01/5/17

Gulftainer Scandal Connects Obama, the Clintons and the Media

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

In a recent column, I challenged the notion that the Obama administration has been scandal free. This has been the assertion, most recently, of Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, in a softball interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. The media have covered for the multiple scandals that have occurred right under their noses, and this is nothing less than willful blindness. It has applied to the Obama administration, the Clinton Foundation and recent presidential campaign, as well as going back to the Clinton administration. One largely overlooked scandal that ties together the Clintons, Barack Obama and the media’s willful blindness is the Gulftainer scandal.

This clear case of malfeasance comes at the expense of national security and American safety. As we reported in 2015, a United Arab Emirates subsidiary company, Gulftainer USA, was granted a lease “at the vital national security hub of Port Canaveral, Florida.” Now a recent Occasional Paper from the Center for Security Policy (CSP) shows that Gulftainer’s parent company, The Crescent Group, is connected to Iraq’s illicit nuclear program, and may have benefited from associations with the Obamas and Clintons. CSP has done an excellent job connecting these very disturbing dots.

Hamid Jafar is the founder and chairman of the Crescent group of companies, according to the Crescent Petroleum website. However, as Alan Jones and Mary Fanning write for the CSP, Hamid Jafar “is the brother and the business partner of Dr. Jafar Dhia Jafar—the Baghdad-born nuclear physicist who masterminded Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program.”

In other words, the company has links to terror. Jones and Fanning write that David Kay, a “U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991–1992” who returned to Iraq after 2003, says that Dr. Jafar told him, “You can bomb our buildings. You can destroy our technology. But you cannot take it [nuclear technology] out of our heads. We now have the capability.”

Dr. Jafar is currently CEO of Crescent’s URUK Engineering & Contracting subsidiary, although his brother claimed for years that he had “no business relationship” with Dr. Jafar, according to Jones and Fanning.

These are the business ties of a company in charge of shipping containers out of a port with close proximity to an Air Force base, a submarine base, and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Yet despite the risks, the mainstream media continue to look the other way on the Gulftainer scandal.

The most recent news article on Gulftainer that I found is from October 2016, and as a local news article it largely discusses the business potential in the port, and notes that Gulftainer USA is “looking at growth opportunities in the northeastern United States and the Oakland, California, area.”

Will this terror-tied shipping company soon be coming to a port near you?

Jones and Fanning also reveal that Obama has ties to this port deal through his college friends.

Abraaj Capital, through The Abraaj Group, is one of Crescent Enterprises’ “private equity holdings,” report Jones and Fanning. “Wahid Hamid, who attended Occidental College in Los Angeles as a wealthy Pakistani foreign student, was one of Barack Obama’s college roommates, and became one of Obama’s lifelong friends, is a Partner at The Abraaj Group,” they write. “Abraaj’s Senior Partner Wahid Hamid of Pakistan, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo of Pakistan, and Vinai Thummalapally of India were all college roommates of Barack Obama, were all 2008 campaign bundlers for Barack Obama (each bringing in $100,000 to $200,000), and all attended Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson’s 1992 wedding.”

Thummalapally attended the 2015 grand opening of Gulftainer’s terminal at Port Canaveral, they write.

The Clintons have also benefited from their relationship with the UAE company and its leaders. Crescent Group executive Majid Jafar, Dr. Jafar’s nephew, co-chairs the “Business Backs Education” campaign with Bill Clinton. “The campaign is funded by the Varkey GEMS Foundation that paid Bill Clinton $5.6 million to serve as ‘Honorary Chairman’ and that helped raise $70 billion in commitments for the Clinton Global Initiative,” write Jones and Fanning. Abraaj Capital held a 25 percent stake in GEMS Education while Bill Clinton received money from that entity, they write.

We have already detailed the conflicts of interest that the Clintons faced while Bill Clinton was earning $16 million from Laureate Education as its Honorary Chancellor. We wrote that Secretary Clinton’s State Department made sure that over $55 million in “American taxpayer dollars flowed out of Hillary Clinton’s State Department to a non-profit run by Laureate CEO Douglas Becker.” Gulftainer is just another example of the potential for corrupt pay for play that has saturated the Clintons’ many dealings.

It turns out that, according to Jones and Fanning, even the man who oversaw the secret negotiations to bring Gulftainer to Port Canaveral is connected to the Clintons. “One of [Port Canaveral CEO John E.] Walsh’s Watersmark business partners is Miguel Lausell, a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign who contributed $1 million to the Clinton Library and is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative,” write Jones and Fanning. “Walsh’s other Watersmark business partners include representatives of the Saudi and UAE royal families and of the UAE government.”

The Gulftainer USA deal was signed in 2014, the same year that the UAE was a first-time donor to the Clinton Foundation.

Gulftainer USA’s presence at Port Canaveral, Florida, remains a threat to the military assets and other national security targets within and near to that port. Yet, “Secretary [Jack] Lew bypassed the mandated Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) ‘National Security Threat Analysis,’ which should have been overseen by Director James R. Clapper,” write Jones and Fanning. “The National Security Threat Analysis is supposed to be ordered by and delivered to the Treasury Secretary, who is also the designated chairperson of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).”

“Did the Clintons’ contacts help to seal the deal?” we asked about this contract in 2015. “Given the Clintons’ scandal-filled history the media might want to at least look into this one.”

Gulftainer was granted its lease without a national security review because it was not purchasing part of the port. Instead, it was leasing it—for 35 years. But it is clear that in this case the Obama administration looked the other way on a potential national security nightmare.

That the media refuse to cover this ongoing Obama and Clinton scandal is a profound dereliction of their journalistic duty to investigate issues of America’s national interest, and an additional blatant attempt to shield President Obama from criticism. The media have an obligation to cover ongoing threats to our national security, no matter who is responsible for them.

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.

01/5/17

The “No Scandals” Obama Administration Revisited

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

No matter how many times it is disproved, members of the Obama administration and the liberal media continue to claim that President Barack Obama has overseen a scandal-free executive branch during his two terms in office. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fast & Furious, the IRS targeting scandal, Benghazi, and the Veterans Administration scandal are but a taste of President Obama’s scandal-ridden leadership.

The latest in the voices declaring Obama scandal-free is senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, who said recently on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” that “The President prides himself on the fact that his administration hasn’t had a scandal and that he hasn’t done something to embarrass himself. But that’s not because he’s being someone other than who he is. That’s because that’s who he is, that’s who they are, and I think that’s what really resonates with the American people.” A fawning Zakaria also asked Jarrett about Obama’s “cool,” “discipline,” and “dignity” on his January 1 show, which was entitled “Voices From the Obama Years.” “Over the last few months, we have had extraordinary access to the White House, to officials current and former. It was all for a documentary about President Obama’s legacy,” said Zakaria.

With President Obama set to step down this month and give way to soon-to-be President Donald Trump, the media are even more eager to contrast the current President with his already demonized successor.

As we have reported, both token New York Times conservative David Brooks and former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod have also claimed that Obama’s tenure has been scandal-free. While this assertion is pure fiction, it continues nonetheless. It is a convenient way of dismissing, if not covering up, Obama’s dishonesty, incompetence and corruption. The perpetuation of this lie demonstrates that the media and the Obama administration are living in a reality constructed entirely by themselves, one that ignores any information that might damage Obama’s legacy.

A key counterpart to the elevation of Obama is the necessary criticism of his successor. Thus, the Times’ Paul Krugman writes in his recent column that Trump is bringing America down to “stan” status, a third-world country label which indicates a runaway personality cult and despotism by rich elites. “But cults of personality are actually the norm in the ‘stans,’ the Central Asian countries that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union, all of which are ruled by strongmen who surround themselves with tiny cliques of wealthy crony capitalists,” Krugman writes.

While Krugman is busy attacking what he perceives as Trump’s cult of personality, he may have forgotten that in 2008 he himself accused candidate Barack Obama of the same thing: “I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration—remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.” At the time Krugman was clearly supporting Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, so his venom was aimed at Obama.

He wrote in that column that it was “particularly saddening” how “many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of ‘Clinton rules’—the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.” By that definition, it is clear that Krugman and the Times, as well as most of the liberal media, seem happy with the application of “Trump rules.” Of course they would argue that in Trump’s case, those rules are justified.

So Krugman has portrayed President George W. Bush, President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump as each fostering cults of personality. America, under that rubric, isn’t descending to Third World status—it is simply getting more of the same. After all, Obama is the one with a celebrated iconic portrait, who is worshiped by Hollywood and the inane arbiters of pop culture, nearly all of whom have refused to be associated in any way with anything related to Trump.

Speaking of cult of personality, incredibly, the Obama administration has inserted favorable mentions of their Dear Leader in 12 of the last 14 biographies of former presidents on the White House website, going back to Calvin Coolidge. That is something no other president has had the audacity to do. For example, President Jimmy Carter’s biography includes a paragraph at the bottom which states, “In 1977, President Jimmy Carter created the Department of Energy; today the DOE works with the Obama Administration to drive towards innovation in energy and reducing reliance on foreign oil with an ‘all of the above’ approach.”

If you attend the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., you will see, in the area focusing on First Ladies, a larger than life photo of President Obama with First Lady Michelle. No other president rates a photo of any size in that room.

But the real difference between the media treatment of these recent presidencies is that President Obama is the only President receiving fawning, constant press coverage that ignores his faults and celebrates his enduring legacy items, such as Obamacare and the Iran deal. As we have written, both of those initiatives are debacles—and the Iran Deal isn’t even signed—yet the press continues to publish articles praising those policies as signature achievements.

The difference is, Obama is a Democrat, and the corrupt Democrat-Media complex works hard to only celebrate the left’s victories.

“How could this happen in a nation that has long prided itself as a role model for democracies everywhere?” asks Krugman in his column, continuing, “In a direct sense, Mr. Trump’s elevation was made possible by the F.B.I.’s blatant intervention in the election, Russian subversion, and the supine news media that obligingly played up fake scandals while burying real ones on the back pages.”

Actually, as we have reported, the media have consistently downplayed the national security scandal that was Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. The press focused on the problems with Trump University, yet they ignored the scandal of the Clinton-linked Laureate Education. While the Clintons’ pay-for-play using the Clinton Foundation during Hillary’s time as secretary of state received some early press coverage, it was not pursued with the same passion as uncovering Trump’s faults.

Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid has outlined why allegations of Russian interference in the election may be baseless. Yet story after story express outrage and disbelief that Trump won’t acknowledge that the Russians, as they see it, handed him the election, so sure are these journalists of the supposed consensus among the intelligence agencies. We’ve seen time after time that the Obama administration has politicized intelligence to fit their narrative. Why not this time?

“Remember, the Clinton administration was besieged by constant accusations of corruption, dutifully hyped as major stories by the news media,” writes Krugman, asserting that “not one of these alleged scandals turned out to involve any actual wrongdoing.” (emphasis added). As Accuracy in Media has outlined in the special report, “The Hillary Clinton File,” and its documentary, “The Clinton Legacy,” investigations into the corruption of the Clintons reach back to President Bill Clinton’s term as president in the 1990s, and reveal serious, even criminal wrongdoing.

The Clintons have been demonstrably corrupt for decades, and President Obama has experienced one scandal after another. But don’t expect the mainstream media to report the truth—they are too invested in supporting politicians who further the left’s agenda.

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.

09/30/16

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

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

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.

08/23/16

Hillary’s Tangled Web Grows by the Day

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

Hillary Clinton is still considered by many people to be a fundamentally dishonest candidate. A recent NBC poll shows that only 11 percent of surveyed voters believe she is “honest and trustworthy.” However, contrary to the mainstream media’s attempt to save her reputation, and her campaign’s complaints about a double standard, Mrs. Clinton has done most of the damage to her reputation herself through her penchant for lying.

This week adds more Clinton lies to the many that have already been exposed. As Accuracy in Media chairman Don Irvine notes, former Secretary of State Colin Powell has taken exception to the Clinton campaign’s decision to “pin” responsibility for Mrs. Clinton’s private email server on him. According to The New York Times, the notes turned over to Congress last week by the FBI about their interview with Mrs. Clinton early last month, said that Mrs. Clinton apparently told the FBI, as she has stated publicly, that Powell had suggested that she use a personal email account.

Powell said, “The truth is, she was using [the private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did,” reports the Washington Examiner. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough detailed a number of differences between Powell’s and Clinton’s email use, including that Powell didn’t use a private email server and did use a State Department office desktop for classified communications.

Now that it’s clear that Mrs. Clinton lied to the FBI, shouldn’t FBI Director James Comey want to reopen the investigation?

The 302s, or FBI summaries, of Mrs. Clinton’s interview with that agency are heavily redacted, according to House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT). He said on Fox News’ Outnumbered on August 22 that he was surprised that the FBI redacted what they did, and was concerned that there wasn’t more detail in the summary.

Records of the FBI interview could contain evidence of contradictions between Mrs. Clinton’s congressional testimony and her statements to the FBI. Yet Chaffetz, asking for a second classified copy, received two different sets of notes from the Bureau, but said they were inconsistent with each other.

Apparent contradictions between the FBI findings and Mrs. Clinton’s assertions extend beyond blaming Powell for her unsecured server. They also include her claims that she sent nothing that was classified at the time through that server, and that her staff “went through every single email” when deciding to delete personal emails.

“Clinton deleted more emails than she turned over,” reports Chris Cillizza for The Washington Post. “Her team never actually read all of the emails, skimming subject lines instead…The essence of Clinton’s argument regarding this email-sorting process was: Trust me.”

But Hillary Clinton has demonstrated time and again that she can’t be trusted. The Post is reporting that the FBI found approximately 15,000 previously undisclosed emails and documents, and “a federal judge on Monday pressed the State Department to begin releasing emails sooner than mid-October as it planned.”

However, Maryland Senator Ben Cardin (D) asserts that the concern over Hillary Clinton’s emails is a “partisan witch hunt,” and he falsely claimed on Fox News Sunday that “Three former secretaries of state used private e-mail servers.” In reality, Mrs. Clinton is the only secretary of state to have established a private, homebrew server. That is what she used for all of her government business.

EmailGate continues to be an enduring scandal that calls Mrs. Clinton’s integrity and judgment into question. The real scandal, as we’ve pointed out before, is not about what device she used for her emails. It is a national security scandal. Hillary regularly sent and received classified information, including Top Secret information, on an unsecured server, putting our nation’s security at risk, as well as potentially exposing sources and methods used by U.S. intelligence to our enemies.

Also enduring is the scandal of the apparent quid pro quo arrangements made between Clinton and her staff and Clinton Foundation donors while she was serving as secretary of state.

The Clintons are trying to control the damage from allegations of pay-for-play. Former President Bill Clinton recently announced that this September marks the last Clinton Global Initiative annual conference, and that if Mrs. Clinton wins the presidency the Clinton Foundation will only accept money from U.S. citizens and charities. The Washington Post reports that these restrictions would not apply to the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

“But my point is that there is all this scrutiny because Hillary Clinton has been transparent,” argued Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook on CNN. “…So, as I said, the foundation is taking unprecedented steps here.”

If the Clintons wanted to be transparent, they would stop the Clinton Foundation from taking foreign donations immediately. Instead, this arrangement serves as a blatant call for foreign governments and corporations to buy access and favors now by paying off the Clintons before the election takes place. After all, each donation is an investment in a possible Clinton presidency.

Some of the press agree. The Boston Globe published an editorial suggesting that the Clinton Foundation should stop receiving any donations now, and should close its doors if Hillary becomes president. Similarly, Slate’s Josh Voorhees has issued cutting words criticizing the Clintons’ current plan: “While the Clintons are now promising to build that firewall for themselves if they win the White House, this announcement does nothing to prevent foreign entities from splashing the foundation pot during the final months of the general election,” he writes. “The Clintons’ cozy relationship with their foundation’s global patrons was a problem when Hillary was secretary of state and it is a problem now that she’s running for president.”

But fear not for the Clinton Foundation. According to the results of a Washington Post investigation reported in June of last year, the foundation had already raised $2 billion since Bill left office in 2001, and the Clintons have personally collected a combined average of $10 million a year for the last 15 years in speaker fees. According to an investigation by The Federalist website, only about 10 percent of the foundation’s money went to charitable grants in 2013.

Hillary’s ethical problem is that she can’t stop lying about things that might make her appear to be a weak or dishonest candidate, one compromised by money in politics. The purpose of the lying is to keep her from being indicted, and convince voters that she can make it to the White House, where she figures she could make this all go away. While the mainstream media continue to pull out all the stops to ensure the viability of her presidential candidacy, the Clinton Foundation quid pro quo has proven to be too bitter a pill to swallow.

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.

08/10/16

Watching someone drop the ball

By: T F Stern | T F Stern’s Rantings

Last night during the Astros’ game with the Minnesota Twins center fielder, Carlos Gomez, didn’t get the job done. Perhaps that’s an understatement as he let a ball get by him and turned a single into an RBI two base error and permitted the batter to reach third.

Bad as that was, Gomez managed to follow that botched play with yet another screw up as he lost track of a fly ball that should have been caught; but instead landed several feet away. Remember the man on third, the one who should have been at first except for a two base error, that man scored and the batter ended up with a ‘gimme’ triple since the ball was ‘lost in the lights’.

I won’t print what the pitcher, Collin McHugh said, use your imagination; but it was captured on film for all who can read lips. Let’s just say it follows the thought pattern of, “You have got to be kidding!”, only with a more common street verbiage and tone.

I mention this as a lead in for what’s going on in our country. ‘We The People’ are standing on the mound as the ball(s) get dropped over and over.

We have an individual running for President of the United States of America who has managed to avoid being charged and prosecuted for crimes which would have the average individual before a firing squad, the gallows or serving life in prison without chance of parole.

The FBI made their case against Hillary Clinton only to back off at the last moment and have FBI DirectorJames Comey tell ‘We The People’ that the charges shouldn’t be filed because they couldn’t prove intent.

Did I hear, “You have got to be kidding me”, or was it the cruder version as stated by the Astros’ pitcher in last night’s game?

It should be noted, none of the felonies which Hillary violated in regard to lost email or improper us of email required ‘intent’; simply that the crime occurred, either by willful intent or neglect did not matter.

We could say the FBI and Justice Department lost it in the lights, much as Gomez let the ball avoid his glove.

‘We The People’ are standing on the mound, figuratively speaking, watching this unfold before our eyes. I can assure you my exclamation matched up with the Astros’ pitcher… and those who can read lips know what I said.

This article has been cross posted to The Moral Liberal, a publication whose banner reads, “Defending The Judeo-Christian Ethic, Limited Government, & The American Constitution”.

06/14/16

Has FBI Director Comey Waited Too Long on Clinton Scandals?

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

The media continue their focus on accusing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of racist rhetoric, and facilitating the circular firing squad that some in the Republican Party and conservative movement are only too happy to take part in. Reporters continue to publish story after story damaging to Republicans, salivating over whatever Republican disunity they can unearth, and calling for Republicans to disavow Trump’s actions.

But in doing so they are hoping to protect Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, and the issue of whether or not its presumptive nominee will face criminal charges. The Obama administration has now admitted that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a “criminal” investigation into the activities of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who used a private email server to send and receive classified information and has demonstrated a pattern of corrupt behavior while secretary of state.

“And that’s why the President, when discussing this issue in each stage, has reiterated his commitment to this principle that any criminal investigation should be conducted independent of any sort of political interference,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest, continuing, “and that people should be treated the same way before the law regardless of their political influence, regardless of their political party, regardless of their political stature and regardless of what political figure has endorsed them.” He spoke less than one hour after President Obama endorsed Mrs. Clinton for president last Thursday.

Earnest maintained that the civil servants at the FBI “aren’t going to be swayed by political forces” when conducting the investigation. But, surely, these civil servants will notice the direction of the political winds.

President Obama held a meeting with Department of Justice Attorney General Loretta Lynch shortly after his endorsement of Hillary. If FBI Director James Comey were to refer his investigation to Lynch, the Attorney General would have the power to not pursue the case.

“In order for Clinton to carry Obama’s torch, she has to stay out of prison,” writes Katie Pavlich for Townhall. “In order to do that, she has to avoid prosecution. I’m sure Obama made that very clear to his somewhat new Attorney General.”

We have regularly cited the various scandals still hanging over Mrs. Clinton’s head. They include the mishandling of classified materials, obstruction of justice, the public corruption scandal in which she used the State Department as leverage for benefitting the Clinton Foundation as well as her family, and Benghazi.

Contrary to President Obama’s assertion that he is allowing a non-partisan and full investigation, by endorsing Mrs. Clinton he has placed his hand on the scale of justice and made his wishes more than clear to federal investigators. The question is, will Director Comey and the FBI follow the President’s direction?

Despite the administration’s continued support for Clinton, new stories break daily outlining Mrs. Clinton’s corruption and pay-for-play. ABC News, with the help of Citizens United, found that a Clinton donor was placed on a sensitive intelligence board during Mrs. Clinton’s term as secretary of state—even though he lacked the credentials for the appointment.

The Wall Street Journal also reports that “many” of the 22 classified emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private email server that the government refuses to release, “dealt with whether diplomats concurred or not with the CIA drone strikes…” These highly sensitive and classified emails were “written within the often-narrow time frame in which State Department officials had to decide whether or not to object to drone strikes before the CIA pulled the trigger…” There are more than 2,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton handled that contained classified material on her private, unsecured server, whether marked as such or not.

“Several law-enforcement officials said they don’t expect any criminal charges to be filed as a result of the investigation,” reports the Journal, continuing, “although a final review of the evidence will be made only after an expected FBI interview with Mrs. Clinton this summer.”

Jonathan F. Keiler, a lawyer and former captain in the Army’s Judge-Advocate General Corps, writes that Comey has already delayed for too long. In an outstanding column for American Thinker, he wonders what Comey is up to: “What FBI director James Comey intends is perhaps the greatest conundrum in Washington these days. Is he playing Hamlet to Hillary’s Claudius, introspective, doubtful, and unwilling to strike the killing blow? Is he just being a careful apolitical policeman? Or is he a political hack who will do what’s best for Jim Comey? Perhaps it’s a bit of all three. Whatever the truth, it is in Hillary’s best interest to discourage Comey as much as possible. Her early claim to be the Democrat nominee serves that purpose.”

Keiler argues that Hillary’s convenient surge past the magic delegate number the night before the California primary, through a sudden burst of superdelegate declarations, served both her political and legal purposes. “If Comey is an honest policeman,” he writes, “the best time for him to have acted was before Hillary claimed the nomination. Then he would only have been referring charges against another—albeit notorious—private citizen. After the nomination, Hillary becomes not only the standard bearer of one of America’s two great political parties, but a ‘historic’ figure as the first woman to do so. As such, it behooved both Hillary and her backers in the media to reach that point ASAP.”

“As a political and media matter,” he adds, “an FBI referral at this point will be against not only the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, but also a historic figure, an affront to the American political system and women everywhere.”

The evidence against Mrs. Clinton is clear. If Director Comey finds no evidence of criminal activity by Mrs. Clinton, he will lose his reputation as a straight shooter. Either way, at this point, it will be viewed as a political act. If the Attorney General and President Obama stymie an investigation through political interference, Director Comey could, and should, go public. There might even be a revolt within the FBI. Whether or not that happens, Hillary Clinton’s fate is now quite clearly in Director Comey’s hands.

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.

03/16/16

Media Pluses and Minuses at Recent Democratic Debate

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

Members of the mainstream media often don’t mention their conflicts of interest. So it was refreshing when Jorge Ramos of Univision noted on air during the March 9th Democratic debate that his daughter works for the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Ramos should be credited for asking Mrs. Clinton tough questions about her private email server and Benghazi. “Secretary Clinton, on the night of the attacks in Benghazi, you sent an e-mail to your daughter Chelsea saying, that al Qaeda was responsible for the killing of the Americans,” said Ramos. “However, some of the families claim that you lied to them…Secretary Clinton, did you lie to them?”

Hillary Clinton has lied about the events of that night, repeatedly, and continues to still blame the YouTube video for the attacks.

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03/11/16

RED ALERT: Hillary Grand Jury Convened — FBI Also Pursuing Clinton Influence Peddling

By: Richard Pollock | Doug Ross @ Journal

Department of Justice officials have impaneled a federal grand jury in the Hillary Clinton email case and FBI agents have launched a second, separate investigation on political corruption involving the former secretary of state’s official activities and the Clinton Foundation, a former U.S. attorney told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Joseph E. diGenova, who served as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for four years, said Wednesday he believes the FBI is investigating two separate Clinton scandals.

“The Bureau has between 100 and 150 agents assigned to the case. They would not have that many people assigned to a classified information case,” he told TheDCNF, addressing Clinton’s use of a private email server located at her New York home.

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02/26/16

Fact-Checking The Washington Post Fact Checker on Mrs. Clinton’s Emails

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

The Washington Post Fact Checkers are once again coming to the aid of Hillary Clinton with a new column criticizing the popular comparison of former General David Petraeus’s mishandling of classified information to Mrs. Clinton’s abuse of classified information on her private email server. The Post politicizes the comparison from the beginning by using quotes from Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz (TX), both controversial figures in their own right.

But many more people than these two politicians have compared the Petraeus case to Mrs. Clinton’s mismanagement of classified information. “His [Petraeus’s] offense involved conduct narrower in scope than Mrs. Clinton’s systematic transmission and storage of classified information on her private system,” arguesNational Review’s Andy McCarthy, former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York who successfully prosecuted the Blind Sheikh for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Former federal prosecutor, Joe DiGenova, says that Clinton’s actions amount to “the negligent handling of classified information, which is prohibited by statute, and this is a gross example of it, and it dwarfs the information in the Petraeus case.” A similar case was made by Sidney Powell, also a former federal prosecutor, and yet again the case was made by former U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey.

Every news article from a major newspaper should be assumed to have been fact-checked. But The Washington Post has a specific Fact Checker column, usually written by Glenn Kessler. Another contributor to the Fact Checker column is Michelle Ye Hee Lee, who wrote this particular column, which is anything but factually correct. Her blatant attempt to exonerate Mrs. Clinton transforms the fact-check article into little more than an opinion piece, while overlooking key facts.

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02/25/16

Salvaging Mrs. Clinton’s Legacy in a Shattered Libya

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

The Washington Post seems unable to grasp the irony of its support for President Obama’s latest military intervention into Libya at the same time that it seeks to salvage Hillary Clinton’s reputation on this issue. Libya remains a failed state, and no amount of reporting can change the facts of this debacle.

“With respect to Libya, I have been clear from the outset that we will go after ISIS wherever it appears, the same way that we went after al Qaeda wherever they appeared,” President Obama told the press on February 16. “And the testament to the fact that we are doing that already is that we took out…one of ISIS’s most prominent leaders in Libya.”

Obama’s words came out just days before the House Select Committee on Benghazi signaled that its report on the events in Benghazi, Libya will be issued “as soon as possible,” now that it has gained access to most of the necessary witnesses and documents.

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