Ted Cruz Putting DC and IRS Scandal on Notice

Posted on November 2, 2015November 2, 2015 by Denise Simon

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch requesting that the Department of Justice (DOJ) preserve all Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents and information for investigation under the next administration. Sen. Cruz’s letter comes after the DOJ recently closed its investigation into improper targeting of conservative groups by the IRS.

“Make no mistake: the IRS’s targeting of ordinary citizens for their political viewpoints under this Administration is not a minor issue, and represents a significant breach of the public trust. Even a casual observer of the IRS targeting scandal could not help but come to the conclusion that there is a strong appearance that the IRS, under this Administration’s political leadership, used the coercive tools available to the tax collection agency to harass people with conservative viewpoints,” Sen. Cruz wrote. “It is important for you and other officials in this Administration to understand that this Administration’s decisions to neither continue this investigation nor appoint a special prosecutor do not represent the conclusion of this matter.”

Sen. Cruz’s letter can be read in its entirety below and here.

November 2, 2015

The Honorable Loretta E. Lynch
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Attorney General Lynch:

I write today to strongly urge you, as head of the Department of Justice, to take specific steps to ensure that the Department preserves all of its Internal Revenue Service-related documents and information indefinitely. This Administration’s recent announcement that it does not intend to conduct or allow an appropriate criminal investigation of the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party and other conservative organizations has finally made it abundantly clear that the responsibility of ensuring a thorough, fair, and impartial investigation of IRS employees and their potential criminal conduct will fall to the next presidential administration, and relevant materials must be protected accordingly.

On Friday, October 23, the Department stated that it would end its investigation of the IRS and the personnel who were part of the agency’s well-documented targeting efforts, including the former director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Unit, Lois Lerner, who invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate herself during a 2013 congressional oversight hearing. Presumably, this latest decision to abandon the investigation required your approval. This decision also comes in the wake of at least two formal rejections by President Obama’s former Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., of requests for the appointment of a special prosecutor to handle the investigation.

Bluntly stated, your decision is disappointing but also not surprising, and only confirms suspicions that the current Department is equipped to neither handle an appropriate investigation nor make appropriate judgments regarding existing conflicts of interest, based on its failure to appoint a special prosecutor. Despite numerous requests for a fair and impartial process, you, your predecessor, and this Administration generally have been dismissive of congressional and other calls for an appropriate accounting of the IRS’s abusive behavior.

Make no mistake: the IRS’s targeting of ordinary citizens for their political viewpoints under this Administration is not a minor issue, and represents a significant breach of the public trust. Even a casual observer of the IRS targeting scandal could not help but come to the conclusion that there is a strong appearance that the IRS, under this Administration’s political leadership, used the coercive tools available to the tax collection agency to harass people with conservative viewpoints. The little information that is available in the public domain about what happened at the IRS also makes it appear that laws, including criminal laws, may have been broken.

That said, as an attorney and former state law enforcement official, I am keenly aware that the facts of a case require objective, non-political review. That is why I and others have been adamant about the need for the appointment of a special prosecutor, who would be appointed by the Administration in accordance with federal law and afforded the freedom and resources to conduct a thorough, fair, and impartial investigation and, if necessary, prosecution.

It is important for you and other officials in this Administration to understand that this Administration’s decisions to neither continue this investigation nor appoint a special prosecutor do not represent the conclusion of this matter. Given this Administration’s refusal to conduct itself appropriately, or take the issue of the potential illegal conduct of IRS employees seriously, any subsequent administration should reserve the right to reopen the matter, conduct its own investigation, or appoint a special prosecutor to conduct an investigation.

With that in mind, it is imperative that you, as Attorney General, take extraordinary steps to see to it that the Department preserves all the documents and materials in its possession in relation to its evaluation of the IRS’s targeting efforts, as well as everything in its possession used to evaluate the potential criminal activity of IRS employees. This request for extraordinary preservation steps is unfortunately necessary, given this Administration’s poor track record for recordkeeping.

I will also take this moment to remind you, your fellow political appointees within the Department, and any other Department employees, advisors, or contractors that destruction of any of the requested documents or information could subject those responsible for such destruction to criminal prosecution in the future. I have previously warned Treasury and IRS officials that such consequences could also result for any such destruction of records within their control, and those warnings stand. One’s position as a past or present federal employee does not afford immunity from the federal criminal justice system. It is my hope that a future administration would pursue justified prosecutions with all due energy.

In accordance with the above, I would request that the Department engage in the following preservation efforts, effective immediately:

1.Preserve all paper-based documents, e-mail-based communications, e-mail-based calendar appointments, electronic documents, electronic communications (including voicemails, SMS (i.e., text) messages, and instant messages), and all other electronic data regardless of format, created since January 1, 2010, that:

a. Are records, regardless of content, that were originally produced or possessed by the IRS or any of its employees, contractors, subcontractors, grantees, subgrantees, or consultants;

b. Are communications, regardless of author, source, or content, that in any way address the IRS or any of its past or current employees; and

c. Include or reference the names Douglas Shulman, John Koskinen, Lois Lerner, William Wilkins, Holly Paz, Judy Kindell, and/or Carter Hull, or any versions of these names, including initials or nicknames.

For the purposes of this request, “preserve” means taking any and all reasonable steps to prevent the partial or full destruction, alteration, overwriting, formatting, deletion, shredding, incineration, wiping, relocation, migration, theft, revision, or mutation of electronic and non-electronic documents, records, and logs, as well as negligent or intentional handling that would make such records incomplete or inaccessible.

2. Exercise any and all reasonable efforts to identify and notify former Department employees, contractors, subcontractors, grantees, subgrantees, and consultants who may have access to such electronic or non-electronic records that these records are also to be preserved.

3. If it is a practice of the Department, any Department component, any federal employee, any contract employee, any grantee or subgrantee, or any consultant to destroy or otherwise alter such electronic or non-electronic records, either halt such practices immediately, or arrange for the preservation of complete and accurate duplicates or copies of such records, suitable for production if requested.

I am also requesting that the Department make additional arrangements with both the Department’s Inspector General and the Archivist of the United States for them to receive copies of all such records.

Please provide a detailed update regarding your efforts to coordinate with the Inspector General and the Archivist no later than 5:00 p.m. on Monday, November 9, 2015.

I look forward to your cooperation. Please contact Committee staff at (202) 224-5225 if you have any additional questions about these requirements.

Sincerely,

Ted Cruz
Chairman
Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action,
Federal Rights and Federal Courts

Cc:
The Honorable Charles E. Grassley
Chairman
Senate Committee on the Judiciary

The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy
Ranking Member
Senate Committee on the Judiciary

The Honorable Christopher A. Coons
Ranking Member
Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action,
Federal Rights and Federal Courts

The Honorable James Comey
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
U.S. Department of Justice

The Honorable Michael E. Horowitz
Inspector General
Office of the Inspector General
U.S. Department of Justice

The Honorable David S. Ferriero
Archivist of the United States
National Archives and Records Administration

Gary M. Stern
General Counsel
National Archives and Records Administration

The Honorable Jack Lew<
Secretary
U.S. Department of the Treasury

The Honorable John Koskinen
Commissioner
Internal Revenue Service

ISIS Rewriting History in the Middle East

Posted on November 2, 2015November 2, 2015 by Denise Simon

ISG = Islamic State Group

In part from:

Middle East Notes and Comment: The Islamic State (Re)Writes History

Did the Prophet Muhammad lash his followers for smoking cigarettes? He couldn’t have, as cigarettes were invented more than 1,200 years after his death, and tobacco itself did not come to the Middle East until 950 years afterwards. Bans on television, recorded music, soccer games and the like all reflect innovations.

What the ISG is, in fact, is a wholly modern movement that seeks to look ancient. Like the photo booths in tourist towns that produce sepia-toned photographs of contemporary subjects in period clothing, its wink toward the present is part of its appeal. Its followers are not recreating a holy seventh-century society of pious believers. They are gathering the dispossessed and disaffected to an invented homeland that strives to provide certainty, intimacy, and empowerment to a population that feels too little of any of them.

There is little use quibbling with their distortions of history, which are too numerous to mention. Instead, what is risible is their solemn use of history at all. This group is wholly modern and wholly innovative. It is wholly disruptive, as it seeks to be. Its followers should not be ennobled by their purported connection to history.

Western governments and their allies in the Middle East should not fall into the trap of seeing the ISG and its ilk as groups hostile to modernity. Instead, they should highlight how truly modern these groups are, and how selective they are in their readings of history. They do not guide their followers back to the well-worn path of tradition, but instead blaze a new trail of confrontation with the rest of the world.

Stripped of their historical costumes, we can see them as they are: the angry and the weak, preying on those even weaker than themselves. There is glory to be found in Islam. It is not to be found in them.

Islam is the Middle East noted by Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Afghanistan is in of itself in turmoil, while same fighters have known nothing but war all their lives and from this video below, war is being taught to the next generations, some as young as 8 years old. This also holds true for regions in the West Bank and Gaza. Children attend camps and training with weapons, vocabulary and to learn a twisted history.

Published on Nov 1, 2015

Raising its black flag over the rugged mountainous regions of Afghanistan, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has emerged as a new threat to the war-ravaged country as it battles the Taliban for supremacy. Employing violence and brutality used by the group in Syria and Iraq, Wilayat Khorasan, (the ancient name ISIL has chosen for the region made up of Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of neighbouring countries), has emerged in seven different areas and vowed to step up operations, where the veteran fighters, the Taliban, once held sway.Fighting to reconstitute the historical Khorasan into the so-called ‘Caliphate’ of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group says it has grand plans for the region, starting with uprooting the Taliban and the government of President Ashraf Ghani.Causing friction with the regional and overall leadership of the Taliban, armed battles have increased over the past few months with dozens of Taliban fighters killed in the clashes, most notably in the Taliban stronghold of Nangarhar province.ISIL’s local chapter has also managed to attract dozens of fighters from the Taliban’s ranks into its fold, while foreign fighters unable to make it to Syria and Iraq have thronged to the group’s territory.In ISIL and the Taliban we look at the group’s growing popularity, how it made steady inroads into the country and the threat it poses for the future of Afghanistan.We gain exclusive access to ISIL’s central leadership, and meet children as young as 5-years-old being trained to fight and dedicate their lives to the ‘Caliphate’.

2 Items: Clinton Corruption Continues

Posted on November 2, 2015November 2, 2015 by Denise Simon

Clinton Foundation Organization Will Not Refile Tax Returns Despite Mistakes

Organization did not comply with conflict-of-interest pledge

FreeBeacon: An organization created by the Clinton Foundation is not going to refile its tax returns after failing to comply with a conflict-of-interest pledge despite reportedly promising to do so when the mistakes were revealed earlier this year.

The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), which was spun off from the foundation in 2010, did not solicit a State Department ethics review of multiple contributions from foreign governments as mandated by a conflict-of-interest pledge established before Hillary Clinton assumed the role of secretary of state in 2009. A CHAI representative told Reuters in April that the organization was planning to refile its 2012 and 2013 tax returns.

However, Politico reported Monday that the same representative insists that the organization never promised to refile the forms and will not do so.

“Contrary to what was reported, CHAI has consistently stated that they would conduct a review process to determine whether the transposition errors required a refiling,” CHAI spokeswoman Maura Daley stated. “After conducting the review, the transpositional errors made had no material impact and we do not believe a refiling is required.”

The organization, which provides cheaper drugs for individuals with HIV worldwide, has previously refiled its returns for 2010 and 2011, having initially over-reported grants from governments by upwards of $100 million. CHAI received about $45 million in government grants in 2012 and $56 million in 2013, according to tax returns for those years.

The broader Clinton Foundation was also found in April to have made errors related to the conflict-of-interest pledge by failing to report funds it received from foreign and U.S. governments. The foundation said in April that it would have an external review conducted of its tax returns from 2010, 2011, and 2012 and “likely” refile forms.

“We have said that after a voluntary external review is completed we will likely refile forms for some years,”then-acting CEO and senior Vice President Maura Pally said in an April statement shortly after Clinton announced her presidential bid.

“We made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them, and have taken steps to ensure they don’t happen in the future. We are committed to operating the foundation responsibly and effectively to continue the life-changing work that this philanthropy is doing every day.”

Pally also reiterated the foundation’s “commitment to transparency.”

Bill Clinton On Leadership Board Of Presidential Debate Commission

Obama’s New Executive Action: Ban the Box

Posted on November 2, 2015November 2, 2015 by Denise Simon

In part from Officer.com: The federal Bureau of Prisons plans to release 6,000 prisoners at the end of October, implementing a decision last year to slash the number of incarcerated drug offenders by nearly half.

Officials said the nationwide releases over four days starting Oct. 30 will be the largest in U.S. history.

Last year, in line with a concerted effort by the Obama administration to reduce the number of drug offenders in U.S. prisons, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to cut drug sentences by an average of two years, potentially affecting as many as 46,000 of 100,000 cases.

In the coming year, an additional 8,550 prisoners will be eligible for release, according to Sentencing Commission spokesman Matt Osterrieder, though he said that not all of them will be approved.

What are employers supposed to do to vet applicants especially in positions where a clean background is required, something like banking, retail or any position for that matter where integrity and morality is centric to employment? Well…there is always Facebook, where employers are presently using social media platforms to determine history, friends, associates and even political bias.

Further, presidential executive orders are designed for exclusive use of operating government, yet with Barack Obama and this mission of his, he is injecting his policies into private enterprise. There must be legal challenges to this new ‘protected class’ operation which is common in the Obama administration, as we clearly know foreign illegals are a proven protected class.

HuffPo:WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday will announce a series of measures designed to reduce obstacles facing former prisoners reintegrating into society, including an executive action directing federal employers to delay asking questions about a job applicant’s criminal history until later in the application process.

Many states, cities and private employers have already taken steps to “ban the box,” which refers to the checkbox on employment applications asking if the applicant has ever been convicted of a crime. However, some federal employers and contractors still ask the question. Obama’s executive action will apply to federal employers, but not to contractors.

Hillary joins Barack Obama on this same objective calling it ‘racial profiling’. This is all yet another misguided social engineering plan to reform the criminal justice system, where law enforcement, district attorneys and judges don’t seem to get any opportunity to voice their respective positions.

Obama to announce executive actions to help prisoners rejoin society

Plans for current and former inmates include education and housing efforts and a push to remove criminal-background questions from job applications

Barack Obama will announce a series of executive actions to help current and former prisoners re-enter society on Monday, as the president continues his campaign to wind down the war on drugs and reform a “broken” system.

Obama’s plans include millions of dollars in education grants for current prisoners, new policies to help former inmates find housing, a “clean slate clearing house” to help former prisoners clear their records where possible, and a call to Congress to “ban the box” – the space on a job application that asks about criminal backgrounds.

Obama is expected to unveil the plans at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, the hometown of Democratic senator Cory Booker, one of the leaders of a bipartisan push for criminal justice reform.

The president has for months toured the nation in a loose campaign for reform, visiting police in Chicago, the NAACP in Philadelphia, and inmates in Oklahoma. On Saturday, he again raised the issue in his weekly address, saying: “We know that having millions of people in the criminal justice system, without any ability to find a job after release, is unsustainable.”

There are 2.2m people incarcerated in federal and state prisons around the US, roughly 20% of the world’s total number of imprisoned people. The number ballooned in the decades of the “war on drugs”, in particular due to “tough on crime” laws enacted during the 1990s.

Obama’s latest push for reform coincides with the early release of several thousand federal prisoners this past weekend. About 6,000 drug offenders were granted early releases thanks to policy changes by the US Sentencing Commission, which made the revisions retroactive last year. Judges then reviewed tens of thousands of applications, with the 6,000 federal prisoners the first to receive early release.

But despite the push for reducing mandatory minimum sentences – often seen as a major cause of mass incarceration over minor crimes – reform advocates around the country have called for more attention for former prisoners. About 650,000 inmates are released every year, and many return to an alien, hostile America facing bars to housing and employment and with little to their names. More here.

Flight Recorders: Crashed Russian Airliner NOT Struck From Outside

Posted on November 2, 2015November 2, 2015 by Denise Simon

Flight Recorders Show Crashed Russian Airliner NOT Struck From Outside — According To Investigator Analyzing Crash; ISIS Said To Have Taken Advanced MANPADS From Syrian Air Base Which It Overran In 2014; Saudi Arabia Gave Chinese SAMs To Syrian Rebels In 2014

Although a terrorist bomb on the doomed Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula over the weekend cannot be ruled out as a potential cause for the crash, Reuters News Service is reporting that the aircraft “was NOT struck from the outside — thus eliminating the possibility of a surface-to-air missile being used — if true. Ahmed Mohmed and Polina Devitt, reporting for the publication from Cairo, Egypt, write on the November 2, 2015 edition of the news website, cites a “source [investigator] who has done a preliminary examination of the black boxes recovered from the A321 which crashed n Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula region on Saturday, killing all 224 people on board. An Egyptian Islamic militant group affiliated with the Islamic State claimed over the weekend that it had downed the civilian airliner, “in response to Russian airstrikes that [it says] killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land.” Russian Transport Minister immediately dismissed the claim saying — “It can’t be considered accurate.” Alexander Smrnov, Deputy General of the Russian airline, Kogalymavia, which operated the plane under the brand name — Metrojet — said only a “technical, or physical action” could have caused the aircraft break up in the air.”

Reuters reports that “militants in the area are not believed to have missiles capable of hitting a plane at 30,000ft.,” though that may be wishful thinking.

ISIS Takes Advanced MANPADS From Syria – Stolen From Airbase Saudi Arabia Supplied Syrian Rebels With Chinese Surface-To-Air Missiles In 2014

Thomas Gibbons Neff, writing for the Washington Post last year, (Tuesday, August 26, 2014 edition) reported that “ISIS militants stormed a Syrian airbase over the weekend, routing the remaining elements of the Syrian Army from the northern Raqqa Province; and, reportedly seized a cache of shoulder fired surface-to-air missiles. Mr. Neff adds that “the seizure of Tabqa air base, while not the first installation of its type to fall to militants, highlights the Islamic State’s gains in the region; and, the groups continued pilfering of advanced military equipment — particularly the surface-to-air missile systems known as MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense Systems).”

Matt Schroeder, a senior researcher at the Switzerland-based research group, Small Arms Survey; and, author of a recent report on MANPADS in Syria, believes the takeover of Tabqa Air Base could mark a “significant proliferation” of weapons across the region. “What we do know from previous airfield seizures…is that these places are a source of MANPADS and similar weapons,” Schroeder said.

Damien Spleeters, an investigator for Conflict Armament Research, who has been documenting the weapons of the Islamic State in northern Iraq and Syria, said, “usually when you take an airbase you don’t just find one or two systems. You find a lot more than that because airbases are meant to store those types of weapons.” Spleeters added that “the prevalence of advanced systems like the SA-24, which can hit aircraft flying up to 20K feet — is very worrying. There’s a limited shelf-life for these type of weapons. There’s a lot of parameters in the picture.”

“Most MANPADS,” for example, Mr. Spleeters said, “depend on batteries, which usually lasts only a few years when in storage; and, a few seconds when activated. When powered, the battery allows the missile to lock on to its target, but only for a brief window,” Spleeters explained. “Once the battery is expended, the weapon is useless.”

“It’s possible,” however, “that militants are trying to work around that limitation by using a homemade recharging system for one particular MANPADS variant,” Mr. Neff wrote. C.J. Shivers, of The New York Times, first reported the case of the Syrian rebel with an SA-7 outfitted with such a system,” Mr. Neff wrote.

Rachel Stohl, an expert on arms control at The Stimson Center, believes that like prior conflicts in the region, that the Syrian Civil War will have long-standing ramifications for MANPADS proliferation in the Middle East. “There’s no question, that the region is going to have to deal with a legacy of these weapons,” Stohl said. “You don’t just put the immediate area at risk, there’s a ripple effect.”

German Intelligence Previously Warned That ISIS Could Shoot Down Passenger Planes

Reuters News (reporting on October 26, 2014) citing the German newspaper, Bild am Sontag — who cited German intelligence sources — says Islamic State militants “have modern, man portable air defense systems that are capable of shooting down a passenger plane,” Germany’s intelligence agency, the BND, said that “Islamic militants located in northern Iraq, had obtained air-defense systems from the captured military arsenal of the Syrian Army. The German newspaper went on to note that air defense arms “were 1970s models; as well as modern man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS). “Unlike other air defense weapons, MANPADS are easy to use, barely trained militia-men can fire the weapon accurately,” the report said, adding that the weapons are especially dangerous to aircraft that are landing or taking off. The paper added that German authorities had not yet confirmed the report [though there has been other reliable reporting indicating this as well]. Several airlines, including Austrian Airlines, and Qatar Airways, still fly in the airspace over northern Iraq — where ISIS is in the heat of battle.

Saudis Reportedly Gave Syrian Rebels Mobile Antiaircraft Missiles In 2014

Maria Abi-Habib and Stacy Meichtry had a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal (Sat., Feb. 15, 2014) with the title above.”Disappointed with U.S. disengagement in the region; and in particular, the Syrian civil war, Saudi Arabia has decided to provide the rebels fighting Bashir al-Assad with more sophisticated weapons — including Chinese man-portable air-defense systems (reportedly in significant numbers), or Manpads, as well as anti-tank guided missiles (Konkurs) from Russia,” according to the Journal article. The Journal cited an Arab diplomat and several rebel opposition figures as their source for this report. “The bulk of the weapons are reportedly in warehouses in Jordan, and are awaiting transport and delivery across northern Jordan and via southern Turkey. These new weapons reportedly will not go to the Islamic Front; but, keeping that commitment may be easier said than done. But, clearly Riyadh felt the potential to swing the momentum in favor of the rebels outweighed the potential risks that some of these weapons could fall into the wrong hands.

So, while this particular downing of a civilian airliner may not have been due to Islamic militants using a surface-to-air missile, downplaying the possibility that they could do so — could be fatal. Clearly, credible reporting suggests that in all likelihood — Islamic militants have MANPADs; and, to believe otherwise….invites disaster. V/R, RCP

Category Archives: Citizens Duty

Ted Cruz Putting DC and IRS Scandal on Notice

Sen. Cruz Asks DOJ to Preserve All IRS-Related Documents

The IRS targeting scandal is a serious breach of the public trust

November 2, 2015

ISIS Rewriting History in the Middle East

2 Items: Clinton Corruption Continues

Clinton Foundation Organization Will Not Refile Tax Returns Despite Mistakes

Bill Clinton On Leadership Board Of Presidential Debate Commission

Obama’s New Executive Action: Ban the Box

Flight Recorders: Crashed Russian Airliner NOT Struck From Outside