Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Blumenthal Benghazi Testimony Date Set

Posted on by

Without media, behind closed doors…but under oath?

A Interim Benghazi investigation report dated May 2015 by the Congressional Benghazi committee is found here.

Hillary Clinton’s next appearance before the committee is delayed due to the State Department slow walking document request production.

“The State Department has told the Committee that it cannot certify that it has turned over all documents responsive to the Committee’s request regarding the former Secretary’s emails. Absent access to the server that housed the former Secretary’s private emails, the Committee has no way to verify the assertions: (1) the former Secretary has produced the full universe of emails related to Benghazi and Libya; and (2) the server has been wiped clean and is currently void of any data that may reflect any email sent or received during her tenure as Secretary of State, including during the relevant time frame….,” the report said.

Because the State Department has been slow rolling the release of the Hillary emails, a judge determined the exact dates for release for which the State Department must comply.

“It is difficult to conduct a fact-centric congressional investigation when the Administration impedes the Committee’s progress by repeatedly failing to answer the Committee’s requests or to provide information in a timely manner,” wrote the South Carolina Republican.

“The largest impediment to being able to write the final, definitive accounting of what happened before, during and after the terrorist attacks in Benghazi is the Executive Branch itself.”

But Gowdy, who also has asked Clinton to appear before his panel, credits his committee with uncovering thousands of new emails and documents related to the administration’s handling of the attack that left four Americans dead.

Gowdy also said the panel wants to interview at least 60 more current and former officials, including Clinton, Susan Rice, Patrick Kennedy and three of Clinton’s top aides during her tenure as secretary of State: Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin.

Clinton has indicated she is willing to appear before the panel, but only once. Gowdy and the committee have requested two sessions, and Gowdy has also insisted she turn over to a third party the personal email server she used to store emails while at State.

Democrats on the GOP-controlled committee again on Friday dismissed the probe as little more than an attempt to smear the former secretary of State amid her presidential campaign.

“At every turn, the Select Committee comes up with a new excuse to further delay its work and then blames its glacial pace on someone else,” said ranking member Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., in a statement. “Like the investigation itself, this memo is short on substance, short on accomplishments, and short on a plan for how to get this investigation done.”

Ex-Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal to testify in private on Benghazi

A former aide to Hillary Clinton has agreed to testify in private later this month before the House panel investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time associate of the Clinton family, will appear for a closed-door witness deposition on June 16 at 10 a.m. The deposition with the House Select Committee on Benghazi will come just three days after Hillary Clinton launches her presidential campaign during a rally in New York.

The State Department made about 300 emails public last month that showed Clinton received about 25 memos from Blumenthal regarding Libya while she was secretary, including one that blamed the 2012 Benghazi attack on a “sacrilegious” Internet video depicting the prophet Mohammad. Blumenthal sent another memo the next day citing “sensitive sources” who believed it was an act of terrorism.

Blumenthal, who previously worked for former President Bill Clinton’s administration, most recently worked as an employee of the Clinton Foundation and served as an informal adviser to Hillary Clinton when she was in President Obama’s Cabinet. He also had business transactions with Libya’s transitional government.

The emails released to the public showed that Clinton forwarded some of Blumenthal’s missives to her senior staff at the State Department without identifying him as the source.

One exchange between Clinton aide Jake Sullivan and Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who died in the Benghazi attack, referred to Blumenthal as “HRC friend.”

The Benghazi panel, which is chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), has not yet announced when it will call Hillary Clinton to testify.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the Benghazi Committee’s top Democrat, has accused the GOP of tactics “straight out the partisan playbook of discredited Republican investigations” by leaking news of the subpoena before it was served and using two armed U.S. marshals to deliver it to Blumenthal.

Clinton downplayed Blumenthal’s influence on her tenure as Secretary of State when asked about the relationship last month.

“I have many, many old friends, and I always think that it’s important when you get into politics to have friends that you had before you were in politics and to understand what’s on their minds. He’s been a friend of mine for a long time — he sent me unsolicited emails, which I passed on in some instances, and I see that that’s just part of the give-and-take,” Clinton told reporters.

The Clinton Foundation paid Blumenthal about $10,000 a month while he worked for the organization, according to reports.

 

2009 White House FOIA Memo, Critical Today

Posted on by

Greg Craig, White House counsel drafted a memo to all agencies. That memo is found here. It is important as earlier this week there were two days of hearings on the Freedom of Information Act broken program that was revisited due in part to Hillary Clinton’s emails.

This was not the first hearing. A prior hearing was in March of 2012 with the same topic, introducing the issues of obstruction by the Department of Justice and the White House of the FOIA process.

‘Most transparent’ White House ever rewrote the FOIA to suppress politically sensitive docs

An April 15, 2009, memo from then-White House Counsel Greg Craig instructing the executive branch to let White House officials review any documents sought by FOIA requestors that involved “White House equities.”

That phrase is nowhere to be found in the FOIA, yet the Obama White House effectively amended the law to create a new exception to justify keeping public documents locked away from the public.

Forget making FOIA deadlines

The FOIA requires federal agencies to respond within 20 days of receiving a request, but the White House equities exception can make it impossible for an agency to meet that deadline.

In one case cited by Cause of Action, the response to a request from a Los Angeles Times reporter to the Department of the Interior for “communications between the White House and high-ranking Interior officials on various politically sensitive topics” was delayed at least two years by the equities review.

Jason Leopold, an investigative reporter gave his testimony this week. Of particular note is the Pentagon told him in written form to never file a FOIA request again. Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch told the congressional panel that his firm has had to sue the government 225 times to get it to comply to the FOIA law. Sharyl Attkisson a former investigative reporter for CBS explained in her testimony she in one case waited over 10 years for a FOIA response.

Human Rights Watch drafted a letter to the Oversight Committee explaining their exasperation with the delays and the unexplained redactions.

Some additional facts coming out of the two day hearings include, in 2014 there were over 700,000 FOIA requests. The majority of those requests went to the Department of Homeland Security asking for immigration documents. In all of government, there are an estimated 3000 people that fulfill the requests, yet no one explained who was responsible for redactions. Could that be decided at the White House? What is worse, a committee at the Department of Justice actually receives reports from all agencies on production of FOIA requests and scores them in a final report to congress. The most recent report to the success of the FOIA program scored all FOIA production processes received perfect scores.

There were many questions when it came to Hillary Clinton’s emails as she did not use any government email platform but rather by exclusive choice a private server and a series of private alias email addresses. Those opposing the investigation into Hillary, pressed several questions with regard to the email use of Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice. The response was no one has filed FOIA requests for their respective emails.

In summary, the White House has a team that asserts final decision-making with regard to FOIA requests and how and when they are fulfilled including those at the IRS.

Information is controlled by the White House and no so transparent at…ALL.

Obama Regime, Full Anti-Semite

Posted on by

It’s Nuclear: On Iran, Obama and the Scope of Anti-Semitism

Does the president understand the depths—and destructive implications—of the ayatollahs’ radical views on Jews?

Yesterday, Jeffrey Herf, a professor of modern European history at the University of Maryland and the author of a number of books on Nazi Germany, published an article in The Times of Israel called “Obama and his American critics on Iran’s anti-Semitism,” which is worth a read. In it, Herf examines the “unusual” public discourse that has begun to swell—a chorus he breaks down bit by bit, who wonder about the bounds of Obama’s understanding of anti-Semitism, and “how his view on that subject affects prospects for a nuclear deal to stop the ayatollahs from getting the bomb.”

Herf argues that Obama, “apparently stung by criticism that his approach to Iran is facilitating rather than preventing its path to the bomb and that he bears primary responsibility for the tensions in American-Israeli relations,” has gone on the offensive by giving an interview to The Atlantic‘s Jeffery Goldberg (read our coverage here), then hitting up Adas Israel in Washington, D.C., in what CNN called “foreign policy damage control.” Herf then cites Michael Doran’s essay in Mosaic, “A Letter to My Liberal Jewish Friends,” in which the author argues that the existence of shared values”—a tenet of Obama’s speech—”though important, was not the key issue. It was, instead, the necessary criticism of Obama’s policies towards Iran’s nuclear program.”

Herf has longed for Obama to publicly discuss his views on “the role of anti-Semitism in the government in Tehran.” He was pleased when Goldberg told Obama about his concerns in negotiating with people who are “captive to a conspiratorial anti-Semitic worldview not because they hold offensive views, but because they hold ridiculous views.” Continue Reading→

U.S. Healthcare, a Manufactured Crisis

Posted on by

Is Our Healthcare Crisis Man-Made?

by: Juliette Fildes

The media would have us believe that the healthcare crisis is us something that mysteriously arose out of a number of factors, including periods of economic crisis and an ever-growing deficit, yet what if the crisis was actually manufactured?

Americans are forced to buy insurance that doesn’t really protect them against their greatest health risks at all. There are many factors that reveal that insurance companies are favored, as are the pharmaceutical and medical industries. In the past, charity hospitals existed to attend to medical emergencies but over the past few decades, federal law has ensured that Americans can no longer receive unfunded care.

Healthcare should be about protecting the consumer, but as long as the medical industry is permitted to charge whatever price they deem fit for a procedure, there is little chance that Americans will pay the significantly lower prices paid by patients in other countries.

We must fight for the establishment of affordable alternatives to current hospitals and clinics; without a free market, it will be difficult for the situation to change for the better. Read about how the man-made health care crisis came about and discover how we can put an end to it.    

Understanding U.S. Healthcare Costs

Infographic provided by Calculators.org

Further Reading

 

Illegals Protected Class at California University System

Posted on by

READ WRITE THINK AND DREAM

‘Undocumented Student Services’ at UC San Diego hosts workshops mandated by the school’s Vice Chancellor to plan strategies to get government financial assistance for housing, tuition, legal counseling with particular assistance for Latinos and Koreans. Remember that former Department of Homeland Security,Janet Napolitano is now the president of the University of California system.  She set aside $5 million dollars for such programs.

Not to be out done, CalState Los Angeles, CalState Fullerton and Long Beach all have the same programs. Suggestion: stop all federal dollars to the university system.

CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITIES ROLL OUT THE RED CARPET FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
Dreamers’ need a space ‘where they can feel safe’

Illegal immigrants in California are already eligible for state financial aid for college. Some public schools are now spending taxpayer money to help these students get money from other sources, even as legal students fight for sparse resources.

 

California State University-Los Angeles received a $1.6 million endowment late last month to fund the Dreamers Resource Center, which the school bills as a space that provides “academic guidance, referral assistance and other support” for so-called dreamers, or students whose parents brought them to the U.S. illegally.

It’s just the latest Cal State campus to christen a center dedicated to students without documentation: Fullerton was the first a year ago and Long Beach came two months ago.

The Northridge campus has one “in the works,” and legislation pending in the Legislature would help create more centers across the Cal State system and in community colleges, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The CSU-LA gift will help the school underwrite staff costs and maintain a dedicated space for the center, which was created in October. It helps undocumented students with things like scholarship deadlines and applying for federal work authorization, the school said.

Erika Glazer, the philanthropist whose $1.6 million donation followed her earlier pledges of $700,000 for illegal immigrants, said in CSU-LA’s release that she hopes the center “will be obsolete in a few years and the funds can go toward other programs” at the school.

CSU-LA “has a long history in facilitating the academic success of special student populations” such as low-income students, Nancy Wada-McKee, assistant vice president for student affairs, told The College Fix in an email. She said the school also serves more than 700 veterans through their own resource center.

Technically, the Dreamers center is open to all students, Wada-McKee said, although it focuses on helping undocumented students.

Favoring one group over everyone else?

Under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and California law, Dreamers who meet certain criteria are eligible for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.

The 2011 California Dream Act also granted access to financial aid to so-called AB 540 students who attend a college or university in California.

In fall 2014, about 850 CSU-LA students met the requirements for in-state tuition under AB 540, the Times said.

The Long Beach Press Telegram reported a year ago that around 6,400 undocumented students were enrolled at Cal State’s 23 campuses.

CSU-Long Beach’s own “Dream Success Center,” not quite three months old, has already run into opposition from some students who think it’s a waste of valuable resource for a school that’s stretched thin.

The Fix previously reported on lobbying against the center by CSU-LB College Republicans Chairman Nestor Moto, Jr., who said the money that went into creating it could have been used to shrink overcrowded classes or offer more counselors for all students.

“We have 10 advising centers and that is who the money should have been allocated to,” not one special student population, Moto told The Fix in March.

The Daily 49er reported that the renovation for Long Beach’s center cost $16 million, and ongoing costs – including a full-time coordinator for the 650 undocumented students – run to $80,000 a year.

Just ‘leveling the playing field’

Besides the CSU-LA pledge from philanthropist Glazer, University of California President Janet Napolitano has set aside $5 million in non-state funds for undocumented students and resource centers.

UC said last week that Napolitano’s efforts – paying “trained advisers” to help students get “mentoring and emotional support” as well as “find internship and work-study jobs” – are simply “leveling the playing field” for illegal immigrants.

Jose Guevara, a CSU-LA center adviser and political science major who previously received a Glazer scholarship, told the Times that it was “important that [Dreamers] have a space where they can feel safe.”

Glazer is not the only multimillionaire philanthropist putting undocumented students ahead of other college students.

Former Washington Post owner Donald Graham and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman each donated $15 million to Graham’s scholarship fund for illegal-immigrant children, TheDream.us, the organization said Wednesday.

The new money – up to $25,000 each for 1,200 students at TheDream.us partner colleges – comes on top of $10 million each the duo previously donated. They want to spur other philanthropists to donate $30 million for another 5,000 scholarships, the organization said.

TheDream.us teamed up with the City University of New York last year to give scholarships to undocumented students who have already filed for temporary legal status.