Immigration Scams, Tourism and Colleges

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The numbers are staggering when it comes to fraudulent scams as they relate to immigration. We cant begin to know all of them, but it should challenge our imagination and then we must begin to ask questions calling for more research. Here are but two symptoms of problems that rarely hit media radar.

What is more chilling is members of Congress are well aware of the two conditions below as is the Governor of California. Since the White House learns about issues and situations in the news. perhaps help out by sharing this post with the Obama team as it seems the full news media cant seem to report it.

Children born in the US automatically qualify for citizenship, one of the reasons behind the popularity of ‘maternity tourism’

Row over US-born immigrant children heats up
Federal agents in California have raided more than a dozen hotels that cater to pregnant foreigners who want their children to be born US citizens.

The “birth tourism” hotels hosted mainly Chinese women who paid between $15,000 (£9,756) to $50,000 for the services.

The raids focused on hotels suspected of engaging in visa fraud.

Court records said companies would coach women to falsify records and claims for their visa screening.

Birth tourism is not always illegal and many agencies openly advertise their services as “birthing centres”.

The raids represent a rare federal crackdown against the widespread practice of foreign nationals giving birth in the US.

Undercover operation

It is estimated that 40,000 of 300,000 children born to foreign citizens in the US each year are the product of birth tourism, according to figures quoted in court documents filed to obtain search warrants for the schemes.

In one of the investigations into an Irvine “birthing centre”, an undercover agent posed as a pregnant mother.

She was helped to provide false proof of income and a college diploma, told to enter through popular US destinations like Hawaii or Las Vegas and make reservations with hotels and tours.

A China-based “trainer” assigned to help put together the visa application asked for full-length frontal and side photo of the undercover agent’s belly to see how visible her pregnancy was, according to agents.

Agents were also concerned that the schemes defrauded hospitals. Even though the women were paying birth tourism operators between $15,000 and $50,000 for their service, they paid local hospitals nothing or a reduced sum for uninsured, low-income patients, according to the affidavit.

No arrests were expected on Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles Times, but authorities said investigators would be seizing evidence and interviewing the mothers to build a criminal case against scheme operators.

*** Going Further:

Businesses engaged in maternity tourism, also known as “birth tourism,” are believed to have been operating for several years, relying on websites, newspaper advertising and social media to promote their services, immigration officials said.

Based on the results of previous investigations, the women who subscribe apparently pay cash for pre-natal medical treatment and actual delivery of their babies.

As part of the package, clients were promised they would receive Social Security numbers and U.S. passports for their infants – documentation the mothers would take with them when they returned to their home countries, ICE said.

Once the children, who by birth are U.S. citizens, reach adulthood they can apply for visas for family members living abroad.

More expensive packages “include recreational activities, such as visits to Disneyland, shopping malls and even an outing to a firing range,” the ICE statement said.

The practices came to public attention in California in recent years when residents of some Los Angeles-area communities complained about what they said were maternity hotels springing up in their neighborhoods, causing sanitation and other issues.

Ah, but hold on there is more.
Federal Agents Raid Suspected Fake Schools
Foreigners on U.S. student visas allegedly paid millions but didn’t take classes
LOS ANGELES—Amid a widening crackdown on immigration fraud, federal agents on Wednesday raided a network of schools alleged to be part of a scheme to collect millions of dollars from foreigners who came to the U.S. on student visas but never studied.

Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations arrested three individuals who ran four schools in the Los Angeles area alleged to serve as a front for the purported scheme.

Hee Sun Shim, 51 years old, was arrested at his Beverly Hills home, and his alleged associates, Hyung Chan Moon and Eun Young Choi, were arrested in their offices near downtown Los Angeles.

They were taken into custody and charged in Los Angeles federal court with conspiracy to commit visa fraud, money laundering and of other immigration offenses, U.S. authorities said. They weren’t immediately available for comment and their attorneys weren’t known.

Wednesday’s action was the latest in a series targeting visa fraud nationwide.

“It’s a priority for us,” said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge of HSI in Los Angeles. “It is something that can be exploited by types who want to do harm to the country.”

He added that authorities haven’t seen any evidence in this case that suspected terrorists used the alleged scheme to enter the country.

The main school in the alleged scam is Prodee University, located in Los Angeles’s Koreatown neighborhood. It is affiliated with three other schools: Walter Jay M.D. Institute and American College of Forensic Studies in Los Angeles and Likie Fashion and Technology College in nearby Alhambra.

Catering primarily to Korean and Chinese nationals, the schools enrolled 1,500 students, the government said, most of whom live outside of Los Angeles, including in Texas, Nevada and Hawaii. They generated as much as $6 million a year in purported tuition payments, authorities said.

Sham colleges across the U.S. are believed to attract thousands of foreigners who pay fees, some of them with the promise of an education they don’t receive and others with assurance that no classes need be taken.

“It’s never clear to what extent the students are victimized or are in on the scheme,” said Barmak Nassirian, policy analysis director at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

The crackdown comes at a time when U.S. colleges and universities are attracting a record number of foreign students—about one million currently.

The spate of student-visa scams has prompted some lawmakers to call for better government monitoring of both schools and students. In recent years, authorities have raided schools in Virginia, New Jersey and California, the state considered the center of the illicit activity.

A 2012 Government Accountability Office report concluded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was failing in its mission to detect fraud by school operators.

The agency last year began deploying field representatives to foster compliance with regulations; a compliance unit makes surprise visits to schools and a new risk-assessment tool helps identify suspicious activity at schools. ICE also says it has enhanced electronic record keeping of students.

“We have been working to fix vulnerabilities,” said Rachel Canty, deputy director of ICE’s Student Exchange and Visitor program, which certifies schools that enroll foreigners.

Concern about the legitimacy of foreign students and institutions they attend first surfaced after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Since then, schools have been required to provide information about students to an online government database, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, overseen by ICE.

The Sevis contains a student’s personal record, including country of origin, age, coursework and U.S. address and other details. Schools that fail to comply can lose their certification.

More than three-quarters of some 9,000 certified schools have fewer than 50 international students, which makes it more challenging to comply with regulations. “People think foreign students come to UCLA and Harvard. We have a lot of mom-and-pop schools,” said Ms. Canty.

Security concerns resurfaced in 2013 after the deadly Boston Marathon bombing. Authorities learned that Azamat Tazhayakov, who hid evidence about the attack, had entered the U.S. on a student visa that was no longer valid. Since then, the government has integrated the SEVIS database into the screening process at airports. Mr. Tazhayakov, a Kazakhstan national, was convicted last July of obstruction of justice in the bombing.

Investigators say the defendants misrepresented students on federal forms, enabling them to secure student visas in what amounted to a pay-to-stay scheme. In exchange for the so-called Form I-20, a student made “tuition” payments for up to $1,800 to “enroll” for six months in one of the schools, according to the indictment.

As part of the suspected conspiracy, the defendants allegedly created bogus student records, including transcripts, for the purpose of deceiving immigration authorities.

The indictment further alleges that purported students often were transferred from one school to another to avoid arousing suspicion of immigration authorities about individuals in the country for long periods.

“We have nothing to indicate the students were getting education for anything,” said Mr. Arnold, the special agent.

After Wednesday’s raid, the schools’ access to Sevis was ended and authorities are seeking to withdraw the schools’ certification to enroll foreign students, ICE said.

The students’ fate is unclear. Foreign pupils enrolled at the schools should contact the Student Exchange Visitor Program office in Washington, officials said.

The largest student-visa fraud case, involving Tri-Valley University in northern California, left more than 1,000 students in limbo and sparked protests in India. The school’s president, Susan Su, was imprisoned in 2013 for making millions of dollars in the scheme.

That scandal prompted U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa) and others to call for action.

“The potential for bad actors to abuse the student-visa program has increased significantly over recent years,” Ms. Feinstein said, noting that a Senate-passed bill to overhaul immigration in 2013 included a provision to combat such fraud.

Where Were You America on Net Neutrality?

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Going back as far as 2010, for the Federal government to take over the internet has been a building coup and while America did not care….the FCC assumed control.

After McCain-Feingold passed, several of the foundations involved in the effort began shifting their attention to “media reform”—a movement to impose government controls on Internet companies somewhat related to the long-defunct “Fairness Doctrine” that used to regulate TV and radio companies. In a 2005 interview with the progressive website Buzzflash, Mr. McChesney said that campaign-finance reform advocate Josh Silver approached him and “said let’s get to work on getting popular involvement in media policy making.” Together the two founded Free Press.

Free Press and allied groups such as MoveOn.org quickly got funding. Of the eight major foundations that provided the vast bulk of money for campaign-finance reform, six became major funders of the media-reform movement. (They are the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bill Moyers’s Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.) Free Press today has 40 staffers and an annual budget of $4 million.

 

 

FCC Cites Soros-Funded, Neo-Marxist-Founded Group 46 TIMES In New Regs

New internet regulations finally released by the Federal Communications Commission make 46 references to a group funded by billionaire George Soros and co-founded by a neo-Marxist.

The FCC released the 400-page document on Thursday, two weeks after it passed new regulations, which many fear will turn the internet into a public commodity and thereby stifle innovation.

“Leveling the playing field” in that way has been a clear goal of Free Press, a group dedicated to net neutrality which was founded in 2003.

As Phil Kerpen, president of the free-market group American Commitment, first noted, Free Press is mentioned repeatedly in the FCC document. Most of the references are found in footnotes which cite comments by Free Press activists supporting more internet regulation.

The term “Free Press” is mentioned 62 times in the regulations. Some are redundant mentions referring to the same Free Press activists’ comments in favor of more oversight. In total, the FCC cited Free Press’ pro-net neutrality arguments 46 times.

The FCC received more than 4 million public comments as it was weighing the net neutrality initiative, but Free Press and other activist groups have received the most attention by pressuring the FCC and the White House on behalf of their cause.

One argument made against the FCC’s regulatory push is that the general public is largely happy with its internet service. Support for net neutrality was seen as the domain of special interest groups like Free Press.

The activist group has big money behinds its effort. It has received $2.2 million in donations from progressive billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and $3.9 million from the Ford Foundation.

And one of Free Press’ co-founders, Robert McChesney, a communications professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has not been shy about his desire to see the internet regulated heavily. (RELATED: A Leading Net Neutrality Activist’s Neo-Marxist Views)

But internet regulation appears to be only part of McChesney’s more radical agenda of completely revamping how the media operate in the U.S.

“In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles,” McChesney wrote in a 2009 essay.

“Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism,” he said.

“The news is not a commercial product. It is a public good, necessary for a self-governing society. Once we accept this, we can talk about the kind of media policies and subsidies we want,” McChesney once argued.

Sentiments such as these have raised questions about whether the FCC’s new regulations will eventually led to oversight of internet content.

“The unthinkable has become thinkable, and the free-market Internet – one of freedom’s greatest triumphs – is set to be reduced to a public utility, subject to pervasive economic regulation and, in turn, to content control,” American Commitment’s Kerpen wrote in an open letter to McChesney after the FCC voted 3-2 in favor of the regulations.

McChesney, who is currently on Free Press’ board of directors, made a series of progressive proposals in a 2010 book, “The Life and Death of American Journalism.” He suggested spending $35 billion on federal subsidies for public media outlets. He also proposed creating a journalism branch of AmeriCorps and said it would be a good idea to give each American a $200 news voucher which could be given only to publicly-owned media outlets.

“Advertising is the voice of capital,” McChesney said in a 2009 interview with the Socialist Project. “We need to do whatever we can to limit capitalist propaganda, regulate it, minimize it, and perhaps even eliminate it. The fight against hyper-commercialism becomes especially pronounced in the era of digital communications.”

FCC commissioner Ajit Pai blew the whistle on the agency’s attempt to sneak the new regulations in under the radar. He pressed FCC chairman Tom Wheeler to release the proposed regulations so that the public could view them before the commission voted on the measure. Wheeler refused.

In his dissent, Pai, a Republican, slammed the commission’s secrecy and also mentioned Free Press as one of the activist groups which received special attention on the matter.

“What the press has called the “parallel FCC” at the White House opened its doors to a plethora of special-interest activists: Daily Kos, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Free Press, and Public Knowledge, just to name a few,” Pai wrote.

Indeed, even before activists were blocking Chairman Wheeler’s driveway late last year, some of them had met with White House officials. But what about the rest of the American people? They certainly couldn’t get White House meetings. They were shut out of the process. They were being played for fools.”

 

Islamic State Using Effective Vintage War Tactics

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According to the BBC, the Islamic State has started using a terrifying tactic against soldiers in Iraq. This technique has rarely seen use since the European battlefields of World War I (1914-1918).

ISIS is packing crude roadside bombs with deadly chlorine gas.

Iraqi officials showed BBC News a video of security forces detonating one of these bombs, releasing into the air a recognizable and deadly orange cloud. ISIS has occasionally used chlorine gas before, but not with the frequency being seen now.

Iraqi security forces explained that these new attacks are meant to scare soldiers and civilians, rather than kill them. It is a new form of psychological warfare ISIS is using to try and turn the tide of the war in their favor.

The BBC interviewed Haider Taher, a member of an Iraqi bomb disposal squad, who unknowingly detonated one of these chlorine-filled roadside bombs:

Our throats were blocked, we couldn’t breath. My ears felt enormous pressure… we were lucky a military ambulance was there to treat us.

Chemical warfare has been used extensively in neighboring Syria. Bashar al-Assad’s forces have been notorious for their use of gas attacks on civilians and opposition alike, a tactic that has been condemned by the UN and the United States.

Although there’s been some use of chemical weapons by ISIS, there is little information on how much of these chemicals they possess.

The BBC has been shown footage of bright yellow gas rising up from a roadside bomb explosion that the Iraqis say is chlorine, as well as film of the Tikrit explosion.

Jennifer Cole, Senior Research Fellow at defence thinktank Royal United Services Institute, told MailOnline that although chlorine can be lethal, it does appear that it’s being used to spread fear by Isis.

She said: ‘Chlorine is easily available from a number of industrial sources and is very hazardous – causing breathing difficulties in particular and in extreme cases prolonged exposure can kill.

‘Used in roadside bombs such as this, in the open air, it disperses reasonably quickly and so appears to be intended to cause panic rather than serious harm.’

She added: ‘There is no doubt that public perception often sees chemical weapons such as this as more dangerous than conventional weapons such as explosives, even though it may not be the case that a chlorine bomb could cause more harm. In fact, the most damage is likely to be done by the explosion created to disperse it.’

Chlorine was used by the British in the First World War, but it proved to be unreliable. In one attack in 1915 the gas blew back into British trenches after canisters of the chemical were fired from heavy guns at the Germans.

Chlorine is not a prohibited chemical and has been used often in Syria.

* Opposition says chlorine used in three areas this month

* Chlorine not declared by Syria to chemical weapons watchdog

* Canisters likely delivered by air-dropped barrel bombs

* Deadline for removal of chemical weapons is April 27

By Oliver Holmes

BEIRUT, April 22 (Reuters) – Chlorine gas attacks in Syria this month, if proven, expose a major loophole in an international deal which promised to remove chemical weapons from Syria and suggest chemical warfare could persist after the removal operation has finished.

President Bashar al-Assad agreed with the United States and Russia to dispose of his chemical weapons – an arsenal which Damascus had never previously formally acknowledged – after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack on the outskirts of the capital last August.

Washington and its Western allies said it was Assad’s forces who unleashed the nerve agent, in the world’s worst chemical attack in a quarter-century. The government blamed the rebel side in Syria’s civil war, which is now in its fourth year.

Syria has vowed to hand over or destroy its entire arsenal by the end of this week, but still has roughly 20 percent of the chemicals it declared to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

In addition, chlorine gas that was never included on the list submitted to the OPCW is now allegedly being used on the battlefield, leading some countries to consider requesting an investigation, possibly through the United Nations.

Attacks this month in several areas of the country share characteristics that have led analysts to believe that there is a coordinated chlorine campaign, with growing evidence that it is the government side dropping the bombs.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Monday that Washington had indications that chlorine was probably used by government forces in Syria.

“We are examining allegations that the government was responsible,” she said. “Obviously there needs to be an investigation of what’s happened here.”

YELLOW CANISTERS

In the rebel-held village of Kfar Zeita in the central province of Hama, 125 miles (200 km) north of Damascus, opposition activists uploaded video of people choking and being fed oxygen following what they said were bombs dropped from helicopters on April 11 and 12.

Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the videos and activists regularly make similar claims, but further footage of canisters provided an indication of what had happened.

One of the canisters had only partially exploded and the marking CL2 was written along its side. CL2 is the symbol for chlorine gas. Also visible was “Norinco” – China’s biggest arms maker.

Repeated calls to China North Industries Group Corporation, or Norinco, went unanswered.

Canisters pictured in three separate areas were all painted yellow – complying with international standards on industrial gas colour codes indicating chlorine.

Since April 11, there have been repeated attacks on Kfar Zeita and also on the town of Al-Tamana’a in north west Idlib on Friday which shared the same characteristics.

Activists said helicopters dropped improvised barrel bombs with a chlorine canister enclosed, which led to casualties.

If inhaled, chlorine gas – a deadly agent widely used in World War One – turns to hydrochloric acid in the lungs, which can lead to internal burning and drowning through a reactionary release of water in the lungs.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, head of British-based chemical biological radiological and nuclear consultancy firm Secure Bio, said he is “reasonably satisfied that chlorine has been used”.

“The evidence is pretty compelling,” he said.

DOMESTIC CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

Amy Smithson, a leading American chemical weapons expert at the Monterey Institute, said that unless tests are run, it is not certain that chlorine was used or some similar agent.

“Once the Syrian government gets the remainder of the declared chemicals out, pressure should mount for Syria to revise its declaration again, to cough up the remainder of their offensive chemical programme,” she said, questioning whether Syria had weaponised its domestic chemical industry.

Chlorine, a so-called dual-use chemical which has industrial uses, is not on the list of chemical weapons submitted to the OPCW but was produced in Syria before the war. It should have been declared if the government has it, an OPCW spokesman said.

On Monday, opposition groups reported a further attack, this time 20 miles (30 km) northeast of Kfar Zeita in the town of Telminnes. Video footage was posted on YouTube by several opposition groups of men, women and children being treated in a field hospital.

Many appeared to have trouble breathing and medics held them down. One boy who looked less than 10 years old shook as a medic poured a liquid on his eyes and in his mouth.

A Reuters photograph of another young boy who had been transferred to a hospital closer to the Turkish border showed him lying dead on a stretcher with blood around his mouth. Medics said he had been exposed to chlorine gas at Telminnes.

Videos from the site of Monday’s bombing showed the same yellow canisters, this time twisted from an explosion.

Eliot Higgins, a British-based researcher who trawls daily through online videos of Syria’s civil war to verify weapons in them, said that these “chlorine bombs” have similar features to improvised barrel bombs the army has used in the war.

He said one bomb from Kafr Zeita shows metal rods, consistent with other large government barrel bomb designs, to hold the impact fuse plate in place.

Another video of an exploded barrel bomb shows a canister inside the barrel, which has fins on the back and what appear to be explosives around the top of the canister with a detonation cord.

“The interesting thing about these new videos is that there’s the same blue det cord you see in other DIY barrel bombs,” Higgins said.

Hundreds of videos confirm barrel bombs have been dropped from helicopters. Rebels have access to large rockets and missiles but there has never been a case reported of the opposition using air-dropped munitions nor commandeering a helicopter.

GREY AREA

A United Nations inquiry found in December that chemical weapons were likely used in five attacks in 2013, although it did not apportion blame. The nerve agent sarin was likely used in four of the five attacks, the inquiry found.

The OPCW mission to extract Assad’s chemicals has been mired by delays and inconsistencies. On Thursday, Reuters reported that Syria had submitted a “more specific” list of its chemical weapons to the OPCW after discrepancies were reported by inspectors on the ground, officials said.

Although it not public, officials have said the list includes more than 500 tonnes of highly toxic chemical weapons, such as sulphur mustard and precursors for the poisonous gas sarin, as well as more than 700 tonnes of bulk industrial chemicals.

The OPCW, which is overseeing the destruction with the United Nations, has taken an inventory of the chemicals and facilities Syria reported to the joint mission, but has not looked into whether the list may have been incomplete.

“Chlorine has a host of commercial uses. Actually, it’s not very toxic. Sarin is probably 2,000 to 3,000 times more toxic. You and I can buy chlorine in a shop,” chemical weapons specialist De Bretton-Gordon said.

This makes it a grey area, he said, as industrial-use chlorine in canisters – which is what these bombs appear to be – is not strictly a chemical weapon until it is used as one.

Nevertheless, he says, “the OPCW and others have been frankly naive.” (Additional reporting by Anthony Deutsch in The Hague, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations and Reuters TV; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Swell, Eric Holder had Email Aliases Too

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It is an epidemic in government, all kinds of powerbrokers in the Federal government are using alias emails. The very agency bound to enforce law and the very top lawyer at the agency, the Department of Justice, is in violation himself.

There is a U.S. Criminal Code where government business transactions including emails, text messages, photos, documents and more belong to the Federal government, not the individual. This must be certified upon leaving office and Eric Holder has tendered his resignation. There is a separation notice (Form OF; 109) under penalty of perjury that all materials are turned over.

Per Shannen Coffin, lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson LLP:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) adopted regulations in 1995 which required the preservation of official e-mails created on non-official accounts. The Archivist interpreted the Federal Records Act to apply to e-mail records and further provided that “[a]gencies with access to external electronic mail systems shall ensure that federal records sent or received on these systems are preserved in the appropriate recordkeeping system . . .” So as early as 1995, all federal agencies were required to preserve official e-mails, including those created or maintained on “external electronic mail systems.” Later NARA regulations merely clarified this requirement. In 2009, after a Government Accountability Office report indicated that certain agencies had lax e-mail practices, the NARA adopted new regulations that provided that any emails created on private e-mail accounts must be preserved. But that regulation merely restated, in perhaps slightly different language, what the 1995 regulation had already mandated, requiring that “[a]gencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.” More here.

Eric Holder Used Email Aliases. DOJ Says It Wasn’t A Transparency Dodge.

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder has used three email aliases to conduct government business over the past six years, a Justice Department official revealed Tuesday.

All three email aliases, including the one Holder currently uses, are official Justice Department addresses on the @usdoj.gov domain, the official told The Huffington Post. Holder has used the aliases to prevent spam and to keep his inbox from being overwhelmed by the public, not to avoid transparency, the official said. The addresses were known to DOJ officials handling Freedom of Information Act requests and congressional inquiries, according to the official.

“The Attorney General uses a Justice Department email address to conduct official business. As with many Cabinet officials, he does not use his given name in the handle of his email address,” Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement. “This practice is similar to using initials or numbers in an email address and helps guard against security risks and prevent his inbox from being needlessly inundated. It does not in any way impact compliance with FOIA requests. The Attorney General’s email address is known to the individuals who process FOIA requests, and his emails are regularly produced, albeit with his exact address redacted.”

Holder’s first alias, Henry Yearwood, was a combination of his mother’s maiden name and the first name of another family member. His second alias, David Kendricks, came from the names of two members of the Temptations: singers David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks.

Fallon, who described Holder’s choice of email addresses as “soulful,” declined to provide Holder’s third and current email alias, but said it is based on the name of an athlete.

The aliases were changed twice over Holder’s tenure, once when the email address was accidentally exposed by another federal agency responding to a FOIA request.

The email practices of top officials in the Obama administration have come under increased scrutiny due to Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email as secretary of state. Former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson pointed to indications that Holder used an email alias in a recent post on The Daily Signal. Attkisson noted that the names associated with Holder’s email address were redacted in documents disclosed by the Justice Department, with his name replaced by “Attorney General.”

Many high-ranking government officials use email addresses that are not readily available to the general public. Lisa Jackson, for example, came under scrutiny for using an email alias during her tenure as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Although an EPA Inspector General report found a lack of internal agency controls for identifying such email addresses, it found no evidence the practice was intended to dodge federal record-keeping rules.

Could Loretta Lynch Decide Hillary’s Fate?

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Truth be known, Hillary was ONLY allowed to use a specially designed Blackberry as was the policy at the State Department. But lil miss Hillary admitted to finessing that policy by also using an iPhone, iPad, and other tablets. She is shown here in her own words.

It must be included in this EmailGate affair as the Clinton server resides in their home in New York which is currently under the legal jurisdiction of AG Loretta Lynch and she is slate to be confirmed next week by the Senate to replace the now resigned U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Lynch is a legal protective firewall of the White House and all government employees, so Hillary’s fate could necessarily be placed in the lap of Loretta Lynch, which means that Hillary could be on the good receiving end of the Department of IN-Justice.

So this begins to add more gasoline to the fire and more comes out where it could be that Hillary committed a felony. Everyone at the State Department assigned directly to Hillary’s inner circle knew about her exclusive email server and private emails. This server should be considered either a proxy server under the ownership of the State Department and hence part of official government property or it could be called an alias server still part of government property. It would be also prudent at this juncture to ask who else uses private emails….alas that of Lisa Jackson the formerly of the EPA and are there other alias servers out there as well. Digressing….

One of the defenses that Hillary Clinton offered at yesterday’s press conference was that she had complied with federal records laws because those laws leave it up to her, as the employee who created or received an e-mail, to decide whether that e-mail must be preserved under the Federal Records Act. But while Clinton is correct that every employee has to make some initial determination of whether a particular document is an official “record,” the ultimate determination is most definitely not up to the employee, but rather to the agency and its records-management officials. Bear with me through some bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo for a moment, because the payoff is pretty significant. That Mrs. Clinton is not the ultimate arbiter of whether her records must be preserved is made very clear in the Department of State’s own records-management manual. Under a provision titled “Removal Procedures,” the manual sets forth the process that each Department of State employee must go through upon separation (i.e., resignation or retirement) from the department. In addition to relinquishing classified materials, all employees are required to clear the removal of any unclassified materials through records-management officials.

First, the “departing official or a staff member must prepare an inventory of personal papers and nonrecord materials proposed for removal.” The departing official must then “request a review of the materials proposed for removal.” Lest Mrs. Clinton claim she was not subject to this rule, the manual provides that this review process is specifically required for “Presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate.” The purpose of this independent review by records officials (as opposed to simply accepting the say-so of the departing official) is “to certify that the documentary materials proposed for removal may be removed without diminishing the official records of the Department; violating national security, privacy or other restrictions on disclosure; or exceeding normal administrative economies.” The process “generally requires a hands-on examination of the materials to verify the accuracy of the inventory.” (5 FAH-4 H-217.2(b)). Finally, there is a formal certification by the State Department records official authorizing the employee to remove the documents from State’s custody: “Once the reviewing official is satisfied that documentary materials proposed for removal comply with Federal law and regulations the reviewing official completes Form DS-1904, Authorization for the Removal of Personal Papers and Non-Record Materials, and forwards the form and the inventory to the Department of State records officer.” These “nonrecord materials” may be removed only “when authorized by the Department and only to the extent that their removal does not: (1) Diminish the official records of the Department; (2) Violate confidentiality required by national security, privacy or other restrictions on disclosure (e.g., commercial or financial information, personnel files or investigative records); (3) Exceed normal administrative economies.” Despite her repeated protestations at yesterday’s press conference that she followed all applicable rules, it is pellucid that she did not. Mrs. Clinton plainly did not just remove personal e-mails without clearing that removal with records officials; she also did not even return official records. Her defense now is that returning the documents two years later is good enough. But the same records manual emphatically rebuts that post-hoc justification. The department’s records manual requires that departing officials “must ensure that all record material that they possess is incorporated in the Department’s official files and that all file searches for which they have been tasked have been completed, such as those required to respond to FOIA, Congressional, or litigation-related document requests.” And lest the employee not get the message, the manual adds that “fines, imprisonment, or both may be imposed for the willful and unlawful removal or destruction of records as stated in the U.S. Criminal Code (e.g., 18 U.S.C., section 2071).” I have already discussed here the question of whether Mrs. Clinton may have violated that criminal prohibition on willful concealment of government records, and the evidence to date — especially her disclosure yesterday that she deleted any document that she determined to be personal in nature (without permission of the Department under the records-removal guidelines) — suggests a strong possibility that she did. But might she have lied to department records officials when she separated from service? The department’s records manual (5 FAH-4 H-217.1(a)) requires that records officials “remind[] all officials, about to leave the Department or a post, of the requirements for the removal of personal papers and nonrecord materials.” Critically, the department enforces “compliance with these procedures for the removal of documentary materials prior to execution of the Separation Statement (Form OF-109).” And what is Form OF-109? It is a formal separation statement, in which the departing official certifies the return of any classified materials, and, more relevant for present purposes, that the departing official has “surrendered to responsible officials all unclassified documents, and papers relating to the official business of the Government acquired by me while in the employ of the Department.” The form makes very clear that a false statement in the certification is punishable as a crime, including under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which makes it a crime to knowingly and willfully falsify or conceal facts in statements made to federal agencies concerning a matter within its jurisdiction. According to the department’s procedures, then, every departing official is required to certify the return of all government documents under penalty of law. Did Hillary Clinton sign such a certification upon her separation from government? Did she knowingly swear that she had returned all records, when in fact she had retained at least 55,000 pages of official e-mails (and perhaps more)? And if she did not sign such a certification, why not? Every other departing employee and official of the State Department is required to do so. Did she ignore her obligations to return the records and thus avoid a false certification? It seems that the one document in all of this that we need to see, if it exists, is Hillary Clinton’s Form OF-109.
**** Get some popcorn, there is more…

Besides exclusively using a secret email account to conduct official government business, it’s likely that Hillary Clinton also used unauthorized electronic equipment—an iPad and an iPhone—as Secretary of State after being warned not to, a veteran State Department official told Judicial Watch this week.

On at least half a dozen occasions Clinton’s top aides asked the State Department’s Office of Security Technology to approve the use of an iPad and iPhone, according to JW’s inside source. Each time the request was rejected for security reasons, the source confirms. The only mobile device that meets the agency’s security standards is the BlackBerry, JW’s source said, adding that the Office of Security Technology—Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s Directorate  of Countermeasures must approve all equipment such as cameras, phones and communication devices for all officials.

Evidently set on using the popular Apple devices, Clinton repeatedly challenged the ban and asked management in the Office of Security Technology to allow their use. The executive secretariat responsible for all communications and information technology always rejected the requests, JW’s source affirms. “From day one Hillary was trying to get the iPhone and the iPad approved,” the State Department official told JW. “She kept trying and trying to get us to approve the iPhone and the iPad, but we wouldn’t do it. Technology security experts tested the iPhone and the iPad several times because she constantly wanted them approved, but it never happened.”

The longtime State Department employee reveals that it’s common knowledge among government security tech experts that Apple devices don’t meet strict security standards so agency insiders were puzzled that the Secretary of State was hell-bent on using them. “There was a lot of head-scratching,” JW’s source revealed. Every State Department employee goes through a rigorous security training that includes strict warnings about using non approved equipment or personal email like Clinton did throughout her tenure as the president’s chief foreign affairs officer, the agency insider said.

Clinton’s persistent efforts to persuade the State Department’s technology security experts to approve the use of her favorite Apple devices led those in the division to conclude that she did in fact go through with it. “My guess is she did it and wanted approval after the fact,” JW’s source said. “But no waivers were ever issued.” JW reached out to the State Department for a comment on this latest potential scandal surrounding its former leader, but failed to get a response.

In the meantime, JW has launched a full-scale investigation into Clinton’s secret email system and has filed a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that will likely end up being litigated in federal court. Prior to the email scandal JW already had nearly a dozen active lawsuits in federal court that could be affected by Clinton and her staff’s use of secret email accounts to conduct official government business. Among them is a public-records request for communications between the former Secretary of State and her Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin with Nagla Mahmoud, wife of ousted Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi.