himself as the point man to push for an investigation into the Trump campaign. Using a combination of unofficial foreign intelligence compiled by contacts, colleagues, and associates—primarily from the UK, but also from other Five Eyes members, such as Australia—Brennan then fed this information to the FBI. Brennan stated this fact repeatedly during a May 23, 2017, congressional testimony:
“I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump campaign, was shared with the [FBI].”
CIA Director John Brennan. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Brennan also admitted that it was his intelligence that helped establish the FBI investigation:
“I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred.”
In late 2015, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was involved in collecting information regarding then-candidate Trump and transmitting it to the United States. The GCHQ is the UK equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
While GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted, after a series of highly coincidental meetings.
Most of these meetings with Papadopoulos—whose own background and reasons for joining the Trump campaign remain suspicious—occurred in the first half of 2016.
Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos—some repeatedly so.
Mifsud, who introduced Papadopoulos to a series of Russian contacts, appears to have more connections with Western intelligence than with Russian intelligence.
Downer, then Australia’s high commissioner to the UK, met with Papadopoulos in May 2016, in a meeting established through a chain of two intermediaries.
Information allegedly relayed by Papadopoulos during the Downer meeting—that the Russians had damaging information on Clinton—appears nearly identical to claims later contained in the first memo from former MI6 spy and dossier author Christopher Steele that the FBI obtained in early July 2016.
Australian high commissioner to the UK, Alexander Downer. (GOH CHAI HIN/AFP/Getty Images)
Downer’s conversation with Papadopoulos was reportedly disclosed to the FBI on July 22, 2016, through Australian government channels, although it may have come directly from Downer himself.
Details from the conversation between Downer and Papadopoulos were then used by the FBI to open its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016.
In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, the head of the UK’s GCHQ, traveled to Washington to meet withBrennan regarding alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Around the same time, Brennan formedan inter-agency task force comprising an estimated six agencies and/or government departments. The FBI, Treasury, and DOJ handled the domestic inquiry into Trump and possible Russia connections. The CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the NSA handled foreign and intelligence aspects.
During this time, Brennan appeared to have employed the use of reverse targeting, which refers to the targeting of a foreign individual with the intent of capturing data on a U.S. citizen.
Mr. Brennan: “We call it incidental collection in terms of CIA’s foreign intelligence collection authorities. Any time we would incidentally collect information on a U.S. person, we would hand that over to the FBI because they have the legal authority to do it. We would not pursue that type of investigative, you know, sort of leads. We would give it to the FBI. So, we were picking things up that was of great relevance to the FBI, and we wanted to make sure that they were there—so they could piece it together with whatever they were collecting domestically here.”
As this foreign intelligence—unofficial in nature and outside of any traditional channels—was gathered, Brennan began a process of feeding his gathered intelligence to the FBI. Repeated transfers of foreign intelligence from the CIA director pushed the FBI toward the establishment of a formal counterintelligence investigation.
The last major segment of Brennan’s efforts involved a series of three reports. The first, titled the “Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security,” was released on Oct. 7, 2016. The second report,“GRIZZLY STEPPE —Russian Malicious Cyber Activity,” was released on Dec. 29, 2016. The third report, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections”—also known as the intelligence community assessment (ICA)—was released on Jan. 6, 2017.
This final report was used to continue pushing the Russia-collusion narrative following the election of President Donald Trump. Notably, Adm. Mike Rogers of the NSA publicly dissented from the findings of the ICA, assigning it only a moderate confidence level.

Fusion GPS and the Steele Dossier

Meanwhile, another less official effort began. Information paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign targeting Trump made its way to the highest levels of the FBI and the State Department, with a sophisticated strategy relying on the personal connections of hired operatives.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)
At the center of the multi-pronged strategy to disseminate the information were Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and former British spy Steele.
In early March 2016, Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie—the law firm used by the Clinton campaign and the DNC—expressing interest in an “engagement,” according to an Oct. 24, 2017, response letter by Perkins Coie. The firm hired Fusion GPS in April 2016 to “perform a variety of research services during the 2016 election cycle.”
Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, was retained by Fusion GPS during the period between June and November 2016. During this time, Steele produced 16 memos, with the last memo dated Oct. 20, 2016. There is one final memo that Steele wrote on Dec. 13 at the request of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Sen. John McCain commissioned one of Steele’s memos. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Steele provided Fusion GPS with something that Simpson’s firm was lacking: access to individuals within the FBI and the State Department. These contacts could be traced back to at least 2010, when Steele had provided assistance in the FBI’s investigation into FIFA over concerns that Russia might have been engaging in bribery to host the 2018 World Cup.
Sometime in the latter half of 2014, Steele began to informally provide reports he had prepared for a private client to the State Department. One of the recipients of the reports was Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.
After Steele’s company was hired by Fusion GPS in June 2016, he began to reach out to the FBI through Michael Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Rome who Steele had worked with on the FIFA case. Gaeta also headed up the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime unit, which specializes in investigating criminal groups from Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine.
Gaeta was later identified as Steele’s FBI handler, in a July 16, 2018, congressional testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees by Page.
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
On July 5, 2016, Gaeta traveled to London and met with Steele at the offices of Steele’s firm, Orbis. At some point in early July, Steele passed his initial report to Nuland and the State Department. Nuland later said these documents were passed on at some point to both the FBI and then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
Exactly what happened with the reports that Gaeta brought back from London, and precisely who he gave them to within the FBI, remains unknown, although some media reports have indicated they might have been sent to the FBI’s New York Field Office. During the period following Steele’s initial contact with the FBI, there appears to have been no further FBI interaction or contact with Steele.

Former CIA Contractor Worked for Fusion GPS

Notably, eight months before Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, Simpson had hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, to work for his firm as a researcher in October 2015. It was at this time that Fusion GPS was retained by the Washington Free Beacon to engage in research on the Trump campaign.
Prior to joining Fusion GPS, Nellie had worked as an independent contractor for an internal open-source division of the CIA, Open Source Works, from 2008 to at least June 2010; it appears likely she remained in that role into 2014.
Nellie told congressional investigators, in her Oct. 19, 2018, closed-door testimony, that part of her work for Fusion GPS was to research the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, including campaign associate Carter Page, early campaign supporter Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and campaign manager Paul Manafort, as well as Trump’s family members, including some of his children.
Additionally, email communications between her and Bruce Ohr show that she routinely sent her husband at the DOJ articles on Russia—most carrying a similar negative slant. The emails continued through the duration of Nellie’s employment with Fusion GPS and usually contained a brief, often one-line comment from Nellie.
In her testimony, Nellie described her work as online open-source efforts that utilized “Russian sources, media, social media, government, you know, business registers, legal databases, all kinds of things.” Ohr said that she would “write occasional reports based on the open-source research that I described about Donald Trump’s relationships with various people in Russia.”
The work Nellie conducted for Fusion GPS matches the same skill set used when she worked for Open Source Works, which is a division within the CIA that uses open-source information to produce intelligence products.
When asked how she came to be hired by Fusion GPS and who had approached her, Nellie responded, “Nobody approached me,” telling investigators that it was she who had initiated contact and approached Fusion GPS after reading an article on Simpson.
Nellie would continue to work for Fusion GPS until September 2016. By this time, Simpson and Steele already had started working on pushing the Steele dossier into the FBI.
Following the end of her employment with Fusion GPS, Nellie provided Bruce with a memory stick that contained all of the research she had compiled during her time at the firm. Bruce then gave the memory stick to the FBI, through his handler, Joe Pientka.

Bruce Ohr Becomes a Conduit

Nearly a month after Gaeta brought back the reports that Steele provided in London, Simpson and Steele decided to pursue a new channel into the FBI through Bruce Ohr. Bruce had known Steele since at least 2007, when they met during an “official meeting” while Steele was still employed by the British government as an MI6 agent. Steele had already been in contact with Bruce via email in early 2016. Notably, most of these prior communications appeared to discuss Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and his ongoing efforts to obtain a U.S. visa.
Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
On July 29, 2016, Steele wrote to Bruce, saying that he would “be in DC at short notice on business,” and asked to meet with both Bruce and his wife. On July 30, 2016, the Ohrs met Steele for breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel. Also present at the breakfast meeting was a fourth individual, described by Bruce as “an associate of Mr. Steele’s, another gentleman, younger fellow. I didn’t catch his name.” Nellie testified that Steele’s associate had a British accent.
The timing of the July 30 breakfast meeting is of particular note, as the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, “Crossfire Hurricane,” was formally opened the following day, on July 31, 2016, by FBI agent Peter Strzok.
Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
According to a transcript of Bruce’s testimony before Congress, Steele relayed information from his dossier at this meeting and claimed that “a former head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, had stated to someone … that they had Donald Trump over a barrel.”
Steele also referenced Deripaska’s business dealings with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and foreign policy adviser Carter Page’s meetings in Moscow.
Lastly, Bruce noted that Steele told him he had been in contact with the FBI but now had additional reports. “Chris Steele had provided some reports to the FBI, I think two, but that Glenn Simpson had more,” he said.
Immediately following the Ohrs’ breakfast meeting with Steele, Bruce Ohr reached out to FBI Deputy Director McCabe and the two met in McCabe’s office—sometime between July 30 and the first days of August. Also present at this meeting was FBI lawyer Page, who had previously worked for Bruce Ohr at the DOJ, where he was her direct supervisor for five to six years.
Bruce Ohr would later testify that during the July/August meeting, he told McCabe that his wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion, noting, “I wanted the FBI to be aware of any possible bias.” FBI General Counsel Baker, who reviewed a portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page—which relied in part on the information from Steele—told congressional investigators that he was never told of Ohr’s concerns regarding possible bias and conflicts of interest.
On Aug. 15, 2016, a week or two following Bruce Ohr’s meeting with McCabe, Strzok would send the now-infamous “insurance policy” text referencing McCabe to Lisa Page:
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office – that there’s no way he gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
On Aug. 22, Bruce Ohr had a meeting with Simpson. Ohr would later discuss that meeting during his testimony:
“I don’t know exactly what Chris Steele was thinking, of course, but I knew that Chris Steele was working for Glenn Simpson, and that Glenn might have additional information that Chris either didn’t have or was not authorized to prevent [present], give me, or whatever.”
It was at this meeting that Simpson first mentioned Belarusan-American businessman Sergei Millian and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen.

Brennan’s Briefings to the Gang of Eight

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
During this same period in late August 2016, Brennan began briefing members of the Gang of Eight on the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, through a series of meetings in August and September 2016. Notably, each Gang of Eight member was briefed separately, calling into question whether each of the members received the same information. Efforts by Democrats to block the release of transcripts from each meeting are ongoing. Comey, however, did not notify Congress of the FBI investigation until early March 2017, and it’s entirely possible he was unaware of Brennan’s private briefings during the summer of 2016.
During her testimony, FBI lawyer Lisa Page was questioned by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) in relation to an Aug. 25, 2016, text message that read, “What are you doing after the CH brief?” CH almost certainly referred to Crossfire Hurricane.
Lisa Page then was asked about an event that took place on the same day as the “CH brief”—a briefing provided by Brennan to then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid:
“You give a brief on August the 25th. Director Brennan is giving a brief. It’s not a Gang of Eight brief. It is a one-on-one, from what we can tell, a one-on-one briefing with Harry Reid at that point.”
According to Meadows, Brennan briefed Reid on the Steele dossier:
“We have documents that would suggest that in that briefing the dossier was mentioned to Harry Reid and then obviously we’re going to have to have conversations. Does that surprise you that Director Brennan would be aware [of the dossier]?”
Lisa Page appeared genuinely surprised that Brennan would have been aware of the dossier’s existence at this early point, telling Meadows: “The FBI got this information from our source. If the CIA had another source of that information, I am neither aware of that nor did the CIA provide it to us if they did.”
She elaborated further: “As of August of 2016, I don’t know who Christopher Steele is. I don’t know that he’s an FBI source. I don’t know what he does. I have never heard of him in all of my life.”
This claim by Page seems incongruous when viewed against Bruce Ohr’s testimony that he met with Page and McCabe in the first days of August following his July 30, 2016, breakfast with Steele:
“My initial meeting was with Mr. McCabe and with Lisa Page.
“I was telling them about what I was hearing from Chris Steele.”
Meanwhile, Brennan’s briefing prompted Reid to write not one but two letters to Comey. Both demanded that Comey commence an investigation, with the details to be made public.
Reid’s first letter, which touched on Carter Page, was sent on Aug. 27, 2016. Reid’s second letter, far angrier and declaring Comey to be in possession of material information, was sent on Oct. 30, 2016.
There had been reports that Comey had been considering closing the FBI investigation of Trump, something Brennan strongly opposed. Now, with Reid’s letters sent, that avenue was effectively closed. The termination of the FBI’s Trump–Russia investigation would be all but impossible in the face of Reid’s public demands.
Perhaps it was in response to Reid’s Aug. 27 letter that the FBI suddenly reached out to Steele in September 2016, asking him for all the information in his possession. The team working on Crossfire Hurricane received documents and a briefing from Steele in mid-September, reportedly at a meeting in Rome, where Gaeta also was present.
During Lisa Page’s testimony, she appeared to corroborate this account, noting that the team received the “reports that are known as the dossier from an FBI agent who is Christopher Steele’s handler in September of 2016.”  She would later clarify the timing, noting “we received the reporting from Steele in mid-September.” A text sent to her by FBI agent Peter Strzok on Oct. 12, 2016, may provide us with the actual date:
“We got the reporting on Sept 19. Looks like [redacted] got it early August.”
Steele had produced eight reports from June 20, 2016, through the end of August 2016 (there also is one undated report included in the dossier). No further reports were generated by Steele until Sept. 14, when he suddenly wrote three separate memos in one day. One of the memos referenced a Russian bank named Alfa Bank, misspelled as “Alpha” in his memo. Steele’s sudden burst of productivity was likely done in preparation for his Oct. 19 meeting in Rome with the FBI.
The impact of Brennan’s potential knowledge of the dossier in August 2016 should not be underestimated. As Brennan testified to Congress, his briefing to the Gang of Eight was done in consultation with the Obama administration:
“Through the so-called Gang-of-Eight process we kept Congress apprised of these issues as we identified them. Again, in consultation with the White House, I personally briefed the full details of our understanding of Russian attempts to interfere in the election to congressional leadership.
“Given the highly sensitive nature of what was an active counter-intelligence case, involving an ongoing Russian effort, to interfere in our presidential election, the full details of what we knew at the time were shared only with those members of Congress.”

The Carter Page FISA Warrant

Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
As the dossier was making its way into the FBI, the agency began its preparations to obtain a FISA warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who was surveilled under Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
According to Baker’s testimony, it appears that the FBI began to set its sights on Carter Page in the summer of 2016. When asked how he had first gained knowledge of the FBI’s intention to pursue a FISA warrant on Carter Page, Baker testified that it came through his familiarity with the FBI’s investigation:
Mr. Baker: “I learned of — so I was aware when the FBI first started to focus on Carter Page, I was aware of that because it was part of the broader investigation that we were conducting. So I was aware that we were investigating him. And then at some point in time –”
Rep. Meadows: “But that was many years ago. That was in 2014. Or are you talking about 2016?”
Mr. Baker: “I am talking about 2016 in the summer.”
Rep. Meadows: “Okay.”
Mr. Baker: “Yeah. And so I was aware of the investigation, and then at some point in time, as part of the regular briefings on the case, the briefers mentioned that they were going to pursue a FISA.”
It appears the FBI, and possibly the CIA, began to focus on Carter Page earlier than Baker was aware. Carter Page had been invited some months prior to a July 2016 symposium held at Cambridge regarding the upcoming election. The speaker list was notable:
·         Madeleine Albright (former U.S. secretary of state)
·         Vin Weber (Republican Party strategist and former congressman)
·         Peter Ammon (German ambassador to the UK)
·         Sir Richard Dearlove (former head of MI6 and Steele’s former boss)
·         Bridget Kendall (BBC diplomatic correspondent and the next master of Peterhouse College)
·         Sir Malcolm Rifkind (former defense and foreign secretary)
Carter Page attended the event just four days after his July 2016 Moscow trip, and it was during this time in the UK that he first encountered Stefan Halper. Page’s Moscow trip would later figure prominently in the Steele dossier.
Halper, who has been outed as an FBI informant, stayed in contact with Carter Page for the next 14 months, severing ties exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired.
Trisha Anderson, the principal deputy general counsel for the FBI and head of the bureau’s National Security and Cyber Law Branch, approved the application for a warrant to spy on Carter Page before it went to FBI Director James Comey.
According to Anderson, pre-approvals for the Carter Page FISA warrant were provided by both McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, before the FISA application was ever presented to Anderson for review.
“[M]y boss and my boss’ boss had already reviewed and approved this application. And, in fact, the Deputy Attorney General, who had the authority to sign the application, to be the substantive approver on the FISA application itself, had approved the application. And that typically would not have been the case before I did that,” said Anderson.
The unusual preliminary reviews and approvals from both McCabe and Yates appear to have had a substantial impact on the normal review process, leading other individuals like Anderson to believe that the warrant application was more vetted than it really was.
Anderson also testified that she had not read the Carter Page FISA application prior to signing off on it and passing it along to Comey for the final FBI signature. According to FBI lawyer Sally Moyer, the underlying Woods file (a document that provides facts supporting the allegations made in a FISA application) was only read by the originating agent and the supervisory special agent in the field. Moyer also noted that the Woods file relating to the Page FISA had not been reviewed or audited by anyone.
The Carter Page FISA application was largely reliant on the Steele dossier, which was unverified at the time of its submission to the FISA court and remains unverified by the FBI to this day. Circular reporting, provided by Steele himself, was used as corroboration of the dossier. Additionally, Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, whose conversation with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer was used to open the FBI’s July 31, 2016, counterintelligence investigation, is referenced in the FISA, yet there “is no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos,” according to a House Intelligence Committee memo.
Moyer testified that without the Steele dossier, the Carter Page application would have had a “50/50” chance of achieving the probable cause standard before the FISA court. Notably, the Steele dossier is generally considered to have been largely discredited.

A Perkins Coie Partner and Alfa Bank Allegations

Michael Sussmann, partner at Perkins Coie. (Courtesy Perkins Coie)
On Sept. 19, shortly after Steele completed his latest three memos, FBI General Counsel James Baker met with Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann, the lawyer the DNC turned to on April 28, 2016, after discovering the alleged hacking of their servers.
Sussman, who sought out the meeting, presented Baker with documents that Baker described as “a stack of material I don’t know maybe a quarter inch half inch thick something like that clipped together, and then I believe there was some type of electronic media, as well, a disk or something.”
The information that Sussmann gave to Baker was related to what Baker described as “a surreptitious channel of communications” between the Trump Organization and “a Russian organization associated with the Russian Government.”
Baker was describing alleged communications between Alfa Bank and a server in the Trump Tower. The allegations, which were investigated by the FBI and proven to be false, were widely covered in the media.
Just four days earlier, on Sept. 14, Steele mentioned Alfa Bank (misspelled as Alpha bank) in one of his memos.
According to Baker’s testimony, there appears to have been at least three meetings with Sussmann—the first in person and at least two subsequent meetings by phone. In either the second or third conversation, Baker came to understand The New York Times was also in possession of Sussmann’s information. As would become clear later, other members of the media also had this same information.
As Baker was meeting with Sussmann, Steele was back in Washington for a series of meetings that included his DOJ contact, Bruce Ohr.
On Sept. 23, 2016, Bruce Ohr again met with Steele for breakfast, telling lawmakers during testimony, “Steele was in Washington, D.C., again, and he reached out to me, and, again, we met for breakfast, and he provided some additional information.” Ohr said this meeting concerned similar topics that were discussed at the July 30, 2016, meeting but did not provide further details.
Bruce Ohr would also meet either that same month or in early October with FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and DOJ career officials from the criminal division, Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad, and Andrew Weissman (Ohr testified that he was unsure whether Weismann was at this or a later meeting). Both Weissman and Ahmad would later become part of the team assembled by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Steele’s Meetings With the Media

On the same day that Bruce Ohr met with Christopher Steele for breakfast, on Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff published an article about Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. The article, headlined “U.S. Intel Officials Probe Ties Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin,” was based on an interview with Steele. Isikoff’s article would later be used by the FBI in the FISA spy warrant application on Carter Page as corroborating information.
Following the publication of the Isikoff article, the Hillary for America campaign released a statement on the same day that touted Isikoff’s “bombshell report,” with the full article attached.
A second lengthy article was published on Sept. 23, by Politico: “Who Is Carter Page? The Mystery of Trump’s Man in Moscow,” by Julia Ioffe. This article was particularly interesting as it appeared to highlight media efforts by Fusion GPS:
“As I started looking into Page, I began getting calls from two separate ‘corporate investigators’ digging into what they claim are all kinds of shady connections Page has to all kinds of shady Russians. One is working on behalf of various unnamed Democratic donors; the other won’t say who turned him on to Page’s scent. Both claimed to me that the FBI was investigating Page for allegedly meeting with Igor Sechin and Sergei Ivanov, who was until recently Putin’s chief of staff—both of whom are on the sanctions list—when Page was in Moscow in July for that speech.”
Ioffe noted that “seemingly everyone I talked to had also talked to the Washington Post, and then there were these corporate investigators who drew a dark and complex web of Page’s connections.”
Her article also mentioned rumors regarding Alfa Bank:
“In the interest of due diligence, I also tried to run down the rumors being handed me by the corporate investigators: that Russia’s Alfa Bank paid for the trip as a favor to the Kremlin; that Page met with Sechin and Ivanov in Moscow; that he is now being investigated by the FBI for those meetings because Sechin and Ivanov were both sanctioned for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
It was probably during this same trip to Washington that Steele met withJonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and former special envoy for Libya, whom Steele had known since at least 2010.
Winer had received a separate dossier, very similar to Steele’s, from longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This “second dossier” had been compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer gave Steele a copy of the “second dossier.” Steele then shared this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it as a means to corroborate Steele’s own dossier.
Steele also met with U.S. media during his visit to Washington, doing so “at Fusion’s instruction.” According to UK Court documents, Steele testified that he “briefed” The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New Yorker, and CNN at the end of September 2016. Steele would engage in a second round of media contact in mid-October 2016, meeting again with The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Yahoo News. Steele testified that all these meetings were “conducted verbally in person.”

Alfa Bank Media Leaks

Former FBI General Counsel James Baker.
As Steele’s media meetings were going on, FBI General Counsel James Baker learned that Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann was also speaking with reporters from The New York Times regarding the Alfa Bank information that Sussmann had provided to the FBI. After some internal discussion, the FBI approached both Sussmann and The New York Times, asking that any story be held until the FBI had time to complete an investigation into the documents provided by Sussmann. It appears that an agreement was reached, and the FBI began to look into the claims regarding Alfa Bank and the server at Trump Tower.
But Sussman wasn’t the only one that Baker, currently the subject of an ongoing criminal leak investigation, was speaking with. According to congressional investigators, beginning sometime in September 2016—before the presidential election—Baker began having conversations with his old friend and journalist, David Corn of Mother Jones.
According to Baker, these conversations were in relation to ongoing FBI matters:
Rep. Jordan: “Did you talk to Mr. Corn prior to the election about anything, anything related to FBI matters? Not — so we’re not going to ask about the Steele dossier. Anything about FBI business, FBI matters?”
Mr. Baker: “Yes.”
Rep. Jordan: “Yes.  And do you know — can you give me some dates or the number of times that you talked to Mr. Corn about FBI matters leading up to the 2016 Presidential election?”
Mr. Baker: “I don’t remember, Congressman.”
By Oct. 31, 2016, the FBI had apparently wrapped up their investigation into the Alfa Bank allegations, finding no evidence of anything untoward in the process. It was on this day that three separate articles on Alfa Bank would be published.
The first, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia” by The New York Times, appeared to be an updated version of the article they had intended to publish before the FBI asked them to delay their reporting. It stated the following:
“In classified sessions in August and September, intelligence officials also briefed congressional leaders on the possibility of financial ties between Russians and people connected to Mr. Trump. They focused particular attention on what cyberexperts said appeared to be a mysterious computer back channel between the Trump Organization and the Alfa Bank, which is one of Russia’s biggest banks and whose owners have longstanding ties to Mr. Putin.”
The reference to “classified sessions in August and September” is likely in relation to the series of Gang of Eight briefings that former CIA Director John Brennan engaged in at that time—including his briefing to then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The article continued:
“F.B.I. officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa Bank. Computer logs obtained by The New York Times show that two servers at Alfa Bank sent more than 2,700 ‘look-up’ messages—a first step for one system’s computers to talk to another—to a Trump-connected server beginning in the spring. But the F.B.I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.”
The second article, “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?” by Slate Magazine, was solely focused on the allegations regarding a server in the Trump Tower that had allegedly been communicating with a server at Alfa Bank in Russia.
Immediately following the publication of the Slate article, Clinton posted a tweet that included a statement from Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser:
“Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”
Sullivan’s statement referenced the Slate article and included the following:
“This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.
“This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists.”
The Alfa Bank story took off—despite the same-day story from The New York Times that specifically noted the FBI had investigated that matter and found nothing untoward.
The final article published on Oct. 31, “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump” by Mother Jones reporter—and Baker’s friend —David Corn, also mentioned Alfa Bank:
“In recent weeks, reporters in Washington have pursued anonymous online reports that a computer server related to the Trump Organization engaged in a high level of activity with servers connected to Alfa Bank, the largest private bank in Russia. On Monday, a Slate investigation detailed the pattern of unusual server activity but concluded, ‘We don’t yet know what this [Trump] server was for, but it deserves further explanation.’ In an email to Mother Jones, Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, maintains, ‘The Trump Organization is not sending or receiving any communications from this email server. The Trump Organization has no communication or relationship with this entity or any Russian entity.’”
More notably, Corn’s article also provided the first public reporting on the existence of the Steele dossier:
“A former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.”
As it turns out, Corn had detailed, first-hand knowledge of the dossier. According to testimony from Baker, Corn had been provided with parts of the dossier by Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson. Baker knew of this fact, because within a week of publishing his article, Corn passed these dossier parts on to Baker personally:
Rep. Jordan: “Prior to the election Mr. Corn had a copy of the dossier and was talking to you about giving that to you so the FBI would have it. Is that all right? I mean all accurate.”
Mr. Baker: “My recollection is that he had part of the dossier, that we had other parts already, and that we got still other parts from other people, and that — and nevertheless some of the parts that David Corn gave us were parts that we did not have from another source?”
Steele had written four memos after the FBI team received his information in mid-September. All of the memos were written in October—on the 12th, 18th, 19th, and the 20th. It is possible that these were the memos passed along to Baker by Corn.
Baker testified that he received elements of the dossier from Corn that were not in the FBI’s possession at the time. He said that he immediately turned this information over to leadership within the FBI, noting, “I think it was Bill Priestap,” the head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division.
The use of personal relationships as a mechanism to transmit outside information to the FBI was actually noted by Baker, who said of Corn: “Even though he was my friend, I was also an FBI official. He knew that. And so he wanted to somehow get that into the hands of the FBI.”

Bruce Ohr’s FBI Handler

Christopher Steele was terminated as a source by the FBI on Nov. 1, 2016, for communicating with the media. Despite this, DOJ official Bruce Ohr and Steele communicated regularly for another full year, until November 2017.
On Nov. 21, 2016, Ohr had a meeting with FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and was introduced to FBI agent Joe Pientka, who became Ohr’s FBI handler. Pientka was also present with Strzok during the Jan. 24, 2017, interview of Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
The next day, Nov. 22, 2016, Ohr met alone with Pientka. Ohr would continue to relay his communications with Steele to the FBI through Pientka, who then recorded them in FD-302 forms. What Ohr didn’t know was that Pientka was transmitting all the information directly to Strzok.
Ohr, in his testimony, detailed his interactions with Steele and Glenn Simpson, as well as his communications with officials at the FBI and DOJ. Notably, Ohr repeatedly stated that he never vetted any of the information provided by either Steele or Simpson. He simply turned it over or relayed it to the FBI—usually to Pientka—but Ohr also testified that “at least on two occasions I was handed onto a new agent.”
Sometime in late 2016, his wife, Nellie Ohr, provided him with a memory stick containing all of her research that she had compiled while employed at Fusion GPS. Bruce Ohr testified he gave the memory stick to Pientka. Nellie Ohr had left Fusion in September 2016. Through Pientka, Strzok now had all of Nellie Ohr’s Fusion research in his possession.
On Dec. 10, 2016, Bruce Ohr met with Simpson, who gave him a memory stick that Ohr believed contained a copy of the Steele dossier. Ohr also passed this second memory stick along to Pientka.
On Jan. 20, 2017, Ohr had one final communication with Simpson, a phone call that took place on the same day as Trump’s inauguration. Ohr testified that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson was concerned that one of Steele’s sources was about to be exposed through the pending publication of an article:
Mr. Ohr: “He says something along the lines of, I — there’s going to be some reporting in the next few days that’s going to — could expose the source, and the source could be in personal danger.”
Rep. Meadows: “And why was he concerned about that source being exposed?”
Mr. Ohr: “I think he was aware of some kind of article that was likely to come out in the next, you know, few days or something.”
Apparently, Simpson’s information was at least partly accurate. On Jan. 24, 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that Sergei Millian, a Belarusan-American businessman and onetime Russian government translator, was both “Source D” and “Source E” in the dossier. It remains unknown exactly how Simpson knew in advance that Millian would be outed as a source.
But there are some questions as to the accuracy of the Journal’s reporting. The dossier appears to conflict with the newspaper’s article in at least one aspect. According to the dossier, Source E was used as confirmation for Source D—meaning they can’t be the same person.

McCain, the Dossier, and a UK Connection

Simpson and Steele were carefully thorough in their dissemination efforts. The dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources.
One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood may have previously worked on behalf of Steele’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence; he was referenced in a UK court filing as an associate of Orbis. Wood was also referred to as an adviser to Orbis in a deposition by an associate of late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), David Kramer.
Kramer knew Wood previously from their mutual expertise on Russia. Kramer said in his deposition, which was part of a defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed News, that Wood told him that “he was aware of information that he thought I should be aware of and that Senator McCain might be interested in.”
McCain associate David Kramer. (Courtesy McCain Institute)
McCain, Wood, and Kramer would meet later that afternoon, on Nov. 19, 2016, in a private meeting room at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Wood told both Kramer and McCain that “he was aware of this information that had been gathered that raised the possibility of collusion and compromising material on the president-elect. And he explained that he knew the person who gathered the information and felt that the person was of the utmost credibility,” Kramer said.
Kramer ascribed the word “collusion” three times to Wood in his deposition. He also said that Wood mentioned the possible existence of a video “of a sexual nature” that might have “shown the president-elect in a compromising situation.” According to Kramer, Wood said that “if it existed, that it was from a hotel in Moscow when president-elect, before he was president-elect, had been in Moscow.”
No such video was ever uncovered or given to Kramer.
Kramer testified that following the description of the video, “the senator turned to me and asked if I would go to London to meet with what turned out to be Mr. Steele.”
Kramer traveled to London to meet with Steele on Nov. 28, 2016. Kramer reviewed all the memos during his meeting with Steele but wasn’t provided with a physical copy of the dossier.
When Kramer returned to Washington, he was provided with a copy of the dossier—which, at that point, consisted of 16 memos—during a meeting with Simpson on Nov. 29, 2016. Kramer also testified that there was another individual, “a male,” present at the meeting.
Late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Interestingly, Kramer testified that Simpson gave him two copies of the dossier, noting that Simpson told him that “one had more things blacked out than the other.” Kramer said, “It wasn’t entirely clear to me why there were two versions of this, so but I took both versions.”
Kramer noted that Simpson, who was aware the dossier was being given to McCain, said the dossier “was a very sensitive document and needed to be handled very carefully.”
Despite that warning, Kramer showed the dossier to a number of journalists and had discussions with at least 14 members of the media, along with some individuals in the U.S. government.
Kramer testified that he gave a physical copy of the dossier to reporters Peter Stone and Greg Gordon of McClatchy; to Fred Hiatt, the editor of the Washington Post editorial page; Alan Cullison of The Wall Street Journal; Bob Little at NPR; Carl Bernstein at CNN; and Ken Bensinger at BuzzFeed. It’s possible that Kramer gave copies to other reporters as well.
Kramer said that Simpson and Steele were aware of most of these contacts, but that Kramer hadn’t told either of them that he gave the dossier to NPR. He also noted that Steele had been in contact with Bernstein at CNN and that the CNN and BuzzFeed meetings occurred at Steele’s request. Steele told Kramer that he and Bensinger “had been in touch during the FIFA investigation; they got to know each other that way.”
According to Kramer, he didn’t believe that Fusion GPS and Simpson were aware of these two meetings with CNN and BuzzFeed.
Kramer testified that he, McCain, and McCain’s chief of staff, Christopher Brose, met to review the dossier on Nov. 30, 2016. Kramer suggested that McCain “provide a copy of [the dossier] to the director of the FBI and the director of the CIA.” McCain later passed a copy of the dossier to James Comey on Dec. 9, 2016. It isn’t known whether McCain also provided a copy to then-CIA Director John Brennan. Notably, Brennan did attach a two-page summary of the dossier to the intelligence community assessment that he delivered to outgoing President Barack Obama on Jan. 5, 2017.
Kramer said that he wasn’t aware of the content of McCain’s Dec. 9 discussion with Comey, noting that he “did not get any readout from the senator on the meeting, but just that it had happened.”
Kramer did, however, provide updates to both Steele and Simpson regarding the status of McCain’s meeting with Comey, in subsequent discussions with Simpson and Steele:
“It was mostly just to inform him about whether or not the senator had transfer — transmitted the document to the FBI. Both he and Mr. Steele were — I kept them apprised of whether the senator was — where the senator was in terms of his contact with the FBI.”
The implications of this statement are significant. Kramer, a private citizen, was providing updates to a former British spy as to what a sitting senator, and chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, was saying to the director of the FBI.
Other members of the media also had advance knowledge of McCain’s intention to meet with Comey. Kramer testified that both Mother Jones reporter David Corn and Guardian reporter Julian Borger came to meet with him. According to Kramer, “They were mostly interested in Senator McCain and his, whether he had given it to Director Comey or not.”
Several days after McCain, Brose, and Kramer met to discuss the dossier, Kramer said that McCain instructed him to meet with Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, and Celeste Wallander, the senior director for Russia and Central Asia on the National Security Council.
The purpose of the meeting was to verify whether the dossier “was being taken seriously.” Both Nuland and Wallander were previously aware of the dossier’s existence, and both officials previously knew Steele, whom “they believed to be credible.” Kramer said he didn’t physically share the dossier with them at this point, but met again with Wallander “around New Years” and “gave her a copy of the document”
Nuland had actually received a copy of the earlier Steele memos back in July 2016.
Steele produced a final memo dated Dec. 13, 2016. According to UK court documents, Kramer, on behalf of McCain, had asked Steele to provide any further intelligence that he had gathered relating to “alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election.” Notably, it appears it was this request from McCain that led Steele to produce his Dec. 13 memo.
Although Kramer didn’t provide a date, he said he received the final Steele memo sometime after “Senator McCain had provided the copy to Director Comey.” We know that Kramer received the final memo prior to Dec. 29—when Kramer met with BuzzFeed’s Bensinger.
Kramer testified that Bensinger “said he wanted to read them, he asked me if he could take photos of them on his—I assume it was an iPhone. I asked him not to. He said he was a slow reader, he wanted to read it. And so I said, you know, I got a phone call to make, and I had to go to the bathroom…” Kramer said that he “left him to read it for 20, 30 minutes.”
Kramer also testified that besides the reporters, he gave a final copy of the dossier to two other people in early January 2017: Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Il.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s chief of staff, Jonathan Burks.

James Clapper Leaks Details of Obama–Trump Briefings

The ICA on alleged Russian hacking was released internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day, outgoing president Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the assessment—and the attached summation of the dossier—with national security adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Rice would later send herself an email documenting the meeting.
The following day, CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary of the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they gave Obama. Comey then met with President-elect Trump to inform him of the dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey, Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the ICA and the Steele dossier.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Comey would only inform Trump of the “salacious” details contained within the dossier. He laterexplained on CNN in an April 2018 interview that he had done so at the request of Clapper and Brennan, “because that was the part that the leaders of the intelligence community agreed he needed to be told about.”
Shortly after Comey’s meeting with Trump, both the Trump–Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The significance of the meeting was material, as Comey noted in a Jan. 7 memo:
“Media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material.”
The media had widely dismissed the dossier as unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey briefed Trump on it that CNN reported on the dossier. The House Intelligence Committee report on Russian election interference confirmed that Clapper personally leaked confirmation of the dossier, along with Comey’s meeting with Trump, to CNN:
“The Committee’s investigation revealed that President-elect Trump was indeed briefed on the contents of the Steele dossier and when questioned by the Committee, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted that he confirmed the existence of the dossier to the media.”
Additionally, the House intelligence report shows Clapper appears to have been the direct source for CNN’s Jake Tapper and his Jan. 10 story that disclosed the existence of the dossier:
“When initially asked about leaks related to the ICA in July 2017, former DNI Clapper flatly denied ‘discuss[ing] the dossier [compiled by Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists.’ Clapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the ‘dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,’ and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic.
“Clapper’s discussion with Tapper took place in early January 2017, around the time IC leaders briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump, on ‘the Christopher Steele information,’ a two-page summary of which was ‘enclosed in’ the highly-classified version of the ICA.”
On Jan. 10, 2017, CNN published the article “Intel Chiefs Presented Trump With Claims of Russian Efforts to Compromise Him” by Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper, and Carl Bernstein. (The article would later be updated and have a Jan. 12, 2017, date.)
The allegations within the dossier were made public, and with reporting of the briefings by intelligence community leaders, instant credibility was given to the dossier’s assertions.
Immediately following the CNN story, BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier, and the Trump–Russia conspiracy was pushed into the mainstream.
David Kramer was asked about his reaction when CNN broke the story on the dossier. According to his deposition, Kramer stated, “I believe my words were ‘Holy [expletive].’”
Kramer, who was actually meeting with The Guardian’s Julian Borger when CNN reported on the dossier, said that he quickly spoke with Steele, who “was shocked.”
On the following day, Jan. 11, 2017, Clapper issued a statement condemning the leaks—without revealing the fact that he was the source of the leak.
On Nov. 17, 2016, Clapper submitted his resignation as director of national intelligence; his resignation became effective on Jan. 20, 2017. Later that year, CNN hired Clapper as its national security analyst.

The Effort to Remove General Flynn

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then-national security adviser to President Donald Trump, was interviewed on Jan. 24, 2017, by FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka about two December 2016 conversations that Flynn had had with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
National security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. (Kevin Hagen/Getty Images)
Details of the phone conversation had leaked to the media. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI regarding his conversations with Kislyak. It remains unknown to this day who leaked Flynn’s classified call—a far more serious felony violation.
The Washington Post reported in January 2017 that the FBI had found no evidence of wrongdoing in Flynn’s actual call with the Russian ambassador. The call, and the matters discussed in it, broke no laws.
Flynn has been portrayed in the media as being suspiciously close to Russia; a dinner in Moscow that occurred in late 2015 is frequently cited as evidence of this.
On Dec. 10, 2015, Flynn attended an event in Moscow to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Russian television network RT. Flynn, who was seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the culminating dinner, was also interviewed on national security matters by an RT correspondent. Flynn’s speaker’s bureau, Leading Authorities Inc., was paid $45,000 for the event and Flynn received $33,000 of the total amount.
Seated at the same table with Flynn was Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate in the 2016 election. By all accounts, including Stein’s, Flynn and Putin didn’t engage in any real conversation. At the time, Flynn’s trip didn’t garner significant attention. But it would later be used by the media and the Clinton campaign to push the Russia-collusion narrative.
Notably, as stated by lawyer Robert Kelner, Flynn disclosed his Moscow trip to the Defense Intelligence Agency before he traveled there and provided a full briefing upon his return:
“As has previously been reported, General Flynn briefed the Defense Intelligence Agency, a component agency of the DoD, extensively regarding the RT speaking event trip both before and after the trip, and he answered any questions that were posed by the DIA concerning the trip during those briefings.”
Flynn’s trip to Russia was first brought to broader attention on July 18, 2016, during a live interview at the Republican National Convention with Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff.
The Isikoff interview took place on July 18, 2016. Unknown at the time, the matter had also captured the attention of Christopher Steele, who had begun publishing his dossier memos on June 20, 2016.
Contained within an Aug. 10, 2016, memo was this initial reference to Flynn:
“Kremlin engaging with several high profile US players, including STEIN, PAGE and (former DIA Director Michael Flynn) and funding their recent visits to Moscow.”
In addition to the obvious questions raised by the timing of Flynn’s name appearing in Steele’s Aug. 10 memo, is the manner in which Flynn is denoted. All other names are capitalized, in the manner of intelligence briefings. Flynn’s name isn’t capitalized and, in one case, appears within parentheses.
Steele met with Yahoo News’ Isikoff in September 2016 and gave him information from the dossier. The resulting Sept. 23, 2016, article from Isikoff was then cited by the FBI as validating Steele’s claims and was featured in the original FISA application, and its three subsequent renewals, for a warrant to spy on Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
Steele wasn’t the only person Isikoff was working with. On April 26, 2016, Isikoff published a story on Yahoo News about Paul Manafort’s business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. It was later learned from a Democratic National Committee (DNC) email leaked by Wikileaks that Isikoff had been working with Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American operative who was doing consulting work for the DNC. Chalupa met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose alleged ties between Trump, Manafort, and Russia.
The obvious question remains: How did the information on Flynn make its way into the dossier at the time it did, and who provided the information to Steele?
Flynn’s 2015 dinner in Moscow was initially used to implicate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. It was then used as a means to cast doubts on Flynn’s ability as Trump’s national security adviser. Following Flynn’s resignation, it was then used as a means to pursue the ongoing collusion narrative that gained full strength in the early days of the Trump administration.
A Jan. 10, 2017, article in The New York Times, “Trump’s National Security Pick Sees Ally in Fight Against Islamists: Russia,” highlighted the efforts:
“In an extraordinary report released last week, the agencies bluntly accusedthe Russian government of having worked to undermine American democracy and promote the candidacy of Mr. Trump. The report is likely to renew questions about Mr. Flynn’s avowed eagerness to work with Russia, and his dismissal of concerns about President Vladimir V. Putin.”
Flynn would resign from his position as national security adviser in February 2017. The sequence of events leading to his resignation were both coordinated and orchestrated, with acting Attorney General Sally Yates playing a leading role.
On Jan. 12, 2017, Flynn’s Dec. 29, 2016, call with Kislyak was leaked to The Washington Post. The article portrayed Flynn as undermining Obama’s Russia sanctions that had been imposed on the same day as Flynn’s call with the Russian ambassador.
On Jan. 15, five days before Trump’s inauguration, Vice President Mike Pence appeared on “Face the Nation” to defend Flynn’s calls.
A few days later, on Jan. 19, Obama officials—Yates, Clapper, Brennan and Comey—met to discuss Flynn’s situation. The concern they reportedlydiscussed was that Flynn might have misled Trump administration officials regarding the nature of his call with Kislyak.
Click on the infographic to enlarge
Yates, Clapper, and Brennan supported informing the Trump administration of their concerns. Comey took a dissenting view. On Jan 23, Yates again pressured Comey, telling the FBI director that she believed Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail. At this point, according to media reports, Comey relented, despite the FBI finding nothing unlawful in the content of Flynn’s calls.
Strzok and Pientka, at the instruction of McCabe, interviewed Flynn the following day. According to court documents, McCabe and other FBI officials “decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted Flynn to be relaxed.” It was during this interview that Flynn reportedly lied to the FBI.
The DOJ was provided with a detailed briefing of the Flynn interview on the following day. On Jan. 26, Yates contacted White House counsel Don McGahn, who agreed to meet to discuss the matter. Yates arrived at McGahn’s office, bringing Mary McCord, John Carlin’s acting replacement as head of the DOJ’s National Security Division.
Yates later testified before Congress that the meeting surrounded Flynn’s phone calls and his FBI interview. She also testified that Flynn’s call and subsequent interview “was a topic of a whole lot of discussion in DOJ and with other members of the intel community.” McGahn reportedly asked Yates, “Why does it matter to the DOJ if one White House official lies to another official?”
McGahn called Yates the following day and asked her to return for a second meeting. Yates returned to the White House without McCord. McGahn asked to examine the FBI’s evidence on Flynn. Yates said she would respond by the following Monday.
Yates failed to provide McGahn with the FBI’s evidence on Flynn. From that point, the pressure on Flynn and the Trump administration escalated—with help from media reporting.
Flynn resigned on Feb. 13, after it was reported that he had misled Pence about phone conversations he’d had with Kislyak.
The following day, The New York Times reported that “phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.”
With Flynn gone and the Russian narrative firmly established, the conspirators then turned their attention to Trump’s newly confirmed attorney general, Jeff Sessions. On March 1, 2017, The Washington Postreported that Sessions had twice had contact with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak. The following day, March 2, Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation.
On the same day that Sessions recused himself, Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, detailed efforts at hampering the newly installed Trump administration, during a March 2, 2017, interview with MSNBC, in which she described how the Obama administration gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump team:
“I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill … ‘Get as much information as you can. Get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.’
“The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff’s dealing with Russians, [they] would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. … That’s why you have the leaking.”
Note that Farkas said “how we knew,” not just “what we knew.”

Obama Officials Used Unmasking to Target the Trump Campaign

On Tuesday, March 21, 2017, the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), met a classified source who showed him “dozens” of intelligence reports. Contained within these reports was evidence of surveillance on the Trump campaign. Nunes held a press conference on March 22 highlighting what he had found:
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
“I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition. Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”
In a series of rapid-fire questions and answers, Nunes attempted to elaborate on what he had been shown:
“From what I know right now, it looks like incidental collection. We don’t know exactly how that was picked up but we’re trying to get to the bottom of it…I think the NSA’s going to comply. I am concerned – we don’t know whether or not the FBI is going to comply. I have placed a call, I’m waiting to talk to Director Comey, hopefully later today.
“I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the President-elect and his team were at least monitored and disseminated out in intelligence, in what appears to be raw—well I shouldn’t say raw—but intelligence reporting channels.
“It looks to me like it was all legally collected, but it was essentially a lot of information on the President-elect and his transition team and what they were doing.”
The documents Nunes had been shown highlighted the unmasking activities of the FBI, the Obama administration, and CIA Director Brennan in relation to the Trump campaign. Although March 2017 would prove chaotic, the Trump administration had survived the first crucial months, and would now begin to slowly assert its administrative authority.

Comey Testifies No Obstruction by Trump Administration

On May 3, 2017, James Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under oath, Comey stated that his agency—and the FBI’s investigation—had not been pressured by the Trump administration:
Sen. Hirono: “So if the attorney general or senior officials at the Department of Justice opposes a specific investigation, can they halt that FBI investigation?”
Mr. Comey: “In theory, yes.”
Sen. Hirono: “Has it happened?”
Mr. Comey: “Not in my experience. Because it would be a big deal to tell the FBI to stop doing something that – without an appropriate purpose. I mean where oftentimes they give us opinions that we don’t see a case there and so you ought to stop investing resources in it. But I’m talking about a situation where we were told to stop something for a political reason. That would be a very big deal. It’s not happened in my experience.”
FBI Director James Comey. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
Less than a week later, on May 9, Trump fired Comey based on a May 8 recommendation by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Rosenstein would later tell members of Congress: “In one of my first meetings with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions last winter, we discussed the need for new leadership at the FBI. Among the concerns that I recall were to restore the credibility of the FBI, respect the established authority of the Department of Justice, limit public statements and eliminate leaks.”
Regarding the recommendation, Rosenstein said: “I wrote it. I believe it. I stand by it.”

McCabe’s FBI Reaches Out Again to Steele

Within days of Trump’s firing of Comey, the FBI, now under the leadership of acting-FBI Director Andrew McCabe, suddenly decided to reestablish direct contact with Christopher Steele through DOJ official Bruce Ohr.
The re-engagement attempt came six months after Steele had been formally terminated by the FBI on Nov. 1, 2016.
The FBI’s re-engagement of Ohr was highlighted during a congressional review of some text messages between Ohr and Steele:
Mr. Ohr: “The FBI had asked me a few days before, when I reported to them my latest conversation with Chris Steele, they had had would he—next time you talk with him, could you ask him if he would be willing to meet again.”
Rep. Jordan: “So this is the re-engagement?”
Mr. Ohr: “Yes.”
The texts being referenced were sent on May 15, 2017, and refer to a request that Ohr received from the FBI to ask Steele to re-engage with the FBI in the days after Comey had been fired on May 9.
This was the only time the FBI used Ohr to reach out to Steele.

The Battle Between McCabe and Rosenstein

Two days after Comey was fired, on May 11, 2017, McCabe testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. While the hearing’s original intent had been to focus on national security threats, Trump’s firing of Comey completely altered the topic of the hearing.
McCabe, who agreed that he would notify the committee “of any effort to interfere with the FBI’s ongoing investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign,” told members of Congress that there had been “no effort to impede our investigation to date.” In other words, McCabe testified that he was unaware of any evidence of obstruction from Trump or his administration. Notably, Comey’s May 3 testimony may have left McCabe with little choice other than to confirm there had been no obstruction.
Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)
McCabe, however, failed to inform the committee that he was actively considering opening an obstruction-of-justice probe of Trump—a path he would initiate in a meeting with Rosenstein just five days later.
On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein allegedly suggested to McCabe that he could secretly record Trump. It was at this meeting that McCabe was “pushing for the Justice Department to open an investigation into the president,” according to witness accounts reported by The Washington Post.
In addition to McCabe, Rosenstein, and McCabe’s special counsel, Lisa Page, there were one or two others present, including Rosenstein’s chief of staff, James Crowley, and possibly Scott Schools, the senior-most career attorney at the DOJ and a top aide to Rosenstein.
An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The Washington Post, framed the conversation between McCabe and Rosenstein in an entirely different light, noting that Rosenstein had responded with angry sarcasm to McCabe, saying, “What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?”
This was just five days after McCabe had publicly testified that there was no obstruction on the part of the Trump administration.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Sometime later that same day, both Rosenstein and Trump met with former FBI Director Robert Mueller in the Oval Office. The meeting was reported as being for the FBI director position, but the idea that Mueller would be considered for the FBI director role seems highly unlikely.
Mueller had previously served as the FBI director from 2001 to 2013—two years beyond the normal 10-year tenure for an FBI director. In 2011, Obama requested that Mueller stay on as FBI director for an additional two years, which required special congressional approval.
Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel the following day, on May 17, 2017, and in doing so, Rosenstein removed control of the Trump–Russia investigation from McCabe and put it in the hands of Mueller.
This was confirmed in a recent statement by a DOJ spokesperson, who said, “The deputy attorney general in fact appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, and directed that Mr. McCabe be removed from any participation in that investigation.”
Following the appointment of Mueller as special counsel, it also appears the FBI’s efforts to re-engage with Steele abruptly ended.

‘There’s No Big There There’

We know the FBI hadn’t found any evidence of collusion in the May 2017 timeframe. While McCabe was attempting to open an obstruction investigation, Peter Strzok—who played a key role in the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign—texted Lisa Page about lacking evidence of collusion:
“You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I’d be there, no question. I hesitate, in part, because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.”
Page, who was asked about this text during her July 2018 testimony, said, “So I think this represents that even as far as May of 2017, we still couldn’t answer the question.”
James Baker, who was questioned about the Strzok text, was then asked if he’d seen any evidence to the contrary. He stumbled a bit in his reply:
Rep. Meadows: “Do you have any evidence to the contrary that you observed personally in your official capacity?”
Mr. Baker: “So the difficulty I’m having with your question is, what does ‘collusion’ mean, and what does ‘prove’ mean? And so I don’t know how to respond to that.”

FBI Leadership Speculates on New Trump–Russia Collusion Narrative

In his testimony, Baker disclosed the actual substance of discussions taking place at the upper echelons of the FBI immediately following Comey’s firing—that Vladimir Putin had ordered Trump to fire Comey:
Mr. Baker: “We discussed, so to the best of my recollection, with the same people I described earlier: Mr. McCabe, possibly Mr. Gattis [Carl Ghattas, executive assistant director of the National Security Branch], Mr. Priestap, possibly Lisa Page, possibly Pete Strzok. I don’t remember that specifically.”
Rep. Ratcliffe: “So there was—there was a discussion between those folks, possibly all of the folks that you’ve identified, about whether or not President Trump had been ordered to fire Jim Comey by the Russian Government?”
Mr. Baker: “I wouldn’t say ordered. I guess I would say the words I sort of used earlier, acting at the behest of and somehow following directions, somehow executing their will, whether—and so literally an order or not, I don’t know. But—”
Rep. Ratcliffe: “And so—”
Mr. Baker: “As a—it was discussed as a theoretical possibility.”
Rep. Ratcliffe: “When was it discussed?”
Mr. Baker: “After the firing, like in the aftermath of the firing.”
The FBI, with no actual evidence of collusion after 10 months of investigating, began discussing a complete hypothetical at the highest levels of leadership as a means to possibly open an obstruction-of-justice investigation of the president of the United States.
During his testimony, Baker told lawmakers: “I had a jaundiced eye about everything, yes. I had skepticism about all this stuff. I was concerned about all of this. This whole situation was horrible, and it was novel and we were trying to figure out what to do, and it was highly unusual.”
McCabe was later fired for lying to the DOJ inspector general and is currently the subject of a criminal grand jury investigation.

The Fixer

Despite the ongoing assault from the intelligence community and holdovers from the Obama administration, Trump was not entirely without allies.
Dana Boente, one of the nation’s highest-profile federal prosecutors, served in a series of critical shifting roles within the Trump administration. Boente, who remained the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia until early 2018, concurrently became the acting attorney general following the firing of Sally Yates. Boente, who was specifically appointed by Trump, was not directly in the line of succession that had been previously laid out under an unusual executive order from the Obama administration.
FBI General Counsel Dana Boente. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Upon the confirmation of Sessions as attorney general, Boente next served as acting deputy attorney general until the confirmation of Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general on April 25, 2017. Boente then became the acting head of the DOJ’s National Security Division on April 28, 2017, following the sudden resignation of Mary McCord.
Boente was appointed as FBI general counsel on Jan. 23, 2018, replacing Baker, who was demoted and reassigned. Baker is currently the subject of a criminal leak investigation. Boente remains in his position as FBI general counsel.
On March 31, 2017, the Trump administration asked for the resignations all 46 holdover U.S. attorneys from the Obama administration. Trump refused to accept the resignations of just three of them—Boente, Rosenstein, and John Huber.
As Sessions noted in a March 29, 2018, letter to congressional chairmen Chuck Grassley, Bob Goodlatte, and Trey Gowdy, Huber was assigned by Sessions to lead a prosecution team and is currently working with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz:
“I already have directed senior federal prosecutors to evaluate certain issues previously raised by the Committee. … Specifically, I asked United States Attorney John W. Huber to lead this effort.”

John Carlin’s Race With Admiral Rogers

Director of the National Security Agency Admiral Mike Rogers. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
The Carter Page FISA application has been the subject of significant media attention, but there’s another element to the story that, although largely ignored, is equally important. It involved what amounted to a surreptitious race between then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers and DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin.
Following a March 9, 2016, discovery that outside contractors for the FBI had been accessing raw FISA data since at least 2015, Rogers directed the NSA’s Office of Compliance to conduct a “fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702” at some point in early April 2016 (Senate testimony & pages 83–84 of court ruling).
On April 18, 2016, Rogers moved aggressively in response to the disclosures. He abruptly shut down all FBI outside-contractor access. At this point, both the FBI and the DOJ’s NSD became aware of Rogers’s compliance review. They may have known earlier, but they were certainly aware after outside-contractor access was halted.
The DOJ’s NSD maintains oversight of the intelligence agencies’ use of Section 702 authority. The NSD and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) jointly conduct reviews of the intelligence agencies’ Section 702 activities every 60 days. The NSD—with notice to the ODNI—is required to report any incidents of agency noncompliance or misconduct to the FISA court.
Instead of issuing individual court orders, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence (DNI) are required by Section 702 to provide the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) with annual certifications that specify categories of foreign intelligence information the government is authorized to acquire, pursuant to Section 702.
The attorney general and the DNI also must certify that Intelligence Community agencies will follow targeting procedures and minimization procedures that are approved by the FISC as part of the certification.
Carlin filed the government’s proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of the compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016, report by the NSA inspector general and associated FISA abuse to the FISA court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers’s ongoing Section 702-compliance review.
On Sept. 27, 2016, the day after he filed the annual certifications, Carlin announced his resignation, which would become effective on Oct. 15, 2016.
John Carlin, DOJ’s National Security Division. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
On Oct. 4, 2016, a standard follow-up court hearing was held (Page 19), with Carlin present. Again, he made no disclosure of FISA abuse or other related issues. This lack of disclosure would be noted by the court later in the April 2017 ruling:
“The government’s failure to disclose those IG and OCO reviews at the October 4, 2016 hearing [was ascribed] to an institutional ‘lack of candor.’”
On Oct. 15, 2016, Carlin formally left the NSD.
On Oct. 20, 2016, Rogers was briefed by the NSA compliance officer on findings from the 702 NSA compliance audit. The audit had uncovered a large number of issues, including numerous “about query” violations (Senate testimony).
Rogers shut down all “about query” activity on Oct. 21, 2016. “About queries” are particularly worrisome, since they occur when the target is neither the sender nor the recipient of the collected communication; rather, the target’s “query,” such as an email address, is being passed between two other communicants.
On the same day, the DOJ and FBI sought and received a Title I FISA warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. At this point, the FISA court still was unaware of the Section 702 violations.
On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally informed the FISA court of his findings:
“On October 24, 2016, the government orally apprised the Court of significant non-compliance with the NSA’s minimization procedures involving queries of data acquired under Section 702 using U.S. person identifiers. The full scope of non-compliant querying practices had not been previously disclosed to the Court.”
Rogers appeared formally before the FISA court on Oct. 26, 2016, and presented the written findings of his audit:
“Two days later, on the day the Court otherwise would have had to complete its review of the certifications and procedures, the government made a written submission regarding those compliance problems … and the Court held a hearing to address them.
“The government reported that the NSA IG and OCO were conducting other reviews covering different time periods, with preliminary results suggesting that the problem was widespread during all periods under review.”
The FISA court was unaware of the FISA “query” violations until they were presented to the court by then-NSA Director Rogers.
Carlin didn’t disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications, apparently in order to avoid raising suspicions at the FISA court ahead of receiving the Carter Page FISA warrant.
The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers’s investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.

FISA Abuse & the FISC

Rogers presented his findings directly to the FISA court’s presiding judge, Rosemary Collyer. Collyer and Rogers would work together for the next six months, addressing the issues that Rogers had uncovered.
It was Collyer who wrote the April 26, 2017, FISA court ruling on the entire episode. It also was Collyer who signed the original FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21, 2016, before being apprised of the many issues by Rogers.
The litany of abuses described in the April 26, 2017, ruling was shocking and detailed the use of private contractors by the FBI in relation to Section 702 data. Collyer referred to it as “a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.” The FBI was specifically singled out by the court numerous times in the ruling:
“The improper access previously afforded the contractors has been discontinued. The Court is nonetheless concerned about the FBI’s apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported.”
Rogers informed Collyer of the ongoing FISA abuses by the FBI and NSD just three days after she personally signed the Carter Page FISA warrant.
Virtually every FBI and NSD official with material involvement in the original Carter Page FISA application would later be removed—either through firing or resignation.

Trump criticized Dimon in 2013 for supposedly contributing to the country’s economic downturn. “I’m not Jamie Dimon, who pays $13 billion to settle a case and then pays $11 billion to settle a case and who I think is the worst banker in the United States,” he told reporters.

JPMorgan’s investment arm, which includes its energy group, collects $14 billion annually; in comparison, six months’ worth of fines would amount to a paltry $180 million.

"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor."  





“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan  THEAMERICAN THINKER.com

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Jim Carrey: America ‘Doomed’ If We Don’t Regulate Capitalism"

The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process."

Wall Street Warms Up to Elizabeth Warren: ‘She’s the Smartest,’ ‘Most Policy-Oriented’ Democrat

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks during a campaign stop at town hall in Peterborough, N.H., Monday, July 8, 2019. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
AP Photo/Charles Krupa
4:14

Wall Street is warming up to the idea of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) being the Democrat nominee for president against President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, interviews with executives and bankers reveal.

Politico report details how Wall Street insiders are becoming comfortable with Warren as the potential nominee to go up against Trump and his “America First” agenda:
I think she is going to get the nomination because she’s the smartest, she’s charismatic and she’s the most policy-oriented,” said one former top executive at a large Wall Street bank who, like several interviewed for this story, declined to be quoted on record saying anything nice about Warren. “Wall Street is very good at accommodating itself to reality and if the reality is the party is going to be super-progressive, they may not like Warren but she’s a better form of poison than Bernie.” [Emphasis added]
“If she were the nominee, there will certainly be people who will say that Donald Trump represents everything that I’m against,” said Orin Kramer, a hedge fund manager who is raising money for Buttigieg. “And they will find stuff that they like about her and will vote for her.” [Emphasis added]


BLOG: THE DEMOCRAT PARTY OF CRONY CAPITALISM IS THE PARTY OF BANKSTERS AND BOTTOMLESS BANKSTER BAILOUTS... AND NO PRISON TIME! 
Former adviser to President Obama and investor Robert Wolf told Politico that the financial industry has changed over the last few decades and that Wall Street-types are vastly more aligned with the Democrat establishment than Trump’s GOP.
“I don’t think the stereotypes of the industry serve the same purpose as they used to,” Wolf said. “People who work in corporate America and financial services may have the same views that she does on 95 percent of the issues such as income inequality, student loans, climate change, and others.”
Wall Street and Warren have at least one major policy initiative in common: A full repeal of Trump’s illegal and legal immigration reforms.
This month, Warren released her immigration platform that includes increasing overall legal immigration to the U.S. to provide business with an even greater flow of foreign workers to hire over Americans, as well as a decriminalization of illegal immigration, an amnesty for all illegal aliens in the country, and an end of Trump’s reforms such as his immigration ban from terrorist-sponsored countries and reduction of the refugee resettlement program.
Like Warren, Wall Street executives have railed against Trump’s immigration agenda — demanding that his zero-tolerance policy at the U.S.-Mexico border be ended and opposing his travel ban.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has supported amnesty for illegal aliens since at least 2016 when he announced support for the infamous “Gang of Eight” amnesty, saying, “Let them stay and let them build companies.”
Last month, Dimon said amnesty for illegal aliens was necessary to grow the economy, saying, “If we do these policies right, America will be growing a lot faster.”
Some of the top multinational banks — JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley — have come out against Trump’s travel ban that effectively stopped all immigration from a handful of foreign countries that sponsor terrorism.
“This is not a policy we support, and I would note that it has already been challenged in federal court, and some of the order has been enjoined at least temporarily,” former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein wrote in a letter at the time. “Let me close by quoting from our business principles: ‘For us to be successful, our men and women must reflect the diversity of the communities and cultures in which we operate … Being diverse is not optional; it is what we must be.'”
Meanwhile, Citigroup has promoted mass immigration as a necessary component to growing the American economy in terms of increasing GDP. A report released by executives last year championed migration into the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Germany.
For decades, the big business lobby, Wall Street, and donor class have said mass immigration is crucial to growing GDP in the U.S. though research has shown that increasing legal immigration levels to an enormous ten million admissions a year would only grow GDP by about 2.5 percent. Meanwhile, Trump’s low-migration, high-wage economy has translated to 3.2 percent annual economic growth.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

Before his first day in office Barack Obama had sucked in more bribes from banksters than any president in history.

During the economic meltdown caused by Obama’s crony banksters, and Obama’s first two years in office, banks made more money than eight years under pro-bankster administration of George Bush.

Both of Obama’s Attorney Generals, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, were chosen by the banks because they were from law firms that had long protected big banks from their victims.

“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”

Joe Biden, the walking moron, was selected by Obama also because of his ties and servitude to big banks!

OBOMB'S CRONY BANKSTERS DESTROYED MORE 

THAN A TRILLION DOLLARS IN AMERICAN HOME 

VALUES AND NOW THEY'RE COMING BACK FOR MORE WITH THE BANKSTES' RENT BOY BIDEN!


Decades of decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating divide.

While the rich accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages

and benefits have been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of

the population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017,

that fell to only 61 percent.


Obama paid $600,000 for a single speech

 
In the two years since leaving the White House, former President Barack Obama has spent his time raising and solidifying his position in the uppermost echelons of the top one percent of Americans. Obama has raked in exorbitant amounts of money for public speaking events and made deals worth millions with multiple companies.
Despite his quip, made during the depths of the Great Recession, that “at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” there seems to be no such limit for the Obamas. His family has amassed so much wealth that even Obama himself said he was surprised in a speech in South Africa last year.
Since he left office, the former president has given an estimated 50 speeches a year to corporate audiences for hundreds of thousands of dollars per event. In 2017, the same year he left office, Obama was officially recognized as one of the top ten highest paid public speakers in the US.
Photo of former president Barack Obama. (Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Just last month, Obama was reported to have been paid nearly $600,000 to speak at the EXMA conference in Bogotá, Colombia. According to the Bogotá Post, EXMA is Colombia’s largest marketing and business event of the year and one of the largest in Latin America. Simply titled, “A conversation with President Barack Obama,” his talk purportedly addressed “influential growth strategies” in marketing and other aspects of the marketing economy.
Colombia is infamous for the corruption prevalent in its public sector and military, 
which costs the country $17 billion a year, equivalent to 5.3 percent of its GDP. 
Colombia exports half of the world’s cocaine and its drug cartels have been known
to have a hand in the government. Corruption and drug money are so rampant that
Colombia’s Inspector General likened it to “the new cartel.”
While Obama warns of the danger of “exploding inequality” in his speeches, the massive sum granted to him for one night in Bogotá is more than 10 times what the typical household in the US makes in a year, and 72 times the average worker’s annual income in Colombia.
Notably, Obama’s purse was nearly triple the amount Hillary Clinton was paid for her notorious speeches to Goldman Sachs that revealed her and the Democratic Party as Wall Street stooges. Former President Bill Clinton was paid just $200,000 per speech when he toured Latin America in 2005.
A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech has been at least $400,000 a clip.
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his administration was “the only thing 
between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
Under Obama’s watch the stock markets soared as the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 149 percent. Meanwhile, the “war on terror” in the Middle East was expanded with Obama becoming the first president to spend every day of his two terms at war, much to the delight of the military-industrial complex.
As the wars raged on and the financial oligarchs fattened themselves off the ever-increasing mountain of wealth being concentrated at the top of society, real wages stagnated and an unprecedented opioid overdose crisis spun out of control. Rising numbers of “deaths of despair” during Obama’s tenure, particularly among the working class, resulted in a decline in life expectancy unprecedented in the modern era.
In addition to monetary rewards for his service to the financial elite and military-intelligence apparatus, Obama has been lavishly feted by socialites and billionaires such as Richard Branson. Obama was Branson’s special guest in 2017 on a private island where the pair were seen kite surfing and enjoying the amenities of Branson’s exclusive resort.
Michelle Obama has also benefited after the family’s departure from the White House. The couple signed a $65 million book deal with publishing company Penguin Random House for their political memoirs. Michelle’s memoir “Becoming” was the best-selling book of 2018 with over 10 million copies sold. The pair also signed multi-year deals with Netflix and Spotify to produce content aimed at “fostering dialogue” and promoting diversity in entertainment.
Obama’s lucrative post-White House career hobnobbing with the corporate, entertainment and financial elite epitomizes the revolving door relationship between the US government and the private sector. Obama’s rewards are simply retroactive bribery for services rendered to the capitalist elite, who have welcomed him with open arms.

They Destroyed Our Country
“They knew Obama was an unqualified crook; yet they promoted him. They knew Obama was a train wreck waiting to happen; yet they made him president, to the great injury of America and the world. They understood he was only a figurehead, an egomaniac, and a liar; yet they made him king, doing great harm to our republic (perhaps irreparable.)”
THE RISE TO POWER OF BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK OBAMA
'Incompetent' and 'liar' among most frequently used words to describe the president: Pew Research Center
The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy.

OBAMA'S ASSAULT ON AMERICA -WHY WALL STREET, ILLEGALS, CRIMINAL BANKSTERS and the 1% LOVE HIM, AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS THE SHAFT TO PAY FOR HIS CRONY CAPITALISM
CEO pay is higher than ever, as is the chasm separating the rich and super-rich from everyone else. The incomes of the top 1 percent grew more than 11 percent between 2009 and 2011—the first two years of the Obama “recovery”—while the incomes of the bottom 99 percent actually shrank.
Meanwhile, Obama is pressing forward with his proposal, outlined in his budget for the next fiscal year, to slash $400 billion from Medicare and $130 billion from Social Security… AS WELL AS WIDER OPEN BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY, NO LEGAL NEED APPLY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED

OBAMA AND BIDEN: SERVANT OF THE 1% 

Richest one percent controls nearly half of global wealth 

The richest one percent of the world’s population now controls 48.2 percent of global wealth, up from 46 percent last year.


The report found that the growth of global inequality has accelerated sharply since the 2008 financial crisis, as the values of financial assets have soared while wages have stagnated and declined.

Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.

THE WALL STREET BOUGHT AND OWNED DEMOCRAT PARTY

SERVING BANKSTERS, BILLIONAIRES and INVADING ILLEGALS
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ----Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER


Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.

THE CRONY CLASS:

Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama-Biden and their bankster regime than Bush.



“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”

“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ----Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER

Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.

INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA AND HIS WALL STREET CRONIES




Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.

THE REAL ECONOMY:
US “retail apocalypse” expected to exceed annual high with more than 1,100 store closures announced in one day.
The declining living standards of the working class are feeding directly into the retail apocalypse and mass layoffs of retail workers will only exacerbate the issue. Workers’ wages have seen little to no growth in the last four decades, and any economic growth experienced since 2008 has gone to the wealthiest of the wealthy.
Why do all global billionaires want wider open borders, amnesty and no E-VERIFY?
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
AMERICA: THE ECONOMY IS RIGGED BY CONGRESS SO THE RICH BECOME SUPER RICH.
The American middle class gets the tax bills for Wall Street’s crimes and bottomeless bailouts!

Wealth concentration increases in US.



The latest research on wealth inequality by University of California economics professor Gabriel Zucman underscores one of the key social and economic trends since the global financial crisis of 2008. Those at the very top of society, who benefited directly from the orgy of speculation that led to the crash, have seen their wealth accumulate at an even faster rate, while the mass of the population has suffered a major decline.
The past 40 years have seen the consolidation of a plutocratic elite, which has subordinated every aspect of American society to a single goal: amassing ever more colossal amounts of personal wealth. The top one percent have captured all of the increase in national income over the past two decades, and all of the increase in national wealth since the 2008 crash.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER

Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.

BILLIONAIRE BETO “BETOMATIC” O’ROURKE PROCLAIMS AMNESTY FOR 40 MILLION INVADING “UNREGISTERED” DEMOCRAT VOTING ILLEGALS.
No word on America’s homeless, housing or jobs crisis for Legals!
Joe Biden Fundraises with Wall Street During Donald Trump Rally

CHARLIE SPIERING
  18 Jun 201984
1:34

Former Vice President Joe Biden attended a fundraiser with Wall Street donors during President Donald Trump’s campaign kickoff rally in Florida on Tuesday.

It was the fourth New York City fundraiser for Joe Biden in about 24 hours.
The fundraiser was hosted by Eric Mindich, the CEO of Eton Park Capital Management with about 100 donors including Stephen Scherr, the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs, H. Rodgin Cohen the senior chairman at Sullivan & Cromwell as well as former Clinton and Obama officials
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
“You know what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic as poor people,” he said. “Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money. The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done.”
Biden warned that if Trump won re-election, he would “literally fundamentally change the nature of who we are and how we function.”
Biden boasted that Obama leaned on him to help bring members of Congress together during their administration.
“Folks, I believe one of the things I’m pretty good at is bringing people together,” he said. “Every time we had trouble in the administration, who got sent to the Hill to settle it? Me. No, not a joke. Because I demonstrate respect for them.”

Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.

AMERICA: THE RICH GET MUCH RICHER AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS BLUDGEONED…. Illegals get the jobs!

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Why do the billionaire class all want wider open borders and hordes more “cheap” labor illegals? It’s all about keeping wages depressed for greater profits!

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“Today’s society benefits those who shaped it, and it has been shaped not by working men and women, but by the new aristocratic elite. Big banks, big tech, big multi-national corporations, along with their allies in the academy and the media—these are the aristocrats of our age. They live in the United States, but they consider themselves citizens of the world” Sen. Josh Hawley 

*
*
"This is how they will destroy America from within.  The leftist billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of millions of migrants.  They have nothing but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of 
our communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human 
traffickers.  These people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT
*

"But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now."  ----  Patricia McCarthy - AMERICANTHINKER.com

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“The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public service”
into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes."
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"The tax overhaul would mean an unprecedented windfall for the super-rich, on top of the fact that virtually all income gains during the period of the supposed recovery from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to the top 1 percent income bracket."

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Graph from the Economic Policy Institute

Decades of decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell to only 61 percent.
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Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019


While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.
By Gabriel Black
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The massive increase in the value of the stock market, which only a small segment of the population participates in, means that the top 10 percent of the population controls 73 percent of all wealth in the United States. Just three men—Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates—had more wealth than the bottom half of America combined last year.

Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.

America Created Just 20,000 Jobs in February...and those all went to foreign born
Exclusive–Mo Brooks: ‘Masters of the Universe’ Want More Immigration to ‘Decrease Incomes of Americans’
Consequently, the pumping of ultra-cheap money into the financial system, fueling speculation and parasitism, together with ever-widening social inequality, is not a temporary measure but must be made permanent.
The declining living standards of the working class are feeding directly into the retail apocalypse and mass layoffs of retail workers will only exacerbate the issue. 
Workers’ wages have seen little to no growth in the last four decades, and any economic growth experienced since 2008 has gone to 

Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
“US household net worth sees biggest fall since crisis”
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“Trump Touts Legal Immigration System for ‘Our Corporations’ at Expense of 
American Workers “– JOHN BINDER

Trump’s shift from a wage-boosting legal immigration system to one that benefits corporations and their shareholders coincides with recent big business lobby influence over his White House, at the behest of advisers Jared Kushner and Brooke Rollins.
*
“Trump Abandons ‘America First’ Reforms: ‘We Need’ More Immigration to Grow Business Profits”  JOHN BINDER


Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.

Despite a booming economy, many U.S. households are still just holding on

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-recovery-that-never-happened-except.html

"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor."  

“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan  THEAMERICAN THINKER.com

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT


Jim Carrey: America ‘Doomed’ If We Don’t Regulate Capitalism"

The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process."

The father of US Treasury Secretary 

Steven Mnuchin just completed the most 

expensive purchase of a living artist’s work in 

US history, spending over $91 million on a 

three-foot-tall metallic sculpture. Ken Griffin,

the founder of hedge fund Citadel, 

recently dropped $238 million on a 

penthouse in New York City, the most 

expensive US home ever purchased. And 

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, 

has invested $42 million in a 10,000-year 

clock.

Decades of decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell to only 61 percent.

"This is how they will destroy America from within.  The leftist billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of millions of migrants.  They have nothing but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of our communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers.  These people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY

In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that money back.
Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.


Additionally, Koch spokespeople at the donors’ conference said the network has its sights set on pushing amnesty for millions of illegal aliens this year.

Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.


NO PRESIDENT SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM BANKSTERS BEFORE AND AFTER HIS PRESIDENCY THAT BARACK OBAMA.

Trump criticized Dimon in 2013 for supposedly contributing to the country’s economic downturn. “I’m not Jamie Dimon, who pays $13 billion to settle a case and then pays $11 billion to settle a case and who I think is the worst banker in the United States,” he told reporters.
“The response of the administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”

Practically every cabinet appointee of Obama’s has close personal connections to the ruling class, many having come directly from corporate boardrooms. Under Obama’s watch not a single executive at a major financial firm has been criminally tried, much less sent to jail, for their role in the financial crisis.
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor."  
This manufactured crisis has, in turn, been exploited by the Obama administration and both big business parties to hand over trillions in pension funds and other public assets to the financial kleptocracy that rules America.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan  THEAMERICAN THINKER.com

“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor."  

$2,198,468,000,000: Federal Spending Hit 10-Year High Through March; Taxes Hit 5-Year Low

By Terence P. Jeffrey | April 10, 2019 | 5:09 PM EDT
(Getty Images/Ron Sachs-Pool)
(CNSNews.com) - The federal government spent $2,198,468,000,000 in the first six months of fiscal 2019 (October through March), which is the most it has spent in the first six months of any fiscal year in the last decade, according to the Monthly Treasury Statements.

The last time the government spent more in the October-through-March period was in fiscal 2009, when it spent $2,326,360,180,000 in constant March 2019 dollars.

Fiscal 2009 was the fiscal year that began with President George W. Bush signing a $700-billion law to bailout the banking industry in October 2008 and then saw President Barack Obama sign a $787-billion stimulus law in February 2009.

JPMorgan shares climb after the bank posts record earnings and revenue


3h
Jamie Dimon arriving to testify before Congress. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters
·         JPMorgan reported first-quarter earnings results on Friday, kicking off another earnings season for the largest US banks.
JPMorgan Chase reported record first-quarter results on both the top and bottom lines Friday morning. Shares climbed 2.3% in early trading to $108.68.
Here's how the results stacked up with Wall Street's expectations as compiled by Bloomberg.
·         Adjusted net income: $9.18 billion versus $7.7 billion expected
·         Earnings per share: $2.65 versus $2.34 expected
·         Revenue: $29.85 billion versus $28.4 billion expected
·         Expenses: $16.4 billion versus $16.7 billion expected
"In the first quarter of 2019, we had record revenue and net income, strong performance across each of our major businesses, and a more constructive environment," CEO Jamie Dimon said in the earnings release. "Even amid some global geopolitical uncertainty, the US economy continues to grow, employment and wages are going up, inflation is moderate, financial markets are healthy, and consumer and business confidence remains strong."
A deeper look into the numbers showed the trading and investment-banking businesses exceeded expectations, though trading declined 17% from the year earlier:
·         FICC sales & trading revenue: $3.73 billion versus $3.67 billion expected
·         Equity sales & trading revenue: $1.74 billion versus $1.73 billion expected
·         Investment-banking revenue: $1.75 billion versus $1.63 billion expected

"The Federal Reserve is a key mechanism for perpetuating this whole filthy system, in which "Wall Street rules."


Wall Street rules

 
The Federal Reserve sent a clear message to Wall Street on Friday: It will not allow the longest bull market in American history to end. The message was received loud and clear, and the Dow rose by more than 700 points.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers remain furloughed or forced to work without pay as the partial government shutdown enters its third week, but the US central bank is making clear that all of the resources of the state are at the disposal of the financial oligarchy.
Responding to Thursday’s market selloff following a dismal report from Apple and signs of a manufacturing slowdown in both China and the US, the Fed declared it was “listening” to the markets and would scrap its plans to raise interest rates.
Speaking at a conference in Atlanta, where he was flanked by his predecessors Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, both of whom had worked to reflate the stock market bubble after the 2008 financial crash, Chairman Jerome Powell signaled that the Fed would back off from its two projected rate increases for 2019.
“We’re listening sensitively to the messages markets are sending,” he said, adding that the central bank would be “patient” in imposing further rate increases. To underline the point, he declared, “If we ever came to the conclusion that any aspect of our plans” was causing a problem, “we wouldn’t hesitate to change it.”
This extraordinary pledge to Wall Street followed the 660 point plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday, capping off the worst two-day start for a new trading year since the collapse of the dot.com bubble.
William McChesney Martin, the Fed chairman from 1951 to 1970, famously said that his job was “to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going.” Now the task of the Fed chairman is to ply the wealthy revelers with tequila shots as soon as they start to sober up.
Powell’s remarks were particularly striking given that they followed the release Friday of the most upbeat jobs report in over a year, with figures, including the highest year-on-year wage growth since the 2008 crisis, universally lauded as “stellar.”
While US financial markets have endured the worst December since the Great Depression, amid mounting fears of a looming recession and a new financial crisis, analysts have been quick to point out that there are no “hard” signs of a recession in the United States.
Both the Dow and the S&P 500 indexes have fallen more than 15 percent from their recent highs, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ has entered bear market territory, usually defined as a drop of 20 percent from recent highs.
The markets, Powell admitted, are “well ahead of the data.” But it is the markets, not the “data,” that Powell is listening to.
Since World War II, bear markets have occurred, on average, every five-and-a-half years. But if the present trend continues, the Dow will reach 10 years without a bear market in March, despite the recent losses.
Now the Fed has stepped in effectively to pledge that it will allocate whatever resources are needed to ensure that no substantial market correction takes place. But this means only that when the correction does come, as it inevitably 
must, it will be all the more severe and the Fed will have all the less power to stop it.
From the standpoint of the history of the institution, the Fed’s current more or less explicit role as backstop for the stock market is a relatively new development. Founded in 1913, the Federal Reserve legally has had the “dual mandate” of ensuring both maximum employment and price stability since the late 1970s. Fed officials have traditionally denied being influenced in policy decisions by a desire to drive up the stock market.
Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, appointed by Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1979, deliberately engineered an economic recession by driving the benchmark federal funds interest rate above 20 percent. His highly conscious aim, in the name of combating inflation, was to quash a wages movement of US workers by triggering plant closures and driving up unemployment.
The actions of the Fed under Volcker set the stage for a vast upward redistribution of wealth, facilitated on one hand by the trade unions’ suppression of the class struggle and on the other by a relentless and dizzying rise on the stock market.
Volcker’s recession, together with the Reagan administration’s crushing of the 1981 PATCO air traffic controllers’ strike, ushered in decades of mass layoffs, deindustrialization and wage and benefit concessions, leading labor’s share of total national income to fall year after year.
These were also decades of financial deregulation, leading to the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, the dot.com bubble of 1999-2000, and, worst of all, the 2008 financial crisis.
In each of these crises, the Federal Reserve carried out what became known as the “Greenspan put,” (later the “Bernanke put”)—an implicit guarantee to backstop the financial markets, prompting investors to take ever greater risks.
In 2008, this resulted in the most sweeping and systemic financial crisis since the Great Depression, prompting Fed Chairman Bernanke, New York Fed President Tim Geithner and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (the former CEO of Goldman Sachs) to orchestrate the largest bank bailout in human history.
Since that time, the Federal Reserve has carried out its most accommodative monetary policy ever, keeping interest rates at or near zero percent for six years. It supplemented this boondoggle for the financial elite with its multi-trillion-dollar “quantitative easing” money-printing program.
The effect can be seen in the ever more staggering wealth of the financial oligarchy, which has consistently enjoyed investment returns of between 10 and 20 percent every year since the financial crisis, even as the incomes of workers have stagnated or fallen.
American capitalist society is hooked on the toxic growth of social inequality created by the stock market bubble. This, in turn, fosters the political framework not just for the decadent lifestyles of the financial oligarchs, each of whom owns, on average, a half-dozen mansions around the world, a private jet and a super-yacht, but also for the broader periphery of the affluent upper-middle class, which provides the oligarchs with political legitimacy and support. These elite social layers determine American political life, from which the broad mass of working people is effectively excluded.
The Federal Reserve is a key mechanism for perpetuating this whole filthy system, in which “Wall Street rules.” But its services in behalf of the rich and the super-rich only compound the fundamental and insoluble contradictions of capitalism, plunging the system into ever deeper debt and ensuring that the next crisis will be that much more violent and explosive.
In this intensifying crisis, the working class must assert its independent interests with the same determination and ruthlessness as evinced by the ruling class. It must answer the bourgeoisie’s social counterrevolution with the program of socialist revolution.

 

 

 

the depression is already here for most of us below the super-rich!


Trump and the GOP created a fake economic boom on our collective credit card: The equivalent of maxing out your credit cards and saying look how good I'm doing right now.

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Trump criticized Dimon in 2013 for supposedly contributing to the country’s economic downturn. “I’m not Jamie Dimon, who pays $13 billion to settle a case and then pays $11 billion to settle a case and who I think is the worst banker in the United States,” he told reporters.
*
"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor."  
*

"Overall, the reaction to the decision points to the underlying fragility of financial markets, which have become a house of cards as a result of the massive inflows of money from the Fed and other central banks, and are now extremely susceptible to even a small tightening in financial conditions."

*
"It is significant that what the Financial Times described as a “tsunami of money”—estimated to reach $1 trillion for the year—has failed to prevent what could be the worst year for stock markets since the global financial crisis."
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"A decade ago, as the financial crisis raged, America’s banks were in ruins. Lehman Brothers, the storied 158-year-old investment house, collapsed into bankruptcy in mid-September 2008. Six months earlier, Bear Stearns, its competitor, had required a government-engineered rescue to avert the same outcome. By October, two of the nation’s largest commercial banks, Citigroup and Bank of America, needed their own government-tailored bailouts to escape failure. Smaller but still-sizable banks, such as Washington Mutual and IndyMac, died."
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The GOP said the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" would reduce deficits and supercharge the economy (and stocks and wages). The White House says things are working as planned, but one year on--the numbers mostly suggest otherwise. 



Obama's Wall Street cabinet

6 April 2009
A series of articles published over the weekend, based on financial disclosure reports released by the Obama administration last Friday concerning top White House officials, documents the extent to which the administration, in both its personnel and policies, is a political instrument of Wall Street.
Policies that are extraordinarily favorable to the financial elite that were put in place over the past month by the Obama administration have fed a surge in share values on Wall Street. These include the scheme to use hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds to pay hedge funds to buy up the banks’ toxic assets at inflated prices, the Auto Task Force’s rejection of the recovery plans of Chrysler and General Motors and its demand for even more brutal layoffs, wage cuts and attacks on workers’ health benefits and pensions, and the decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to weaken “mark-to-market” accounting rules and permit banks to inflate the value of their toxic assets.
At the same time, Obama has campaigned against restrictions on bonuses paid to executives at insurance giant American International Group (AIG) and other bailed-out firms, and repeatedly assured Wall Street that he will slash social spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The new financial disclosures reveal that top Obama advisors directly involved in setting these policies have received millions from Wall Street firms, including those that have received huge taxpayer bailouts.
The case of Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council and Obama’s top economic adviser, highlights the politically incestuous character of relations between the Obama administration and the American financial elite.
Last year, Summers pocketed $5 million as a managing director of D.E. Shaw, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, and another $2.7 million for speeches delivered to Wall Street firms that have received government bailout money. This includes $45,000 from Citigroup and $67,500 each from JPMorgan Chase and the now-liquidated Lehman Brothers.
For a speech to Goldman Sachs executives, Summers walked away with $135,000. This is substantially more than double the earnings for an entire year of high-seniority auto workers, who have been pilloried by the Obama administration and the media for their supposedly exorbitant and “unsustainable” wages.
Alluding diplomatically to the flagrant conflict of interest revealed by these disclosures, the New York Times noted on Saturday: “Mr. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr. Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from which he recently received payments.”
Summers was a leading advocate of banking deregulation. As treasury secretary in the second Clinton administration, he oversaw the lifting of basic financial regulations dating from the 1930s. The Times article notes that among his current responsibilities is deciding “whether—and how—to tighten regulation of hedge funds.”
Summers is not an exception. He is rather typical of the Wall Street insiders who comprise a cabinet and White House team that is filled with multi-millionaires, presided over by a president who parlayed his own political career into a multi-million-dollar fortune.
Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, worked for Citigroup and received more than $7.4 million from the bank from January of 2008 until he entered the Obama administration this year. This included a $2.25 million year-end bonus handed him this past January, within weeks of his joining the Obama administration.
Citigroup has thus far been the beneficiary of $45 billion in cash and over $300 billion in government guarantees of its bad debts.
David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s top strategist and now senior adviser to the president, was paid $1.55 million last year from two consulting firms he controls. He has agreed to buyouts that will garner him another $3 million over the next five years. His disclosure claims personal assets of between $7 and $10 million.
Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, was paid $3.9 million by a Washington law firm whose major clients include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm Apollo Management.
Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, made $227,155 last year from IndyMac Bancorp, the California bank that heavily promoted subprime mortgages. It collapsed last summer and was placed under federal receivership.
The presence of multi-millionaire Wall Street insiders extends to second- and third-tier positions in the Obama administration as well. David Stevens, who has been tapped by Obama to head the Federal Housing Administration, is the president and chief operating officer of Long and Foster Cos., a real estate brokerage firm. From 1999 to 2005, Stevens served as a top executive for Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage lending giant that was bailed out and seized by federal regulators in September.
Neal Wolin, Obama’s selection for deputy counsel to the president for economic policy, is a top executive at the insurance giant Hartford Financial Services, where his salary was $4.5 million.
Obama’s Auto Task Force has as its top advisers two investment bankers with a long resume in corporate downsizing and asset-stripping.
It is not new for leading figures from finance to be named to high posts in a US administration. However, there has traditionally been an effort to demonstrate a degree of independence from Wall Street in the selection of cabinet officials and high-ranking presidential aides, often through the appointment of figures from academia or the public sector. In previous decades, moreover, representatives of the corporate elite were more likely to come from industry than from finance.
In the Obama administration such considerations have largely been abandoned.
This will not come as a surprise to those who critically followed Obama’s election campaign. While he postured before the electorate as a critic of the war in Iraq and a quasi-populist force for “change,” he was from the first heavily dependent on the financial and political backing of powerful financiers in Chicago. Banks, hedge funds and other financial firms lavishly backed his presidential bid, giving him considerably more than they gave to his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.
Friday’s financial disclosures further expose the bankruptcy of American democracy. Elections have no real effect on government policy, which is determined by the interests of the financial aristocracy that dominates both political parties. The working class can fight for its own interests—for jobs, decent living standards, health care, education, housing and an end to war.


“Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”

OBAMA and HIS BANKS: THEIR PROFITS, CRIMES and LOOTING SOAR


CRONY KING OBAMA: CURL: The Obamas live the 1% life

OBAMAnomics:
FROM THE MAN THAT HATED AMERICAN BUT LOVED AMERICAN BANKSTERS:



OBAMA, THE BANKSTER OWNED LA RAZA DEM

THE GLOBALIST LEGACY OF A SOCIOPATH
Obama warns against “cynicism” at Ohio State commencement address
7 May 2013
At a commencement address on Sunday at Ohio State University, President Barack Obama counseled students not to be “cynical” about government and politics.
There was an almost comically absurd element to Obama’s remarks, delivered with his characteristic demagogy and attempted gestures at profundity. In his first four years in office, along with the first months of his second term, Obama proceeded to systematically repudiate every campaign pledge and to deflate every illusion that, with the assistance of a highly coordinated marketing campaign, led millions of people, including a large number of young people, to vote for him in 2008.
The Obama administration handed trillions of dollars to the banks; has overseen a massive attack on public education; is leading the campaign to slash Social Security and Medicare, the core federal retirement and health care programs; expanded the war in Afghanistan, led a war against Libya, and is preparing a new war in Syria; and has asserted the right to kill anyone, anywhere, including US citizens, without due process.
After this record of service to the corporate elite, he declares: “When we turn away and get discouraged and cynical… we grant our silent consent to someone who will gladly claim it. That’s how we end up with lobbyists who set the agenda; and policies detached from what middle class families face every day; the well-connected who publicly demand that Washington stay out of their business—and then whisper in government’s ear for special treatment that you don’t get.”
The references to the “whispers” of the wealthy and well-connected is particularly rich, coming only a week after Obama nominated Penny Pritzker for commerce secretary. The selection of Pritzker—a longtime Obama confidant, billionaire heiress and owner of a private equity company—only underscores the fact that the administration is a government of, by and for the financial aristocracy. She will be the wealthiest person ever to serve in a presidential cabinet.
Previous to his appointment of Pritzker, Obama appointed Mary Jo White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), one of the main financial regulators. White made millions of dollars as an attorney for banks responsible for the financial crisis, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO, Jamie Dimon, called White the “perfect choice” to head the SEC.
Practically every cabinet appointee of Obama’s has close personal connections to the ruling class, many having come directly from corporate boardrooms. Under Obama’s watch not a single executive at a major financial firm has been criminally tried, much less sent to jail, for their role in the financial crisis.
As a whole, Obama’s speech was characterized by a complete separation from the actual conditions facing the graduates he spoke to, who confront joblessness, falling wages, and a lifetime in debt. “You have every reason to believe that your future is bright,” he told his audience. “You’re graduating into an economy and a job market that is steadily healing.”
He added later, “The trajectory of this great nation should give you hope.” Really? This is under conditions in which over 11 percent of college graduates are unemployed a year after getting out of school, and another 16.1 percent simply drop out of the labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most of those who do find a job are paid barely enough to get by, let alone pay off student loans. Wages for young adults are falling faster than any other part of the population, and are down by 6 percent in the past four years.
Most of the students that Obama addressed Sunday will be so burdened with debt that they will delay or have to completely put off starting a family or buying a home.
It is not surprising that Obama should neglect to dwell on this disastrous situation, because his administration bears responsibility for it. In the government-sponsored restructuring of the auto industry, the White House insisted that the wages of new-hires be slashed in half, setting the stage for vast reduction of wages throughout the economy.
Obama sought to paint opposition to the government’s violation of democratic rights as right-wing hysterics. “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity,” Obama said. “They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”
This comes from a president who has personally overseen the illegal assassination of thousands of people, including at least three American citizens, in weekly “Terror Tuesday” meetings. The assertions of executive power have been systematically expanded, going beyond those claimed even by the Bush administration. The specter of a police state—the response of the ruling class to growing social opposition—is in fact lurking around the corner.
The moribund state of American politics, of which the Obama administration is a principal expression, is, according to the president, the fault of the American people. “Democracy doesn’t function without your active participation,” he admonished. If politicians “don’t represent you the way you want… you’ve got to let them know that’s not okay. And if they let you down, there’s a built-in day in November where you can really let them know that’s not okay.”
Such limp efforts to encourage illusions in the viability of the “democratic process” in the United States will not go very far. The experience of the past four years has not passed in vain. Millions of people, including many of those in the audience at Ohio State, are drawing the quite justified, if “cynical,” conclusion that the entire political and economic system is rotten to the core.
Mounting evidence of international collusion in Libor rigging - THE RAPE OF THE ECONOMY BY THE BANKSTERS

Mounting evidence of international collusion in Libor rigging

OBAMA'S AND HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS AT WORK:


JPMorgan’s investment arm, which includes its energy group, collects $14 billion annually; in comparison, six months’ worth of fines would amount to a paltry $180 million.

THERE IS A REASON WHY THE BANKSTERS INVESTED HEAVILY IN OBAMA’S CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION!

Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).

Obama: JPMorgan Is 'One of the Best-Managed Banks'

By Mary Bruce | ABC OTUS News – 2 hrs 31 mins ago

Obama: JPMorgan Is 'One of the …

Lou Rocco / ABC News

Just hours after a top JPMorgan Chase executive retired in the wake of a stunning $2 billion trading loss, President Obamatold the hosts of ABC's "The View" that the bank's risky bets exemplified the need for Wall Street reform.

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JPMorgan Chase investigated for manipulating California energy market

By Oliver Richards
23 July 2012

The California Independent Systems Operator (CalISO), the nonprofit organization that coordinates the state’s electricity market, has alleged that JPMorgan Chase& Co. manipulated the state’s energy market, resulting in at least $73 million in improper payments—costs passed along to the state’s energy consumers.

OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS:
STILL SUCKING THE BLOOD OUT OF AMERICA
This manufactured crisis has, in turn, been exploited by the Obama administration and both big business parties to hand over trillions in pension funds and other public assets to the financial kleptocracy that rules America.
 “Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan  THEAMERICAN THINKER.com

“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”



OBAMANOMICS TO SERVE BANKSTERS 

AND GLOBAL BILLIONAIRES



"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor."  
BILLIONAIRES, BANKSTERS AND THE RICH PARTNER WITH TRUMP TO FIGHT … economic equality.


"JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who was known as Barack Obama’s favorite banker and who has been a major donor to
the Democratic Party, centered his annual letter to shareholders on a denunciation of socialism."

BANKSTER SOCIALISM

Dimon’s bank received tens of billions of dollars in government bailouts and many billions more from the Obama administration’s ultra-low interest rate and “quantitative easing” money-printing policies.  He told his shareholders that “socialism inevitably produces stagnation, corruption” and “authoritarian government,” and would be “a disaster for our country.”… UNLESS IT IS SOCIALISM FOR BANKSTERS AND WALL STREET!


"This paved the way for the elevation of Trump, the personification of the criminality and backwardness of the ruling oligarchy."

"The very fact that the US government officially acknowledges a growth of popular support for socialism, particularly among the nation’s youth, testifies to vast changes taking place in the political consciousness of the working class and the terror this is striking within the ruling elite. America is, after all, a country where anti-communism was for the greater part of a century a state-sponsored secular religion. No ruling class has so ruthlessly sought to exclude socialist politics from political discourse as the American ruling class."
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Socialism haunts the American ruling class In the two months since Donald Trump vowed in his State of the Union Address that “America will never be a socialist country,” the right-wing demagogue president and the Republican Party have embraced anti-socialism as the defining theme of their campaign in the 2020 elections.