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.
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...
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...
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.”
THE
PRE- ELECTION and POST ELECTION COUP
So here’s what we know from the Nunes memo (https://www.scribd.com/docu...and the Grassly memo (http://www.powerlineblog.co....
So here’s what we know from the Nunes memo (https://www.scribd.com/docu...and the Grassly memo (http://www.powerlineblog.co....
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.
At
this point the game is up. Even Clintonista Mark Penn writing at the Hill knows
it's over. http://thehill.com/opinion/...
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)
“I was aware of intelligence and information about
contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my
mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians,
either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the
FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation
occurred.”
In late 2015, Britain’s Government Communications
Headquarters (GCHQ) was involved in collecting information regarding
then-candidate Trump and transmitting it to the United States. The GCHQ is the
UK equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. (MANDEL
NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
While GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump
campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been
targeted, after a series of highly coincidental meetings.
Most of these meetings with Papadopoulos—whose own
background and reasons for joining the Trump campaign remain
suspicious—occurred in the first half of 2016.
Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat
Alexander Downer, FBI informant Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK’s
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos—some
repeatedly so.
Mifsud, who introduced Papadopoulos to a series of
Russian contacts, appears to have more connections with Western intelligence
than with Russian intelligence.
Downer, then Australia’s high commissioner to the UK, met
with Papadopoulos in May 2016, in a meeting established through a
chain of two intermediaries.
Information allegedly relayed by Papadopoulos during the
Downer meeting—that the Russians had damaging information on Clinton—appears
nearly identical to claims later contained in the first memo from former MI6
spy and dossier author Christopher Steele that the FBI obtained in early July
2016.
Australian high commissioner to the UK, Alexander Downer.
(GOH CHAI HIN/AFP/Getty Images)
Downer’s conversation with Papadopoulos was reportedly
disclosed to the FBI on July 22, 2016, through Australian government channels,
although it may have come directly from Downer himself.
Details from the conversation between Downer and
Papadopoulos were then used by the FBI to open its counterintelligence
investigation on July 31, 2016.
In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, the head of the
UK’s GCHQ, traveled to Washington to meet withBrennan regarding
alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Around the same
time, Brennan formedan inter-agency
task force comprising an estimated six agencies and/or government departments.
The FBI, Treasury, and DOJ handled the domestic inquiry into Trump and possible
Russia connections. The CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
and the NSA handled foreign and intelligence aspects.
During this time, Brennan appeared to have employed the
use of reverse targeting, which refers to
the targeting of a foreign individual with the intent of capturing data on a
U.S. citizen.
Mr. Brennan: “We call it incidental
collection in terms of CIA’s foreign intelligence collection authorities. Any
time we would incidentally collect information on a U.S. person, we would hand
that over to the FBI because they have the legal authority to do it. We would
not pursue that type of investigative, you know, sort of leads. We would give
it to the FBI. So, we were picking things up that was of great relevance
to the FBI, and we wanted to make sure that they were there—so they could piece
it together with whatever they were collecting domestically here.”
As this foreign intelligence—unofficial in nature and
outside of any traditional channels—was gathered, Brennan began a process of
feeding his gathered intelligence to the FBI. Repeated transfers of foreign
intelligence from the CIA director pushed the FBI toward the establishment of a
formal counterintelligence investigation.
The last major segment of Brennan’s efforts involved a
series of three reports. The first, titled the “Joint Statement from the
Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National
Intelligence on Election Security,” was released on Oct. 7, 2016. The second
report,“GRIZZLY STEPPE —Russian
Malicious Cyber Activity,” was released on Dec. 29, 2016. The third
report, “Assessing Russian Activities
and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections”—also known as the
intelligence community assessment (ICA)—was released on Jan. 6, 2017.
This final report was used to continue pushing the
Russia-collusion narrative following the election of President Donald Trump. Notably,
Adm. Mike Rogers of the NSA publicly dissented from the findings of the ICA,
assigning it only a moderate confidence level.
Fusion GPS and the Steele Dossier
Meanwhile, another less official effort began.
Information paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton
campaign targeting Trump made its way to the highest levels of the FBI and the
State Department, with a sophisticated strategy relying on the personal
connections of hired operatives.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. (JEWEL
SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)
At the center of the multi-pronged strategy to
disseminate the information were Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and former
British spy Steele.
In early March 2016, Fusion GPS approached Perkins
Coie—the law firm used by the Clinton campaign and the DNC—expressing interest
in an “engagement,” according to an Oct. 24, 2017, response letter by Perkins
Coie. The firm hired Fusion GPS in April 2016 to “perform a variety of research
services during the 2016 election cycle.”
Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, was retained
by Fusion GPS during the period between June and November 2016. During this
time, Steele produced 16 memos, with the last memo dated Oct. 20, 2016. There
is one final memo that Steele wrote on Dec. 13 at the request of Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.).
Sen. John McCain commissioned one of Steele’s memos.
(Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Steele provided Fusion GPS with something that Simpson’s
firm was lacking: access to individuals within the FBI and the State
Department. These contacts could be traced back to at least 2010, when Steele
had provided assistance in the FBI’s investigation into FIFA over concerns that
Russia might have been engaging in bribery to host the 2018 World Cup.
Sometime in the latter half of 2014, Steele began to
informally provide reports he had
prepared for a private client to the State Department. One of the recipients of
the reports was Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European
and Eurasian affairs.
After Steele’s company was hired by Fusion GPS in June
2016, he began to reach out to the FBI through Michael Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attaché at the U.S.
Embassy in Rome who Steele had worked with on the FIFA case. Gaeta also headed
up the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime unit, which specializes in investigating
criminal groups from Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine.
Gaeta was later identified as Steele’s FBI handler, in a
July 16, 2018, congressional testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight
committees by Page.
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian
Affairs Victoria Nuland. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
On July 5, 2016, Gaeta traveled to London and met with
Steele at the offices of Steele’s firm, Orbis. At some point in early July,
Steele passed his initial report to Nuland and the State Department. Nuland
later said these documents were passed on at some point to both the FBI and
then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
Exactly what happened with the reports that Gaeta brought
back from London, and precisely who he gave them to within the FBI, remains
unknown, although some media reports have indicated they might have been sent
to the FBI’s New York Field Office. During the period following Steele’s
initial contact with the FBI, there appears to have been no further FBI
interaction or contact with Steele.
Former CIA Contractor Worked for Fusion GPS
Notably, eight months before Fusion GPS hired Christopher
Steele, Simpson had hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of then-Associate Deputy
Attorney General Bruce Ohr, to work for his firm as a researcher in October
2015. It was at this time that Fusion GPS was retained by the Washington Free
Beacon to engage in research on the Trump campaign.
Prior to joining Fusion GPS, Nellie had worked as an
independent contractor for an internal open-source division of the CIA, Open
Source Works, from 2008 to at least June 2010; it appears likely she remained
in that role into 2014.
Nellie told congressional investigators, in her Oct. 19,
2018, closed-door testimony, that part of her work for Fusion GPS was to
research the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, including campaign associate
Carter Page, early campaign supporter Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and campaign
manager Paul Manafort, as well as Trump’s family members, including some of his
children.
Additionally, email communications between her and Bruce Ohr
show that she routinely sent her husband at the DOJ articles on Russia—most
carrying a similar negative slant. The emails continued through the duration of
Nellie’s employment with Fusion GPS and usually contained a brief, often
one-line comment from Nellie.
In her testimony, Nellie described her work as
online open-source efforts that utilized “Russian sources, media, social media,
government, you know, business registers, legal databases, all kinds of
things.” Ohr said that she would “write occasional reports based on the
open-source research that I described about Donald Trump’s relationships with
various people in Russia.”
The work Nellie conducted for Fusion GPS matches the same
skill set used when she worked for Open Source Works, which is a division
within the CIA that uses open-source information to produce intelligence
products.
When asked how she came to be hired by Fusion GPS and who
had approached her, Nellie responded, “Nobody approached me,” telling
investigators that it was she who had initiated contact and approached Fusion
GPS after reading an article on Simpson.
Nellie would continue to work for Fusion GPS until
September 2016. By this time, Simpson and Steele already had started working on
pushing the Steele dossier into the FBI.
Following the end of her employment with Fusion GPS,
Nellie provided Bruce with a memory stick that contained all of the research
she had compiled during her time at the firm. Bruce then gave the memory stick
to the FBI, through his handler, Joe Pientka.
Bruce Ohr Becomes a Conduit
Nearly a month after Gaeta brought back the reports that
Steele provided in London, Simpson and Steele decided to pursue a new channel
into the FBI through Bruce Ohr. Bruce had known Steele since at least 2007,
when they met during an “official meeting” while Steele was still employed by
the British government as an MI6 agent. Steele had already been in contact with
Bruce via email in early 2016. Notably, most of these prior communications
appeared to discuss Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and his ongoing efforts to
obtain a U.S. visa.
Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr. (Samira
Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
On July 29, 2016, Steele wrote to Bruce,
saying that he would “be in DC at short notice on business,” and asked to meet
with both Bruce and his wife. On July 30, 2016, the Ohrs met Steele for
breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel. Also present at the breakfast meeting was a
fourth individual, described by Bruce as “an associate of Mr. Steele’s, another
gentleman, younger fellow. I didn’t catch his name.” Nellie testified that
Steele’s associate had a British accent.
The timing of the July 30 breakfast meeting is of
particular note, as the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, “Crossfire
Hurricane,” was formally opened the following day, on July 31, 2016, by FBI
agent Peter Strzok.
Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Images)
According to a transcript of Bruce’s testimony before
Congress, Steele relayed information from his
dossier at this meeting and claimed that “a former head of the Russian Foreign
Intelligence Service, the SVR, had stated to someone … that they had Donald
Trump over a barrel.”
Steele also referenced Deripaska’s business dealings with
Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and foreign policy adviser Carter Page’s
meetings in Moscow.
Lastly, Bruce noted that Steele told him he had been in
contact with the FBI but now had additional reports. “Chris Steele had provided
some reports to the FBI, I think two, but that Glenn Simpson had more,” he
said.
Immediately following the Ohrs’ breakfast meeting with
Steele, Bruce Ohr reached out to FBI Deputy Director McCabe and the two met in
McCabe’s office—sometime between July 30 and the first days of August. Also
present at this meeting was FBI lawyer Page, who had previously worked for
Bruce Ohr at the DOJ, where he was her direct supervisor for five to six years.
Bruce Ohr would later testify that during the July/August
meeting, he told McCabe that his wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion, noting, “I
wanted the FBI to be aware of any possible bias.” FBI General Counsel Baker,
who reviewed a portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
application to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page—which relied in part
on the information from Steele—told congressional investigators that he was
never told of Ohr’s concerns regarding possible bias and conflicts of interest.
On Aug. 15, 2016, a week or two following Bruce Ohr’s
meeting with McCabe, Strzok would send the now-infamous “insurance policy” text
referencing McCabe to Lisa Page:
“I want to believe the path you threw out for
consideration in Andy’s office – that there’s no way he gets elected – but I’m
afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely
event you die before you’re 40.”
On Aug. 22, Bruce Ohr had a meeting with Simpson. Ohr
would later discuss that meeting during his testimony:
“I don’t know exactly what Chris Steele was thinking, of
course, but I knew that Chris Steele was working for Glenn Simpson, and that
Glenn might have additional information that Chris either didn’t have or was
not authorized to prevent [present], give me, or whatever.”
It was at this meeting that Simpson first mentioned
Belarusan-American businessman Sergei Millian and former Trump attorney Michael
Cohen.
Brennan’s
Briefings to the Gang of Eight
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. (Chip
Somodevilla/Getty Images)
During this same period in late August 2016, Brennan
began briefing members of the Gang of Eight on the FBI’s counterintelligence
investigation, through a series of meetings in August and September 2016.
Notably, each Gang of Eight member was briefed separately, calling into
question whether each of the members received the same information. Efforts by
Democrats to block the release
of transcripts from each meeting are ongoing. Comey, however, did not notify
Congress of the FBI investigation until early March 2017, and it’s entirely
possible he was unaware of Brennan’s private briefings during the summer of
2016.
During her testimony, FBI lawyer Lisa Page was questioned
by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) in relation to an Aug. 25, 2016, text message
that read, “What are you doing after the CH brief?” CH almost certainly
referred to Crossfire Hurricane.
Lisa Page then was asked about an event that took place
on the same day as the “CH brief”—a briefing provided by Brennan to then-Senate
Minority Leader Harry Reid:
“You give a brief on August the 25th. Director Brennan is
giving a brief. It’s not a Gang of Eight brief. It is a one-on-one, from what
we can tell, a one-on-one briefing with Harry Reid at that point.”
According to Meadows, Brennan briefed Reid on the Steele
dossier:
“We have documents that would suggest that in that
briefing the dossier was mentioned to Harry Reid and then obviously we’re going
to have to have conversations. Does that surprise you that Director Brennan
would be aware [of the dossier]?”
Lisa Page appeared genuinely surprised that Brennan would
have been aware of the dossier’s existence at this early point, telling
Meadows: “The FBI got this information from our source. If the CIA had another
source of that information, I am neither aware of that nor did the CIA provide
it to us if they did.”
She elaborated further: “As of August of 2016, I don’t
know who Christopher Steele is. I don’t know that he’s an FBI source. I don’t
know what he does. I have never heard of him in all of my life.”
This claim by Page seems incongruous when viewed against
Bruce Ohr’s testimony that he met with Page and McCabe in the first days of
August following his July 30, 2016, breakfast with Steele:
“My initial meeting was with Mr. McCabe and with Lisa
Page.
“I was telling them about what I was hearing from Chris
Steele.”
Meanwhile, Brennan’s briefing prompted Reid to write not
one but two letters to Comey. Both demanded that Comey commence an
investigation, with the details to be made public.
Reid’s first letter, which touched on
Carter Page, was sent on Aug. 27, 2016. Reid’s second letter, far angrier and
declaring Comey to be in possession of material information, was sent on Oct.
30, 2016.
There had been reports that Comey
had been considering closing the FBI investigation of Trump, something Brennan
strongly opposed. Now, with Reid’s letters sent, that avenue was effectively
closed. The termination of the FBI’s Trump–Russia investigation would be all
but impossible in the face of Reid’s public demands.
Perhaps it was in response to Reid’s Aug. 27 letter that
the FBI suddenly reached out to Steele in September 2016, asking him for all
the information in his possession. The team working on Crossfire Hurricane
received documents and a briefing from Steele in mid-September, reportedly at a meeting
in Rome, where Gaeta also was present.
During Lisa Page’s testimony, she appeared to corroborate
this account, noting that the team received the “reports that are known as the
dossier from an FBI agent who is Christopher Steele’s handler in September of
2016.” She would later clarify the timing, noting “we received the
reporting from Steele in mid-September.” A text sent to her
by FBI agent Peter Strzok on Oct. 12, 2016, may provide us with the actual
date:
“We got the reporting on Sept 19. Looks like [redacted]
got it early August.”
Steele had produced eight reports from June 20, 2016,
through the end of August 2016 (there also is one undated report included in
the dossier). No further reports were generated by Steele until Sept. 14, when
he suddenly wrote three separate memos in one day. One of the memos referenced
a Russian bank named Alfa Bank, misspelled as “Alpha” in his memo. Steele’s
sudden burst of productivity was likely done in preparation for his Oct. 19
meeting in Rome with the FBI.
The impact of Brennan’s potential knowledge of the
dossier in August 2016 should not be underestimated. As Brennan testified to Congress,
his briefing to the Gang of Eight was done in consultation with the Obama
administration:
“Through the so-called Gang-of-Eight process we kept
Congress apprised of these issues as we identified them. Again, in consultation
with the White House, I personally briefed the full details of our
understanding of Russian attempts to interfere in the election to congressional
leadership.
“Given the highly sensitive nature of what was an active
counter-intelligence case, involving an ongoing Russian effort, to interfere in
our presidential election, the full details of what we knew at the time were
shared only with those members of Congress.”
The Carter Page FISA Warrant
Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
As the dossier was making its way into the FBI, the
agency began its preparations to obtain a FISA warrant on Trump campaign
adviser Carter Page, who was surveilled under Title I of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act.
According to Baker’s testimony, it appears that the FBI
began to set its sights on Carter Page in the summer of 2016. When asked how he
had first gained knowledge of the FBI’s intention to pursue a FISA warrant on
Carter Page, Baker testified that it came through his familiarity with the
FBI’s investigation:
Mr. Baker: “I learned of — so I was aware
when the FBI first started to focus on Carter Page, I was aware of that because
it was part of the broader investigation that we were conducting. So I was
aware that we were investigating him. And then at some point in time –”
Rep. Meadows: “But that was many years ago. That was
in 2014. Or are you talking about 2016?”
Mr. Baker: “I am talking about 2016 in the
summer.”
Rep. Meadows: “Okay.”
Mr. Baker: “Yeah. And so I was aware of the
investigation, and then at some point in time, as part of the regular briefings
on the case, the briefers mentioned that they were going to pursue a FISA.”
It appears the FBI, and possibly the CIA, began to focus
on Carter Page earlier than Baker was aware. Carter Page had been invited some
months prior to a July 2016 symposium held at Cambridge regarding the upcoming
election. The speaker list was notable:
· Madeleine Albright (former U.S.
secretary of state)
· Vin Weber (Republican
Party strategist and former congressman)
· Peter Ammon (German
ambassador to the UK)
· Sir Richard Dearlove (former head
of MI6 and Steele’s former boss)
· Bridget Kendall (BBC
diplomatic correspondent and the next master of Peterhouse College)
· Sir Malcolm Rifkind (former
defense and foreign secretary)
Carter Page attended the event just four days after his
July 2016 Moscow trip, and it was during this time in the UK that he first
encountered Stefan Halper. Page’s Moscow trip would later figure prominently in
the Steele dossier.
Halper, who has been outed as an FBI informant, stayed in
contact with Carter Page for the next 14 months, severing ties exactly as the
final FISA warrant on Page expired.
Trisha Anderson, the principal deputy general counsel for
the FBI and head of the bureau’s National Security and Cyber Law Branch,
approved the application for a warrant to spy on Carter Page before it went to
FBI Director James Comey.
According to Anderson, pre-approvals for the Carter Page
FISA warrant were provided by both McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Sally
Yates, before the FISA application was ever presented to Anderson for review.
“[M]y boss and my boss’ boss had already reviewed and
approved this application. And, in fact, the Deputy Attorney General, who had
the authority to sign the application, to be the substantive approver on the
FISA application itself, had approved the application. And that typically would
not have been the case before I did that,” said Anderson.
The unusual preliminary reviews and approvals from both
McCabe and Yates appear to have had a substantial impact on the normal review
process, leading other individuals like Anderson to believe that the warrant
application was more vetted than it really was.
Anderson also testified that she had not read the Carter
Page FISA application prior to signing off on it and passing it along to Comey
for the final FBI signature. According to FBI lawyer Sally Moyer, the
underlying Woods file (a document that provides facts supporting the
allegations made in a FISA application) was only read by the originating agent
and the supervisory special agent in the field. Moyer also noted that the Woods
file relating to the Page FISA had not been reviewed or audited by anyone.
The Carter Page FISA application was largely reliant on
the Steele dossier, which was unverified at the time of its submission to the
FISA court and remains unverified by the FBI to this day. Circular reporting,
provided by Steele himself, was used as corroboration of the dossier.
Additionally, Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, whose conversation
with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer was used to open the FBI’s July 31,
2016, counterintelligence investigation, is referenced in the FISA, yet there
“is no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and
Papadopoulos,” according to a House Intelligence Committee memo.
Moyer testified that without the Steele dossier, the
Carter Page application would have had a “50/50” chance of achieving the
probable cause standard before the FISA court. Notably, the Steele dossier is
generally considered to have been largely discredited.
A Perkins Coie Partner and Alfa Bank
Allegations
Michael Sussmann, partner at Perkins Coie. (Courtesy
Perkins Coie)
On Sept. 19, shortly after Steele completed his latest
three memos, FBI General Counsel James Baker met with Perkins Coie partner
Michael Sussmann, the lawyer the DNC turned to on April 28, 2016, after
discovering the alleged hacking of their servers.
Sussman, who sought out the meeting, presented Baker with
documents that Baker described as “a stack of material I don’t know maybe a
quarter inch half inch thick something like that clipped together, and then I
believe there was some type of electronic media, as well, a disk or something.”
The information that Sussmann gave to Baker was related
to what Baker described as “a surreptitious channel of communications” between
the Trump Organization and “a Russian organization associated with the Russian
Government.”
Baker was describing alleged communications between Alfa
Bank and a server in the Trump Tower. The allegations, which were investigated
by the FBI and proven to be false, were widely covered in the media.
Just four days earlier, on Sept. 14, Steele mentioned
Alfa Bank (misspelled as Alpha bank) in one of his memos.
According to Baker’s testimony, there appears to have
been at least three meetings with Sussmann—the first in person and at least two
subsequent meetings by phone. In either the second or third conversation, Baker
came to understand The New York Times was also in possession of Sussmann’s
information. As would become clear later, other members of the media also had
this same information.
As Baker was meeting with Sussmann, Steele was back in
Washington for a series of meetings that included his DOJ contact, Bruce Ohr.
On Sept. 23, 2016, Bruce Ohr again met with Steele for
breakfast, telling lawmakers during testimony, “Steele was in Washington, D.C.,
again, and he reached out to me, and, again, we met for breakfast, and he
provided some additional information.” Ohr said this meeting concerned similar
topics that were discussed at the July 30, 2016, meeting but did not provide
further details.
Bruce Ohr would also meet either that same month or in
early October with FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and DOJ career
officials from the criminal division, Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad, and Andrew
Weissman (Ohr testified that he was unsure whether Weismann was at this or a later
meeting). Both Weissman and Ahmad would later become part of the team assembled
by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Steele’s Meetings With the Media
On the same day that Bruce Ohr met with Christopher
Steele for breakfast, on Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff
published an article about Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
The article, headlined “U.S. Intel Officials Probe Ties
Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin,” was based on an interview with Steele.
Isikoff’s article would later be used by the FBI in the FISA spy warrant
application on Carter Page as corroborating information.
Following the publication of the Isikoff article, the
Hillary for America campaign released a statement on the same day that touted
Isikoff’s “bombshell report,” with the full article attached.
A second lengthy article was published on Sept. 23, by
Politico: “Who Is Carter Page? The Mystery
of Trump’s Man in Moscow,” by Julia Ioffe. This article was
particularly interesting as it appeared to highlight media efforts by Fusion
GPS:
“As I started looking into Page, I began getting calls
from two separate ‘corporate investigators’ digging into what they claim are
all kinds of shady connections Page has to all kinds of shady Russians. One is
working on behalf of various unnamed Democratic donors; the other won’t say who
turned him on to Page’s scent. Both claimed to me that the FBI was
investigating Page for allegedly meeting with Igor Sechin and Sergei Ivanov,
who was until recently Putin’s chief of staff—both of whom are on the sanctions
list—when Page was in Moscow in July for that speech.”
Ioffe noted that “seemingly everyone I talked to had also
talked to the Washington Post, and then there were these corporate
investigators who drew a dark and complex web of Page’s connections.”
Her article also mentioned rumors regarding Alfa Bank:
“In the interest of due diligence, I also tried to run
down the rumors being handed me by the corporate investigators: that Russia’s
Alfa Bank paid for the trip as a favor to the Kremlin; that Page met with
Sechin and Ivanov in Moscow; that he is now being investigated by the FBI for
those meetings because Sechin and Ivanov were both sanctioned for Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine.”
It was probably during this same trip to Washington that
Steele met withJonathan Winer, a
former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement
and former special envoy for Libya, whom Steele had known since at least 2010.
Winer had received a separate dossier, very similar to
Steele’s, from longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This “second
dossier” had been compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former
journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer
gave Steele a copy of the “second dossier.” Steele then shared this second
dossier with the FBI, which may have used it as a means to corroborate Steele’s
own dossier.
Steele also met with U.S. media during his visit to
Washington, doing so “at Fusion’s instruction.” According to UK Court documents, Steele testified
that he “briefed” The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New
Yorker, and CNN at the end of September 2016. Steele would engage in a second
round of media contact in mid-October 2016, meeting again with The New York
Times, The Washington Post, and Yahoo News. Steele testified that all these
meetings were “conducted verbally in person.”
Alfa Bank Media Leaks
Former FBI General Counsel James Baker.
As Steele’s media meetings were going on, FBI General
Counsel James Baker learned that Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann was also
speaking with reporters from The New York Times regarding the Alfa Bank
information that Sussmann had provided to the FBI. After some internal
discussion, the FBI approached both Sussmann and The New York Times, asking
that any story be held until the FBI had time to complete an investigation into
the documents provided by Sussmann. It appears that an agreement was reached,
and the FBI began to look into the claims regarding Alfa Bank and the server at
Trump Tower.
But Sussman wasn’t the only one that Baker, currently the
subject of an ongoing criminal leak investigation, was speaking with. According
to congressional investigators, beginning sometime in September 2016—before the
presidential election—Baker began having conversations with his old friend and
journalist, David Corn of Mother Jones.
According to Baker, these conversations were in relation
to ongoing FBI matters:
Rep. Jordan: “Did you talk to Mr. Corn prior
to the election about anything, anything related to FBI matters? Not — so we’re
not going to ask about the Steele dossier. Anything about FBI business, FBI
matters?”
Mr. Baker: “Yes.”
Rep. Jordan: “Yes. And do you know —
can you give me some dates or the number of times that you talked to Mr. Corn
about FBI matters leading up to the 2016 Presidential election?”
Mr. Baker: “I don’t remember, Congressman.”
By Oct. 31, 2016, the FBI had apparently wrapped up their
investigation into the Alfa Bank allegations, finding no evidence of anything
untoward in the process. It was on this day that three separate articles on
Alfa Bank would be published.
The first, “Investigating Donald Trump,
F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia” by The New York Times, appeared to
be an updated version of the article they had intended to publish before the
FBI asked them to delay their reporting. It stated the following:
“In classified sessions in August and September,
intelligence officials also briefed congressional leaders on the possibility of
financial ties between Russians and people connected to Mr. Trump. They focused
particular attention on what cyberexperts said appeared to be a mysterious
computer back channel between the Trump Organization and the Alfa Bank, which
is one of Russia’s biggest banks and whose owners have longstanding ties to Mr.
Putin.”
The reference to “classified sessions in August and
September” is likely in relation to the series of Gang of Eight briefings that
former CIA Director John Brennan engaged in at that time—including his briefing
to then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The article continued:
“F.B.I. officials spent weeks examining computer data
showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa Bank.
Computer logs obtained by The New York Times show that two servers at Alfa Bank
sent more than 2,700 ‘look-up’ messages—a first step for one system’s computers
to talk to another—to a Trump-connected server beginning in the spring. But the
F.B.I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like
a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.”
The second article, “Was a Trump Server
Communicating With Russia?” by Slate Magazine, was solely focused
on the allegations regarding a server in the Trump Tower that had allegedly
been communicating with a server at Alfa Bank in Russia.
Immediately following the publication of the Slate
article, Clinton posted a tweet that included
a statement from Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser:
“Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert
server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”
Sullivan’s statement referenced the Slate article and
included the following:
“This could be the most direct link yet between Donald
Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server
linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.
“This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the
mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization
felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal
the link when it was discovered by journalists.”
The Alfa Bank story took off—despite the same-day story
from The New York Times that specifically noted the FBI had investigated that
matter and found nothing untoward.
The final article published on Oct. 31, “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI
Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump” by Mother Jones
reporter—and Baker’s friend —David Corn, also mentioned Alfa Bank:
“In recent weeks, reporters in Washington have pursued
anonymous online reports that a
computer server related to the Trump Organization engaged in a high level of
activity with servers connected to Alfa Bank, the largest private bank in
Russia. On Monday, a Slate investigation detailed the
pattern of unusual server activity but concluded, ‘We don’t yet know what this
[Trump] server was for, but it deserves further explanation.’ In an email to
Mother Jones, Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, maintains, ‘The Trump
Organization is not sending or receiving any communications from this email
server. The Trump Organization has no communication or relationship with this
entity or any Russian entity.’”
More notably, Corn’s article also provided the first
public reporting on the existence of the Steele dossier:
“A former senior intelligence officer for a Western
country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that
in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent
interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for
years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more
information from him.”
As it turns out, Corn had detailed, first-hand knowledge
of the dossier. According to testimony from Baker, Corn had been provided with
parts of the dossier by Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson. Baker knew of this fact,
because within a week of publishing his article, Corn passed these dossier
parts on to Baker personally:
Rep. Jordan: “Prior to the election Mr. Corn
had a copy of the dossier and was talking to you about giving that to you so
the FBI would have it. Is that all right? I mean all accurate.”
Mr. Baker: “My recollection is that he had
part of the dossier, that we had other parts already, and that we got still
other parts from other people, and that — and nevertheless some of the parts
that David Corn gave us were parts that we did not have from another source?”
Steele had written four memos after the FBI team received
his information in mid-September. All of the memos were written in October—on
the 12th, 18th, 19th, and the 20th. It is possible that these were the
memos passed along to Baker by Corn.
Baker testified that he received elements of the dossier
from Corn that were not in the FBI’s possession at the time. He said that he
immediately turned this information over to leadership within the FBI, noting,
“I think it was Bill Priestap,” the head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence
Division.
The use of personal relationships as a mechanism to
transmit outside information to the FBI was actually noted by Baker, who said
of Corn: “Even though he was my friend, I was also an FBI official. He knew
that. And so he wanted to somehow get that into the hands of the FBI.”
Bruce Ohr’s FBI Handler
Christopher Steele was terminated as a source by the FBI
on Nov. 1, 2016, for communicating with the media. Despite this, DOJ official
Bruce Ohr and Steele communicated regularly for another full year, until
November 2017.
On Nov. 21, 2016, Ohr had a meeting with FBI agent Peter
Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and was introduced to FBI agent Joe Pientka,
who became Ohr’s FBI handler. Pientka was also present with Strzok during the
Jan. 24, 2017, interview of Trump’s national security
adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
The next day, Nov. 22, 2016, Ohr met alone with Pientka.
Ohr would continue to relay his communications with Steele to the FBI through
Pientka, who then recorded them in FD-302 forms. What Ohr didn’t know was that
Pientka was transmitting all the information directly to Strzok.
Ohr, in his testimony, detailed his interactions with
Steele and Glenn Simpson, as well as his communications with officials at the
FBI and DOJ. Notably, Ohr repeatedly stated that he never vetted any of the
information provided by either Steele or Simpson. He simply turned it over or
relayed it to the FBI—usually to Pientka—but Ohr also testified that “at least
on two occasions I was handed onto a new agent.”
Sometime in late 2016, his wife, Nellie Ohr, provided him
with a memory stick containing all of her research that she had compiled while
employed at Fusion GPS. Bruce Ohr testified he gave the memory stick to Pientka.
Nellie Ohr had left Fusion in September 2016. Through Pientka, Strzok now had
all of Nellie Ohr’s Fusion research in his possession.
On Dec. 10, 2016, Bruce Ohr met with Simpson, who gave
him a memory stick that Ohr believed contained a copy of the Steele dossier.
Ohr also passed this second memory stick along to Pientka.
On Jan. 20, 2017, Ohr had one final communication with
Simpson, a phone call that took place on the same day as Trump’s inauguration.
Ohr testified that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson was concerned that one
of Steele’s sources was about to be exposed through the pending publication of
an article:
Mr. Ohr: “He says something along the
lines of, I — there’s going to be some reporting in the next few days that’s
going to — could expose the source, and the source could be in personal
danger.”
Rep. Meadows: “And why was he concerned about
that source being exposed?”
Mr. Ohr: “I think he was aware of some
kind of article that was likely to come out in the next, you know, few days or
something.”
Apparently, Simpson’s information was at least partly accurate. On
Jan. 24, 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that Sergei Millian, a
Belarusan-American businessman and onetime Russian government translator, was
both “Source D” and “Source E” in the dossier. It remains unknown exactly how
Simpson knew in advance that Millian would be outed as a source.
But there are some questions as to the accuracy of the
Journal’s reporting. The dossier appears to conflict with the newspaper’s
article in at least one aspect. According to the dossier, Source E was used as
confirmation for Source D—meaning they can’t be the same person.
McCain, the Dossier, and a UK Connection
Simpson and Steele were carefully thorough in their
dissemination efforts. The dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several
different sources.
One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Russia,
who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood may have previously worked on behalf of
Steele’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence; he was referenced in a UK court filing as an
associate of Orbis. Wood was also referred to as an adviser to Orbis in a deposition
by an associate of late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), David Kramer.
Kramer knew Wood previously from their mutual expertise
on Russia. Kramer said in his deposition, which was part of a defamation
lawsuit against BuzzFeed News, that Wood told him that “he was aware of
information that he thought I should be aware of and that Senator McCain might
be interested in.”
McCain associate David Kramer. (Courtesy McCain
Institute)
McCain, Wood, and Kramer would meet later that afternoon,
on Nov. 19, 2016, in a private meeting room at the Halifax International
Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Wood told both Kramer and McCain that “he was aware of
this information that had been gathered that raised the possibility of
collusion and compromising material on the president-elect. And he explained
that he knew the person who gathered the information and felt that the person
was of the utmost credibility,” Kramer said.
Kramer ascribed the word “collusion” three times to Wood
in his deposition. He also said that Wood mentioned the possible existence
of a video “of a sexual nature” that might have “shown the president-elect in a
compromising situation.” According to Kramer, Wood said that “if it existed,
that it was from a hotel in Moscow when president-elect, before he was
president-elect, had been in Moscow.”
No such video was ever uncovered or given to Kramer.
Kramer testified that following the description of the
video, “the senator turned to me and asked if I would go to London to meet with
what turned out to be Mr. Steele.”
Kramer traveled to London to meet with Steele on Nov. 28,
2016. Kramer reviewed all the memos during his meeting with Steele but wasn’t
provided with a physical copy of the dossier.
When Kramer returned to Washington, he was provided with
a copy of the dossier—which, at that point, consisted of 16 memos—during a
meeting with Simpson on Nov. 29, 2016. Kramer also testified that there was
another individual, “a male,” present at the meeting.
Late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Interestingly, Kramer testified that Simpson gave him two
copies of the dossier, noting that Simpson told him that “one had more things
blacked out than the other.” Kramer said, “It wasn’t entirely clear to me why
there were two versions of this, so but I took both versions.”
Kramer noted that Simpson, who was aware the dossier was
being given to McCain, said the dossier “was a very sensitive document and
needed to be handled very carefully.”
Despite that warning, Kramer showed the dossier to a
number of journalists and had discussions with at least 14 members of the
media, along with some individuals in the U.S. government.
Kramer testified that he gave a physical copy of the
dossier to reporters Peter Stone and Greg Gordon of McClatchy; to Fred Hiatt,
the editor of the Washington Post editorial page; Alan Cullison of The
Wall Street Journal; Bob Little at NPR; Carl Bernstein at CNN; and Ken
Bensinger at BuzzFeed. It’s possible that Kramer gave copies to other reporters
as well.
Kramer said that Simpson and Steele were aware of most of
these contacts, but that Kramer hadn’t told either of them that he gave the
dossier to NPR. He also noted that Steele had been in contact with Bernstein at
CNN and that the CNN and BuzzFeed meetings occurred at Steele’s request. Steele
told Kramer that he and Bensinger “had been in touch during the FIFA
investigation; they got to know each other that way.”
According to Kramer, he didn’t believe that Fusion GPS
and Simpson were aware of these two meetings with CNN and BuzzFeed.
Kramer testified that he, McCain, and McCain’s chief of
staff, Christopher Brose, met to review the dossier on Nov. 30, 2016. Kramer
suggested that McCain “provide a copy of [the dossier] to the director of the
FBI and the director of the CIA.” McCain later passed a copy of the dossier to
James Comey on Dec. 9, 2016. It isn’t known whether McCain also provided a copy
to then-CIA Director John Brennan. Notably, Brennan did attach a two-page
summary of the dossier to the intelligence community assessment that he
delivered to outgoing President Barack Obama on Jan. 5, 2017.
Kramer said that he wasn’t aware of the content of
McCain’s Dec. 9 discussion with Comey, noting that he “did not get any readout
from the senator on the meeting, but just that it had happened.”
Kramer did, however, provide updates to both Steele and
Simpson regarding the status of McCain’s meeting with Comey, in subsequent
discussions with Simpson and Steele:
“It was mostly just to inform him about whether or not
the senator had transfer — transmitted the document to the FBI. Both he and Mr.
Steele were — I kept them apprised of whether the senator was — where the
senator was in terms of his contact with the FBI.”
The implications of this statement are significant.
Kramer, a private citizen, was providing updates to a former British spy as to
what a sitting senator, and chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services,
was saying to the director of the FBI.
Other members of the media also had advance knowledge of
McCain’s intention to meet with Comey. Kramer testified that both Mother Jones
reporter David Corn and Guardian reporter Julian Borger came to meet with him.
According to Kramer, “They were mostly interested in Senator McCain and his,
whether he had given it to Director Comey or not.”
Several days after McCain, Brose, and Kramer met to
discuss the dossier, Kramer said that McCain instructed him to meet with
Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian
Affairs, and Celeste Wallander, the senior director for Russia and Central Asia
on the National Security Council.
The purpose of the meeting was to verify whether the
dossier “was being taken seriously.” Both Nuland and Wallander were previously
aware of the dossier’s existence, and both officials previously knew Steele,
whom “they believed to be credible.” Kramer said he didn’t physically share the
dossier with them at this point, but met again with Wallander “around New
Years” and “gave her a copy of the document”
Steele produced a final memo dated Dec. 13, 2016.
According to UK court documents, Kramer, on behalf
of McCain, had asked Steele to provide any further intelligence that he had
gathered relating to “alleged Russian interference in the US presidential
election.” Notably, it appears it was this request from McCain that led Steele
to produce his Dec. 13 memo.
Although Kramer didn’t provide a date, he said he
received the final Steele memo sometime after “Senator McCain had provided the
copy to Director Comey.” We know that Kramer received the final memo prior to
Dec. 29—when Kramer met with BuzzFeed’s Bensinger.
Kramer testified that Bensinger “said he wanted to read
them, he asked me if he could take photos of them on his—I assume it was an
iPhone. I asked him not to. He said he was a slow reader, he wanted to read it.
And so I said, you know, I got a phone call to make, and I had to go to the
bathroom…” Kramer said that he “left him to read it for 20, 30 minutes.”
Kramer also testified that besides the reporters, he gave
a final copy of the dossier to two other people in early January 2017: Rep.
Adam Kinzinger (R-Il.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s chief of staff, Jonathan
Burks.
James Clapper Leaks Details of Obama–Trump
Briefings
The ICA on alleged
Russian hacking was released internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day,
outgoing president Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the
assessment—and the attached summation of the dossier—with national security
adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Deputy Attorney General Sally
Yates. Rice would later send herself an email documenting
the meeting.
The following day, CIA Director John Brennan, Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary of
the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they gave Obama. Comey then met
with President-elect Trump to inform him of the dossier. This meeting took
place just hours after Comey, Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on
both the ICA and the Steele dossier.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. (Alex
Wong/Getty Images)
Comey would only inform Trump of the “salacious” details
contained within the dossier. He laterexplained on CNN in an
April 2018 interview that he had done so at the request of Clapper and Brennan,
“because that was the part that the leaders of the intelligence community
agreed he needed to be told about.”
Shortly after Comey’s meeting with Trump, both the
Trump–Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The
significance of the meeting was material, as Comey noted in a Jan. 7 memo:
“Media like CNN had them and were looking for a news
hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that
the FBI has the material.”
The media had widely dismissed the dossier as
unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that
Comey briefed Trump on it that CNN reported on the
dossier. The House Intelligence Committee report on Russian election interference
confirmed that Clapper personally leaked confirmation of the dossier, along
with Comey’s meeting with Trump, to CNN:
“The Committee’s investigation revealed that
President-elect Trump was indeed briefed on the contents of the Steele dossier
and when questioned by the Committee, former Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper admitted that he confirmed the existence of the dossier to the
media.”
Additionally, the House intelligence report shows Clapper
appears to have been the direct source for CNN’s Jake Tapper and his Jan. 10
story that disclosed the existence of the dossier:
“When initially asked about leaks related to the ICA in
July 2017, former DNI Clapper flatly denied ‘discuss[ing] the dossier [compiled
by Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016
election with journalists.’ Clapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the
‘dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,’ and admitted that he might have
spoken with other journalists about the same topic.
“Clapper’s discussion with Tapper took place in early
January 2017, around the time IC leaders briefed President Obama and
President-elect Trump, on ‘the Christopher Steele information,’ a two-page
summary of which was ‘enclosed in’ the highly-classified version of the ICA.”
On Jan. 10, 2017, CNN published the article “Intel Chiefs Presented
Trump With Claims of Russian Efforts to Compromise Him” by Evan Perez, Jim
Sciutto, Jake Tapper, and Carl Bernstein. (The article would later be updated
and have a Jan. 12, 2017, date.)
The allegations within the dossier were made public, and
with reporting of the briefings by intelligence community leaders, instant
credibility was given to the dossier’s assertions.
Immediately following the CNN story, BuzzFeed published the Steele
dossier, and the Trump–Russia conspiracy was pushed into the mainstream.
David Kramer was asked about his reaction when CNN broke
the story on the dossier. According to his deposition, Kramer stated, “I
believe my words were ‘Holy [expletive].’”
Kramer, who was actually meeting with The Guardian’s
Julian Borger when CNN reported on the dossier, said that he quickly spoke with
Steele, who “was shocked.”
On the following day, Jan. 11, 2017, Clapper issued a
statement condemning the leaks—without revealing the fact that he was the
source of the leak.
On Nov. 17, 2016, Clapper submitted his resignation as
director of national intelligence; his resignation became effective on Jan. 20,
2017. Later that year, CNN hired Clapper as its national security analyst.
The Effort to Remove General Flynn
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then-national security adviser to
President Donald Trump, was interviewed on Jan. 24,
2017, by FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka about two December 2016
conversations that Flynn had had with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
National security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. (Kevin
Hagen/Getty Images)
Details of the phone conversation had leaked to the
media. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI
regarding his conversations with Kislyak. It remains unknown to this day who
leaked Flynn’s classified call—a far more serious felony violation.
The Washington Post reported in January 2017 that the FBI
had found no evidence of wrongdoing in Flynn’s
actual call with the Russian ambassador. The call, and the matters discussed in
it, broke no laws.
Flynn has been portrayed in the media as being
suspiciously close to Russia; a dinner in Moscow that occurred in late 2015 is
frequently cited as evidence of this.
On Dec. 10, 2015, Flynn attended an event in Moscow to
celebrate the 10th anniversary of Russian television network RT. Flynn, who was
seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the culminating dinner, was
also interviewed on national security matters by an RT correspondent. Flynn’s
speaker’s bureau, Leading Authorities Inc., was paid $45,000 for the event and
Flynn received $33,000 of the total amount.
Seated at the same table with Flynn was Jill Stein, the
Green Party candidate in the 2016 election. By all accounts, including Stein’s, Flynn and Putin
didn’t engage in any real conversation. At the time, Flynn’s trip didn’t garner
significant attention. But it would later be used by the media and the Clinton
campaign to push the Russia-collusion narrative.
Notably, as stated by lawyer
Robert Kelner, Flynn disclosed his Moscow trip to the Defense Intelligence
Agency before he traveled there and provided a full briefing upon his return:
“As has previously been reported, General Flynn briefed
the Defense Intelligence Agency, a component agency of the DoD, extensively
regarding the RT speaking event trip both before and after the trip, and he
answered any questions that were posed by the DIA concerning the trip during
those briefings.”
Flynn’s trip to Russia was first brought to broader
attention on July 18, 2016, during a live interview at the
Republican National Convention with Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff.
The Isikoff interview took place on July 18, 2016.
Unknown at the time, the matter had also captured the attention of Christopher
Steele, who had begun publishing his dossier memos on June 20, 2016.
“Kremlin engaging with several high profile US players,
including STEIN, PAGE and (former DIA Director Michael Flynn) and funding their
recent visits to Moscow.”
In addition to the obvious questions raised by the timing
of Flynn’s name appearing in Steele’s Aug. 10 memo, is the manner in which
Flynn is denoted. All other names are capitalized, in the manner of
intelligence briefings. Flynn’s name isn’t capitalized and, in one case,
appears within parentheses.
Steele met with Yahoo News’ Isikoff in September 2016 and
gave him information from the dossier. The resulting Sept. 23, 2016, article from Isikoff
was then cited by the FBI as validating Steele’s claims and was featured in the
original FISA application, and its three
subsequent renewals, for a warrant to
spy on Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
Steele wasn’t the only person Isikoff was working with.
On April 26, 2016, Isikoff published a story on
Yahoo News about Paul Manafort’s business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg
Deripaska. It was later learned from a Democratic National Committee (DNC)
email leaked by Wikileaks that Isikoff
had been working with Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American operative who was
doing consulting work for the DNC. Chalupa met with top officials in the
Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose alleged ties between
Trump, Manafort, and Russia.
The obvious question remains: How did the information on
Flynn make its way into the dossier at the time it did, and who provided the
information to Steele?
Flynn’s 2015 dinner in Moscow was initially used to
implicate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. It was then used as a means to
cast doubts on Flynn’s ability as Trump’s national security adviser. Following
Flynn’s resignation, it was then used as a means to pursue the ongoing
collusion narrative that gained full strength in the early days of the Trump
administration.
A Jan. 10, 2017, article in The New York Times, “Trump’s National Security Pick
Sees Ally in Fight Against Islamists: Russia,” highlighted the
efforts:
“In an extraordinary report released last week, the
agencies bluntly accusedthe Russian
government of having worked to undermine American democracy and promote the
candidacy of Mr. Trump. The report is likely to renew questions about Mr.
Flynn’s avowed eagerness to work with Russia, and his dismissal of concerns
about President Vladimir V. Putin.”
Flynn would resign from his position as national security
adviser in February 2017. The sequence of events leading to his resignation
were both coordinated and orchestrated, with acting Attorney General Sally
Yates playing a leading role.
On Jan. 12, 2017, Flynn’s Dec. 29, 2016, call with
Kislyak was leaked to The
Washington Post. The article portrayed Flynn as undermining Obama’s Russia
sanctions that had been imposed on the same day as Flynn’s call with the
Russian ambassador.
On Jan. 15, five days before Trump’s inauguration, Vice
President Mike Pence appeared on “Face the
Nation” to defend Flynn’s calls.
A few days later, on Jan. 19, Obama officials—Yates,
Clapper, Brennan and Comey—met to discuss Flynn’s situation. The concern
they reportedlydiscussed was that
Flynn might have misled Trump administration officials regarding the nature of
his call with Kislyak.
Click on the infographic to enlarge
Yates, Clapper, and Brennan supported informing the Trump
administration of their concerns. Comey took a dissenting view. On Jan 23,
Yates again pressured Comey, telling the FBI director that she believed Flynn
could be vulnerable to blackmail. At this point, according to media reports,
Comey relented, despite the FBI finding nothing unlawful in the content of
Flynn’s calls.
Strzok and Pientka, at the instruction of McCabe,
interviewed Flynn the following day. According to court documents, McCabe and
other FBI officials “decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a
crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted Flynn to be relaxed.”
It was during this interview that Flynn reportedly lied to the FBI.
The DOJ was provided with a detailed briefing of the
Flynn interview on the following day. On Jan. 26, Yates contacted White House
counsel Don McGahn, who agreed to meet to discuss the matter. Yates arrived at
McGahn’s office, bringing Mary McCord, John Carlin’s acting replacement as head
of the DOJ’s National Security Division.
Yates later testified before Congress
that the meeting surrounded Flynn’s phone calls and his FBI interview. She also
testified that Flynn’s call and subsequent interview “was a topic of a whole
lot of discussion in DOJ and with other members of the intel community.” McGahn
reportedly asked Yates, “Why does it matter to the DOJ if one White House
official lies to another official?”
McGahn called Yates the following day and asked her to
return for a second meeting. Yates returned to the White House without McCord.
McGahn asked to examine the FBI’s evidence on Flynn. Yates said she would
respond by the following Monday.
Yates failed to provide McGahn with the FBI’s evidence on
Flynn. From that point, the pressure on Flynn and the Trump administration
escalated—with help from media reporting.
Flynn resigned on Feb. 13, after it was reported that he
had misled Pence about phone conversations he’d had with Kislyak.
The following day, The New York Times reported that “phone
records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016
presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with
senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election,
according to four current and former American officials.”
With Flynn gone and the Russian narrative firmly
established, the conspirators then turned their attention to Trump’s newly
confirmed attorney general, Jeff Sessions. On March 1, 2017, The Washington
Postreported that Sessions
had twice had contact with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak. The following day,
March 2, Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation.
On the same day that Sessions recused himself, Evelyn
Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, detailed efforts at
hampering the newly installed Trump administration, during a March 2,
2017, interview with MSNBC, in which she
described how the Obama administration gathered and disseminated intelligence
on the Trump team:
“I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking,
the people on the Hill … ‘Get as much information as you can. Get as much
intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.’
“The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we
knew about the Trump staff’s dealing with Russians, [they] would try to
compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to
that intelligence. … That’s why you have the leaking.”
Note that Farkas said “how we knew,” not just “what we
knew.”
Obama Officials Used Unmasking to Target
the Trump Campaign
On Tuesday, March 21, 2017, the chair of the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), met a
classified source who showed him “dozens” of intelligence reports. Contained
within these reports was evidence of surveillance on the Trump campaign. Nunes
held a press conference on March 22
highlighting what he had found:
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch
Times)
“I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the
intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens
involved in the Trump transition. Details about persons associated with the
incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign intelligence
value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”
In a series of rapid-fire questions and answers, Nunes
attempted to elaborate on what he had been shown:
“From what I know right now, it looks like incidental
collection. We don’t know exactly how that was picked up but we’re trying to
get to the bottom of it…I think the NSA’s going to comply. I am concerned – we
don’t know whether or not the FBI is going to comply. I have placed a call, I’m
waiting to talk to Director Comey, hopefully later today.
“I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the
President-elect and his team were at least monitored and disseminated out in
intelligence, in what appears to be raw—well I shouldn’t say raw—but intelligence
reporting channels.
“It looks to me like it was all legally collected, but it
was essentially a lot of information on the President-elect and his transition
team and what they were doing.”
The documents Nunes had been shown highlighted the
unmasking activities of the FBI, the Obama administration, and CIA Director
Brennan in relation to the Trump campaign. Although March 2017 would prove
chaotic, the Trump administration had survived the first crucial months, and
would now begin to slowly assert its administrative authority.
Comey Testifies No Obstruction by Trump
Administration
On May 3, 2017, James Comey testified before the
Senate Judiciary Committee. Under oath, Comey stated that his agency—and the
FBI’s investigation—had not been pressured by the Trump administration:
Sen. Hirono: “So if the attorney general or
senior officials at the Department of Justice opposes a specific investigation,
can they halt that FBI investigation?”
Mr. Comey: “In theory, yes.”
Sen. Hirono: “Has it happened?”
Mr. Comey: “Not in my experience. Because
it would be a big deal to tell the FBI to stop doing something that – without
an appropriate purpose. I mean where oftentimes they give us opinions that we
don’t see a case there and so you ought to stop investing resources in it. But
I’m talking about a situation where we were told to stop something for a
political reason. That would be a very big deal. It’s not happened in my
experience.”
FBI Director James Comey. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
Less than a week later, on May 9, Trump fired Comey based
on a May 8 recommendation by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Rosenstein would later tell members of
Congress: “In one of my first meetings with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions last
winter, we discussed the need for new leadership at the FBI. Among the concerns
that I recall were to restore the credibility of the FBI, respect the
established authority of the Department of Justice, limit public statements and
eliminate leaks.”
Regarding the recommendation, Rosenstein said: “I wrote
it. I believe it. I stand by it.”
McCabe’s FBI Reaches Out Again to Steele
Within days of Trump’s firing of Comey, the FBI, now
under the leadership of acting-FBI Director Andrew McCabe, suddenly decided to
reestablish direct contact with Christopher Steele through DOJ official Bruce
Ohr.
The re-engagement attempt came six months after Steele
had been formally terminated by the FBI on Nov. 1, 2016.
The FBI’s re-engagement of Ohr was highlighted during a
congressional review of some text messages between Ohr and Steele:
Mr. Ohr: “The FBI had asked me a few
days before, when I reported to them
my latest conversation with Chris Steele, they had had would he—next time you
talk with him, could you ask him if he would be willing to meet again.”
Rep. Jordan: “So this is the re-engagement?”
Mr. Ohr: “Yes.”
The texts being referenced were sent on May 15, 2017, and
refer to a request that Ohr received from the FBI to ask Steele to re-engage with
the FBI in the days after Comey had been fired on May 9.
This was the only time the FBI used Ohr to reach out to
Steele.
The Battle Between McCabe and Rosenstein
Two days after Comey was fired, on May 11, 2017,
McCabe testified before the
Senate Intelligence Committee. While the hearing’s original intent had been to
focus on national security threats, Trump’s firing of Comey completely altered
the topic of the hearing.
McCabe, who agreed that he would
notify the committee “of any effort to interfere with the FBI’s ongoing
investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign,” told members of
Congress that there had been “no effort to impede our investigation to date.”
In other words, McCabe testified that he was unaware of any evidence of
obstruction from Trump or his administration. Notably, Comey’s May 3 testimony
may have left McCabe with little choice other than to confirm there had been no
obstruction.
Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. (REUTERS/Kevin
Lamarque)
McCabe, however, failed to inform the committee that he
was actively considering opening an obstruction-of-justice probe of Trump—a
path he would initiate in a meeting with Rosenstein just five days later.
On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein
allegedly suggested to McCabe
that he could secretly record Trump. It was at this meeting that McCabe
was “pushing for the Justice Department to open an investigation into the
president,” according to witness accounts reported by The Washington Post.
In addition to McCabe, Rosenstein, and McCabe’s special
counsel, Lisa Page, there were one or two others present, including
Rosenstein’s chief of staff, James Crowley,
and possibly Scott Schools, the senior-most career attorney at the DOJ and a
top aide to Rosenstein.
An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The
Washington Post, framed the
conversation between McCabe and Rosenstein in an entirely different light,
noting that Rosenstein had responded with angry sarcasm to McCabe, saying,
“What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?”
This was just five days after McCabe had publicly
testified that there was no obstruction on the part of the Trump
administration.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. (Samira
Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Sometime later that same day, both Rosenstein and Trump
met with former FBI Director Robert Mueller in the Oval Office. The meeting was
reported as being for the FBI director position, but the idea that Mueller
would be considered for the FBI director role seems highly unlikely.
Mueller had previously served as the FBI director from
2001 to 2013—two years beyond the normal 10-year tenure for an FBI director. In
2011, Obama requested that Mueller stay on as FBI director for an additional
two years, which required special congressional approval.
Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel the
following day, on May 17, 2017, and in doing so, Rosenstein removed control of
the Trump–Russia investigation from McCabe and put it in the hands of Mueller.
This was confirmed in a recent statement by a DOJ
spokesperson, who said, “The deputy attorney general in fact appointed special
counsel Robert Mueller, and directed that Mr. McCabe be removed from any
participation in that investigation.”
Following the appointment of Mueller as special counsel,
it also appears the FBI’s efforts to re-engage with Steele abruptly ended.
‘There’s No Big There There’
We know the FBI hadn’t found any evidence of collusion in
the May 2017 timeframe. While McCabe was attempting to open an obstruction
investigation, Peter Strzok—who played a key role in the counterintelligence
investigation of the Trump campaign—texted Lisa Page about lacking evidence of
collusion:
“You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought
it was likely, I’d be there, no question. I hesitate, in part, because of my
gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.”
Page, who was asked about this text during her July 2018
testimony, said, “So I think this represents that even as far as May of 2017,
we still couldn’t answer the question.”
James Baker, who was questioned about the Strzok text,
was then asked if he’d seen any evidence to the contrary. He stumbled a bit in
his reply:
Rep. Meadows: “Do you have any evidence to the
contrary that you observed personally in your official capacity?”
Mr. Baker: “So the difficulty I’m having
with your question is, what does ‘collusion’ mean, and what does ‘prove’ mean?
And so I don’t know how to respond to that.”
FBI Leadership Speculates on New
Trump–Russia Collusion Narrative
In his testimony, Baker disclosed the actual substance of
discussions taking place at the upper echelons of the FBI immediately following
Comey’s firing—that Vladimir Putin had ordered Trump to fire Comey:
Mr. Baker: “We discussed, so to the best of
my recollection, with the same people I described earlier: Mr. McCabe, possibly
Mr. Gattis [Carl Ghattas, executive assistant director of the National Security
Branch], Mr. Priestap, possibly Lisa Page, possibly Pete Strzok. I don’t
remember that specifically.”
Rep. Ratcliffe: “So there was—there was a
discussion between those folks, possibly all of the folks that you’ve
identified, about whether or not President Trump had been ordered to fire Jim
Comey by the Russian Government?”
Mr. Baker: “I wouldn’t say ordered. I guess
I would say the words I sort of used earlier, acting at the behest of and
somehow following directions, somehow executing their will, whether—and so
literally an order or not, I don’t know. But—”
Rep. Ratcliffe: “And so—”
Mr. Baker: “As a—it was discussed as a
theoretical possibility.”
Rep. Ratcliffe: “When was it discussed?”
Mr. Baker: “After the firing, like in the aftermath
of the firing.”
The FBI, with no actual evidence of collusion after 10
months of investigating, began discussing a complete hypothetical at the
highest levels of leadership as a means to possibly open an
obstruction-of-justice investigation of the president of the United States.
During his testimony, Baker told lawmakers: “I had a
jaundiced eye about everything, yes. I had skepticism about all this stuff. I
was concerned about all of this. This whole situation was horrible, and it was
novel and we were trying to figure out what to do, and it was highly unusual.”
McCabe was later fired for lying to the DOJ inspector
general and is currently the subject of a criminal grand jury investigation.
The Fixer
Despite the ongoing assault from the intelligence
community and holdovers from the Obama administration, Trump was not entirely
without allies.
Dana Boente, one of the nation’s highest-profile federal
prosecutors, served in a series of critical shifting roles within the Trump
administration. Boente, who remained the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District
of Virginia until early 2018, concurrently became the acting attorney general
following the firing of Sally Yates. Boente, who was specifically appointed by
Trump, was not directly in the line of succession that had been previously laid
out under an unusual executive order from the Obama administration.
FBI General Counsel Dana Boente. (Mark Wilson/Getty
Images)
Upon the confirmation of Sessions as attorney general,
Boente next served as acting deputy attorney general until the confirmation of
Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general on April 25, 2017. Boente then became the acting
head of the DOJ’s National Security Division on April 28, 2017, following the
sudden resignation of Mary McCord.
Boente was appointed as FBI general counsel on Jan. 23,
2018, replacing Baker, who was demoted and reassigned. Baker is currently the
subject of a criminal leak investigation. Boente remains in his position as FBI
general counsel.
On March 31, 2017, the Trump administration asked for the
resignations all 46 holdover U.S. attorneys from the Obama administration.
Trump refused to accept the resignations of just three of them—Boente,
Rosenstein, and John Huber.
As Sessions noted in a March 29, 2018, letter to
congressional chairmen Chuck Grassley, Bob Goodlatte, and Trey Gowdy, Huber was
assigned by Sessions to lead a prosecution team and is currently working with
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz:
“I already have directed senior federal prosecutors to
evaluate certain issues previously raised by the Committee. … Specifically, I
asked United States Attorney John W. Huber to lead this effort.”
John Carlin’s Race With Admiral Rogers
Director of the National Security Agency Admiral Mike
Rogers. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
The Carter Page FISA application has been the subject of
significant media attention, but there’s another element to the story that,
although largely ignored, is equally important. It involved what amounted to a
surreptitious race between then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers and DOJ National
Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin.
Following a March 9, 2016, discovery that outside
contractors for the FBI had been accessing raw FISA data since at least 2015,
Rogers directed the NSA’s Office of Compliance to conduct a “fundamental
baseline review of compliance associated with 702” at some point in early April
2016 (Senate testimony & pages 83–84 of court
ruling).
On April 18, 2016, Rogers moved aggressively in response
to the disclosures. He abruptly shut down all FBI outside-contractor access. At
this point, both the FBI and the DOJ’s NSD became aware of Rogers’s compliance
review. They may have known earlier, but they were certainly aware after
outside-contractor access was halted.
The DOJ’s NSD maintains oversight of the intelligence
agencies’ use of Section 702 authority. The NSD and the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence (ODNI) jointly conduct reviews of the intelligence
agencies’ Section 702 activities every 60 days. The NSD—with notice to the
ODNI—is required to report any incidents of agency noncompliance or misconduct
to the FISA court.
Instead of issuing individual court orders, the attorney
general and the director of national intelligence (DNI) are required by Section 702 to provide
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) with annual certifications
that specify categories of foreign intelligence information the government is
authorized to acquire, pursuant to Section 702.
The attorney general and the DNI also must certify that
Intelligence Community agencies will follow targeting procedures and minimization procedures that are
approved by the FISC as part of the certification.
Carlin filed the government’s proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26,
2016. Carlin knew the general status of the compliance review by Rogers. The
NSD was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7,
2016, report by the NSA inspector
general and associated FISA abuse to the FISA court in his
2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers’s ongoing Section
702-compliance review.
On Sept. 27, 2016, the day after he filed the annual
certifications, Carlin announced his resignation, which would
become effective on Oct. 15, 2016.
John Carlin, DOJ’s National Security Division. (Alex
Wong/Getty Images)
On Oct. 4, 2016, a standard follow-up court hearing was
held (Page 19), with Carlin present.
Again, he made no disclosure of FISA abuse or other related issues. This lack
of disclosure would be noted by the court later in the April 2017 ruling:
“The government’s failure to disclose those IG and OCO
reviews at the October 4, 2016 hearing [was ascribed] to an institutional ‘lack
of candor.’”
On Oct. 15, 2016, Carlin formally left the NSD.
On Oct. 20, 2016, Rogers was briefed by the NSA
compliance officer on findings from the 702 NSA compliance audit. The audit had
uncovered a large number of issues, including numerous “about query” violations
(Senate testimony).
Rogers shut down all “about query” activity on Oct. 21,
2016. “About queries” are particularly worrisome, since they occur when the
target is neither the sender nor the recipient of the collected communication;
rather, the target’s “query,” such as an email address, is being passed between
two other communicants.
On the same day, the DOJ and FBI sought and received a
Title I FISA warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. At this point, the
FISA court still was unaware of the Section 702 violations.
On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally informed the FISA court
of his findings:
“On October 24, 2016, the government orally apprised the
Court of significant non-compliance with the NSA’s minimization procedures
involving queries of data acquired under Section 702 using U.S. person
identifiers. The full scope of non-compliant querying practices had not been
previously disclosed to the Court.”
Rogers appeared formally before the FISA court on Oct.
26, 2016, and presented the written findings of his audit:
“Two days later, on the day the Court otherwise would
have had to complete its review of the certifications and procedures, the
government made a written submission regarding those compliance problems … and
the Court held a hearing to address them.
“The government reported that the NSA IG and OCO were
conducting other reviews covering different time periods, with preliminary
results suggesting that the problem was widespread during all periods under
review.”
The FISA court was unaware of the FISA “query” violations
until they were presented to the court by then-NSA Director Rogers.
Carlin didn’t disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the
annual Section 702 certifications, apparently in order to avoid raising
suspicions at the FISA court ahead of receiving the Carter Page FISA warrant.
The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against
Rogers’s investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.
FISA Abuse & the FISC
Rogers presented his findings directly to the FISA
court’s presiding judge, Rosemary Collyer. Collyer and Rogers would work
together for the next six months, addressing the issues that Rogers had
uncovered.
It was Collyer who wrote the April 26, 2017, FISA court
ruling on the entire episode. It also was Collyer who signed the original
FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21, 2016, before being apprised of the many
issues by Rogers.
The litany of abuses described in the April 26, 2017,
ruling was shocking and detailed the use of private contractors by the FBI in
relation to Section 702 data. Collyer referred to it as “a very serious Fourth
Amendment issue.” The FBI was specifically singled out by the court numerous
times in the ruling:
“The improper access previously afforded the contractors
has been discontinued. The Court is nonetheless concerned about the FBI’s
apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in
similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been
reported.”
Rogers informed Collyer of the ongoing FISA abuses by the
FBI and NSD just three days after she personally signed the Carter Page FISA
warrant.
Virtually every FBI and NSD official with material
involvement in the original Carter Page FISA application would later be
removed—either through firing or resignation.
"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
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."
Codevilla's worry about a civil
war dovetails with The Fourth Turning,:
What the Cycles of History Tell Us About American's Next Rendezvous with
Destiny (1997) by William Strauss and Neil Howe. To my
reading, these authors predict a Fourth Turning Crisis period around the years
2020-2022. Then, many things that Americans have always taken for granted will
unravel.
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.
Katie Pavlich's Latest Books, Fast and
Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up are
available on Amazon
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
OPERATION OBOMB:
DESTABILIZE AMERICA TO
LAY GROUNDS FOR A MUSLIM-STYLE DICTATORSHIP
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/seth-barron-obama-and-building-of.html
*
“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
https://www.theepochtimes.com/eliseo-medina-revolution-through-illegal-immigration_2748588.html?ref=brief_Archives&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=6432f3abd5-
“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.’”
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
Central American Towns Empty as Migrants Rush to U.S. Border Loopholes
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
Los Angeles Times: Border Agencies Return Pregnant Migrants to Mexico
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
Wage Raises: Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi Tout Rival Plans
EconomyImmigrationPoliticsBarack
Obamacatch and releaseDACAFlores court orderH-1BimmigrantimmigrationMigrantmigrationRemain in MexicoUACs
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.”
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)
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.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/02/larry-elder-who-said-this-about-illegal.html
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
https://www.theepochtimes.com/eliseo-medina-revolution-through-illegal-immigration_2748588.html?ref=brief_Archives&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=6432f3abd5-
“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.
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