Voter Fraud Comm. Wants States Voter Roll Data

Mississippi responds with ‘go jump in the Gulf of Mexico’.

The White House has said the commission will embark upon a “thorough review of registration and voting issues in federal elections,” but experts and voting rights advocates have pilloried Trump for his claims of widespread fraud, which studies and state officials alike have not found. They say they fear the commission will be used to restrict voting.  

Those worries intensified this week, after the commission sent letters to 50 states and Washington, D.C., on Wednesday asking for a trove of information, including names, dates of birth, voting histories and, if possible, party identifications. The letters also asked for evidence of voter fraud, convictions for election-related crimes, and recommendations for preventing voter intimidation – all within 16 days. More here.

Image result for voter rolls FN

Trump’s voter fraud commission asks all states for voter roll data

President Trump’s newly formed Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is asking states to turn over all publicly available voter roll data.

In the letter, sent Wednesday to all 50 secretaries of state, the commission’s vice chairman — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — requests the full names of all registered voters, their addresses, dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, voting history and other personal information.

The letter to Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill, a Democrat, was made public first.

In a statement, Merrill said her office will share “publicly-available information with the Kobach Commission while ensuring that the privacy of voters is honored by withholding protected data.”

Vanita Gupta, the former head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, said on Twitter Kobach and Vice President Mike Pence, who serves as the commission’s chairman, “are laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain & simple.”

Kobach is asking for responses by July 14.

***  Image result for voter rolls USAToday

SACRAMENTO, Calif. States are steadily disclosing whether or not they will cooperate with a request for voter information from the commission set up by President Trump in May to investigate alleged voter fraud in the 2016 elections.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, tweeted Friday that his state would not comply with the commission’s request for a list of the names, party affiliations, addresses and voting histories of all voters, if state laws allow it to be public.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said there is no evidence of voter fraud in the state.

“At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Mr. Trump’s alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression,” he said in a statement.

On Wednesday the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity sent a letter giving secretaries of state about two weeks to provide about a dozen points of voter data. That also would include dates of birth, the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers and any information about felony convictions and military status.

Other Democratic officials are also refusing to comply, saying the request invades privacy and is based on false claims of fraud. The secretaries of state in California and Kentucky, all Democrats, said they will not share the requested information.

Mr. Trump lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton but has alleged, without evidence, that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally.

In addition to the voter information, the letter asks state officials for suggestions on improving election integrity and to share any evidence of fraud and election-related crimes in their states. The data will help the commission “fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting,” vice chairman and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach wrote.

The California and Virginia officials said attention would be better spent upgrading aging voting systems or focusing on Russia’s alleged election meddling. Mr. Trump has alleged “serious voter fraud” in both states.

“California’s participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud,” Democratic Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a statement. Clinton won California by about 3 million votes.

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes expressed similar sentiments, reports CBS Lexington affiliate WKYT-TV. A statement released by her office said, “The president created his election commission based on the false notion that ‘voter fraud’ is a widespread issue – it is not. Indeed, despite bipartisan objections and a lack of authority, the President has repeatedly spread the lie that three to five million illegal votes were cast in the last election. Kentucky will not aid a commission that is at best a waste of taxpayer money and at worst an attempt to legitimize voter suppression efforts across the country.”

Wisconsin’s elections administrator, Michael Haas, said in a statement Friday that a voters’ “name, address and voting history are public,” but the state does not collect information about political preference or gender, and Wisconsin law does not permit the state to release a voter’s date of birth, driver’s license number or Social Security number. Should the commission want the public information, Haas said it’ll have to pay the $12,500 fee for the statewide voter file.

Oklahoma, too, said that its voter roll is public, and an Oklahoma State Election Board spokesman said that the commission could have “a copy of the same database that anyone could get from us,” according to NewsOK. Oklahoma will not release even partial Social Security numbers, however.

Georgia will also provide only publicly available voter information, not private information.

The panel is seeking “public information and publicly available data” from every state and the District of Columbia, said Marc Lotter, a spokesman for Vice President Mike Pence, who is chairing the commission. Lotter described the intent of the request as “fact-finding” and said there were no objections to it by anyone on the 10-member commission, which includes four Democrats.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said he’s not sure whether he will share the data because of privacy concerns. Vermont’s top election official, Democrat Jim Condos, said it goes beyond what the state can publicly disclose.

In Missouri, Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said he is happy to “offer our support in the collective effort to enhance the American people’s confidence in the integrity of the system.” Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican, said he’ll provide what state law allows.

Other states have not yet decided whether to comply with the commission’s request. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican who is running for governor, is still considering the request, Cincinnati.com reported.

Revoking U.S. Citizenship, it Does Happen

FNC: A  Mexico native serving time in a prison south of the border for rape had his naturalized U.S. citizenship revoked by a federal judge Tuesday after authorities discovered the man failed to disclose a previous child sex assault conviction dating back more than 20 years.

The decision to denaturalize Jose Arizmendi, 54, made him the 88th person in the last eight years to have his citizenship revoked, according to a review by SeattlePI.com. Arizmendi had been living in Texas, making him the ninth person from the Lone Star State in eight years to be denaturalized.

“The Justice Department is committed to preserving the integrity of our nation’s immigration system,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Chad A. Readler said in a statement. “We will aggressively pursue denaturalization in cases where individuals lie on their naturalization applications, especially in a circumstance like this one, which involved a child sex abuser. Civil denaturalization cases are an important law enforcement tool for protecting the public, including our children.”

Arizmendi, who is currently serving an 18-year sentence in Mexico for the rape of a minor there, did not tell officials at his immigration interview in October 1995 about his conviction six months earlier for the aggravated sexual assault of a child, according to a Department of Justice news release. Arizmendi was given 10 years of probation in that case, The Houston Chronicle reported.

When officials approving his immigration request asked if he had ever been arrested or convicted of a crime, Arizmendi told them: “No.”

Partly based on that answer, Arizmendi became a U.S. citizen in 1996. But immigration officials eventually uncovered the child sex assault conviction and alerted the DOJ, which initiated proceedings to strip Arizmendi of his citizenship in February 2015.

Because of a 10-year statute of limitations, U.S. authorities couldn’t revoke the citizenship based on the criminal conviction alone – but due to Arizmendi’s lie to immigration officials, they were able to strip it as a civil denaturalization.

“Applications for naturalization must be candid with all material facts,” Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Abe Martinez said in a statement. “Like in this case, failing to disclose material data should result in denaturalization.”

*** Meanwhile, other cases such as that posted below are still common and daily criminal cases.

From left, rape-home invasion suspects Francisco Palencia, 17, and Josue Ramirez, 19. Ramirez has an immigration hold from ICE at the Gwinnett County Jail near Atlanta.

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. – It’s easily one of the most horrific crimes of the year in the Atlanta area, and now WND has found that the lead suspect is an illegal alien from Latin America.

On June 15, police arrested three Hispanic teen agers accused of raping a 23-year-old Gwinnett County mother in front of her 4-year-old son.

The suspects are Josue Aguilar Ramirez, 19, Francisco Palencia, 17, and an unidentified 15-year-old girl. All three face charges of kidnapping, rape, cruelty to children, aggravated sodomy and aggravated battery.

The oldest, Ramirez, is an illegal immigrant who is subject to an immigration hold at the Gwinnett County Detention Center, according to online jail records.

According to the police report, the young mother arrived home from work with her two small children just before 3 a.m. on May 12 and found two armed men inside her kitchen, each wearing black jackets and ski masks. They were armed with Taser stun guns.

“The two males were armed with Tasers and approached ( her),” according to the police report.

The incident occurred at the woman’s apartment in unincorporated Tucker, Georgia, within Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta that has one of the state’s highest populations of illegal immigrants.

The mother initially tried to fight back, but one of the men threw two pots of boiling water on her, severely burning her shoulder, neck and arm, according to the police report. Even though badly burned, she still struggled to get away from her attackers and back to her children.

That’s when the men shocked the woman with the Taser and forced her into the bedroom. One of the teens asked her if she had HIV, and she said “no.” They demanded she take off her clothes and forced her to perform oral sex before raping her, the police reports state.

She told police that she “complied wit h the male’s demands out of fear for what could be done to her children.”

Peter Smith and Hillary’s 30,000 Missing Emails

Peter Smith and Michael Flynn knew each other and communicated often. Peter Smith was 81 years old when he died, but what does Flynn have when it comes to 30,000 emails that Hillary deleted? Once Smith was able to located Russian hackers that admitted hacking Hillary’s emails, the question is where are they and why were they never published?

Performing attribution, ensuring they are real, confirming they have not been doctored is the challenge, after all Russians are in the equation. However, cyber experts performing the review have an above 90% certainty. Peter Smith was not associated at all with any part of the Trump camp but did support his race for the White House.

Meanwhile, special council Robert Mueller and his team are likely passing out subpoenas to get all the pieces of the electronic trail on this.

Image result for peter smith hackers Peter Smith/NYDailyNews

Humm…let’s go deeper for background and context. Once you read below, you will have thousands of questions and some are answered here in the follow up podcast with the WSJ journalist that broke the story.

***

A new report raises some big questions about Michael Flynn and Russian hackers

The Wall Street Journal describes how one Trump supporter reached out to hackers — and dropped Flynn’s name.

A tantalizing new report from Shane Harris of the Wall Street Journal gives the strongest indication yet that collusion may have occurred — or was at least attempted — between supporters of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russian hackers who targeted Democrats’ emails.

And it raises serious questions about whether fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was involved in these efforts to contact hackers.

Harris describes an effort by Peter Smith, a Trump-supporting GOP operative and private equity executive, to track down Hillary Clinton’s infamous 30,000 or so deleted emails during the fall of 2016.

The effort, described on the record to Harris by Smith (the 81-year old man died a week and a half after their interview), entailed outreach to several hacker groups, including at least two that Smith believed to be Russian-tied, to see if they had hacked the emails and could release them.

The emails — which Clinton said she deleted because they were personal and unrelated to her work as secretary of state — never surfaced. And Smith didn’t work for the Trump campaign.

But this new report could be especially significant because of one name that keeps coming up: Michael Flynn, who at the time was advising the Trump campaign.

Smith repeatedly claimed that he was in contact with Flynn about the effort to find Clinton’s emails, per Harris’s sources.

“He said, ‘I’m talking to Michael Flynn about this — if you find anything, can you let me know?’” said Eric York, a computer-security expert from Atlanta who searched hacker forums on Mr. Smith’s behalf for people who might have access to the emails. …

… In phone conversations, Mr. Smith told a computer expert he was in direct contact with Mr. Flynn and his son, according to this expert. … The expert said that based on his conversations with Mr. Smith, he understood the elder Mr. Flynn to be coordinating with Mr. Smith’s group in his capacity as a Trump campaign adviser.

Furthermore, Harris describes, apparently for the first time, US intelligence reports claiming Russian hackers discussed how to get hacked emails to Flynn through a third party.

Investigators have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the intelligence.

If accurate, all this is enough to raise serious questions about just what Flynn knew about this or any other attempted outreach to Russian hackers.

How this story fits into the timeline of the hackings

It’s no secret that Trump wanted someone to find Clinton’s deleted emails — he said as much publicly.

To recap: When word got out that Clinton had used a personal email account for all her work at the State Department, she agreed to hand over the work-related emails on that account to government investigators. But it turned out that she had previously deemed about 32,000 emails (about half of the total) to be “personal” rather than work-related, and deleted them.

Many conservatives didn’t take Clinton’s explanation for why she deleted the emails at face value, and questioned whether the deleted emails could have included some incriminating information that might reveal scandalous behavior of some kind. One of those Republicans was Trump, who repeatedly referenced the deleted emails on the campaign trail.

In July 2016, hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee were publicly released, and the hacks were thought to be the work of Russia. And at the time, Trump said in public that he hoped there would be email releases to come — including Clinton’s deleted ones.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re about to find the 30,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing,” he said at a press conference. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens. That will be next.”

A few months after this, in fall 2016, Peter Smith launched the effort reported by the Journal to try to get the emails from hacking groups that he thought might have them — including hacking groups he understood to be tied to the Russian government.

Again, though, it seems that no one did have Clinton’s deleted emails. The biggest Russia-linked email hacks and dumps involved the DNC accounts (released in July 2016) and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails (released in October 2016), but no emails from Clinton’s own server.

Michael Flynn’s potential involvement could be highly significant

Still, one major question has always been whether any Trump associates were involved in these or other hacking efforts.

There’s been a whole lot of evidence that several Trump associates (including Flynn) had ties to Russian officials, and of course it was clear that Trump’s public policies were far more pro-Russia than the Republican norm.

But there really hasn’t been very much evidence tying anyone in Trumpworld to any hacking — making it plausible that the hacking operations were carried out without any coordination or contacts with anyone in Trump’s camp.

Harris’s story changes that somewhat. Now we know of Smith’s outreach to Russian hackers — and, more importantly, his claims that Flynn (who was close to Trump) may have known too. And there’s that other claim that US intelligence suggests Russian hackers were discussing giving hacked emails to Flynn. Where would they get that idea?

Any involvement from Flynn could be quite significant. He’s known to have had many contacts with Russian officials, and he advised Trump on foreign policy matters during the presidential campaign.

Afterward, Trump named him national security adviser. But he didn’t last long in the post, resigning in February due to controversy over whether he falsely described his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition.

By then, the White House had been told that Flynn was under federal investigation. And then-FBI Director James Comey has since testified that the day after Flynn’s firing, President Trump took him aside and told him, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

So Trump has already been trying to shield Flynn from investigators — making the question of just what Flynn might know ever more interesting, and one that will certainly be on special counsel Robert Mueller’s mind.

SCOTUS: 2 Judges Blasted 2nd Amend Challenge

Well, at least two Supreme Court judges were angry enough to write an opinion blasting the court’s rejection to hear the challenge to the 2nd Amendment regarding the right to carry a weapon outside the home.

FNC: Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch issued a scathing dissent Monday to a Supreme Court decision turning away yet another gun rights case.

On a busy morning of decisions, the court on Monday rejected a challenge out of California regarding the right to carry guns outside their homes, leaving in place a San Diego sheriff’s strict limits on issuing permits for concealed weapons.

But Thomas, in a dissent joined by Gorsuch, countered that the case raises “important questions” – and warned that Second Amendment disputes aren’t getting the attention they deserve from the Supreme Court.

“The Court’s decision … reflects a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right,” they wrote.

The case in question involved a San Diego man who said state and county policies requiring “good cause” — a specific reason or justifiable need to legally carry a concealed weapon — were too restrictive. A federal appeals court had ruled for the state, and now those restrictions will stay in place.

A LOOK AT CALIFORNIA GUN LAW

But Thomas and Gorsuch – the court’s newest member – called the appeals court’s decision to limit its review only to the “good cause” provision “indefensible.”

“The Court has not heard argument in a Second Amendment case in over seven years,” they wrote. “… This discrepancy is inexcusable, especially given how much less developed our jurisprudence is with respect to the Second Amendment as compared to the First and Fourth Amendments.”

The justices concluded by warning the court is in danger of acting dismissive toward the right to bear arms:

“For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a State denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it. I respectfully dissent.”

The high court decided in 2008 that the Constitution guarantees the right to a gun, at least for self-defense at home.

But the justices have refused repeated pleas to spell out the extent of gun rights in the United States, allowing permit restrictions and assault weapons bans to remain in effect in some cities and states.

More than 40 states already broadly allow gun owners to be armed in public.

The high court also turned away a second case involving guns and the federal law that bars people convicted of crimes from owning guns.

The Trump administration had urged the court to review an appellate ruling that restored the rights of two men who had been convicted of non-violent crimes to own guns.

The federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled for the two men. The crimes were classified as misdemeanors, which typically are less serious, but carried potential prison sentences of more than a year. Such prison terms typically are for felonies, more serious crimes.

The administration says that the court should have upheld the blanket prohibition on gun ownership in the federal law and rejected case-by-case challenges.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have heard the administration’s appeal.

*** Image result for justice thomas gorsuch Image result for justice thomas  BusinessInsider

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. 

JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom JUSTICE GORSUCH joins, dissenting from the denial of certiorari.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arm[s] shall not be infringed.” At issue in this case is whether that guarantee protects the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. Neither party disputes that the issue is one of national importance or that the courts of appeals have already weighed in extensively. I would therefore grant the petition for a writ of certiorari.

I California generally prohibits the average citizen from carrying a firearm in public spaces, either openly or concealed. With a few limited exceptions, the State prohibits open carry altogether. Cal. Penal Code Ann. §§25850, 26350 (West 2012). It proscribes concealed carry unless a resident obtains a license by showing “good cause,” among other criteria, §§26150, 26155, and it authorizes counties to set rules for when an applicant has shown good cause,§26160.In the county where petitioners reside, the sheriff has interpreted “good cause” to require an applicant to show that he has a particularized need, substantiated by documentary evidence, to carry a firearm for self-defense. The sheriff ’s policy specifies that “concern for one’s personal safety” does not “alone” satisfy this requirement.

(internal quotation marks omitted). Instead, an applicant must show “a set of circumstances that distinguish the applicant from the mainstream and cause him to be placed in harm’s way.” Id., at 1169 (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). “[A] typical citizen fearing for his personal safety—by definition—cannot distinguish himself from the mainstream.” Ibid. (emphasis deleted; internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). As a result, ordinary, “law-abiding, responsible citizens,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 635 (2008), may not obtain a permit for concealed carry of a firearm in public spaces.

Petitioners are residents of San Diego County (plus an association with numerous county residents as members)who are unable to obtain a license for concealed carry due to the county’s policy and, because the State generally bans open carry, are thus unable to bear firearms in public in any manner. They sued under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42

U. S. C. §1983, alleging that this near-total prohibition on public carry violates their Second Amendment right to bear arms. They requested declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent the sheriff from denying licenses based on his restrictive interpretation of “good cause,” as well as other “relief as the Court deems just and proper.” First Amended Complaint in No. 3:09–cv–02371, (SD Cal.) ¶¶149, 150, 152. The District Court granted respondents’ motion for summary judgment, and petitioners appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

In a thorough opinion, a panel of the Ninth Circuit reversed. 742 F. 3d 1144. The panel examined the constitutional text and this Court’s precedents, as well as historical sources from before the founding era through the end of the 19th century. Id., at 1150–1166. Based on these sources, the court concluded that “the carrying of an operable handgun outside the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense . . . constitutes ‘bear[ing] Arms’ within the meaning of the Second Amendment.” Id., at 1166. It thus reversed the District Court and held that the sheriff ’s interpretation of “good cause” in combination with the other aspects of the State’s regime violated the Second Amendment’s command that a State “permit some form of carry for self-defense outside the home.” Id., at 1172.

The Ninth Circuit sua sponte granted rehearing en banc and, by a divided court, reversed the panel decision. In the en banc court’s view, because petitioners specifically asked for the invalidation of the sheriff ’s “good cause” interpretation, their legal challenge was limited to that aspect of the applicable regulatory scheme. The court thus declined to “answer the question of whether or to what degree the Second Amendment might or might not protect a right of a member of the general public to carry firearms openly in public.” Peruta v. County of San Diego, 824

F. 3d 919, 942 (2016). It instead held only that “the Second Amendment does not preserve or protect a right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public.” Id., at 924 (emphasis added).

Read more here of the decision start at page 32.

New Leader of Gaza?

 

Photo of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and discharged Fatah leader Muhammad Dahlan (File)

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Amid an escalating conflict between Hamas and the Fatah-ruled Palestinian Authority (PA), a leaked and unconfirmed document obtained by Ma’an has noted that discharged Fatah leader and President Mahmoud Abbas’ political rival Muhammad Dahlan could be appointed head of Gaza’s government as a result of talks between Hamas officials and Dahlan in Cairo.

MaanNews: The document, titled “A National Consensus Document for Trust-Building” details an agreement allegedly made between the Hamas movement, led by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and Dahlan during Egyptian-sponsored talks when Palestinian officials established a political front to challenge the PA in coordination with Dahlan.
Dahlan, being a fierce former opponent of Hamas’ rule in Gaza following its success in the 2006 elections that threw Fatah and Hamas in a protracted internal conflict, seemed like an unlikely political ally for Hamas. Nevertheless, analysts have pointed out that the new relationship between the former enemies represents Dahlan and Hamas’ mutual rejection of the PA, led by Abbas in the occupied West Bank.
The document contains 15 articles focused on ending the issues of Palestinian reconciliation, including articles aiming to resolve issues of revenge or compensation that have arisen during Hamas and Fatah’s more than a decade-long feud.
According to the document, the talks agreed that Dahlan would be head of the government in the Gaza Strip, while Hamas would control Gaza’s Ministry of Interior.
The reports have not been confirmed by Hamas or Dahlan.
Hamas’ newfound relationship with Dahlan also received attention following Egypt’s decision to send millions of liters of fuel to the besieged Gaza Strip, after Israel, which has kept the territory under a crippling blockade for a decade, dramatically cut its power supply to Gaza, at the request of the PA which had decided to cut its funding of Israeli fuel to the coastal enclave.
Despite the PA denying the allegations, it is widely believed among Palestinians and international critics that the PA’s recent policies in Gaza are aimed at putting pressure on Hamas to relinquish control of the besieged coastal enclave and hand over the territory to the PA.
Dahlan, who while residing in exile in Abu Dhabi continues to hold political clout in the region, had reportedly persuaded the Egyptian government to send the fuel to the besieged territory in order to avert a full humanitarian collapse.
However, other reports stated that the fuel was provided to Gaza under an agreement that Hamas would work with the Egyptian government to deter militant activities in the Sinai, which Hamas has been accused of exacerbating by harboring militants in its territory. Hamas has consistently denied such allegations.
In the 1990s, Dahlan led a merciless crackdown on Hamas, rounding up thousands of Islamists who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the newly-created PA following the Oslo Accords.
But he fell from grace in June 2007 after the humiliating rout of his forces by Hamas fighters during days of fierce street battles in Gaza, when Hamas expelled Fatah forces from the territory.
Two years later, he returned to the political stage when he was elected to the Fatah central committee in August 2009.
But in December 2010, he was suspended from the committee which said it had set up a commission of inquiry to examine his finances and claimed he tried to set up a personal militia.
In 2015, Dahlan made headlines once again when he called for integrating all Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, into the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
Dahlan has also called to end the PA’s widely criticized security coordination with Israel, and has said he now considers the Oslo Accords to be invalid.
International media has also reported plans by several Middle Eastern countries to buttress Dahlan as the next Palestinian president to replace his rival Abbas