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Out of the Brexit Turmoil: Opportunity
Europe should not treat Britain as a prison escapee but as a potential compatriot. And the U.S. has a vital role to play.
By: Henry A. Kissinger
June 28, 2016 6:03 p.m. ET
The cascade of commentary on Britain’s decision to leave institutional Europe has described the epochal event primarily in the vocabulary of calamity. However, the coin of the realm for statesmen is not anguish or recrimination; it should be to transform setback into opportunity.
The impact of the British vote is so profound because the emotions it reflects are not confined to Britain or even Europe. The popular reaction to European Union institutions (as reflected in public-opinion polls) is comparable in most major countries, especially France and Spain. The multilateral approach based on open borders for trade and the movement of peoples is increasingly being challenged, and now an act of direct democracy intended to reaffirm the status quo has rendered a damning verdict. However challenging this expression of popular sentiment, ignoring the concerns it manifests is a path to greater disillusionment.
Brexit is a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences. The British government sought a Remain vote to end, once and for all, domestic disputes about Europe in a minority of the Conservative Party and among fringe populist groups. Many backers of the Leave campaign were surprised by their success, having understood their political mission initially in much less sweeping terms.
All these elements have been overwhelmed because the European vision elaborated over decades has been developing a sclerotic character. Internal debates of Europe have increasingly concentrated on structural contradictions. In the process, the vision that motivates sacrifice is weakening.
The founders of European unity understood the ultimate scope of their project. It was, on one level, a rejection of the worst consequences of European divisions, especially the traumatic wars that had killed tens of millions of Europeans in the 20th century alone. But it was also an affirmation of the values by which Europe had become great.
The Europe of the founders’ youth had thrived by the elaboration of the nation-state, which on one hand competed for pre-eminence, but at the same time evolved a common culture. Its principles of democracy and constitutionalism were spread around the world, even while respect for the dignity of the individual had been violated under colonialism. The European vision sought to maintain the dynamism reflected in Europe’s historical achievements while tempering the competition which had, by 1945, nearly led to their destruction.
Too much of the Europe of today is absorbed in management of structural problems rather than the elaboration of its purposes. From globalization to migration, the willingness to sacrifice is weakening. But a better future cannot be reached without some sacrifice of the present. A society reluctant to accept this verity stagnates and, over the decades, consumes its substance.
Inevitably a gap arises between the institutions and their responsibilities, which accounts for increasing populist pressures. The deepest challenge to the EU is not its management but its ultimate goals. In a world in which upheavals based on conflicting values span the continents, a common act of imagination by Europe and its Atlantic partners is badly needed.
Instead, European leadership is now faced with an unexpected challenge. Under the terms of its charter, the EU is obliged to negotiate with a principal member over the terms of withdrawal. Britain will want to maintain extensive ties with Europe while lifting or easing the constraints of its many legislative and bureaucratic requirements. The EU leadership has almost the opposite incentive. It will not wish to reward Britain’s Leave majority by granting Britain better terms than it enjoyed as a full member. Hence a punitive element is likely to be inherent in the EU bargaining position.
Many of us who have grown up with and admired the vision of European unity hope that the EU will transcend itself, by seeking its vocation not in penalizing the recalcitrant but by negotiating in a manner that restores the prospects of unity. The EU should not treat Britain as an escapee from prison but as a potential compatriot.
Punishing the U.K. will not solve the question of how to operate a common currency in the absence of a common fiscal policy among countries with disparate economic capacities, or of how to define a union whose ability to achieve common political strategies lags fundamentally behind its economic and administrative capacities.
By the same token, Britain needs to put forward the concept of autonomy for which its people voted in a manner that embraces ultimate cooperation. Britain and Europe together must consider how they might return, at least partially, to their historical role as shapers of international order.
In recent decades, Europe has retreated to the conduct of soft power. But besieged as it is on almost all frontiers by upheavals and migration, Europe, including Britain, can avoid turning into a victim of circumstance only by assuming a more active role. These vistas cannot yet be discussed at a geopolitical level, but the EU’s leaders should be able to form discrete and discreet panels for exploring them. In this manner, the Leave vote can serve as a catharsis.
The United States has encouraged the European Union from its beginning but has had difficulty adjusting to the achievement that followed. When the EU idea was first put forward by Jean Monnet at the end of World War II and advanced by the Marshall Plan, the U.S. was the indispensable contributor for international security and economic progress. Given the recovery of contemporary Europe, the American role needs to be redefined to a new kind of leadership, moving from dominance to persuasion.
The manner in which the U.S. administration and other advocates of Remain sought to influence the Brexit vote illustrates the point. The threat that without the support of Europe, a solitary Britain would move to the end of the line in negotiations with Washington reversed the historical sequence of that relationship. The “special relationship” is founded in the origins of America, in a common language and in a comparable system of political values reinforced by fighting together in common wars. The idea of the special relationship was enunciated by Winston Churchill not as a refutation of a multilateral world, but as the guarantor of its values in the hard times sure to follow World War II.
That special relationship is needed for the Atlantic world to traverse the present crisis. A disintegrating Europe could subside into an impotent passivity that will shrivel the entire Atlantic partnership, which represents one of the greatest achievements of the past century. Britain, in whatever mutually respectful legal status it arranges with Europe, is an essential element in this design. Its history and emotion are Atlantic; its current necessity requires as well a link to Europe. Today’s established international order was founded upon conceptions that emerged from the British Isles, were carried by Europe around the world, and ultimately took deep root in North America. American leadership in reinvigorating the contemporary order is imperative.
The Brexit vote has unleashed the anxieties of two continents and of all those who rely upon the stability that their union of purpose provides. The needed restoration of faith will not come through recriminations. To inspire the confidence of the world, Europe and America must demonstrate confidence in themselves.
Mr. Kissinger served as national-security adviser and secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/out-of-the-brexit-turmoil-opportunity-1467151419
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Great sig.
She'll probably go for drones in America instead.
Stacey Dash Rips Hillary: 'How Could You Want a Criminal' to Be President?
Hillary Clinton did not turn over a key email in which her private email server was discussed, Outnumbered reported this afternoon.
The State Department confirmed Thursday that the former secretary of state did not hand over the message in which she and a top aide spoke about problems caused by her use of a homebrew email server.
AP reported:
The email was included within messages exchanged Nov. 13, 2010, between Clinton and one of her closest aides, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin. At the time, emails sent from Clinton's BlackBerry device and routed through her private clintonemail.com server in the basement of her New York home were being blocked by the State Department's spam filter. A suggested remedy was for Clinton to obtain a state.gov email account.
"Let's get separate address or device but I don't want any risk of the personal being accessible," Clinton responded to Abedin.
Clinton's campaign spokesman Brian Fallon downplayed the newly discovered message, saying, "Secretary Clinton had some emails with Huma that Huma did not have, and Huma had some emails with Secretary Clinton that Secretary Clinton did not have."
The Outnumbered panel discussed the ramifications this afternoon, including attorneys Peter Johnson Jr. and Eboni Williams.
Williams noted that voters already question Clinton's trustworthiness and these weekly developments with her emails doesn't help.
But she explained that it all comes down to whether Clinton's actions are deemed improper or illegal. Williams explained that the State Department IG report last month found violations of federal records regulations.
Johnson said that since Clinton deleted 30,000 emails that she deemed "personal," it's become a "jigsaw puzzle" in which investigators need to piece together her email messages.
This comes after Clinton's former IT specialist pleaded the Fifth 125 times during a deposition. Stacey Dash said that just makes Clinton look worse.
"She's a very calculated criminal and how could you want a criminal to run your country? There are so many smoking guns. Why have they not indicted her? ... Because the president doesn't want them to indict her, that's why," she argued.
Watch the full segment above and see more from today's show, here.
http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/06/24/stacey-dash-goes-after-hillary-how-could-you-want-criminal-run-your-country
Stacey Dash Rips Hillary: 'How Could You Want a Criminal' to Be President?
Hillary Clinton did not turn over a key email in which her private email server was discussed, Outnumbered reported this afternoon.
The State Department confirmed Thursday that the former secretary of state did not hand over the message in which she and a top aide spoke about problems caused by her use of a homebrew email server.
AP reported:
The email was included within messages exchanged Nov. 13, 2010, between Clinton and one of her closest aides, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin. At the time, emails sent from Clinton's BlackBerry device and routed through her private clintonemail.com server in the basement of her New York home were being blocked by the State Department's spam filter. A suggested remedy was for Clinton to obtain a state.gov email account.
"Let's get separate address or device but I don't want any risk of the personal being accessible," Clinton responded to Abedin.
Clinton's campaign spokesman Brian Fallon downplayed the newly discovered message, saying, "Secretary Clinton had some emails with Huma that Huma did not have, and Huma had some emails with Secretary Clinton that Secretary Clinton did not have."
The Outnumbered panel discussed the ramifications this afternoon, including attorneys Peter Johnson Jr. and Eboni Williams.
Williams noted that voters already question Clinton's trustworthiness and these weekly developments with her emails doesn't help.
But she explained that it all comes down to whether Clinton's actions are deemed improper or illegal. Williams explained that the State Department IG report last month found violations of federal records regulations.
Johnson said that since Clinton deleted 30,000 emails that she deemed "personal," it's become a "jigsaw puzzle" in which investigators need to piece together her email messages.
This comes after Clinton's former IT specialist pleaded the Fifth 125 times during a deposition. Stacey Dash said that just makes Clinton look worse.
"She's a very calculated criminal and how could you want a criminal to run your country? There are so many smoking guns. Why have they not indicted her? ... Because the president doesn't want them to indict her, that's why," she argued.
Watch the full segment above and see more from today's show, here.
http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/06/24/stacey-dash-goes-after-hillary-how-could-you-want-criminal-run-your-country
Why Hillary Is Stalling Her FBI Interview?
Ed Klein
Posted: Jun 28, 2016 12:50 PM
James Comey, the straight-arrow director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is eager to wind up his investigation of Hillary’s use of an unsecure email system, but he can’t do that until he and Justice Department prosecutors sit down with Hillary and interview her.
Hillary says that neither she nor her campaign have been contacted by the FBI. But that is not true.
Negotiations have been going on for quite some time between the FBI and Hillary’s attorney, David Kendall, who went to law school with Hillary and defended Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial.
Hillary has come up with a dozen excuses why she’s too busy to take time out for an FBI interview.
The strategy she and Kendall have come up with is clear: They want to drag this out as long as possible—if possible until after Hillary is the official Democratic nominee—which will make it harder politically for Comey to recommend an indictment.
Comey is turning up the heat, insisting that the interview be done sooner than later, but it doesn’t look like he will be able to force Hillary’s hand.
Jim Comey and Hillary Clinton are two of the toughest characters in Washington and this has turned into a battle royal.
http://townhall.com/columnists/edklein/2016/06/28/why-hillary-is-stalling-her-fbi-interview-n2184884
Why Hillary Is Stalling Her FBI Interview?
Ed Klein
Posted: Jun 28, 2016 12:50 PM
James Comey, the straight-arrow director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is eager to wind up his investigation of Hillary’s use of an unsecure email system, but he can’t do that until he and Justice Department prosecutors sit down with Hillary and interview her.
Hillary says that neither she nor her campaign have been contacted by the FBI. But that is not true.
Negotiations have been going on for quite some time between the FBI and Hillary’s attorney, David Kendall, who went to law school with Hillary and defended Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial.
Hillary has come up with a dozen excuses why she’s too busy to take time out for an FBI interview.
The strategy she and Kendall have come up with is clear: They want to drag this out as long as possible—if possible until after Hillary is the official Democratic nominee—which will make it harder politically for Comey to recommend an indictment.
Comey is turning up the heat, insisting that the interview be done sooner than later, but it doesn’t look like he will be able to force Hillary’s hand.
Jim Comey and Hillary Clinton are two of the toughest characters in Washington and this has turned into a battle royal.
http://townhall.com/columnists/edklein/2016/06/28/why-hillary-is-stalling-her-fbi-interview-n2184884
UN Official found dead was set to testify against Hillary Clinton same day. “BARBELL FELL ON HIS NECK”
Richard Saunders | June 26, 2016
The death by barbell of disgraced UN official John Ashe could become a bigger obsession for conspiracy theorists than Vince Foster’s 1993 suicide.
Ashe — who was facing trial for tax fraud — died Wednesday afternoon in his house in Westchester County. The UN said he’d had a heart attack. But the local Dobbs Ferry police said Thursday that his throat had been crushed, presumably by a barbell he dropped while pumping iron.
Ashe was due in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, who is charged with smuggling $4.5 million into the US since 2013 and lying that it was to buy art and casino chips.
Ng was identified in a 1998 Senate report as the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally funneled through an Arkansas restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, to the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration. (Ng was not charged with any crime.)
Ng and Trie had visited the White House several times for Democratic fundraising events and were photographed with then-President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton.
One source told me, “During the trial, the prosecutors would have linked Ashe to the Clinton bagman Ng. It would have been very embarrassing. His death was conveniently timed.”
Ashe’s lawyer Jeremy Schneider told me he is sure Ashe’s death was an accident. “There is not one iota of evidence that it was homicide. This is nothing at all like Vince Foster.”
Police in Dobbs Ferry village are keeping the investigation open pending an autopsy by the Westchester medical examiner.
http://hiddenamericans.com/politics/un-official-found-dead-was-set-to-testify-against-hillary-clinton-same-day-barbell-fell-on-his-neck/
http://pagesix.com/2016/06/26/disgraced-ex-un-officials-death-conveniently-timed/
UN Official found dead was set to testify against Hillary Clinton same day. “BARBELL FELL ON HIS NECK”
Richard Saunders | June 26, 2016
The death by barbell of disgraced UN official John Ashe could become a bigger obsession for conspiracy theorists than Vince Foster’s 1993 suicide.
Ashe — who was facing trial for tax fraud — died Wednesday afternoon in his house in Westchester County. The UN said he’d had a heart attack. But the local Dobbs Ferry police said Thursday that his throat had been crushed, presumably by a barbell he dropped while pumping iron.
Ashe was due in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, who is charged with smuggling $4.5 million into the US since 2013 and lying that it was to buy art and casino chips.
Ng was identified in a 1998 Senate report as the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally funneled through an Arkansas restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, to the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration. (Ng was not charged with any crime.)
Ng and Trie had visited the White House several times for Democratic fundraising events and were photographed with then-President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton.
One source told me, “During the trial, the prosecutors would have linked Ashe to the Clinton bagman Ng. It would have been very embarrassing. His death was conveniently timed.”
Ashe’s lawyer Jeremy Schneider told me he is sure Ashe’s death was an accident. “There is not one iota of evidence that it was homicide. This is nothing at all like Vince Foster.”
Police in Dobbs Ferry village are keeping the investigation open pending an autopsy by the Westchester medical examiner.
http://hiddenamericans.com/politics/un-official-found-dead-was-set-to-testify-against-hillary-clinton-same-day-barbell-fell-on-his-neck/
http://pagesix.com/2016/06/26/disgraced-ex-un-officials-death-conveniently-timed/
21 most consequential Clinton scandals, ranked from most important
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES - - Monday, October 12, 2015
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
1. Monica Lewinsky: Led to only the second president in American history to be impeached.
2. Benghazi: Four Americans killed, an entire system of weak diplomatic security uncloaked, and the credibility of a president and his secretary of state damaged.
3. Asia fundraising scandal: More than four dozen convicted in a scandal that made the Lincoln bedroom, White House donor coffees and Buddhist monks infamous.
4. Hillary’s private emails: Hundreds of national secrets already leaked through private email and the specter of a criminal probe looming large.
5. Whitewater: A large S&L failed and several people went to prison.
6. Travelgate: The firing of the career travel office was the very first crony capitalism scandal of the Clinton era.
7. Humagate: An aide’s sweetheart job arrangement.
8. Pardongate: The first time donations were ever connected as possible motives for presidential pardons.
9. Foundation favors: Revealing evidence that the Clinton Foundation was a pay-to-play back door to the State Department, and an open checkbook for foreigners to curry favor.
10. Mysterious files: The disappearance and re-discovery of Hillary’s Rose Law Firm records.
11. Filegate: The Clinton use of FBI files to dig for dirt on their enemies.
12. Hubble trouble: The resignation and imprisonment of Hillary law partner Web Hubbell.
13. The Waco tragedy: One of the most lethal exercises of police power in American history.
14. The Clinton’s Swedish slush fund: $26 million collected overseas with little accountability and lots of questions about whether contributors got a pass on Iran sanctions.
15. Troopergate: From the good old days, did Arkansas state troopers facilitate Bill Clinton’s philandering?
16. Gennifer Flowers: The tale that catapulted a supermarket tabloid into the big time.
17. Bill’s Golden Tongue: His and her speech fees shocked the American public.
18. Boeing Bucks: Boeing contributed big-time to Bill; Hillary helped the company obtain a profitable Russian contract.
19. Larry Lawrence: How did a fat cat donor get buried in Arlington National Cemetery without war experience?
20. The cattle futures: Hillary as commodity trader extraordinaire.
21. Chinagate: Nuclear secrets go to China on her husband’s watch.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/12/bill-clinton-hillary-clinton-scandals-ranked-from-/
21 most consequential Clinton scandals, ranked from most important
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES - - Monday, October 12, 2015
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
1. Monica Lewinsky: Led to only the second president in American history to be impeached.
2. Benghazi: Four Americans killed, an entire system of weak diplomatic security uncloaked, and the credibility of a president and his secretary of state damaged.
3. Asia fundraising scandal: More than four dozen convicted in a scandal that made the Lincoln bedroom, White House donor coffees and Buddhist monks infamous.
4. Hillary’s private emails: Hundreds of national secrets already leaked through private email and the specter of a criminal probe looming large.
5. Whitewater: A large S&L failed and several people went to prison.
6. Travelgate: The firing of the career travel office was the very first crony capitalism scandal of the Clinton era.
7. Humagate: An aide’s sweetheart job arrangement.
8. Pardongate: The first time donations were ever connected as possible motives for presidential pardons.
9. Foundation favors: Revealing evidence that the Clinton Foundation was a pay-to-play back door to the State Department, and an open checkbook for foreigners to curry favor.
10. Mysterious files: The disappearance and re-discovery of Hillary’s Rose Law Firm records.
11. Filegate: The Clinton use of FBI files to dig for dirt on their enemies.
12. Hubble trouble: The resignation and imprisonment of Hillary law partner Web Hubbell.
13. The Waco tragedy: One of the most lethal exercises of police power in American history.
14. The Clinton’s Swedish slush fund: $26 million collected overseas with little accountability and lots of questions about whether contributors got a pass on Iran sanctions.
15. Troopergate: From the good old days, did Arkansas state troopers facilitate Bill Clinton’s philandering?
16. Gennifer Flowers: The tale that catapulted a supermarket tabloid into the big time.
17. Bill’s Golden Tongue: His and her speech fees shocked the American public.
18. Boeing Bucks: Boeing contributed big-time to Bill; Hillary helped the company obtain a profitable Russian contract.
19. Larry Lawrence: How did a fat cat donor get buried in Arlington National Cemetery without war experience?
20. The cattle futures: Hillary as commodity trader extraordinaire.
21. Chinagate: Nuclear secrets go to China on her husband’s watch.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/12/bill-clinton-hillary-clinton-scandals-ranked-from-/
Conservative group claims Hillary Clinton's foundation took millions from foreign governments
By Steve Contorno on Thursday, February 26th, 2015 at 4:49 p.m.
A group founded by Karl Rove launched one of the first salvos of the 2016 presidential election cycle with a Web video attacking presumed Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
American Crossroads released a video Feb. 23 that features audio of a speech from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat from the party’s progressive wing, warning that "powerful interests have tried to capture Washington and rig the system in their favor." The video shows photos of Clinton meeting with various foreign delegates and leaders.
Text on the screen alleges that "the Clintons' foundation took millions from foreign governments" including "up to $5 million" from the United Arab Emirates and "up to $25 million" from Saudi Arabia.
We should note off the bat that Warren's remarks were ripped from two separate speeches aimed at limiting money from corporations and Super PACs in politics, and they were merged together and cut in such a way to eliminate those references. They certainly weren't about Clinton or foundations or foreign governments.
Still, we wanted to check whether Bill and Hillary Clinton's foundation has indeed received large sums of money from foreign governments.
Former President Bill Clinton started the William J. Clinton Foundation in 2001 as a nonprofit philanthropy for global development. The organization partners with government, non-government organizations and businesses to tackle quality-of-life issues, such as AIDS, poverty and climate change.
When Hillary Clinton became secretary of state in 2009, the foundation agreed to disclose its donors at the request of the White House. According to a memorandum of understanding, the foundation could continue to collect donations from countries with which it had existing relationships or running grant programs. If contributions from those countries increased significantly or a new foreign government wanted to make a donation, the State Department would have to first approve (more on that in a bit).
We should emphasize there is nothing illegal about the contributions. Candidates for office are prohibited by law from accepting campaign contributions from foreign governments, but foundations have no such restriction. The main issue is that the foundation presented ethical quandaries when Clinton was a candidate for president in 2008 and when she was Secretary of State. But at this time, the foundation was her husband’s project, not hers.
That changed when Clinton left the State Department. In 2013, the foundation became the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton foundation, with Hillary Clinton taking an active role in fundraising.
Throughout the years, donors have included celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz, businesses like eBay and Pepsi, and other nonprofits, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And, yes, some governments.
So which countries and foreign governments have donated to her organization? Not just Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, it turns out.
We pulled the information from the Clinton Foundation website, which tracks donors by contribution range. As it is, we don’t have exact amount for each donation, nor do we know when the contribution was made — except donations made in 2014, which were marked on the site.
Here’s what we found. Due to search constraints on the Clinton Foundation’s website and the vast number of small donations, we’re only including contributions larger than $25,000.
Foreign government
Amount
Tenerife Island government
$25,000 to $50,000
Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah
$25,000 to $50,000
Government of Jamaica
$50,000 to $100,000
Kingdom of Bahrain
$50,000 to $100,000
Federal Republic of Germany
$100,000 to $250,000
Embassy of Algeria
$250,000 to $500,000
Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada
$250,000 to $500,000
Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office
$500,000 to $1,000,000
State of Qatar
$1,000,000 to $5,000,000
Government of Brunei Darussalam
$1,000,000 to $5,000,000
Sultanate of Oman
$1,000,000 to $5,000,000
United Arab Emirates
$1,000,000 to $5,000,000
UK Department for International Development
$1,000,000 to $5,000,000
Commonwealth of Australia
$5,000,000 to $10,000,000
Government of the Netherlands
$5,000,000 to $10,000,000
State of Kuwait
$5,000,000 to $10,000,000
Australian Agency for International Development
$10,000,000 to $25,000,000
Government of Norway
$10,000,000 to $25,000,000
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
$10,000,000 to $25,000,000
Of the 25 donors that have contributed more than $5 million to the Clinton Foundation throughout the years, six are foreign governments.
Six of the 19 countries listed above made donations to the Clinton Foundation in 2014: Germany, Canada, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Australia and Saudi Arabia. It’s not clear whether those governments had donated previously, and if so, how much of their donation came last year.
So the assertion at the center of the ad is accurate: the Clinton Foundation did, in fact, take millions from foreign governments. Additionally, the ad singled out two countries — the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — that have donated to the foundation since Hillary Clinton officially joined her family’s foundation.
Clinton Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian said most of the money from foreign countries is earmarked for specific projects and grants, like AIDS relief. Minassian said that the ad implied nefarious dealings, and that isn’t the case.
"I just have a problem with the premise of the ad," Minassian said. "It’s the same premise when people say we’re the same as a Super PAC. We’re not; we’re philanthropy. This is what NGOs do."
Readers can decide for themselves how they feel about the charge. We’re just checking the fact behind the ad. American Crossroads did not respond to a voicemail and emails.
We should note that since the ad came out, and while we were reporting this story, the Washington Post reported that the contribution from Algeria, that had never donated previously, came while Clinton was Secretary of State and was not approved by the State Department.
Minassian said the donation from Algeria was related to Haiti relief efforts, and that, per the agreement with the White House, "the State Department should have been formally informed."
"As the Clinton Foundation did with all donations it received for earthquake relief, the entire amount of Algeria's contribution was distributed as aid in Haiti," Minassian said. "This was a one-time, specific donation to help Haiti and Algeria had not donated to the Clinton Foundation before and has not since."
Our ruling
An American Crossroads web ad claimed, "the Clintons' foundation took millions from foreign governments" including "up to $5 million" from the United Arab Emirates and "up to $25 million" from Saudi Arabia.
As we noted, it doesn’t violate campaign rules for a nonprofit philanthropy to accept donations from foreign governments. Over the years, the Clinton Foundation has taken millions of dollars from foreign governments. This includes between $1 million and $5 million from the United Arab Emirates and between $10 million and $25 million from Saudi Arabia. At least a portion of those donations came in 2014, after Clinton left the State Department and formally joined the family’s foundation that had previously been in her husband’s name alone.
We rate the statement True.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/feb/26/american-crossroads/conservative-group-claims-hillary-clintons-foundat/
Conservative group claims Hillary Clinton's foundation took millions from foreign governments
By Steve Contorno on Thursday, February 26th, 2015 at 4:49 p.m.
A group founded by Karl Rove launched one of the first salvos of the 2016 presidential election cycle with a Web video attacking presumed Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
American Crossroads released a video Feb. 23 that features audio of a speech from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat from the party’s progressive wing, warning that "powerful interests have tried to capture Washington and rig the system in their favor." The video shows photos of Clinton meeting with various foreign delegates and leaders.
Text on the screen alleges that "the Clintons' foundation took millions from foreign governments" including "up to $5 million" from the United Arab Emirates and "up to $25 million" from Saudi Arabia.
We should note off the bat that Warren's remarks were ripped from two separate speeches aimed at limiting money from corporations and Super PACs in politics, and they were merged together and cut in such a way to eliminate those references. They certainly weren't about Clinton or foundations or foreign governments.
Still, we wanted to check whether Bill and Hillary Clinton's foundation has indeed received large sums of money from foreign governments.
Former President Bill Clinton started the William J. Clinton Foundation in 2001 as a nonprofit philanthropy for global development. The organization partners with government, non-government organizations and businesses to tackle quality-of-life issues, such as AIDS, poverty and climate change.
When Hillary Clinton became secretary of state in 2009, the foundation agreed to disclose its donors at the request of the White House. According to a memorandum of understanding, the foundation could continue to collect donations from countries with which it had existing relationships or running grant programs. If contributions from those countries increased significantly or a new foreign government wanted to make a donation, the State Department would have to first approve (more on that in a bit).
We should emphasize there is nothing illegal about the contributions. Candidates for office are prohibited by law from accepting campaign contributions from foreign governments, but foundations have no such restriction. The main issue is that the foundation presented ethical quandaries when Clinton was a candidate for president in 2008 and when she was Secretary of State. But at this time, the foundation was her husband’s project, not hers.
That changed when Clinton left the State Department. In 2013, the foundation became the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton foundation, with Hillary Clinton taking an active role in fundraising.
Throughout the years, donors have included celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz, businesses like eBay and Pepsi, and other nonprofits, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And, yes, some governments.
So which countries and foreign governments have donated to her organization? Not just Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, it turns out.
We pulled the information from the Clinton Foundation website, which tracks donors by contribution range. As it is, we don’t have exact amount for each donation, nor do we know when the contribution was made — except donations made in 2014, which were marked on the site.
Here’s what we found. Due to search constraints on the Clinton Foundation’s website and the vast number of small donations, we’re only including contributions larger than $25,000.
Foreign government
Amount
Tenerife Island government
$25,000 to $50,000
Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah
$25,000 to $50,000
Government of Jamaica
$50,000 to $100,000
Kingdom of Bahrain
$50,000 to $100,000
Federal Republic of Germany
$100,000 to $250,000
Embassy of Algeria
$250,000 to $500,000
Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada
$250,000 to $500,000
Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office
$500,000 to $1,000,000
State of Qatar
$1,000,000 to $5,000,000
Government of Brunei Darussalam
$1,000,000 to $5,000,000
Sultanate of Oman
$1,000,000 to $5,000,000
United Arab Emirates
$1,000,000 to $5,000,000
UK Department for International Development
$1,000,000 to $5,000,000
Commonwealth of Australia
$5,000,000 to $10,000,000
Government of the Netherlands
$5,000,000 to $10,000,000
State of Kuwait
$5,000,000 to $10,000,000
Australian Agency for International Development
$10,000,000 to $25,000,000
Government of Norway
$10,000,000 to $25,000,000
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
$10,000,000 to $25,000,000
Of the 25 donors that have contributed more than $5 million to the Clinton Foundation throughout the years, six are foreign governments.
Six of the 19 countries listed above made donations to the Clinton Foundation in 2014: Germany, Canada, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Australia and Saudi Arabia. It’s not clear whether those governments had donated previously, and if so, how much of their donation came last year.
So the assertion at the center of the ad is accurate: the Clinton Foundation did, in fact, take millions from foreign governments. Additionally, the ad singled out two countries — the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — that have donated to the foundation since Hillary Clinton officially joined her family’s foundation.
Clinton Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian said most of the money from foreign countries is earmarked for specific projects and grants, like AIDS relief. Minassian said that the ad implied nefarious dealings, and that isn’t the case.
"I just have a problem with the premise of the ad," Minassian said. "It’s the same premise when people say we’re the same as a Super PAC. We’re not; we’re philanthropy. This is what NGOs do."
Readers can decide for themselves how they feel about the charge. We’re just checking the fact behind the ad. American Crossroads did not respond to a voicemail and emails.
We should note that since the ad came out, and while we were reporting this story, the Washington Post reported that the contribution from Algeria, that had never donated previously, came while Clinton was Secretary of State and was not approved by the State Department.
Minassian said the donation from Algeria was related to Haiti relief efforts, and that, per the agreement with the White House, "the State Department should have been formally informed."
"As the Clinton Foundation did with all donations it received for earthquake relief, the entire amount of Algeria's contribution was distributed as aid in Haiti," Minassian said. "This was a one-time, specific donation to help Haiti and Algeria had not donated to the Clinton Foundation before and has not since."
Our ruling
An American Crossroads web ad claimed, "the Clintons' foundation took millions from foreign governments" including "up to $5 million" from the United Arab Emirates and "up to $25 million" from Saudi Arabia.
As we noted, it doesn’t violate campaign rules for a nonprofit philanthropy to accept donations from foreign governments. Over the years, the Clinton Foundation has taken millions of dollars from foreign governments. This includes between $1 million and $5 million from the United Arab Emirates and between $10 million and $25 million from Saudi Arabia. At least a portion of those donations came in 2014, after Clinton left the State Department and formally joined the family’s foundation that had previously been in her husband’s name alone.
We rate the statement True.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/feb/26/american-crossroads/conservative-group-claims-hillary-clintons-foundat/
Foreign donations to foundation raise major ethical questions for Hillary Clinton
By Jennifer Rubin February 18, 2015 ?
Foreign donations to foundation raise major ethical questions for Hillary Clinton
In an extraordinary report that has not yet been fully digested, the Wall Street Journal tells us that the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation has received millions from foreign governments including Qatar, a prominent backer of Hamas:
WASHINGTON - AUGUST 20: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton briefs reporters at the State Department on August 20, 2010 in Washington, DC. Secretary Clinton announced that leaders from Israel and Palestine have agreed to participate in peace talks in Washington, DC.
The Clinton Foundation has dropped its self-imposed ban on collecting funds from foreign governments and is winning contributions at an accelerating rate, raising ethical questions as Hillary Clinton ramps up her expected bid for the presidency.
Recent donors include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Australia, Germany and a Canadian government agency promoting the Keystone XL pipeline. . . .
United Arab Emirates, a first-time donor, gave between $1 million and $5 million in 2014, and the German government—which also hadn’t previously given—contributed between $100,000 and $250,000.
A previous donor, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has given between $10 million and $25 million since the foundation was created in 1999. Part of that came in 2014, although the database doesn’t specify how much.
The Australian government has given between $5 million and $10 million, at least part of which came in 2014. It also gave in 2013, when its donations fell in the same range.
Qatar’s government committee preparing for the 2022 soccer World Cup gave between $250,000 and $500,000 in 2014. Qatar’s government had previously donated between $1 million and $5 million.
Oman, which had made a donation previously, gave an undisclosed amount in 2014. Over time, Oman has given the foundation between $1 million and $5 million. Prior to last year, its donations fell in the same range.
The foundation of course provides luxury travel for Hillary Clinton and her spouse, a high-visibility platform and access to mega-donors. She is beholden in a meaningful sense to its donors. No presidential candidate can justify a conflict of interest of this magnitude; it is not merely the appearance of conflict but actual conflict of interest.
If former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell (R) might go to jail for receiving lavish gifts for a donor for whom he made a few phone calls, what would be the remedy if, once in office, Hillary Clinton extended her office not only to make calls but also to approve policy and financial arrangements worth billions back to these countries? How will the American people ever be satisfied we are getting her undivided loyalty? No matter how much she protests, her judgment would be questioned as influenced by gratitude toward the foundation’s wealthy patrons. And, of course, a president cannot recuse himself or herself from dealings, so there is no practical way to avoid the conflict.
It is bad enough when Clinton takes gobs of money in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, oil and chemical companies, and other titans of industry — although that, too, raises the potential for conflicts of interest. But a foreign government should never have any claim on the loyalty of a U.S. president, which is why foreign donations directly to a campaign are illegal. We cannot give her a pass simply because her entity is a “foundation,” not a PAC or campaign entity.
There is no conceivable way, I would suggest, that the foundation can keep the foreign monies if she wants to run for president. It is unseemly in the extreme and raises potential for liability down the road. But even if she were now to give all the money back, she has had use of the money in the meantime (the time value of money is something, after all). More important, her egregious judgment and untrammeled greed raise real questions about her priorities and ethics. Republicans should and will, I predict, pummel her with this. If the MSM is not entirely in her pocket, they will as well. Imagine if Jeb Bush’s education foundation took millions from Saudi Arabia. Surely there would be cries for him to withdraw from presidential pre-campaigning.
The irony here is that it is not the “Israel lobby” that buys influence. It is Arab states that lavishly fund universities and think tanks. And now they are buying a president. I await with baited breath the outrage from Tom Friedman and the other Israel-bashers who accuse lawmakers of being bought and paid for by Israel. Or do the rules just apply to Israel?
Hillary, give the money back. Or don’t run. You can’t keep the money and run.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/02/18/foreign-donations-to-hillary-clintons-foundation-raise-major-ethical-questions/
Foreign donations to foundation raise major ethical questions for Hillary Clinton
By Jennifer Rubin February 18, 2015 ?
Foreign donations to foundation raise major ethical questions for Hillary Clinton
In an extraordinary report that has not yet been fully digested, the Wall Street Journal tells us that the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation has received millions from foreign governments including Qatar, a prominent backer of Hamas:
WASHINGTON - AUGUST 20: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton briefs reporters at the State Department on August 20, 2010 in Washington, DC. Secretary Clinton announced that leaders from Israel and Palestine have agreed to participate in peace talks in Washington, DC.
The Clinton Foundation has dropped its self-imposed ban on collecting funds from foreign governments and is winning contributions at an accelerating rate, raising ethical questions as Hillary Clinton ramps up her expected bid for the presidency.
Recent donors include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Australia, Germany and a Canadian government agency promoting the Keystone XL pipeline. . . .
United Arab Emirates, a first-time donor, gave between $1 million and $5 million in 2014, and the German government—which also hadn’t previously given—contributed between $100,000 and $250,000.
A previous donor, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has given between $10 million and $25 million since the foundation was created in 1999. Part of that came in 2014, although the database doesn’t specify how much.
The Australian government has given between $5 million and $10 million, at least part of which came in 2014. It also gave in 2013, when its donations fell in the same range.
Qatar’s government committee preparing for the 2022 soccer World Cup gave between $250,000 and $500,000 in 2014. Qatar’s government had previously donated between $1 million and $5 million.
Oman, which had made a donation previously, gave an undisclosed amount in 2014. Over time, Oman has given the foundation between $1 million and $5 million. Prior to last year, its donations fell in the same range.
The foundation of course provides luxury travel for Hillary Clinton and her spouse, a high-visibility platform and access to mega-donors. She is beholden in a meaningful sense to its donors. No presidential candidate can justify a conflict of interest of this magnitude; it is not merely the appearance of conflict but actual conflict of interest.
If former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell (R) might go to jail for receiving lavish gifts for a donor for whom he made a few phone calls, what would be the remedy if, once in office, Hillary Clinton extended her office not only to make calls but also to approve policy and financial arrangements worth billions back to these countries? How will the American people ever be satisfied we are getting her undivided loyalty? No matter how much she protests, her judgment would be questioned as influenced by gratitude toward the foundation’s wealthy patrons. And, of course, a president cannot recuse himself or herself from dealings, so there is no practical way to avoid the conflict.
It is bad enough when Clinton takes gobs of money in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, oil and chemical companies, and other titans of industry — although that, too, raises the potential for conflicts of interest. But a foreign government should never have any claim on the loyalty of a U.S. president, which is why foreign donations directly to a campaign are illegal. We cannot give her a pass simply because her entity is a “foundation,” not a PAC or campaign entity.
There is no conceivable way, I would suggest, that the foundation can keep the foreign monies if she wants to run for president. It is unseemly in the extreme and raises potential for liability down the road. But even if she were now to give all the money back, she has had use of the money in the meantime (the time value of money is something, after all). More important, her egregious judgment and untrammeled greed raise real questions about her priorities and ethics. Republicans should and will, I predict, pummel her with this. If the MSM is not entirely in her pocket, they will as well. Imagine if Jeb Bush’s education foundation took millions from Saudi Arabia. Surely there would be cries for him to withdraw from presidential pre-campaigning.
The irony here is that it is not the “Israel lobby” that buys influence. It is Arab states that lavishly fund universities and think tanks. And now they are buying a president. I await with baited breath the outrage from Tom Friedman and the other Israel-bashers who accuse lawmakers of being bought and paid for by Israel. Or do the rules just apply to Israel?
Hillary, give the money back. Or don’t run. You can’t keep the money and run.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/02/18/foreign-donations-to-hillary-clintons-foundation-raise-major-ethical-questions/
There is so much more. And this is only what we're allowed to see.
Judge Napolitano on Report of Hillary’s Latest Bombshell: Missing Donor Schedules
by S. Noble • June 28, 2016
While we were all watching the shiny object last week, more Hillary corruption came through. We reviewed this last week after the AP put out their study but it deserves further attention.
See video: http://www.independentsentinel.com/judge-napolitano-on-report-of-hillarys-latest-bombshell-missing-donor-schedules/
Judge Nap on Hillary’s missing’ schedules with… by mauriedee–Martha McCallum
Understand this is the woman – the presidential candidate – being touted as the most transparent of leaders yet donor meetings, especially Wall Street donors, were left off her schedules. It was discovered by a lawsuit. Listen to the judge in the video above.
Clinton campaign manager Mook is one of the worst manipulators and demonstrated that on Fox News Sunday while being interviewed by Chris Wallace last week. Mook cleverly, though deceptively, turned the conversation away from Hillary’s complete lack of transparency to a condemnation of Trump not releasing his tax forms.
MOOK: Well, Hillary Clinton has actually been the most transparent secretary of state in our history. She has released all of her emails. She has released her schedules. You know, I think the record speaks for itself here.
(CROSSTALK)
MOOK: Donald Trump has yet to release his taxes.
WALLACE: Without litigating all of it, you know, there is a lot of pushback on that.
MOOK: Well, again, if we’re talking about transparency and ethics, it has been a given for decades that presidential candidates release their taxes. Donald Trump refuses to do that. He refuses to release the documents related to Trump University.
Tying to make hay out of Trump University is also rather humorous considering Bill Clinton’s ties to a sketchy college mill which paid him millions for some speeches and photo-ops – Laureate University. It’s a fraud by many accounts.
Judge Napolitano on Report of Hillary’s Latest Bombshell: Missing Donor Schedules
by S. Noble • June 28, 2016
While we were all watching the shiny object last week, more Hillary corruption came through. We reviewed this last week after the AP put out their study but it deserves further attention.
See video: http://www.independentsentinel.com/judge-napolitano-on-report-of-hillarys-latest-bombshell-missing-donor-schedules/
Judge Nap on Hillary’s missing’ schedules with… by mauriedee–Martha McCallum
Understand this is the woman – the presidential candidate – being touted as the most transparent of leaders yet donor meetings, especially Wall Street donors, were left off her schedules. It was discovered by a lawsuit. Listen to the judge in the video above.
Clinton campaign manager Mook is one of the worst manipulators and demonstrated that on Fox News Sunday while being interviewed by Chris Wallace last week. Mook cleverly, though deceptively, turned the conversation away from Hillary’s complete lack of transparency to a condemnation of Trump not releasing his tax forms.
MOOK: Well, Hillary Clinton has actually been the most transparent secretary of state in our history. She has released all of her emails. She has released her schedules. You know, I think the record speaks for itself here.
(CROSSTALK)
MOOK: Donald Trump has yet to release his taxes.
WALLACE: Without litigating all of it, you know, there is a lot of pushback on that.
MOOK: Well, again, if we’re talking about transparency and ethics, it has been a given for decades that presidential candidates release their taxes. Donald Trump refuses to do that. He refuses to release the documents related to Trump University.
Tying to make hay out of Trump University is also rather humorous considering Bill Clinton’s ties to a sketchy college mill which paid him millions for some speeches and photo-ops – Laureate University. It’s a fraud by many accounts.
Lest We Forget Chinagate, The Most Serious Scandal in US History
by S. Noble • October 24, 2015
The “Chinagate” fundraising scandal plagued the 1996 Bill Clinton-Al Gore campaign and Hillary was very much involved. Chinagate aka Commercegate is the most serious scandal in U.S. history. It involves the transfer of America’s most sensitive technology, including but not limited to nuclear missile and satellite technology, apparently in exchange for millions of dollars in contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election effort and the Democratic National Committee.
The Chinagate scandal of 1996 ended up in an award of 900,000 in attorney’s fees and costs to Judicial Watch ten years later.
The scandal was an apparent scheme by the Clinton administration to sell seats on taxpayer-funded trade missions in exchange for campaign contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign.
Judicial Watch began an investigation and Clinton administration officials deliberately concealed and destroyed records regarding the trade mission and testimony was falsified.
Nolanda Hill, a business partner and confidante of the Clinton then-Commerce Secretary Ron Brown testified in a court hearing during the litigation that the Clinton White House told Brown to “delay the [Judicial Watch] case by withholding the production of documents prior to the 1996 elections and to devise a way not to comply with the court’s orders.”
She also testified that Brown, who died in a plane crash during a trade mission to Bosnia, told her that Hillary conceived of the scheme to sell trade mission seats. Brown complained of being “Hillary’s blankety-blank tour guide.”
The case was so serious and so damaging that the Commerce Department asked for a judgment against itself to avoid any further revelations. The court refused and insisted the Commerce Department conduct a new search for trade mission records and authorized discovery into the illegal concealment and destruction of government records.
Congressional investigations, FEC investigations, a criminal inquiry by the Justice Department and the FBI followed. The DOC changed its trade mission policy which abandoned all political contributions affecting mission seats.
Finally, in 2006, without any fanfare, an appellate court upheld an award of 900,000 to Judicial Watch.
While there was a lot of circumstantial evidence, there was never a smoking gun.
~ Clinton friend Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie pleaded guilty to charges of violating campaign finance rules in exchange for having pending indictments dropped against him in Washington and Arkansas.
~ According to news reports in 1997, Democratic donor Johnny Chung received a $150,000 transfer from the Bank of China three days before he handed then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff a $50,000 check.
~ Then-Vice President Al Gore received political donations from Buddhist nuns who had taken a vow of poverty.
~ President Clinton admitted in 1997 that he invited major campaign donors to spend the night in the White House. The Clintons hosted 404 overnight guests.
~ During the investigation by the Department of Justice, about 120 people connected to “Chinagate” either fled the country or pleaded the Fifth Amendment to prevent testifying.
Judicial Watch brought the case on behalf of shareholders of Loral
Space & Communications Ltd. They transferred sensitive US missile technology to China in the 1990s. The CEO Bernard Schwartz gave $1.5 million to various Democratic Party entities including Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign.
At the same time Schwartz and Loral convinced the Clinton Administration to transfer technology export licensing authority from the State Department to the more politically-influenced Commerce Department. Schwartz and Loral then obtained licenses from the Commerce Department that were needed to launch Loral-manufactured communications satellites into orbit from China.
They ended up advancing China’s missile program which is a threat to US national security much as the Clinton-Russian uranium deal is..
Federal racketeering charges were never brought.
Then there was the contribution scandal involving fugitive Norman Hsu during Hillary’s last presidential run. She kept most of the money he contributed even after she knew he admitted guilt in illegal bundling of the contributions. He had raised more than $1 million for then-Senator Clinton’s presidential campaign.
There were questions, but no smoking gun.
In January 2001, immediately before Bill Clinton left office, he granted a presidential pardon to Marc Rich after his ex-wife and his friend donated a combined $1.45 million to the Clinton Presidential Library. Rich fled the country once he was convicted of tax evasion.
Even Hillary’s 2000 Senate campaign involved an illegal contribution from Hollywood mogul Peter Paul and the leveling of a $35,000 fine by the FEC. Hillary’s finance director was indicted and acquitted.
Recently, very large contributions to the Clinton Foundation and exorbitant speaking fees for Bill Clinton were proven to coincide with favors granted by the State Department and signed off by then-secretary Hillary Clinton. One extremely large donation was tied to the selling of our Uranium to the Russians.
The Benghazi scandal brings us once again to Hillary Clinton’s lack of transparency and suspected intrigue. She deleted 30,000 emails from a private server she was not allowed to use for government documents. She had no right to delete the emails and she did it when Congress announced they were going to subpoena them.
Sources: Media Research Center, Standard Newswire, and the Sentinel
https://www.independentsentinel.com/lest-we-forget-hillarys-china-gate-scandal/
Lest We Forget Chinagate, The Most Serious Scandal in US History
by S. Noble • October 24, 2015
The “Chinagate” fundraising scandal plagued the 1996 Bill Clinton-Al Gore campaign and Hillary was very much involved. Chinagate aka Commercegate is the most serious scandal in U.S. history. It involves the transfer of America’s most sensitive technology, including but not limited to nuclear missile and satellite technology, apparently in exchange for millions of dollars in contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election effort and the Democratic National Committee.
The Chinagate scandal of 1996 ended up in an award of 900,000 in attorney’s fees and costs to Judicial Watch ten years later.
The scandal was an apparent scheme by the Clinton administration to sell seats on taxpayer-funded trade missions in exchange for campaign contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign.
Judicial Watch began an investigation and Clinton administration officials deliberately concealed and destroyed records regarding the trade mission and testimony was falsified.
Nolanda Hill, a business partner and confidante of the Clinton then-Commerce Secretary Ron Brown testified in a court hearing during the litigation that the Clinton White House told Brown to “delay the [Judicial Watch] case by withholding the production of documents prior to the 1996 elections and to devise a way not to comply with the court’s orders.”
She also testified that Brown, who died in a plane crash during a trade mission to Bosnia, told her that Hillary conceived of the scheme to sell trade mission seats. Brown complained of being “Hillary’s blankety-blank tour guide.”
The case was so serious and so damaging that the Commerce Department asked for a judgment against itself to avoid any further revelations. The court refused and insisted the Commerce Department conduct a new search for trade mission records and authorized discovery into the illegal concealment and destruction of government records.
Congressional investigations, FEC investigations, a criminal inquiry by the Justice Department and the FBI followed. The DOC changed its trade mission policy which abandoned all political contributions affecting mission seats.
Finally, in 2006, without any fanfare, an appellate court upheld an award of 900,000 to Judicial Watch.
While there was a lot of circumstantial evidence, there was never a smoking gun.
~ Clinton friend Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie pleaded guilty to charges of violating campaign finance rules in exchange for having pending indictments dropped against him in Washington and Arkansas.
~ According to news reports in 1997, Democratic donor Johnny Chung received a $150,000 transfer from the Bank of China three days before he handed then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff a $50,000 check.
~ Then-Vice President Al Gore received political donations from Buddhist nuns who had taken a vow of poverty.
~ President Clinton admitted in 1997 that he invited major campaign donors to spend the night in the White House. The Clintons hosted 404 overnight guests.
~ During the investigation by the Department of Justice, about 120 people connected to “Chinagate” either fled the country or pleaded the Fifth Amendment to prevent testifying.
Judicial Watch brought the case on behalf of shareholders of Loral
Space & Communications Ltd. They transferred sensitive US missile technology to China in the 1990s. The CEO Bernard Schwartz gave $1.5 million to various Democratic Party entities including Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign.
At the same time Schwartz and Loral convinced the Clinton Administration to transfer technology export licensing authority from the State Department to the more politically-influenced Commerce Department. Schwartz and Loral then obtained licenses from the Commerce Department that were needed to launch Loral-manufactured communications satellites into orbit from China.
They ended up advancing China’s missile program which is a threat to US national security much as the Clinton-Russian uranium deal is..
Federal racketeering charges were never brought.
Then there was the contribution scandal involving fugitive Norman Hsu during Hillary’s last presidential run. She kept most of the money he contributed even after she knew he admitted guilt in illegal bundling of the contributions. He had raised more than $1 million for then-Senator Clinton’s presidential campaign.
There were questions, but no smoking gun.
In January 2001, immediately before Bill Clinton left office, he granted a presidential pardon to Marc Rich after his ex-wife and his friend donated a combined $1.45 million to the Clinton Presidential Library. Rich fled the country once he was convicted of tax evasion.
Even Hillary’s 2000 Senate campaign involved an illegal contribution from Hollywood mogul Peter Paul and the leveling of a $35,000 fine by the FEC. Hillary’s finance director was indicted and acquitted.
Recently, very large contributions to the Clinton Foundation and exorbitant speaking fees for Bill Clinton were proven to coincide with favors granted by the State Department and signed off by then-secretary Hillary Clinton. One extremely large donation was tied to the selling of our Uranium to the Russians.
The Benghazi scandal brings us once again to Hillary Clinton’s lack of transparency and suspected intrigue. She deleted 30,000 emails from a private server she was not allowed to use for government documents. She had no right to delete the emails and she did it when Congress announced they were going to subpoena them.
Sources: Media Research Center, Standard Newswire, and the Sentinel
https://www.independentsentinel.com/lest-we-forget-hillarys-china-gate-scandal/
Foreign donations to foundation raise major ethical questions for Hillary Clinton
By Jennifer Rubin
February 18, 2015 ?
In an extraordinary report that has not yet been fully digested, the Wall Street Journal tells us that the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation has received millions from foreign governments including Qatar, a prominent backer of Hamas:
WASHINGTON - AUGUST 20: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton briefs reporters at the State Department on August 20, 2010 in Washington, DC. Secretary Clinton announced that leaders from Israel and Palestine have agreed to participate in peace talks in Washington, DC.
The Clinton Foundation has dropped its self-imposed ban on collecting funds from foreign governments and is winning contributions at an accelerating rate, raising ethical questions as Hillary Clinton ramps up her expected bid for the presidency.
Recent donors include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Australia, Germany and a Canadian government agency promoting the Keystone XL pipeline. . . .
United Arab Emirates, a first-time donor, gave between $1 million and $5 million in 2014, and the German government—which also hadn’t previously given—contributed between $100,000 and $250,000.
A previous donor, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has given between $10 million and $25 million since the foundation was created in 1999. Part of that came in 2014, although the database doesn’t specify how much.
The Australian government has given between $5 million and $10 million, at least part of which came in 2014. It also gave in 2013, when its donations fell in the same range.
Qatar’s government committee preparing for the 2022 soccer World Cup gave between $250,000 and $500,000 in 2014. Qatar’s government had previously donated between $1 million and $5 million.
Oman, which had made a donation previously, gave an undisclosed amount in 2014. Over time, Oman has given the foundation between $1 million and $5 million. Prior to last year, its donations fell in the same range.
The foundation of course provides luxury travel for Hillary Clinton and her spouse, a high-visibility platform and access to mega-donors. She is beholden in a meaningful sense to its donors. No presidential candidate can justify a conflict of interest of this magnitude; it is not merely the appearance of conflict but actual conflict of interest.
If former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell (R) might go to jail for receiving lavish gifts for a donor for whom he made a few phone calls, what would be the remedy if, once in office, Hillary Clinton extended her office not only to make calls but also to approve policy and financial arrangements worth billions back to these countries? How will the American people ever be satisfied we are getting her undivided loyalty? No matter how much she protests, her judgment would be questioned as influenced by gratitude toward the foundation’s wealthy patrons. And, of course, a president cannot recuse himself or herself from dealings, so there is no practical way to avoid the conflict.
It is bad enough when Clinton takes gobs of money in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, oil and chemical companies, and other titans of industry — although that, too, raises the potential for conflicts of interest. But a foreign government should never have any claim on the loyalty of a U.S. president, which is why foreign donations directly to a campaign are illegal. We cannot give her a pass simply because her entity is a “foundation,” not a PAC or campaign entity.
There is no conceivable way, I would suggest, that the foundation can keep the foreign monies if she wants to run for president. It is unseemly in the extreme and raises potential for liability down the road. But even if she were now to give all the money back, she has had use of the money in the meantime (the time value of money is something, after all). More important, her egregious judgment and untrammeled greed raise real questions about her priorities and ethics. Republicans should and will, I predict, pummel her with this. If the MSM is not entirely in her pocket, they will as well. Imagine if Jeb Bush’s education foundation took millions from Saudi Arabia. Surely there would be cries for him to withdraw from presidential pre-campaigning.
The irony here is that it is not the “Israel lobby” that buys influence. It is Arab states that lavishly fund universities and think tanks. And now they are buying a president. I await with baited breath the outrage from Tom Friedman and the other Israel-bashers who accuse lawmakers of being bought and paid for by Israel. Or do the rules just apply to Israel?
Hillary, give the money back. Or don’t run. You can’t keep the money and run.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/02/18/foreign-donations-to-hillary-clintons-foundation-raise-major-ethical-questions/
Foreign donations to foundation raise major ethical questions for Hillary Clinton
By Jennifer Rubin
February 18, 2015 ?
In an extraordinary report that has not yet been fully digested, the Wall Street Journal tells us that the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation has received millions from foreign governments including Qatar, a prominent backer of Hamas:
WASHINGTON - AUGUST 20: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton briefs reporters at the State Department on August 20, 2010 in Washington, DC. Secretary Clinton announced that leaders from Israel and Palestine have agreed to participate in peace talks in Washington, DC.
The Clinton Foundation has dropped its self-imposed ban on collecting funds from foreign governments and is winning contributions at an accelerating rate, raising ethical questions as Hillary Clinton ramps up her expected bid for the presidency.
Recent donors include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Australia, Germany and a Canadian government agency promoting the Keystone XL pipeline. . . .
United Arab Emirates, a first-time donor, gave between $1 million and $5 million in 2014, and the German government—which also hadn’t previously given—contributed between $100,000 and $250,000.
A previous donor, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has given between $10 million and $25 million since the foundation was created in 1999. Part of that came in 2014, although the database doesn’t specify how much.
The Australian government has given between $5 million and $10 million, at least part of which came in 2014. It also gave in 2013, when its donations fell in the same range.
Qatar’s government committee preparing for the 2022 soccer World Cup gave between $250,000 and $500,000 in 2014. Qatar’s government had previously donated between $1 million and $5 million.
Oman, which had made a donation previously, gave an undisclosed amount in 2014. Over time, Oman has given the foundation between $1 million and $5 million. Prior to last year, its donations fell in the same range.
The foundation of course provides luxury travel for Hillary Clinton and her spouse, a high-visibility platform and access to mega-donors. She is beholden in a meaningful sense to its donors. No presidential candidate can justify a conflict of interest of this magnitude; it is not merely the appearance of conflict but actual conflict of interest.
If former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell (R) might go to jail for receiving lavish gifts for a donor for whom he made a few phone calls, what would be the remedy if, once in office, Hillary Clinton extended her office not only to make calls but also to approve policy and financial arrangements worth billions back to these countries? How will the American people ever be satisfied we are getting her undivided loyalty? No matter how much she protests, her judgment would be questioned as influenced by gratitude toward the foundation’s wealthy patrons. And, of course, a president cannot recuse himself or herself from dealings, so there is no practical way to avoid the conflict.
It is bad enough when Clinton takes gobs of money in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, oil and chemical companies, and other titans of industry — although that, too, raises the potential for conflicts of interest. But a foreign government should never have any claim on the loyalty of a U.S. president, which is why foreign donations directly to a campaign are illegal. We cannot give her a pass simply because her entity is a “foundation,” not a PAC or campaign entity.
There is no conceivable way, I would suggest, that the foundation can keep the foreign monies if she wants to run for president. It is unseemly in the extreme and raises potential for liability down the road. But even if she were now to give all the money back, she has had use of the money in the meantime (the time value of money is something, after all). More important, her egregious judgment and untrammeled greed raise real questions about her priorities and ethics. Republicans should and will, I predict, pummel her with this. If the MSM is not entirely in her pocket, they will as well. Imagine if Jeb Bush’s education foundation took millions from Saudi Arabia. Surely there would be cries for him to withdraw from presidential pre-campaigning.
The irony here is that it is not the “Israel lobby” that buys influence. It is Arab states that lavishly fund universities and think tanks. And now they are buying a president. I await with baited breath the outrage from Tom Friedman and the other Israel-bashers who accuse lawmakers of being bought and paid for by Israel. Or do the rules just apply to Israel?
Hillary, give the money back. Or don’t run. You can’t keep the money and run.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/02/18/foreign-donations-to-hillary-clintons-foundation-raise-major-ethical-questions/
Hillary Clinton bundler pleads guilty to illegal contributions
By Josh Gerstein
| 04/17/14 05:02 PM EDT
A prominent New York hotel magnate who was a top bundler for then-Sen. Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign pled guilty in federal court Thursday to making more than $180,000 in illegal campaign contributions and to witness tampering.
Sant Chatwal, 70, admitted using employees and vendors for his hotels as straw donors to avoid limits dictated by campaign finance law. Investigators also recorded Chatwal telling an associate not to admit that donations were reimbursed, court papers say.
"Without [donations] nobody will even talk to you," Chatwal said in a recorded conversation, according to a criminal information filed in lieu of an indictment in the case (and posted here). "When they are in need of money [unintelligible] the money you give then they are always for you.That's the only way to buy them, get into the system."
Court papers don't identify the recipients of Chatwal's illegal largesse by name, but indicate it dated back at least to 2007. A source familiar with the investigation told POLITICO the unlawful donations were delivered to Clinton's 2008 campaign, as well as to Rep. Kendrick Meek's 2010 Senate campaign in Florida and to a campaign by former Sen. Chris Dodd, who served as head of the Senate India Caucus.
A Justice Department press release said: "There is no allegation that the candidates participated in, or were aware of Chatwal's scheme."
Chatwal was a major figure among well-heeled Indian-Americans who support Democrats. He attended at least two state dinners for India in the U.S., one hosted by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and another hosted by President Barack Obama in 2009.
Chatwal's guilty pleas were entered Thursday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, before Judge Leo Glasser, the Justice Department said. Chatwal was released on $750,000 bond in advance of sentencing set for July 31.
"Chatwal sought to buy access to power through unlimited and illegal campaign contributions, funneling money from the shadows through straw donors,” the U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, Loretta Lynch, said in a statement.
Chatwal said little in court besides briefly answering questions from Glasser, The Associated Press reported. In a statement, defense attorney Jonathan Sack said, “Mr. Chatwal deeply regrets his actions and accepts full responsibility for the consequences. He looks forward to resolving this personal matter.”
While the candidates who received illegal donations that originated with Chatwal may indeed have been unaware of his scheme, there have long been public signs that he might push the legal limits of campaign finance, according to a 2007 article in the New York Sun.
In the 1990s, Chatwal — then known as the founder of the Bombay Palace chain of restaurants in New York — filed for personal bankruptcy and became enmeshed in a dispute over whether he was hiding his assets. While traveling with Bill Clinton in India, the businessman was detained because of an unpaid bank debt.
In 2007, Chatwal pledged that he and other Indian-Americans would raise $5 million for Clinton's presidential campaign. He organized a fundraiser that year that was billed to include appearances by two celebrity businessmen from India, neither of whom could legally donate at the fundraiser they were set to headline.
And Chatwal told Indian journalists that he was putting his personal, $40 million airplane at Clinton's disposal. He later said he changed his mind. "We got to stay away from that," he told this reporter in 2007.
A spokesman for Hillary Clinton declined to comment on Chatwal's plea. A spokesman for Dodd, who now heads the Motion Picture Association of America, had no immediate comment. Meek could not be reached.
Over the past couple of decades, Chatwal's son Vikram has become a key part of the family's business and has added to the family's hotel holdings, while also drawing attention for hanging out with celebrities like Nicky Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. But Vikram, 42, has also had legal troubles.
Last April, Vikram Chatwal was arrested at the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airport and charged with having a wide array of drugs in his bags and on his person. Court records show he was charged with posession of heroin, cocaine, ketamine and marijuana, as well as a prescription not issued to him.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2014/04/hillary-clinton-bundler-pleads-guilty-to-illegal-contributions-187027#ixzz4CypENRS7
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
Hillary Clinton bundler pleads guilty to illegal contributions
By Josh Gerstein
| 04/17/14 05:02 PM EDT
A prominent New York hotel magnate who was a top bundler for then-Sen. Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign pled guilty in federal court Thursday to making more than $180,000 in illegal campaign contributions and to witness tampering.
Sant Chatwal, 70, admitted using employees and vendors for his hotels as straw donors to avoid limits dictated by campaign finance law. Investigators also recorded Chatwal telling an associate not to admit that donations were reimbursed, court papers say.
"Without [donations] nobody will even talk to you," Chatwal said in a recorded conversation, according to a criminal information filed in lieu of an indictment in the case (and posted here). "When they are in need of money [unintelligible] the money you give then they are always for you.That's the only way to buy them, get into the system."
Court papers don't identify the recipients of Chatwal's illegal largesse by name, but indicate it dated back at least to 2007. A source familiar with the investigation told POLITICO the unlawful donations were delivered to Clinton's 2008 campaign, as well as to Rep. Kendrick Meek's 2010 Senate campaign in Florida and to a campaign by former Sen. Chris Dodd, who served as head of the Senate India Caucus.
A Justice Department press release said: "There is no allegation that the candidates participated in, or were aware of Chatwal's scheme."
Chatwal was a major figure among well-heeled Indian-Americans who support Democrats. He attended at least two state dinners for India in the U.S., one hosted by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and another hosted by President Barack Obama in 2009.
Chatwal's guilty pleas were entered Thursday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, before Judge Leo Glasser, the Justice Department said. Chatwal was released on $750,000 bond in advance of sentencing set for July 31.
"Chatwal sought to buy access to power through unlimited and illegal campaign contributions, funneling money from the shadows through straw donors,” the U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, Loretta Lynch, said in a statement.
Chatwal said little in court besides briefly answering questions from Glasser, The Associated Press reported. In a statement, defense attorney Jonathan Sack said, “Mr. Chatwal deeply regrets his actions and accepts full responsibility for the consequences. He looks forward to resolving this personal matter.”
While the candidates who received illegal donations that originated with Chatwal may indeed have been unaware of his scheme, there have long been public signs that he might push the legal limits of campaign finance, according to a 2007 article in the New York Sun.
In the 1990s, Chatwal — then known as the founder of the Bombay Palace chain of restaurants in New York — filed for personal bankruptcy and became enmeshed in a dispute over whether he was hiding his assets. While traveling with Bill Clinton in India, the businessman was detained because of an unpaid bank debt.
In 2007, Chatwal pledged that he and other Indian-Americans would raise $5 million for Clinton's presidential campaign. He organized a fundraiser that year that was billed to include appearances by two celebrity businessmen from India, neither of whom could legally donate at the fundraiser they were set to headline.
And Chatwal told Indian journalists that he was putting his personal, $40 million airplane at Clinton's disposal. He later said he changed his mind. "We got to stay away from that," he told this reporter in 2007.
A spokesman for Hillary Clinton declined to comment on Chatwal's plea. A spokesman for Dodd, who now heads the Motion Picture Association of America, had no immediate comment. Meek could not be reached.
Over the past couple of decades, Chatwal's son Vikram has become a key part of the family's business and has added to the family's hotel holdings, while also drawing attention for hanging out with celebrities like Nicky Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. But Vikram, 42, has also had legal troubles.
Last April, Vikram Chatwal was arrested at the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airport and charged with having a wide array of drugs in his bags and on his person. Court records show he was charged with posession of heroin, cocaine, ketamine and marijuana, as well as a prescription not issued to him.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2014/04/hillary-clinton-bundler-pleads-guilty-to-illegal-contributions-187027#ixzz4CypENRS7
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
Pro-Hillary group takes $200K in banned donations
A super-PAC backing Hillary Clinton has accepted $200,000 in donations from a company holding multiple contracts with the federal government - despite a ban on such contributions.
According to a review of contributions by The Hill, Boston-based Suffolk Construction made two contributions of $100,000 to Priorities USA, which is backing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
At the time it made the contributions, Suffolk held multiple contracts worth $976,560 with the Department of Defense for maintenance and construction projects at a Naval base in Newport, R.I., and the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., according to the government website USASpending.gov.
Suffolk - which, by Forbes's estimate, brings in some $2 billion in revenue annually - also donated $10,000 in 2015 to Right to Rise, a super-PAC that supported Republican Jeb Bush's now-defunct presidential bid.
The donations from Suffolk highlight how a 70-year-old campaign finance law meant to prevent pay-to-play deals between public officials and companies making money from the government is often ignored by those making the donations and those on the receiving end.
The two contributions, one made in July and one in December, came during Clinton's presidential primary battle with Bernie Sanders, who rose to prominence partly because he railed against super-PACs and the wealthy donors who fund them.
A review of campaign finance records by The Hill shows that the practice of skirting or openly flouting the contractor ban has become widespread in both congressional and presidential politics.
There are multiple reasons why the law is ignored.
Some lawyers believe the prohibition on a contractor giving to a super-PAC is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has never issued a ruling on the specific matter.
Perhaps more importantly, donors face little chance of being penalized by a Federal Election Commission (FEC) that is so divided between its Republican and Democratic members it has proved incapable of deciding even the most basic questions, such as whether to investigate complaints.
Priorities USA stipulates on its website that donors can't be federal contractors. Yet a spokesman for the super-PAC declined to comment in response to a question about whether the donations from Suffolk would be returned.
Clinton's campaign also declined to comment.
"The increasing trend of contractors violating the law comes as no surprise," said Craig Holman of Public Citizen, an advocacy group that was involved in a high-profile case regarding the ban.
In addition to the donations to Priorities USA, The Hill found 14 federal contractors that had contributed a total of $173,250 to Right to Rise. Two had also given to Conservative Solutions PAC, a group that supported Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fla.) bid for president.
One contractor, a Florida utility named Gulf Power Co., gave $44,000 to Right to Rise in March 2015. At the time, the company held more than $1 million in contracts with the Department of Defense.
The Hill asked Gulf Power whether the company was aware it was in violation of the ban and if it believed there was a conflict of interest in politicians benefiting from donations from federal contractors.
Jeff Rogers, a spokesman for the company, responded, "We believe Gulf Power's right to make the contribution in question is constitutionally protected."
Suffolk Construction, which since 2008 has received $169.7 million in federal contracts, according to USASpending. gov, declined multiple requests for comment.
John Fish, the company's CEO, has been a prolific donor to both parties over the years, though FEC records show he favors Democrats by a wide margin. He's contributed thousands to President Obama's White House bids and gave $500 to his 2004 Senate campaign.
Fish's office did not return a request for comment.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/exclusive-pro-hillary-group-takes-dollar200k-in-banned-donations/ar-AAhLioz?li=BBnb7Kz
And someone might think this is the only one so far????...LOL
Pro-Hillary group takes $200K in banned donations
A super-PAC backing Hillary Clinton has accepted $200,000 in donations from a company holding multiple contracts with the federal government - despite a ban on such contributions.
According to a review of contributions by The Hill, Boston-based Suffolk Construction made two contributions of $100,000 to Priorities USA, which is backing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
At the time it made the contributions, Suffolk held multiple contracts worth $976,560 with the Department of Defense for maintenance and construction projects at a Naval base in Newport, R.I., and the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., according to the government website USASpending.gov.
Suffolk - which, by Forbes's estimate, brings in some $2 billion in revenue annually - also donated $10,000 in 2015 to Right to Rise, a super-PAC that supported Republican Jeb Bush's now-defunct presidential bid.
The donations from Suffolk highlight how a 70-year-old campaign finance law meant to prevent pay-to-play deals between public officials and companies making money from the government is often ignored by those making the donations and those on the receiving end.
The two contributions, one made in July and one in December, came during Clinton's presidential primary battle with Bernie Sanders, who rose to prominence partly because he railed against super-PACs and the wealthy donors who fund them.
A review of campaign finance records by The Hill shows that the practice of skirting or openly flouting the contractor ban has become widespread in both congressional and presidential politics.
There are multiple reasons why the law is ignored.
Some lawyers believe the prohibition on a contractor giving to a super-PAC is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has never issued a ruling on the specific matter.
Perhaps more importantly, donors face little chance of being penalized by a Federal Election Commission (FEC) that is so divided between its Republican and Democratic members it has proved incapable of deciding even the most basic questions, such as whether to investigate complaints.
Priorities USA stipulates on its website that donors can't be federal contractors. Yet a spokesman for the super-PAC declined to comment in response to a question about whether the donations from Suffolk would be returned.
Clinton's campaign also declined to comment.
"The increasing trend of contractors violating the law comes as no surprise," said Craig Holman of Public Citizen, an advocacy group that was involved in a high-profile case regarding the ban.
In addition to the donations to Priorities USA, The Hill found 14 federal contractors that had contributed a total of $173,250 to Right to Rise. Two had also given to Conservative Solutions PAC, a group that supported Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fla.) bid for president.
One contractor, a Florida utility named Gulf Power Co., gave $44,000 to Right to Rise in March 2015. At the time, the company held more than $1 million in contracts with the Department of Defense.
The Hill asked Gulf Power whether the company was aware it was in violation of the ban and if it believed there was a conflict of interest in politicians benefiting from donations from federal contractors.
Jeff Rogers, a spokesman for the company, responded, "We believe Gulf Power's right to make the contribution in question is constitutionally protected."
Suffolk Construction, which since 2008 has received $169.7 million in federal contracts, according to USASpending. gov, declined multiple requests for comment.
John Fish, the company's CEO, has been a prolific donor to both parties over the years, though FEC records show he favors Democrats by a wide margin. He's contributed thousands to President Obama's White House bids and gave $500 to his 2004 Senate campaign.
Fish's office did not return a request for comment.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/exclusive-pro-hillary-group-takes-dollar200k-in-banned-donations/ar-AAhLioz?li=BBnb7Kz
And someone might think this is the only one so far????...LOL
Nothing would be surprising.
Hillary, Obama And The Cult Of Alinsky
By Richard Poe
1-13-8
Most Americans never heard of Saul Alinsky. Yet his shadow darkens our coming election. Democrat frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both worship at the altar of Alinskyism .
In a 1971 book called Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.
Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.
In his native Chicago, Alinsky courted power wherever he found it. His alliance with prominent Catholic clerics, such as Bishop Bernard Sheil, gave him respectability. His friendship with crime bosses such as Frank Nitti - Al Capone's second-in-command - gave Alinsky clout on the street.
In our book The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party, my co-author David Horowitz and I trace the rise of Alinsky's political influence since the 1930s.
He excelled at wooing wealthy funders. Start-up money for his Industrial Areas Foundation - a training school for radical organizers - came from department-store mogul Marshall Field III, Sears Roebuck heiress Adele Rosenwald Levy, and Gardiner Howland Shaw, an assistant secretary of state for Franklin Roosevelt.
Alinsky once boasted, "I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday."
One Alinsky benefactor was Wall Street investment banker Eugene Meyer, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post. They used their newspaper to promote Alinsky.
Agnes Meyer personally wrote a six-part series in 1945, praising Alinsky's work in Chicago slums. Her series, called "The Orderly Revolution", made Alinsky famous. President Truman ordered 100 reprints of it.
During the Sixties, Alinsky wielded tremendous power behind the scenes.
When President Johnson launched his War on Poverty in 1964, Alinsky allies infiltrated the program, steering federal money into Alinsky projects.
In 1966, Senator Robert Kennedy allied himself with union leader Cesar Chavez, an Alinsky disciple. Chavez had worked ten years for Alinsky, beginning in 1952. Kennedy soon drifted into Alinsky's circle.
After race riots shook Rochester, New York, Alinsky descended on the city and began pressuring Eastman-Kodak to hire more blacks . Kennedy supported Alinsky's shakedown. The two men had an "understanding", Alinsky later wrote.
Alinsky's crowning achievement was his recruitment of a young high school student named Hillary Rodham. She met Alinsky through a radical church group. Hillary wrote an analysis of Alinsky's methods for her senior thesis at Wellesley College. They remained friends until Alinsky's death in 1972.
Alinsky tried to hire Hillary as a community organizer, but she chose instead to attend Yale Law School. Nonetheless, Alinsky's network continued guiding Hillary's career.
Fresh out of law school at age 26, Hillary received a prestigious appointment to the House Judiciary Committee's Watergate investigative team in 1974. She got the job on the recommendation of Peter and Marian Wright Edelman.
The Edelmans have been trusted mentors of Hillary since 1969. New Republic editor Martin Peretz called Marian " Hillary's closest sister and ideological soulmate". Marian Wright Edelman also happens to be an Alinskyite, having served on the Board of Trustees of Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation.
Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Alinsky's counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power.
Barack Obama is also an Alinskyite. Trained by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, Obama spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project. Later, he worked with ACORN and its offshoot Project Vote , both creations of the Alinsky network.
Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer .
That Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama share an Alinskyite background tells us two things. First, they are leftists, dedicated to overthrowing our Constitutional system. Second, they will go to any length to conceal their radicalism from the public.
That is the Alinsky method. And that is today's Democratic Party.
http://rense.com/general80/fon.htm
If Hillary wins, that's three Alinskyites of the last four Presidents. I America gone?
Hillary, Obama And The Cult Of Alinsky
By Richard Poe
1-13-8
Most Americans never heard of Saul Alinsky. Yet his shadow darkens our coming election. Democrat frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both worship at the altar of Alinskyism .
In a 1971 book called Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.
Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.
In his native Chicago, Alinsky courted power wherever he found it. His alliance with prominent Catholic clerics, such as Bishop Bernard Sheil, gave him respectability. His friendship with crime bosses such as Frank Nitti - Al Capone's second-in-command - gave Alinsky clout on the street.
In our book The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party, my co-author David Horowitz and I trace the rise of Alinsky's political influence since the 1930s.
He excelled at wooing wealthy funders. Start-up money for his Industrial Areas Foundation - a training school for radical organizers - came from department-store mogul Marshall Field III, Sears Roebuck heiress Adele Rosenwald Levy, and Gardiner Howland Shaw, an assistant secretary of state for Franklin Roosevelt.
Alinsky once boasted, "I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday."
One Alinsky benefactor was Wall Street investment banker Eugene Meyer, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post. They used their newspaper to promote Alinsky.
Agnes Meyer personally wrote a six-part series in 1945, praising Alinsky's work in Chicago slums. Her series, called "The Orderly Revolution", made Alinsky famous. President Truman ordered 100 reprints of it.
During the Sixties, Alinsky wielded tremendous power behind the scenes.
When President Johnson launched his War on Poverty in 1964, Alinsky allies infiltrated the program, steering federal money into Alinsky projects.
In 1966, Senator Robert Kennedy allied himself with union leader Cesar Chavez, an Alinsky disciple. Chavez had worked ten years for Alinsky, beginning in 1952. Kennedy soon drifted into Alinsky's circle.
After race riots shook Rochester, New York, Alinsky descended on the city and began pressuring Eastman-Kodak to hire more blacks . Kennedy supported Alinsky's shakedown. The two men had an "understanding", Alinsky later wrote.
Alinsky's crowning achievement was his recruitment of a young high school student named Hillary Rodham. She met Alinsky through a radical church group. Hillary wrote an analysis of Alinsky's methods for her senior thesis at Wellesley College. They remained friends until Alinsky's death in 1972.
Alinsky tried to hire Hillary as a community organizer, but she chose instead to attend Yale Law School. Nonetheless, Alinsky's network continued guiding Hillary's career.
Fresh out of law school at age 26, Hillary received a prestigious appointment to the House Judiciary Committee's Watergate investigative team in 1974. She got the job on the recommendation of Peter and Marian Wright Edelman.
The Edelmans have been trusted mentors of Hillary since 1969. New Republic editor Martin Peretz called Marian " Hillary's closest sister and ideological soulmate". Marian Wright Edelman also happens to be an Alinskyite, having served on the Board of Trustees of Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation.
Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Alinsky's counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power.
Barack Obama is also an Alinskyite. Trained by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, Obama spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project. Later, he worked with ACORN and its offshoot Project Vote , both creations of the Alinsky network.
Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer .
That Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama share an Alinskyite background tells us two things. First, they are leftists, dedicated to overthrowing our Constitutional system. Second, they will go to any length to conceal their radicalism from the public.
That is the Alinsky method. And that is today's Democratic Party.
http://rense.com/general80/fon.htm
If Hillary wins, it will three Alinskyites of the last 4 Presidents. Is America gone?
Why Hillary’s Alinsky Letters Matter
By Stanley Kurtz — September 22, 2014
Alana Goodman’s revelation at the Washington Free Beacon of previously unknown correspondence between Hillary Clinton and Saul Alinsky shows that Clinton has not been honest about her far-left past. The lost Alinsky letters also remind us of what we ought to know but have forgotten: Hillary is not “Clintonian.” While Bill and Hillary have worked, schemed, and governed as a couple for decades, Hillary has always been to the left of Bill. As president, she would govern more like Obama than like her husband.
Hillary Clinton was the Elizabeth Warren of her day, the leader of the left-wing of the Democratic party. Hillary continually pressed Bill from the left during their White House years, while clashing on the inside with Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and the administration’s Wall Street contingent.
The difference between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren is that Warren flaunts her ideology, thrilling the base by making the leftist case as few other Democrats dare. Ever the Alinskyite, Hillary prefers to achieve leftist ends incrementally, in pragmatic guise. It’s a conflict of means rather than ends, the same conflict that leads many leftists to doubt Obama’s ideological credentials, when in fact the president is as much a man of the left as ever.
Alinsky’s original quarrel with the young radicals of the 1960s, which Hillary alludes to in her letter, was over the New Left’s tendency to make noise rather than get things done. Working effectively, Alinsky believed, requires ideological stealth, gradualism, and pragmatic cover. In his day, Alinsky took hits from more openly leftist ideologues for his incrementalist caution, as Obama and Hillary do now. Yet he was no more a centrist than his two most famous acolytes are today.
Glenn Reynolds links to a tweet in response to the Goodman story by Politico’s Glenn Thrush: “Remind me again why liking Saul Alinsky is unacceptable.” Alright Glenn, and the rest of a Democratic-leaning media that will do everything in its power to play this revelation down, I’ll remind you.
Alinsky was a democratic socialist. He worked closely for years with Chicago’s Communist party and did everything in his power to advance its program. Most of his innovations were patterned on Communist-party organizing tactics. Alinsky was smart enough never to join the party, however. From the start, he understood the dangers of ideological openness. He was a pragmatist, but a pragmatist of the far left. (See Chapter Four of Spreading the Wealth for details.)
Hillary Clinton understood all of this. As she noted at the conclusion of her undergraduate thesis on Alinsky, “If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution.” In her letter to Alinsky, Hillary says, “I have just had my one-thousandth conversation” about Reveille for Radicals (Alinsky’s first book). Nowadays, people focus on Alinsky’s more famous follow-up, Rules for Radicals. But Reveille, which Hillary knew inside-out, is the more ideologically revelatory work.
Here’s how Alinsky defined his favored politics in Reveille for Radicals:
Radicals want to advance from the jungle of laissez-faire capitalism to a world worthy of the name of human civilization. They hope for a future where the means of economic production will be owned by all of the people instead of the comparative handful.
So Alinsky supported the central Marxist tenet of public ownership of the means of production. Unlike the New Left, however, Alinsky had no expectation of reaching that end through swift or violent revolution. He meant to approach the ultimate goal slowly, piecemeal, perhaps over generations, through patient organizing efforts at the local level.
Hillary has made much of the fact that she turned away from Alinskyite organizing to seek change from within the political system instead. What these new letters show is that this was also a change of means rather than ends. Hillary’s belief in Alinsky’s goals, and her willingness to adopt and adapt his methods in a political context, remained strong.
In this, Hillary has much in common with Obama and other modern Alinskyites. Alinsky wanted community organizers to shun electoral politics. Yet, as I showed in Radical-in-Chief, Alinsky’s New Left followers found ways to combine his methods with electoral politics. This synthesis of Alinskyism and electoral politics, pioneered by Alinsky’s acolytes in Chicago, is what inspired Obama’s career. Hillary was part of the same wave. Despite her attempts to use her choice of electoral politics as evidence of distancing from Alinsky, these letters make clear that she never lost the faith.
Hillary’s newly discovered letter to Alinsky was written while she was doing a summer internship at the left-wing law firm of Treuhaft, Walker, and Bernstein. As Carl Bernstein points out in A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hillary hasn’t been honest about this episode either. Bernstein quotes Treuhaft saying that of the firm’s four partners, “two were communists, and others tolerated communists.” Yet none acknowledged party membership until years later.
Whether Hillary knew about those memberships or not, the firm was obviously very far on the left. They represented some of the Black Panther Party leadership and other left-wing causes as well. “There was no reason except politics for a girl from Yale” to intern at the firm, Treuhaft told Bernstein. “She certainly . . . was in sympathy with all the left causes,” he continued. Yet as Bernstein notes, in her memoir Hillary took pains to gloss over “anything that could be construed as resembling a radical or leftist past.”
During her time in Arkansas, Hillary may seem to have moved to the center. The Rose Law Firm, after all, was nothing like Treuhaft, Walker, and Bernstein. It was an establishment law firm representing the most powerful economic interests in the state. With the help of Dick Morris, moreover, Hillary took on the Arkansas teachers’ unions from the right as she led Bill’s education initiative during his final governorship. In retrospect, all of this was largely pragmatic positioning. When Hillary finally got to the White House and assumed the co-presidency, she veered sharply back to the left on a whole range of issues, especially Hillarycare.
The same pattern will repeat itself should Hillary be elected president. Hillary has never abandoned her early leftist inclinations. She has merely done her best to suppress the evidence of her political past, from barring public access to her thesis on Alinsky during her time in the White House, to papering over the significance of her internship at Treuhaft, Walker, and Bernstein, to pretending that she turned away from Alinsky after her undergraduate years, when in fact she brought his methods and outlook into the heart of her political work. Her strategic preference for polarization and targeting enemies is well documented from her time in the White House, even, or especially, by sympathetic writers such as Bernstein.
Hillary is fortunate in having a more open and straightforward champion of the Left like Elizabeth Warren as a foil. Yet far less separates the two of them than meets the eye. Not only have Hillary’s deepest sympathies always been on the left, but the newly ideologized Democratic party is going to pressure a President Hillary Clinton to be what she has always wanted to be.
With Obamacare and much else besides, the legal and bureaucratic groundwork has already been laid for a leftist transformation of America. It is naïve to believe that Hillary would roll any of this back. On the contrary, as president she would finish the job Obama started. A Hillary presidency is destined to be Obama’s third term. Two Alinskyite presidents in a row? Hillary said it best: “The result would be a social revolution.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/388560/why-hillarys-alinsky-letters-matter-stanley-kurtz
Why Hillary’s Alinsky Letters Matter
By Stanley Kurtz — September 22, 2014
Alana Goodman’s revelation at the Washington Free Beacon of previously unknown correspondence between Hillary Clinton and Saul Alinsky shows that Clinton has not been honest about her far-left past. The lost Alinsky letters also remind us of what we ought to know but have forgotten: Hillary is not “Clintonian.” While Bill and Hillary have worked, schemed, and governed as a couple for decades, Hillary has always been to the left of Bill. As president, she would govern more like Obama than like her husband.
Hillary Clinton was the Elizabeth Warren of her day, the leader of the left-wing of the Democratic party. Hillary continually pressed Bill from the left during their White House years, while clashing on the inside with Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and the administration’s Wall Street contingent.
The difference between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren is that Warren flaunts her ideology, thrilling the base by making the leftist case as few other Democrats dare. Ever the Alinskyite, Hillary prefers to achieve leftist ends incrementally, in pragmatic guise. It’s a conflict of means rather than ends, the same conflict that leads many leftists to doubt Obama’s ideological credentials, when in fact the president is as much a man of the left as ever.
Alinsky’s original quarrel with the young radicals of the 1960s, which Hillary alludes to in her letter, was over the New Left’s tendency to make noise rather than get things done. Working effectively, Alinsky believed, requires ideological stealth, gradualism, and pragmatic cover. In his day, Alinsky took hits from more openly leftist ideologues for his incrementalist caution, as Obama and Hillary do now. Yet he was no more a centrist than his two most famous acolytes are today.
Glenn Reynolds links to a tweet in response to the Goodman story by Politico’s Glenn Thrush: “Remind me again why liking Saul Alinsky is unacceptable.” Alright Glenn, and the rest of a Democratic-leaning media that will do everything in its power to play this revelation down, I’ll remind you.
Alinsky was a democratic socialist. He worked closely for years with Chicago’s Communist party and did everything in his power to advance its program. Most of his innovations were patterned on Communist-party organizing tactics. Alinsky was smart enough never to join the party, however. From the start, he understood the dangers of ideological openness. He was a pragmatist, but a pragmatist of the far left. (See Chapter Four of Spreading the Wealth for details.)
Hillary Clinton understood all of this. As she noted at the conclusion of her undergraduate thesis on Alinsky, “If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution.” In her letter to Alinsky, Hillary says, “I have just had my one-thousandth conversation” about Reveille for Radicals (Alinsky’s first book). Nowadays, people focus on Alinsky’s more famous follow-up, Rules for Radicals. But Reveille, which Hillary knew inside-out, is the more ideologically revelatory work.
Here’s how Alinsky defined his favored politics in Reveille for Radicals:
Radicals want to advance from the jungle of laissez-faire capitalism to a world worthy of the name of human civilization. They hope for a future where the means of economic production will be owned by all of the people instead of the comparative handful.
So Alinsky supported the central Marxist tenet of public ownership of the means of production. Unlike the New Left, however, Alinsky had no expectation of reaching that end through swift or violent revolution. He meant to approach the ultimate goal slowly, piecemeal, perhaps over generations, through patient organizing efforts at the local level.
Hillary has made much of the fact that she turned away from Alinskyite organizing to seek change from within the political system instead. What these new letters show is that this was also a change of means rather than ends. Hillary’s belief in Alinsky’s goals, and her willingness to adopt and adapt his methods in a political context, remained strong.
In this, Hillary has much in common with Obama and other modern Alinskyites. Alinsky wanted community organizers to shun electoral politics. Yet, as I showed in Radical-in-Chief, Alinsky’s New Left followers found ways to combine his methods with electoral politics. This synthesis of Alinskyism and electoral politics, pioneered by Alinsky’s acolytes in Chicago, is what inspired Obama’s career. Hillary was part of the same wave. Despite her attempts to use her choice of electoral politics as evidence of distancing from Alinsky, these letters make clear that she never lost the faith.
Hillary’s newly discovered letter to Alinsky was written while she was doing a summer internship at the left-wing law firm of Treuhaft, Walker, and Bernstein. As Carl Bernstein points out in A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hillary hasn’t been honest about this episode either. Bernstein quotes Treuhaft saying that of the firm’s four partners, “two were communists, and others tolerated communists.” Yet none acknowledged party membership until years later.
Whether Hillary knew about those memberships or not, the firm was obviously very far on the left. They represented some of the Black Panther Party leadership and other left-wing causes as well. “There was no reason except politics for a girl from Yale” to intern at the firm, Treuhaft told Bernstein. “She certainly . . . was in sympathy with all the left causes,” he continued. Yet as Bernstein notes, in her memoir Hillary took pains to gloss over “anything that could be construed as resembling a radical or leftist past.”
During her time in Arkansas, Hillary may seem to have moved to the center. The Rose Law Firm, after all, was nothing like Treuhaft, Walker, and Bernstein. It was an establishment law firm representing the most powerful economic interests in the state. With the help of Dick Morris, moreover, Hillary took on the Arkansas teachers’ unions from the right as she led Bill’s education initiative during his final governorship. In retrospect, all of this was largely pragmatic positioning. When Hillary finally got to the White House and assumed the co-presidency, she veered sharply back to the left on a whole range of issues, especially Hillarycare.
The same pattern will repeat itself should Hillary be elected president. Hillary has never abandoned her early leftist inclinations. She has merely done her best to suppress the evidence of her political past, from barring public access to her thesis on Alinsky during her time in the White House, to papering over the significance of her internship at Treuhaft, Walker, and Bernstein, to pretending that she turned away from Alinsky after her undergraduate years, when in fact she brought his methods and outlook into the heart of her political work. Her strategic preference for polarization and targeting enemies is well documented from her time in the White House, even, or especially, by sympathetic writers such as Bernstein.
Hillary is fortunate in having a more open and straightforward champion of the Left like Elizabeth Warren as a foil. Yet far less separates the two of them than meets the eye. Not only have Hillary’s deepest sympathies always been on the left, but the newly ideologized Democratic party is going to pressure a President Hillary Clinton to be what she has always wanted to be.
With Obamacare and much else besides, the legal and bureaucratic groundwork has already been laid for a leftist transformation of America. It is naïve to believe that Hillary would roll any of this back. On the contrary, as president she would finish the job Obama started. A Hillary presidency is destined to be Obama’s third term. Two Alinskyite presidents in a row? Hillary said it best: “The result would be a social revolution.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/388560/why-hillarys-alinsky-letters-matter-stanley-kurtz
Orlando terrorist's chilling Facebook posts from inside club revealed
By Malia Zimmerman Published June 15, 2016
EXCLUSIVE: In the hours after he blasted his way into an Orlando gay nightclub, and with his victims lying dead or wounded around him, Omar Mateen took to Facebook to pledge his loyalty to ISIS and threaten more attacks on the civilized world, a key lawmaker privy to the gunman’s posts told FoxNews.com Wednesday.
Mateen, who killed 49 people and wounded 53 inside Pulse early Sunday, died when a SWAT team stormed the club. But in the roughly four hours between his initial rampage and his death, the 29-year-old radicalized Muslim broadcast his twisted message of hate on social media, according to Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wisc.
CLICK HERE TO READ SEN. JOHNSON'S LETTER TO FACEBOOK
“I pledge my alliance to (ISIS leader) abu bakr al Baghdadi..may Allah accept me,” Mateen wrote in one post early Sunday morning. “The real muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west” …“You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes..now taste the Islamic state vengeance.”
Mateen’s social media accounts were taken down before they could be widely viewed by the public, but Johnson’s committee investigators have uncovered some or all of them. The senator has also written a letter to Facebook executives expressing concern about Mateen’s postings and asking for more information on his activities.
“It is my understanding that Omar Mateen used Facebook before and during the attack to search for and post terrorism-related content,” read Johnson’s letter. “According to information obtained by my staff, five Facebook accounts were apparently associated with Omar Mateen.”
The posts uncovered by Johnson’s committee shed light on Mateen’s actions in the hours that followed his 2 a.m. raid on the nightclub. Mateen, armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, shot his way past an off-duty cop and sprayed bullets throughout the club, which was packed with more than 300 revelers when he arrived. Some escaped, many died or were wounded and scores more waited out the horrific ordeal, knowing each moment could be their last.
As survivors cowered in darkened rooms, praying and texting police and relatives, Mateen accessed his Facebook account to search for media reports, using search words such as “Pulse Orlando” and “Shooting.” An FBI source told FoxNews.com he also made 16 phone calls from inside the club after the bloody spree began. Investigators are tracking down each of the recipients of those calls.
Mateen proclaimed his hatred for Westerners in one Facebook post uncovered by Johnson’s committee.
“America and Russia stop bombing the Islamic state,” Mateen wrote.
In his final post, Mateen made an ominous prediction.
“In the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic state in the usa.”
Besides looking for information on himself, Johnson noted Mateen used Facebook to search for information on the jihadist couple behind the Dec. 2 San Bernardino attack, used the search term “Baghdadi Speech,” and scouted for posts by local law enforcement and FBI, Johnson told FoxNews.com.
Johnson called on Facebook to hand over all information the company has on Mateen for review and to brief his committee on all of Mateen’s activity logs, Facebook timeline information, Facebook messages, photos, and posts by June 29.
Facebook officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/06/15/orlando-terrorists-chilling-facebook-posts-from-inside-club-revealed.html?intcmp=hpbt1
Orlando terrorist's chilling Facebook posts from inside club revealed
By Malia Zimmerman Published June 15, 2016
EXCLUSIVE: In the hours after he blasted his way into an Orlando gay nightclub, and with his victims lying dead or wounded around him, Omar Mateen took to Facebook to pledge his loyalty to ISIS and threaten more attacks on the civilized world, a key lawmaker privy to the gunman’s posts told FoxNews.com Wednesday.
Mateen, who killed 49 people and wounded 53 inside Pulse early Sunday, died when a SWAT team stormed the club. But in the roughly four hours between his initial rampage and his death, the 29-year-old radicalized Muslim broadcast his twisted message of hate on social media, according to Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wisc.
CLICK HERE TO READ SEN. JOHNSON'S LETTER TO FACEBOOK
“I pledge my alliance to (ISIS leader) abu bakr al Baghdadi..may Allah accept me,” Mateen wrote in one post early Sunday morning. “The real muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west” …“You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes..now taste the Islamic state vengeance.”
Mateen’s social media accounts were taken down before they could be widely viewed by the public, but Johnson’s committee investigators have uncovered some or all of them. The senator has also written a letter to Facebook executives expressing concern about Mateen’s postings and asking for more information on his activities.
“It is my understanding that Omar Mateen used Facebook before and during the attack to search for and post terrorism-related content,” read Johnson’s letter. “According to information obtained by my staff, five Facebook accounts were apparently associated with Omar Mateen.”
The posts uncovered by Johnson’s committee shed light on Mateen’s actions in the hours that followed his 2 a.m. raid on the nightclub. Mateen, armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, shot his way past an off-duty cop and sprayed bullets throughout the club, which was packed with more than 300 revelers when he arrived. Some escaped, many died or were wounded and scores more waited out the horrific ordeal, knowing each moment could be their last.
As survivors cowered in darkened rooms, praying and texting police and relatives, Mateen accessed his Facebook account to search for media reports, using search words such as “Pulse Orlando” and “Shooting.” An FBI source told FoxNews.com he also made 16 phone calls from inside the club after the bloody spree began. Investigators are tracking down each of the recipients of those calls.
Mateen proclaimed his hatred for Westerners in one Facebook post uncovered by Johnson’s committee.
“America and Russia stop bombing the Islamic state,” Mateen wrote.
In his final post, Mateen made an ominous prediction.
“In the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic state in the usa.”
Besides looking for information on himself, Johnson noted Mateen used Facebook to search for information on the jihadist couple behind the Dec. 2 San Bernardino attack, used the search term “Baghdadi Speech,” and scouted for posts by local law enforcement and FBI, Johnson told FoxNews.com.
Johnson called on Facebook to hand over all information the company has on Mateen for review and to brief his committee on all of Mateen’s activity logs, Facebook timeline information, Facebook messages, photos, and posts by June 29.
Facebook officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/06/15/orlando-terrorists-chilling-facebook-posts-from-inside-club-revealed.html?intcmp=hpbt1
By Rejecting ‘Radical Islam,’ Obama Rejects Reality
After a meeting with the National Security Council to discuss the Orlando massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in American history, Barack Obama was angry. He's more impassioned than we've ever seen him. He was speaking from the heart. He’s lashing out! Because you know what really grinds his gears? Republicans.
“That’s the key, they say,” Obama said, eviscerating the GOP. “We can't defeat them unless we call them radical Islamists. What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change?”
A lot, actually.
As a matter of realpolitik, perhaps it makes sense to avoid the phrase “radical Islam.” We don’t want to offend the Mullahs, theocratic sheiks, oligarchic princes, Arab strongmen, and future junta leaders of the Middle East. We need to work with these people, after all. What should bother you, though, is that Obama constantly tries to chill speech by insinuating that anyone who does associate violence with radical Islam—which includes millions of adherents—is a bigot. This is a president who also intimates that anyone who is critical of everyday Islam’s widespread illiberalism—for example, all nations where homosexuality is punishable by death are Muslim—is also a bigot.
It’s not as if Obama shies away from lecturing people about faith. Saying the words “radical Islam” is a step too far, but bringing up events from the year 1095 to create a tortured moral equivalence is just fine. Not only has Obama implored us to avoid critical rhetoric about Islam, but he demands that Americans (secular apostates like myself included) act as if all faiths are equally tolerant of our lives. This is the president who tells the world that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Can you imagine Obama going to the United Nations General Assembly and declaring the same for Jesus Christ?
Exempting Islam from discourse is to place Muslims outside the norms of American debate.
Nor has Obama hesitated to lecture Christians, who supposedly use religious freedom as an “excuse” for “discrimination,” to evolve and abandon their antiquated ways. After years of propaganda equating evangelicals with Islamic fundamentalists (who aren’t the true adherents of Islam, according to pundits who’ve probably never read a single book about the faith), many liberals make no distinction between the two anymore. For them, supporting the idea sex-specific bathrooms is only a small step from massacring gay Americans. This is what denial of reality can do to a society. You can see it all manifesting in liberal punditry.
Obama isn’t a secret Muslim, and, regardless of what many people tell me, I’m sure his intentions are good. But abdication of the most obvious truths allows demagogues like Donald Trump to appear to be brave truth-tellers. Blaming all Muslims is as dumb as pretending this terror has nothing to do with Islam. One absurd position just reinforces the other.
"We have a proposal from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to bar all Muslims from immigrating to America," Obama explained, claiming that those kinds of ideas do the terrorists' job for them. I’m sure that Trump’s rhetoric on this matter is highly counterproductive. But if you’re willing to murder scores of innocent people in the name of Islam because a blowhard U.S. presidential candidate has an immigration proposal you dislike, that’s a you problem and an Islam problem before it’s a Trump problem. Also, the idea that we have a president more willing to accuse the GOP nominee of instigating terrorism than he is willing to accuse radical Islam is a problem for all of us.
Exempting Islam from discourse is to place Muslims outside the norms of American debate. This is a luxury no other political philosophy or theology enjoys. Obviously, this helps us make events like this about gay marriage or guns or whatever liberal agenda item can be squeezed from tragedy. That would be fine if we weren’t also asked to ignore the actual problem.
Islamists use planes and bombs, and sometimes guns. You can believe all the things you want about the NRA, the availability of “weapons of war,” and Christian homophobia, and still believe that Islamic terrorism is a unique movement that threatens us in a way that the random madman opening fire in a theater does not. Liberals love to point out how rare Islamic-inspired violence is—let’s ban white men! But they fail to point out that we spend billions every year to stop terrorism. If we didn’t, we’d be in for yearly 9/11s.
By the way, don’t you wish Obama would get this worked up about the FBI, which allowed Omar Mateen to slip away from two investigations—one of those, reportedly, because he blamed his actions on Islamophobia? Law enforcement sources now say that Disney notified the FBI that Omar and his wife may have been casing the amusement park back in April. Maybe there was nothing actionable for FBI. So rather than suggesting we undermine the Fifth Amendment and Second Amendment, maybe it’s time to ask why the billions of dollars we spend fighting terrorism are failing.
Mostly, though, I’m not sure why a peaceful Muslim would not appreciate being set apart from Islamists by the president. “Radical Islam” distinguishes between extremists and moderates. Other than allowing liberals to accuse anyone who brings up theological problems of being Islamophobic, what other purpose does ignoring this distinction achieve? The president has yet to explain.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/by-rejecting-%e2%80%98radical-islam%e2%80%99-obama-rejects-reality/ar-AAh4J9b?li=BBnb7Kz
By Rejecting ‘Radical Islam,’ Obama Rejects Reality
After a meeting with the National Security Council to discuss the Orlando massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in American history, Barack Obama was angry. He's more impassioned than we've ever seen him. He was speaking from the heart. He’s lashing out! Because you know what really grinds his gears? Republicans.
“That’s the key, they say,” Obama said, eviscerating the GOP. “We can't defeat them unless we call them radical Islamists. What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change?”
A lot, actually.
As a matter of realpolitik, perhaps it makes sense to avoid the phrase “radical Islam.” We don’t want to offend the Mullahs, theocratic sheiks, oligarchic princes, Arab strongmen, and future junta leaders of the Middle East. We need to work with these people, after all. What should bother you, though, is that Obama constantly tries to chill speech by insinuating that anyone who does associate violence with radical Islam—which includes millions of adherents—is a bigot. This is a president who also intimates that anyone who is critical of everyday Islam’s widespread illiberalism—for example, all nations where homosexuality is punishable by death are Muslim—is also a bigot.
It’s not as if Obama shies away from lecturing people about faith. Saying the words “radical Islam” is a step too far, but bringing up events from the year 1095 to create a tortured moral equivalence is just fine. Not only has Obama implored us to avoid critical rhetoric about Islam, but he demands that Americans (secular apostates like myself included) act as if all faiths are equally tolerant of our lives. This is the president who tells the world that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Can you imagine Obama going to the United Nations General Assembly and declaring the same for Jesus Christ?
Exempting Islam from discourse is to place Muslims outside the norms of American debate.
Nor has Obama hesitated to lecture Christians, who supposedly use religious freedom as an “excuse” for “discrimination,” to evolve and abandon their antiquated ways. After years of propaganda equating evangelicals with Islamic fundamentalists (who aren’t the true adherents of Islam, according to pundits who’ve probably never read a single book about the faith), many liberals make no distinction between the two anymore. For them, supporting the idea sex-specific bathrooms is only a small step from massacring gay Americans. This is what denial of reality can do to a society. You can see it all manifesting in liberal punditry.
Obama isn’t a secret Muslim, and, regardless of what many people tell me, I’m sure his intentions are good. But abdication of the most obvious truths allows demagogues like Donald Trump to appear to be brave truth-tellers. Blaming all Muslims is as dumb as pretending this terror has nothing to do with Islam. One absurd position just reinforces the other.
"We have a proposal from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to bar all Muslims from immigrating to America," Obama explained, claiming that those kinds of ideas do the terrorists' job for them. I’m sure that Trump’s rhetoric on this matter is highly counterproductive. But if you’re willing to murder scores of innocent people in the name of Islam because a blowhard U.S. presidential candidate has an immigration proposal you dislike, that’s a you problem and an Islam problem before it’s a Trump problem. Also, the idea that we have a president more willing to accuse the GOP nominee of instigating terrorism than he is willing to accuse radical Islam is a problem for all of us.
Exempting Islam from discourse is to place Muslims outside the norms of American debate. This is a luxury no other political philosophy or theology enjoys. Obviously, this helps us make events like this about gay marriage or guns or whatever liberal agenda item can be squeezed from tragedy. That would be fine if we weren’t also asked to ignore the actual problem.
Islamists use planes and bombs, and sometimes guns. You can believe all the things you want about the NRA, the availability of “weapons of war,” and Christian homophobia, and still believe that Islamic terrorism is a unique movement that threatens us in a way that the random madman opening fire in a theater does not. Liberals love to point out how rare Islamic-inspired violence is—let’s ban white men! But they fail to point out that we spend billions every year to stop terrorism. If we didn’t, we’d be in for yearly 9/11s.
By the way, don’t you wish Obama would get this worked up about the FBI, which allowed Omar Mateen to slip away from two investigations—one of those, reportedly, because he blamed his actions on Islamophobia? Law enforcement sources now say that Disney notified the FBI that Omar and his wife may have been casing the amusement park back in April. Maybe there was nothing actionable for FBI. So rather than suggesting we undermine the Fifth Amendment and Second Amendment, maybe it’s time to ask why the billions of dollars we spend fighting terrorism are failing.
Mostly, though, I’m not sure why a peaceful Muslim would not appreciate being set apart from Islamists by the president. “Radical Islam” distinguishes between extremists and moderates. Other than allowing liberals to accuse anyone who brings up theological problems of being Islamophobic, what other purpose does ignoring this distinction achieve? The president has yet to explain.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/by-rejecting-%e2%80%98radical-islam%e2%80%99-obama-rejects-reality/ar-AAh4J9b?li=BBnb7Kz
Plus the alligator is watching his weight. Trying to reduce his fat intake.
Read that there is an alligator at Disneyland in Florida that would love to meet her.
I agree. She'll talk her head off and get zero done. Perfect for continuing Zero's policies. Get her out of there after one term. She'd be the second oldest President in history.
Hillary Clinton’s Secret Health Issues Visible Once Again
Posted at 1:30 pm on April 19, 2016 by streiff
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign event, Saturday, April 2, 2016, in Eau Claire, Wis.
While showing she can relate to the day to day life of the average black American, Hillary Clinton's suppressed health issues became visible once again.
From the Free Beacon story linked above:
When host Angela Yee asked Clinton whether her gender would be an issue in dealings with foreign governments, however, the former secretary of state could not contain her urge any longer.
“Well, I don’t think so. There is a lot of oppression against women that we have to address,” Clinton said and coughed.
“Excuse me, sorry,” she said and blamed her cough on allergies.
“Allergy season,” Clinton said and reached for her water cup. “How do you guys do it?”
Her cough was such that host DJ Envy offered Clinton CPR.
“Do you need mouth-to-mouth, CPR? Are you alright?” he said.
Host Charlamagne tha God said Clinton’s cough sounded like she had been smoking medical marijuana.
“Senator, you’re coughing like you got some medicinal,” he said.
Clinton laughed and lamented that she didn’t have any.
“Yeah, I need some,” Clinton said and laughed into her water cup. “Excuse me.”
She carried on with the interview despite her hoarse voice.
“My voice is failing here,” Clinton said between gasps.
Clinton, like Donald Trump, has been very cagey about her medical history. I noted a while back that all evidence indicated that she has chronic health problems that are only barely being held in check.
Hillary never participated in athletics when she was younger, something about being too ugly to participate. And now, as she approaches the BIG SEVEN-ZERO she is very out of shape. It is a safe bet that her BMI is over 30 — I base that not on having access to her weight but on the dimensions of her posterior and the girth of her ankles — which makes her obese; best casing it, she is at the upper bounds of overweight. With age and obesity comes Type II diabetes and hypertension. Together you have increased risk for heart disease and stroke. Lack of exercise and physical condition has also been documented to impair mental function.
We know that Hillary Clinton has suffered from fainting spells since at least 20o5. In that year she passed out, presumably sober, while giving a speech. In 2012, she passed out yet again and suffered a concussion. Radar Online has reported that sources close to Hillary Clinton say she has suffered minor strokes and may have multiple sclerosis. The book on Hillary by Ed Klein says that she suffers from depression and migraines.
She has also gained about thirty pounds during the course of the campaign and is suffering from mange
Hillary Clinton has had at least six of these public coughing fits since the campaign started. Most of them did not take place during "allergy season." And there is never any sneezing that accompanies the cough which is a good indicator the problem is not allergies. And if allergies were actually an issue, she'd take a megadose of benadryl or other antihistamine before these public appearances. All this signs says this is a symptom of a much deeper health problem that she is trying to disguise. (My best guess is that the cough is a side-effect of industrial strength ACE inhibitors she takes to manage the raging hypertension that caused here "minor" strokes.)
Hillary Clinton is an old, sick woman and even the minor stresses of a non-competitive primary are wearing her down. If she does win the primary, the general campaign will exhaust her and the odds of her being able to cope with the demands of the presidency approach zero.
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/04/19/hillary-clintons-secret-health-issues-visible/
Another one:
Susan Sarandon refused to endorse Democrat presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical matchup between Clinton and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, telling Larry King in an interview that a number of unforeseen things could still happen to prevent Clinton from clinching her Party’s nomination.
In an interview with King on Monday, the 69-year-old Oscar-winning actress said she would “wait and see what happens” before endorsing a candidate in what is presumed to be a Trump-Clinton general election matchup this fall.
“I’m not saying I endorse Hillary,” the Thelma and Louise star told King. “I’m not. I’m gonna say I’m gonna wait and see what happens. There’s a lot of things that could happen.”
When pressed by an incredulous King as to what might happen to prevent Clinton from advancing to the general, a defiant Sarandon replied: “So many things.”
“She could have health issues. She could not get the nomination,” Sarandon added.
“You think Bernie [Sanders] could get it?” King asked.
“Yeah, I think he can,” she responded. “He’s a miracle that he’s even in this. I think that… now he’s been to the Pope, maybe there’s another miracle that’s going to happen.”
Clinton currently leads Sanders by a wide margin in both pledged delegates and so-called superdelegates, Democrat party insiders and officials who may cast a vote for whomever they please regardless of primary outcome. According to CBS News, Clinton needs only to win 17 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to secure the Democrat nomination outright.
Clinton’s health has long been an issue in this year’s election cycle, most recently when the candidate disappeared from the ABC Democratic presidential debate stage in December for an extended period of time for what her campaign said was an extended bathroom break. Breitbart News previously reported that a law enforcement source believed the extended break stemmed from a flare-up of a previous brain injury, though the Clinton campaign refuted the report.
Sarandon is one of Sanders’ most vocal celebrity supporters. In February, the actress wrote on Twitter that it is “insulting” that other people think she would vote for Clinton based on gender alone, writing: “I don’t vote with my vagina.” The actress has also said that “passionate and principled” Sanders supporters may have trouble voting for Clinton in a general election.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/05/10/susan-sarandon-health-issues-keep-hillary-clinton-clinching-dem-nomination/
lots more speculation on google. where there's smoke.....
Books written on how NOT to be President. By then he will have changed his gender thanks to the laws he helped pass and disappeared into his own version of 'pay to play'...... only to realized the surgery created fatal consequences. So long.....
BO - desperate, trying to hard.
Farmer Barry