DOJ: Steve Bannon Grifted The Wall - But What Did He Do With All The Money?

I am much more curios about the crowdfunding website process in its financial mechanisms because it sorta sounds like a vehicle for money laundering and grifting without any reportability duties.

Not having reportability duties, like SARs, would not be a good thing.

I wonder if we will be able to see the journey of these funds because I bet they will go through various trafficking tiny humans trust funds.

I bet some of the funding was invested in other online grifting operations, but, hey, what do I know?

I know that I just adore transposable models.

I wonder what is the next cyber grifting organization will be next

I know thou shalt not bear false witness for they shall fall from the heavens.

#maytheheavensfall

Leaders Of ‘We Build The Wall’ Online Fundraising Campaign Charged With Defrauding Hundreds Of Thousands Of Donors

Steve Bannon

Brian Kolfage, Stephen Bannon, and Two Others Alleged to Have Funneled Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars From the Organization to Kolfage; All Four Defendants Allegedly Profited From Their Roles in the Scheme

Audrey Strauss, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Philip R. Bartlett, Inspector-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the United States Postal Inspection Service (“USPIS”), announced the unsealing of an indictment charging BRIAN KOLFAGE, STEPHEN BANNON, ANDREW BADOLATO, and TIMOTHY SHEA for their roles in defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign known as “We Build the Wall” that raised more than $25 million.  The defendants were arrested this morning.  KOLFAGE will be presented today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Hope T. Cannon in the Northern District of Florida.  BANNON will be presented today in the Southern District of New York.  BADOLATO will be presented today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Wilson in the Middle District of Florida.  SHEA will be presented today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Kristen L. Mix in the District of Colorado.  The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in the Southern District of New York.

Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said:  “As alleged, the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction.  While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle.  We thank the USPIS for their partnership in investigating this case, and we remain dedicated to rooting out and prosecuting fraud wherever we find it.”

Inspector-in-Charge Philip R. Bartlett said:  “The defendants allegedly engaged in fraud when they misrepresented the true use of donated funds.  As alleged, not only did they lie to donors, they schemed to hide their misappropriation of funds by creating sham invoices and accounts to launder donations and cover up their crimes, showing no regard for the law or the truth.   This case should serve as a warning to other fraudsters that no one is above the law, not even a disabled war veteran or a millionaire political strategist.”

According to the Indictment[1] unsealed today in Manhattan federal court:

Starting in approximately December 2018, BRIAN KOLFAGE, STEPHEN BANNON, ANDREW BADOLATO, and TIMOTHY SHEA, and others, orchestrated a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors, including donors in the Southern District of New York, in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign ultimately known as “We Build The Wall” that raised more than $25 million to build a wall along the southern border of the United States.  In particular, to induce donors to donate to the campaign, KOLFAGE repeatedly and falsely assured the public that he would “not take a penny in salary or compensation” and that “100% of the funds raised . . . will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose” because, as BANNON publicly stated, “we’re a volunteer organization.”

Those representations were false.  In truth, KOLFAGE, BANNON, BADOLATO, and SHEA received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor funds from We Build the Wall, which they each used in a manner inconsistent with the organization’s public representations.  In particular, KOLFAGE covertly took for his personal use more than $350,000 in funds that donors had given to We Build the Wall, while BANNON, through a non-profit organization under his control (“Non-Profit-1”), received over $1 million from We Build the Wall, at least some of which BANNON used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in BANNON’s personal expenses.  To conceal the payments to KOLFAGE from We Build the Wall, KOLFAGE, BANNON, BADOLATO, and SHEA devised a scheme to route those payments from We Build the Wall to KOLFAGE indirectly through Non-Profit-1 and a shell company under SHEA’s control, among other avenues.  They did so by using fake invoices and sham “vendor” arrangements, among other ways, to ensure, as KOLFAGE noted in a text message to BADOLATO, that his pay arrangement remained “confidential” and kept on a “need to know” basis.  

*                *                *

KOLFAGE, 38, of Miramar Beach, Florida, BANNON, 66, of Washington, D.C., BADOLATO, 56, of Sarasota, Florida, and SHEA, 49, of Castle Rock, Colorado, are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. 

The statutory maximum penalties are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendants would be determined by the judge.

Ms. Strauss praised the outstanding investigative work of the USPIS and the Special Agents of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.  She also thanked the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida for their assistance.

The case is being handled by the Office’s Public Corruption Unit.  Assistant United States Attorneys Nicolas Roos, Alison G. Moe, and Robert B. Sobelman are in charge of the prosecution.

The charges contained in the Indictment are merely accusations.  The defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

---

[1] As the introductory phrase signifies, the entirety of the text of the Indictment, and the description of the Indictment set forth herein, constitute only allegations, and every fact described therein should be treated as an allegation.

"We Build The Wall" U.S. v. Brian Kolfage Stephen Bannon Et Al. Indictment 20-Cr-412 0 by Beverly Tran on Scribd

Aaaaaand away we go!

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

Steven Bannon reads the New Federal State of China Declaration. 史蒂文·班农先生宣读《新中国联邦宣言》

What is that flying rectangle being followed by a military plane at the end of the video?

The Statute of Liberty in the background gives one the impression that this was done in New York.

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

DOJ: George Nader Indicted On Campaign Fraud In Child Welfare

Here is the background on George Nader and his network of The Nasty Ones.

Cocktails & Popcorn: George Nader Busted On Child Porn - Mueller Has A Window Into Israel

Welcome to the world of child welfare.

It is dark.

Very dark.

And to think, no one cared, because everyone was making money.

Psy Group Speed Read: 6 WTF Bits From The New Yorker Exposé on Mueller Probe’s Ex-Mossad Spy Group

Even for the world of covert intel operations, this one crosses boundaries in both fake-personae espionage and epic influence failure.

In 2017, the notorious Israeli spy-for-hire outfit known as Psy Group, known for its alleged role in social-media manipulation ahead of Donald Trump’s election and its spot on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s radar, got entangled in a local election in an obscure part of central California, after a Bernie Sanders die-hard convinced his immigrant mother to try to unseat one of the town’s hospital-board members.

But apparently it wasn’t the only time the Mossad-linked intelligence group tried to expand its practice in the U.S. On Monday morning, The New Yorker published “Private Mossad for Hire” by reporters Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow, which unravels additional disturbing details about the Psy Group’s other work in America, including a proposition to sabotage campus opponents of Israel and that out-of-proportion attack on the candidate in Rep. Devin Nunes’ home district.

Here, a look at the six most WTF bits in the report about this shadowy group.

Psy Started on Small Targets—Including U.S. Campus BDS Activists

Before it set its sights on the U.S. election market, Psy Group first practiced sowing false information in elsewhere, according to The New Yorker report. In recent years, it wrote a fictitious report about an Amsterdam-based religious sect called Brunstad Christian Church that stated that its Norwegian leader claimed to have written “a more important book than the New Testament.” It also spread disinformation about a rival of Gabon President Ali Bongo Ondimba under the code name “Operation Bentley” to ensure he retained power.

In New York, it reportedly developed “Project Butterfly” at the bequest of wealthy Jewish-American university donors in an effort to “embarrass and intimidate activists” who demanded U.S. entities put economic pressure on Israel because of its harsh treatment of Palestinians. In 2017, Psy operatives scouted the internet for supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, known as BDS. “If a student claimed to be a pious Muslim, for example, Psy Group operatives would look for photographs of him engaging in behavior unacceptable to many pious Muslims, such as drinking alcohol or having an affair,” The New Yorker reports. “Psy Group would then release the information online using avatars and websites that couldn’t be traced back to the company or its donors.” Eventually, Psy Group was able to recruit Yaakov Amidror, a former national-security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to work as an adviser on Butterfly.                                                                                                     

Psy’s Owner Asked Newt Gingrich to Offer Services to Jared Kushner

The New Yorker reports the group’s owner Joel Zamel asked Trump ally and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to get Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to sign on for the services that included “online deception.” In one draft strategy from early 2016, it promised to exploit their powers of sowing deceit to more than 50 political groups including the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee, and major super PACs that were deemed influential among voters. By controlling the messages these groups were sending to potential voters, they promised to easily sway first the Republican primary and then the general election.

Entous and Farrow report Kushner checked around with the team, including Brad Parscale, who was in charge of the Trump campaign’s web-based strategies, but concluded that they didn’t need Psy Group’s expertise.

Psy Advertised ‘Honey Traps’ and Low, Low Prices

The company’s glossy publicity campaign included printed brochures with a price list for services like “honey traps,” which they depicted with a cartoon cat casting the shadow of a lion to refer to using a sexy spy to get information from various targets, according to the report. It also used a goldfish with a shark fin attached to its back to back up its motto: “Reality is a matter of perception.” The cost of these services? An average package price of $350,000, or just $275 an hour.

Prison Exec Pursues Federal Cash, Spends at Trump Hotel

It Also Used Fake Avatars to Infiltrate Think Tanks

In a project proposal called “Project Mockingjay” (after the fictional bird in The Hunger Games) designed to influence the local Tulare hospital board election, Psy Group created identities meant to represent consultants. These fake avatars were then used to “uncover and deliver actionable intelligence” against those trying to unseat the embedded hospital board members who had drawn attention with outsize contracts with the struggling small-town facility. It launched later-deleted websites—Tulareleaks.com, and Draintulareswamp.com—to mount negative campaigns against rival candidates, promising that to the outside eye, the efforts would appear to be “grassroots” in nature.

Mueller Witness’ Team Gamed Out Russian Meddling … in 2015

It also used these avatars to hack systems and hire local analysts for think tanks, and in at least one separate case in Europe, it even created sham think tanks that would disseminate reports meant to undermine the reputations of campaign rivals. The New Yorker piece says Psy even created an avatar who was designed to win regulatory approval in Europe for one of its clients. “Over time, the avatar became so well established in the industry that he was quoted in mainstream press reports and even by European parliamentarians,” the reporters state, quoting a former Psy Group operative as saying, “It’s got to look legit.”

Other Firms Tricked Jihadis With Fake Online Personae

Gadi Aviran, owner of Terrogence, was one of the first to capitalize on Israeli intelligence and set the pace for agencies like Psy Group. “There was this huge pipeline of talent coming out of the military every year,” Aviran told The New Yorker. “All a company like mine had to do was stand at the gate and say, ‘You look interesting.’” Terrogence was the first major Israeli company to use these fake identities in counterintelligence work by engaging with jihadi groups in online communities. Terrogence even gave its avatars histories or “backstories–often as Arab students at European universities.” But the scheme soon got out of hand and chat rooms were suddenly completely filled with fake avatars who were collecting false information on each other.

Psy Group disabled a virtual Christian female Chicago teen named Madison —“Finally! I’m a Muslim,” Entous and Farrow report Madison wrote on Facebook. “I feel at home.” She added a smiley-face emoticon—who converted to Islam and was asked to consider becoming an ISIS bride. It pitched a similar idea to the State Department for a project “modeled on the successful ‘Madison’ engagement,” intended to “interrupt the radicalization and recruitment chain.” The New Yorker says the State Department apparently never acted on the proposal.         

However, Psy’s Candidate Couldn’t Even Win the Hospital Election

Back in Tulane, the home of Alex Gutiérrez, the Bernie Sanders fan who convinced his immigrant mother to run to unseat the powerful hospital board chairman, was burned to the ground shortly before election. Psy Group denied involvement in the fire, and Gutiérrez’s mother won with 75 percent of the vote. The unseated board member was later investigated for fraud—and refused to answer any questions about Psy Group’s involvement. “It was like they organized a concert and nobody showed up,” a computer-security expert who reviewed local data from Psy Group’s campaign told The New Yorker.

In February 2018, Psy Group shuttered its doors, but many of its operatives are thought to have been picked up by other spy-for-hire services with Israeli ties.

California CEO and Seven Others Charged in Multi-Million Dollar Conduit Campaign Contribution Case

Earlier today, an indictment was unsealed against the CEO of an online payment processing company, and seven others, charging them with conspiring to make and conceal conduit and excessive campaign contributions, and related offenses, during the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and thereafter.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Assistant Director in Charge Timothy R. Slater of the FBI’s Washington Field Office made the announcement.

A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia indicted Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja, 48, of Los Angeles, California, on Nov. 7, 2019, along with George Nader, Roy Boulos, Rudy Dekermenjian, Mohammad “Moe” Diab, Rani El-Saadi, Stevan Hill and Thayne Whipple. The 53 count indictment charges Khawaja with two counts of conspiracy, three counts of making conduit contributions, three counts of causing excessive contributions, 13 counts of making false statements, 13 counts of causing false records to be filed, and one count of obstruction of a federal grand jury investigation. Nader is charged with conspiring with Khawaja to make conduit campaign contributions, and related offenses. Boulos, Dekermenjian, Diab, El-Saadi, Hill, and Whipple are charged with conspiring with Khawaja and each other to make conduit campaign contributions and conceal excessive contributions, and related offenses.

According to the indictment, from March 2016 through January 2017, Khawaja conspired with Nader to conceal the source of more than $3.5 million in campaign contributions, directed to political committees associated with a candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 election. By design, these contributions appeared to be in the names of Khawaja, his wife, and his company. In reality, they allegedly were funded by Nader. Khawaja and Nader allegedly made these contributions in an effort to gain influence with high-level political figures, including the candidate. As Khawaja and Nader arranged these payments, Nader allegedly reported to an official from a foreign government about his efforts to gain influence.

The indictment also alleges that, from March 2016 through 2018, Khawaja conspired with Boulos, Dekermenjian, Diab, El-Saadi, Hill, and Whipple to conceal Khawaja’s excessive contributions, which totaled more than $1.8 million, to various political committees. Among other things, these contributions allegedly allowed Khawaja to host a private fundraiser for a presidential candidate in 2016 and a private fundraising dinner for an elected official in 2018.

The indictment further alleges that, from June 2019 through July 2019, Khawaja obstructed a grand jury investigation of this matter in the District of Columbia. Knowing that a witness had been called to testify before the grand jury, Khawaja allegedly provided that witness with false information about Nader and his connection to Khawaja’s company. Boulos, Diab, Hill, and Whipple also are charged with obstructing the grand jury’s investigation by lying to the FBI.

Currently, Nader is in federal custody on other charges.

An indictment is not a finding of guilt. It merely alleges that crimes have been committed. A defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The FBI’s Washington Field Office is investigating the case and Deputy Chief John D. Keller and Trial Attorneys James C. Mann and Michael J. Romano of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section are prosecuting the case.

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

Cocktails & Popcorn: August 29th, 2019 Bannon Backbone To Trump Takedown - Now A Playlist!

"They eat each other alive."

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

SCOTUS U.S. v. Department Of Commerce - Privatization Of Citizenship Question On Census For Violations Of Voting Rights Act & Administrative Procedures Act

In short, the U.S. is petitioning to take the issue of putting the citizenship question on the next 2020 Census as a mandamus to stop violations of the Voting Rights Act & Administrative Procedures Act.

It seems, Steve Bannon may have assisted Kris Kobach and Wilbur Ross, under the financial direction of private political interests, through propaganda, to have citizenship on the census, for the purposes of securing electioneering data and, dare I say, the implementation of a national absentee voting ballots scheme. involving real estate.

But hey, what do I know?

I know there are many more SCOTUS Petitions for Certiorari in the pipeline and they are all legally symbiotic.

I also know to put the citizenship question on the census is an act of privatization because policymakers, the Executive Branch, cannot make law, only the Congress makes law.

Happy National Adoption Month: SCOTUS - DHS v. States Children's Trust Funds On Trafficking Tiny Humans - DACA, DAPA Privatization Policies Of Fraud

Happy National Adoption Month: TRUMP v. NAACP Petition For Certiorari To SCOTUS On Trafficking Tiny Humans - DACA, DAPA

And, I also know Willis Hartman, Kansas oil industry, dropped more than 50% of campaign funding into Kobach's failed 2018 Kansas gubernatorial campaign, which comes to about $1,000,000.

This is about predictive modeling crap.

QUESTION PRESENTED Whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 701 et seq., a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker—including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking Executive Branch officials —when there is not a strong threshold showing that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis.

SERRANO: Should political parties and campaign politics ever factor into what is asked of every household in the country on the census? 

ROSS: No political party has asked us to do anything on the census. We have had a request, as everyone is aware, from the Department of Justice, to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. 

SERRANO: * * * I was very disappointed to see yesterday that the Republican Party campaign to reelect the president put out an appalling e-mail specifically noting that the president wants a new citizenship question added to the census * * * . Do you disavow this campaign e-mail? * * *

ROSS: I’m not familiar with the e-mail. I’m not part of the Republican campaign committee. So, I have not seen it. I have heard about it, this morning. We are responding solely to the Department of Justice’s request, not to any campaign request, not to any other political party request. We are listening to stakeholders. Many have written to us. Some have come in to talk with me.

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, ET ... by on Scribd

Besides, what the heck is a third party administrator going to do with all that data?

I thought it only fair to report what Tom Perez, DNC Chair is up to when it comes to his activities of securing voter data profiles, strictly for the purposes of monetization, of course.

Hey, at least Tom was open and obvious in the DNC's intentions of selling voter data profiles to private, foreign, third parties.

DNC Chair Tom Perez goes to war with state parties

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez launched an attack on his own party’s state organizations Saturday with a long and angry email over the future of the party’s most valuable asset — its voter data file.

Just days before an important Tuesday meeting in D.C. on the future of the data operation, Perez sharply criticized a new proposal from state party leaders and singled out prominent state officials by name.

“For some inexplicable reason, this proposal would tear down just about everything about our current data structure, reversing so much of the progress we made over the past decade,” Perez wrote.

The national chairman, describing his own reaction to the state proposal as “disappointed” and “dumbfounded,” accused the president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, Minnesota’s Ken Martin, of undermining the DNC by not keeping other state party officials “in the loop,” prompting withering criticism of Perez from state party leaders.

It‘s the latest fight in a quickly escalating war over the trove of Democratic voter information — a conflict that broke into the open at a gathering of the state parties and the DNC in Puerto Rico late last month. The party’s data are largely owned by the state parties, but a considerable amount of other data being collected by outside groups like labor unions and super PACs could be leveraged to benefit Democratic candidates and the eventual 2020 nominee.

COUNTDOWN TO 2020

The race for 2020 starts now. Stay in the know. Follow our presidential election coverage.

The DNC wants to gather all the data points on voters into a new, massive for-profit database but needs to convince state parties on the idea. The state parties have been wary, accusing the DNC of conducting a power grab that could financially benefit a few elite party figures.

In response to the DNC plan, Martin on Friday circulated a counterproposal designed to better integrate data from outside groups within the existing infrastructure. It was this proposal that prompted Perez’s email.

Perez’s email — with the seemingly innocuous subject line “UPDATE on data” — immediately triggered an uproar Saturday among state party leaders, who held conference calls and communicated with a flurry of emails and texts. The DNC chairman was referred to in a call as “a bull in a china shop,” according to one state party official. Another state party official called him “petulant,” via text message.

The backlash threatens to splinter the state parties and the national committee — technically separate entities — just as Democratic contenders are preparing to launch presidential campaigns.

Perez argued in his Saturday email that “Ken’s new entity...amounts to having State Parties effectively going alone on technology and data.” He threatened to cut off access to campaign tech tools like VoteBuilder, an online organizing platform, if state parties go forward with their plan.

“You would have to find a replacement for VoteBuilder — either building or buying — as the DNC has sole rights to the platform,” he wrote.

“The reality is the state parties own the voter file. At the end of the day, we hope to move forward with the DNC, but if the DNC continues down this path, we’re just not interested in that,” Martin told POLITICO. “It’s clear that the DNC is not interested in any other proposals or in negotiating.”

Of the email, Martin said that “it’s highly disappointing that Tom would make it so personal.”

Party chairs in the early 2020 presidential primary states also criticized Perez for personalizing the dispute.

“I was very disappointed, and I felt we could have continued to have conversations at a better level than the tone of that email, and I find it very unfortunate,” said Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. “I think that’s how negotiations are, and for [Perez] to be surprised that there would be alternative suggestions is disappointing.”

Trav Robertson, the South Carolina Democratic Party chairman, said Saturday’s email prompted him to “spit out my sweet tea.”

“His email was wholly inappropriate and wholly in the wrong spirit of our conversation,” he said. “For them to say that Ken Martin and Brad Martin [president of the state party executive directors group] have misled us and have not operated in good faith is just not true. In fact, it’s a lie.”

The fight is likely to deepen the intraparty gridlock on how best to prepare a data operation for the eventual 2020 nominee — a goal both sides share but over which they are in deep disagreement on the means.

Ken Martin added that Perez’s email could imperil future negotiations: “I don’t know how you put the genie back in the bottle at this point after Tom’s email.”

DNC officials see a chance to update their tech and pool their data quickly with cash from liberal donors and Silicon Valley tycoons. Republicans have this capability already — although in practice the Koch brothers-backed outside groups and the Republican National Committee have feuded over sharing their data — which has many Democratic leaders worried about being at a competitive disadvantage in 2020.

“It is also time to take critical steps to modernize our data infrastructure. The other side has already done this, so time is of the essence,” Perez wrote to the state parties. With several state parties staunchly opposed, DNC officials have discussed potentially integrating just some states at first, with the hope of eventually persuading all of them to sign on.

The counterproposal offered by Martin and additional state party officials — most state parties received copies on Friday, with a briefing scheduled for Monday — would largely build on the existing infrastructure utilized by the state parties and data vendor TargetSmart. Proponents argue that the goal of integrating all the progressive world’s data is achievable without creating an entirely new organization.

“TargetSmart has provided key data services to the DNC for more than a decade,” Tom Bonier, TargetSmart’s CEO, told POLITICO. “The fact is that there are no shortcuts in this work. Handing over our data to an outside entity could hurt our candidates in 2020 and put our party at a disadvantage for years to come.”

Although most state parties hadn’t publicly weighed in on the new state party-centric proposal by Saturday morning — many hadn’t even read it yet — Perez’s email caused officials to rally behind Martin, the veteran Minnesota chairman.

The executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party, Jay Parmley, emailed a response directly to Perez telling him he was being “petty.”

“To insinuate that that these individuals haven’t been completely transparent and open with the ASDC membership simply because much of the ASDC membership doesn’t trust what the DNC is ‘peddling’ when it comes to a Data Trust is just wrong,” he wrote in an email obtained by POLITICO.

Parmley, who has served in state party leadership in numerous states, confirmed he authored the email.

“I like Tom, but I think this was really poor judgment. It read like a letter from an 8th grader,” Parmley told POLITICO.

Other state party chairs also supported Martin.

“I think Ken’s doing a good job,” said Troy Price, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. “It’s disappointing for a fight like this to become so public. Obviously, our [2020 presidential] caucus is coming up here in 14 months, and that data conversation is very important.” 

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

Rod Rosenstein Worked On Whitewater

Rumor has it this meeting was a leak, conjured up by Conway and Bannon.

Although I am not thrilled with Rod's performance during his tenure when it comes to trafficking tiny humans, he has admitted that he got it wrong.

Rod worked Whitewater.

Rosenstein played a smaller role in the Starr’s office. A Harvard Law graduate and public corruption prosecutor before joining the independent counsel’s staff, he thrived in the courtroom.He played a supporting role in the successful prosecution of three onetime associates of the Clintons — Susan McDougal, James McDougal and former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker. They were convicted in 1996 on charges related to a $3-million conspiracy to defraud two federally backed financial institutions stemming from an Arkansas real estate development known as Whitewater.Rosenstein also helped investigate whether the Clintons played a role in improperly obtaining FBI background files on Republicans. He interviewed Hillary Clinton about the case in January 1998; the independent counsel ultimately concluded no crime had been committed.

I am going to sit back and see if he bows before the Celestial Goddess of the Woodshed and gives homage in the form of getting all the Meanies.

The Meanies were really mean to my Sweetie.

The Meanies were really mean to "The Poors" (always said with clinched teeth).

Besides, this was a cockamamie story, anyway.

It did not even follow legal logic or administrative protocol.

"Legal Geniuses" (trademark pending).

Trump postpones meeting with Rod Rosenstein

Washington – A highly anticipated meeting between President Donald Trump and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was postponed until next week to avoid conflicting with a dramatic Senate hearing involving Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the White House said Thursday.

The two were set to meet Thursday following news media reports that Rosenstein last year discussed possibly secretly recording the president and using the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

But White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the men agreed to reschedule their meeting because “they do not want to do anything to interfere with the hearing.”

Amid speculation that the meeting could result in Rosenstein’s dismissal or resignation, Trump said Wednesday that he would “certainly prefer not” to fire Rosenstein and that the Justice Department’s No. 2 official had denied making the remarks first attributed to him in a New York Times report.

“I would much prefer keeping Rod Rosenstein,” Trump said at a news conference in New York. “He said he did not say it. He said he does not believe that. He said he has a lot of respect for me, and he was very nice and we’ll see.”

Trump added, “My preference would be to keep him and to let him finish up.”

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway would not say Thursday when the meeting would take place, but stressed that the two will talk and Trump has made clear “he would prefer that the deputy attorney general stay on the job and complete the job.”

Rosenstein is overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and his dismissal would put that probe in jeopardy and create a political storm.

The meeting delay prolongs the uncertainty of Rosenstein’s status. Rosenstein headed to the White House on Monday morning preparing to be fired and had discussed a possible resignation over the weekend with White House officials. But after meeting with chief of staff John Kelly and speaking by phone with Trump, he got a reprieve with the Trump meeting scheduled for Thursday.

Since then, the White House has sought to tamp down anxiety that Rosenstein would be fired.

White House officials called senators Monday to say Trump had said he wouldn’t be firing Rosenstein at the meeting, according to two people familiar with the conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private discussions. Aides have advised Trump against taking any extreme actions ahead of the midterm elections with his party’s majorities in Congress already under threat.

Friends and former colleagues of Rosenstein say they don’t expect him to step aside and give up oversight of the Russia investigation and the enormous swath of Justice Department operations for which he is responsible.

Rosenstein, who has spent his entire career in government, “has tremendous loyalty to the department,” said former Justice Department lawyer and longtime friend James Trusty.

“He’s a very long-run, historical-minded guy in a lot of ways,” Trusty said. “I think he may have some confidence that history will be kinder to him than politicians are.”

Trump’s remarks Wednesday followed a chaotic period that began last Friday with reports that Rosenstein had last year discussed possibly secretly recording the president and invoking the Constitution to remove Trump from office. The Justice Department issued statements aimed at denying the reports, including one that said the wiretap remark was meant sarcastically.

Rosenstein appointed Mueller in May 2017, oversees his work and has repeatedly defended the breadth and scope of the probe. Trump has been critical of Rosenstein’s oversight of the probe, but the two have at times displayed a warm working relationship, and Rosenstein has been spared some of the more personal and antagonistic broadsides leveled against Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Though Rosenstein appears poised to survive the week, it’s not clear how much longer he’ll be around. Trump has signaled that he may fire Sessions after the November midterms, and Rosenstein could go with him.

But it could be sooner: Some officials around Trump believe Rosenstein’s reported musings about invoking the 25th Amendment could make it defensible for Trump to part with him, even in the final sprint to Election Day.

Rosenstein’s friends and former colleagues describe him as exceptionally committed to the Justice Department – one said he “bleeds” for the agency – and unlikely to leave on his own, though they say he respects the chain of command enough to resign if asked.

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

Cocktails & Popcorn: Ice Cube, Stormy Daniels, Avenatti, Cohen, Flynn, Bannon, Qatar Investment Authority & Elmo

Elmo & Ice Cube

On this exciting episode of Cocktails & Popcorn, it looks like we must definitely invite Elmo.

Here's how Ice Cube figures in the Trump-Cohen mess

Donald Trump was already facing a fierce battle from a prominent member of the porn industry.

Now he’s up against N.W.A.

The investigations into the Trump campaign’s links to Russia, and his lawyer Michael Cohen’s ties to deep-pocketed foreign investors, just introduced another potential star witness: Ice Cube.

On Sunday, Michael Avenatti, the media savvy lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels, claimed Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, an investor managing billions for the government of Qatar, held a secret meeting in Trump Tower in December 2016 with Cohen — and tweeted out pictures and video supporting his assertion.

Avenatti suggested the supposed meeting with Cohen may have to do with other allegations hovering over the Qatari investor, namely political bribery.

That’s where Ice Cube — famed rapper, actor and entrepreneur — comes in. The hip-hop mogul and his business partner have brought a$1.2 billion lawsuit against Al-Rumaihi over a startup basketball league called BIG3.

Specifically, Ice Cube’s suit features testimony alleging that Al-Rumaihi tried to use the financial might of the government of Qatar to cement political ties with former Trump campaign chairman, Steve Bannon, and former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn.

Translation: Cube and his business partner may have key information relating to a Middle Eastern government’s attempts to buy political support from people who once served at the highest levels of the Trump administration.

Read: Here’s why Trump’s motive in the Stormy Daniels payoff matters

Ice Cube launched BIG3 along with his partner Jeff Kwatinetz in 2017, and the fund led by Al-Rumaihi, which manages about $100 billion on behalf of the government of Qatar, soon agreed to invest millions in the league.

In their lawsuit, Ice Cube and Kwatinetz claim that after that deal was agreed, relations between the founding partners and their investors began to sour — and turn political.

Although Bannon wasn’t involved in BIG3, he once worked with Kwatinetz in another media company, and the two remain friends. Al-Ruhaimi, according to the suit, saw this relationship as an opportunity for his home-country.

Read: Who is Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch tied to a $500k Payment to Michael Cohen?

Qatar has been struggling under the weight of a trade and diplomatic blockade launched by Saudi Arabia — one that Trump has appeared to support — and has been in search for relief.

Kwatinetz testified that after investing in BIG3, Al-Ruhaimi repeatedly brought up Bannon and the Trump administration’s position on the trade embargo. Then, in January 2018, the two men went on a hike — and Al-Rumaihi said he had a message from Qatar for Bannon, according to Kwatinetz.

“Al-Rumaihi requested I set up a meeting between him, the Qatari government, and Steve Bannon, and to tell Steve Bannon that Qatar would underwrite all his political efforts in return for his support,” Kwatinetz testified.

Kwatinetz claims he responded he was “offended by this request,” but that the Qatari businessman replied that he’d already forged some kind of financial relationship with Trump’s former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn.

“Al-Rumaihi laughed and then stated to me that I shouldn’t be so naive, that so many Washington politicians have taken our money, and stated ‘do you think [Michael] Flynn turned down our money?,” Kwatinetz testified.

Flynn resigned from his post in Trump administration for lying about his phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the transition.

Sports Trinity, which represents the Qatari investors in BIG3, has slammed Ice Cube and Kwatinetz’s accusations as untrue.

“Kwatinetz and Ice Cube have subsequently engaged in a public smear campaign, making unfounded and defamatory remarks about investors and departing executives, all to the detriment of the BIG3,” the group said in a statement.

But on Sunday, Avenatti tweeted out a link to a C-SPAN video that appeared to show Al-Rumaihi arriving in Trump Tower with a group including Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer.

Cohen, of course, has been making headlines lately for accepting millions of dollars in payments from corporations like AT&T and pharmaceutical firm Novartis. Those firms have said they paid Cohen because they were seeking insight into the Trump administration.

Cohen, according to documents revealed by Avenatti, also accepted half a million dollars from a U.S. investment firm closely linked to Russian oligarch Viktor Veskelberg.

BIG3 LLC v. Qatar Investment Authority by Beverly Tran on Scribd

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Did CPS & FBI Rig The 2016 Election?

Did FBI make false claims for an ex-parte hearing to be granted a fraudulent FISA warrant to run a wire tap to throw the election?

Does CPS make false claims for an ex-parte hearing to be granted a fraudulent Order of Removal of a child to bill foster care to terminate parental rights for adoption?

I wonder where in the world did the "Legal Geniuses" of the FBI came up with this scheme.

We may just have to ask the real FBI.

I just adore transposable models.

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

Day 47.2. Capitol Hill Arrests

TRUMP WHITE HOUSE WEIGHING PLANS FOR PRIVATE SPIES TO COUNTER “DEEP STATE” ENEMIES

INISTRATION is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency.

The creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda.

“Pompeo can’t trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official with firsthand knowledge of the proposals, in describing White House discussions. “It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books,” this person said, meaning the intelligence collected would not be shared with the rest of the CIA or the larger intelligence community. “The whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly.”

North, who appears frequently on Trump’s favorite TV network, Fox News, was enlisted to help sell the effort to the administration. He was the “ideological leader” brought in to lend credibility, said the former senior intelligence official.

Some of the individuals involved with the proposals secretly met with major Trump donors asking them to help finance operations before any official contracts were signed.

The proposals would utilize an army of spies with no official cover in several countries deemed “denied areas” for current American intelligence personnel, including North Korea and Iran. The White House has also considered creating a new global rendition unit meant to capture terrorist suspects around the world, as well as a propaganda campaign in the Middle East and Europe to combat Islamic extremism and Iran.

“I can find no evidence that this ever came to the attention of anyone at the NSC or [White House] at all,” wrote Michael N. Anton, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, in an email. “The White House does not and would not support such a proposal.” But a current U.S. intelligence official appeared to contradict that assertion, stating that the various proposals were first pitched at the White House before being delivered to the CIA. The Intercept reached out to several senior officials that sources said had been briefed on the plans by Prince, including Vice President Mike Pence. His spokesperson wrote there was “no record of [Prince] ever having met with or briefed the VP.” North did not respond to a request for comment.

According to two former senior intelligence officials, Pompeo has embraced the plan and lobbied the White House to approve the contract. Asked for comment, a CIA spokesperson said, “You have been provided wildly inaccurate information by people peddling an agenda.”

At the heart of the scheme being considered by the White House are Blackwater founder Erik Prince and his longtime associate, CIA veteran John R. Maguire, who currently works for the intelligence contractor Amyntor Group. Maguire also served on Trump’s transition team. Amyntor’s role was first reported by BuzzFeed News.

Michael Barry, who was recently named NSC senior director for intelligence programs, worked closely with Prince on a CIA assassination program during the Bush administration.

Prince and Maguire deny they are working together. Those assertions, however, are challenged by current and former U.S. officials and Trump donors who say the two men were collaborating.

As with many arrangements in the world of CIA contracting and clandestine operations, details of who is in charge of various proposals are murky by design and change depending on which players are speaking. An Amyntor official said Prince was not “formally linked to any contract proposal by Amyntor.” In an email, Prince rejected the suggestion that he was involved with the proposals. When asked if he has knowledge of this project, Prince replied: “I was/am not part of any of those alleged efforts.”

The former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the efforts scoffed at Prince’s denials. “Erik’s proposal had no company names on the slides,” this person said, “but there is no doubt that Prince and Maguire were working together.”

Prince and Maguire have a long professional relationship. Maguire recently completed a stint as a consultant with Prince’s company, Frontier Services Group, a Hong Kong-based security and logistics company partially owned by the Chinese government. FSG has no known connections to the private spy plan.

Prince has strong ties to the Trump administration: His sister Betsy DeVos is secretary of education, he was a major donor to the Trump election campaign, and he advised the transition team on intelligence and defense appointments, as The Intercept has previously reported. Prince has also contributed to Pence’s campaigns.

Maguire spent more than two decades as a paramilitary officer in the CIA, including tours in Central America working with the Contras. He has extensive experience in the Middle East, where he helped plan the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Maguire and Prince met together in September with a senior CIA official at a Virginia restaurant to discuss privatizing the war in Afghanistan.

Prince told a top fundraiser that Maguire was working on part of his Afghanistan plan, characterizing it as the first part of a multi-pronged program. The fundraiser added that Prince never directly asked him for money. But sources close to the project say Maguire did seek private funding for Amyntor’s efforts until a CIA contract materialized. “They’ve been going around asking for a bridge loan to float their operations until the CIA says yes,” said a person who has been briefed on the fundraising efforts.

Beginning last spring and into the summer, Maguire and a group of Amyntor representatives began asking Trump donors to support their intelligence efforts in Afghanistan, the initial piece of what they hoped would be a broader program. Some Trump fundraisers were asked to provide introductions to companies and wealthy clients who would then hire Amyntor for economic intelligence contracts. Maguire explained that some of the profit from those business deals would fund their foreign intelligence collection. Others were asked to give money outright.

“[Maguire] said there were people inside the CIA who joined in the previous eight years [under Obama] and inside the government, and they were failing to give the president the intelligence he needed,” said a person who was pitched by Maguire and other Amyntor personnel. To support his claim, Maguire told at least two people that National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, in coordination with a top official at the National Security Agency, authorized surveillance of Steven Bannon and Trump family members, including Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Adding to these unsubstantiated claims, Maguire told the potential donors he also had evidence McMaster used a burner phone to send information gathered through the surveillance to a facility in Cyprus owned by George Soros.

Amyntor employees took potential donors to a suite in the Trump Hotel in Washington, which they claimed was set up to conduct “secure communications.” Some White House staff and Trump campaign supporters came to refer to the suite as “the tinfoil room,” according to one person who visited the suite. This account was confirmed by another source to whom the room was described. “John [Maguire] was certain that the deep state was going to kick the president out of office within a year,” said a person who discussed it with Maguire. “These guys said they were protecting the president.”

Maguire and others at Amyntor have boasted that they have already sent intelligence reports to Pompeo.

Oliver North testifying before Congress in 1986, and Erik Prince testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2007, in Washington, D.C.

PRINCE, MAGUIRE, AND North have long shared a common frustration over the failure of the U.S. government to bring two suspects from a high-profile terrorist event in the 1980s to justice. Last summer, Maguire discussed rendering the suspects with White House officials after learning the men had been located in the Middle East. Despite having no U.S. government approval, associates of Maguire began working on a snatch operation earlier this year, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Prince colleague.

Maguire, concerned that the FBI would not take action, made an offer to senior White House officials. The message, according to a person with direct knowledge of the rendition plan, was: “We’re going to go get these guys and bring them to the U.S. Who should we hand them over to?”

The rendition plan was meant to be a demonstration that Maguire and his associates had an active intelligence network and the capability to grab suspects around the world. Prince maintains he has nothing to do with that plan. But according to a source with extensive knowledge of Prince’s networks, Prince was working in parallel to assemble a team to help apprehend the men.

According to two people who have worked extensively with Prince in recent years, Prince has been contacting former Blackwater personnel who worked on a post-9/11 era CIA assassination program targeting Al Qaeda operatives. That program, which the Bush White House prohibited the CIA from disclosing to congressional intelligence committees, was revealed to Congress in 2009 by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta. The CIA says the program did not result in any assassinations.

Among the capabilities Prince offers is a network of deniable assets —  spies, fixers, foreign intelligence agents — spread across the globe that could be used by the White House. “You pick any country in the world Erik’s been in, and it’s there,” said a longtime Prince associate. “They’re a network of very dark individuals.” The associate, who has worked extensively with Prince, then began rattling off places where the private spies and paramilitaries already operate — Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, “all across North Africa.”

Opaque contracting arrangements are typical for Prince, who became a lightning rod in his Blackwater days and now prefers to minimize controversy by operating in the shadows, disguising his involvement in sensitive operations with layers of subcontractors and elaborately crafted legal structures. “That’s his exact MO,” said the longtime Prince associate, adding that Prince consistently attempts to ensure plausible deniability of his role in U.S. and foreign government contracts.

“I have zero to do with any such effort and saying that I did/do would be categorically false,” Prince said in his email to The Intercept. “Knowingly publishing false information exposes you to civil legal action. The only effort I’ve quite publicly pitched is an alternative to Afghanistan.”

THE INTELLIGENCE AND covert action program would mark an unorthodox return to government service for Prince, the onetime CIA contractor who built a mercenary force that became notorious during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would also raise new questions about Prince’s foreign entanglements since he sold Blackwater.

In addition to Prince’s former assassination network, the hidden cadre of spies with no official cover — NOCs in CIA jargon — includes the assets of another key player in the Iran-Contra affair, CIA Officer Duane Clarridge, who died in 2016. Maguire, who worked under Clarridge as a young CIA paramilitary in Central America during the mid-1980s, took over the network of contract spies, who operate mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Last summer, as Prince pushed his public proposal to privatize the war in Afghanistan, he and Maguire had broader ambitions, according to a person involved in the discussions. “The goal was to eventually get their network of NOCs worldwide, but they initially started with Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

“Prince seems to be firing on a lot of cylinders and pitching overt and covert plans,” said a current intelligence officer who has closely monitored Prince’s career and been briefed on several of Prince’s recent efforts, including the proposals to Pompeo. The official declined to discuss details of the plans but pointed to Prince’s much-discussed pitch to privatize the war in Afghanistan as a smokescreen for offering other more controversial programs and operations.

Prince’s Afghanistan plan, which received substantial media attention and got a hearing at the highest levels of the Trump administration, “was brilliant because it changed the narrative and made him relevant,” the officer said, referring to Prince’s scandal- and investigation-plagued career at Blackwater. The officer also added that the very public Afghanistan pitch, replete with cable news interviews and op-eds, provided a legitimate reason “to justify meeting with people” at the White House, CIA, or other government agencies.

“Erik has no hobbies,” said the longtime Prince associate. “Counterterrorism is his hobby.”

In some ways, these plans mirror operations Prince led during the Bush-Cheney administration. When Prince was running Blackwater, he and a former CIA paramilitary officer, Enrique Prado, set up a global network of foreign operatives, offering their “deniability” as a “big plus” for potential Blackwater customers, according to internal company communications obtained by The Intercept.

In a 2007 email, with the subject “Possible Opportunity in DEA—READ AND DELETE,” Prado sought to pitch the network to the Drug Enforcement Administration, bragging that Blackwater had developed “a rapidly growing, worldwide network of folks that can do everything from surveillance to ground truth to disruption operations.” He added, “These are all foreign nationals (except for a few cases where US persons are the conduit but no longer ‘play’ on the street), so deniability is built in and should be a big plus.”

The longtime Prince associate said that the nexus of deniable assets has never gone away. “The NOC network is already there. It already exists for the better part of 15 years now,” he said.

Prince has long admired North and viewed his role in Iran-Contra as heroic, said the Prince associate. In 2007, Prince testified defiantly before Congress following the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, in which Blackwater operatives gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians, including women and children. Shortly after his testimony, Prince’s longtime friend, conservative California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, praised the Blackwater chief. “Prince,” Rohrabacher said, “is on his way to being an American hero just like Ollie North was.”

North, a Marine lieutenant colonel on the Reagan National Security Council, oversaw a scheme to divert proceeds from illicit arms sales to Iran to Contra death squads in Nicaragua. The resulting scandal became known as the Iran-Contra affair, and North was convicted of three felonies, though these convictions were later thrown out.

Both North and Maguire attended a small reception in 2014 celebrating Prince’s third marriage — to his former spokesperson Stacy DeLuke. “It was an intimate affair,” said the Prince associate. “Only Erik’s closest friends were invited to that reception.” On election night in 2016, DeLuke posted photos on social media from inside Trump headquarters.

On November 30, Prince testified behind closed doors before the House Intelligence Committee about his January trip to the Seychelles to meet with Mohammad bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, and a Russian fund manager close to Vladimir Putin. According to the Washington Post,
Prince presented himself as an unofficial envoy of President-elect Trump. The Intercept reported last week that the fund manager was Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. Prince repeatedly said that he did not remember the identity of the Russian, but on Thursday, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Prince admitted that he did in fact meet with Dmitriev.

Prince may have revealed part of his strategy in a July 2016 radio interview with Steve Bannon, when he proposed recreating the CIA’s Phoenix Program, an assassination ring used in the Vietnam War, to battle the Islamic State. Prince said in the interview that the program would be used to kill or capture “the funders of Islamic terror, the wealthy radical Islamist billionaires funding it from the Middle East.”

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CONYERS: Bannon's Removal Doesn't Address Trump's Support Of White Supremacy & Racism

Conyers: We Must Boldly Condemn Racist Un-American Ideals

Detroit, MI– House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) today released the following statement in response to the news that Steve Bannon will no longer serve as White House Chief Strategist:

Dean of the U.S. House
of Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.

“As I said in November, Steve Bannon is the standard-bearer for the worst instincts in American society.  Whether Bannon personally trades in violence, racism, and bigotry - he allowed Brietbart - his media organization - to become a platform for white nationalism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant sentiment of the worst kind. 

“I am pleased that he is no longer serving in the White House, he should have never been appointed. However, his removal will not undo the damage that has already been done and it will not reconcile the hate-filled agenda of the Trump Administration.

“President Donald Trump has shown us his true colors. He sided with un-American white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and all those who give racism and hatred a voice. Trump's failure to reflect on his dangerous rhetoric continues to embolden these groups and ideals.

“This administration must reverse its pattern of discriminatory positions in notable areas including voting rights, policing, immigration, and affirmative action. Beyond wringing our hands, we must use this opportunity to enact meaningful change.”

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CONYERS & NADLER: GOP oversight of Trump: Worse than Watergate

Dean of the U.S. House
of Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.

On Tuesday, the GOP defeated our Congressional Resolution of Inquiry, asking the Trump administration about their conflicts of interest and Russian ties, including improper contacts between the White House and the FBI.  This was part of a series of amendments Democrats have offered over the last several weeks to break through a concerted and coordinated stonewall up by the GOP Congress.

We are doing this because one month into the Trump presidency, our nation is witnessing a mean-spirited assault on the media, the courts and law enforcement, and the Republican majority in Congress is not only tolerating, but abetting these attacks.

After Judge James Robart, a Federal District Judge in Washington state, blocked enforcement of President Trump’s executive order, the president referred to him as a “so-called judge,” characterized his decision as “political,” and warned that if something happened to the United States, Judge Robart and the court system should be blamed. 

He charged that the judges on the Ninth Circuit panel who reaffirmed the order failed to grasp concepts that even “a bad high school student would understand.” Yet, when we offered an oversight amendment to allow the Judiciary Committee to examine the impact of such threats to courts, every Republican voted against it.

At his now infamous mid-February press conference, President Trump repeatedly critiqued and belittled specific media outlets, and charged their reporting on administration scandals was “fake, because so much of the news is fake.” At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Trump used the Stalinist phrase “enemy of the people” in characterizing the media.  He went on to assert that reporters should not be allowed to rely on anonymous sources, a mere hour after his own aides held an anonymous briefing with the press.  When Democrats offered an amendment to investigate attacks on the free press, Republicans voted in lock step against it.  This puts them on the wrong side of George W. Bush who responded to Trump’s rhetoric by declaring an independent “media to be indispensable to democracy.”

After a “Russian Dossier” shared by a private investigator with numerous media outlets was released on the internet, Mr. Trump lashed out at law enforcement, claiming they were taking “one last shot at me” and comparing them to “Nazi Germany.” Last Friday he chastised the FBI as “leakers” who were putting the nation at risk. When our Resolution offered the Republicans the opportunity to formally press the administration on these matters, they chose to bury it in committee.

These assaults by Mr. Trump are not random tirades and rants, they represent a premeditated and calculated strategy to weaken the very institutions best positioned to safeguard our democracy from abuses of power.  After all, it was the free press (see Woodward and Bernstein), an independent prosecutor (see Leon Jaworski) and the federal courts (see Judge John Sirica) that ultimately led to President Nixon’s resignation.

Ominously, not only is the Republican majority permitting these unprecedented attacks on our institutional checks and balances, they have become part and parcel of the cover up.  Why else would the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence committees – who are supposed to be leading unbiased investigations -- act at the specific request of the White House to engage in media spin in an effort to counter allegations of pre-election contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government?  During Watergate, Republican Sen. Howard Baker (Tenn.) famously asked “what did the president know and when did he know it?” Today Republicans are asking what does the president want us to say, and when does he want us to say it. 

When the president’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, tells the media to “shut up”; when his senior adviser, Stephen Miller instructs the courts that "the judiciary is not supreme" and "the powers of the president…will not be questioned,” and when the president compares our intelligence service to Nazi Germany, we should all take pause.  When the U.S. Congress not only tolerates but supports such reckless actions we need to be afraid for the future of our democracy.

Our resolution is the “canary in the coal mine.  If Republicans won’t engage in oversight now, when will they?  If Republicans won’t ask for information about numerous potentially unlawful actions, what will they ask for?

It’s unfortunate we must resort to a resolution of inquiry to learn the truth about these serious issues, but the House has abdicated its constitutional responsibility, and it’s time that we do our duty.

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

CONYERS: Donald Trump Is the Next Richard Nixon

By John Conyers, Jr.

'Democrats must publicly push for accountability'

Dean of the U.S. House
of Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.

Nearly four decades ago, former President Nixon told us that “when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” Recently, President-elect Donald Trump echoed those comments when he declared, “The president can’t have a conflict of interest,” a statement that disregards all customs and norms of the modern presidency. As someone who has endured numerous undeclared wars, two presidential impeachments, the attacks of 9/11 and passage of the PATRIOT Act, this mindset causes me to fear that our nation may again be veering towards a constitutional crisis, but with far fewer safeguards than we have had in the past.

Trump on his businesses/conflict q's: "The law's totally on my side, the president can't have a conflict of interest."

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 22, 2016

As one who experienced the toxic politics of Vietnam and the riots of the 1960’s, I have never witnessed mindless name-calling, insults or demagoguery on the scale or scope of the Trump campaign. Among other things, Trump accused Democrats of “try[ing to] rig the election at the polling booths, where so many cities are corrupt and voter fraud is all too common.” He has intermittently called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” and sought to intimidate the media, promising to “open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.” During the presidential debates, he told Secretary Hillary Clinton that if he wins “you’d be in jail.”

Not only does such “loose cannon” rhetoric divide our nation, but if acted upon is flatly inconsistent with our Constitution and our values. Throwing around reckless and unsubstantiated accusations of election fraud undermines our democracy, the Voting Rights Act and the 15th Amendment. Banning Muslim entry or creating a registry would violate First Amendment freedom of religion. Legislatively targeting news outlets based on their views would abrogate freedom of press. Promising to lock up political opponents upends long-held notions of fairness and due process. And changing your mind about prosecution after the election does not make things better—it just illustrates a continued misunderstanding of the proper role of federal law enforcement.

The potential threat to our democracy comes at a time when our incoming president will have lost the popular vote by more than 2 million votes and many of the controls and safeguards that allowed our nation to weather prior constitutional storms have been severely weakened. One-party control of Washington means tepid oversight of a Republican President. Our independent judiciary is seen as increasingly politicized in the aftermath of Bush v. Gore and the determination by Senate Republicans to deny President Obama the opportunity to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. The media may well be compromised due to President-elect Trump’s continuing efforts to attack, undermine and humiliate his critics.

This set of circumstances means that if and when we face a constitutional crisis—perhaps Trump’s Administration will have taken actions with respect to a foreign government to benefit his financial interests; or his Attorney General will have secretly authorized unlawful torture or surveillance—we will be operating without our usual institutional or structural safety nets.

There will be no Sam Ervin or Peter Rodino to investigate executive misconduct as there was during Watergate. Nor can we expect a Republican in the mold of Howard Baker to step forward (risking a Tea Party primary challenge the next election), or an Attorney General such as Elliot Richardson to resign rather than participate in a White House cover up. And we can only wonder whether there are any more Woodwards or Bernsteins willing to risk their careers or the solvency of their employer by challenging a Trump Administration.

In the absence of subpoena authority, Democrats must publicly push for accountability. We still have the authority to pursue independent investigations by the GAO and Agency Inspectors General. And we will need to hold our own informal forums and issue minority reports documenting the inevitable abuses. Even if we cannot prevent excesses, our job will be to make sure our citizens are fully aware of what is happening and why.

Of course, in the end, it’s the people themselves who have the most important role in safeguarding our constitutional form of government. I witnessed firsthand how the 1963 March on Washington galvanized the civil rights movement and led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. With the party in power typically losing 30 House seats or more during midterm elections, we can’t lose sight of the fact that a more meaningful legislative check may not be that far away.

I truly hope that we can avoid the constitutional abyss. After all, it was Gerald Ford who appointed the esteemed jurist Edward Levi as Attorney General, helping to restore faith in the Justice Department after the stain of Watergate. And it was George H.W. Bush who began his campaign with race baiting against Willie Horton before eventually signing legislation reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act.

Unfortunately, as of yet, we have seen no such meaningful olive branch from Trump—only more angry and unpresidential tweets, more attacks on the press, appointments of divisive figures such as Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions and Michael Flynn, and an ongoing risk to our nation’s values.

 Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©