[LI] It seems ages ago, but was just a couple of months ago that controversy swirled around former National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s “unmasking” of names from classified intelligence reports.
We reported on the inconsistencies in Rice’s story on April 3, Susan Rice unmasked? Previously said “I know nothing about” Nunes allegations, and the following day on her interview by Andrea Mitchell, Susan Rice: Sought unmasking but “absolutely not for any political purpose”:
Now there is a new twist. Those White House unmasking records have been removed … to the Obama Library in Chicago, which isn’t even built yet.
This all came known when Judicial Watch sought the records. Judicial Watch’s press release states, in part, that the records not only have been removed, they may be unavailable for 5 years:
Judicial Watch today announced that the National Security Council (NSC) on May 23, 2017, informed it by letter that the materials regarding the unmasking by Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice of “the identities of any U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team” have been removed to the Obama Library.
(2) subject to any rights, defenses, or privileges which the United States or any agency or person may invoke, Presidential records shall be made available–
(A) pursuant to subpoena or other judicial process issued by a court of competent jurisdiction for the purposes of any civil or criminal investigation or proceeding;
(B) to an incumbent President if such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of current business of the incumbent President’s office and that is not otherwise available; and
(C) to either House of Congress, or, to the extent of matter within its jurisdiction, to any committee or subcommittee thereof if such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of its business and that is not otherwise available; and”
There are a number of ways the Trump administration can choose to get at the records. Importantly, the House Intelligence Committee subpoenas should still bear fruit. Devin Nunes might just have to add the Obama Library and the national Archivist to the subpoena list."
#4
Trump and Congress should go after these records just to p!ss-off the opposition and to push criminal charges. From what VRWC posted, it seems like a slam dunk case except for the usual gnashing of teeth and whining by the Dems, the RINOs and the legacy media.
#1
They really can't help themselves. They see their side as the resistance and the fight against the man, even though they are the biggest fascists of them all.
Wake up or die guys. Those are really your only choices.
#2
“we’ve got to stand up and fight back. We have got to be involved in the political process in a way that we have never been before, because what is happening in Washington right now is unprecedented.”
It is difficult to imagine how the Dems would act in ways they never have before. They have engaged in election-rigging and very likely far worse.
[Yahoo] LOS ANGELES -- More than two years after leaving the Obama administration, former Attorney General Eric Holder is reentering the political fray.
His goal: to lead the legal resistance to Donald Trump’s agenda -- and perhaps even run against the president in 2020.
Seized by a sense of urgency to oppose Trump and restore what he regards as America’s best self, Holder is mulling a White House bid of his own, according to three sources who have spoken to him and are familiar with his thinking.
"Up to now, I have been more behind-the-scenes," Holder told Yahoo News in an exclusive interview about his plans. "But that’s about to change. I have a certain status as the former attorney general. A certain familiarity as the first African-American attorney general. There’s a justified perception that I’m close to President Obama. So I want to use whatever skills I have, whatever notoriety I have, to be effective in opposing things that are, at the end of the day, just bad for the country.
"Now is the time to be more visible," Holder added. "Now is the time to be heard."
On Monday morning, Holder launched this new phase of his career by traveling to California to speak out.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/20/2017 9:58 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Did Holder ever pick up a criminal contempt charge in Congress over Fast and Furious? There was also a civil contempt charge in the courts over his failure to release request called for documents in F & F.
[Daily Caller] Democrats are worried that they could lose the extremely close Georgia special election runoff to replace former Rep. Tom Price.
Party leaders like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi invested time hosting fundraisers and urging others to campaign on behalf of Democratic contender Jon Ossoff, but as Republican contender Karen Handel narrows the gap between the two candidates, party strategists worry that they will lose in Tuesday’s runoff election.
"Just like any sporting event, however unlikely it is that you’re close heading into the fourth quarter, a loss is bitterly disappointing and there will be some feeling of, "when do we get this done if it’s not this race?'" Democratic strategist Dan Kanninen told Politico. "You’ll definitely see some hand-wringing from Democrats wondering when we’re going to get over that hump."
So far, Democratic candidates have lost in Kansas, Montana and the April 18 Georgia special election.
"There’s a lot of anticipation that Democrats could do better than Hillary [Clinton] did, but it remains to be seen if Democrats can turn these so-called red districts into something purple," former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile told Politico.
#7
ABC is carrying the Ay Pee live feed here. Most polling places closed at 7:00 p.m., a few that opened late are staying open until 7:30 -- they hope to have an official vote count of the 250,000 votes cast by 11:00 p.m. They are saying it looks close, so I guess it comes down to those who voted early.
The mask has fallen to the floor.
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain in 2012 turned over nearly $9 million in unspent funds from his failed 2008 presidential campaign to a new foundation bearing his name, the McCain Institute for International Leadership.
The institute is intended to serve as a "legacy" for McCain and "is dedicated to advancing human rights, dignity, democracy and freedom." It is a tax-exempt non-profit foundation with assets valued at $8.1 million and associated with Arizona State University.
Conservative and liberal critics, however, believe the institute constitutes a major conflict of interest for McCain, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.
McCain, a former Navy pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and was then a prisoner of war in the infamous Hanoi Hilton until 1973, is a major political force in Washington, D.C. He is presently chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services.
Critics worry that the institute’s donors and McCain’s personal leadership in the organization’s exclusive "Sedona Forum" bear an uncanny resemblance to the glitzy Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) that annually co-mingled special interests and powerful political players in alleged pay-to-play schemes.
The institute has accepted contributions of as much as $100,000 from billionaire liberal activist-funder George Soros and from Teneo, a for-profit company co-founded by Doug Band, former President Bill Clinton’s "bag man." Teneo has long helped enrich Clinton through lucrative speaking and business deals.
And Bloomberg reported in 2016 on a $1 million Saudi Arabian donation to the institute, a contribution the McCain group has refused to explain publicly.
In addition, the institute has taken at least $100,000 from a Moroccan state-run company tied to repeated charges of worker abuse and exploitation. The McCain group has also accepted at least $100,000 from the Pivotal Foundation, which was created by Francis Najafi who owns the Pivotal Group, a private equity and real estate firm.
The Pivotal Foundation has in the last three years given $205,000 to the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), which has been a vocal advocate for the Iranian nuclear deal the Obama administration negotiated.
The NIAC web site claims the group "is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the voice of Iranian Americans and promoting greater understanding between the American and Iranian people."
But NIAC President Trita Parsi has long been an advocate for Iran, including demanding in May 2017 that President Donald Trump and officials in his administration "cease questioning the integrity of a (nuclear) deal."
The NIAC is "Iran’s lobbyists in Washington," charged Aresh Salih, the Washington representative of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan. "People inside of Iran know them as their lobbyists in Washington, D.C.," Salih told TheDCNF.
The NIAC does not file as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, nor does it register as a lobbyist with Congress.
Yet in May 2013, Parsi spoke to a packed Capitol Hill meeting sponsored by Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison to argue in favor of the nuclear deal. Ellison was the first Muslim elected to Congress and is also deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
"This is a very real conflict of interest," Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, told TheDCNF. "This is the similar type of pattern we received with the Clinton Foundation in which foreign governments and foreign interests were throwing a lot of money in the hopes of trying to buy influence."
Liberal consumer advocate Ralph Nader founded Public Citizen.
Lawrence Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, told the DCNF that accepting contributions in the name of a sitting senator like McCain raises troubling issues.
"In terms of the ethics of it, it does raise a broad question of people trying to get good will with the elected official," he said. "From a personal standpoint, I’d rather not see these entities exist."
Charles Ortel, a retired Wall Street investment banker and philanthropy law expert, told TheDCNF that "high government officials such as John McCain, [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama should not get involved with vehicles like these where substantial sums can be funneled over time in ways that at best, wreak of impropriety and at worse are public corruption."
The institute’s donations not only suggest special pleading before the senator, but also in some instances appear to contradict McCain’s vision of human rights and national security.
It accepted more than $100,000 from OCP, S.A., a Moroccan state-owned phosphate company operating in the Western Sahara, territory which Morocco seized in 1975. The North African country has since occupied the region by force in defiance of U.N. resolutions and legal declarations by other international bodies.
Morocco has come under criticism from human rights groups that the government violates basic human rights and that its state-owned companies subject its workforce to gruesome conditions while exploiting the disputed territory’s natural resources.
The Western Sahara holds half of the world’s phosphate reserves. Used to make fertilizer, phosphate is called Morocco’s "white gold."
Last week, a South African court ruled in favor of the seizure of an OCP ship charged with illegally carrying 50,000 tons of phosphate from the Western Sahara. The country’s independence movement, which calls the territory the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, succeeded in convincing the court to keep the ship in port until the case is resolved. Little "convincing" required. The bribery and bidding wars hadn't even begun.
The King of Morocco was a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary Clinton personally accepted $12 million from the King in return for holding a CGI regional meeting in the country.
OCP also was a major sponsor of the CGI meeting, and Bill Clinton was the featured speaker.
The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice has charged OCP with "serious human rights violations," including exploitation of workers by not "adequately compensating the impoverished people who live there."
McCain has lavished effusive praise on the King of Morocco, saying in 2011, that the country was a "positive example to governments across the Middle East and North Africa."
McCain and Soros reportedly became friends after the senator was exposed as a member of the "Keating Five" during the savings and loan (S&L) industry scandal during former President George H.W. Bush’s administration. As the S&L bank chairman, Charles Keating paid $1.3 million to bribe five members of Congress to interfere with government regulators on behalf of the savings bank.
The experience so scarred McCain that he became a vigorous advocate of campaign finance reform and in the process reportedly became friends with Soros.
McCain recently claimed no involvement with the institute, saying "I’m proud that the institute is named after me, but I have nothing to do with it."
The institute did not respond to requests for the dollar amounts of its high donors, when the donations were made and if there were strings attached to the contributions, claiming it did not have any of the information. Late Monday, the institute’s spokesman referred The DCNF to Arizona State University.
#1
Just as Hildebeast did as Sec State, McCain has recently spent a lot of time traveling internationally spewing anti-Make America Great Again (anti-Trump) speech. McCain has sold out to international special interests for $$$.
#2
The experience so scarred McCain that he became a vigorous advocate of campaign finance reform and in the process reportedly became friends with Soros.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The experience so scarred McCain that he became a vigorous advocate of campaign finance reform and in the process reportedly became friends with Soros.
