Tag Archives: FBI

04/4/17

Grassley Wants Answers From The FBI… Why Were They Offering Money To A Spy? [VIDEO]

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Right Wing News

Sen. Charles Grassley is demanding answers on the Trump dossier that sought to smear the President. A point that should be examined closely is brought up here… why did the FBI offer to pay Christopher Steele for investigating Trump? Grassley wants an answer from Comey over that issue and fast. He’s particularly interested in Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and his role in the Trump-Russia affair. Why is the FBI delving into partisan politics here? A few weeks before the FBI offered to pay Steele for the dossier, the Democrats also paid him. It looks like the FBI never followed through on payment to the spy, but they were all set to pay him. What is the story here?

The FBI and the Democrats were actively investigating a political opponent. Unless there is something solid there to indicate it is a national security issue (and a serious one), that is extremely unethical and perhaps illegal. I would also like to know if there were communications on this matter between the Clinton camp and the FBI. It appears there were, which makes Comey and the FBI look complicit and very, very bad.

From the Washington Examiner:

Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey demanding the story behind the FBI’s reported plan to pay the author of a lurid and unsubstantiated dossier on candidate Donald Trump. In particular, Grassley appears to be zeroing in on the FBI’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, indicating Senate investigators want to learn more about McCabe’s role in a key aspect of the Trump-Russia affair.

Grassley began his investigation after the Washington Post reported on February 28 that the FBI, “a few weeks before the election,” agreed to pay former British spy Christopher Steele to investigate Trump. Prior to that, supporters of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign had paid Steele to gather intelligence on Clinton’s Republican rival. In the end, the FBI did not pay Steele, the Post reported, after the dossier “became the subject of news stories, congressional inquiries and presidential denials.” It is not clear whether Steele worked under agreement with the FBI for any period of time before the payment deal fell through.

“The idea that the FBI and associates of the Clinton campaign would pay Mr. Steele to investigate the Republican nominee for president in the run-up to the election raises further questions about the FBI’s independence from politics, as well as the Obama administration’s use of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political ends,” Grassley wrote in a letter to Comey dated March 28.

The fact that Obama would use law enforcement and intelligence agencies to further his political agenda does not surprise me in the least. But he should be held accountable for that. Hearings need to be convened over this surveillance of Trump and his associates. This is far more serious than Watergate ever was.

Grassley is gunning for McCabe. He noted that McCabe is already under investigation by the FBI‘s inspector general for playing a top role in the Hillary Clinton email investigation even though McCabe’s wife accepted nearly $700,000 in political donations arranged by a close Clinton friend, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, for her run for state senate in Virginia. “While Mr. McCabe recused himself from public corruption cases in Virginia… he failed to recuse himself from the Clinton email investigation,” Grassley wrote, “despite the appearance of a conflict created by his wife’s campaign accepting $700,000 from a close Clinton associate during the investigation.” McAuliffe is dirty as hell and here we are with Comey and the FBI again. Is it a coincidence he let Clinton walk during all this? I highly doubt it. All of the involved parties should be investigated at the very least and go to prison if found guilty of breaking the law here.

04/1/17

State Department Official Provides Intel to the Chinese For Cash, iPhone and Vacations

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

This is treason… this right here… no doubt about it. And I’ll bet you didn’t even hear it on the news. Candace Marie Claiborne, 60, has been with the State Department since 1999. She has been charged with two felonies: “Obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements to the FBI.” Both will land her in jail for a very long time… but why was she not charged with treason? She sold information and data to the communist Chinese. The last time I looked, they were our enemies. She kept it secret all these years, while receiving tens of thousands in cash, an iPhone and vacations. She has a Top Secret security clearance and had full knowledge that what she was doing was betraying her country and national security.

Claiborne was an office management specialist. She was posted at the headquarters in Washington, as well as U.S. diplomatic posts in Beijing and Shanghai, along with posts in Baghdad and Khartoum, Sudan. Let that sink in for a moment on just how bad this is. A criminal complaint in the case said she conspired with two Chinese intelligence agents working for the Shanghai State Security Bureau. She also worked with a fourth person who is a male U.S. citizen and a relative of Claiborne’s, who was not identified by name but labeled “Co-conspirator A” in court papers. And stunningly, this case is one of the very first Chinese espionage-related operations involving a U.S. citizen to come to light in nearly ten years. Believe me, our agencies are simply lousy with Chinese spies and operatives like this.

From Truth Revolt:

The FBI’s Washington Field Office announced Wednesday that sixty-year-old Candace Marie Claiborne, a U.S. Department of State employee, was charged with two felonies: “obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements to the FBI.” Allegedly she had numerous contacts with foreign agents that she kept secret. According to the Department of Justice:

“Candace Marie Claiborne is a U.S. State Department employee who possesses a Top Secret security clearance and allegedly failed to report her contacts with Chinese foreign intelligence agents who provided her with thousands of dollars of gifts and benefits,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General McCord. “Claiborne used her position and her access to sensitive diplomatic data for personal profit. Pursuing those who imperil our national security for personal gain will remain a key priority of the National Security Division.”

But wait, there’s more!

“Candace Claiborne is charged with obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements in connection with her alleged concealment and failure to report her improper connections to foreign contacts along with the tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and benefits they provided,” said U.S. Attorney Phillips. “As a State Department employee with a Top Secret clearance, she received training and briefing about the need for caution and transparency. This case demonstrates that U.S. government employees will be held accountable for failing to honor the trust placed in them when they take on such sensitive assignments”

“Candace Claiborne is accused of violating her oath of office as a State Department employee, who was entrusted with Top Secret information when she purposefully mislead federal investigators about her significant and repeated interactions with foreign contacts,” said Assistant Director in Charge Vale. “The FBI will continue to investigate individuals who, though required by law, fail to report foreign contacts, which is a key indicator of potential insider threats posed by those in positions of public trust.”

Other recent illegal intelligence activity by the Chinese government has primarily involved illicit acquisition of U.S. technology. This reminds me of the Bill Clinton years. The charges against Claiborne were filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. She pleaded not guilty on Wednesday during a hearing before Magistrate Judge Robin M. Meriweather. A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for April 18th. If convicted, Claiborne faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for obstruction of justice and five years in prison for making false statements to the FBI. Silly me, I thought treason was a death sentence. Not anymore evidently.

Here are some of the ‘gifts’ Claiborne received: Tens of thousands of dollars, jewelry, slippers, an iPhone, an Apple laptop computer, Chinese New Year’s gifts, meals, international travel and vacations, tuition at a Chinese fashion school, a fully furnished apartment and a monthly stipend. She also bragged that she could earn $20k a year by working for one particular agent. This is a Clinton-era person and she’s learned treason from the very best. There is no doubt about her dealings here.

The FBI counterintelligence investigation revealed that Claiborne was co-opted into working with Chinese intelligence in 2010 in exchange for cash and gifts. That’s smack dab in the middle of the Obama administration where things were more than loosy-goosy with national security. Claiborne was first posted to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 1999. She remained there until June 2003 when she moved to Shanghai. The person identified as “Co-conspirator A” lived with Claiborne when she was posted to Shanghai. After a stint in Baghdad, Claiborne returned to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in November of 2009 and remained there until 2012.

From the Washington Free Beacon:

The complaint states that Claiborne received a task from one of the Chinese intelligence agents in May 2011 and failed to report it as required under security rules.

The task came a month after the Chinese spy wired $2,500 to Claiborne’s bank account in the United States.

The agent sought information from Claiborne on “internal United States government positions on matters of U.S.-Sino relations,” specifically the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue, high-level U.S.-China talks launched by the Obama administration, the complaint said.

Chinese intelligence also sought information from Claiborne on what pressure the U.S. government planned to put on China and the “internal attitudes” of senior U.S. officials, according to the complaint.

Claiborne held meetings with the Chinese agents and used a Chinese social media application to communicate covertly with the agents.

In 2014, an FBI undercover agent posing as a Chinese intelligence officer contacted Claiborne and told her that the Ministry of State Security, China’s civilian spy service, considered her one of the agency’s “highest regarded” friends. A search of Claiborne’s journal in 2015 revealed the contacts with Chinese intelligence and the payments. The FBI questioned Claiborne in August 2016 when she denied having any foreign government contacts while in China and also made other statements that led to the false statement charges. In January, an ethnically Chinese FBI undercover agent talked to Claiborne while posing as a Chinese spy.

On Tuesday, she returned to the FBI office in Washington and acknowledged the relationship with the two Chinese intelligence officers, the complaint says. “Claiborne admitted to passing information to [the two Chinese agents], both orally and in writing but insisted she always provided unclassified information.” This is classic espionage. The woman was cultivated as a source for Chinese intelligence and flipped. So, while we are digging on the Russians, we might want to dig a bit on the Chinese. Just sayin’.

03/21/17

Trump vs. Fox News on Wiretapping

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

President Donald Trump is usually a fan of Fox News, but his opinion may now be changing. Fox News has been caught misrepresenting its own interview with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) on the subject of alleged wiretapping of President Trump, in order to make Trump look bad. The cable channel also threw one of its own commentators, Judge Andrew Napolitano, under the bus for highlighting a possible British role in gathering intelligence on Trump and his associates.

After having Nunes on the network’s “Fox News Sunday” show, Fox News claimed that he said “that phones at President Donald Trump’s campaign headquarters in midtown Manhattan were never tapped during last year’s election campaign, contrary to Trump’s earlier, unsubstantiated assertion.”

But if you listen to the video clip or read the transcript, that is not what Nunes really said.

Nunes actually said, “…the President doesn’t go and physically wiretap something. So if you take the President literally, it didn’t happen.” But Trump has referred to “wiretap” in quotes, to refer to surveillance. Nunes went on, “I think the concern that we have is that are—were there any other surveillance activities that were used unmasking the names” (emphasis added).

Unmasking refers to acquiring the name of a U.S. citizen in a surveillance report, even though that citizen’s personal privacy is supposed to be protected under U.S. law because he/she was not the target of the surveillance that captured the conversation. Trump press secretary Sean Spicer said on Monday, “Before President Obama left office, Michael Flynn was unmasked and then illegally his identity was leaked out to media outlets, despite the fact that, as NSA Director [Mike] Rogers said, that unmasking and revealing individuals endangers ‘national security.’ Not only was General Flynn’s identity made available, Director [James] Comey refused to answer the question of whether or not he’d actually briefed President Obama on his phone calls and activities.”

Nunes explained, “…the one crime we know that’s been committed is that one, the leaking of someone’s name through the FISA system. That is—that is a crime that’s been committed.”

At Monday’s hearing, Nunes repeated in his prepared opening statement, “…it’s still possible that other surveillance activities were used against President Trump and his associates.”

The media highlighted FBI Director James B. Comey’s statement at Monday’s hearing that the FBI and the Justice Department had “no information that supports” President Trump’s tweets about wiretapping.

But where could these “other surveillance activities” have originated? We know that a former British intelligence agent was involved in gathering “intelligence” against Trump in the form of the fake “Trump Dossier,” and was paid by donors associated with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Parts of that “dossier” were passed on to Trump by the U.S. intelligence community.

As we note in our special report, “A Watergate-style Threat to the Democratic Process,” it is well-known that the British NSA, known as GCHQ or Government Communications Headquarters, collaborates with the NSA. In fact, a declassified document on the NSA’s own website confirms NSA/GCHQ “collaboration” dating back decades. Fox News senior judicial analyst and commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano said his sources confirm there was such an arrangement in the matter of the “wiretapping” of Trump and/or his associates.

Fox News immediately threw Napolitano under the bus. “Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary,” Fox News anchor Shepard Smith said on-air. “Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now-President of the United States was surveilled at any time, any way.”

The phrase, “knows of no evidence,” does not suggest any independent investigation of his information.

One of Napolitano’s sources, former CIA operative Larry Johnson, came forward to say, “I reached out to friends in the intel community and asked them about the possibility that a back channel was used to get the Brits to collect on Trump associates. My sources said, ‘absolutely.’ I later confirmed this via a cutout with a person who is a Senior Intelligence Service executive in the CIA.”

In the face of this evidence of collaboration, NSA Director Mike Rogers tried to insist at Monday’s hearing that the NSA never asked the British to conduct surveillance of Trump. So why did the intelligence community accept and circulate the Trump dossier?

In a letter to Comey, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) noted that not only was the former British intelligence agent Christoper Steele “creating these memos as part of work for an opposition research firm connected to Hillary Clinton,” but that The Washington Post had reported that the FBI had reached an agreement a few weeks before the 2016 presidential election “to pay the author of the unsubstantiated dossier alleging a conspiracy between President Trump and the Russians, Christopher Steele, to continue investigating Mr. Trump” (emphasis added).

Grassley said, “The idea that the FBI and associates of the Clinton campaign would pay Mr. Steele to investigate the Republican nominee for President in the run-up to the election raises further questions about the FBI’s independence from politics, as well as the Obama administration’s use of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political ends.”

At the House Intelligence Committee hearing on Monday, Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) was still quoting from the discredited Trump dossier.

Although Comey confirmed to the House Intelligence Committee that the investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged relationship with Russian officials continues, there was no firm commitment to get to the bottom of the source (or sources) of the leaks to the media that are designed to damage the Trump administration.

Nunes said his committee wanted to pursue the matter, saying, “Numerous current and former officials have leaked purportedly classified information in connection to these questions. We aim to determine who has leaked or facilitated leaks of classified information so that these individuals can be brought to justice.”

As we argued in our column, “Investigate and Prosecute the Press,” there is a procedure to get to the bottom of at least one of these leaks. That is, to subpoena Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, the recipient of the illegal leak of the classified information naming or “unmasking” Michael T. Flynn.

Here’s what Ignatius, a known mouthpiece for the CIA, reported on January 12: “According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking.”

Subsequently, the Post revealed that, in regard to the Flynn matter, “Nine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.”

All of this leaking is illegal, a violation of the Espionage Act. It is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, has a financial relationship with the CIA and the NSA through the provision of computer cloud capabilities.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Nunes said that “still remaining out there is the unmasking of names and the leaking of names…we have a lot of surveillance activities in this country and I think the concern that the Trump administration has is, you know, were they actually using surveillance activities to know what they were up to, because we know that that happened with General Flynn. We know that his name was unmasked and we know that it was leaked out to the press.”

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) was unable to get exact figures from Comey or Rogers on the number of people at these agencies able to “unmask”—and therefore leak—a name. Such a number is absolutely vital in any identification of the leakers.

Comey did admit that the heads of the intelligence agencies and various Obama White House officials could have acquired access to unmasked names. But as Spicer noted at the White House press briefing, Comey would not talk about any discussions he may have had with President Obama on the matter.

It looks increasingly like any serious investigation of the illegal surveillance and leaking will have to be led and conducted by Rep. Nunes. But in going forward, it appears that the Fox News Channel has decided not to pursue the line of inquiry already opened up by one of its own commentators, Judge Napolitano.

Predictably, there are now demands that Fox News fire its senior judicial analyst for offering his own informed opinion based on the facts and his own sources of information.

[UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times and other media are now reporting that Judge Napolitano has been suspended by the Fox News Channel.]

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

02/27/17

Trump Should “Drain the Swamp” at the FBI Before Terror Strikes Again

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

Bill Gates was recently quoted as saying that bioterrorism could kill more people than nuclear war, but that Western governments are not ready to deal with it. The situation may be worse than he thinks. What stories about his remarks at the Munich Security Conference did not explain is that the FBI has still failed to resolve the question of who carried out the post-9/11 anthrax attacks on America.

Some of the evidence points to al Qaeda, and there are reports that other Islamic terrorist groups, such as ISIS, are now developing biological weapons.

For his part, President Donald Trump is currently engaged in a feud with the FBI over “illegal leaks” that he wants investigated and stopped.

Trump has a right to be concerned, even alarmed. And he certainly has a right to know the full extent of the corruption that ran rampant in the Bureau during its investigation of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, known as Amerithrax. The gross mishandling of the case serves as an example of how not to conduct a national security investigation involving weapons of mass destruction. It is also a warning that something similar—or perhaps more catastrophic—could happen again unless changes are made at the FBI involving monitoring the activities of jihadist groups on American soil.

We noted at the time that the anthrax letters, which were mailed to American media organizations and two senators, featured the phrases “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” and “Allah is God.” These were indications that an Islamic extremist had written them. But the FBI dismissed these obvious leads as a diversion intended to falsely blame radical Islam and focus attention away from the real perpetrator, supposedly a right-winger with a military background.

In the end, the FBI says “The Amerithrax Task Force—which consisted of roughly 25 to 30 full-time investigators from the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and other law enforcement agencies, as well as federal prosecutors from the District of Columbia and the Justice Department’s Counterterrorism Section—expended hundreds of thousands of investigator work hours on this case. Their efforts involved more than 10,000 witness interviews on six different continents, the execution of 80 searches, and the recovery of more than 6,000 items of potential evidence during the course of the investigation. The case involved the issuance of more than 5,750 grand jury subpoenas and the collection of 5,730 environmental samples from 60 site locations. In addition, new scientific methods were developed that ultimately led to the break in the case—methods that could have a far-reaching impact on future investigations.”

Still, independent experts believe the FBI did not solve the case.

While experts believe that al Qaeda was behind the attacks, a story about Bill Gates’ sensational warning about bioterrorism in the British Guardian reported that, “US and UK intelligence agencies have said that Islamic State has been trying to develop biological weapons at its bases in Syria and Iraq.” The publication said, however, that these intelligence agencies “have played down the threat, saying that the terrorists would need people with the necessary skills, good laboratories and a relatively calm environment free from the confusion and chaos of conflict zones.”

Playing down the threat of jihadist bioterrorism is something that U.S. intelligence agencies, led by the FBI, did in the case of the anthrax attacks. In 2010, the FBI officially blamed those attacks, which killed five Americans, on a dead man, U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins.

The independent investigators, including historian Kenneth J. Dillon, a former Foreign Service officer and intelligence analyst, and attorney Ross Getman, an expert on al Qaeda’s biowarfare program, are asking President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to reopen the anthrax mailings investigation. This could lead, Dillon argues, to exonerating an innocent man, identifying the real al-Qaeda perpetrator, and getting to the bottom of what went wrong in America’s premier federal law enforcement agency.

In 2002, then-Rep. Pence wrote a letter asking why international links weren’t being probed in the anthrax mailings.

From the start of the FBI’s inquiry, the Bureau seemed determined to eliminate al Qaeda as a source of the attacks. Former government scientist Dr. Stephen Hatfill’s career was destroyed by the FBI as they sought to frame him. Eventually, the Department of Justice paid Hatfill a multi-million dollar settlement in recognition of the fact that they had persecuted an innocent man.

At the time, Hatfill spoke to an Accuracy in Media conference, focusing on how American reporters were assisting the FBI campaign against him. For example, Pulitzer Prize-winning liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times wrote five columns and thousands of words urging FBI scrutiny of the scientist.

After paying Hatfill a financial settlement, the FBI picked on another alleged villain, Dr. Bruce Ivins, and hounded him until he committed suicide. Ivins had worked at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland.

Federal authorities conceded that al Qaeda planned that its next wave of terrorism after the 9/11 attacks was to be chemical or biological attacks. Medical reports suggested that two of the 9/11 hijackers may have come into contact with anthrax. Yet the FBI consistently diverted attention away from al Qaeda.

There was a chance to review the case in 2010, when bipartisan congressional support was growing for an examination of the FBI’s gross mishandling of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks. But President Barack Obama’s representatives told Congress that the FBI’s conduct shouldn’t be scrutinized.

Historian Dillon notes that Richard Lambert, who headed the FBI’s anthrax investigation from 2002 to 2006, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Tennessee against Attorney General Eric Holder et al. for retaliating against him for his whistleblowing about the FBI’s handling of the case. In his lawsuit, he criticizes the FBI’s efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence.

When we asked him for an interview, Lambert declined, saying “All of the information the Justice Department is withholding from the American people is either restricted from disclosure by the Privacy Act, governed by non-disclosure, non-disparagement clauses in other settlement agreements, or classified as national security information. The only avenue for remedying the government’s wealth of material omissions in this case would be through a congressional inquiry.  Although bills have been introduced in the past to establish such an inquiry committee, they never became law.”

The independent investigators believe that Freedom of Information Act requests that are now being stonewalled by the FBI could lead to major breakthroughs and the clearing of Ivins if the FBI is ordered by the Trump administration to cooperate.

In his remarks on possible bioterrorism, Bill Gates said, “Imagine if I told you that somewhere in this world, there’s a weapon that exists—or that could emerge—capable of killing tens of thousands, or millions, of people, bringing economies to a standstill, and throwing nations into chaos. You would say that we need to do everything possible to gather intelligence and develop effective countermeasures to reduce the threat.”

Such a weapon could be in the hands of radical Islamic extremists. But if the FBI still hasn’t solved the matter of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, what assurance do we have that the Bureau could prevent or solve the next devastating wave of biological attacks?

President Trump and Vice President Pence have every reason in the world to be concerned about what is happening at the FBI. They could, and should, reopen the anthrax investigation. It would be an opportunity to expose and remove the corruption that may remain in the Bureau and makes us vulnerable to another biological terrorist attack.

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

01/20/17

Dear FBI: You may want to check these assassination threats on President Trump’s life

By: Renee Nal | New Zeal

Threatening tweet.

When President Donald Trump won the election, assassination threats abounded on Twitter:

The ones compiled by this author were all deleted, but can still be seen here. For the sake of history, here are the tweets that will likely be deleted as well:

Here is a (long) list of more examples:  Continue reading →

11/8/16

FBI Director Confirms that Hillary Lied, and Mishandled Classified Material

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

comey

On Sunday, FBI Director James Comey sought to put a cap on the bottle he opened on October 28 when he announced that the FBI was once again investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails, based on a device they had discovered containing what turned out to be approximately 650,000 emails. The device was the shared computer of sexting pervert and former congressman Anthony Weiner and his long suffering wife, Huma Abedin, top aide to Hillary Clinton and a woman with deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Comey caused an uproar in the campaign, on both sides of the aisle. Democrats and their allies in the media were outraged that Comey would drop this bomb into the campaign with 11 days until the election, and not explain the urgency or the substance of his findings. Many Republicans, and their allies, who were outraged by Comey’s conclusions back in July—namely that Hillary Clinton was guilty of serious violations of the law, but that he didn’t believe that she had any criminal intent, nor that “any reasonable prosecutor” would attempt to prosecute the case against her—were saying that maybe Comey was going to implicate Hillary in serious criminal activity after all. He wouldn’t have reopened this matter, they believed, if he didn’t have something new and serious that he had seen.

Now, the roles are reversed again, with Democrats claiming that Comey’s latest statement represents a complete vindication for Hillary, while Republicans are questioning the timing and point of the whole exercise. Did the FBI, even with their high-tech reading devices, actually go through 650,000 emails in a week, and conclude that there is no there there? And why is the State Department only able to process 500 emails per month? The wheels of justice seem to turn at whatever pace the Democrats need them to.

I have a bit of a different take. In the November 6 letter to Congress, Comey stated:

“I write to supplement my October 28, 2016 letter that notified you the FBI would be taking additional investigative steps with respect to former Secretary of State Clinton’s use of a personal email server. Since my letter, the FBI investigative team has been working around the clock to process and review a large volume of emails from a device obtained in connection with an unrelated criminal investigation. During that process, we reviewed all of the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State.

“Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.”

While Comey did, in fact, argue back in July that he was not recommending an indictment or prosecution of Hillary, he also drew other “conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.” He had concluded that she lied when she said that she hadn’t sent or received classified materials on her private, unsecured server. She lied when she said that nothing that she sent or received was marked classified. She lied when she said that she only used one device, when in fact she used at least 13 devices, at least two of which were destroyed by hammers. And she lied when she said that she had turned over all of her work-related emails. No, in fact Comey said that there were “thousands” of work-related emails they found that she had not turned over. You can watch here to see Comey draw all of these “conclusions” back in July.

This is what the Clinton campaign is wearing as a badge of complete exoneration, and a closing of the books on her so-called email scandal, which is actually a national security scandal. As we have often pointed out, others have gone to jail, been fined, lost their security clearances and were run out of public life for far less egregious examples of mishandling classified material.

Andy McCarthy, the former U.S. Attorney who successfully prosecuted the Blind Sheikh for his involvement in the first World Trade Center bombing, argued back in July that Comey basically rewrote the law. Comey “conceded that former Secretary Clinton was ‘extremely careless’ and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.”

McCarthy added that “Comey recommended against prosecution of the law violations he clearly found on the ground that there was no intent to harm the United States.”

“In essence,” wrote McCarthy, “in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.”

But this has been a corrupt process. The fix was in. It had to be to protect President Obama as well, who knowingly exchanged emails with Hillary on her private server. As Politico pointed out, “President Barack Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others, according to FBI records…” Those FBI records, released in late September, confirmed what McCarthy had earlier predicted:  “As I explained in February,” wrote McCarthy, “when it emerged that the White House was refusing to disclose at least 22 communications Obama had exchanged with then-secretary Clinton over the latter’s private e-mail account, we knew that Obama had knowingly engaged in the same misconduct that was the focus of the Clinton probe: the reckless mishandling of classified information.”

It is possible that America will be electing someone as president on Tuesday who has committed serious crimes that could all be wiped away by a presidential pardon. The media’s failure to accurately cover this story could very well be the cause of a major constitutional crisis, the likes we’ve never witnessed before.

Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

11/1/16

Spy Scandals, Globalism and the Betrayal of America

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

clintons

Our top educators like to think that worthwhile social movements only come from the left, such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. But the movement backing Donald J. Trump for president rejects most of what the left is preaching. These people see America losing its greatness, unique identity and national sovereignty. Hillary Clinton uses the campaign slogan “Stronger Together,” which has a patriotic appeal. But she also termed half of Trump’s supporters “deplorable” and “irredeemable.” She prefers the artificial George Soros-funded “social movements” that back her campaign.

By any objective measure, it can be argued that the stench of globalism is starting to affect everything, even perceptions of our founding documents. It may also invite foreign penetration into the highest levels of our government.

Visitors to Independence Hall in Philadelphia are surprised to learn that the site of the adoption of our Declaration of Independence is now a World Heritage Site designated by the United Nations. A big plaque with the designation faces you after you get a lecture from the U.S. Park Service and prepare to enter the historic building. Referring to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, the United Nations declares, “The universal principles of freedom and democracy set forth in these documents are of fundamental importance to American history and have also had a profound impact on law-makers around the world.” These are nice thoughts. But the U.N. is hardly a tribute to freedom and democracy. Ordinary patriotic Americans don’t like the idea of the corrupt United Nations claiming some form of jurisdiction over Independence Hall.

What’s more, visitors to the Liberty Bell see a big picture of Nelson Mandela raising a clenched fist salute. The Mandela quotation that the Liberty Bell is “a very significant symbol for the entire democratic world” is featured next to the photograph. These, too, are nice thoughts. But while Mandela presided over a democratic transition that turned the whites out of power in South Africa, revelations after his death proved that he was a secret memberof the South African Communist Party. He had concealed his true motives and allegiances from those who elected him. South Africa is a member of the Russian orbit of nations, known as BRICS, and some of the remaining whites are fleeing.

The “Citizenship in the World” merit badge is now required for the highest rank in Scouting, Eagle Scout, with one of the requirements being, “Explain what citizenship in the world means to you and what you think it takes to be a good world citizen.”

What Hillary Clinton is trying to carry forward is something that her husband talked openly about in 2003. In his “Global Challenges” speech, former President Clinton outlined a form of world government. “We cannot continue to live in a world where we grow more and more and more interdependence, and we have no over-arching system to have the positive elements of interdependence outweigh the negative ones,” he said. He went on to say, “…I think the great mission of 21st Century world is to make it a genuine global community. To move from mere interdependence to integration, to a community that has three characteristics: shared responsibilities, shared benefits, and shared values.”

That “over-arching system” includes strengthening the United Nations, a process still underway, and currently using the alleged threat of “climate change” to build up the power of this world body and move toward a “genuine global community.”

As president, Clinton had sent a June 22, 1993 letter congratulating the members of the World Federalist Association for meeting to give Strobe Talbott the annual Norman Cousins Global Governance Award. “Norman Cousins worked for world peace and world government,” Clinton said. Talbott, a former Time magazine columnist and U.S. diplomat who served in Clinton’s administration, was a “voice for global harmony,” Clinton said. As a Time magazine writer, Talbott had written a column openly calling for world government. Now the head of the Brookings Institution, Talbott had direct but confidential contacts with Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, according to recent WikiLeaks disclosures. The book, Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War, documents questionable contacts between Talbott and the Russian intelligence service. Mrs. Clinton spoke to the same World Federalist group in 1999, congratulating former CBS Evening News anchorman Walter Cronkite upon his receipt of the Norman Cousins award.

Yet, Talbott’s continuing relationship with Hillary Clinton is not a subject that alarms the major media.

However, the disclosure that the FBI discovered some of Hillary Clinton’s emails on the Huma Abedin/Anthony Weiner computer could also have national security implications. Were these emails shared with or hacked by our foreign adversaries? Tragically, the American people may not have the answer to this question by Election Day, November 8. But the carelessness of the arrangement is such that we have to suspect the worst, and that Hillary Clinton and her top aide, Huma Abedin, are at the very least, security risks. It could become the biggest spy scandal since Alger Hiss, the former State Department official who was exposed as a Soviet spy. He happened to be a founder of the United Nations.

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

09/30/16

Was the Fix in on FBI Investigation of Hillary Clinton’s Emails?

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

comey

The more that details about the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices come to light, the more their efforts appear to have been a sham designed to exonerate her of wrongdoing from the very beginning. As we wrote, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) failure to indict Hillary, based on the recommendation of FBI Director James Comey, has moved the United States closer to banana republic status.

The Clinton family’s ongoing corruption and Hillary Clinton’s pay-to-play as secretary of state have also created a precedent which could encourage other politicians to enrich themselves at the expense of the integrity of their office. The FBI’s light touch also has created a double standard on national security, where high-profile figures such as Mrs. Clinton walk free while others lose their security clearance or are fined or jailed.

Yet some on the left are unhappy with Comey’s investigation because of the comments he made publicly characterizing Mrs. Clinton as “extremely careless” with classified information. “What Comey should have done…was handle the Clinton probe like any other routine inquiry: provide confidential recommendations to prosecutors, release a strictly factual statement noting that the investigation would be closed, and resist external pressures to inappropriately air the FBI’s findings outside a court of law,” argues Riley Roberts, former speechwriter for former Attorney General Eric Holder, in Politico Magazine.

Arguably, Clinton’s status as a presidential candidate under FBI investigation may have called for some public justification of the FBI’s decision. However, despite Comey’s open criticisms, the fact remains that he decided to recommend no indictment for Hillary Clinton. There will be no accountability for Clinton’s many lies about classified information on her private email server or the way she jeopardized national security as secretary of state.

Upon further review, it appears that Mr. Comey’s investigation was highly unusual, given the five immunity agreements that were handed out. According to Paul Sperry, writing for the New York Post, not only was Platte River Networks’ Paul Combetta granted immunity, the DOJ upheld this immunity despite the fact that he had lied to the investigators during an interview.

“Instead of asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch to revoke his immunity deal and squeezing him, Comey let [Combetta] go because he was a ‘low-level guy,’ he testified at the House hearing. It’s yet another action by Comey,” wrote Sperry, “that has left former prosecutors shaking their heads.”

At that September 28 House Judiciary Committee hearing featuring Director Comey as a witness, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) accused Combetta of “trying to cover-up the cover-up” by first using Reddit to solicit information on how to strip email address information and then trying to delete his posts. “The same guy later took Bleachbit and did delete emails,” continued Rep. Jordan.

But Comey insisted that the immunity agreement was necessary to ensure that the FBI got the facts.

“There’s no doubt Combetta was involved in deleting emails,” said Comey. “He had the ‘O-sh-t’ moment, as he told us, and that’s why it was very important for us to interview this guy to find out who told you to do that, why did you do that.”

According to Andy McCarthy, writing for National Review, Secretary Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills and Clinton aide Heather Samuelson also received immunity agreements meant to ensure that they gave the FBI access to their laptops. However, the FBI could have just subpoenaed the computers or obtained a search warrant instead.

Sperry makes it clear that Mills was lying to investigators, as well. She, apparently, “told agents she had no idea Clinton maintained a private email server,” he writes. However, the email record demonstrates that she emailed the server administrator to ask about the status of that very server.

McCarthy calls the granting of these immunity agreements “very strange” behavior by the FBI. “The Justice Department could have required the production of the computer by simply issuing a grand jury subpoena,” he writes. “And had there been any concern that Mills would not cooperate, would destroy the computer, or would ‘misplace’ it (as Team Clinton claims to have misplaced so many Hillary devices), investigators could have applied for a search warrant and seized the computer.”

To add insult to injury, the FBI allowed Samuelson and Mills to sit in on Hillary Clinton’s interview with the bureau.

Former U.S. attorney Solomon Wisenberg, who conducted the grand jury questioning of President Bill Clinton, argues that the FBI should never have allowed Cheryl Mills to sit in on Mrs. Clinton’s interview. “Competent prosecutors do not allow a key witness to participate as an attorney in an FBI interview of the main subject,” he writes. “It just isn’t done.” He writes that “if Clinton insisted on Mills’s attendance, the interview would be conducted under the auspices of the federal grand jury.”

In addition, it was inappropriate that the only interview of such a high profile subject wasn’t recorded. It is preposterous that nine people were allowed to sit in during the interview. Comey acknowledged that this was unusual, but he said it was not unprecedented, though he didn’t cite any precedents.

The FBI should have convened a grand jury instead of just conducting light touch interviews, argued former U.S. attorney Joe DiGenova, speaking at a recent Judicial Watch event. “Now, it is evident to me…what Mr. Comey should have done at the beginning of this investigation was empanel a grand jury,” said DiGenova. “When you want to investigate crimes involving national security information, classified information, you don’t do interviews. You issue subpoenas to witnesses, third parties for documents. You make people come into court and fight them in front of a federal judge…”

The left continues to claim that Mrs. Clinton is held to a different standard, a double standard when compared to other candidates. However, it is clear that the FBI did hold Mrs. Clinton and her aides to a different standard—one which gives a free pass to lies and corruption.

Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

09/16/16

The Denise Simon Experience – 09/15/16

By: Denise Simon

Hosted by DENISE SIMON, the Senior Research / Intelligence Analyst for Foreign and Domestic Policy for numerous flag officers and intelligence organizations.

SEGMENT 1:  Daniel Ikenson, Cato Institute discusses the Trans Pacific Partnership facts.

SEGMENT 2:  Ed Miller, Co-Author with deceased Phyllis Schlafy book titled: The Conservative Case for Trump.

SEGMENT 3:  Sam Faddis, former CIA discusses the big cash transfers to Iran.

SEGMENT 4:  Naveed Jamali, former FBI domestic spy and author of the book titled: How to Catch a Russian spy.

BROADCAST WORLDWIDE:  –  WDDQ – TALK 92.1FM, WJHC – TALK 107.5FM, and on RED NATION RISING RADIO

09/13/16

Why Hillary Continues to Lie

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

clinton

Why does Hillary Clinton continue lying and covering up her various activities, whether it is her pneumonia, or the fact that she regularly sent and received classified information on a private, unsecured server, or that she traded favors, influence and access as secretary of state for large payments to her husband or her family’s foundation? It is because if she told the truth, she would never be elected president, and would almost certainly end up behind bars.

When asked why she decided to keep secret the medical diagnosis she received on Friday, she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday night that “I just didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal. It’s just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and you’re a busy, active person, you keep moving forward.” If Hillary hadn’t been caught by a bystander’s cell-phone camera nearly collapsing as she was being helped into her limousine, we probably still wouldn’t know about her pneumonia. Her lack of transparency on this matter has forced the liberal media to acknowledge Hillary’s health issues, which have fueled much speculation about other possible ailments she may be hiding.

With the release of the notes on the FBI investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s handling of classified material, and the Bureau’s interview with her, it becomes more and more apparent that she is trying to run out the campaign clock without admitting to her many lies. When Hillary first explained the use of her private server, she said it was a matter of convenience, so that she could use just one device. But the FBI summary reveals that there were actually 13 mobile devices she used, plus several iPads. At least one, maybe two, of the phones were destroyed by a hammer.

CNN reports that Mrs. Clinton told the FBI she could not recall, or did not remember, at least 39 times during her interview. Alex Griswold, writing for Mediaite, gives more details into 40 examples of Mrs. Clinton’s unbelievable memory hole, based on what she told the FBI.

Apparently, according to Griswold, the FBI interview indicates that Mrs. Clinton “could not recall any briefing or training by State related to the retention of federal records or handling of classified information.” She also claimed that she didn’t remember what the “(C)” represented on many documents she handled, even though it is regularly used by the State Department to denote information classified at the confidential level. “Clinton stated that she did not know what the ‘(C)’ meant at the beginning of the paragraphs and speculated it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order,” states the FBI notes.

Yet Mrs. Clinton’s signature can be found on a classified information non-disclosure agreement that she signed upon taking the position of secretary of state. The agreement states, “Classified information is marked or unmarked classified information, including oral communication. I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government.” In other words, it doesn’t matter if there were headers or other markings. It’s her job to recognize classified information, in whatever form. Former prosecutor Andy McCarthy pointed out that this signed document indicates that Mrs. Clinton did, in fact, receive training on the use of classified information. “The simple fact, so familiar in Mrs. Clinton’s case, is that she’s lying,” writes McCarthy.

“Clinton did not recall receiving any emails she thought should not be on an unclassified system,” states the FBI file. This shows the light touch treatment that FBI Director James Comey’s department gave Hillary Clinton during the investigation. It was not enough to simply state publicly to the nation that Mrs. Clinton was “extremely careless” with classified information—an indictment was clearly warranted. And it seems suspicious that the FBI interviewed Mrs. Clinton last, not first—and only about72 hours before announcing the FBI’s decision not to indict. The fix was clearly in.

Breitbart News investigated potential conflicts of interest between Comey and the Clintons, and found some very intriguing connections. For example, they report that Comey made more than $6 million in compensation from Lockheed Martin during the last year he worked for them, which was 2010. That is the year that Lockheed Martin became a Clinton Foundation donor, and also “won 17 approvals for private contracts from the Hillary Clinton State Department.” There were other such situations that qualified as, at the very least, the appearance of conflicts of interest.

Comey’s brother, Peter, was a senior director for DLA Piper, “the firm that performed the independent audit of the Clinton Foundation in November during Clinton-World’s first big push to put the email scandal behind them.”

Comey, a deputy attorney general for two years during the George W. Bush administration who was appointed FBI Director by President Obama in 2013, had not disclosed these personal or professional relationships when he announced that Mrs. Clinton should not be prosecuted for her mishandling of classified materials.

The Democrats, and the media, are asking citizens to accept, on blind faith, the many lies of Hillary Clinton—including the gigantic cover-up that is the Benghazi scandal. Voters are supposed to accept Hillary’s lie that she didn’t send or receive classified information with headers or markings, and that she only deleted her emails related to yoga or her personal life. As McCarthy points out, “A great deal of classified information is not marked at all.”

The latter lie—that she had turned over all of her work related emails—has been blown apart by the news that the FBI has handed over 14,900 Hillary Clinton emails that it salvaged during its investigation into Hillary’s server. “Actually, the FBI recovered tens of thousands,” said Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “This first batch of 14,900 that we’ll be getting in the next couple of weeks is only one disc of seven cds full of emails. There are thousands still out there. We’re going to get every single one of them, I assure you.” He said that the 14,900 deal directly with Mrs. Clinton.

It is impossible to know what information these many emails contain until they are released, but until then the existence of Clinton emails that may have been work-related yet deleted calls into question Mrs. Clinton’s honesty and integrity.

Mrs. Clinton and her faithful media supporters are working together to cover up the malfeasance of Hillary Clinton and downplay her many lies. It is difficult and frustrating for them at times. Despite the media’s complicity in covering for Hillary, the truth continues to shine through.

Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.