Category Archives: Gangs and Crimes

Hoorah for Senator(s) Grassley/Johnson, Shame on WH/DHS

Posted on by

Primer: The OIG report is here.

FreeBeacon: The number of individuals who were supposed to have been deported but were instead granted citizenship is far higher than was initially reported by media covering the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s office report on the matter.

On Monday, the Inspector General reported that 858 individuals from “special interest countries” — meaning countries that are considered to be “of concern to the national security” of the US — were supposed to have been deported but were instead granted US citizenship.

The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s office said in a footnote that 1,811 people had been granted citizenship wrongly. More here.

****   

Email shows federal immigration bosses in OT push to swear in new citizens ‘due to election’

FNC: An internal Obama administration email shows immigration officials may be literally working overtime to swear in as many new “citizen voters” as possible before the Nov. 8 presidential election, a powerful lawmaker charged Thursday.

The email, from a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field office chief and part of a chain of correspondence within the agency, urges the unnamed recipient to swear in as many citizens as possible “due to the election year.”

“The Field Office due to the election year needs to process as many of their N-400 cases as possible between now and FY 2016,” reads the email, which was disclosed to FoxNews.com by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who chairs the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

“If you have cases in this category or other pending, you are encouraged to take advantage of the OT if you can,” the email continues. “This will be an opportunity to move your pending naturalization cases. If you have not volunteered for OT, please consider and let me know if you are interested.”

Parts of the email were redacted before it was disclosed to FoxNews.com, but it was sent by the branch chief of the Houston Field Office District 17. It was not clear to whom it was addressed.

“I couldn’t have said it better!” reads the July 21 note introducing the forwarded missive. “It’s the end of the year crunch time, so let’s get crunchy! Go Team Houston! Thanks for all your hard work!”

Johnson and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, in a Wednesday letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, said it appears the agency is trying to swear in new citizens as the election between Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton and GOP choice Donald Trump approaches.

“Your department seems intent on approving as many naturalization cases as quickly as possible at a time when it should instead be putting on the brakes and reviewing past adjudications,” the senator’s letter read.

Johnson referred to a report this week from the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General that found at least 858 people from terror hotspots and other countries of concern had been mistakenly granted citizenship despite facing orders of deportation under other identities.

“Considering that USCIS already has a troubling record of inadequate review of naturalization applications, and mistakenly giving away citizenship to terrorists, criminals and other fraudsters, it is disturbing that they are now in full and blind rubber stamp mode to crank out new citizens,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies.

In a USCIS planning document submitted to Congress earlier this year, USCIS reported it expected to receive 828,000 total applications this year, up from a planned 815,000 last year, an increase of 13,000, Vaughan said.

A DHS official did not immediately offer comment on the matter.

The effort is reminiscent of a similar bid to bring in new voters when Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, said Claude Arnold, a retired U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations.

“I am not at all surprised by this revelation,” Arnold said. “This is a repeat of the Clinton election playbook. Then it was to help re-elect Bill Clinton, this time it is to help elect Hillary Clinton.”

The all-out push shows the Obama administration is using levers to help Clinton win, said Dan Stein, president of Federation for American Immigration Reform.

“In the pursuit of a partisan advantage, one party has decided integrity in the system is irrelevant,” Stein said. “They don’t really care about checking backgrounds or verifying status and eligibility – it is more about increasing the number of eligible voters in the upcoming election.”

 

Hey Yahoo Users…..a Big Problem was Finally Admitted, HACKED

Posted on by

Yahoo confirms 500 million accounts compromised in huge data breach

FNC: Yahoo has confirmed that hackers stole information from at least 500 million user accounts in what it describes as a “state-sponsored” attack.

In a statement released Thursday, Yahoo’s Chief Information Security Officer Bob Lord said that the information was stolen from the company’s network in late 2014. “The account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers,” he said.

However, an ongoing investigation into the hack suggests that stolen information did not include unprotected passwords, payment card data, or bank account information, according to Lord. Payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the affected system, he added.

The investigation has found that the attacker is no longer in Yahoo’s network. The internet giant said that it is working with law enforcement.

Yahoo is notifying potentially affected users and asking them to promptly change their passwords.

Early on Friday Recode reported that Yahoo was set to confirm a major data breach of its systems in 2012 that compromised the personal data of 200 million accounts.

**** 

PYMNTS: Yahoo did announce over the summer that is was investigating a possible data breach wherein hackers claimed to have accessed 200 million Yahoo user accounts that they were selling online.

“It’s as bad as that,” one source told re/code. “Worse, really.”

And a hack that is “bad” on its best description and “worse” than 200 million accounts going up for sale on the dark web may only be the beginning of Yahoo’s troubles this week, since the firm is also in the midst of trying to close a $4.8 billion sale of its core business — which is at the center this hack — to Verizon.

If the scale of liability is large enough, it could be a costly problem for Yahoo’s new owners — and the firm’s shareholders are likely to worry that it could lead to an adjustment in the price of the transaction. As of now the deal is moving forward as it goes through a variety of regulatory clearances. The deal must also pass final muster with Yahoo’s shareholders. Representatives of both firms have recently began meeting to review the Yahoo business and to make sure the transition runs smoothly. We’re sure those meeting will be delightfully fun this week.

If this is the same hack that was reported over the summer, the actor behind the mayhem is an infamous cybercriminal named “Peace.” Peace was, by his own admission, selling credentials of 200 million Yahoo users from 2012 on the dark web for just over $1,800. The data allegedly included user names, easily decrypted passwords, personal information like birth dates and other email addresses. At the time (in August 2016) Yahoo noted being “aware of the claim,” but did not confirm or deny it. However, at the time Yahoo did not issue a password reset recommendation.

If this hack is what it seems to be, it will be a depressing coda on CEO Marissa Mayer’s run at the head of Yahoo. Though brought in to turn the firm around, Mayer was unable to find traction for a reset, refocused Yahoo — which eventually precipitated the sale.

WH Hacked: DC Leaks Releases New Emails Of WH Staffer

Posted on by

Much of what the White House puts out is obviously a political Potemkin Village it seems as well.

Zerohedge: DC Leaks has just revealed its latest email hack of White House staffer Ian Mellul.  According to DC Leaks, Mellul works in the White House to coordinate official trips for the First Lady and VP Biden while also serving on Hillary’s presidential campaign.

Ian Mellul is a member of White House Office staff. He coordinates with United States Secret Service and local law enforcement agencies to help maximize the safe exposure of the First Lady and the Vice President of the United States, during official trips and visits. At the same time he works for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The emails come from Mellul’s personal gmail account, spanning February 2015 through July 2016, and contain a mix of detailed planning logistics, internal campaign chatter and other materials from both the White House and Clinton campaign.  A full list of the emails can be reviewed on the DC Leaks website.

The following tweet was sent out earlier by DC Leaks exposing the hack.

***

Check Ian Mellul’s private correspondence for more interesting stuff:

 

 

The leaks included the alleged passport of Michelle Obama…

*** DC Leaks

And logistics photos, like the one below, intended to coordinate press events for the Hillary campaign.

*** DC Leaks

The White House declined to comment on the leak but both the LinkedIn and Twitter accounts for Mellul were deleted on Thursday morning.

Of course, the key question here remains why is official government business being conducted through personal gmail accounts in obvious violation of the federal records act?  Moreover, who exactly at the White House thinks it’s acceptable to send Michelle Obama’s passport to the gmail account of a 22 year old recent college grad?

**** In part from DailyMail:

DC Leaks said in an email: ‘The leaked files show the security level of our government. If terrorists hack emails of White House Office staff and get such sensitive information we will see the fall of our country.’

The hack also revealed a Power Point detailing the recent trip of Vice President Joe Biden to the Intercontinental Hotel in Cleveland on June 26 of this year.

The detailed report includes how many stairs Biden will be walking up as he arrives at the hotel loading dock and makes his way up to the second floor of the facility.

It also features an photo image of Biden waving as he travels from the loading dock and up the stairs, laying out all the rooms and who he will be expected to meet and speak with at the event.

The First Lady gets the same treatment for a Let’s Move event being held in Waynesboro, Georgia.

And even a Hillary Clinton event held in May of this year in Houston is detailed, from who will be meeting the Democratic hopeful to, once again, the number of steps she will walk up and down.

There are also detailed documents detailing the movements for Clinton and those with her on a number of campaign events, from who will be riding in which car and their phone numbers to the manifest on her private plane as it travels around the country.

Most of those listed are members of the advance team for Hillary for America, along with Clinton aide Connolly Keigher and Clinton senior policy adviser Maya Harris.

There is also personal correspondences between the staffers and friends, as well as notes to professors, like one in April of 2015 in which he informs one of his teachers that he will be late for class due to a last second obligation he has as part of the advance team for the First Lady.

‘I am very sorry about the last minute nature of this email. I am on the advance team for Mrs Obama, and they bumped up our meetings today on site in VA (they were supposed to be tonight!) I hate missing class more than anything else, I hopefully should be back I DC by 430, and I will sprint to the lab,’ writes the staffer.

An email from Arielle Medina, Clinton’s travel coordinator, also reveals how much those who are working on the campaign are getting paid.

‘You will receive a day rate for full work days and 1/2 of that rate for travel-only days. The rate for leads is $150 ($75 for travel-only); the rate for press leads, site leads and RONs is $110 ($55 for travel-only); the rate for credentials, S2/P2s, and motorcade is $75 ($37.50for travel-only),’ reads the email to the staffer and others on the team.

The email also reminds everyone that receipts must be saved if they want to be reimbursed and that public transportation must be taken to airport for flights between the hours of 7:00am and 10:00pm.

All team members must also share hotel rooms.

The messages were all taken from the staffers GMail account starting back in 2015, while the individual was still in college, through this past July.

DC Leaks is the same group that earlier this month hacked into the email account of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, releasing his private information.

Those emails revealed Powell’s disdain for Trump and his at times reluctance to support Clinton in the upcoming election. More here including additional photos.

 

DOJ, Civil Rights Division on Ferguson, Baltimore etc.

Posted on by

DOJ Civil Rights Chief Links Local Distrust of Police to ‘Unconstitutional’ Tactics

Law: The chief of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division told more than 200 lawyers and community activists at an Atlanta symposium Tuesday at Georgia State University that she and her Justice Department colleagues in Washington and across the nation “see a very clear link” between the criminalization of poverty by law enforcement authorities and the growing distrust of police and the government by the public.

Civil rights chief Vanita Gupta’s comments on law enforcement tactics came just hours before unrest erupted in Charlotte over the latest police shooting of an African-American man, Keith Lamont Scott. A second African-American man, Terence Crutcher, was also shot by police, in Tulsa, on Friday.

“Unconstitutional policing undermines community trust,” Gupta said. “Blanket assumptions and stereotypes about certain neighborhoods and certain communities can lead residents to see the justice system as illegitimate and authorities as corrupt. Those perceptions can drive resentment. And resentment can prevent the type of effective policing needed to keep communities and officers safe.”

Gupta noted that in Baltimore, the city’s African-American residents, concentrated in two small districts that accounted for just 11 percent of the city’s population, represented an estimated 44 percent of police stops. There, as well as in Ferguson, Missouri, where a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed 16-year-old African-American teen in 2014, Gupta said Justice Department staff saw a trend toward criminalizing the poor coupled with a focus on policing in order to generate revenue. That strategy, Gupta said, “resulted in a system where the police department and municipal court advanced policies that broke the law.”

Gupta said at the symposium that more than 60 percent of all inmates in county jails across the nation are defendants awaiting trial. Many of them, she said, “have committed nonviolent offenses and are there because they cannot pay bail.” Those practices “translate into devastating consequences—for individuals, communities and society as a whole,” she said. For people living on the financial edge, an arrest or a fine can cost a defendant his or her job, family, children, home and health care, trapping “the most vulnerable among us in perpetual cycles of poverty, debt and incarceration,” Gupta said. That, in turn, “undermines the legitimacy of our justice system,” she added. “It threatens the integrity of our democracy.”

She said the division also found when people living in poverty could not pay the court’s fines and fees, “they were subjected to multiple arrests, jail time and payments that far exceeded the cost of the original ticket.”

The seminar was sponsored by the Southern Center for Human Rights, which has filed lawsuits across Georgia challenging practices by counties and municipalities, and the private probation companies many of them have retained, that incarcerate misdemeanor defendants because they have no money to pay their fines or post a bond.

The Civil Rights Division has brought its considerable weight to two of those Georgia cases. Last month, Gupta joined with the U.S. attorney in Atlanta and the American Bar Association to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to affirm a trial court ruling on behalf of indigent misdemeanor defendants who had faced jail because they could not afford to post a bond.

Seems Gupta is traveling the country hosted several seminar essentially broadcasting variations of a DoJ mission as noted here: DOJ Official: Slavery to Blame for Riots in Ferguson and Baltimore

Need more on Gupta and Loretta Lynch at the DoJ?

CJR: Top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Loretta Lynch, have worked with an organization dedicated to interfering with law enforcement efforts to monitor activities at the most radical mosques.

Lynch and DOJ Civil Rights Division head Vanita Gupta have appeared at gala events for an organization called Muslim Advocates. The George Soros-funded charity has badgered the New York City Police Department away from monitoring the most radical mosques in the city.

Civil Rights Division head Gupta appeared at the sold-out annual gala event for Muslim Advocates in Millbrae, California. Muslim Advocates lobbies the administration heavily to oppose any link between terrorist acts and radical Islam, and opposes monitoring of radical mosques. Gupta told the crowd:

To anyone who feels afraid, targeted, or discriminated against because of which religion you practice or where you worship, I want to say this — we see you. We hear you. And we stand with you. If you ever feel that somehow you don’t belong, or don’t fit in, here in America, let me reassure you  you belong.

Muslim Advocates also conducts recruitment and training for lawyers designed to help FBI terrorist targets and interviewees navigate the interviews. Their annual report states:

Throughout the year we grew our internal volunteer referral list for FBI interviews. Today, the list is over 130 lawyers nationwide who are ready and able to assist community members contacted by the FBI.

The purported non-partisan tax exempt 501(c)(3) charity is conducting a campaign against corporations like Coca-Cola to hector them into not sponsoring the Republican convention in Cleveland.

Muslim Advocates gave Vanita Gupta their Thurgood Marshall Award “for her commitment to criminal justice reform and to holding perpetrators of anti-Muslim hate accountable” at the California gala. Read more here.

How Obama Admin Hid the Cash Transfers to Iran

Posted on by

 

The U.S. government wired about $848,000 to Iran in July 2015 in order to settle a dispute over fossils and architectural drawings that are now in Iranian possession, a spokesman from the Treasury Department said. This April, the U.S. also wired roughly $9 million to Iran in exchange for 32 tons of its excess heavy water, which could be used to make a plutonium bomb. Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, commander of Iran’s Basij militia, said in January that the $400 million payment “was returned for the freedom of the US spy and it was not related to the [nuclear] negotiations.” More here in further detail.

(The heavy water was delivered to Oak Ridge Laboratories in August for domestic use and for sale to other customers including Spellation Neutron Source which is an accelerator operation. The total published cost to purchase Iran’s extra heavy water from the Iranian Arak facility is $8.6 million. It is unclear out of what agency budget this money was paid, including the Department of Defense or the Department of Energy.

Obama Admin ‘Laundered’ U.S. Cash to Iran Via N.Y. Fed, Euro Banks

Congressman: ‘Administration laundered this money in order to circumvent U.S. law’

FreeBeacon: A member of the House Intelligence Committee is accusing the Obama administration of laundering some $1.7 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars to Iran through a complicated network that included the New York Federal Reserve and several European banks, according to conversations with sources and new information obtained by the lawmaker and viewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

New disclosures made by the Treasury Department to Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a House Intelligence Committee member, show that an initial $400 million cash payment to Iran was wired to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) and then converted from U.S. dollars into Swiss francs and moved to an account at the Swiss National Bank, according to a copy of communication obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon.

Once the money was transferred to the Swiss Bank, the “FRBNY withdrew the funds from its account as Swiss franc banknotes and the U.S. Government physically transported them to Geneva” before personally overseeing the handover to an agent of Iran’s central bank, according to the documents.

These disclosures shine new light on how the Obama administration moved millions of dollars from U.S. accounts to European banks in order to facilitate three separate cash payments to Iran totaling $1.7 billion.

The latest information is adding fuel to accusations the Obama administration arranged the payment in this fashion to skirt U.S. sanctions laws and give Iran the money for the release of U.S. hostages, in what many have called a ransom.

Congress has been investigating the circumstances surrounding the payment for months and said the administration is blocking certain requests for more detailed information about the cash transaction with Iran.

“By withholding critical details and stonewalling congressional inquiries, President Obama seems to be hiding whether or not he and others broke U.S. law by sending $1.7 billion in cash to Iran,” Pompeo told the Free Beacon. “But Americans can plainly see that the Obama administration laundered this money in order to circumvent U.S. law and appease the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

As new details emerge, congressional critics such as Pompeo and Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) are beginning to suspect the U.S. government laundered the money in order to provide Tehran with immediate access.

“Think about this timeline: the U.S. withdraws $400 million in cash from the Swiss National Bank and then physically transports it to another city to hand-off to Iranian officials—three days before Iran releases four American hostages,” Pompeo said. “But it gets worse: less than a week after this, the U.S. again sends hordes of cash to Iran.  As we speak, Iran is still holding three more Americans hostage and I fear what precedent this administration has set.”

The initial $400 million payment to Iran was initiated on Jan. 14, 2016, according to information sent by the Treasury Department to Pompeo.

“For the first settlement payment in January, Treasury assisted the Defense Finance and Accounting Services (DFAS) in crafting a wire instruction to transfer the $400 million in principal from the Iran FMS [Foreign Military Sales program] account on January 14, 2016,” the document states.

“Treasury worked with DFAS and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), which was acting as Treasury’s financial agent, so that the funds were converted from dollars to Swiss francs and credited to a FRBNY account at the Swiss National Bank (SNB), which is the central bank of the Switzerland [sic],” it adds.

The U.S. hostages were released shortly after Iran received this initial cash payment.

The additional $1.3 billion cash payment was facilitated by the Dutch Central Bank, which helped the United States transfer the money to an account before it was converted into euros.

The Dutch Bank “then disbursed the funds as euro banknotes in the Netherlands to an official from the Central Bank of Iran.”

The payment was broken down into two separate transactions that occurred on Jan. 22 and Feb. 5.

Senior administration officials maintain that the transaction was completely legal and not paid out as part of a ransom to Iran. These officials have said that cash was the “most reliable” method to ensure Iran received immediate access to the funds, as its banking system is still under sanctions.

Officials from the Treasury and Justice Departments would not respond to Free Beacon requests for comment about the exact type of legal approval given prior to the cash payment.

One congressional adviser who works closely on the Iran issue told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration appears to have involved multiple branches of the government in order to help conceal the cash payment to Iran.

“It looks as if the White House made just about every corner of the executive branch complicit in covering up the extent of its payments to Iran,” the source said. “Congress was already aggressively looking into payments involving the State, Treasury, and Energy Departments. Now it’s the Justice Department, too. We already know that top officials from Justice objected strongly to the ransom deal, but were overruled. Congress wants to know what happened and why.”

A senior congressional aide familiar with investigations regarding the matter told the Free Beacon that the administration continues to hide information from lawmakers about the cash payment.

“The American public and Members of Congress understand psychology—if the administration is hiding something, there is a reason.  President Obama, Secretary Kerry and others would like to pretend that their months of evasiveness and stonewalling regarding Iran are normal, but their behavior indicates otherwise” the source said. “Refusing to answer basic questions about millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars paid to the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism only invites more questions.”

Recent reports have raised questions about how much of this money may be spent to fund Iran’s international terror operations and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Lawmakers examining who in Iran assumed control of the money have told the Free Beacon that at least part of the cash was likely spent to fund the IRGC’s operations.