Now think Medicare for all!

NEWS AUGUST 16, 2020

FLASHBACK: Thousands of USPS mailboxes removed during Obama-Biden administration

Then there was the time Obama said: 'It's the post office that's always having problems'

The revolution and Obama's radical leftists! If Molotov cocktails are good for one side they will surely become good for all.

Former Obama intelligence official secures bail for NYC lawyer accused of Molotov cocktail attack on NYPD vehicle

She told the judge that the firebombing suspect is her 'best friend'

THOMAS URBAIN/AFP via Getty Images

 PAUL SACCA

A former high-level Obama administration intelligence official has guaranteed the bail for the New York City lawyer who is accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at an NYPD vehicle. Salmah Rizvi, who worked in both the Departments of State and Defense, told the judge that the firebombing suspect is her "best friend."

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Urooj Rahman was one of three people arrested this weekend, who were accused of trying to destroy NYPD vehicles. According to charging documents, Rahman tossed a Molotov cocktail at an empty police cruiserthat was parked outside the 88th Precinct station house in Fort Greene around 1 a.m. Saturday.
Surveillance video captured Rahman getting into a tan van driven by Colinford Mattis, a furloughed associate of the York-based law firm Pryor Cashman and a member of Community Board 5 in East New York. Police arrested the two suspects after a brief chase in Brooklyn. In the van, police found a lighter, a bottle filled with toilet paper, and a gas tank.

Rahman was also accused of distributing incendiary devices to other rioters. Rahman and Mattis were charged with intentionally damaging a police vehicle with fire and explosives. They both face mandatory minimum sentences of five years and a maximum of 20 years in prison. Rahman's bail was set at $250,000.
Rahman, 31, is registered as an attorney in New York state and graduated from Fordham University School of Law. Rahman is friends with Rizvi, who served in the Defense Department and State Department during the Obama administration and currently an associate at the law firm Ropes & Gray, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
"Urooj Rahman is my best friend, and I am an associate at the law firm Ropes & Gray in Washington, D.C.," Rizvi told the judge, according to a transcript of the proceedings. "I earn $255,000 a year."
Rizvi agreed to be a surety for Rahman's bail, making her liable for the entire $250,000 amount if Rahman fails to obey the court's orders. U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie granted Rahman bail due to the "willingness of family and friends to sign on as suretors," according to Law360.
"The conduct was reckless, it was violent, it was completely lawless," Judge Brodie said of the firebombers, who both attended New York University Law School.
"We don't believe this is the time to be releasing a bomb-thrower like the defendant into the community," federal prosecutor Ian Richardson said.
"Home detention secured by the financial well-being of his entire family and several high-earning colleagues and friends should be an adequate deterrent to further danger to the community," Judge Steven Gold said.
Rahman will be detained at home and fitted with a GPS monitoring device. Mattis, the Princeton-educated attorney, was also approved for release on $250,000 bond and home detention, pending trial.
According to her biography on the Ropes & Gray's website, "Salmah is an associate in the litigation & enforcement practice group."
"Salmah also maintains an active civil rights and human rights pro bonopractice, focused on prison reform, LGBTQ equality, and immigration," the site adds. "She represents asylum seekers at various stages of litigation."
The Washington Free Beacon also noted that Rizvi received scholarship funds from the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which was founded by the now-deceased brother of billionaire and left-wing financier George Soros.
While attending New York University School of Law, Rizvi was a fellow at the Palestinian-based legal organization Al-Haq, which was founded to challenge the "legal status of Israel as an occupying power."
Rizvi also received a scholarship supported by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR has been criticized for its ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Before her legal career, Rizvi worked as an analyst for the U.S. Departments of State and Defense. Rizvi's biography on the Islamic Scholarship Fund website states: "Salmah also worked full-time for the U.S. Departments of State and Defense as a lead linguist and analyst, mastering multiple foreign languages including Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi and gaining expertise in international security and diplomacy. Her high-value work would often inform the President's Daily Briefs."
The next hearing is June 12. 

Obama and friends covert insurance policy gearworks

Secondary Confirmation – Treasury Whistleblower Complaint Aligns Directly With President Obama’s Political Surveillance Activity…

Posted on May 18, 2020 by sundance

An exclusive Treasury Department whistleblower outline in the Ohio Star is almost an absolute match to our research {Go Deep} on how President Obama constructed the political surveillance network during his second term.

According to the article in mid-December 2015 the Treasury whistleblower started noticing data-search transactions with the Treasury Dept. for specific people that aligned with the 2016 GOP primary.  The searches included Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump and his family as well as certain members of congress.

[(L-R) Denis McDonough, Joe Biden, President Obama, Tom Donolin, Jack Lew]

The complaint outlines an unnamed database [likely NSA] was used as the first search mechanism.  After initial data was extracted the results were then used to transfer more specific searches to the Treasury dept.   The level of detail within the whistleblower complaint is eerily familiar to our own research based on declassified records.

OHIO STAR – […] By March 2016, the whistleblower said she and a colleague, who was detailed to Treasury from the intelligence community, became convinced that the surveillance of Flynn was not tied to legitimate criminal or national security concerns, but was straight-up political surveillance among other illegal activity occurring at Treasury.

“When I showed it to her, what she said, ‘Oh, sh%t!’ and I knew right then and there that I was right – this was some shady stuff,” the whistleblower said.

“It wasn’t just him,” the whistleblower said. “They were targeting other U.S. citizens, as well.”

Only two names are listed in the whistleblower’s official paperwork, so the others must remain sealed, she said. The second name is Paul J. Manafort Jr., the one-time chairman of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The other names include: Members of Congress, the most senior staffers on the 2016 Trump campaign and members of Trump’s family, she said.

“Another thing they would do is take targeted names from a certain database – I cannot name, but you can guess – and they were going over to an unclassified database and they were running those names in the unclassified database,” she said.

This ruse was to get around using classified resources to surveil Americans, she said. Once the Treasury personnel had enough information about someone they were targeting from the black box, they would go to the white box for faster and more informed search.

It was routine for these searches that had no criminal nor national security predicate, merely a political predicate, she said. (read more)

What is described in that article is exactly what our own research discovered as we overlaid numerous declassified reports from the NSA, FISA Court, and testimony to congress around the previous use of the IRS to target political opposition.

The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.

[…] There is little doubt the FISA-702(16)(17) database system was used by Obama-era officials, from 2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition.

Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of database abuse that was taking place; and keep in mind these searches were all ruled to be unlawful. Searches for repeated persons over a period time that were not authorized.

This whistleblower complaint simply makes sense.

We know Jack Lew was moved from President Obama’s White House to the position of Treasury Secretary specifically because the IRS targeting became public.   As Treasury Secretary Mr. Lew was in position to keep damaging information from surfacing.

Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:

The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)

Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.

The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal.

Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.

[…] The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database.

Sometime around the summer of 2012 the Obama administration shifted from direct searches of the Treasury IRS files, to using contractor access to the NSA database as a way to conduct political surveillance and export search results without any minimization.

The process of exploiting the NSA database continued for years until March 2016 when a severe uptick in activity, coinciding with candidate Donald Trump becoming the presumptive GOP nominee, flagged the NSA database auditor.

Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.

The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.

While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016

It just makes sense the exported contractor results from database access would then transfer to non-classified (Treasury) searches on other networks for more details.   That process is exactly what the Treasury whistleblower is outlining.

Here’s the full background story.

How would President Obama be reacting to the collapse of the case against Michael Flynn if Flynn were a black teen?

Don’t Shrug at Obama’s Michael Flynn Scandal

It sure seems like an unconscionable attempt to take out a political enemy with state power.

How would President Obama be reacting to the collapse of the case against Michael Flynn if Flynn were a black teen?

Picture a racist white FBI agent who hates a black student and became enraged when that teen publicly insulted one of the agent’s close friends. Say the FBI sends two guys over to the teen’s house, claiming it suspects him of being involved in drug trafficking, and starts asking the kid questions in hopes that the kid will lie.

Suppose the FBI does not read the kid his rights before questioning him. Suppose the FBI discourages the kid from hiring a lawyer and tells the kid its investigation is friendly, not an effort to incriminate him. Suppose further that the FBI, after grilling the kid, still doesn’t think he lied (but merely that he forgot details of things he’d been asked about). Suppose the FBI then dragged out the case so long that the kid rang up $5 million in legal bills, then threatened to arrest the kid’s mother. Suppose the FBI withheld exculpatory evidence from the kid’s lawyers and agreed to leave the kid’s mother alone if he pleaded guilty — but didn’t tell the judge about this side deal.

If the teen finally pleaded guilty to a single count of making false statements, would Obama then say, “Aha! Justice is served! The kid admits being guilty!”? If the prosecutors, years later, finally dropped the case against the kid, would Obama say, “You begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk” because he thought the kid deserved everything that had happened to him?

All of the above is pretty much exactly what happened to Michael Flynn. Except the team that went after Michael Flynn didn’t hate him because of racial difference; they hated him because of political difference. The personal insult Flynn delivered was when he publicly went after Hillary Clinton, leading the cries to “Lock her up” at the Republican National Convention. The FBI did indeed fail to advise Flynn that they were targeting him rather than seeking information about phone calls with the Russian ambassador that they had already listened to. They discouraged him from having a lawyer present and didn’t read him anything like the Miranda warning. They did indeed pour so much trouble on Flynn that he amassed some $5 million in legal bills (and had to put his house up for sale). They didn’t initially think that he had lied, but merely had a faulty memory. Instead of threatening his mother, the FBI threatened to indict his son, and someone leaked this to the media so that Flynn’s son’s reputation would be damaged in any event. And the FBI did indeed withholdexculpatory evidence from Flynn’s lawyers.

continue

Jonathan Turley: The unmasking of Joe Biden

The unmasking of Joe Biden

BY JONATHAN TURLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR —  05/14/20 10:00 AM EDT

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL 

 

© Getty Images

The declassification of material from the Michael Flynn case has exposed more chilling details of a concerted effort by prosecutors to come up with any crime to use against the former national security adviser. This week, however, a letter revealed a new unsettling detail. Among more than three dozen Obama administration officials asking to “unmask” Flynn from the investigation was former Vice President Joe Biden. This revelation came less than 24 hours after Biden denied any involvement in the investigation of Flynn. It also follows a disclosure that President Obama was following that investigation.

For three years, many in the media have expressed horror at the idea of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. We now know there never was credible evidence of such collusion. In recently released transcripts, a long list of Obama administration officials admitted they never saw any evidence of such collusion — none. That included the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama national security adviser who was widely quoted in her public plea for Congress to gather the evidence that she learned of as part of the Obama administration.

The media widely covered her alarm that this evidence would be lost “if they found out how we knew what we knew about their, the staff, the Trump staff’s, dealing with Russians.” Yet, in her previously classified testimony under oath, she repeatedly said “I didn’t know anything.” (Farkas is now running for Congress in New York and highlighting her role in raising “the alarm” over Russian collusion.)

As much of the media blindly pushed the Russian collusion story, a truly alarming story has unfolded in plain view: the use of national security power to investigate an opposing political party and opponents. There is little question that the response by the media to such a story would have been overwhelming if George Bush and his administration had targeted Obama campaign figures with secret surveillance. That story would have become all encompassing if it was learned that there was no direct evidence to justify the investigation and, ultimately, the underlying allegation of collusion was found to lack any credible basis.

However, the motivations and means of Obama officials are not to be questioned, apparently. Indeed, when candidate Donald Trump claimed the Obama administration was putting his campaign under surveillance, the media universally mocked him. It was later proven to be true. The Obama administration used the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to conduct surveillance of Trump campaign officials. The FBI even falsified key evidence to continue that surveillance.

Yet none of that matters. The media is now fully invested in the original false allegations of collusion. If Obama administration officials were to be questioned now, the coverage and judgment of the media might be placed into question. Even this latest disclosure of the unmasking request of Biden will not alter the official media narrative.

Unmasking occurs when an official asks that an intelligence agency remove anonymous designations hiding the identity of an individual. This masking is an important protection of the privacy of American citizens who are caught up in national security surveillance. The importance of this privacy protection is being dismissed by media figures like Andrea Mitchell who declared the Biden story to be nothing more than “gaslighting.”

While unmasking is more routinely requested by intelligence officials, with a reported 10,000 such requests by the National Security Agency last year alone, it is presumably less common for figures like Biden or Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough. There remains a concern over asking for the unmasking information that was likely to reveal the name of a political opponent and possibly damage the Trump administration. More importantly, it adds a detail of the scope of interest and involvement in an investigation that targeted Flynn without any compelling evidence of a crime or collusion.

The media had portrayed both Obama and Biden as uninvolved in the investigation. Now, however, we know that both actively followed the investigation. According to former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, she was surprised that President Obama not only knew about the investigation but knew more than she did at that time. Obama even called upon former FBI Director James Comey to stay back after a January meeting, in order to discuss the Flynn investigation. At the meeting, he discussed using a flagrantly unconstitutional law, the Logan Act, to charge Flynn, even though it has never been used successfully in a prosecution since the founding of the republic.

For his part, Biden has repeatedly denied knowledge of the investigation. Just the day before the latest disclosure, George Stephanopoulos asked Biden in an interview what he knew of the Flynn investigation. Biden was adamant that “I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn” and called it all a “diversion ... a game this guy [Trump] plays.” Stephanopoulos then pointed out that recent disclosure of a meeting on the Flynn investigation in January 2017 with Obama and Comey. Biden said he did know about the investigation: “I was aware that there was, that they asked for an investigation, but that’s all I know about.” That also is not true if Biden took the relatively uncommon step for a vice president of demanding the unmasking of Flynn information.

But none of this matters. A Democratic administration using a secret national security court to investigate the opposing party’s campaign simply does not matter to Democrats in Congress or many in the media anyway. An investigation continuing despite the lack of any credible information supporting collusion does not matter to them either. A president and vice president taking personal interest in surveillance of political opponents? It does not matter.

There was a time when all of this did matter, though. Indeed, there was a time when this would be viewed as the story of the century, including the unmasking of Biden himself in this investigation. But this is not those times. This cannot be a story, you see. Russian collusion was a story and, as Biden stressed, the rest is just a “diversion.” The public however will have to decide who was ultimately unmasked by the Flynn investigation.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley.

TAGS JOE BIDEN DONALD TRUMP MICHAEL FLYNN

Holding Obama/Holder responsible for the Fast and Furious invasion of Mexico

Mexico sheds light on note requesting answers over Obama era gun-running sting: report

The foreign minister of Mexico announced on Monday that he sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. requesting answers related to a gun-running sting that caused tension during the Obama administration, according to a report.

In a video posted on Twitter, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard quoted Eric Holder, the former U.S. Attorney General, as saying Mexican authorities knew about the ill-fated 2009-2011 scheme known as "Fast and Furious."

"The [Mexican] government requests that it be provided with all the information available regarding the 'Fast and Furious' operation," Ebrard said, according to Reuters.

HOSPITALS TREATING CORONAVIRUS PATIENTS IN MEXICO CITY ARE REACHING MAXIMUM CAPACITY: REPORT

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. speaks during the National Action Network Convention in New York, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. (AP)

The sting allowed people to illegally buy arms in the United States and take them to Mexico, so the firearms could be tracked to drug cartel bosses and lead law enforcement there. It hoped to limit gun smuggling across the border.

A review of the program found that only 710 out of roughly 2,000 firearms were recovered as of February 2012, according to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). In 2011, Holder had requested the OIG to conduct a review of operation "Fast and Furious."

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had said last week his government would send a diplomatic note to Washington for information on the operation, as his current regime digs for more information on the cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico, as well as possible corruption under previous administrations.

“How could this be? A government that invades in this way, that flagrantly violates sovereignty, international laws,” Lopez Obrador said at a news conference, according to Reuters.

Obama's scandal free administration ..Mexico's president calls for investigation into Obama-era Fast and Furious Operation

MAY 10, 2020

Mexico's president calls for investigation into Obama-era Fast and Furious Operation

The Mexican government is asking Washington for cooperation in discovering how Operation Fast and Furious happened

PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images

 PAUL SACCA

Mexico's president asked the United States for answers and an apology for the Obama-era gun-running operation known as "Fast and Furious." On Friday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called for an investigation into Operation Fast and Furious to prevent it from happening again.

"What seems serious to me is that a violation of our sovereignty was carried out, a secret operation, and that Mexicans were killed with these weapons," Lopez Obrador said during a press conference in Mexico City on Friday.
"How could this be? A government that invades in this way, that flagrantly violates sovereignty, international laws," Lopez Obrador continued. "We have to shine light on this so that an action of this type will never be carried out again."
"There is still time for the U.S. to apologize," the Mexican president stated.
He also said that his government would send a diplomatic note to Washington asking for information on the gun-running scheme. Mexico Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard confirmed the communication, and said he was sending a letter to the U.S. regarding Operation Fast and Furious.

Operation Fast and Furious was a strategy created to assist the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to combat Mexican drug cartels. Between 2009 and 2011, the Phoenix Field Division of the ATF would allow and track the illegal sale of approximately 2,000 firearms worth roughly $1.5 million. The weapons from Operation Fast and Furious would end up being used to kill hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010.
Lopez Obrador first brought up the decade-old incident last Monday when talking about Genaro Garcia Luna, who was Mexico's security minister between 2006 and 2012. Garcia Luna was arrested in Texas by U.S. federal agents last December on drug trafficking and bribery charges.
Roberta Jacobson, a former American ambassador to Mexico appointed under U.S. President Barack Obama, suggested that both governments were aware of potential corruption tied to Garcia Luna. The report was published in Mexican magazine Proceso last weekend.
Lopez Obrador said the "cover-ups" were not the work of just "one government."
Last Monday, Lopez Obrador said U.S. officials with the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Agency should be investigated for potential cooperation with Garcia Luna. The DEA and the CIA declined to comment. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters.

Mexico asks U.S. for answers over historic gun-running row

Dave Graham