Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

200,000 Salvadorians Face Termination of Protected Status Program

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Back in November of 2017, the Trump administration began dismantling a longstanding humanitarian program known as temporary protected status, leaving hundreds of thousands of Central American immigrants living in heightened fear of deportation.

The program grants temporary visas that allow immigrants to live and work in the U.S. and protects them from being forced to return to their home countries. The U.S. has granted TPS to immigrants from 10 countries, mostly in Central America, for decades. The countries gain the designation after being ravaged by war or natural disasters.

DHS in coordination with the State Department and Health and Human Services is the agency of record in this matter. DHS designates the native country TPS-eligible. The initial period provided is not less than six months and not more than 18 months, but DHS can extend this time if country conditions warrant it.

*** For more information and details on TPS by DHS, go here.

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The Trump administration is ending special protections for Salvadoran immigrants, forcing nearly 200,000 to leave the country or face deportation, officials said Monday.

El Salvador is the fourth country whose citizens have lost Temporary Protected Status under President Donald Trump, and they have been, by far, the largest beneficiaries of the program, which provides humanitarian relief for foreigners whose countries are hit with natural disasters or other strife.

Two U.S. officials discussed the decision on condition of anonymity with The Associated Press because they were not authorized to speak publicly ahead of the announcement. One official said Salvadorans will have until September 2019 to leave the country or adjust their legal status.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s decision, while not surprising, will send shivers through parts of Washington, Los Angeles, New York, Houston and other metropolitan areas that are home to large numbers of Salvadorans, who have enjoyed special protection since earthquakes struck the Central American country in 2001. Many have established deep roots in the U.S., starting families and businesses over decades.

It also represents a serious challenge for El Salvador, a country of 6.2 million people whose economy depends on remittances from wage earners in the U.S. Over the last decade, growing numbers of Salvadorans — many coming as families or unaccompanied children — have entered the United States illegally through Mexico, fleeing violence and poverty.

In September 2016, the Obama administration extended protections for 18 months, saying El Salvador suffered lingering harm from the 2001 earthquakes that killed more than 1,000 people and was temporarily unable to absorb such a large number of people. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen faced a Monday deadline to decide whether to grant another extension.

El Salvador President Salvador Sanchez Ceren spoke by phone Friday with Nielsen to renew his plea to extend status for 190,000 Salvadorans and allow more time for Congress to deliver a long-term fix for them to stay in the U.S.

The decision comes amid intensifying talks between the White House and Congress on an immigration package that may include protections for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who came to the country as children and were temporarily shielded from deportation under an Obama-era program. Trump said in September that he was ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, but gave Congress until March to act.

The U.S. created Temporary Protected Status in 1990 to provide a safe haven from countries affected by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, war and other disasters, and it currently shields nearly 320,000 people from 10 countries. There are nearly 440,000 beneficiaries from the 10 countries, including 263,000 from El Salvador, but many have obtained legal status other ways.

The benefit, which includes work authorization, can be renewed up to 18 months at a time by the Homeland Security secretary. Critics say it has proved anything but temporary — with many beneficiaries staying years after the initial justification applies.

Nielsen said last week that short-term extensions are not the answer.

“Getting them to a permanent solution is a much better plan than having them live six months to 12 months to 18 months,” she told the AP.

In November, Nielsen’s predecessor, acting Secretary Elaine Duke, ended the protection for Haitians, requiring about 50,000 to leave or adjust their legal status by July 22, 2019, and for Nicaraguans, giving about 2,500 until Jan. 5, 2019. She delayed a decision affecting more than 50,000 Hondurans, foisting the decision onto Nielsen.

Last year, the Trump administration extended status for South Sudan and ended it for Sudan. Other countries covered are Nepal, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

UNRWA De-Funded by the United States, Finally, Sorta

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Primer: April – August 1948: More than 700,000 Palestine refugees are displaced as a result of the Arab-Israeli War. Per the United Nations Relief and Works Agency website. So, we have a generational refugee condition, where they are refugees in essentially their own land…let that sink in.

UNRWA human development and humanitarian services encompass primary and vocational education, primary health care, relief and social services, infrastructure and camp improvement, microfinance and emergency response, including in situations of armed conflict.

Bleh…..after 70 years….it still has to be funded? Did you catch that set of words ‘armed conflict’? Even the left leaning Huffington Post agrees, the Palestinians DON’T want peace.

The Palestinians not only have rejected one offer after another for a peaceful settlement in the past nearly 70 years, but also, tragically, their misguided actions now make any chance of an accord going forward still less likely.

Friday’s UN Security Council resolution is a case in point.

If the goal was to increase the chance of Palestinian statehood alongside Israel (and not in its place!), it was an abysmal failure, despite the lopsided vote. Those diplomats who rushed to applaud the outcome – and I’ll set aside thuggish countries like Venezuela that don’t bring a shred of good will to the UN table – should think twice about what they actually achieved.

If they wanted to excoriate Israel, a longstanding vocation of too many UN member states, then they can thump their chests, even if, alas, they habitually reserve such scrutiny for the only democratic nation in the Middle East. But for those truly committed to advancing prospects for peace, they took a big step backwards, once again falling into the Palestinian trap.

*** The Palestinians have a capital it is called Ramallah. Image result for ramallah palestinians

And Israel has a capital, Jerusalem. Image result for jerusalem photo

The Palestinians want peace, just not with Jews.

So, when the United States suspended funding to UNRWA….it was not all the funding, don’t be fooled. The United States gives an estimated $390,000,000 to UNRWA each year. Add that to the collection of other nations’ contributions and UNRWA is hardly out of business.

The United States administration froze a $125 million grant to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN’s agency for “Palestinian refugees”, which was supposed to be delivered on January 1, Channel 10 News reported on Friday, citing three Western diplomats.

The amount frozen is one-third of the annual funding the United States provides the organization, according to the report.

The three diplomats, who asked to remain anonymous because of the political sensitivity of the issue, told Channel 10 the grant had been frozen until the end of the reexamination of U.S. aid to the Palestinians, which began in recent days. According to the diplomats, officials in the administration have informed UN officials in the past two days that President Donald Trump is considering cutting this amount completely and could even increase the cut to $180 million, which would be half the total U.S. funding for UNRWA.

The cutting in the UN funding to UNRWA is a U.S. sanction against the organization, which has come under strong criticized from both the United States and Israel, as well as against the Palestinian Arabs, in an attempt to pressure them to renew peace talks with Israel.

News of the freezing of the grant came as a meeting took place in the White House discussing the cutting of aid to the Palestinian Authority and to UNRWA.

The meeting followed Trump’s tweets earlier this week in which he expressed doubt over the usefulness of American aid to the Palestinians, given their refusal to resume peace talks with Israel.

The United States is the largest single donor to UNRWA, providing approximately a fourth of the organization’s budget.

Reports in Israel on Thursday indicated that the Israeli Foreign Ministry is opposed to Trump’s planned cut in the aid to UNRWA, but on Friday Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett said that cutting aid to UNRWA is the correct move.

For years, UNRWA has been a target for criticism in light of Hamas’s activity in its educational institutions and the use of its facilities by Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations in Gaza.

UNRWA was documented storing Hamas rockets and weapons “designed to kill Israeli citizens” in its schools, a fact which the UNRWA chief admitted himself.

In addition, the organization has actively taken part in inciting anti-Semitic violence.

By the way, it is called a global diaspora regarding where and how many Palestinians live across the globe.

The countries outside the Palestinian territories with significant Palestinian populations are:

Iran/Turkey Evade Sanctions Work, Guilty and DC

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If you think you can describe relationships and motivations globally and the connective tissue into Washington DC….you may need to think again.

This particular legal case decided yesterday has the makings of an HBO television documentary that includes past and present political power-brokers. We have Trump, Giuliani, Flynn, Obama, FBI, Justice, Iran, Turkey, lobbyists and even some violence.

What did the Obama administration know and why did they know it, then what?

Primer:

May 2017: MIAMI — President Donald Trump’s longtime Florida lobbyist, Brian Ballard, has expanded his practice globally and just signed a $1.5 million contract with the government of Turkey, which will be represented by the firm’s new big hire, former Florida Congressman Robert Wexler.

Ballard Partners’ Turkey contract, inked Friday, comes on the heels of two other international clients signed by the firm: A March 6 $900,000 contract with the Dominican Republic and an April 1 $240,000 contract with the Socialist Party of Albania, the ruling party in the Balkan nation. More here.

For a current list of clients for Ballard Partners, go here.

***

Just the facts and the case of GOLD below, while several are still at large.

Enter the good guys, outside of government who perform remarkable and respected investigative work.

The Biggest Sanctions-Evasion Scheme in Recent History

And the swashbuckling gold trader at its center

SchanzerYesterday, Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla was found guilty in a Manhattan courtroom for a range of financial crimes. His dramatic trial revealed that tens of billions in dollars and gold moved from Turkey to Iran through a complex network of businesses, banks, and front companies.

Image result for Mehmet Hakan Atillaphoto

The trial was a long time coming. In late October of 2016, Justice Department officials paid a visit to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Washington-based think tank where I serve as senior vice president. They wanted to talk about Reza Zarrab. A dual Iranian-Turkish national, Zarrab was the swashbuckling gold trader who had helped Iran evade sanctions with the help of Turkish banks in 2013 and 2014, yielding Iran an estimated $13 billion at the height of the efforts to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. A leaked report by prosecutors in Istanbul in March 2014 suggested that Zarrab spearheaded a second sanctions-busting scheme involving fake invoices for billions more in fictitious humanitarian shipments to Iran that were processed through Turkish banks.

At FDD, we’d spent considerable time digging into Zarrab’s activities. Our think tank already had an established track record of identifying and exposing Iran’s malign activities. We had also just launched a new program to explore Turkey’s recent drift into Islamist authoritarianism. The more we investigated, the more we realized that Zarrab’s schemes, which could have helped Iran pocket more than $100 billion, rank among the largest sanctions evasion episode in modern history.Despite the headlines generated by the gold trade and leaked report, the Turkish government insisted that everything was above board. The Obama administration seemed to echo this sentiment, saying that the gold trade had slipped through a legal loophole (a loophole the White House inexplicably left open for an additional six months, even after the problem was flagged). We soon learned Ankara’s political motivations: The gold trade helped boost Turkey’s flagging export numbers at a moment when those numbers might have hurt President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chances for reelection. Zarrab, who became fabulously wealthy by taking a percentage from every transaction (he later estimated his take at $150 million), even received a reward for his efforts from a Turkish trade association in 2015, with Erdogan applauding from the audience.

But it all came to an abrupt halt last March, when Zarrab inexplicably brought his family to America for a vacation at Disney World. With the 2015 nuclear deal in effect, he may have believed that the sanctions laws he violated before the deal were no longer in force. Some suggest that Zarrab was trying to flee Iranian justice, particularly as the regime came to grasp just how much he skimmed off the top. Either way, when he arrived in Florida, U.S. authorities arrested him for engaging in conspiracies to violate sanctions, commit bank fraud, and launder money.

It was about time. For three years, my colleagues and I had been briefing the Treasury Department, the State Department, and Congressional offices. We had tracked the export data (which, remarkably, Turkey did not hide), showing an astronomical spike in Turkish gold exports. We identified the companies and players, with the help of the 2014 prosecutor’s report. It was painstaking work, but it was all out there in open sources for a think tank like ours to document.Yet, it was an inconvenient moment to reveal unsavory truths about Iran, amid the push for the nuclear agreement. Nor did anyone, Democrat or Republican, want to touch the third rail of relations with Turkey, a NATO ally that had recently begun backing terrorist groups like Hamas (which still maintains a disturbing presence in Turkey) and a range of Sunni jihadi groups fighting the Assad regime in Syria (including al-Qaeda’s affiliate, according to senior U.S. government officials we interviewed). Stable allies in the Muslim world were scarce, and decision-makers seemed reluctant to take any chances with Ankara.

It may also have been difficult for officials to hear that the sanctions tools we have in place to prevent bad actors from moving money are just that—tools. Without intense vigilance and enforcement, there is ample opportunity for Iran and other sanctioned countries to find workarounds. But if we’re going to follow the money, we’d better be prepared to follow it to the most inconvenient places.

That’s why it was a pleasant surprise when the Justice Department came knocking on FDD’s door. It had never dawned on us that they might be interested in our work. But they were. They wanted to see what we already knew of the complex web of companies, networks, and schemes, that Zarrab employed to move money out of Turkey and into Iran. After all, even with the vast evidence they had collected, our research predated their investigation.In the weeks and months that followed, one visit begat another. Both I and Mark Dubowitz, FDD’s CEO, were asked by the assistant U.S. attorney to serve as an expert witness for the prosecution. We pored over invoices tracking the transactions that turned gold into Iranian cash. We analyzed spreadsheets detailing the dizzying trail of sales and purchases designed to obfuscate the illicit nature of the transactions. There were also photos, including one of Zarrab himself standing next to a six-foot high tower of plastic-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. The documents were privileged at the time, but will soon be made public now that the trial is over. The documents are damning, with textbook examples of  money-laundering techniques like over-invoicing (charging significantly more for a given product to yield more margin) and circular invoicing (making multiple transactions involving the same funds or goods to hide a money trail or even benefit from arbitrage). The figures themselves were astounding: hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions in every stack of papers we viewed.

The case took a wild turn on March 28, when, Justice Department officials from the Southern District of New York arrested Atilla, the deputy CEO and general manager at Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank. They accused him of conspiring with Zarrab to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on behalf of Iran. It was Halkbank that held one of the oil escrow accounts for Iran. The escrow accounts constituted a creative method of withholding petrodollars from Iran, as mandated by the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (ITRA) of 2012. In brazen defiance of U.S. sanctions, Halkbank released those funds to buy gold, which was then shipped off to Iran. Halkbank was also accused of helping to process Zarrab’s aforementioned fictitious invoices, the ones first exposed in the 2014 prosecutor’s report.
Image result for HalkbankUranium or gold

Halkbank was clearly in trouble. In September, it hired Ballard Partners, a U.S. lobbying firm that already represented the Turkish government, for a whopping $1.5 million. Separately, Zarrab hired former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in an attempt to derail the proceedings. But the real drama came in late November when Zarrab pled out, making him a witness for the prosecution. Atilla would stand trial alone.

Related reading: Iran’s Turkish gold rush

That’s when the Turkish government got angry. They took their anger out on me and Mark Dubowitz, who testified on the first day of Atilla trial about the Iran sanctions architecture. The state media called us terrorists, alleging we were affiliated with Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen’s network, the group Erdogan blamed for the attempted coup in July of last year. Ankara also issued an arrest warrant for my colleague Aykan Erdemir, a former Turkish parliamentarian. Turkish authorities froze his assets and even seized the apartment that his grandfather had bequeathed to the family. They said he “destroyed paperwork relating to state security” and “stole documents with the intention of using them abroad.” They also falsely identified him as being on the witness list.

But Ankara could not stop Zarrab from delivering seven days of sensational testimony. On day one, he appeared in court wearing a beige prison jumpsuit; for the remainder, he was allowed to wear a blazer. He was a natural in front of the jury, using diagrams to coolly explain how he orchestrated the scheme. He looked like a business school professor teaching a class on corruption.Here’s what Zarrab testified: The scheme began in 2010, when Iran began to feel the squeeze from U.S. sanctions for its nuclear drive. Zarrab said that around 2012 the Iranian government gave him explicit directions to conduct these illegal transactions. Turkish officials were also on the take, Zarrab said, with its economy minister allegedly taking $50 million in bribes to help facilitate the scheme. He said other Turkish officials were on the take, too—many of whom were in Erdogan’s inner circle. According to Zarrab, other Turkish banks may have been involved at the government’s behest. All this might explain why the Turkish government, even after the prosecutor’s report was leaked in 2014, killed all inquiry into the Zarrab scheme.

Testimony from David Cohen and Adam Szubin, two former Treasury Department undersecretaries would also reveal that Halkbank officials repeatedly reassured them their gold-trader clients, including Zarrab, were in compliance with U.S. sanctions against Iran. (Zarrab testified that he continued his operations up until his arrest in March 2016, which meant that Halkbank would have been lying to U.S. officials.)

In the end, the trial ran long. With the judge calling for the prosecution to wrap things up quickly, I managed to avoid taking the stand. Atilla testified in a last-ditch self-defense, and the jury began its deliberations on December 20.Yesterday, after spending 11 days away for Christmas and New Years, the jury returned to deliberate again, and after only a few hours delivered their verdict: guilty on five out of six counts. Atilla’s rap sheep now includes four conspiracy counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, plus one count of bank fraud. (He was acquitted for money laundering.)

All eyes are now on the United States government and whether it issues a fine against Halkbank, particularly now that it has proven in a court of law that the bank engaged in a massive, illegal financial scheme. French Bank BNP Paribas was fined $8.9 billion for far lesser transgressions in 2015, for its violations of sanctions against Sudan, Cuba, and Iran.

Fine or no fine, it’s hard to envision tranquil U.S.-Turkish relations going forward. Erdogan, who now rivals Russia’s Vladimir Putin in autocratic style, has already instructed his spokesman to decry the trial as a “plot” against Turkey, while slamming “the scandalous verdict of a scandalous case.”

Then there is the question of Iran. In all likelihood, Tehran probably gave little thought to the Atilla verdict, given its ongoing domestic turmoil. The people are calling for better economic conditions, and a foreign policy that doesn’t squander Iran’s wealth on adventurism outside the country’s borders. One can only guess that would include complex sanctions busting schemes to enable an illicit nuclear program.

And now that Zarrab has finally clarified a few things about the Iranian role in his scheme, one troubling question lingers: Why did the U.S. government continue to negotiate the nuclear deal with Iran in 2013 and 2014 while Treasury was warning Halkbank about enormous sanctions violations? We may never know. Then again, from the documents I viewed, I wouldn’t be surprised to see other sanctions busters come in the DOJ crosshairs—creating new and uncomfortable challenges for our existing alliances and diplomatic agreements. Perhaps other future indictments will tell us more.

 

AG Sessions Unwinds Obama’s Marijuana Policy

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Oregon, one of the first states to push back:

SALEM, Ore. — An Oregon congressman who is one of a chief backer of legalized marijuana is urging a fight against U.S. Attorney General Jeff Session’s plan to open the gates to federal enforcement of laws against marijuana.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat who co-sponsored an amendment that prevents the Justice Department from interfering with states’ medical marijuana programs, called the move outrageous. He said anyone who cares about this issue should mobilize and push back strongly.

“One wonders if Trump was consulted—it is Jeff Sessions after all—because this would violate his campaign promise not to interfere with state marijuana laws,” he said in a prepared statement.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said rolling back federal marijuana policy, which has been largely non-interventionist, will disrupt the state’s economy. She said over 19,000 jobs have been created by the marijuana market in Oregon, which was the first state to decriminalize personal possession in 1973, legalized medical marijuana in 1998, and recreational use in 2014.

“The federal government must keep its promise to states that relied on its guidance,” she said in a statement. “My staff and state agencies … will fight to continue Oregon’s commitment to a safe and prosperous recreational marijuana market.”

More here.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday rescinded a policy begun under Democratic former President Barack Obama that had eased enforcement of federal marijuana laws, saying it would be up to federal prosecutors across the country to prioritize any such drug cases.

The Obama administration’s guidelines had “created a safe harbor for the marijuana industry to operate in these states and … there is a belief that that is inconsistent with what the federal law says,” a Justice Department official told reporters, referring to states that have legalized the drug.

***

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, January 4, 2018

Justice Department Issues Memo on Marijuana Enforcement

The Department of Justice today issued a memo on federal marijuana enforcement policy announcing a return to the rule of law and the rescission of previous guidance documents. Since the passage of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in 1970, Congress has generally prohibited the cultivation, distribution, and possession of marijuana.

 

In the memorandum, Attorney General Jeff Sessions directs all U.S. Attorneys to enforce the laws enacted by Congress and to follow well-established principles when pursuing prosecutions related to marijuana activities. This return to the rule of law is also a return of trust and local control to federal prosecutors who know where and how to deploy Justice Department resources most effectively to reduce violent crime, stem the tide of the drug crisis, and dismantle criminal gangs.

 

“It is the mission of the Department of Justice to enforce the laws of the United States, and the previous issuance of guidance undermines the rule of law and the ability of our local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement partners to carry out this mission,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “Therefore, today’s memo on federal marijuana enforcement simply directs all U.S. Attorneys to use previously established prosecutorial principles that provide them all the necessary tools to disrupt criminal organizations, tackle the growing drug crisis, and thwart violent crime across our country.”

Attachment(s):
Download Marijuana Enforcement 1.4.18
Component(s):
Office of the Attorney General

What Goes on in Sanctuary California Wont Stay in California

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Image result for sanctuary california photo

Federal dollars going to California could or should be considered foreign aid. Why? Read on…

The federal government spends some $367.8 billion a year on California. That’s an average of about $9,500 for every woman, man and child in the state.

In truth, the money isn’t spread out evenly. About 56 cents of every federal dollar spent in California, according to the analysis, goes to health or retirement benefits — Social Security, Medicare and money for low-income residents’ health care through the Medi-Cal program.

Defense contracts are the next biggest slice of the pie, followed by paychecks to military and civilian government employees. From there, federal spending gets sprinkled among a number of programs run by the state government. Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent budget plan pegged those funds at a total of $105 billion, equivalent to about 58% of state taxpayer dollars to be spent in the fiscal year that begins on July 1.

A detailed report is here.

So, now that California is officially a sanctuary state under SB54, effective January1, 2018, those illegals, felons and those plotting threats with regard to national security can freely travel anywhere, this is not just a California problem.

Last year, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order to cut funding from counties that limit cooperation with U.S. immigration authorities, Santa Clara County stood to lose $1.7 billion in federal funding. After fighting the order, a federal judge ruled in favor of the county. Now that the entire state is following the same guidelines, some leaders argue it could strengthen their position in future legal battles.

Not everyone is onboard, however. Some California sheriff’s departments have criticized the new sanctuary state law, saying it will lead to broad roundups that could lead to collateral arrests. More here.

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There is a key word in this new law, it is ‘prohibits’.

BILL SUMMARY

  • Prohibits state and local law enforcement from holding illegal aliens on the basis of federal immigration detainers, or transferring them into federal custody, unless they’ve been convicted in the last 15 years for one of a list of 31 crimes, or are a registered sex offender: if not, they may only be held with a warrant from a federal judge.
  • Prohibits state and local law enforcement from asking anyone about their immigration status.
  • Prohibits state and local law enforcement from sharing any information with federal immigration authorities that is not available to the general public.
  • Prohibits state and local law enforcement from using any of their money or personnel to “investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes”.
  • Prohibits state and local law enforcement from allowing federal immigration authorities to use space in their facilities.
  • Limits how and when state and local law enforcement can contract with federal immigration authorities.
  • Grants discretion to state and local law enforcement to cooperate even less with federal immigration authorities than the bill authorizes them to, but not more
  • Is near-universally recognized and described by both its supporters and opponents as a sanctuary state bill: protects illegal aliens at the expense of citizens, will increase illegal immigration to California, and sends the message that illegal aliens are welcome everywhere in the state.

***

State Senate Leader Kevin de Leon, the author of the bill, has argued that public safety will be undermined if the law isn’t passed. It is estimated that more than 2 million undocumented people live in California — with hundreds of thousands from Asia as well as Latin America — and advocates say many will be scared to interact with official institutions if they fear that will put them on federal immigration agents’ radar. They say individuals might not report violent crimes to police, might not send their kids to school or might not seek medical care at the local hospital. And there is some evidence to back that up: Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Police Department said that Latino communities were reporting fewer instances of sexual assault and domestic violence because of concerns about deportation under Trump. More here.

***

California Democratic state Senate president Kevin de León intends to enter California’s 2018 Senate race against Sen. Dianne Feinstein, three sources with knowledge of his plans say.

De León has begun calling labor leaders and elected officials to inform them of his plans, the sources said, and is expected to soon announce his campaign against Feinstein, a giant of California Democratic politics who has held the office since 1992.
The 50-year-old de León, who represents Los Angeles and is seen as a leading Latino voice in Democratic politics, is likely to campaign aggressively against President Donald Trump. He began signaling he could oppose Feinstein in late August, after she said Trump could “be a good president” and that he “can learn and change.” Feinstein later clarified that she is “under no illusion that it’s likely to happen and will continue to oppose his policies.” More here.
So who is this de Leon character? That is a challenge to determine and he has not been fully forthcoming on his own history. Check it out here. 
We also had this sexual harassment case, where de Leon was the roommate. Hummm. He was also a college dropout.

De León was the first and only person in his family to graduate from high school and attend college. He started out at the University of California Santa Barbara, but it was a challenge. He had moxie but no organizational skills, no practice at taking notes or studying for a test. He didn’t last long.

He couldn’t go back home and tell his mother of his failure. Instead, he went to work for One Stop Immigration Center, a nonprofit in Los Angeles that helps undocumented immigrants fill out paperwork and teaches them English, history and organizing.

Then, the Attorney General for California is Javier Beccera.  He is a loyal and dedicated supported of the Dream Act and will defend all cases against California becoming a sanctuary state. Meanwhile, remember that whole Pakistani IT case in Congress under Debbie Wasserman Schultz?

Enter again Javier Beccera.

Now-indicted former congressional IT aide Imran Awan allegedly routed data from numerous House Democrats to a secret server. Police grew suspicious and requested a copy of the server early this year, but they were provided with an elaborate falsified image designed to hide the massive violations. The falsified image is what ultimately triggered their ban from the House network Feb. 2, according to a senior House official with direct knowledge of the investigation.

The secret server was connected to the House Democratic Caucus, an organization chaired by then-Rep. Xavier Becerra. Police informed Becerra that the server was the subject of an investigation and requested a copy of it. Authorities considered the false image they received to be interference in a criminal investigation, the senior official said.

On Jan. 24, 2017, Becerra vacated his congressional seat to become California’s attorney general. “He wanted to wipe his server, and we brought to his attention it was under investigation. The light-off was we asked for an image of the server, and they deliberately turned over a fake server,” the senior official said.

“They were using the House Democratic Caucus as their central service warehouse … It was a breach. The data was completely out of [the members’] possession. Does it mean it was sold to the Russians? I don’t know,” the senior official said.

Capitol Police considered the image a sign that the Awans knew exactly what they were doing and were going to great lengths to try to cover it up, the senior official said. The House Sergeant-at-Arms banned them from the network as a result.

The senior official said the data was also funneled offsite via a Dropbox account, from which copies could easily be downloaded. Authorities could not immediately shut down the account when the Awans were banned from the network because it was not an official account. More here.

One last item…don’t forget to keep Eric Holder in the whole mix regarding California.

Former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder files brief on behalf of California Senate in Chicago’s ‘sanctuary city’ lawsuit

The California Senate is throwing its support behind Chicago in a lawsuit against the Justice Department over its plan to withhold federal money from “sanctuary cities,” which limit collaboration between state and local authorities with federal immigration agents.

Former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and his firm, Covington & Burling, on Thursday filed a friend-of the-court brief on behalf of the state Senate in the federal case, saying sanctuary jurisdictions have policies consistent with federal law.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, Holder says, does not have the constitutional authority to mandate that cities, counties or states participate in federal immigration efforts as a condition to receive their federal public safety awards.

The lawsuit, filed last month by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and city officials, asks a judge to block the Trump administration from enforcing three new conditions it included in petitions for Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant money. The city uses the grant to buy police cars and other equipment, and to fund an anti-violence program.

Holder, who was said to have filed the brief pro-bono, was temporarily hired by the Senate and Assembly to serve as outside counsel to offer advice on the state’s legal strategy against the incoming administration. On Friday, a Covington & Burling spokeswoman said the firm remains “engaged with the California Senate on an ongoing basis.”

In the brief, Holder said the California Legislature has a particular interest in the Chicago case as it weighs Senate Bill 54, which seeks to limit state and local law enforcement agencies from using resources to question, detain and provide information on immigrants illegally in the country.

Covington & Burling analyzed the legislation this year and concluded that “states have the power over the health and safety of their residents and allocation of state resources.”