Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Eric Holder has Teamed up with Hillary

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via GIPHY   (Hat tip, Weekly Standard)

This could also tell us that Holder is working deeply with the Clinton campaign on all her legal issues that include the server and the foundation….wow, no doubt eh?

Eric Holder: ‘Progressive’ Hillary Best to ‘Protect Obama Legacy’

She’s an “agent of change.”

TruthRevolt: Anyone who watched Sunday evening’s Democrat debate, or who has followed presidential contender Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric of late, knows she has been doing an inordinate amount of pandering to Obama voters.

Full of praise for the Obama administration, its policies and initiatives, Clinton is beginning to sound like an Obama’s greatest cheerleader. While on its face it seems the former First Lady is simply looking to garner the support of Obama disciples, according to Attorney General Eric Holder, who recently endorsed the Democrat frontrunner, Clinton is actually the best candidate to uphold Obama’s legacy.

In fact, Holder thinks the former Secretary of State is just as “progressive” as socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders. He also said that black voters can’t afford to allow “wistfulness” at the closer of Obama’s presidency keep them from the polls. During an interview with The Washington Post on Sunday Holder discussed why Clinton is the best candidate to “continue the great work that President Obama and his administration did.”

When asked what he would say to black voters who are not as excited about the candidates this time around, Holder explained why Clinton will “protect the Obama legacy” and that she is an “agent of change.”:

“I think what people have to understand is that what we have to do is protect the Obama legacy. We’ve made really substantial progress in the last eight years — it’ll be eight years at the end of 2016 — and the question is who is best situated to protect that legacy and not let the progress that we have made get rolled back. And there is no question that there are going to be attempts to roll back the Affordable Care Act, they sent [President Obama] a bill the week before last that he had to veto. There will certainly be efforts to counter the executive actions that he’s taken on immigration issues, when it comes to gun safety issues and his foreign policy.

“You need somebody who’s got a record on those issues that’s consistent with the positions that the president took, and Hillary Clinton is that person, there’s no question. They are in lockstep when it comes to gun safety issues. Sen. [Bernie] Sanders, quite frankly, is not. So to the extent that people are a bit of a nostalgic, wistful feeling, I think that ought to be converted into a concern for the future and for the preservation of all the great work that President Obama and his administration did.”

Some voters don’t think Clinton, compared to Sen. Bernie Sanders, is progressive enough.

“People have not, for whatever reason, focused on the fact that Hillary Clinton is and always has been a change agent. If you look at her record as a progressive and think about what she did early in her career at Children’s Defense Fund. We can talk about here in South Carolina where she worked to make sure that kids were not incarcerated, jailed with adults. Health care — Hillary Clinton led the fight for health care during the Bill Clinton administration. Although the overall effort wasn’t successful, the CHIP program came out of that effort.

Holder told the Post that, from his perspective, people are confused about who Clinton is as a political figure.

“There’s no question in my mind that she is a progressive,” he said.

And there’s no question in our minds either, Holder.

NY Judge Gives Victory Decision to U.S. Islamists

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Court Requires NYPD to Purge Docs on Terrorists Inside U.S.

Muslim community sued police over surveillance programs

FreeBeacon: The New York Police Department has been directed by a U.S. court to remove from its online records an investigation pertaining to the rise of Islamic extremists in the West and the threats these individuals pose to American safety, according to legal documents.

As part of a settlement agreement reached earlier this month with Muslim community advocates in U.S. District Court, the NYPD will purge from its website an extensive report that experts say has been critical to the department’s understanding of radical Islam and its efforts to police the threat.

The court settlement also stipulates that the NYPD make a concerted effort to mitigate the impact of future terror investigations on certain religious and political groups, according to a copy of the court documents published by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has spearheaded the case since June 2013.

Legal experts and critics of the settlement maintain that it could hamper future terrorism investigations and view it as part of a larger campaign by Muslim advocacy organizations in the United States to dismantle surveillance programs encompassing that community.

Critics expressed particular concern about the case in light of a recent surge in attacks on U.S. citizens committed by individuals pledging allegiance to terror groups such as ISIS.

A key portion of the settlement focuses on the NYPD’s purported use of a document produced by the department’s intelligence division to examine how radicalized individuals make their way to the United States and carry out terror attacks.

The document, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” aimed to provide local law enforcement and policy makers with information about domestic terrorists and their operations.

As part of the settlement agreement, the NYPD will be forced to remove the publication from its database and vow not to rely on it in the future.

The NYPD and New York state government agencies included in the case “represent that they do not, have not, and will not rely upon the Radicalization in the West report to open or extend investigations,” according to the settlement. “Defendants will remove the Radicalization in the West report from the NYPD website.”

The settlement further affirms that the NYPD will be “committed to mitigating the potential impact” of future investigations on political and religious groups, such as those in the Muslim-American community.

While NYPD officials would not comment Thursday when contacted by the Washington Free Beacon, a spokesperson directed a reporter to a recent press release affirming the department’s commitment to upholding the court settlement.

The NYPD and relevant New York state agencies will “provide additional guidance to police officers as part of a settlement of lawsuits accusing the NYPD of improperly investigating Muslim groups,” according to the Jan. 7 press release. “While the City did not admit to engaging in any improper practices, the changes represent an effort to provide more detailed guidance to NYPD personnel within the existing Handschu Guidelines,” which govern how authorities investigate political activities.

The NYPD confirmed that it would remove from its website the 2007 radicalization report.

The department will additionally incorporate into the guidelines “police policies against religious profiling” and insert an additional “provision for considering the impact investigations have on people who are not targets of investigations,” according to the statement.

John Miller, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, maintained in a statement that the settlement would not “weaken the [department’s] ability to fulfill its steadfast commitment to investigate and prevent terrorist activity in New York City.”

However, some experts have cast doubt on this statement, claiming that the decision to delete the anti-terrorism handbook will impact officers’ ability to understand how terrorists organize and operate in the United States.

Benjamin Weingarten, a writer and national security analyst who has covered the court case, said that local police departments should be relying more heavily on the now-banned counterterror analysis.

Referring to the recent shooting of a Philadelphia police officer by a radicalized individual who allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS, Weingarten noted that the assailant followed the “‘four stages of radicalization’ detailed in the NYPD report.”

The information about radical terrorists provided in “the NYPD’s analysis may have at the least led Philadelphia authorities to dig deeper and flag him,” he said.

The settlement further reflects a larger cultural shift in America that shuns terms such as “war on terror” and “Muslim terrorism,” Weingarten said.

“To pursue a see-no-Islam counter-jihadist strategy is not only absurd and contradictory on its face, but its a severe dereliction of duty—ignorance is not an excuse, and it represents a failure to do everything necessary to defend against an ideology that seeks to undermine the Constitution and subvert and destroy Western civilization again, according to Islamic supremacists themselves,” he said.

Stephen Coughlin, an attorney and intelligence officer, expressed concern about what he described as a widening attempt by local and federal authorities to redefine the nature of domestic counter-terror efforts.

“I am greatly concerned with the imposition of [the case] which, I believe, exists to replace counter-terror efforts,” Coughlin said. “This is a continuation of a purging of evidentiary based counter-terror analysis first initiated in 2011.”

The ACLU and Muslim community advocates initially filed the lawsuit following reports after the 9/11 terror attacks that the NYPD was running a domestic spy operation centered on the American-Muslim community.

The ACLU, which would not comment on record for this report, directed the Free Beacon to a recent editorial published in the Guardian celebrating the court decision.

“Bias-based policing legitimizes religious discrimination, It can pave the way to copy-cat approaches by other agencies and set the stage for hate crimes nationwide,” wrote Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s national security project, and Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York.

“We hope the settlement announced this week pulls our city and its police department out of a downward spiral by reaffirming core values and principles, ones just as necessary to a local police force as they are to a rational debate on civil rights and liberties nationally,” they wrote.

*** It goes back a long way, directly post 9/11.

Obama Lifting 14 Red Notices, Part of Iran Deal, Good for Assad

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Prisoner Swap May Help Iran Arm Assad

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Bloomberg: In exchange for the release of four American prisoners, the Barack Obama administration agreed to free seven Iranians in U.S. custody and stop trying to arrest 14 others, two of whom the U.S. government had accused of  funneling weapons to the Bashar al-Assad regime and Hezbollah in Syria.

For years, Iran’s privately-owned Mahan Air has been using its planes to bring soldiers and arms directly to the Syrian military and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah by flying them from Tehran to Damascus, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In 2013, Treasury sanctioned Mahan’s managing director, Hamid Arabnejad, for overseeing the company’s efforts to evade U.S. and international sanctions and aiding the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ elite Quds Force.

“Arabnejad has a close working relationship with IRGC-QF personnel and coordinates Mahan Air’s support and services to the paramilitary group,” the Treasury Department said. “He has also been instrumental in facilitating the shipment of illicit cargo to Syria on Mahan Air aircraft.”

According to the Iranian state media organization FARS, Arabnejad is one of the 14 Iranians who no longer will have Interpol red notices out on them, which are meant to ensure their arrest and extradition to the U.S. on charges that will now also be dropped. The executive order he is sanctioned under is for support for terrorism. In 2011, the U.S. sanctioned the entire airline for ferrying personnel and arms for the Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hezbollah, which it officially considers a terrorist organization. The White House declined my request for comment on whether Arabnejad was among the de-listed Iranians, but did not dispute the 14 names on the FARS list.

Mahan Air is “yet another facet of the IRGC’s extensive infiltration of Iran’s commercial sector to facilitate its support for terrorism,” the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, David Cohen, told Bloomberg News at the time.

A 2012 press release from the Treasury says, “Iran used Iran Air and Mahan Air flights between Tehran and Damascus to send military and crowd control equipment to the Syrian regime.” Hezbollah and the Assad government coordinate with Mahan Air during their attacks on Syrian civilians and opposition groups, the Treasury Department said.

According to the Iranian news service, another Iranian who will no longer have to look over his shoulder when traveling around the world is Gholamreza Mahmoudi, also a top official at Manar Air. When Treasury sanctioned Mahmoudi in 2012, it said he worked closely with Arabnejad to evade sanctions and purchase new aircraft.

Last May, as the Iranian nuclear deal was being finalized, Mahan Air was able to purchase nine used Airbus commercial airliners, taking advantage of a relaxation of sanctions that came with an interim agreement Iran struck with Western powers. Experts say that the new lifting of the Interpol “red notices” — essentially arrest warrants — on Arabnejad and Mahmoudi further reduces pressure on Mahan Air and, by extension, on the Assad regime and Hezbollah, even though their U.S. Treasury Department sanctions remain in place.

“The one big impediment for them to run their business abroad was the red notice, not the U.S. sanctions,” said Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank that has advocated tough sanctions on Iran. “Clearly it was not impossible for them to travel. The fact they are no longer on the red notice means that as long as they don’t try to come to the U.S., they will probably live their professional lives unencumbered.”

The lifting of the red notices also has a symbolic effect, he said, by telling countries and companies around the world that it’s OK to look the other way as Mahan Air helps the Assad regime and Hezbollah.

“These guys have been working day in and day out flying arms to Assad regime,” said Ottolenghi. “This is another signal that there will be no consequences for this airline and the crimes they are responsible for.”

A U.S. official told me Saturday that the U.S.  removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.

President Obama spoke about the Iran prisoner swap Sunday and said none of the 7 released Iranians were charged with terrorism or any violent offenses. “They are civilians,” he said. But Obama didn’t mention the 14 who no longer have international arrest warrants, including the Mahan Air executives.

“We remain steadfast in opposing Iran’s destabilizing behavior elsewhere, including its threats against Israel and our gulf partners, and its support for violent proxies in places like Syria and Yemen,” Obama said.

The administration has repeatedly said that the Iran nuclear deal and the prisoner swap were separate events, pursued through parallel tracks of diplomacy. But there’s concern on Capitol Hill that the effort to stop the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ violent activities is suffering in the wake of the nuclear agreement.

“This flawed deal is only entrenching Iran’s military and security forces that run the country.  Now more than ever, we need a policy of backbone, not backing down,” House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce said Saturday.

On the other hand, Treasury did go forward Sunday with sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program that had been delayed because of the prisoner negotiations.

The return of the American prisoners, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, is of course good news, and the Obama administration believes the costs of the trade were worth the benefits. But some of those costs could be felt by the Syrian people, who had no say in the trade, got nothing from it and are still begging for more international support to stop Assad’s slaughter of civilians.

*** Going back to 2007, there were clandestine flights from Caracas, Damascus and Tehran.

NYT’s CARACAS, Venezuela, March 2 — Iran is already Venezuela’s closest ally outside Latin America, with ventures to produce oil and build cars and tractors together. Now, travelers between the countries can also take a weekly flight between Caracas and Tehran.

The flight, which was inaugurated here on Friday and includes a stop in Damascus, Syria, is operated in a code-share agreement by the Venezuelan state-controlled airline Conviasa and Iran’s national carrier, Iran Air.

Officials at Conviasa said that the company would use a Boeing 747 on the route and that soon it would also make available a European-made Airbus 340.

Under President Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has tightened relations with Iran and expressed explicit support for its uranium enrichment program.

Mr. Chávez has also reached out to Syria, making plans to build a $1.5 billion oil refining complex there. He sees relations with Iran and Syria, both under United States sanctions, as a centerpiece of a foreign policy aimed at countering American influence around the world.

In 2010:

Mahan Air made its first flight to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) today (January 28).

Iran’s second largest airline is offering twice weekly flights from Shiraz to Kuala Lumpur, using an Airbus A310-300, which has a seating capacity of 196.

*** Let us not forget that in circa 2000: In the hotel room of Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian Army captain and businessman, in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur. The meeting lasted from 5 January 2000 to 8 January 2000. The summit’s purpose was allegedly to plan future attacks, which apparently included the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the 11 September 2001 attack plot. The attendance consisted of Arab veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, including Hambali, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Tawfiq bin Attash.

And in March of 2015:

KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysian police have foiled an attempt by a terror cell of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to attack the Saudi Arabia and Qatar embassies in Kuala Lumpur with the arrest of two Iraqi nationals.

Sources said the two men were detained by intelligence officials at a shopping mall last Thursday.

“They were planning to attack the embassies on March 31 at the behest of IS,” a source told The Star last Saturday, using another name of ISIS.

Iran Implementation Day and Iran’s Connection to Islamic State

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The money to Iran is already moving.

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This is going to be a long read, but an important one such that history is included, details of diplomacy is included and described implications are described. Imagine what the next president of the United States will have to deal with, but more, imagine what Iran may do in the immediate coming months with $100 billion dollars, which by the way is bigger than Iran’s current economic value.

Iran Is More Deeply Tied to ISIS Than You Think

As the West continues to partner with Iran to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State, it is worth remembering that one of Iran’s highest-ranking terrorists was instrumental in founding Al-Qaeda, and that the split between Shia and Sunni jihadis is murky at best.

Iranian operative Imad Mughniyeh was instrumental in the training, development, and support of Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda – and thus its offshoot, the Islamic State.

The power vacuum Mughniyeh created helped to further Iran’s geopolitical agenda. (This is a very long, detailed and important read, don’t miss the whole summary)

In part from the WSJ: The head of the Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence is in Europe to discuss joint counterterrorism finance efforts and where things stand with the global agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. Talks on the former will be straightforward enough, but the latter could get bumpy.

Over the past few months, investors from Europe and Asia have gone to Tehran in droves, searching for post-sanction deals and bolstering Iranian hopes that the lifting of international sanctions will draw significant investment. Some in Europe have described Iran “as ‘an El Dorado’ and potential ‘bonanza.’ ” The chief of Iran’s central bank has cited the country’s “unique geographical advantage,” its “sense of timeliness and discipline,” and “very good history of being a trade partner.” In October, he predicted that “Iran will be a very favored destination for many international investors.”

But Treasury officials bear mixed news: The U.S. is preparing to meet its commitments on sanctions relief tied to implementation of the nuclear deal. Still, many U.S. sanctions tied to Iran’s support for terrorism, human rights abuses, and other negative behaviors remain in place.

And within days of the Iranian central banker’s comments in October, the Financial Action Task Force, which sets global standards on countering money laundering and terrorist financing, issued another searing rebuke of Iran’s “strategic deficiencies.” Only Iran and North Korea, the task force said, present such “on-going and substantial money laundering and terrorist financing” risks that the international community should apply active “counter-measures” to protect the global financial system.

The task force said that as sanctions are being lifted under the nuclear agreement, it “remains particularly and exceptionally concerned about Iran’s failure to address the risk of terrorist financing and the serious threat this poses to the integrity of the international financial system.” It repeated its long-standing call for financial institutions to “give special attention to business relationships and transactions with Iran, including Iranian companies and financial institutions.” The full story is here.

From the White House:

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From the Treasury Department in part:

1/16/2016

​Implementation Day Statement:

On July 14, 2015, the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the European Union, and Iran reached a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful.  October 18, 2015 marked Adoption Day of the JCPOA, the date on which the JCPOA came into effect and participants began taking steps necessary to implement their JCPOA commitments.  Today, January 16, 2016, marks Implementation Day of the JCPOA.  On this historic day, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has verified that Iran has implemented its key nuclear-related measures described in the JCPOA, and the Secretary State has confirmed the IAEA’s verification.  As a result of Iran verifiably meeting its nuclear commitments, the United States is today lifting nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, as described in the JCPOA.
In connection with reaching Implementation Day, today the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued several documents.  Specifically, OFAC posted to its website: Guidance Relating to the Lifting of Certain Sanctions Pursuant to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Implementation Day; Frequently Asked Questions Relating to the Lifting of Certain U.S. Sanctions Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Implementation Day; General License H: Authorizing Certain Transactions relating to Foreign Entities Owned or Controlled by a United States Person; and a Statement of Licensing Policy for Activities Related to the Export or Re-Export to Iran of Commercial Passenger Aircraft and Related Parts and Services. The aforementioned documents are effective today, January 16, 2015.
***

Political Challenges to the Iran Deal in Tehran and Washington

By Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi and Timothy Stafford
The Iran deal remains at the mercy of a volatile and unpredictable political climate, both in Tehran and Washington. This could well overwhelm it in the coming year.

Ticking the Boxes: Tehran’s Road to ‘Implementation Day’

By Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi
To make the deal successful, intensive co-ordination between domestic actors in Iran will be required to implement these highly technical processes.

The Devil is in the Detail: The Financial Risks to the Economic Success of the Iran Deal

By Emil Dall, Andrea Berger and Tom Keatinge
Over the last decade, the US and EU have constructed a complex network of sanctions in response to Iran’s nuclear programme, ensuring the near-total isolation of Iran from global markets. On ‘implementation day’, this network starts to be disassembled and reintegration begin.

Iran Implementation Day Recommendations

The signatories to the Iran nuclear deal should move to entrench processes that will enable the agreement to outlast the individuals that put it in place. By this time next year, a new US president will have been sworn in, and presidential elections in Iran will only be just months away. Time must be used wisely.

Senator Session’s Book on Immigration and Green Cards

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Under Barack Obama, the United Nations is also the headquarters of who can claim a new identity, that of an American. The same does for Europe, the world is one big global citizen, loyal to nothing and fully borderless.

Hat tip to Chuck and Daily Caller:

Jeff Sessions Releases Book Of Charts Putting Immigration And Green Card Issuances Into Shocking Perspective

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions released a book of graphs and charts on Wednesday that helps put the U.S.’s relaxed immigration policies in shocking perspective.

“Record-breaking visa issuances propelling U.S. to immigration highs never before seen,” is the sub-title to the Republican immigration hawk’s “chart book.”

Sessions, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, asserts that the federal government will legally add 10 million or more “new permanent immigrants over the next 10 years.”

He also cites polls showing that a “stark” majority of Americans want lawmakers to reduce immigration rates, not increase them. Polls from Gallup and Fox show that Americans support an immigration reduction to an increase by a 2-to-1 margin.

Sessions’s chart book is aimed at providing readers an easy-to-understand frame of reference for immigration flows and green card issuances, past and present.

In one chart, Sessions compares the number of green cards that will be issued in the next decade to the population of the first three presidential primary states — Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions "Chart Book"

Another chart entitled “Immigration Adds 1 New Los Angeles Every 3 Years,” which is based on U.S. Census Bureau statistics and population projections, shows that the 11.4 million immigrants will enter the U.S. over the next nine years. “Unless immigration reductions are enacted,” the immigration population will increase in size equal to the population of Los Angeles — 3.9 million — every three years, Sessions notes.

sessions2 The number of green card issuances that can be expected over the next decade is also the equivalent of the combined population of seven of the largest cities in the U.S., including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas, St. Louis, Denver, Boston, and Atlanta, Sessions notes.

sessions3

Other charts include one which shows that the U.S.’s immigration population will grow to more than 700 percent of 1970 levels by 2060.

By then, the U.S. will have 78.2 million foreign-born residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1970, that number was 9.6 million.

And another chart takes aim at immigration from majority-Muslim nations. The U.S. has issued 680,000 green cards to migrants from those nations in the last five years, reports Sessions, citing statistics from the Department of Homeland Security.

Sessions’s “chart book” also includes stats on welfare usage rates for Middle Eastern refugees. According to a 2013 report from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 91.4 percent of refugees from the Middle East are on food stamps. Nearly 70 percent — 68.3 percent to be exact — receive cash welfare assistance.

Other charts compare the U.S.’s immigrant population to other nations’.

“America Has 10 Million More Foreign-Born Residents Than The Entire European Union” and “U.S. Has 6 Times More Migrants Than All Latin American Nations Combined” provide the numbers.

While the U.S. has 45.8 million residents who were born outside of the U.S., the entire European Union has 35 million, according to a United Nations database. That despite the fact that the combined population of EU countries is 60 percent larger than the population of the U.S.