The Department Of Justice Is closing in on Spygate, probably the worst election scandal in American history.
Basically, here's what happened. Former DNI Richard Grenell who had access to everything explains it quite well here in a great speech at the Republican National Convention. While the whole speech is a gem, the part on Spygate starts at 5:40
As former DNI Grenell points out, Biden came up with the idea of targeting General Flynn, the incoming National security advisor weeks before the inauguration. Declassified notes written by Peter Strzok proved that Joe Biden was the
one who suggested going after General Michael Flynn using the Logan
Act.
And exactly as Richard Grenell said, they came up with totally bogus 'evidence' from a dossier paid for by the DNC to get a FISA order to spy on the Trump campaign during the election itself. They also lied to judges and conducted secret surveillance on the Trump campaign beyond what FISA's rules call for. And the FBI, CIA and members of the Obama Administration were all part of this.
U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is leading the investigation into the Obama administration’s spying on the Trump campaign has already gotten a guilty plea out of former former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to altering evidence that
the FBI used to get a FISA warrant extension for another 90 days to continue spying on the Trump campaign.
The FBI even admits they acted wrongly. FBI Director Christopher Wray has agreed there was illegal surveillance on the Trump campaign.
Think about that for a moment. Here we have the lame duck administration of a Democrat president spying on the candidate of the opposing party during an election. And using the American people's national security apparatus to do it.
This has never happened before in America's history. And it's worth asking why this happened. Who would have given the orders for this? Would high government officials and the then vice president have done this on their own?
Doubtful. The orders for this came from someone at the top. And it's worth recalling that this is an administration whose President was willing to weaponize the IRS, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, ICE and other government agencies for partisan political reasons, something else unprecedented in American politics.
It gets better. In May, declassified Department of Justice (DOJ) documents showed clearly that
President Obama was aware of the illegally wiretapped conversations of
then-incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn with then-Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak as far back as December, 2016. Joe Biden was also
aware, and was present at a White House meeting where the bogus Flynn
investigation was discussed. So yes, they knew.
Also, U.S. Attorney Durham is also investigating
whether Obama’s former CIA Director, John Brennan, pressured the
Intelligence Community into pushing the theory that Russia was trying to
help Donald Trump win in 2016. That of course was bogus as well.
Actually, Putin was really hoping Hilary Clinton would win. Aside from fact that Russian intelligence, along with Iran and the Chinese among others had already hacked into her unprotected and illegal server and retrieved classified documents ('Come now Mrs. President. We wouldn't want to release these to the American public, now would we?') Putin had already dealt with Hillary Clinton before and knew she was easy to bend. Among other things, during her Russian 'reset', Mrs. Clinton gave the Russians full details of America's most secret anti-missile defenses, known as 'hit to kill.'
Also, Fred Fleitz,a former CIA analyst who also worked on the House Intelligence Committee accused then-CIA Director John Brennan of suppressing the truth in a report in 2017 that alleged that Russia backed Trump over Clinton, which contradicted a House committee report from March 2018 showing that it did not.
As it turns out, newly declassified intelligence of the kind former DNI Richard Grennel accused the Obama administration of classifying to hide exactly how spygate was pulled off. In this case, Flietz revealed that his sources inside the House Intelligence Committee told him “the actual drafting of
the intelligence community assessment was done by three close
associates of former CIA Director John Brennan who refused any evidence, even high quality evidence that suggested that Putin would have preferred dealing with the venal and self centered Clintons. This is contrary to the usual practice which makes these things a community effort of all 14 US intelligence services.
What we maybe seeing here as this gathers steam is a criminal prosecution of John Brennen for lying to congress. Of course, as a Muslim, he's allowed to lie to infidels.
Brennen has been a very interesting CIA head. As The Weekly Standard‘s Stephen Hayes reported, Brennan directed the CIA
to hide most of the documents seized in the Osama bin Laden raid,
because that information contradicted the Obama administration’s narrative
of a “decimated” al-Qaeda, a moderate Iran, and success in fighting radical Islamist
terror.
As I said, an interesting CIA director. Here's hoping John Durham's investigation reveals the truth.
Rob Miller writes for Joshuapundit. His articles have appeared in The
Jerusalem Post, The Washington Examiner, American Thinker, The Los
Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The San Francisco
Chronicle, Real Clear Politics, The Times Of Israel, Breitbart.Com,
Yediot and other publications
President Trump created a firestorm when he accused President Obama of bugging his phones during the campaign. My first thought was that while this was likely, it was a tactical mistake. After all, basic intel 101 is that when you find something like that, you keep quiet about it and use it to feed false intel to your enemies. But as it has turned out, President Trump was correct to go public with this, and in fact it was a brilliant tactical stroke, which is why the Democrats and their trained seal media are suddenly backing away from a real investigation. Because as we'll see, President Trump was 110% correct. And that's going to end up being a major scandal that might even reach as far as former President Obama.
For a novice at politics, President Trump has been demonstrating real mastery of the game. Or perhaps its just that the Democrat media believes it's own horse manure so thoroughly that it still hasn't figured out who Donald Trump is, or how he got elected.
One of President Trump's tactics has been to tweet directly to the American people on various issues, after which the news cycle simply follows him and devotes lots of space to what an idiot he is. After which, facts come out they are forced to report showing that he was totally correct in the matter.He's set them up a number of times, and each time they are more revealed as the partisan whores they are, as opposed to being actual journalists.
The recent Sweden controversy is a good example.Trump was ridiculed for calling out Sweden as a place where taking in thousands of unassimilated, unvetted refugees has resulted in a dangerous situation complete with no go areas. Even the Swedish government weighed in. And then, the next week, Rinkeby, one of those no go areas in Stockholm, saw violent riots break out with the overwhelmed police actually fleeing the Muslim mobs and fires burning unchecked because the area is deemed to be too dangerous for firefighters to enter without police protection. Whole stories and reports on the horrendous situation in Sweden also surfaced to prove that President trump knew exactly what he was talking about.
Trump has done the same thing here.
The 'Russia hacked the election' meme has been part of the Democrat catechism ever since Trump won the election. of course, no less than a certain ex-president said this was impossible...at least when he thought Mrs. Clinton was a cinch to win:
But the Democrats and their media fellow travelers have continued to use this successfully. Funny, no 'reporter' ever asked any of them that since all the polls showed Mrs. Clinton winning, why would Putin and the Russians waste time and energy helping the candidate who was going to lose? Ohhh, why bother asking? The answer's so obvious, n'est pa*?
Aside from using the 'Russia hacked the election' nonsense to try to deligitimize Trump's election, there was another, more insidious reason to keep this fiction recycling itself in the media. And that was to tie President Trump's hands and if possible, keep him from enacting his agenda at least until the 2018 midterms.
The Senate Democrats, led by the odious Chuck Schumer know Majority leader Mitch McConnell quite well by now as the gutless coward he is. They've realized he has no intention of doing what Harry Reid did to force through Obama appointees with the Nuclear option of a simple majority vote. And so, they have been slow walking all of President Trump's cabinet appointees to a degree never seen before. And that's just the beginning. Because of that, as former Speaker Newt Gingrich pointed out on FOX news, President Trump hasn't even been able to begin to fill 2,000 other political vacancies within the administration. That especially affects the Department of Justice.
A number of these positions are now filled by Obama appointees, and most of them can be depended on to do their best to sabotage Trump's agenda as a fifth column behind the scenes.
By tweeting as he did, President Trump focused attention on the bogus 'Russia hacked the election' nonsense. And as usual, after a couple of days of hysterics from the Democrats and their media, coupled with an Orwellian non-denial from Obama's spokesperson, the real facts began to come out as attention was focused on this.
As the BBC reported, the Obama Administration did indeed wiretap the Trump Towers as well as Donald Trump and many of his campaign associates. Back in June of 2016, they applied for a Foreign Intelligence Service Act (FISA) warrant to monitor members of the Trump campaign, but were denied.That,by the way is almost unheard of unless there is no real evidence. Out of 35,000+ requests for surveillance, the FISA court has only ever rejected 12. That also suggests that the evidence was truly non-existent against Trump.
They tried a second time a month later, in July and were rejected again. They tried a third time, before a new judge and succeeded on October 15th, three weeks before the election.
According to what's surfacing now, Obama or someone in his administration circumvented both the regular command of the FBI and the regularly appointed federal courts, by placing the entire case as a FISA case (probably under Sally Yates at DOJ) as a “foreign” case, and then omitted Trump’s name from the third request for a surveillance warrant submitted to the FISA court, which the court unwittingly granted. And which was then misused to spy on Trump, and many connected to Trump's campaign. It was President Obama, you'll remember who changed NSA policy just before he left office and instructed his security people toshare and preserve intel on this. He may live to regret that.
Additional proof of this comes, ironically, from the New York Times.On January 19th and 20th 2017,when President Trump was inaugurated, the New York Times emphasized the ongoing 'investigation' in a front page story by reporter Michael S. Schmidt:
"American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.
"The continuing counterintelligence investigation means that Mr. Trump will take the oath of office on Friday with his associates under investigation and after the intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government had worked to help elect him."
"The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House."
Well, well! Now let's flash forward to March 4, 2017. Lo and behold there's a story in the New York Times with this headline: Trump, Offering No Evidence, Says Obama Tapped His Phones.' The author? Why, reporter Michael S. Schmidt, of course!
It's getting to the point they can't even keep their lies straight any more. Now the same Obama trained media seals who used the press to smear Trump are now demanding that he help them by denying what openly appeared - in the narrative they put out to try and destroy his presidency.
My personal choice for ringmaster of this circus is Obama lackey John Abu Brennan, former head of our CIA. He was almost certainly the 'senior official' referred to by the BBC and made a huge mistake in thinking he could put this out there without Trump calling him on it.As you may have noticed, the media isn't asking John Brennan anything. They're deliberately not putting him on the Sunday shows and the other usual outlets.
Instead, they're pushing Orwellian non-denials from the likes of James Clapper and Obama spokesperson Kevin Lewis. Meet the Press's Chuck Todd simply swallowed Clapper's lame horse manure without a single follow up. He never even asked Clapper to respond to the BBC story. Media whores like Chuck Todd have already gotten their marching orders. This needs to go quietly away. Among other things, Donald Trump just exploded the whole 'Putin hacked the election for Trump' mythology. It can't be safely used anymore.
And there's a good reason why. There are a number of crimes that appear to have been committed
In order to wiretap any American citizen suspected of illegal activity involving foreign intelligence, approval is needed from a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)judge.
FISA, 50 USC 1801 was deliberately designed as a very limited method of obtaining surveillance authority. That's because FISA evades the usual federal court process to authorize surveillance the Fourth Amendment forbids. So the FISA laws are limited and can be applied only for surveillance about pending terror attacks or “grave hostile” situations. So a FISA application can only be used in very limited circumstances. If the application for such a warrant was deliberately constructed with false information, that is a major felony under section 1809, which makes it a crime for anyone to either perform electronic surveillance under “color of law” under FISA or to disclose or use the information gathered from it.
Misusing the FISA system when foreign intelligence is NOT involved is another felony. So is perjury or conspiracy to commit perjury when it comes to say, testimony in congress used to falsely accuse Attorney general Jeff Sessions.
Then there's this. FISA law forbids the dissemination of the information. But Obama's people issued orders to exactly that, if published reports are true about the administration sharing the surveilled information far-and-wide to promote unlawful leaks to the press. FISA strictly segregates information gathered by surveillance into two categories. Either it's highly confidential, classified intel involving serious espionage,terrorism or or acts of war or it's information that shouldn't have been gathered and needs to be immediately deleted, not sourced nor disseminated.
Since the intel gathered in spying on the Trump campaign wasn't FISA material, it was supposed to have been deleted and destroyed. Instead, Obama's crew did the opposite,ordering that it be preserved, and ordering the NSA to search it, keep it, and share it. After which Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch issued an order to allow broader sharing of information.
That's not anything she would have the authority or the gall to do unless she had received direction - directly for the President, Barack Hussein Obama.
Now you know why the Democrats and their media creatures are backing away from this like a vampire from garlic.
Obama in now in the middle of the worst scandal since Watergate. Even worse, another of his little tricks backfired badly. As I reported earlier, Obama had the attack on Sessions planned way beforehand. He changed the order of succession in the Department of Justice deliberately so that one of his appointees would be in charge of the bogus 'Russia investigation.'
But President Trump, being no fool, did exactly the same thing. So the new acting Attorney General is now Dana Boente, the man Obama removed from succession...and Trump just put him back in charge. Boente is a solid , ethical prosecutor very much along the lines of Jeff Sessions,and he now has the opportunity to make a real name for himself.
The question, of course is "what did President Obama know, and when did he know it?" The rats on this sinking ship are unlikely to be willing to do jail time to protect Obama, at least not all of them. One of the smaller fish is going to talk in exchange for immunity.
Barack Husein Obama may go down in history not just as the first black president but as the first president to be a convicted felon. And he may end up with some interesting company.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) filed a long awaited report today on President Obama's swap of five senior Taliban commanders for alleged deserter Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.
“[The Department of Defense] violated section 8111 because it did not notify the relevant congressional committees at least 30 days in advance of the transfer,” the GAO report said. “In addition, because DOD used appropriated funds to carry out the transfer when no money was available for that purpose, DOD violated the Antideficiency Act. The Antideficiency Act prohibits federal agencies from incurring obligations exceeding an amount available in an appropriation.”
In the report, the GAO rejected the Obama Administration's attempt to sluff this off as legal and their attempt to paint the law as 'unconstitutional'.
“It is not our role or our practice to determine the constitutionality of duly enacted statutes,” the report says. “In our view, where legislation has been passed by Congress and signed by the President, thereby satisfying the bicameralism and presentment requirements in the Constitution, that legislation is entitled to a heavy presumption in favor of constitutionality.”
President Lawless strikes again. Fore!
Isn't it time he started being held accountable for something?
President Obama, in remarks today in the Rose Garden said he was 'tired of waiting for Congress' and will push through amnesty by what he referred to as 'a summer of executive action' .
This particular temper tantrum came, reportedly, after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told him last week that he would not allow a vote on immigration, umm, amnesty for illegal migrants this year:
“Our country and our economy would be stronger today if House Republicans had allowed a simple yes-or-no vote on this bill or, for that matter, any bill,” Obama said, raising his voice. “Instead they’ve proven again and again that they’re unwilling to stand up to the tea party in order to do what’s best for the country. And the worst part about it is, a bunch of them know better.” {...}
“Speaker Boehner told the president exactly what he has been telling him: The American people and their elected officials don’t trust him to enforce the law as written,” said Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman. “Until that changes, it is going to be difficult to make progress on this issue.”
They don't trust President Barack Hussein Obama to enforce the law???? My my, I wonder why that might be?
What will likely happen is typical Obama. A full load of horse manure about 'enforcement' with zero action accompanied by an expansion of his 2012 executive order implementing the DREAM Act a bipartisan congress rejected three times, and extremely loosened regulations on 'asylum for refugees'. As we've already seen, there are 'cheat sheets circulating south of our borders telling people exactly what to say to be considered for asylum status, and it's obvious that a large number of people have been coached and rehearsed on exactly what to tell the Border Patrol.
It is this administration's disregard for our immigration laws that is causing this surge. And why not? They've been given every expectation that they're going to be given amnesty, complete with all the freebies of generous welfare state at someone else's expense. That's unsustainable.
With the midterms upcoming, even Democrats have to be thinking about what this entails for them. It's time this lawless presidency was stopped.
President Obama's response to the crisis on our southern border that he precipitated is unfortunately typical of this regime. He's having his minions signal that he plans to ignore our laws and impose de facto amnesty for illegal aliens on America.
New White House press secretary Josh Earnest (there's an ironic misnomer for you) told MSNBC's Chuck Todd exactly that today in an interview:
“[W]e’re not just going to sit around and wait interminably for Congress,” he explained. “We’ve been waiting a year already. The president has tasked his Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson with reviewing what options are available to the president, what is at his disposal using his executive authority to try to address some of the problems that have been created by our broken immigration system.”
Earnest added that, although Obama was planning executive orders, he'd much rather have congress take the onus for him. And that was echoed strategically by other regime surrogates.
Senator Robert Menendez ( D-NJ) took care to threaten the Republicans that the president intends to override them by diktat.
"We're at the end of the line," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said Thursday during a press briefing in the Capitol. "We're not bluffing by setting a legislative deadline for them to act.
"Their first job is to govern," Menendez added, "and in the absence of governing, then you see executive actions."
Senator Dick Durbin ( D-IL) aided in the 'message sending' as well.
"I don't know how much more time he thinks he needs, but I hope that Speaker Boehner will speak up today," Durbin said. "And if he does not, the president will borrow the power that is needed to solve the problems of immigration."
Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third-ranking Democrat in the senate completed the trifecta,telling anyone who'll listen that all this can be solved very easily...all the House Republicans have to do in cave in on amnesty. He said Boehner and other Republican critics of Obama's executive actions have "a very good antidote" for their fears: "Put a bill on the floor."
"He's, like, shooting his parents and then throwing himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan," Schumer said. "Pass a bill, and that won't happen.
"If they don't bring any bill to the floor, the president has no choice — on a humanitarian basis and on a policy basis — to act where he can on his own," Schumer added.
I have seldom heard such outright lies pass the lips of public servants. Especially from Schumer, who isn't stupid in the least.There are over 250 bills that the House has presented to the senate for action that have not been allowed to go to committee, let alone a vote, because Majority leader Harry Reid won't allow the senate to act on them in any way.Talk about congressional inaction, they're just sitting there in limbo. And Schumer, at least, knows it.
What the regime's surrogates are saying is that the House Republicans either pass the ridiculous Senate bill supporting amnesty or craft one of their own that does essentially the same thing, because Harry Reid won't even allow any other kind of bill into the senate. If the Republicans refuse, the threat is that the president will ignore the law and do what he wants anyway.
A good part of this is House Speaker John Boehner's fault. President Obama has blatantly ignored the separation of powers in many instances, not just our immigration laws. Believe it or not, Boehner is only getting around to suing him over that now, six years on.
There's the spin from this president's apologists that he has deported more illegal aliens than any other president. But when you look at how 'deportations' are figured since President Obama took over, you find that even people caught illegally crossing the border and turned back are added to those numbers. In reality, Obama's Department of Justice has been declining to prosecute the majority of illegal aliens for some time, even in many cases where a court was fully prepared to issue a deportation order Th eObama Administration has been deliberately not pursuing the over 600,000 illegal aliens who actually have deportation orders and are running loose, winking at local jurisdictions in places like California that do not enforce or cooperate with the enforcement of our immigration laws while suing states like Arizona that do, hand cuffing our Border Patrol and 'prioritizing' enforcement of our laws so that illegal aliens guilty of crimes like drunken driving, fraud, sexual assaults and theft are not prosecuted for breaking our immigration laws and deported.
The entire perception this gives to anyone wanting to jump our border without going through legal channels is that amnestia is right around the corner, there are lots of freebies to be had and you won;t be sent back, so that now is the time to make the move. This president's illegal implementation of the DREAm Act after both houses of congress refused to pass it three times and his 2012 deferred action program, which halted deportations of qualified illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children were just a reiteration of that message, and are directly responsible for the chaos on our border.
Right now, instead of doing the job they were supposedly hired for, Border Patrol Agents are involved in shepherding illegal aliens to various makeshift facilities around the country, doing laundry and doling out meals and clothing.A number of the agents have already tested positive for exposure to infectious diseases.
In the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the border alone, over 181,000 illegal aliens have already crossed border since October 2013..and the number could be considerably higher.The McAllen, Texas Border patrol station was built to hold 380 people. It’s currently housing more than 1,100.
And it's not just people looking for work or to latch on to what they see as the coming amnesty and it's accompanying freebies. criminal elements from south of the border are also taking advantage of the surge.
A president who cared anything at all about the laws, about upholding his oath of office, or even about protecting the citizens of the country he supposedly works for would have ordered the National Guard to the borders to help police them and would have already spoken to the Mexican government about its responsibilities in the matter.
That's not the man we have in the Oval Office right now.
It's high time the House brought impeachment charges against Barack Hussein Obama.
The Democrats will of course vote against impeaching this president, just as they refused to convict Bill Clinton of obstruction of justice, lying to congress under oath and perjury.But the very fact of investigating these charges and airing them in the public arena will give the American people an opportunity to decide whether they still want President Obama in office. And every Democrat voting to acquit him will have to live with that decision come election time.
Oh, and just for the record? Here is a real solution for our illegal migration and immigration problems that is fair, just, humane and addresses these issues from the standpoint of what benefits America. That's exactly why nothing like this would ever be proposed or enacted by the current congress or signed into law by President Obama.
The surge of illegal aliens openly crossing the border has coincided with brand new use-of-force restrictions that not only keep them from doing what they're supposedly being paid to do but actually endanger them physically.
Agents are now mandated to avoid any situation where deadly force might come into play. "Examples include refraining from blocking moving vehicles' paths" or shooting at rock-throwers unless the agents can prove that they were in imminent danger. "Additionally, agents will be trained on how to carry and use lighter weapons, while also facing restrictions on taser use."
So if a coyote with a van full of sex slaves in the process of being trafficked across the border steps on the gas instead of stopping when ordered to, the Border Patrol has now been ordered to simply step aside and let them pass. And rest assured, whose whose intent is to cross our border illegally are well aware of the new restrictions.
Assaults on Border Patrol Agents by rock throwers on the Mexican side of the border are becoming increasingly common. The image, of course is of harmless kids committing mischief, but the reality (h/t, Breitbart) is that these assaults are far more serious than that:
Zack Taylor, Chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO), told Breitbart Texas that agents must have a way to defend themselves against threatening immigrants armed with rocks.
"If you don't throw rocks at the border patrol agent, they're not going to shoot you," Taylor told Breitbart Texas. "If you threaten the life of the officer, you then put the officer in a position where he has to protect his life. What do people not understand about that?"
Aside from putting their lives and safety at risk, the new rules appear to be aimed at sending a message to Border patrol Agents from the Obama Administration: 'Don't take your job of apprehending
illegal aliens and protecting the border seriously. Sit back, get paid and enjoy the scenery.'
The State Department has responded to a subpoena by the House Oversight Committee by stating that Secretary of State Kerry will not appear before them and will not comply with the subpoena, issued by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA.
Issa issued the subpoena for Kerry on Friday, saying that the State Department has “failed to meets its legal obligations.”
“This disregard for the rule of law is even more disturbing considering your agency’s role in encouraging governments throughout the world to respect the rule of law and the authority of representative government brought to office through free and fair elections,” Issa said in a letter to Kerry. “By ignoring your own legal obligations and posturing the State Department as immune from congressional oversight, these actions undermine our credibility abroad and erode our moral authority.”
"Compliance with a subpoena for documents is not a game. Because your Department is failing to meet its legal obligations, I am issuing a new subpoena to compel you to appear before the Committee to answer questions about your agency's response to the congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack."
Kerry was supossed to appear before the Committee May 21st. State's reply?
Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Kerry planned to travel to Mexico at that time and officials would discuss alternative options with the committee.
“We are committed to working with the committee to find a resolution to this that is acceptable to both sides. We were surprised when they didn’t reach out to us before issuing a subpoena for exactly that reason,” Harf said. “And as I’ve noted here, there have been a number of Republicans who themselves, under the previous administration, said a secretary of state should not be subpoenaed.”
It's fascinating that she doesn't mention any by name. And that bit about needing toi be subpoenad? As if Kerry would have appeared voluntarily if they just asked?
George Schultz, Reagan's Secretary of State testified before Congress on Iran -Contra. James Baker, Bush '41's Secretary of State did too, both without the necessity of being subpoenaed.So did Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice.
Clinton's Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee
and Christopher's successor, Madelaine Albright testified on NATO expansion in hearings before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. Neither needed a subpoena.
So what makes Secretary Kerry such a special little snowflake? Oh, wait...none of these previous administrations had anything like the contempt for congress the current one does, or the record of serial obstruction.
And none of them had even remotely as much to hide, based on how the Obama Administration has behaved on Benghazi, Fast and Furious, IRS-Gate or any of the other scandals this most lawless and secretive of regimes has been involved in since its inception.
I'll be surprised if Kerry appears at all let alone under oath, given his penchant for shooting his mouth off without thinking. But if he won't appear, the House Select Committee certainly has a clear path to requiring him to be deposed.And that will be under oath.
You might remember the story I ran a few days ago about 'moderate' Iranian president Hasan Rouhani's appointment of Hamid Aboutalebi to serve as Iran's UN envoy, which means he would enjoy complete diplomatic immunity in America.
As pictured above then and now, Aboutalebi was one of the terrorists who stormed the American embassy in Tehran, kidnapped our diplomats and held them hostage.
When the Iranians refused to cancel ABoutalabi's appointment, both houses on Congress, sparked by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO)voted unanimously voted to pass legislation that would ban terrorists from entering the US to serve as UN ambassadors and sent the bill to the White House for Presdient Obama's signature.
The President's spokeshole Jay Carney signalled that he would sign legislation banning terrorists from receiving visas as diplomatic personnel:
"We concur with the Congress and share the intent of the bill," said White House spokeshole Jay Carney.
Our president did indeed sign the bill, passed unanimously by both parties. And then said he would never enforce the law.
Obama decided to treat the law as mere advice. "Acts of espionage and terrorism against the United States and our allies are unquestionably problems of the utmost gravity, and I share the Congress's concern that individuals who have engaged in such activity may use the cover of diplomacy to gain access to our Nation," Obama said in his signing statement.
"Nevertheless, as President [George H.W.] Bush] also observed, "curtailing by statute my constitutional discretion to receive or reject ambassadors is neither a permissible nor a practical solution." I shall therefore continue to treat section 407, as originally enacted and as amended by S. 2195, as advisory in circumstances in which it would interfere with the exercise of this discretion."
Obama frequently criticized President George W. Bush for such signing statements during his 2008 campaign. “Congress's job is to pass legislation," he said, as The Daily Beast recalled. "The president can veto it or he can sign it.”
“It is unconscionable that, in the name of international diplomatic protocol, the United States would be forced to host a foreign national who showed a brutal disregard for the status of our diplomats when they were stationed in his country,” Cruz said when he introduced the bill.
Once again, this most lawless of presidents has shown that he'll only uphold those laws that he feels like upholding and that work for his political agenda.
Attorney General Eric Holder was giving testimony today before the House Judiciary Committee and revealed in this exchange exactly how much contempt the Obama Administration have for our laws, the legislative branch and our Constitution. This took place in response to a question by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who asked Holder whether he believed there were any limits to the administration’s prosecutorial discretion:
“There is a vast amount of discretion that a president has — and more specifically that an attorney general has,” Holder responded. “But that discretion has to be used in an appropriate way so that your acting consistent with the aims of the statute but at the same time making sure that you are acting in a way that is consistent with our values, consistent with the Constitution and protecting the American people."
(emphasis mine)
What the attorney general of the United States is saying in no uncertain terms that he and the president reserve the right to enforce those laws they agree with, and to selectively ignore other laws they don't happen to like..
Their 'values',or more precisely their political agenda take precedence...not the law, not the will of the American people, and certainly not their oaths of office.
According to according to a new review of internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, the Obama Administration is deliberately violating immigration laws on a large scale and refusing to deport illegal aliens who have committed serious crimes.
A new report compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)that reviewed this data revealed that the Obama administration released 35 percent (over 68,000) of all illegal aliens convicted of serious crimes back into the U.S. general population when according to our laws they should have been deported. In fact, there are almost a million illegal aliens (872,504, according to ICE's own data) who actually have deportation orders filed but who are still here, because ICE is not making it a priority to apprehend them.
'Criminal aliens', according to ICE's definition are those who have been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony that is not a traffic violation. So Driving Under the Influence or even vehicular manslaughter aren't being counted in this calculation of 'criminal aliens'.
The CIS revue shows that in 2013, ICE targeted only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially aliens, And most of these aliens were only 'targeted' after incarceration for a local arrest.
In other words, they're deliberately not looking for them.One can only imagine what this does to the morale of those ICE agents actually committed to trying to enforce our laws.
“According to ICE personnel, the vast gap between the number of encounters reported and the number of aliens put on the path to removal exists because officers are not permitted to file charges against aliens who do not fall into the administration’s narrowly defined criteria for enforcement, regardless of the criminal charges or the circumstances in which the alien was identified,” the report says.
Since June 2011, when the Obama administration first decided to not enforce our laws with “prosecutorial discretion” policies ICE arrests of illegal aliens have declined by 40 percent.
“The Obama administration and anti-enforcement activist groups have tried to portray the number of departures as ‘record-breaking’ and indicative of robust immigration enforcement. They have tried to support this claim by showing that the number of departures credited to ICE is higher than ever before,” the report reads. “However, an independent analysis of ICE records obtained in a lawsuit showed that ICE was able to achieve these ‘record’ departures only because the agency was taking credit for removing a large number of individuals who were apprehended by the Border Patrol. Such cases made up the majority of ICE’s reported deportations in 2013, but they had never been counted that way in previous administrations.”
That also applies to illegal aliens who've been apprehended and are a slam dunk for deportation. For years now, ICE has simply been deliberately failing to prosecute most of them by presidential diktat, supposedly to 'concentrate on criminal aliens'. Of course, this new report shows they're not even doing that much - and public safety be damned.
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has been active on this issue.A report from his office focusing on ICE's own data revealed that that only .08 percent of the aliens deported in 2013 were not serial immigration law violators or convicted of serious crimes:
“The preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that immigration enforcement in America has collapsed,” Sessions said. “Even those with criminal convictions are being released. DHS is a department in crisis. Secretary [Jeh] Johnson must reject the President’s demands to weaken enforcement further and tell him that his duty, and his officers’ duty, is to enforce the law – not break it. As Homeland Secretary, Mr. Johnson is tasked with ensuring the public safety and the rule of law. But Secretary Johnson is not meeting these duties.”
“American citizens have a legal and moral right to the protections our immigration laws afford — at the border, the interior and the workplace. The administration has stripped these protections and adopted a government policy that encourages new arrivals to enter illegally or overstay visas by advertising immunity from future enforcement.”
“Comments from top Administration officials, such as Attorney General Holder’s claim that amnesty is a civil right, or Vice President Biden’s claim that those here illegally are all U.S. citizens (apparently including someone whose visa expired yesterday), demonstrate the administration’s increasing belief in an open borders policy the American public has always rejected.”
“The Administration’s lawless policies have not only impaired public safety but increased economic suffering for millions of vulnerable Americans by depriving them of their jobs and wages,” he said. “Unfortunately, Congressional Democrats continue to empower this lawlessness. Republicans must work to end it.”
That on its own is an astounding statement. Did you ever imagine our Republic as a place where simple public safety and enforcing our existing laws could be characterized with a large degree of accuracy as a partisan issue?
It has come to light the President Obama, who promised the most transparent administration history was lying to the American people - again.
On April 15, 2009, a mere four months after he was sworn into office, the president decided to secretly rewrite the Freedom Of Information Act, which is designed to inform the public and provide oversight of various government activities and behavior to keep any of what it called “White House equities” from being released without a White House review:
The rewrite came in an April 15, 2009, memo from then-White House Counsel Greg Craig instructing the executive branch to let White House officials review any documents sought by FOIA requestors that involved "White House equities."
That phrase is nowhere to be found in the FOIA, yet the Obama White House effectively amended the law to create a new exception to justify keeping public documents locked away from the public.
The equities exception is breathtaking in its breadth. As the Greg memo put it, any document request is covered, including "congressional committee requests, GAO requests, judicial subpoenas and FOIA requests."
And it doesn't matter what format the documents happen to be in because, according to Greg, the equities exception "applies to all documents and records, whether in oral, paper, or electronic form, that relate to communications to and from the White House, including preparations for such communications."
This secret rewrite basically stopped federal agencies from answering FOIA requests which might include “White House equities” within the 20 days required by law, and there is no time limit on how long a 'review' might take. It covers whatever the White House says it covers and keeps whatever it wants hidden away as long as the White House wants to.
Since the White House gets to decide for itself what “White House equities” consist of and how long the White House feels like taking to review requests which might possibly include them, what the president and his team have effectively done is to make the FOIA law meaningless. They can label nearly everything as a 'White House Equity' and stonewall and exclude the public and the media forever,or pick a time to sign off on whatever does get released when it's politically advantageous, if at all.
In one case cited by Cause of Action, the response to a request from a Los Angeles Times reporter to the Department of the Interior for "communications between the White House and high-ranking Interior officials on various politically sensitive topics" was delayed at least two years by the equities review.
"Cause of Action is still waiting for documents from 16 federal agencies, with the Department of Treasury having the longest pending request of 202 business days.
"The Department of Energy is a close second at 169 business days. The requests to the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services have been pending for 138 business days," the report said.
By the way, rewriting a portion of existing law secretly like this by the Executive Branch without going through congress is not only highly unethical, it is illegal and unconstitutional. It is a clear violation of President Obama's Oath of Office and de facto grounds for impeachment all by itself.
An actual Speaker of the House who had respect for congress and cared about the Constitution would make a major public stink, bring charges in the House and submit them to the senate for trial to force the Democrats to vote against such an outright violation of law - if they dared. Unfortunately, John Boehner isn't that kind of Speaker.
