Add this to the Huma Abedin Anthony Weiner List

Posted on October 19, 2015October 19, 2015 by Denise Simon

About Huma and Anthony:

Looking at Ms. Abedin’s mother and her relationship to the Dar Al-Hekma College, it is interesting to note that the college was founded in September, 1999, on the advice of the Austin based Texas International Education Consortium.

The TIEC, an international, private, non-profit corporation founded in 1985, works with 32 public universities in Texas and is very influential in the development of cooperation programs between international universities.

Since its inception, Dar Al-Hekma College has counted on the blessing of Saudi Arabia’s ruling elite. The King, the crown prince, and one of King Fahd’s wives, Princess Al-Jowhara bint Ibrahim Al-Ibrahim, attended the school’s graduation ceremonies in 2005.

Arabic-speaking Huma returned to the US to attend George Washington University, earning an internship at the White House, a coveted and prestigious position for the children of the powerful and the rich in America. Her internship put her to work in the office of the First Lady.

That internship lead to Huma’s present position, working at the U.S. State Department for Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. There she is often singled out not only as an employee, but as a trusted friend of the powerful Clinton family.

Less than a year ago, in July 2010, Huma Abedin married Jewish U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY).

Attesting to the strength of her relationship with the Clintons, former President William J. Clinton officiated at the ceremony. Not unlike President Obama, the Clintons, as well as powerful politicos such as George Soros, are devotes of Saul Alinksy, who is considered “the founder of modern Community Organizing.” From my position, I clearly see that the actions of this group signal their socialist agenda, which includes domination of the U.S. by a Muslim ruled world.

According to emails obtained by Judicial Watch, Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin did not provide all of the legally-required information to obtain her Special Government Employee (SGE) status at the State Department, failing to give over details about her husband Anthony Weiner’s financial history.

Breitbart: Abedin had top secret clearance as part of her SGE status by March 20, 2012, which allowed her to work simultaneously for the State Department and also the Clinton-linked private consulting firm Teneo Holdings. Emails recently obtained by Judicial Watch indicate that Abedin did not properly apply for SGE status.

More than two months later, on June 5, 2012, State Department Financial Disclosures Chief Sarah Taylor emailed two of her colleagues complaining that Abedin did not give over the needed information to obtain SGE status.

“Her termination report is Incomplete, Schedule B, Part I and II were left blank,” Taylor wrote.

Schedule C, Part II was left blank. I hope she provided all of her spouse’s assets. Marcella I believe told him, either Huma or her husband called her yesterday indicating there were more assets. The documents I have do not have the income information, only the value information. What was her date of termination? She needs to be aware her termination report will be going up on a DOS website for the public to view and it must be accurate.

Abedin failed to fill out the OGE Executive Branch personnel disclosure forms as it applied to “any purchase, sale, or exchange by you, your spouse, or dependent children during the reporting period of any real property, stocks, bonds, commodity futures, and other securities when the amount of the transaction exceeded $1,000,” as well as “Gifts, Reimbursements, and Travel Expenses. For you, your spouse and dependent children.”

Abedin also failed to “Report your agreements or arrangements for: (1) continuing participation in an employee benefit plan (e.g. pension, 401k, deferred compensation); continuation of payment by a former employer (including severance payments); (3) leaves of absence; and (4) future employment.”

Abedin’s husband Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 following a sexting scandal and has since worked for a public affairs firm.

Abedin, meanwhile, worked as an adviser for Teneo in late 2012, helping to recruit State Department adviser Ken Miller to the private firm while she was on an official trip with Secretary Clinton.

Never Before in History Now the Doomsday Supply

Posted on October 19, 2015October 19, 2015 by Denise Simon

It boils down to Syria, the failed policy to control Bashir al Assad or remove him when the 5 year civil war has caused a global crisis. A country that once had a population of more than 20 million, today, an estimated 11 million Syrians are no longer in their home country. The crisis? The United Nations and member countries are out of money and resources to aid and provide humanitarian support for refugees any where they are located.

The United States as the historic world’s equalizer, failed to act in Syria for up to now 5 years….shameful as the consequences are worldwide and deaths are reported to be approaching 300,000 if not more.

The decision was made last month with no fanfare to break into the Doomsday inventory.

Arctic ‘Doomsday Vault’ opens to retrieve vital seeds for Syria

Svalbard, Norway (CNN)Humanity has had to cash in on its insurance policy earlier than expected.

Deep in the side of a mountain in the Arctic archipelago is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Known as the “Doomsday Vault,” this seed bank — operated by the Norwegian government and containing a seed of just about every known crop in the world — is meant to be humanity’s backup in the event of a catastrophe that devastates crops.

But it was not a natural disaster that has caused scientists to have to dip in and make the first significant withdrawal from the vault. Rather, it was the most preventable of man-made disasters — war.

The bloody conflict in Syria has left scientists at an important gene bank in Aleppo — where new strains of drought- and heat-resistant wheat have been developed over time — unable to continue their work in recent years.

Now, with no sign of conditions in Syria improving, scientists have begun recovering their critical inventory of seeds, sourced from around the Fertile Crescent and beyond, that have been in safekeeping beneath the Arctic ice.

The seeds are being planted at new facilities in Lebanon and Morocco, allowing scientists to resume the important research they’ve been doing for decades, away from the barrel bombs of Aleppo.

READ: Syrian war forces first ‘Doomsday Vault’ withdrawal

An important storehouse in the Fertile Crescent

The gene bank in Aleppo, run by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, is one of the most important in the world and includes more than 135,000 varieties of wheat, fava bean, lentil and chickpea crops, as well as the world’s most valuable barley collection.

“These are land races that were inherited from our grand-grandparents, most of them are unfortunately extinct now,” ICARDA Director General Mahmoud El-Solh said. “And this is where the cradle of agriculture (was)10,000 years ago. In this part of the world, many of the important crops were domesticated from the wild to cultivation.”

ICARDA representative Thanos Tsivelikas, who is overseeing the withdrawal from the vault, describes the operation as “a rescue mission; these seeds cannot be replaced.”

The ICARDA Aleppo center had sent nearly 80% of the seeds and samples to the Global Seed Vault as a backup by 2012, with its last deposit being in 2014.

And now, Solh and his ICARDA team have the challenge of keeping and reproducing one of humanity’s most important collections of food crop genetic lines.

Moved to neighboring Lebanon

Relocated to Lebanon, Solh opens the door to a vault on the Agricultural Research and Educational Center of the American University of Beirut campus in the Bekaa Valley. This is where the seeds ICARDA received back from Svalbard are housed.

Solh carefully shakes out a few wisps of what looks like wheat from a brown envelope. It is the plant from which the wheat we eat today originated 10 millennia ago.

“This is a source of desirable traits including drought tolerance, including heat tolerance, including resistance to disease and so forth. So this had lived through natural selection for over hundreds of years,” he said.

A 10-minute drive away and just across the mountain range from Syria, a new vault is being built by ICARDA.

To begin replenishing the stock, there are greenhouses nearby where the seeds will be planted, grown and reproduced. Once restocked, the seeds will once again become available for researchers and other seed vaults.

A parallel project is being set up in Morocco to ensure that humanity always has access to this irreplaceable cache of genetic material.

“Two-thirds of material is coming from dry areas which … are adapted to very harsh environments and have desirable traits” for drought, heat, cold, salinity and pests, Solh said.

Researchers are looking at ways to improve food crops with existing and extinct-in-nature genetic lines that are more adapted to the challenges that may lie ahead with global warming.

The answers could very well be in these specific seeds harvested from a specific moment in time. “This variety could help us adapt to climate change,” Solh said, holding up a small fava bean.

“You know that climate change is a reality and climate change is changing the whole environment in terms of more drought, hotter environments and even new diseases.”

ICARDA and others know that the past could very well contain the key to our future, though no one thought they would see such a mass withdrawal in their lifetime.

Server-Gate or Deep Throat Part 2?

Posted on October 19, 2015October 19, 2015 by Denise Simon

Hillary says often that the State Department gave her permission to use a private server and email. Think about that, who at State did that? She was HEAD of the State Dept, so did she give herself permission? C’mon….

Then there is the excuse that everyone does it so it must be okay right?

State Department’s Cybersecurity Weakened Under Hillary Clinton

From 2011 to 2014, the State Department’s poor cybersecurity was identified by the inspector general as a “significant deficiency.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department was among the worst agencies in the federal government at protecting its computer networks while Hillary Rodham Clinton was secretary from 2009 to 2013, a situation that continued to deteriorate as John Kerry took office and Russian hackers breached the department’s email system, according to independent audits and interviews.

The State Department’s compliance with federal cybersecurity standards was below average when Clinton took over but grew worse in each year of her tenure, according to an annual report card compiled by the White House based on audits by agency watchdogs. Network security continued to slip after Kerry replaced Clinton in February 2013, and remains substandard, according to the State Department inspector general.

In each year from 2011 to 2014, the State Department’s poor cybersecurity was identified by the inspector general as a “significant deficiency” that put the department’s information at risk. The latest assessment is due to be published in a few weeks.

Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has been criticized for her use of a private email server for official business while she was secretary of state. Her private email address also was the recipient of malware linked to Russia, and her server was hit with malware from China, South Korea and Germany. The FBI is investigating whether her home server was breached.

State Department officials don’t dispute the compliance shortcomings identified in years of internal audits, but argue that the audits paint a distorted picture of their cybersecurity, which they depict as solid and improving. They strongly disagree with the White House ranking that puts them behind most other government agencies. Senior department officials in charge of cybersecurity would speak only on condition of anonymity. More here.

With Jake Tapper, Hillary laughed at this scandal…a weird moment in that interview.

Observer: Hillary Clinton emerged from Tuesday night’s inaugural Democratic debate in Las Vegas the clear leader in her party’s field. As Democrats attempt to hold onto the White House in 2016, polling demonstrated a revitalized Hillary campaign, which had been in the doldrums for months due to the ongoing scandal about her misuse of email as Secretary of State.

Mounting talk of Vice President Joe Biden entering the race–to take the place of an ailing Hillary–has dissipated in the wake of the debate, where Ms. Clinton dismissed the email issues as Republican-driven political theater. That Senator Bernie Sanders vigorously backed Ms. Clinton on the point helped her cause, as did her brusque dismissal of Lincoln Chafee’s efforts to raise the issue again, which got raucous applause from the crowd.

It’s evident the Democratic base agrees with Ms. Clinton that her emails are just GOP theatrics. President Obama reflected the sentiment in an interview with 60 Minutes airing two days before the debate, during which he allowed that Secretary Clinton had “made a mistake” with her email but it “is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”

Though the White House soon walked back on some of the president’s statements, which seemed to many to be inappropriate West Wing commentary regarding an ongoing FBI investigation, it’s apparent that the Clinton campaign and the Obama team have united around a message: this issue is fundamentally contrived by Republicans, and is certainly not a threat of any kind to national security.

Democrats unsurprisingly find this take congenial, but it’s less clear if other Americans consider it persuasive. Naturally, Republicans view Ms. Clinton’s email activities with a great deal of suspicion, but recent polls show even independents have concerns regarding EmailGate and Ms. Clinton’s honesty. While the Clinton camp is now confident the email problems will likely not bar her party’s nomination next summer, the issue may loom larger in the race for the White House next fall.

There’s also the matter of exactly what the FBI is investigating. Recent revelations hint that the compromising of classified information on Ms. Clinton’s “private” email and server was more serious than originally believed. While earlier reports indicated only a small percentage of the sensitive information that “spilled over” onto Ms. Clinton’s personal email was highly classified at the Top Secret level, that may be only a small portion of what was potentially compromised.

Particularly disturbing is the report that one of the “personal” emails Ms. Clinton forwarded included the name of a top CIA asset in Libya, who was identified as such. The source of this information was Tyler Drumheller, a retired senior CIA operations officer, who served as a sort of one-man private spy agency for Sid Blumenthal, the Clintons’ close family friend and factotum whose sometimes long-winded emails, particularly regarding Libya, have generated much of the controversy behind EmailGate.

Mr. Drumheller became a fleeting hero to liberals with his resistance to George W. Bush’s White House over skewed intelligence behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but he was never particularly popular at CIA and he left Langley under something of a cloud. His emails to Mr. Blumenthal, which were forwarded to Ms. Clinton, were filled with espionage-flavored information about events in Libya. In many cases, Mr. Drumheller’s reports were formatted to look exactly like actual CIA reports, including attribution to named foreign intelligence agencies. How much of this was factual versus Mr. Drumheller embellishing his connections is unclear.

What is abundantly clear is that the true name of an identified CIA asset is a highly classified fact and intentionally revealing it is a Federal crime, which Mr. Drumheller, a career spy, had to know. Why he compromised this person who was secretly helping the United States – possibly endangering his life in the process — may never be known because Mr. Drumheller conveniently died of cancer in early August.

Libya may have a great deal to worry about since new information continues to show just how slipshod Ms. Clinton’s security measures were for her “private” server. That Ms. Clinton’s server experienced multiple cyber-attacks from abroad, including by Russians, does not inspire confidence that any classified information stored in her emails remained in American hands.

To make matters worse, a recent investigation by the Associated Press demonstrates that even relatively low-skill hackers could have hacked Hillary’s unencrypted server, which was left vulnerable to exposure on the open Internet to a degree that cyber-warriors find difficult to believe. “Were they drunk?” a senior NSA official asked me after reading the AP report. “Anybody could have been inside that server – anybody,” he added.

Since the communications of any Secretary of State are highly sought after by dozens of intelligence agencies worldwide – a reality expressed by Secretary John Kerry recently when he said it’s “very likely” the Russians and Chinese are reading his email, a view that any veteran spy would endorse – Ms. Clinton putting her emails at such risk means they have to be assumed to be compromised. If the more skilled state-connected hackers in Russia can fool even NSA these days, they could have gotten into Hillary’s unprotected server without breaking a sweat.

This makes Mr. Obama’s quip that EmailGate represents no threat to American national security all the more puzzling in its dishonesty. Unsurprisingly, some at the FBI are not pleased the president made this pronouncement before the Bureau completed its investigation. “We got the message,” an FBI agent at the Washington Field Office, which is spearheading the EmailGate case, explained: “Obama’s not subtle sometimes.”

In 2012, while the FBI was investigating CIA director David Petraeus for mishandling classified information, Mr. Obama similarly dismissed the national security implications of the case at a press conference. Although FBI director James Comey pressed for serious charges against Mr. Petraeus, the White House demurred and the Department of Justice allowed him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, sentenced to probation with no jail time.

Some at the FBI were displeased by this leniency and felt Mr. Obama showed his hand to the public early, compromising the Bureau’s investigation. Is the same happening with Ms. Clinton? It’s too soon to say, though the anger of some at the FBI has seeped into the media already. Comments to tabloids reflect the widespread frustration and fear among federal law enforcement and intelligence circles that Mr. Obama will let Ms. Clinton skate free from EmailGate.

For now, the FBI is pursuing its investigation with diligence, bringing other intelligence agencies into the case, and recent reports indicate that specific provisions of the Espionage Act are being re-read carefully, particularly regarding “gross negligence” – which may be the most appropriate charge that Ms. Clinton or members of her inner circle could face.

It will be weeks, even months, before the FBI’s investigation concludes and the Department of Justice has to decide whether any of the events surrounding EmailGate reach the threshold of prosecution. Many in the FBI and the Intelligence Community suspect the fix is already inside the West Wing to prevent that from happening, but it’s still early in this investigation.

It can be expected that if the White House blocks Hillary’s prosecution during the election campaign, leaks will commence with a vengeance. “Is there another Mark Felt out there, waiting?” asked a retired senior FBI official. “There usually is,” he added with a wry smile, citing the top Bureau official who, frustrated by the antics of the Nixon White House, became the notorious “Deep Throat”who leaked the dirty backstory to Watergate to the Washington, DC, media.

Mr. Obama and the Clinton camp should be advised to be careful about who they throw under the bus in this town.

Hacking of Dow Jones and CIA Director?

Posted on October 19, 2015October 19, 2015 by Denise Simon

Out of control…exactly where are the upgrades to all government systems to prevent hacking further…what about those pesky personal email accounts that continue to pop up with classified material?

Heh….so Barack Obama takes an opportunity several weeks ago when the Chinese President was in town to say stop hacking us…or did he?

In part from WashingtonFreeBeacon: A U.S. cybersecurity firm that works with the government has evidence that Chinese government-linked hackers violated the cyber agreement reached between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping less than a month ago.

The Wall Street Journal reported that CrowdStrike Inc. will announce Monday that some of its customers fell victim to unsuccessful cyber attacks that violated the leaders’ Sept. 25 agreement to stop state-sponsored cyber attacks on companies for commercial gain.

According to the firm, customers from the technology and pharmaceutical industries that will remain unnamed were targeted by hackers linked to the Chinese government. A pair of hacking attempts occurred on the days before and after Obama hosted Jinping for a state dinner at the White House during which the leaders reached the agreement. Other attempted hacks continued through October.

The Obama administration is “aware” of the report from CrowdStrike.

“We are aware of this report. We’ll decline comment on its specific conclusions. We have and will continue to directly raise our concerns regarding cybersecurity with the Chinese,” a senior administration official stated.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted last month that he did not have confidence that the deal between Obama and Jinping would stop China from launching cyber attacks on U.S. businesses.

*** So who exactly nailed the Director of the CIA, John Brennan? Well a Palestinian sympathizer who is a ‘stoner’. (No pun intended)

Teen stoner says he hacked CIA director’s AOL account

From NYPost: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email scandal didn’t stop the head of the CIA from using his own personal AOL account to stash work-related documents, according to a stoner high school student who claims to have hacked into them.

CIA Director John Brennan’s private account held sensitive files — including his 47-page application for top-secret security clearance — until he recently learned that it had been infiltrated, the hacker told The Post.

Other emails stored in Brennan’s non-government account contained the Social Security numbers and personal information of more than a dozen top American intelligence officials, as well as a government letter about the use of “harsh interrogation techniques” on terrorism suspects, according to the hacker.

The FBI and other federal agencies are now investigating the hacker, with one source saying criminal charges are possible, law enforcement sources said.

“I think they’ll want to make an example out of him to deter people from doing this in the future,” said a source who described the situation as “just wild” and “crazy.”

“I can’t believe he did this to the head of the CIA,’’ the source added. “[The] problem with these older-generation guys is that they don’t know anything about cybersecurity, and as you can see, it can be problematic.”

In a series of phone conversations with The Post, the hacker described himself as an American high school student who is not Muslim and was motivated by opposition to US foreign policy and support for Palestine.

He wouldn’t reveal his name or say where he lived but made good on a promise to tweet “CWA owns John Brennan of the CIA” as a means of verifying his control over the @phphax Twitter account.

He explained “CWA” stood for “Crackas With Attitude,” which he said referred to him and a classmate with whom he smokes pot.

The hacker contacted The Post last week to brag about his exploits, which include posting some of the stolen documents and a portion of Brennan’s contact list on Twitter. The hacker’s Twitter page includes the Muslim Shahada creed, which translates as, “There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

He said the stolen documents were stored as attachments to about 40 emails that he read after breaking into Brennan’s account on Oct. 12, more than six months after the controversy erupted over Clinton’s use of a private computer server to handle emails while serving as secretary of state.

The hacker said he used a tactic called “social engineering” that involved tricking workers at Verizon into providing Brennan’s personal information and duping AOL into resetting his password.

Brennan’s account was disabled as of Friday, he said.

He claimed he has repeatedly prank-called America’s top spy since August, once reciting Brennan’s Social Security number to him.

“He waited a tiny bit and hung up,” the hacker said.

And he also got into the online Comcast account of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and posted a redacted screenshot of a billing page. He claimed that he listened to Johnson’s voicemails.

In a statement, the CIA said: “We are aware of the reports that have surfaced on social media and have referred the matter to the appropriate authorities.”

*** Then to Dow Jones….

Bloomberg states that the ongoing investigation conducted by US authorities was probing allegations that there is a Russian gang behind the Dow Jones hack.

Dow Jones has provided further information on the data breach that the company has recently suffered.

A week ago, the CEO of Dow Jones & Co disclosed the incident confirming that 3,500 people were affected.

The Dow Jones firm confirmed it discovered unauthorized access to its customer payment system that occurred between August 2012 and July 2015.

The investigators believe that the attackers were searching for contact information of current and former Dow Jones subscribers, whom records include name, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.

“As part of the investigation to date, we also determined that payment card and contact information for fewer than 3,500 individuals could have been accessed, although we have discovered no direct evidence that information was stolen. We are sending those individuals a letter in the mail with more information about the support we are offering. If you do not receive such a letter, we have no indication that your financial information was involved,” the letter states published by the Dow Jones Chief Executive William Lewis .

Yesterday Bloomberg reported that the ongoing investigation conducted by the FBI, US financial watchdog the SEC, and America’s Secret Service were probing allegations that there is a Russian criminal ring behind the attack. According to the investigators, the Russian gang was financially motivated, the hackers search for unpublished financial data and news articles and press releases from the Dow Jones computers to get an edge on the market. Attackers are now stealing sensitive information and selling it to traders and operators in the industry.

“A group of Russian hackers infiltrated the servers of Dow Jones & Co., owner of the Wall Street Journal and several other news publications, and stole information to trade on before it became public, according to four people familiar with the matter.” states Bloomberg Business.

But Cohen is a Democrat!

Posted on October 18, 2015October 18, 2015 by Denise Simon

Has anyone attempted to look deeper at Trump’s team? We have a duty to look at all the candidates and their team. Earlier today on this site, we learned some peculiar details on Dr. Ben Carson.

Donald Trump’s Political ‘Pit Bull’: Meet Michael Cohen

By Michael Falcone April 16, 2011

The man behind Donald Trump’s possible 2012 presidential campaign is a registered Democrat who voted for Barack Obama in 2008.

Not only that, but Michael Cohen, an executive at the Trump Organization who doubles as Trump’s chief political adviser, once volunteered for 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and worked for a Democratic member of Congress.

This election cycle is different. Late last year, Cohen co-founded the draft Trump website “Should Trump Run?” It has received more than 830,000 hits.

Cohen, 44, is known around the office — and around New York — as Trump’s “pit bull.” Some have even nicknamed him “Tom,” a reference to Tom Hagen, the consigliore to Vito Corleone in the “Godfather” movies.

“It means that if somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit,” Cohen said in an interview with ABC News. “If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished.”

But since Obama’s election in 2008, he said he has grown disappointed with the president, so much so that he now describes himself as “offended” by the administration’s agenda. America, Cohen said, has become a “third-world nation,” echoing words that have become a familiar refrain of Trump’s.

“I thought it was the greatest thing ever,” Cohen said he felt during the first months of the Obama presidency. “This fantastic orator was going to make a change in this country. He was going to do things that Bush clearly did not do.”

His distaste for Obama, and Trump’s professed interest in pursuing the Republican nomination in 2012, led Cohen, businessman Stewart Rahr and other supporters to create “Should Trump Run?” as a way both to spark — and gauge — interest in a potential Trump presidential bid.

A lawyer by training, Cohen is Trump’s special counsel and a juggler of people and projects. One minute he’s on the phone with a reporter, the next he’s giving orders to an assistant, and a moment later he’s finalizing a deal on another line — and frequently, he’s doing all three at once.

Donald Trump’s ‘Pit Bull’

With Trump stoking new speculation about his political ambitions every day, Cohen said “the phones have not stopped ringing, the fax machine is off the hook” and his email inbox is clogged. More than a few of those messages have to do with the issue that has catapulted Trump into the headlines recently — birtherism.

“I am certain that the president was born in Hawaii — I really am,” Cohen said. “I am most irritated with the fact that this president has been exceptionally secretive when it relates to any personal documentation about his past. If you run on a platform of transparency, you should be transparent.”

Cohen was the aide who flew to Iowa in a private plane bearing Trump’s logo to meet with Republican operatives there in March. He said he may make a similar trip to another crucial early nominating state — New Hampshire — in the weeks to come.

Roger Stone, a Republican consultant known for his controversial brand of politics, is long-time Trump associate and a cheerleader for his presidential run (albeit without Trump’s blessing). In an interview with ABC News, Stone described Cohen as a “nice guy” and an “enthusiast” but lacking the political expertise to manage the growing interest in Trump candidacy.

“If you need brain surgery, you go to a brain surgeon,” Stone said. “You don’t go to a dentist.”

A case in point, Stone said, was Cohen’s one-day Iowa trip that led to questions about his role as both a Trump Organization employee and a promoter of his boss’s potential presidential campaign — questions that he sought to answer by stating unequivocally that the trip and the website were paid for, not with any of Trump’s money, but out of pockets of Cohen and Rahr, who made a fortune in the pharmaceutical industry.

Still, the trip triggered a complaint to the Federal Election Commission by a supporter of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who alleged that the trip violated election law.

Cohen may be new to presidential politics, but he’s not a total novice. In 2003 he briefly became a Republican to run for a New York City Council seat at the request of then-Gov. George Pataki. He lost that race to Democrat Eva Moskovitz by a wide margin. In 2009, he started a short-lived campaign for a New York State Senate seat, but dropped out of the race after a just a few weeks.

Michael Cohen and Donald Trump

By all indications, he and Rahr have more than enough personal wealth to finance the independent effort urging Trump to run. Cohen owns several residences in Trump buildings, including a home at Trump World Tower at United Nations Plaza, and Trump Park Avenue, just blocks from Central Park. His parents and in-laws have also invested in Trump properties in New York and Florida.

“Michael Cohen has great insight into the real estate market,” Trump said of Cohen in a 2007 New York Post interview. “He has invested in my buildings because he likes to make money — and he does.”

The feeling is mutual.

“I think the world of him,” Cohen said of the billionaire real estate and reality television mogul who has said he will decide sometime before June whether to run for president. “I respect him as a businessman, and I respect him as a boss.”

The two talk regularly — “I speak to him even more than I did before,” Cohen said — and he has spearheaded a variety of projects for Trump, including sealing a business partnership in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, running a mixed martial arts promotion company called Affliction Entertainment and a firm that turns landfills into golf courses.

Cohen, whose position allows him to play at any of Trump’s courses around the world, describes himself as a “decent” golfer and an avid tennis player. Much like Trump’s, his circle of acquaintances include political leaders, actors and “super high net worth people,” as Cohen calls them.

He only wears Dolce & Gabbana suits and Hermes ties. Even when he was a legislative intern for former Congressman Joe Moakley, a Massachusetts Democrat, Cohen says he was “always dressed to the hilt.”

“It’s very, very surreal,” Cohen told ABC News. “I’ve been admiring Donald trump since I was in high school.” (He said that when he was a young man he read Trump’s 1987 book, “The Art of The Deal” cover to cover — twice.)

Cohen grew up on Long Island. His mother was a nurse and his father was a surgeon who escaped a Nazi concentration camp with his family during World War II. He attended American University followed by law school and said he got his first taste of politics when he was a boy. A neighbor of his parents’ invited him to walk precincts with New York Mayor John Lindsay in Atlantic Beach, Queens and Brooklyn.

Donald Trump’s ‘Pit Bull’

Like Trump, Cohen has donated money to both Democratic and Republican candidates over the years, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. He’s hobnobbed with Hillary Clinton and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Cohen said he and Kennedy even once went sailing near the Kennedy Compound in Cape Cod and later shared a lobster and clambake.

After law school, Cohen went on to work at a personal-injury malpractice law firm in New York and later became a partner at the firm Phillips Nizer. He joined the Trump Organization in 2006 at Trump’s invitation. He’s married and has two children.

Cohen said he sees no conflict in his advocacy for Trump now and his past support for Obama. He said his concerns are three-fold: the “unsustainable” debt, the country’s “ongoing and continuous” loss of jobs and the “basic overall lack of respect” that the rest of the world has for the U.S.

“I’m prepared to put the fact that I voted for Obama to the side,” he said. I’m more concerned now about my children, future grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and everybody’s children and families. I’m more concerned about them than I am about party affiliation.”