Now that the Democratic Party has all but consolidated behind decrepit Joe Biden to keep unelectable socialist Bernie Sanders off the top of its ticket, it's worth a snicker to consider President Obama, behind the scenes, suddenly realizing he's going to have to endorse idiot Joe Biden for president, a man he considers unfit for the office.
Obama had withheld his endorsement for his faithful former vice president, which was pretty humiliating for Joe, a man Joe had touted as his "best friend" to the NAACP. Biden claimed he asked for no endorsement, which no one believed. Obama claimed he was waiting till after primaries. The real reason leaked out, though: that Obama doesn't think Biden is up to the job.
"You don't have to do this, Joe, you really don't," the former president told Biden before the front-runner entered the race, insiders told the New York Times.
Biden has repeatedly cited his relationship with his old boss as he touts his credentials on the campaign trail — but Obama has asked Biden staffers to make sure the gaffe-prone veep does not "damage his legacy" or "embarrass himself" during his run.
The former president has told insiders of his worries that Biden's top aides are "too old and out of touch with the current political climate."
Worse still, Obama said this to Democratic leaders last November and word got out: "You know who really doesn't have it? Joe Biden."
Now it's endorsement time, tiger, so buckle up.
Obama is still squirming, delivering a congratulations but no endorsement. The last reported news of his doings comes from Pete Buttigieg, who says Obama called him up during the dropout consolidation and told him to "use the leverage you amassed."
Two things might be going on here.
One, Obama hasn't endorsed Biden because he still thinks Joe isn't up to the job and wants to keep his hands off the whole matter until he has to. Maybe he's waiting for the convention in order to make a grand appearance for the endorsement — knowing Obama's ego, that's pretty likely.
The importance of an endorsement for Biden is reinforced by the fact that Rep. James Clyburn's endorsement handed the South Carolina primary to Joe in a dramatic turnaround for the otherwise washed up gaffemaster, paving the way to his Super Tuesday wins. If Clyburn's endorsement could do that for Joe, think what an Obama endorsement could do for Joe. But he won't give it.
Two, despite his contempt for incompetent Joe, Obama might just be behind the consolidation behind the scenes, given his pen-and-phone stuff with the assorted Democratic candidates such as Buttigieg, someone he had a soft spot for early on (along with Beto O'Rourke). Despite his distaste for Joe, Obama realizes that Joe might just be the best hope for preserving his legacy, something that's always foremost in his mind. He hates Sanders and knows that Sanders would blow up his legacy far more decisively than Trump, turning America into the shambles of Venezuela, a vast 5,000-mile blue city full of corruption, unemployment, homeless blight, opioid addiction, rigged elections, illegals, high rents, high costs, collapsing markets, shriveling 401(k)s, greenie oppression, men-only sports prizes, state bankruptcy, zero oil, and crime.
Biden, though, is malleable, easily manipulated, desperate for love, a political hack of no principles — and easy to lead by the nose. Just as Obama told Pete, to exert "leverage" on Biden, Obama knows he can get anything he wants from Biden for that slavered-after Obama endorsement. This makes Biden the perfect puppet. It's said that someone's pulling Biden's puppet strings. Obama's as good a guess as any for who the puppetmaster is.
A third theory is that Obama and his minions never wanted to leave power; they felt entitled to it, the minions, at least, and Biden might just be the best actual front man for making Obama the power behind the throne. It's doubtful that Obama, occupied as he is with golf and billionaire-paid vacays, and as lazy as he is, really wants to do the governing. But his minions certainly don't like being on the outs. This picture, remember, told us everything. These Obama minions are so desperate to cling to power they launched a coup attempt against President Trump through the use of Obama holdovers and the Deep State. Some, such as the political appointees at Voice of America, one such agency, still refuse to leave office. Others have found their way into the FISA courts, the leaky press, and the offices of Adam Schiff. It may well be that professional power behind the throne Valerie Jarrett is plotting her comeback.
But it all comes down to the significant hurdle of having to endorse Joe Biden, something that must make Obama gag. Instead of get it over with, he's exerting leverage for sure. But if and when he does, we all know it will be a joke: word's already out about what Obama really thinks of Biden in private.
Ain’t
this sweet?
Michelle
Obama: ‘Many’ Around the World Feel Barack Is ‘Their President’
Scott Olson/Getty Images
27
Former first lady Michelle Obama said Tuesday
that her husband, former President Barack Obama, could have built his
presidential library anywhere in the world because many feel he is “their
president.”
Obama, speaking at the Obama
Foundation Summit at the Illinois Institute of Technology, explained
Chicago’s Jackson Park was selected as the site for the Obama Presidential
Center because it was close to the couple’s former home and situated near her
South Side childhood home.
“There’s power in the selection of
Jackson Park,” the former first lady said. “Barack and I don’t do things
incidentally. There’s a strategy.”
Obama then argued the library could
have even been built outside of the United States.
“Barack’s presidential library could
have been anywhere in the world, because there are so many people who feel like
he is their president,” she stated.
“New York wanted it. Hawaii wants
it. Because it’s also an economic engine,” she added.
Michelle Obama appeared at the
fireside chat with her brother, Craig Robinson, and interviewed by The Warmth of Other Suns author
Isabel Wilkerson.
In June, a federal judge ruled plans
to build the $500 million presidential center on Chicago’s lakefront could move
forward, dismissing advocacy group Protect Our Parks’s lawsuit objecting
to the use of public park land.
The
bottom line 3 is this: If Operation Crossfire
Hurricane wasn’t a plot to restore Barack Obama to the Presidency, why
wasn’t the op shutdown after the election was over? It wasn’t.
Instead it ramped up with the appointment of a special prosecutor whose
only raison d’etre is to cover up the original crimes during the primary
season and in the run up to the election.
“Obama
would declare himself president for life with Soros really running the show, as
he did for the entire Obama presidency.”
What
no one will say, but I will, is that the ObamaGate /MuellerGate /SpyGate
scandal is an ongoing plot to restore Barack Obama to the Presidency.
Before heads explode let me explain.
"That
phase of the takeover was started in 2008 by President Barack
Obama. Throughout his eight years in office, Obama practiced
divisiveness and hammered away at the Second Amendment while pouring gallons of
fuel on the fire of the "Black Lives Matter" lie. His
administration was rampant with corruption, pushing the envelope with every new
scandal." RICK HAYES
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.”
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure
was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL
GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
THE (REALITY) OF THE
DEMOCRAT PARTY:
Anti-Semitic, open
borders for cheaper labor and funded by criminal banksters… and these pols are
making vast fortunes sucking the blood of America!
We must not let them
cheat their way to power over the rest of us. Their ongoing vote
fraud must be stopped and the Democrats need to take a look at themselves and
at what they have become. It's not a pretty picture. What they have
become threatens to destroy the greatest nation on the planet and they are
doing it on purpose. They have nothing but contempt for the US as
founded and for those of us who love this country. PATRICIA McCARTHY – AMERICAN
THINKER
“Then we suffered the rattling election of Barack
Obama, whose active membership in a white-, Jewish-, and America-hating church
was well known to the electorate. His close personal
relationship with the likes of his adored Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Louis
Farrakhan was no secret. Obama was open about his goals. He
told us he was out to "fundamentally transform America" and the
world.” ALAN BERGSTEIN
Obama ‘Very Confident’ He Would’ve Won
Third Term
1:34
Former President Barack Obama said on Tuesday
that he was “very confident” he would have won a third term had the
Constitution and his wife allowed him to run again.
Speaking to his former
top adviser David Axelrod at a live recording of the “The Axe Files” podcast at
the University of Chicago, Obama said he
believes voters felt that he had “taken the job seriously, worked hard, been
true to my oath, observed and hopefully strengthened the norms and the rules
and the values of our democracy.”
“I feel very confident
that I was in a position—had it not been for both the Constitution and
Michelle—to continue in office,” Obama said.
Axelrod had earlier
said that some people would like Obama to serve in perpetuity and joked about
some of Obama’s supporters even wanting him to run for vice president.
The former president,
though, added that he is “not sure it is a healthy thing” to serve more than
two terms, pointing out that in countries without term limits, “even very good
people… lose their edge and get stale and comfortable in the position.”
Obama said it is
“useful to have a democracy have to continually evolve.”
Had Obama been allowed
to run for a third term, he would have faced off against Donald Trump in 2016.
But when Axelrod asked whether Obama believed he could defeat President Trump
in 2020 in a hypothetical one-on-one matchup, Obama did not take the bait.
“I will not answer that
direct question for obvious reasons,” Obama said.
Impeachment
is Built on a Trap That Obama Created for Romney
A weapon against a Romney
administration gets used against Trump.
October 7, 2019
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a
Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative
journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
The Whistleblower
Protection Act was put into place for the stated purpose of fighting waste and
mismanagement in the civil service. It’s a controversial piece of legislation,
but its purpose is clear.
As a Senate report on the
1978 Civil Service Reform Act put it, “What is needed is a means to protect the
Pentagon employee who discloses billions of dollars in cost overruns, the GSA
employee who discloses widespread fraud, and the nuclear engineer who questions
the safety of certain nuclear plants. These conscientious civil servants
deserve statutory protection rather than bureaucratic harassment and
intimidation.” This does not cover a partisan effort to undermine the President
of the United States.
It does not mean a
government employee taking issue with a president’s foreign policy.
A whistleblower exposes
structural waste, mismanagement and abuse within the civil service, among
government contractors and in varied ways within the private sector. This is
meant to protect employees who blow the whistle on misbehavior, not to serve as
cover for assorted political agendas.
In the Trump era,
whistleblowing and partisan leaks to the media have been conflated by the
media. Partisan government workers, some openly aligning with the “resistance”
and participating in partisan groups within government agencies, have sought to
undermine administration policies through leaks. These leaks were in turn meant
to generate congressional investigations of cabinet officials.
The impeachment effort
against President Trump takes that ongoing tactic to the ultimate extreme.
The politicization of the
civil service is a deeply troubling phenomenon. Efforts by members of the civil
service to undermine elected officials is a threat to our entire system of
representative government.
This problem goes beyond
the ‘Deep State’ and has shown up in a wide variety of government agencies. But
its appearance in national security agencies is deeply troubling because these
agencies have the infrastructure to act as a police state. The existence of
national security agencies in a free country is contingent on their
subservience to elected officials. Anything else isn’t whistleblowing, it’s a
coup.
Obama’s Presidential
Policy Directive 19 opened the door by expanding whistleblowing protection to
members of the “intelligence community” and other personnel handling classified
information.
A few years earlier,
Bradley Manning had ushered in a new era of espionage by enemy state actors
using front groups to solicit spies as whistleblowers. While the court threw
the book at Manning, Obama commuted his sentence. PPD19 was supposed to avoid
another Manning case, which it utterly failed to do when Edward Snowden
repeated Manning’s treason on a larger scale before escaping to Russia.
But PPD19 was never
really meant to help the likes of Manning and Snowden. Instead it was part of a
larger pattern of politicizing national security organizations that led
directly to the current crisis.
While the Russians were
soliciting whistleblowers from inside the national security sphere to act as
spies, which was exactly what they had been doing throughout the Cold War,
Obama’s people were building partisan networks within the national security
infrastructure to act as their political agents.
Both the Russians and the
Democrats understood that whistleblowers were a strategic vulnerability.
Whistleblowers were seen as sympathetic underdogs who were trying to do the
right thing. That was the perfect camouflage for an enemy agent or the agent of
a police state. Astroturfing, the practice of manufacturing grass roots efforts
and building causes around individual protesters, like Greta Thunberg or David
Hogg, had moved into the national security infrastructure before going off like
a bomb.
PPD19 was issued on
October 10, 2012.
The presidential debates
were underway and the election was up in the air. In the weeks before PPD19,
Mitt Romney had begun to lead in a number of polls. It is striking that PPD19
came out during the exact same period that Romney was leading in as many polls
as he ever would in that election.
On October 9, the day
before PPD19, even a DailyKos/SEIU poll showed Romney in the lead. After
Obama’s disastrous debate performance, his people had to be worried about the
possibility of defeat.
The real purpose of PPD19
was to aid Obama loyalists is undermining a Romney administration.
The Obama administration
would not have been too worried about Romney reversing its social policies. But
Romney had run sharply against Obama on national security. And Obama’s cronies
knew that there would be significant foreign policy differences there. PPD19
may have been their answer.
Romney lost. PPD19
remained obscure.
By the time Trump won,
the weaponization of the national security infrastructure in national politics
was complete with national security organs spying on Trump associates,
investigating his campaign, entrapping his associates, leaking his phone calls,
and now setting the stage for impeachment.
The Russia conspiracy
theory was not a counterintelligence investigation. And Ukraine impeachment
isn’t whistleblowing. Investigating the domestic political opposition is only a
counterintelligence investigation in China, Russia or Cuba. Launching such an
effort is the hallmark of a police state.
And whistleblowers don’t
have partisan political agendas aimed at elected officials.
Until now, the two worst
cases of activists and spies pretending to be whistleblowers were Daniel
Ellsberg and Edward Snowden. The Ukraine case has some similarities to the
Pentagon Papers case, but there isn’t even the pretense that this fake
whistleblowing is about anything other than going directly for the President of
the United States, not indirectly through his policies, but directly aimed at
him.
Whistleblowers aren’t
supposed to have any agenda except the law and organizational standards.
And whistleblowing
protections are absolutely not meant to serve as cover for partisan fights or
assaults on elected officials. Whistleblowing protections are meant to protect
government employees in the civil service from retaliation by their supervisors
in the civil service when they report waste or abuse.
They are not meant to
allow an anonymous government employee to assist in a partisan campaign to
remove the President of the United States as part of a ploy orchestrated by the
opposition party.
That is a breathtaking
abuse that will damage whistleblower protections indefinitely.
Whistleblower protections
have traditionally been a bipartisan project. But courts have repeatedly
limited the scope of how and what a whistleblower can disclose. It appears that
they were wise to do so.
The eavesdropping and
entrapment of Trump allies in the last election was the ultimate nightmarish
abuse of national security. The same folks who brought you that violation have
now contrived to produce the worst possible abuse of whistleblower protections.
The abuse of the NSA has dealt a fatal blow to Republican support for national
security measures used to fight enemy nations and terrorists. The abuse of
whistleblowing will lead to an identical loss of support for whistleblower
protections.
The Obama administration
and its allies have tried to turn government agencies into bear traps, seeking
to retain control of policymaking through a network of lefty loyalists in
agencies and activist judges in the courts, and, beyond that, to force out
Trump appointees and to even force out President Trump.
At the heart of this
crisis is the conflict between representative government and the infrastructure
of government, between the will of the voters and the will of D.C., between the
taxpayers and officials, that is the breaking point of any free country. Some
countries lose their freedom through violent revolutions. Others ossify into an
oligarchy of government officials and elites who call all the shots.
This is not about the
Ukraine. Just as it wasn’t about Russia. It’s about whether our governments are
elected or selected.
Elected government
requires that government officials be neutral and non-partisan. When partisan
factions use the machinery of government to wage war on their opponents, that’s
a coup.
A day after President
Trump survived one coup, the deep state debuted a second coup.
Obama is not stupid. He
knows this. It's his road map.
“The Democrats would be
clamoring for a suspension of the 22nd Amendment and calling for Barack Obama,
to "restore calm and order", to step back into his role for the
"good of the country". They will still call for Obama if the
Democrats manage to Impeach and convict Trump.”
“Obama would declare
himself president for life with Soros really running the show, as he did for
the entire Obama presidency.”
“The bottom line 2 is
this: Barack Obama is a Communist. This was all an Obama operation. Why is
anyone surprised that a communist (Obama) tried to subvert an election. That is
what Communists do. It is Barack Obama and his people like Brennan and Clapper
behaving to type. That's what Maduro does in Venezuela. That's what the Castro
brothers did. That's what every communist and socialist nation does. THEY FIX ELECTIONS!”
Right back to the White
House. That was the plan all along
What no one will say, but
I will, is that the ObamaGate/MuellerGate/SpyGate scandal is an ongoing plot to
restore Barack Obama to the Presidency. Before heads explode let me explain.
To believe any part of my
theory you have to get to certain assumptions.
1) Obama never intended to leave office. Indeed he has a house a few blocks
from the White House.
2) Hillary and Obama despise each other and, had Hillary been elected, he would
have undermined her as he is trying to undermine Trump.
3) To make way for the Obama restoration
The Constitution would have been shredded
for the good of the country, and it would have
been seen to have been done legally.
As Mark Levin says, we
are in the middle of a slow motion soft coup Joseph diGenova, former
federal
prosecutor and Trump loyalist, says the truth is starting
to seep out about the Obama Administration’s “brazen
plot to exonerate Hillary Clinton” and “frame an
incoming president with a false Russian conspiracy,”
according to an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller
Dan Bongino, on Tucker
Carlson's show, has called the operation a sting.
EARLY STAGES of the COUP
Mar 26, 2012 - SEOUL
President Barack Obama was caught on camera on assuring outgoing Russian
President and Putin Poodle Dmitry Medvedev that he will have "more
flexibility" to deal with contentious issues like missile
Dan Bongino, on Tucker
Carlson's show, has called the operation a sting.
EARLY STAGES of the COUP
Mar 26, 2012 - SEOUL
President Barack Obama was caught on camera on assuring outgoing Russian
President and Putin Poodle Dmitry Medvedev that he will have "more
flexibility" to deal with contentious issues like missile defense after
the U.S. presidential election. I just happen to have it on film:
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Sept 11, 2012 --
Benghazi: In the run up to Obama’s re-election Obama was running around
claiming he had decimated Al Qaeda. One can only imagine the panic in the WH
when the Al Qaeda attack occurred on our annex. So Hillary and Obama concocted
the Muslim film cover up, jailed the filmmaker, and sent Susan Rice out to lie
on all of the Sunday chat shows that the attack was all about the film.
Oct 22, 2012 -- During
one of the Romney/Obama debates one of the moderators asked Romney who our
greatest threat was. He said the Russians, Obama smugly “The 1980s are now
calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over
for 20 years.”.
The annexation of Crimea
by Putin’s Russia Federation occurred in March 2014. On 17 July 2014 Malaysia
Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17), a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to
Kuala Lumpur that, was shot down while flying over eastern Ukraine, killing all
283 passengers and 15 crew on board.
The DNC SERVER HACK
The first indications of
the Russian Hacking occurred in late 2015 and early 2016. Considering
Wikileaks published the hack in July 2016 confirms the hack occurred at least 6
months before, long before Trump's campaign was really up and running.
Afterwards the DNC didn't
let the FBI anywhere near the server. They let Crowdstrike go through it. And
curiously, Obama and Comey's FBI seemed just fine being shut out of the loop
and they couldn’t have anything about the hack leaking out. And when you are
formulating a plan to get Hillary “elected” via exoneration, as Comey and
Strzok were doing, you don’t want the pot stirred.
I wonder what Debbie
Blabbermouth Schultz and Donna Brazile were trying to hide. Probably their own
incompetence and the fact that Hillary and the DNC was playing Bernie Sanders
by rigging the primaries.
And the Awan brothers, two Pakistanis that had been hired by Schultz, had
access to everybody in Congress's emails because they were the IT guys...which
means they also had access to the DNC server.
Then Obama began the
essence of the coup. He said that our elections couldn't be hacked and that
Trump should quit whining
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Then Obama got serious
and really got tough. He told Putin to "Cut it out!"
The Russian hack damage
was done on Obama's watch. Susan Rice (of the 5 Sunday Show Benghazi lies)
ordered Michael Daniel, chief of cyber security investigating the hack, to
stand down per Obama, according to a new book by Michael Isikoff and David
Korn, “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the
Election of Donald Trump.”
Hillary kept a secret
server overflowing with national security info which, more than likely, was
hacked. June 28, 2016, on a Phoenix tarmac, Bill Clinton met with Attorney
General Loretta Lynch to seal a deal insuring Hillary would not be prosecuted. On July 5, 2016
James Comey exonerated Hillary when he said he would not prosecute, after
Barack Obama said there is no evidence that Hillary did anything wrong. Lynch
also instructed Comey to call the Hillary scandal a “matter”.
Disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok and Comey made sure the earlier
draft language describing Hillary's actions as "grossly
negligent" was changed to "extremely careless." That small
change in wording has significant legal implications. "Gross
negligence" in handling classified information carries criminal penalties.
The Hillary campaign also
paid Fusion GPS to gather dirt on Trump which became the dossier, compiled by
Brit agent Christopher Steele, relying on Russian sources. Steele and Fusion
GPS gave the Dossier to the FBI and DOJ with the help of FBI employee Bruce
Ohr's wife Nellie, who worked at Fusion GPS.
We also now that, per
Strzok's recent testimony on July 12, 2018, that fourth highest ranking Justice
Department official Bruce Ohr gave parts of the Russia dossier to the FBI and
DOJ.
FBI guys James Comey and
Andrew McCabe didn't bother to tell the FISA Judges under what circumstances
the dossier was obtained and that it was unverified. In other words they lied
to the FISA judge at least three times to get the warrants renewed, because the
people who worked for them didn't want to see Trump elected.
Thus, the Department of
Justice used the unverified dossier to obtain a Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act warrant against Carter Page, an alleged “foreign policy
adviser” to Donald Trump and the last frayed thread of the Russian collusion
story. The FISA court was not told who had paid Steele to create the “salacious
and unverified” dossier — in the words of the showboating former FBI Director James
Comey — much less about Steele’s personal hatred of Trump. And McCabe has
testified that the Dossier was the basis of getting the FISA warrants. Two
days later McCabe was fired.
And this now leads back
to the Oval office. Texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page reveal Obama
wanted to be briefed on EVERYTHING happening in the "Russia"
investigation – after he 'guaranteed' he wouldn't get involved. Lisa Page wrote
her lover Peter Strzok about the Clinton probe: Obama 'wants to know everything
we're doing'.
Obama had said he could
'guarantee' he wouldn't interfere and there would be 'no political influence'
in the FBI investigation. This was after he ordered Rice to tell Michael Daniel
chief of cyber security to stand down on the DNC server.
The September 2, 2016
text message was among more than 50,000 texts the pair sent during a two-year
extramarital affair. Page was an FBI lawyer, and Strzok was a leading
investigator on both the Clinton probe and the more recent Trump-Russia
investigation. Strzok, though expected to be nonpartisan, also called Trump 'a
******g idiot' and texted Page about a cryptic 'insurance policy' against a
Trump presidency.
In the spring of 2017,
after James Comey was fired, deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein was
planning on wearing a wire to secretly record Trump to gather damaging
information in an effort to have him removed by recruiting cabinet members to
invoke the 25th amendment. Rosenstein, ironically, played a key role in the
president’s dismissal of Mr. Comey by writing a memo critical of his handling
of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. It sounds like Rosenstein was
trying to set up Trump from the day he was hired by the President. Rosenstein
made the remarks in meetings with Department of Justice and FBI officials
shortly after the May 9, 2017 firing of James Comey as FBI director.
And now, as Russia
Collusion falls apart, Herr Reichsmarshall Mueller and his Kapo Rod Rosenstien
engaged in a Gestapo like raid of Trump's lawyer to secure Trump's private
papers.
THE HELSINKI SETUP
Folks, the coup attempt
is ongoing.
Prior to Trump's Euro
trip a dozen Russian GRU military intelligence officers were indicted by the
Mueller investigation on charges they hacked Democrats’ computers, stole their
data and published those files to disrupt the 2016 election. Promptly following
Asst AG Rosenstein announced no votes were changed and no Americans were
involved. You could hear the air go out of Democrat balloons especially when
Rosenstein announced that Mueller was sending this case to the
counterintelligence investigative department in the DOJ. No trial, no evidence,
No nothing.
Rosenstein: "There’s
no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.
There’s no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected
any election result." https://www.vox.com/2018/7/...
Obama and Brennan were
weaponizing the CIA for years. Basically Trump called Brennan and his corrupt
agency out. No wonder Brennan is pissed.
A lot of Obama's people
are still at CIA, FBI, NSA, DOJ. Of course Trump doesn't believe any of the
intel he gets from these still compromised agencies
The presser was a setup
and Trump didn't take the bait. If Trump had acknowledged Russian meddling the
press would have turned into Trump collusion and that would have been the
narrative instead of all the over the top faux outrage..
THE OBAMA RESTORATION
We are in the middle of
what Mark Levin calls a soft coup, involving Obama, Clapper, Brennan, Comey,
Rhodes, Rice, Lynch, Power, McCabe, Mueller and rogue FBI/DOJ officials.
The “resistance” to duly elected president Donald Trump, writes Michael Walsh,
“was an intelligence operation from the start, engineered by Barack Obama, the
FBI/DOJ nexus, James Clapper, John Brennan, Loretta Lynch, leading Democrats,
rogue Republicans, and using a deeply partisan and thus compromised media as
its vengeful Greek chorus.”
"Operation Crossfire
Hurricane" was that small cabal of five rogue senior FBI and DOJ
officials, and Obama officials who started this coup 100 days before the
election was even decided. They set about to exonerate Hillary, illegally, and
frame Donald Trump and the people in his campaign should he have won. The FBI
went so far as to plant a mole inside the campaign to start asking questions on
foreign policy, to later entrap Trump people. https://legalinsurrection.c.... Former Director of
National Intelligence and serial lier James Clapper told CNN's Don Lemon that
the president's claim that the Obama administration spied on his campaign is
"hyperbole" but if it is true, it is a "good thing."
In the now released FBI IG report there is detailed
several texts by Strozk and Page saying the following:
Lisa Page text to Peter
Strzok: “(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
Strzok: “No. No he’s not.
We’ll stop it.” Was this Strozk's cryptic insurance policy? What could
that be?
Strozk's and Page's
'insurance policy' might well have been one of two things. If the faux legal mechanisms
(the Mueller investigation and impeachment) failed the 'insurance policy' may
just be an on-call hit squad to take Trump out. Pence would have been denied
his right to take office as he would have been falsely implicated as well.
Hillary was always small
potatoes, a placeholder as it were. Her health was always suspect. And do you
think the plotters would have let a doofus like Tim Kaine take office in the
event that Hillary became disabled?
The Democrats would be
clamoring for a suspension of the 22nd Amendment and calling for Barack Obama,
to "restore calm and order", to step back into his role for the
"good of the country". They will still call for Obama if the
Democrats manage to Impeach and convict Trump
And then the door would
slam shut. The FBI would basically become the State Police, so to speak, the
DOJ a collection of corrupt prosecutors and the intelligence community the new
KGB
Obama would declare
himself president for life with Soros really running the show, as he did for
the entire Obama presidency.
In his heart Obama is a
small time, garden variety leftist Communist. During his eight years Obama just
ran out of time and he was just too incompetent. Fortunately, he was also
constrained (barely) by the Constitution. He didn't have the guts to follow
through. But he has the
totalitarian impulse. After all, he went
around saying he didn't have
Constitutional authority to legalize the
illegals, and then he tried anyway. The
courts stopped him.
The bottom line 1 is
this: The Mueller investigation is simply a coverup for the three original
crimes of this coup 1) the original illegal exoneration of Hillary by Comey to
insure she won. 2) the penetration of the Trump campaign by an FBI mole
during the late summer and early fall 3) the ongoing penetration by that mole
of the Trump transition after the election and finally 4) the Special Council
effort to destroy the Trump presidency in it's infancy.
The bottom line 2 is
this: Barack Obama is a Communist. This was all an Obama operation. Why is
anyone surprised that a communist (Obama) tried to subvert an election. That is
what Communists do. It is Barack Obama and his people like Brennan and Clapper
behaving to type. That's what Maduro does in Venezuela. That's what the Castro
brothers did. That's what every communist and socialist nation does. THEY FIX ELECTIONS!!
The bottom line 3 is
this: If Operation Crossfire Hurricane wasn’t a plot to
restore Barack Obama to the
Presidency, why wasn’t the op shutdown after the election was over?
It wasn’t. Instead it ramped up with the appointment of a special
prosecutor whose only raison d’etre is to cover up the original
crimes during the primary season and in the run up to the election.
Everything about this
coup is rapidly coming to light, except for my theory of the Barack Obama
restoration end game. We shall see. One thing is for certain, had Hillary been
elected nothing about this coup would have come to light.
(Illustration by The Epoch Times)
Spygate: The Inside
Story Behind the Alleged Plot to Take Down Trump
March 28, 2019 Updated: March 29, 2019
Share
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.
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.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
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.
“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.
"That phase of the
takeover was started in 2008 by President Barack Obama. Throughout
his eight years in office, Obama practiced divisiveness and hammered away at
the Second Amendment while pouring gallons of fuel on the fire of the "Black
Lives Matter" lie. His administration was rampant with
corruption, pushing the envelope with every new scandal." RICK HAYES
October 3, 2019
The Political Civil War is real
The American Political
Civil War, which began in November 2016, has so far witnessed leftist Democrats
initiating a series of unsuccessful offensive maneuvers against the president
and his allies. The unrelenting Russian collusion bombardment did
not produce the shock and awe promised by leftist operatives such as Adam
Schiff, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi. And so a new front was
opened up against the president, having the appearance of impeachment
proceedings that dealt with a routine phone call from President Trump to the
Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Sometimes aggression must
be met head on, with resolve to stop it in its tracks. History
reviles Neville Chamberlain not because he was unsuccessful in halting German
expansion, but because he couldn't identify or didn't want to acknowledge the
clear evidence of imminent war.
Chamberlain's
self-deception and fear helped pave the way in allowing an aggressor to gather
strength and strike when he had amassed enough power. In the same
way, it was the self-deception and cowardice of Republican members of Congress
that allowed the Democrat impeachment machine to gain control of the House
during the midterm elections.
But the leftist Democratic
Party has taken a different approach toward total political and social
conquest. Unlike the German war machine that promised peace but
delivered war, leftist Democrats do not promise any
compromises. Instead, they are openly mobilizing for political war
and are prepared to deliver on that threat, no matter the cost to the country.
And to be clear, it will
continue to be an all-out, extremely aggressive assault on the president and
any American who wants nothing more than to live in peace and raise a
family. To pretend that what is happening today is merely dirty
politics as usual would be the equivalent of British citizens identifying
descending V-1 rockets in the battle of Britain as no more than pesky mosquitoes.
It is, thus far, a
bloodless, political civil war to change America forever. And it has
already seen a coup attempt against the president by the Left that desires a
winner-take-all conclusion. And because Leftist Democrats never
conceived that anyone other than a person they selected would become president,
the rules, laws, and language must change and contort to fit their agenda so
they can finally seize power. Once in power, the rules and laws
dictated by the Left will become unrecognizable, and there will be no bridge to
cross to get back to the Constitution.
Politically speaking, these
leftist radicals have proven that they will attack all those who want to remain
living in a Republic. As in every past revolution into socialism,
the socialist victors demand complete obedience from the conquered.
In their own words, leftist
Democrats confirm that they are counting on a misinformed public in order to
gain power. Take, as an example, the statement made by Jonathan
Gruber, the architect of Obamacare, where he brags to a group of people how in
order to pass Obamacare he relied on "the stupidity of the American
voter." Although Gruber doesn't explain how the American voter
becomes so "stupid," the evidence is clear that the corrupt,
indoctrinating media play a crucial role. They dole out
misinformation and deceit, as does the leftist education system.
There are no more
pretenses, as the corrupt major media have all but announced their alliance
with the far left's aggressive goals. An article in the October 2018 edition
of Investor's Business Daily points out this
blatant one-sided absurdity that passes for today's media:
To say that the big
networks haven't exactly had a love affair with Donald Trump, as they did with
President Obama, is an understatement. A new survey shows that not only is
coverage of Trump overwhelmingly negative, but the President's biggest
accomplishment — the roaring economy — gets almost no attention.
The article goes on to say
Trump receives 92% negative coverage and that the Media Research Center watched
network TV for four months and found that the coverage surrounding Trump's
economic boom was only 0.7% of the entire coverage.
It cannot be overstated
that for America to "change," there had to be a push to revoke some
or all of the Bill of Rights. That phase of the takeover was started
in 2008 by President Barack Obama. Throughout his eight years in
office, Obama practiced divisiveness and hammered away at the Second Amendment
while pouring gallons of fuel on the fire of the "Black Lives Matter"
lie. His administration was rampant with corruption, pushing the
envelope with every new scandal. Only because outsider citizen Trump
became President Trump do we now know that there was no chance that justice
would have ever been served for the victims of the scandals of Benghazi, the
IRS, and Fast and Furious while Obama was in office. Just like the
leftist Democrats of today, Obama was protected by America's version of Pravda.
The ongoing coup attempt
against President Trump and his administration will continue. The
American people will get deluged with fake news and lies from hostile media
sources. There still exists a sliver of hope in the name of William
Barr. But even Barr holding a winning hand is not enough to turn the
tide against the waves of corruption slamming into America. It will
also take the selfless efforts of the average American who demands
liberty. It will take the courage and grit of ordinary men and women
to secure a victory — not just for the president, but for America's bright
future and the joy of living in ultimate freedom.
OBAMA'S PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA
TO BUILD HIS DICTATORSHIP REQUIRED
THAT HE AND HOLDER DESTROY OUR
BORDERS AND VOTING ONLY BY
CITIZENS.
Mecha's (M.E.Ch.A.)
own slogan reads, "For the race everything. For those outside the race,
nothing."
LA RAZA: The Mexican
Fascist Party of LA RAZA “THE RACE” and the Reconquista and surrender of
America to NARCOMEX
VIVA LA RAZA SUPREMACY?
The comparison to the
Nazi Party is well deserved. La Raza openly supports pushing all but Latino
Americans out of a portion of the United States (ethnic cleansing), they call
for 'Reconquista' or the re-conquest of the American Southwest by Mexico (the
re-occupation of the Sudetanland), and the establishment of 'Atzlan' which is
the utopian all-Latino version of the American Southwestern states (Adolf
Hitler planned to called his utopia Germania).
"Despite the fact
that the majority of documented hispanics oppose illegal immigration, as do the
majority of Americans, Aztlan and La Raza race hate groups have become the
self-appointed voice for a separatist movement that threatens a violent
overthrow of the Constitutional system and a barbaric program of ethnic
cleansing. This is held up by the media as 'diversity' and to vociferously
oppose it is scorned as racism."
Jose Pescador Osuna,
Mexican Consul General We are practicing "La Reconquista" in
California."
"We’ve got an even
more ominous enemy within our borders that promotes “Reconquista of Aztlan” or the reconquest of
California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas into the country of
Mexico."
"Remember 187 -- the Proposition to deny taxpayer funds for services
to non-citizens --- was the last gasp of white America in California." --- Art Torres, Chairman of the California Democratic Party… NOW THE PARTY for
LA RAZA SUPREMACY… do a search for Barack Obama and LA RAZA.
"The American
Southwest seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without
firing a single shot." --- Excelsior, the national
newspaper of Mexico
“The watchdogs at
Judicial Watch discovered documents that reveal how the Obama administration's
close coordination with the Mexican government entices Mexicans to hop over the
fence and on to the American dole.” Washington Times
“Make
no mistake about it: the Latino community holds this election in your hands.
Some of the closest contests this November will be in states like Florida,
Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico -- states with large Latino populations.” PRESIDENTIAL
CANDIDATE BARACK OBAMA
“I
know how powerful this community is. Just think how powerful you could be on
November 4th if you translate your numbers into votes.”
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BARACK OBAMA
Pollak: Barack Obama Wrote the Playbook on Political Division
JOEL B. POLLAK
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.
Heading for civil war
Donald Trump’s opponents
are completely unhinged. The hate and slander directed towards the president
and his supporters is off the charts. The vitriol comes not just from the
Democrat party, the media, and the world of entertainment, but also from a
sizable proportion of the federal bureaucracy and many seemingly ordinary
people.
The media coordinates this
campaign and amplifies the hate at every opportunity. Media twist every
event, be it big or small, into a criticism of the president. The goal is
always to present Trump in not just an unfavorable light but to make him appear
too loathsome for polite society. And Trump is not the sole target of this
demonization. It is directed at his supporters, too.
Where will all this lead?
No less than Angelo M. Codevilla fears it could
ultimately result in a bloody civil war. And if it comes to that, there's no
doubt where he places the blame.
The story of the
contemporary American Left's sponsorship of hate and violence began around
1964, when the Democrats chose to abandon the Southern constituencies that had
been its mainstay since the time of Jefferson and Jackson. In less than a
decade, the party found itself increasingly dependent on gaining
super-majorities among blacks, upscale liberals, and constituencies
of resentment in general -- and hence on stoking their hate.
For the past half century,
America's political history has been driven by the Democrats' effort to
fire up these constituencies by denigrating the rest of America.
Codevilla notes that
prominent Democrats like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Hillary Clinton have
led millions of their followers "to think and act as if conservatives were
simply a lower level of humanity, and should have their faces rubbed in their
own inferiority."
It’s not surprising that
many ordinary followers have concluded that harassing conservatives in
restaurants, airports, and public functions is "not just permissible
but praiseworthy, and if thousands of persons who
exercise power over cities, towns, and schools have not concluded that facilitating
such harassment and harm is their duty."
This is the toxic
environment that the Democrats, in conjunction with the media, have created.
Has Pandora's box been opened? Are we beyond the point of no return? Are
leftists and their liberal soulmates too obtuse not to expect that hate and
violence will someday be answered in kind? These questions are up in the air.
Right now, one thing is clear. As Yeats wrote: "The best lack all
conviction while the worse are full of passionate intensity."
Just to touch on a few of
the changes that Strauss and Howe see: today's soft criminal justice system
will become swift and rough. Vagrants will be rounded up and the mentally ill
recommitted. Criminal appeals shortened and executions hastened. Pension
funds will go bust and Social Security checks become iffy. The full
spectrum of society will be under distress. All the problems will be
combined into one -- the survival of society.
Aren't the seeds already
planted for a crisis? Trust in Washington and in government institutions is at
an all-time low. Political violence is tacitly condoned and often openly
encouraged by Democratic officeholders. The political establishment
encourages massive Illegal immigration. The mainstream media is highly
partisan and corrupt beyond reform. The American flag, the country's history,
and even its nationhood are openly despised in universities. American
public schools are a disgrace despite the money poured into them. The
country is burdened by a $22 trillion national debt to which many
trillions more of unfunded government liabilities must be added. Students owe a
trillion dollars in school loans that can never be repaid.
Someday there has to be a
reckoning for all this dysfunction. Irrespective of the election results in
2020, the time frame of 2020-2022 sounds about the right for things to come to
a head. It would be prudent to be ready.
University of California President Janet Napolitano Resigns
ALANA
MASTRANGELO
18
Sep 2019152
2:48
University of California (UC) President Janet
Napolitano announced her resignation on Wednesday. During her rocky tenure over
the UC system, Napolitano championed sanctuary campuses and was accused of
interfering in a state investigation into the system’s budget.
Napolitano made her
announcement at the UC regents meeting at UCLA, according to a report by Los
Angeles Times, which added that the
university president’s management of the UC system has sparked criticism.
While a president of
UC, Napolitano championed sanctuary for illegal aliens, and defended “safe
space” and “trigger warning” culture on college campuses, among other issues.
Prior to her role as UC
president, Napolitano served as Arizona governor from 2003 to 2009, and the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary under President Barack Obama,
from 2009 to 2013.
During her time as
DHS secretary, Napolitano played a key
role in providing sanctuary to illegal
aliens by helping the Obama Administration bypass
congress to grant de facto amnesty to
young illegal aliens by enacting key parts of DACA with a memo — calling
for law enforcement officials to ignore immigration law — without
any Congressional vote.
As UC
president, Napolitano spearheaded a lawsuit to stop the Trump
administration’s actions regarding the DACA program, which in turn,
resulted in more than 500,000 DACA recipients renewing their authorizations to
remain in the United States, notes to Los Angeles Times.
In 2017, a state
audit revealed that Napolitano’s
office hid $175 million, even as it raised tuition for students in the UC
system.
“The audit found that
Napolitano’s office ‘used misleading budgeting practices, provided its
employees with generous salaries and atypical benefits, and failed to
satisfactorily justify its spending on systemwide initiatives,'” noted
Breitbart News reporter Chriss Street.
Moreover, the
auditor testified that Napolitano
and her office had attempted to interfere with — and to smear publicly —
the investigation, in an effort to prevent revelations of the hidden money.
“Napolitano approved a
plan instructing UC campuses to submit responses to confidential questionnaires
for review by each college’s chancellor and her aides before returning them to
the state auditor,” noted Los Angeles Times. “Those steps and
others ‘constituted interference,’ the investigation said.”
More sneaky-pete from Obama: Huge trove of DHS speeches erased
from White House record just before Trump took office
If there's one thing that distinguishes Democrats from Republicans,
it's got to be their habit of illegally erasing records of their
times in office. It wasn't just Sandy Bergler getting off scot-free after
stealing archives to destroy, stuffing them
down his pants. It wasn't just the bleachbit and hammers
to destroy email records from an illegal unsecured private server from
President Obama's Secretary of State.
The Obama administration deleted hundreds
of speeches and statements on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
website just hours before President Donald Trump officially entered office,
according to research released Tuesday.
A collection of 190 transcripts of
speeches on ICE’s website was deleted on Jan. 18 and late in the evening on
Jan. 19, 2017, according to research conducted
by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for
government transparency. Statements made by high-ranking ICE officials
regarding controversial immigration topics such as sanctuary cities, E-Verify,
treatment of detainees, and other issues were included in the reported
deletions.
That stands in striking contrast to the carefully preserved Twitter
accounts of White House officials such as Samantha Power and Ben Rhodes.
Or look at this well
preserved archive of flattering Obama pictures from
his days in the White House. They know how to be meticulous about saving
records when they want to be. And rest assured if there was anything that
needed to be gone to avoid embarrassment, well, let's just say they have
connections at Twitter.
This document destruction of archived public statements, done just a
day or before Trump entered office in 2017, raises the question about just
what the Obama White House wanted to hide from both Trump and the American
public.
I don't have access to these public statements any more than anyone
else does, but I do recall writing editorials about some of them. I recall that
many did pay lip service to the growing border crisis. Many did cite the crisis
as a crisis. Many did condemn the damage to rule of law that illegal
immigration could do. Some may have criticized sanctuary cities.
It would take a long time to reconstruct the archive, based on the news
trail, but it might be the only way. Because what it undoubtedly shows is that
the Obama administration knew there was a crisis and took similar steps,
perhaps even harsher steps (remember: They were the ones who caged children,
not President Trump) to attempt to stop the great migration wave. Leftist
open-borders advocates often yelled that he was "the deporter in
chief," a title Obama did not like, but which certainly meant there was
some kind of law enforcement effort going on.
And with Obama a soft socialist more than a little obssessed with
winning the Latino vote, it's obvious his presidential deeds didn't quite match
his political claims. There was a crisis, law enforcement tried to stop some of
it, and some officials tried to give warning. That was so important for Obama
to hide from the public some of his minions actually erased records. No history
for you.
It's illegal. It's unfair to the public. It's clearly a bid to give
another kick to the Trump adminstration, enabling Democrats to paint any effort
from Trump to enforce U.S. immigration law as the work of a heartless
scoundrel, something Obama would never dream of being, as the narrative goes.
It ought to be prosecuted. If the public is ever to retain any right to
know, a failed presidency trying to cover up its record is a good place to
start. Let Trump's lawmen create some new records in the wake of this
destruction of old ones.
FOR
EIGHT YEARS BARACK OBAMA AND ERIC HOLDER SABOTAGED HOMELAND SECURITY TO EASE
MORE MEXICANS OVER OUR BORDERS AND INTO OUR JOBS AND VOTING BOOTHS.
OBAMA NEEDED THESE ILLEGALS TO FINISH OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS, WHAT WAS
LEFT OF THEM AFTER OBAMA'S CRONY BANKSTERS' PLUNDER.
“The watchdogs at Judicial Watch discovered documents
that reveal how the Obama administration's close coordination with the Mexican
government entices Mexicans to hop over the fence and on to the American
dole.” Washington Times
DESTABILIZE
AMERICA TO LAY GROUNDS FOR A MUSLIM-STYLE DICTATORSHIP
*
“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.”
BARACK OBAMA: Was he America’s first
Communist president in the closet?
Obama
choose Communists and Marxists for the highest, most powerful positions in our
land, including his closest political advisors, and his head of the CIA.
These facts are not in dispute. Most are openly admitted by the people in
question, as necessary damage control. Our press chooses not to report
them.
Professor
Paul Kengor has extensively researched the Chicago communists whose
progeny include David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Barack Hussein
Obama. Add the openly Marxist, pro-communist Ayers, and you have many of
the key players who put Obama into power.
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.”
Former President Barack Obama (L)
listens to Eliseo Medina and other people taking part in the Fast for Families
on the National Mall in Washington on Nov. 29, 2013. Obama offered support for
those fasting for immigration reform. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
Eliseo Medina: Revolution Through Illegal Immigration
“Before
immigration debates took place in Washington, I spoke with Eliseo Medina
and SEIU members,” said
then-Sen. Barack Obama, addressing the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
at a stop for his 2008 presidential campaign.
Eliseo Medina, Obama’s informal immigration adviser, has dedicated his
life to obtaining citizenship and voting rights for America’s illegal
aliens—now at an estimated 22 million—with the expressed goal of transforming
the United States into a one-party state.
As a Communist
Party USA (CPUSA) supporter and former honorary chair of the largest Marxist
organization in the United States, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA),
Medina is undeniably the leader of today’s amnesty movement.
At the far-left
“America’s Future Now!” conference in Washington on June 2, 2009, Medina, then
SEIU’s international executive vice president, addressed
attendees on the vital
importance of “comprehensive immigration reform”—a code phrase for amnesty.
Medina failed to
mention the plight of illegal aliens, focusing instead on how—if given
amnesty—they would eventually vote for Democrats.
Speaking of Latino
voting patterns in the 2008 election, Medina said:
“When they
[Latinos] voted in November, they voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates.
Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up.
“So, I think
there’s two things that matter for the progressive community:
“Number one: If we
are to expand this electorate to win, the progressive community needs to
solidly be on the side of immigrants. That will solidify and expand the
progressive coalition for the future.
“Number two: [If]
we reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to
citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if we have—even the same ratio—two
out of three?
“If we have 8
million new voters … we will create a governing coalition for the long term,
not just for an election cycle.”
Medina’s “governing
coalition” refers to Democrats having control of the federal government for the
foreseeable future, “not just for an election cycle.”
Who
Is Eliseo Medina?
Medina‘s road to power began
in 1965 when, as a 19-year-old grape-picker, he participated in the United Farm
Workers’ strike in Delano, California. Over the next 13 years, Medina worked
alongside labor leader and beloved socialist Cesar Chavez, eventually
surpassing his mentor as a skilled union organizer and political strategist.
Medina met his future wife Liza Hirsch during this period.
Medina had met Chicago
DSA comrades in the 1970s when he was in the Windy City organizing a grape
boycott for Chavez. From 2004 until 2016, Medina served as an honorary chairman for the organization.
Like many DSA members,
Medina also worked closely with the CPUSA.
Medina gave the
keynote speech at the CPUSA publication’s People’s Weekly World (PWW) banquet
in Berkeley, California, on Nov. 18, 2001.
The PWW quoted Medina
praising the communist publication: “’Wherever
workers are in struggle,’ Medina said, ‘they find the PWW regularly reporting
issues and viewpoints that are seldom covered by the regular media. For us, the
PWW has been and always will be the people’s voice.’”
In 2007, Medina
personally endorsed the People’s World (by then renamed from People’s Weekly
World).
Medina’s
Wife and Flexible Socialist Ethics
Medina’s wife, Liza,
is the daughter of Fred Hirsch, a
self-described “communist plumber” and his even-more-radical wife, Virginia,
known as Ginny. In the early 1960s, Ginny
Hirsch left her husband
and young children in San Jose while she drove to Guatemala with nearly a ton
of smuggled ammunition destined for leftist rebels.
From the age of 12,
Liza Hirsch was partially raised by Cesar Chavez and, at his personal request,
committed herself at an early age to earning a law degree so she could serve as
an attorney for the movement.
Though a
sometimes-socialist himself, Chavez had no time for illegal aliens (who he
dubbed “wet-backs”) fearing they would “scab” against his strikes and take jobs
from his members. Chavez even launched an “Illegals Campaign”—an organized
program to identify illegal alien workers in the fields and turn them in to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Hirsch was put in
charge of this program. In 1974, just before she went to law school, she
“distributed forms printed in triplicate to all union offices and directed
staff members to document the presence of illegal immigrants in the fields and
report them to the INS,” according to the book “The Crusades of Cesar
Chavez” by Miriam Pawel.
Hirsch would later
marry New York DSA member Paul Du
Brul. After his untimely
death, she married Medina, also a card-carrying DSA member by then.
Socialist ethics can
be very flexible.
Changing
the Democrat Position to Pro-Amnesty
Medina joined the SEIU in 1986, where he helped revive a local union in
San Diego, building its membership from 1,700 to more than 10,000 in five
years. Medina became international executive vice president of the 2.2
million-member SEIU in 1996.
The SEIU has a huge
number of illegal alien workers in its ranks. Medina used that leverage to
promote amnesty in the union movement, as well as in the organized left and in
the Democratic Party.
In the mid-1990s, most
unions were still hostile to illegal alien workers who worked at a much lower
rate, taking jobs away from union members. But in 1994, several far-left union
leaders led by DSA member John
Sweeney took over the American Federation of Labor and Congress of
Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), setting the stage for a major
policy change for the unions—and ultimately for the Democrats.
Claiming U.S. immigration
policy was “broken and [needed] to be fixed,” the AFL-CIO on Feb. 16, 2000, called for
a new amnesty for millions of undocumented workers and the repeal of the 1986 legislation
that criminalized hiring them.
According to the DSA website in
2004, Medina was “widely credited with playing a key role in the AFL-CIO’s
decision to adopt a new policy on immigration a few years ago.”
From his union
position, Medina reached across the labor movement into the social movements
and the Catholic Church to create the widest possible pro-amnesty coalition.
“Working to ensure
the opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration reform does not slip away,
Medina led the effort to unite the unions of the Change to Win federation and
AFL-CIO around a comprehensive framework for reform. Serving as a leading voice
in Washington, frequently testifying before Congress, Medina has also helped to
build a strong, diverse coalition of community and national partners that have
intensified the call for reform and cultivated necessary political capital to
hold elected leaders accountable.
“Medina has also
helped strengthen ties between the Roman Catholic Church and the labor movement
to work on common concerns such as immigrant worker rights and access to health
care.”
In August 2008, the
Obama campaign announced the formation of its National Latino Advisory Council.
The new body consisted of
several Democratic Congress members, a Catholic bishop, a former ambassador,
two former cabinet members, and Medina.
After the election,
Medina became Obama’s informal
adviser on issues
concerning immigration and amnesty. The fact that a DSA member and CPUSA
supporter was advising the U.S. president on issues of vital national security
importance appeared to concern no one.
Eventually, Medina and
his movement were able to get an amnesty bill passed through the U.S. Senate.
If they could only pass a bill through the House, the United States would be
set on an irreversible path to socialism.
Fortunately, Tea
Party-aligned Republican Congress members refused to sell out their nation.
They held the line against intense pressure, and no amnesty bill was passed
through the House in Obama’s eight years in the White House.
‘Fast for Families’
In November 2013,
Medina, along with Cristian Avila of amnesty advocacy group Mi Familia Vota and
Dae Jung Yoon of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium
(a hard-left group that supports communist North Korea), started a 22-day “fast
for families” in front of Capitol Hill “to demand Congress approve
comprehensive immigration reform,” according to People’s World.
The staged protest
gained worldwide media attention. Several Democratic members of Congress dropped by to
offer support, along with then-President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and
Vice President Joe Biden.
Still, House
Republicans did not budge.
On May 17,
2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign announced that
long-time DSA activist Dolores Huerta and
Medina would join the team as senior advisers in California.
“Huerta and Medina
will build on the campaign’s robust outreach to the Latino community in
California and work with the campaign’s senior team to organize and engage
Californians in conversations about Hillary Clinton’s plans to break down barriers
and help move the country forward.
“’We are thrilled
to be joined by two incredibly accomplished and admired leaders in the Latino,
immigrant and labor communities, Dolores Huerta and Eliseo Medina,’ said Buffy
Wicks, State Director for Hillary for California. ‘Their advocacy and
leadership … will go a long way in continuing the important work of reaching
every California voter in advance of the June 7 primary.’”
Clinton promised to introduce a “pathway to
full and equal citizenship” to legalize and grant
voting rights to every illegal alien in the country
“within 100 days of taking office” if she were to
be elected president.
Had President Donald
Trump not won his shocking victory on Nov. 6,
2016, Medina’s dream of a permanent, unbeatable progressive “governing
coalition” would today be a reality, making it virtually impossible to elect
another Republican president.
Trevor Loudon is an
author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years,
he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their
covert influence on mainstream politics.
Views expressed in
this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
views of The Epoch Times.
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure
was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama
years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
Senate Hearing: Obama’s DACA and Flores Orders Spiked Illegal
Migration
Sen. Ron Johnson
NEIL
MUNRO
23 May 201918
4:54
The illegal migration of “family units” and
“unaccompanied alien children” spiked after former President Barack Obama
signed off on the “DACA” amnesty and the Flores court
order, according to a graphic used by the chairman of the Senate Homeland
Defense Committee.
Committee chairman Rep. Ron Johnson,
R-Wisc., touted the jarring graphic by printing it on paper cups used by the
committee members. The graphic contradicts claims by Democrats that the huge
wave of Central American economic migrants are really refugees from a
humanitarian disaster caused by crime and crop failures in Central
America.
Officials expect almost one million
Central American migrants in the 12 months prior to October 2019. The migrant
wave includes hundreds of thousands of people in “family units.” These units
consist of adults who bring youths and children to help trigger the border
catch-and-release loophole.
The primary catch-and-release loophole
is the Flores court order, because it requires
border agencies to release migrants within 20 days if they bring children. Once
released, the migrant adults take jobs in American workplaces and their
children are sent to the schools used by the children of blue-collar Americans.
The Flores decision
“has been the essential driver, frankly, for the increase in family units,”
said Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland
Security in a May 23 committee hearing. He continued:
That certainty, that knowledge, that
they will be allowed to stay in the US. indefinitely, pending a court [asylum]
proceeding that could be years away … is a huge draw. Smugglers have
capitalized on that. They’re advertising that fact. We hear that routinely from
our interviews with families.
The 2015 extension of the 1993 Flores judgment
was accepted by the Obama administration, even though it requires border
agencies to release migrants within 20 days if they bring children. Obama’s
legal team could have fought the decision by filing appeals with higher courts,
but it instead signed an agreement to implement the decision.
Under policies set by judges, the 2015
agreement by Obama, ACLU activists, and the judge binds President Donald Trump,
even though he did not approve it, and even though the Supreme Court did
approve the extension.
Obama’s 2012 DACA amnesty offered a
sanctuary from deportation, plus work permits and Social Security Numbers, to
roughly 800,000 migrants who had been smuggled over the border by their
parents. The giveaway is legally
shaky, but it prompted many other illegal
migrants to get
their children delivered from Central America by smugglers
to U.S. border agencies, which then passed the children to the parents.
This government-enabled smuggling
operation helped bring tens of thousands of
carefuly smuggled Unaccompanied Minor Children (UACs) into the United States.
Very few migrants have been sent home, according to federal data.
Democratic legislators have refused to
reform the border rules, ensuring that 100,000 migrants — including 40,000
children — walked over the border in April 2019, into the nation’s job sites
and schools.
However, Trump’s deputies are preparing
a regulation that would allow them to detain migrants with children for more
than 20 days.
But Obama holdovers in the agencies have
slowed the regulation. The Flores requirement
that state officials set up a health and safety inspection process for family
detention centers has also delayed the regulatory fix.
Democrats say the migration is a
humanitarian crisis but deny their role in creating the disaster, which is now
emptying parts of Guatemala.
The US govt's appetite for more cheap labor is distorting Central America's
economy by encouraging & subsidizing migration instead of boosting local
investment & job-growth via trade. http://bit.ly/2VHmkPG
Trump’s deputies are also developing
other programs to stop the flow, such as the “Remain in Mexico” program, which
prevents migrants from getting jobs while they wait for court hearings. If
denied jobs, the migrants would not be able to pay the travel costs owed to the
Mexican cartels and will not make the trip.
Trump's 'Remain in Mexico' program is helping ensure that pregnant migrants
cannot cheat the legal asylum process by birthing a child in the U.S.
Pro-migration groups are aghast. http://bit.ly/2X3qNhr
This year’s inflow of one million
illegal migrants from Central American is only a small slice of the immigration
economy.
Each year, roughly four million
young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high
school or university.
But the federal government then imports
about 1.1 million legal immigrants and refreshes a resident population
of roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including roughly one
million H-1B workers — and approximately 500,000 blue-collar visa workers.
The government also prints out more than
one million work permits for foreigners, tolerates about eight million illegal
workers, and does not punish companies for employing the hundreds of thousands
of illegal migrants who sneak across the border or overstay their legal visas
each year.
This policy of inflating the labor
supply boosts economic
growth for investors because
it ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by
offering higher wages and better working conditions.
This policy of flooding the
market with cheap foreign white-collar graduates and
blue-collar labor shifts
also enormous wealth from young employees
towards older investors even as it also widens wealth
gaps, reduces high-tech
investment, increases state
and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations.
It also pushes Americans
away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized
Americans, including many who are now struggling with
fentanyl addictions. The labor policy also moves business investment and
wealth from the heartland to the coastal
cities, explodes rents
and housing
costs, shrivels real
estate values in the Midwest and rewards investors for creating low tech, labor-intensive workplaces.
Nancy Pelosi is promising to raise wages via gov't socialism, but Trump's
"Hire American" immigration/labor-supply policy is nudging wages up
by 3-4 percent a year. Yes, politicians competing over rival wage-raising
policies would be a great thing. http://bit.ly/2Vgymzk
DACA Amnesty Would Render Border Wall Useless, Cost Americans
$26B
Eric
Baradat/AFP/Getty- mages
5:36
A
deal in which President Trump accepts an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens
enrolled and eligible for President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA) program in exchange for minor border wall funding would be
counterproductive to the “America First” goals of the administration,
depressing U.S. wages in the process ahead of the 2020 election.
As Breitbart News has extensively
chronicled, Attorney General Jeff Sessions
ended the DACA program last year, although it’s official termination has
been held up in court by left-wing judges.
Since then, a coalition of establishment
Republicans and Democrats have sought to ram an amnesty for up to 3.5 million
DACA-enrolled and eligible illegal aliens through Congress, an initiative
supported by the
donor class.
CLOSE |
X
Such a plan, most recently, has been
touted in an effort to negotiate a deal in which Trump receives anywhere
between $1.6 tand $5 billion for his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall in
exchange for approving a DACA amnesty for millions.
The amnesty would render the border wall
useless, as it would not only trigger increased illegal immigration at the
border — which is already set to hit the highest
annual level in a decade next year — but
increased legal immigration to the country.
Last year, Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen
admittedthat even discussion of a DACA amnesty increased
illegal immigration at the southern border, as
migrants surge to the U.S. in hopes of making it into the country to later cash
in on the amnesty.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris
Kobach previously
predicted that a DACA amnesty would trigger
an immediate flood of a million illegal aliens arriving at the U.S.-Mexico
border. In 2014, when Obama enacted DACA by Executive Order, the temporary
amnesty caused a surge at the southern border, as noted by
the Migration Policy Institute.
In terms of legal immigration, a DACA
amnesty would implement
a never-ending flow of foreign relatives to the DACA
illegal aliens who can be readily sponsored for green cards through the process
known as “chain migration.”
According to Princeton University
researchers Stacie Carr and Marta Tienda, the average number of family
members brought to the U.S. by newly naturalized Mexican immigrants stands at
roughly six. Therefore, should all 1.5 million amnestied illegal aliens
bring six relatives each to the U.S., that would constitute a total chain
migration of nine million new foreign nationals entering the U.S.
If the number of amnestied illegal
aliens who gain a pathway to citizenship under an immigration deal were to rise
to the full 3.3 million who would be eligible for DREAM Act amnesty, and if
each brought in three to six foreign family members, the chain migration flow
could range from 9.9 million to 19.8 million foreign nationals coming to the
U.S.
At this rate of chain migration solely
from a DACA amnesty, the number of legal immigrants arriving to the U.S. with
family relations to the amnestied population would potentially outpace
the population of New York City, New York — where
more than 8.5 million residents live.
Should the goal of Trump’s proposed
border wall be to reduce illegal immigration and eventually incentivize lawmakers
to reduce legal immigration levels — where the U.S. imports 1.5 million
immigrants every year — to raise the wages of America’s working and middle
class, a DACA amnesty would have the opposite impact, increasing illegal and
legal immigration levels.
The president has also touted the wall
as a benefit to American citizens in terms of cost. A border wall is projected
to cost about $25 million, a tiny figure compared to the $116
billion that illegal immigration costs
U.S. taxpayers every year.
A DACA amnesty, coupled with a border
wall, would have steep costs for American citizens — wiping out the
cost-benefit to taxpayers of the wall.
For example, a DACA amnesty would cost
American taxpayers about
$26 billion, more than the border wall, and that
does not include the money taxpayers would have to fork up to subsidize the
legal immigrant relatives of DACA illegal aliens. And because amnesties for
illegal aliens tend to be larger than initially predicted, the total cost would
likely be even higher for taxpayers.
Additionally, about one in
five DACA illegal aliens, after an
amnesty, would end up on food stamps, while at least one in
seven would go on Medicaid, the CBO has
estimated.
The number of DACA illegal aliens who
will go on Medicaid following an amnesty is likely to be much larger than what
the CBO reports.
Previous research by
the Center for Immigration Studies indicates that the average immigrant
household in the U.S. takes 44 percent more Medicaid money than the average
American household. The research also noted that 56 percent of households
led by illegal aliens have at least one person on Medicaid.
Another study, reported by Breitbart
News, indicates that the CBO estimate of
DACA illegal aliens who would end up on Medicaid after an amnesty is the lowest
total possible of illegal aliens who would go on the welfare program.
Meanwhile, a DACA amnesty would drag
increasing U.S. wages down for the country’s working and middle class,
delivering benefits to the business lobby while squashing the intended goals of
the Trump administration ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The plan
is also likely to hit the black American community the
hardest, as they are forced to compete for
blue collar jobs against a growing illegal and legal immigrant population from
Central America.
On Tuesday, Trump said he would be
willing to shut down the federal government in order to secure funding for his
proposed border wall. Democrat leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Nancy
Pelosi (D-CA) have previously indicated that they would be willing to swap an
amnesty in exchange for funding border “security measures.”
John Binder is a reporter for
Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Trump ‘immigration reform’ ignores real
problem
President Donald Trump participates in a
roundtable on immigration and border security at the U.S. Border Patrol
Calexico Station in Calexico, Calif., Friday April 5, 2019. Trump headed to the
border with Mexico to make a renewed push for border security as a central
campaign issue for his 2020 re-election. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
By HOWIE CARR | howard.carr@medianewsgroup.com | Boston Herald
Trump
‘immigration reform’ ignores real problem
President Donald Trump
participates in a roundtable on immigration and border security at the U.S. Border
Patrol Calexico Station in Calexico, Calif., Friday April 5, 2019. Trump headed
to the border with Mexico to make a renewed push for border security as a
central campaign issue for his 2020 re-election. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
By HOWIE
CARR | howard.carr@medianewsgroup.com | Boston Herald
OK, so
President Trump’s “immigration reform plan” is nothing more than a campaign
document, a talking point, to impress the likes of the Wall Street Journal
(which gave him a big wet kiss of an editorial Saturday) and the Chambers of
Commerce.
But as
everyone knows, the problem isn’t so much who we are keeping out of the country
– educated, English-speaking people with a work ethic – as opposed to the
shiftless, lawless hordes we are allowing to swarm across the southern border
in untold numbers.
The
problem is most of these undocumented Democrats are future recipients of at
least one welfare handout, and even worse, they include a sizable contingent of
future MS-13 gangbangers, drive-by shooters, identity thieves and fentanyl
dealers.
On
Thursday, at the White House, the president halfheartedly raised the specter of
these marvelously educated foreign college grads being forced to return home.
But c’mon, how many MIT and CalTech grads really get the heave-ho?
When he
announced for president in 2015, Trump famously said, “When Mexico sends its
people, they’re not sending their best.”
Now
it’s worse, much worse, because it’s not only Mexico flushing its criminal
underclass into the U.S., it’s Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and every other
country where they’ve been running TV ads telling their unwed mothers, winos
and freelance criminals that all they need to do is tell the gringos that
they’re seeking “asylum,” and then it’s off to the welfare free-stuff office.
As the
old song goes, “Everything free in America.”
The U.S. Sentencing
Commission recently released its 2018 report on federal sentencing statistics:
42.7 percent of offenders were illegal aliens. Sixty-three percent of all
non-citizens charged with drug trafficking last year were living in the country
illegally.
Look
what happened at the Quincy District Court Friday. ICE was staking it out,
looking to grab a Dominican heroin/cocaine dealer with a phony Puerto Rican
identity. He didn’t show.
On
Thursday, in Texas, a “Dallas man,” as the Associated Press described him, was
charged with the murders of 11 elderly American women between the ages of 76
and 94, as he stole their jewelry and other valuables. In the third paragraph,
the AP copped to the truth – the serial killer was “a Kenyan citizen who was
living in the U.S. illegally.”
Here’s
another recent headline: “ICE arrests Salvadoran murder suspect, gang associate
in South Dakota.”
Question:
Since when is South Dakota a border state? Answer: Since Barack Obama was
president, maybe even before then.
As
George W. Bush used to say, they’re only doing the jobs Americans won’t do.
Jobs that apparently include fentanyl and meth dealing, not to mention
dismemberment of their underworld rivals and too many instances of domestic
abuse and drunken driving to even recount? In case you missed it, ICE has
picked up 141 illegal immigrant drunken drivers in recent weeks, just in New
England.
Here’s a
recent headline from the Worcester Telegram: “Three men arrested in Millbury in
alleged scheme to defraud banks.”
“Three
men” – that’s the dead-giveaway phrase. The only remaining question is, in what
paragraph will the paper mention the perps’ immigration status?
In this
story, the answer was, the 17th: “The detective said the three suspects each
had passports from Ghana. She said she was unsure of their citizenship status.”
I’m not
unsure at all. Are you?
Next, a
few recent press releases from the feds in New England. First, from the eastern
district of Massachusetts:
“Dominican
National Pleads Guilty to Identity Theft/Defendant stole identity of US Army
Specialist … Dominican National Sentenced for Social Security Fraud … Dominican
National Pleads Guilty to Social Security Fraud and Identity Theft … Brazilian
National Sentenced for ATM Skimming.”
Here are
a few from Connecticut:
“Third
Nigerian National Admits Role in Business E-Mail Compromise Scheme Targeting
CFO’s and Controllers … Mexican National Convicted of Illegal Reentry for a
Third Time … Citizen of Peru Charged with Illegally Reentering US.”
That
Peruvian illegal immigrant was a drug dealer and warrant defaulter.
Let’s
not slight Rhode Island: “15 Individuals Convicted, Sentenced in Heroin and
Cocaine Trafficking Conspiracy.”
Unfortunately,
the R.I. U.S. Attorney’s Office buried the lede about the drug outfit headed by
one Juan Valdez: “Eleven of the ‘Operation Triple Play’ defendants, many of
whom had been living in the United States with stolen identities, including the
three brothers who led the drug trafficking organizations, have or will face
deportation proceedings … Juan Valdez was previously deported from the United
States on four occasions.”
Look, I understand, every resort, restaurant
and hotel owner in New England needs H2B visa workers to get through the resort
season. That’s a problem, granted. But the bigger disaster is this: Illegal
immigrant criminals are destroying the United States, and one of the nation’s
major political parties think it’s in its interest to continue the “fundamental
transformation” of America … into a Third World hellhole.
Obama Funds the Mexican Fascist Party of
LA RAZA “The Race”
FIFTEEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LA
RAZA “THE RACE”
by Michelle Malkin
Only in America could critics of a group
called "The Race" be labeled racists. Such is the triumph of
left-wing identity chauvinists, whose aggressive activists and supine abettors
have succeeded in redefining all opposition as "hate."
Both Barack Obama and John
McCain will speak this week in San Diego at the annual conference of the
National Council of La Raza, the Latino organization whose name is Spanish for,
yes, "The Race." Can you imagine Obama and McCain paying
homage to a group of white people who called themselves that? No matter. The
presidential candidates and the media have legitimized "The Race" as
a mainstream ethnic lobbying group and marginalized its critics as intolerant
bigots. The unvarnished truth is that the group is a radical ethnic nationalist
outfit that abuses your tax dollars and milks PC politics to undermine our
sovereignty.
Here are 15 things you should know about
"The Race":
15. "The Race" supports driver's
licenses for illegal aliens.
14."The Race" demands in-state
tuition discounts for illegal alien students that are not available to
law-abiding U.S. citizens and law-abiding legal immigrants.
13. "The Race" vehemently
opposes cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state and
federal authorities.
12. "The Race" opposes a secure
fence on the southern border.
11. "The Race" joined the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to
prevent the feds from entering immigration information into a key national
crime database -- and to prevent local police officers from accessing the data.
10. "The Race" opposed the state
of Oklahoma's tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare
to illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions and strengthened
local-federal cooperation and information sharing.
9. "The Race" joined other
open-borders, anti-assimilationists and sued to prevent Proposition 227,
California's bilingual education reform ballot initiative, from becoming law.
8. "The Race" bitterly protested
common-sense voter ID provisions as an "absolute disgrace."
7. "The Race" has consistently
opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn.
6. Former "Race" president Raul
Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton's Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: "U.S.
English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks." He was
referring to U.S. English, the nation's oldest, largest citizens' action group
dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United
States. "The Race" also pioneered Orwellian open-borders Newspeak and
advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty while
avoiding the terms "illegal" and "amnesty."
5. "The Race" gives mainstream
cover to a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento
Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA).
The late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized the organization as
"a radical racist group … one of the most anti-American groups in the
country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its
push to carve a racist nation out of the American West."
4. "The Race" is currently
leading a smear campaign against staunch immigration enforcement leaders and has
called for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement
proponents off the airwaves -- in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine
policies to shut up their foes. The New York Times reported that current
"Race" president Janet Murguia believes "hate speech"
should "not be tolerated, even if such censorship were a violation of
First Amendment rights."
3. "The Race" sponsors militant
ethnic nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at
least $8 million in federal education grants). The schools include Aztlan
Academy in Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia
Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del
Pueblo in Los Angeles, whose principal inveighed: "We don't want to drink
from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs
and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don't need a White water
fountain … ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal,
capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction."
2. "The Race" has perfected the
art of the PC shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home
loan standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal
"mortgage counseling" grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar
earmarks and partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens.
1. "The Race" thrives on ethnic
supremacy -- and the elite sheeple's unwillingness to call it what it is. As
historian Victor Davis Hanson observes: "[The] organization's very
nomenclature 'The National Council of La Raza' is hate speech to the core.
Despite all the contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests)
reflects the meaning of 'race' in Spanish, not 'the people' -- and that's
precisely why we don't hear of something like 'The National Council of the
People,' which would not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal
chauvinism."
The fringe is the center. The center is
the fringe. Viva La Raza.
"This is country belongs to
Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that
the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican
kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by
American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in
March of 2009!
IMMIGRATION AS ECONOMIC WAR ON THE
AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS.
Yes, it is by invitation of the Democrat
and Republican parties on behalf of their rich paymasters!
However, the dominant force in American
politics for the last two decades has been economic warfare against American
citizens.
This economic warfare has two primary
components; the use of government to economically favor one group over another;
and the collusion of immigrant groups to economically inhibit Americans who oppose
replacement migration.
JOSHUA FOXWORTH – AMERICAN
THINKER
"This is country belongs to
Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that
the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican
kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by
American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in
March of 2009!
The
“mother of all caravans” is
forming in Central America, and our border-enforcement system is at “the breaking point” — all
because Democrats in Congress rejects any effort to plug the legal loopholes that
drive the accelerating flood at the border. In effect, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck
Schumer are doing just what Cesar Chavez complained about 40 years ago:
placating employers by allowing the unhindered importation of cheap labor to
undermine the efforts of American workers to negotiate higher wages. MARK
KRIKORIAN
JAMES
WALSH
THE OBAMA-BIDEN
HISPANICAZATION of AMERICA… first ease millions of illegals over our
borders and into our voting booths!
How the Democrat party surrendered
America to Mexico:
“The watchdogs at Judicial Watch
discovered documents that reveal how the Obama administration's close
coordination with the Mexican government entices Mexicans to hop over the fence
and on to the American dole.” Washington Times
"This is country belongs to
Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that
the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican
kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by
American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in
March of 2009!
The “zero tolerance” program was
dismantled by Attorney General Erc Holder once it had successfully cut the
transit of migrants by roughly 95 percent. Initially, officials made
140,000 arrests per year in the mid-2000s, but the northward flow dropped so
much that officials only had to make 6,000 arrests in 2013, according to
a 2014 letter by
two pro-migration Senators, Sen. Jeff Flake and John McCain.
“The cost of the Dream Act is far bigger
than the Democrats or their media allies admit. Instead of covering 690,000
younger illegals now enrolled in former President Barack Obama’s 2012 “DACA”
amnesty, the Dream Act would legalize at least 3.3 million illegals,
according to a pro-immigration group, the Migration Policy Institute.”
Obama Quietly Erasing Borders (Article)
WIKILEAKS EXPOSES THE OBAMA CONSPIRACY
TO FLOOD AMERICAN WITH DEM VOTING ILLEGALS
“The watchdogs at Judicial Watch
discovered documents that reveal how the Obama administration's close
coordination with the Mexican government entices Mexicans to hop over the fence
and on to the American dole.” Washington Times
"This is country belongs to
Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that
the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican
kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by
American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March
of 2009!
Previous generations of immigrants did not
believe they were racially superior to Americans. That is the view of La
Raza Cosmica, by Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico’s former
education minister and a presidential candidate. According to this book,
republished in 1979 by the Department of Chicano Studies at Cal State LA,
students of Scandinavian, Dutch and English background are dullards, blacks are
ugly and inferior, and those “Mongols” with the slanted eyes lack enterprise.
The superior new “cosmic” race of Spaniards and Indians is replacing them, and
all Yankee “Anglos.” LLOYD BILLINGSLEY/ FRONTPAGE mag
*
GLOBALIST BARACK OBAMA AND NANCY PELOSI’S CONSPIRACY
TO SABOTAGE HOMELAND SECURITY AND KEEP AMERICA FLOODED WITH DEM VOTING ILLEGALS
"Along with Obama, Pelosi and Schumer
are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the eight
years of that administration." PATRICIA McCARTHY
“One of the most disgusting things to
come out of the Obama administration was "Operation Fast and
Furious," where members of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives (ATF) allowed illegal gun sales to go through – commonly
referred to as "gun walking" – in order to track buyers and sellers
they believed were connected to the Mexican drug cartels. Nearly 2,000 firearms
were sold and were eventually found throughout the United States and Mexico.
Two of them were used to k ill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.”
BETH BAUMANN
DURING OBAMA'S 8 YEAR BANKSTER REGIME,
HE OPERATED LA RAZA (NOW CALLING ITSELF UNIDOSus FROM THE WHITE HOUSE
UNDER LA RAZA V.P. CECILIA MUNOZ. HE FUNDED THE MEX FASCIST PARTY WITH
U.S. TAX DOLLARS.
BOTH OF OBAMA’S SECRETARY of (ILLEGAL)
LABOR WERE LA RAZA SUPREMACIST. THESE WERE HILDA SOLIS AND TOM PEREZ.
The “zero tolerance” program was
dismantled by Attorney General Erc Holder once it had successfully cut the
transit of migrants by roughly 95 percent. Initially, officials made
140,000 arrests per year in the mid-2000s, but the northward flow dropped so
much that officials only had to make 6,000 arrests in 2013, according to
a 2014 letter by
two pro-migration Senators, Sen. Jeff Flake and John McCain.
Jose Angel Gutierrez, professor,
University of Texas, Arlington and founder of La Raza Unida political
party screams at rallies: "We have an aging white America. They are d
ying. They are s hitting in their pants with fear! I love it! We have
got to eliminate the g ringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to
the worst, we have got to k ill him!"
Previous generations of immigrants did not
believe they were racially superior to Americans. That is the view of La
Raza Cosmica, by Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico’s former
education minister and a presidential candidate. According to this book,
republished in 1979 by the Department of Chicano Studies at Cal State LA,
students of Scandinavian, Dutch and English background are dullards, blacks are
ugly and inferior, and those “Mongols” with the slanted eyes lack enterprise.
The superior new “cosmic” race of Spaniards and Indians is replacing them, and
all Yankee “Anglos.” LLOYD BILLINGSLEY/ FRONTPAGE mag
The Democrat Party’s Legacy of the
'Hispanicazation' of America
By: James Walsh
Casting a shadow on economic recovery
efforts in the United States is the cost of illegal immigration that consumes
U.S. taxpayer dollars for education, healthcare, social welfare benefits, and
criminal justice. Illegal aliens (or more politically correct, “undocumented
immigrants”) with ties to Mexican drug cartels are contributing to death and
destruction on U.S. lands along the southern border.
While the declining job market in the
United States may be discouraging some would-be border crossers, a flow of
illegal aliens continues unabated, with many entering the United States as
drug-smuggling “mules.”
THE
INVADING CRIMINALS:
A county by county
chart:
OBAMA’S INVASION OF ILLEGALS IS WORKING!
They’re already signed up to vote LA RAZA
SUPREMACY DEM!
“According to Immigration and Customers
Enforcement data first obtained by the Associated Press this week, about 70
percent of the 40,000 migrant family members arrested at the border since May
did not follow up their arrest with a necessary visit to an immigration
office.”
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY and the RISE OF THE
MEXICAN FASCIST WELFARE STATE and MEX FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA “The Race” NOW
CALLING ITSELF UNIDOus.
Not long ago, both Democrats and Republicans
advocated safe, secure borders and an immigration policy of admitting
immigrants who benefit, not burden, Americans. Que pasó? ….. LARRY ELDER – FRONT
PAGE MAG
Mecha's (M.E.Ch.A.) own slogan reads, "For the race
everything. For those outside the race, nothing."
LA RAZA: The Mexican Fascist Party of LA
RAZA “THE RACE” and the Reconquista and surrender of America to NARCOMEX.
The comparison to the Nazi Party is well
deserved. La Raza openly supports pushing all but Latino Americans out of a
portion of the United States (ethnic cleansing), they call for 'Reconquista' or
the re-conquest of the American Southwest by Mexico (the re-occupation of the
Sudetanland), and the establishment of 'Atzlan' which is the utopian all-Latino
version of the American Southwestern states (Adolf Hitler planned to called his
utopia Germania).
Jose Pescador Osuna, Mexican Consul
General We are practicing "La Reconquista" in California."
"Remember 187 --
the Proposition to deny taxpayer funds for services to non-citizens --- was the
last gasp of white America in California." --- Art Torres, Chairman of the
California Democratic Party
OF COURSE THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION IS NOW
BORDER TO BORDER!
"The American Southwest seems to be
slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without firing a single
shot." --- Excelsior, the national newspaper of Mexico
DURING OBAMA'S 8 YEAR BANKSTER REGIME,
HE OPERATED LA RAZA (NOW CALLING ITSELF UNIDOus FROM THE WHITE HOUSE
UNDER LA RAZA V.P. CECILIA MUNOZ. HE FUNDED THE MEX FASCIST PARTY WITH
U.S. TAX DOLLARS.
BOTH OF OBAMA’S SECRETARY of (ILLEGAL)
LABOR WERE LA RAZA SUPREMACIST. THESE WERE HILDA SOLIS AND TOM PEREZ.
Jose Angel Gutierrez, professor,
University of Texas, Arlington and founder of La Raza Unida political
party screams at rallies: "We have an aging white America. They are
dying. They are shitting in their pants with fear! I love it! We have
got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to
the worst, we have got to ki ll him!"
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.”
Former President Barack
Obama (L) listens to Eliseo Medina and other people taking part in the Fast for
Families on the National Mall in Washington on Nov. 29, 2013. Obama offered
support for those fasting for immigration reform. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty
Images)
Eliseo Medina: Revolution Through Illegal Immigration
“Before
immigration debates took place in Washington, I spoke with Eliseo Medina
and SEIU members,” said then-Sen. Barack
Obama, addressing the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
at a stop for his 2008 presidential campaign.
Eliseo Medina, Obama’s informal immigration adviser, has dedicated his
life to obtaining citizenship and voting rights for America’s illegal
aliens—now at an estimated 22 million—with the expressed goal of transforming
the United States into a one-party state.
As a Communist
Party USA (CPUSA) supporter and former honorary chair of the largest Marxist
organization in the United States, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA),
Medina is undeniably the leader of today’s amnesty movement.
At the far-left
“America’s Future Now!” conference in Washington on June 2, 2009, Medina, then
SEIU’s international executive vice president, addressed
attendees on the vital
importance of “comprehensive immigration reform”—a code phrase for amnesty.
Medina failed to
mention the plight of illegal aliens, focusing instead on how—if given
amnesty—they would eventually vote for Democrats.
Speaking of Latino
voting patterns in the 2008 election, Medina said:
“When they
[Latinos] voted in November, they voted overwhelmingly for progressive
candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up.
“So, I think
there’s two things that matter for the progressive community:
“Number one: If we
are to expand this electorate to win, the progressive community needs to
solidly be on the side of immigrants. That will solidify and expand the
progressive coalition for the future.
“Number two: [If]
we reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to
citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if we have—even the same
ratio—two out of three?
“If we have 8
million new voters … we will create a governing coalition for the long term,
not just for an election cycle.”
Medina’s “governing
coalition” refers to Democrats having control of the federal government for the
foreseeable future, “not just for an election cycle.”
Who Is Eliseo Medina?
Medina‘s road to power began
in 1965 when, as a 19-year-old grape-picker, he participated in the United Farm
Workers’ strike in Delano, California. Over the next 13 years, Medina worked
alongside labor leader and beloved socialist Cesar Chavez, eventually
surpassing his mentor as a skilled union organizer and political strategist.
Medina met his future wife Liza Hirsch during this period.
Medina had met Chicago
DSA comrades in the 1970s when he was in the Windy City organizing a grape
boycott for Chavez. From 2004 until 2016, Medina served as an honorary chairman for the organization.
Like many DSA members,
Medina also worked closely with the CPUSA.
Medina gave the
keynote speech at the CPUSA publication’s People’s Weekly World (PWW) banquet
in Berkeley, California, on Nov. 18, 2001.
The PWW quoted Medina
praising the communist publication: “’Wherever workers
are in struggle,’ Medina said, ‘they find the PWW regularly reporting issues
and viewpoints that are seldom covered by the regular media. For us, the PWW
has been and always will be the people’s voice.’”
In 2007, Medina
personally endorsed the People’s World (by then renamed from People’s Weekly
World).
Medina’s Wife and Flexible Socialist Ethics
Medina’s wife, Liza,
is the daughter of Fred
Hirsch, a self-described “communist
plumber” and his even-more-radical wife, Virginia, known as Ginny. In the early
1960s, Ginny
Hirsch left her husband
and young children in San Jose while she drove to Guatemala with nearly a ton
of smuggled ammunition destined for leftist rebels.
From the age of 12,
Liza Hirsch was partially raised by Cesar Chavez and, at his personal request,
committed herself at an early age to earning a law degree so she could serve as
an attorney for the movement.
Though a
sometimes-socialist himself, Chavez had no time for illegal aliens (who he
dubbed “wet-backs”) fearing they would “scab” against his strikes and take jobs
from his members. Chavez even launched an “Illegals Campaign”—an organized
program to identify illegal alien workers in the fields and turn them in to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Hirsch was put in
charge of this program. In 1974, just before she went to law school, she
“distributed forms printed in triplicate to all union offices and directed
staff members to document the presence of illegal immigrants in the fields and
report them to the INS,” according to the book “The Crusades of Cesar
Chavez” by Miriam Pawel.
Hirsch would later
marry New York DSA member Paul Du
Brul. After his untimely
death, she married Medina, also a card-carrying DSA member by then.
Socialist ethics can
be very flexible.
Changing
the Democrat Position to Pro-Amnesty
Medina joined the SEIU in 1986, where he helped revive a local union in
San Diego, building its membership from 1,700 to more than 10,000 in five
years. Medina became international executive vice president of the 2.2
million-member SEIU in 1996.
The SEIU has a huge
number of illegal alien workers in its ranks. Medina used that leverage to
promote amnesty in the union movement, as well as in the organized left and in
the Democratic Party.
In the mid-1990s, most
unions were still hostile to illegal alien workers who worked at a much lower
rate, taking jobs away from union members. But in 1994, several far-left union
leaders led by DSA member John Sweeney took
over the American Federation of Labor and Congress of
Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), setting the stage for a major
policy change for the unions—and ultimately for the Democrats.
Claiming U.S.
immigration policy was “broken and [needed] to be fixed,” the AFL-CIO on Feb.
16, 2000, called for
a new amnesty for millions of undocumented workers and the repeal of the 1986
legislation that criminalized hiring them.
According to the DSA website in
2004, Medina was “widely credited with playing a key role in the AFL-CIO’s
decision to adopt a new policy on immigration a few years ago.”
From his union
position, Medina reached across the labor movement into the social movements
and the Catholic Church to create the widest possible pro-amnesty coalition.
“Working to ensure
the opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration reform does not slip away,
Medina led the effort to unite the unions of the Change to Win federation and
AFL-CIO around a comprehensive framework for reform. Serving as a leading voice
in Washington, frequently testifying before Congress, Medina has also helped to
build a strong, diverse coalition of community and national partners that have
intensified the call for reform and cultivated necessary political capital to
hold elected leaders accountable.
“Medina has also
helped strengthen ties between the Roman Catholic Church and the labor movement
to work on common concerns such as immigrant worker rights and access to health
care.”
In August 2008, the
Obama campaign announced the formation of its National Latino Advisory Council.
The new body consisted of
several Democratic Congress members, a Catholic bishop, a former ambassador,
two former cabinet members, and Medina.
After the election,
Medina became Obama’s informal
adviser on issues
concerning immigration and amnesty. The fact that a DSA member and CPUSA
supporter was advising the U.S. president on issues of vital national security
importance appeared to concern no one.
Eventually, Medina and
his movement were able to get an amnesty bill passed through the U.S. Senate.
If they could only pass a bill through the House, the United States would be
set on an irreversible path to socialism.
Fortunately, Tea
Party-aligned Republican Congress members refused to sell out their nation.
They held the line against intense pressure, and no amnesty bill was passed
through the House in Obama’s eight years in the White House.
‘Fast for Families’
In November 2013,
Medina, along with Cristian Avila of amnesty advocacy group Mi Familia Vota and
Dae Jung Yoon of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium
(a hard-left group that supports communist North Korea), started a 22-day “fast
for families” in front of Capitol Hill “to demand Congress approve
comprehensive immigration reform,” according to People’s World.
The staged protest
gained worldwide media attention. Several Democratic members of Congress dropped by to
offer support, along with then-President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and
Vice President Joe Biden.
Still, House
Republicans did not budge.
On May 17,
2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign announced that
long-time DSA activist Dolores Huerta and
Medina would join the team as senior advisers in California.
“Huerta and Medina
will build on the campaign’s robust outreach to the Latino community in
California and work with the campaign’s senior team to organize and engage
Californians in conversations about Hillary Clinton’s plans to break down
barriers and help move the country forward.
“’We are thrilled
to be joined by two incredibly accomplished and admired leaders in the Latino,
immigrant and labor communities, Dolores Huerta and Eliseo Medina,’ said Buffy
Wicks, State Director for Hillary for California. ‘Their advocacy and
leadership … will go a long way in continuing the important work of reaching
every California voter in advance of the June 7 primary.’”
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure
was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama
years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
Senate Hearing: Obama’s DACA and Flores Orders Spiked Illegal
Migration
Sen. Ron Johnson
NEIL
MUNRO
23 May 201918
4:54
The illegal migration of “family units” and
“unaccompanied alien children” spiked after former President Barack Obama
signed off on the “DACA” amnesty and the Flores court
order, according to a graphic used by the chairman of the Senate Homeland
Defense Committee.
Committee chairman Rep. Ron Johnson,
R-Wisc., touted the jarring graphic by printing it on paper cups used by the
committee members. The graphic contradicts claims by Democrats that the huge
wave of Central American economic migrants are really refugees from a
humanitarian disaster caused by crime and crop failures in Central
America.
Officials expect almost one million
Central American migrants in the 12 months prior to October 2019. The migrant
wave includes hundreds of thousands of people in “family units.” These units
consist of adults who bring youths and children to help trigger the border
catch-and-release loophole.
The primary catch-and-release loophole
is the Flores court order, because it requires
border agencies to release migrants within 20 days if they bring children. Once
released, the migrant adults take jobs in American workplaces and their
children are sent to the schools used by the children of blue-collar Americans.
The Flores decision
“has been the essential driver, frankly, for the increase in family units,”
said Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland
Security in a May 23 committee hearing. He continued:
That certainty, that knowledge, that
they will be allowed to stay in the US. indefinitely, pending a court [asylum]
proceeding that could be years away … is a huge draw. Smugglers have
capitalized on that. They’re advertising that fact. We hear that routinely from
our interviews with families.
The 2015 extension of the 1993 Flores judgment
was accepted by the Obama administration, even though it requires border
agencies to release migrants within 20 days if they bring children. Obama’s
legal team could have fought the decision by filing appeals with higher courts,
but it instead signed an agreement to implement the decision.
Under policies set by judges, the 2015
agreement by Obama, ACLU activists, and the judge binds President Donald Trump,
even though he did not approve it, and even though the Supreme Court did
approve the extension.
Obama’s 2012 DACA amnesty offered a
sanctuary from deportation, plus work permits and Social Security Numbers, to
roughly 800,000 migrants who had been smuggled over the border by their
parents. The giveaway is legally
shaky, but it prompted many other illegal
migrants to get
their children delivered from Central America by smugglers
to U.S. border agencies, which then passed the children to the parents.
This government-enabled smuggling
operation helped bring tens of thousands of
carefuly smuggled Unaccompanied Minor Children (UACs) into the United States.
Very few migrants have been sent home, according to federal data.
Democratic legislators have refused to
reform the border rules, ensuring that 100,000 migrants — including 40,000
children — walked over the border in April 2019, into the nation’s job sites
and schools.
However, Trump’s deputies are preparing
a regulation that would allow them to detain migrants with children for more
than 20 days.
But Obama holdovers in the agencies have
slowed the regulation. The Flores requirement
that state officials set up a health and safety inspection process for family
detention centers has also delayed the regulatory fix.
Democrats say the migration is a
humanitarian crisis but deny their role in creating the disaster, which is now
emptying parts of Guatemala.