Ban the AR-15….heh….right Val Gal…. This is a White House full of ahem….experts that think AR stands for Automatic Rifle…sheesh…The Federal ‘Assault’ Weapons ban happened in 1994.
Valerie Jarrett’s war on guns
Anyone remember Richard Windsor…ooops Lisa Jackson at the EPA? By the way, lil miss Lisa is a Board member of the Clinton Foundation.
Jeh Johnson granted special waiver on first day of official ban.
Practice Continued Even After Clinton Email Revelations.(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced it obtained 693 pages of Department of Homeland Security records revealing that Secretary Jeh Johnson and 28 other agency officials used government computers to access personal web-based email accounts despite an agency-wide ban due to heightened security concerns. The documents also reveal that Homeland Security officials misled Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) when Perry specifically asked whether personal accounts were being used for official government business.
The records were obtained in response to a February 2016 court order by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia following a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:15-cv-01772)).
The Judicial Watch lawsuit was filed in October 2015 after the Department of Homeland Security failed to comply with a July 2015 FOIA request seeking the following:
- All requests (in any form) submitted by senior DHS officials for waivers to use personal Web-based email accounts on government-owned computers.
- Copies of all waivers granted to senior DHS officials to use personal Web-based email accounts on government-owned computers.
Judicial Watch sought the documents following a Bloomberg News report revealing that 29 high-level Homeland Security officials, including Johnson, obtained exemptions from a February 2014 agency-wide ban on the use of web-based email systems due to increased security concerns. The waivers were granted despite security officials’ warning of the risks of malicious attacks and data exfiltration from webmail use.
Included among the records is a February 19, 2014 memorandum from security officials at the Department of Homeland Security strongly warning: “According to the Office of the Chief Information Officer, access to webmail using DHS networks is responsible for almost half of all attempts to compromise DHS network security.” The memo explains that webmail use resulted in 14 Trojan-Horse attacks in August 2013 and 25 attacks in December 2013 on Homeland Security computer networks.
As a result, in the same memo, Department of Homeland Security officials imposed a total ban on employee use of web-based email systems:
New restrictions are being implemented that will no longer allow employee access to personal webmail sites from government computers [Emphasis added]. This action is being taken to strengthen cybersecurity and enhance protection of the Department’s computer networks. Effective tonight, access to webmail sites like AOL, Hotmail, Comcast, Gmail, Yahoo, and other email services will be prohibited.
The records reveal that despite this strict prohibition, Johnson was given an exemption from the ban on the first day of its implementation simply because he liked to check his personal email from the office everyday. In an April 7, 2014 email, DHS Deputy Director for Scheduling and Protocol Mary Ellen Brown wrote to DHS Chief of Staff for the Under Secretary for Management Vincent Micone: “Hi Vince – I wanted to flag that S1 [Secretary Johnson] accesses his [redacted] account every day and I didn’t know if we could add his computer to the waiver list? Let us know at your convenience. Thanks! ME”
Micone responds several minutes later: “ME, This will be done… no problem. Thanks, Vince”
The documents also reveal that on April 29, 2014, Connie LaRossa, then- director of legislative affairs for Homeland Security, was granted a waiver to use her web-based email account for official government business. The justification LaRossa used for requesting access to Yahoo email was that some congressional staffers wanted to send her “political information” that they “do not want to transmit via government mail.”
Despite LaRossa’s waiver, in an April 7, 2014, seems to contradict answers prepared Rep. Scott Perry in response to his query about the use of personal email accounts for official business, Homeland Security explicitly denied it was being done. In one question, Rep. Perry asked: “Are DHS officials permitted to maintain private email accounts that are used to conduct official business? If so, who and under what circumstances?”
Homeland Security officially responded: “To date, no requests have been approved to use a private email account for official business.”
Others Homeland Security officials included among those receiving waivers permitting them to use personal, web-based email on government computers despite the official ban included:
ANMS2 [Alejandro N. Mayorkas, deputy secretary]
Bunnell, Stevan E. [general counsel]
Chavez, Richard [director of the Office of Operations Coordination]
Gottfried, Jordan [Chief of Staff]
JCJ [Jeh Charles Johnson, secretary of Homeland Security]
Kronisch, Matthew [associate general counsel (Intelligence)]
Marrone, Christian [chief of staff]
Meyer, Jonathan [deputy general counsel]
Rosen, Paul [deputy chief of staff]
Shahoulian, David [deputy general counsel]
Silvers, Robert [deputy chief of staff]
Taylor, Francis X [undersecretary for intelligence and analysis]
Veitch, Alenandra [acting deputy assistant secretary]
Waters, Erin [director of strategic communication]The use of personal email accounts on Homeland Security computers continued for more than a year after the official ban was put in place in April 2014, until July 2015 – over four months after revelations about Hillary Clinton’s controversial email practices. In a July 20, 2015 email, Luke McCormack, then-Chief Information Officer of the Justice Department, ordered Jeanne Etzel, Executive Director of Homeland Security’s Next Generation Program, to “pull down” the personal “webmail” email accounts of the 29 Department of Homeland Security executives previously approved to use personal email accounts, except for that of Secretary Jeh Johnson [“S1”].
McCormack ordered this at the “DUSM’s direction.” (Deputy Undersecretary for Management, Charles Fulghum.) This order came the same day a Bloomberg story was published regarding Homeland Security officials’ “bending the rules” on personal email use on government computers. The next day, Secretary Johnson’s webmail access also was blocked.
“Jeh Johnson and top officials at Homeland Security put the nation’s security at risk by using personal email despite significant security issues,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And we know now security rules were bent and broken to allow many these top Homeland officials to use ‘personal’ emails to conduct government business. This new Obama administration email scandal is just getting started. If the waivers were appropriate, then they wouldn’t have been dropped like a hot potato as soon as they were discovered by the media.”
Say it isn’t so…pigs flying? Video calls between soccer or basketball games?
The Obama White House has a habit of altering assessments and reports especially noted by the CENTCOM scandal. The Obama regime also did the same with the assessment profiles of those forcibly released to other countries in an effort to close Gitmo. One such country that was betrayed by the Obama administration was Ghana.
What is mind boggling is whether we should trust our President or the external people who are proving him wrong. According to US pundits, the said description as given by our leaders isn’t true for either of the men. Bin Atef in particular is a cause of concern. Long before his transfer, the intelligence analysts at Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessed him as a ‘high risk’ and ‘likely to pose a threat to the US, its interest and allies’. Atef is actually a fighter in Usama bin Laden’s former 55th Arab Brigade and an admitted member of the Taliban.
This is in sharp contrast to the claim by Mahama, who portrays the deal as an act of humanitarian assistance, likening the Yemeni men to non-threatening refugees who have been cleared of any involvement in terrorist activities. More here.
Those former detainees released to Uruguay were to be managed and controlled by the government under the Memorandum of Understanding and release. Well, at least one has fled, allegedly to Brazil.
Exclusive: Justice Department opposes new Obama proposal on Guantanamo
Reuters: President Barack Obama is again facing dissent from within his administration – this time from Attorney General Loretta Lynch – over his plans to shutter the Guantanamo Bay military prison, according to senior administration officials.
Lynch, a former federal prosecutor whom Obama appointed to head the Justice Department two years ago, is opposing a White House-backed proposal that would allow Guantanamo Bay prisoners to plead guilty to terrorism charges in federal court by videoconference, the officials said.
Over the past three months, Lynch has twice intervened to block administration proposals on the issue, objecting that they would violate longstanding rules of criminal-justice procedure.
In the first case, her last-minute opposition derailed a White House-initiated legislative proposal to allow video guilty pleas after nearly two months of interagency negotiations and law drafting. In the second case, Lynch blocked the administration from publicly supporting a Senate proposal to legalize video guilty pleas.
“It’s been a fierce interagency tussle,” said a senior Obama administration official, who supports the proposal and asked not to be identified.
White House officials confirmed that President Obama supports the proposal. But the president declined to overrule objections from Lynch, the administration’s top law-enforcement official.
“There were some frustrations,” said a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The top lawyer in the land has weighed in, and that was the DOJ’s purview to do that.”
If enacted into law, the Obama-backed plan would allow detained terrorism suspects who plead guilty to serve their sentences in a third-country prison, without setting foot on U.S. soil. The plan would thus sidestep a Congressional ban on transferring detainees to the United States, which has left dozens of prisoners in long-term judicial limbo in Guantanamo, the American military enclave in Cuba.
Obama has vowed to close the prison on his watch. But while he has overseen the release of some 160 men from the prison, the facility still holds 80 detainees.
The video plea plan has broad backing within the administration, including from senior State Department and Pentagon officials. A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment.
The most enthusiastic backers of the plan have been defense lawyers representing up to a dozen Guantanamo Bay detainees who are eager to extricate their clients from seemingly indefinite detention.
Republicans in Congress have opposed the president’s plans to empty the prison, on the grounds that many of the detainees are highly dangerous. But there is some bipartisan support for the proposal as well, a rarity in the Guantanamo debate.
Kevin Bishop, a spokesman for Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading Republican voice on defense and national security issues, said Graham was “intrigued” by the proposal.
While support from a Republican senator would by no means guarantee the votes needed to pass, it does give the proposal a better chance than schemes that would transfer detainees from the Cuban enclave to the United States.
Obama views the video feed proposal as a meaningful step toward closing the facility and making good on one of his earliest pledges as president, administration officials said.
Of the 80 prisoners remaining in Guantanamo, roughly 30 have been approved for transfer to third countries by an interagency review board. Most of those 30 men are expected to be released from Guantanamo in coming weeks, according to administration officials.
The officials said they think that as many as 10 more prisoners could be added to the approved-for-transfer list by the review board. Finally, another 10 detainees are standing trial in military commissions.
That leaves roughly 30 detainees whom the government deems too dangerous to release but unlikely to be successfully prosecuted in court. As a result, those men would likely have to be transferred to detention in the United States if the prison were closed.
Administration officials say that allowing video feeds could reduce that number to somewhere between 10 and 20. The administration believes that with such a small number of prisoners requiring transfer to the United States, it would be easier to win support for closing the facility, which is run by a staff of 2,000 military personnel.
“This is the group that gives the president the most heartburn,” said the senior administration official.
Lynch and her deputies at the Justice Department argued that the laws of criminal procedure do not allow defendants to plead guilty remotely by videoconference.
Even if Congress were to pass the law, Lynch and her aides have told the White House that federal judges may rule that such pleas are in effect involuntary, because Guantanamo detainees would not have the option of standing trial in a U.S. courtroom.
A defendant in federal court usually has the option to plead guilty or face a trial by jury. In the case of Guantanamo detainees, the only option they would likely face is to plead guilty or remain in indefinite detention.
“How would a judge assure himself that the plea is truly voluntary when if the plea is not entered, the alternative is you’re still in Gitmo?” said a person familiar with Lynch’s concerns about the proposal. “That’s the wrinkle.”
Lawyers for Guantanamo detainee Majid Khan, a 36-year-old Pakistani citizen, first proposed allowing Khan to plead guilty by videoconference in a legal memo submitted to the Department of Justice in November. In 2012, Khan confessed in military court to delivering $50,000 to Qaeda operatives who used it to carry out a truck bombing in Indonesia, and to plotting with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, on various planned strikes.
Senate investigators found internal CIA documents confirming that Khan’s CIA interrogators subjected him to forced rectal feedings. Khan’s lawyers say the experience amounted to rape. He was also water-boarded.
That treatment makes it difficult for the Department of Justice to successfully prosecute Khan in federal court, according to administration officials.
When White House officials learned that Khan and other detainees were ready to plead guilty to terrorism charges in federal court, they thought they had found a solution.
Efforts to try detainees, including Mohammed and other Sept. 11 suspects, in military tribunals at Guantanamo have bogged down over legal disputes. Only eight defendants have been fully prosecuted. Three verdicts have been overturned.
“The beauty of a guilty plea is you don’t need a trial,” said the senior administration official who supports the video plea proposal.
In February, senior Obama aides proposed pushing ahead with video guilty pleas at an interagency meeting at the White House on the closure of Guantanamo, according to officials briefed on the meeting.
Justice Department officials said they opposed video guilty pleas. Matthew Axelrod, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, said the proposal would violate laws of criminal procedure, according to the officials.
The meeting ended with an agreement to pursue new legislation allowing the guilty pleas, the officials said, which the Department of Justice supported.
One week later, President Obama rolled out his plan to close the prison in a nationally televised announcement from the Roosevelt Room. Obama’s plan included seeking “legislative changes … that might enable detainees who are interested in pleading guilty” in U.S. federal courts.
Administration officials spent much of the next two months drafting the new law. On a Friday afternoon in mid-April, White House staff emailed all the involved agencies with a final draft of the bill, according to the officials. The bill would be submitted to Congress the following Monday, the White House email said.
That weekend, Lynch intervened unexpectedly and said the Justice Department opposed the bill. The eleventh-hour move frustrated White House staff. Deciding again to not overrule Lynch, the White House shelved the bill.
In late May, White House officials found a sympathetic lawmaker who inserted language authorizing video pleas into the annual defense spending bill. The White House drafted a policy memo publicly supporting the proposal, which is known as a Statement of Administration Policy, or SAP.
Lynch opposed the idea, according to administration officials, sparking renewed tensions between the Justice Department and White House.
A SAP is the president’s public declaration on the substance of a bill, according to Samuel Kernell, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego. Without one, it’s often more difficult to get lawmakers on the fence to vote the way the White House wants.
The White House again bowed to Lynch’s objections and declined to issue the SAP.
FreeBeacon: The Obama administration is stalling a congressional inquiry into its ongoing refusal to uphold a U.S. law that would sanction Russia for selling advanced missile systems to Iran, according to recent communications between the State Department and Congress exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
President Obama has the authority under U.S. law to designate as illegal Russia’s recent sale to Iran of the advanced S-300 missile system, a long-range weapon that would boost the Islamic Republic’s military capabilities.
The administration has so far declined to exercise its sanction authority under law and has been stalling attempts by Congress to discern the rationale behind this decision, prompting accusations that the administration is ignoring U.S. law and “acquiescing” to the sale in order to preserve last summer’s comprehensive nuclear deal.
Rep. Steve Chabot (R., Ohio), who first launched an inquiry challenging the administration’s reluctance to sanction the sale in early April, told the Free Beacon that the White House is continuing to punt questions from lawmakers, jeopardizing efforts by Western nations to block the arms sale.
The administration informed Chabot on June 8—more than two months after his initial request—that it has not reached a determination as to whether it will move forward with sanctions as specified under the law.
Obama administration officials reiterated this stance when contacted by the Free Beacon late last week.
“Frankly, I’m disappointed in the administration’s response to my letter requesting a quick determination that Russia’s transfer of the S-300 missile system to Iran is progressing their efforts to acquire advanced conventional weapons systems,” Chabot told the Free Beacon. “Unfortunately, the administration’s abysmal response indicates that they are more than reluctant to provide a determination on this case—which is exceptionally disconcerting considering the administration admits they have been trying to persuade Russia not to proceed with the weapon transfer.”
U.S. officials continue to avoid specifying whether the president will use current U.S. laws to designate the sale as illicit and place sanctions upon Russia.
This power, granted under the Iran-Iraq Arms Nonproliferation Act of 1992, allows the president to sanction any sale of “advanced conventional weapons” to Iran by other nations.
Obama administration officials have not explained why the law is still not being followed months after Russia announced it had made good on the multi-million dollar arms sale to Iran.
“We regret the delay in responding to your inquiry,” the State Department informed Chabot in its most recent communication, according to a copy viewed by the Free Beacon.
While the administration remains “concerned” about the S-300 sale, it is not prepared to take action, according to the State Department, which was ordered by the White House to provide Chabot’s office with a response.
“We remain concerned about this and have strongly urged Russia not to proceed with the sale of an S-300 system to Iran, as the transfer of these surface-to-air weapons systems to Iran would add to tension in the region and be clearly inconsistent with our common nonproliferation goals,” the State Department wrote to Chabot.
“The Department will continue to implement, as required, the various sanctions authorities we have to support our non-proliferation priorities,” the letter adds.
A State Department official further told the Free Beacon it has not yet decided how to react to the sale.
“We’re continuing to closely follow reports concerning the delivery of the S-300 missile system from Russia to Iran,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on record. “We have not yet made any determination as to whether this delivery, if and when complete, would trigger any actions under U.S. authorities.”
Lawmakers, as well as reporters, have been trying for months to obtain answers from the administration about the sale. So far, U.S. officials have declined to provide a rationale as to why the administration has not exercised its sanction authority.
“These systems would significantly bolster Iran’s offensive capabilities and introduce new obstacles to our efforts to eliminate the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon. I believe existing U.S. sanctions should be used to deter Russia from transferring this or other dangerous weapons systems to Iran,” Chabot wrote in his initial inquiry to the White House.
Obama administration officials are fighting against enforcing U.S. laws designating the sale in order to keep Iran from breaking its commitments under the nuclear agreement, according to one foreign policy adviser who works intimately with Congress on the issue.
“The Obama administration seems willing to let Iran get away with anything, up to and including acquiring destabilizing weapons that will remake the military balance in the Middle East, just to preserve the nuclear deal,” the source said. “It’s difficult to imagine what would ever trigger U.S. action, if importing these missiles that make Iran immune from outside pressure isn’t enough. Critics of the Iran deal predicted a lot of this, but the collapse on S-300s is worse than many of them imagined.”
1M Immigrants From Muslim Countries Admitted During Obama’s Presidency
The Obama Administration is on track to issue 1 million green cards to immigrants from countries where Muslims are in the majority, according to an analysis of Department of Homeland Security data released Friday.
According to the DHS Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, green cards were issued to 832,014 people from Muslim-majority countries in the first six fiscal years of the Obama administration, from fiscal years 2009-2014, the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest report shows.
In addition, the numbers of green cards increased dramatically in the last two fiscal years of the report, for 2013 and 2014. The records show that 117,423 green cards were issued in fiscal year 2013, compared to 148,810 in fiscal year 2014, for an increase of nearly 27 percent.
The reports show that in the first six fiscal years President Barack has held office, the United States issued green cards to an average of 138,669 migrants from Muslim-majority countries every year, and if the trends continue, the United States will have issued green cards to at least 1.1 million migrants from such countries by the time Obama leaves office in January. Read more here from NewsMax.
The vetting for migrants and refugees is performed by the UN High Commission for Refugees. The UNHCR operates in panic mode, simply rubber-stamping approval due to volume. So, let’s make a movie.
More than 60 stars of film, TV and music have joined refugees, faith leaders and UNHCR to back a petition highlighting the plight of forcibly displaced people.
GENEVA, June 16 (UNHCR) – More than 60 stars from the worlds of film, TV and music joined refugees, faith leaders and UN Refugee Agency staff today to urge you to stand #WithRefugees and sign a petition on behalf of the world’s forcibly displaced.
The petition aims to gather public support for the growing number of families forced to flee conflict and persecution worldwide, who currently face heightened anti-refugee rhetoric coupled with greater restrictions to asylum.
It calls on governments to ensure every refugee child gets an education; that every refugee family has somewhere safe to live, and can work or learn skills to make a positive contribution to their community.
Despite the fact that the FBI and CIA director have said that Syrian refugees cannot be screened properly, Barack Obama has put the program to resettle Syrian refugees in the country on the fast track.
The AP reported that so far only about 1,000 Syrian families have been brought to the US but that was because the process took 18 to 24 months. The US now has a speeded up “surge operation” in place.
“The 10,000 (figure) is a floor and not a ceiling, and it is possible to increase the number,” Kassem told reporters. High-risk groups are given priority to include unaccompanied minor, victims of torture and gender-based violence. The UNHCR insists that the US resettle 65,000 Syrian refugees.
In part from FNC: The danger posed by people coming from terrorism-infested regions has been a hotly contested issue, as is the potentially outsized impact on the small American communities often called upon to receive them. What does not appear in doubt is the hefty price tag, which is projected to total some $644 million over those refugees’ first five years in the United States.
Unlike other classes of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for a full range of welfare benefits.
The figure comes from an analysis performed by the Center for Immigration Studies, which looked at processing and administrative costs of the federal agencies, money for assistance provided to refugees directly or through federally funded nonprofit organizations and consumption of government-assistance programs. Unlike other classes of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for a full range of welfare benefits.
Camarota, director of research for the Washington-based think tank, estimated costs of the federal welfare programs by examining five-year usage rates contained in a report by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The most recent figures, show usage rates for welfare programs by refugees from the Middle East that are even higher for most programs than when Camarota first wrote the report.
Refugees from the Middle East use those programs at rates that far exceed participation by refugees from any other region. In five of seven programs, the percentage of Middle Eastern refugees participating are higher than those of refugees from Africa, the region with the next-highest usage rates. In some cases, the rates are substantially higher. Nearly nine in 10 were on food stamps, for instance, compared with 80 percent of African refugees.
“The Middle East really stands out,” said Camarota, who speculated that the disparity might be due to deficiencies in eduction, English proficiency or job skills. “There’s something special about Middle Easterners in the cost of these programs.”
The Office of Refugee Resettlement Report, however, indicates that Middle Easterners arrived with better English skills and more education than those from other parts of the world.
If the latest participation figures hold up for the Syrians admitted between Oct. 1 last year and Sept. 30 this year, Camarota’s five-year cost projection — $64,370 per person and $257,481 per household — may be low-ball estimates.
Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation of American Immigration Reform, said it would be more cost-effective for the United States to provide financial assistance to Jordan and Turkey, which are housing the bulk of refugees who fled war-torn Syria. Those refugees also would have an easier time returning home after the fighting ends.
“In terms of helping people, you get far more for your money helping people close to where they live,” he said. Read more details here.