Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

State Dept. Breaking Laws for the Sake of Iran

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At least on 2 tracks the State Department is breaking the law when it comes to Iran.

Sanctions

The State Department (State) is three years late in slapping certain sanctions on Iran, prompting new allegations that the Barack Obama administration is deliberately skirting US law in its quest for a nuclear deal.

Under the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA), State is supposed to inform Congress every six months of attempts to help the three countries obtain weapons of mass destruction and certain missile technology. The law requires the agency to sanction violators or justify its decision not to.

But the department has fallen way behind in recent years, according to a government watchdog report obtained by Al-Monitor. Delays have kept on getting longer, with Congress receiving an update on violations committed in 2011 only in December 2014.

“Our analysis demonstrates that State is falling further and further behind in providing the reports and is now juggling a backlog of draft reports at different stages of that process,” the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report concludes. “The imposition of sanctions no sooner than 3 or more years after the transfer occurred may diminish the credibility of the threatened sanction.”

The State Department acknowledges the delays but faults a complex web of agency reviews to make sure allegations of violations are substantiated. Republicans, however, are jumping on the report as further evidence of the Obama administration bending over backwards to placate Tehran.

“How many overtures of good will are we sending to these guys? How many times do we have to bend over to look like we’re good people?” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., told Al-Monitor ahead of her Middle East subcommittee’s hearing on the issue the afternoon of June 17. “It’s unbelievable. Iran keeps demanding more of us, and we keep on giving them more kind signals.”

The GAO report is but the latest example of questionable sanctions enforcement that has raised congressional ire in recent months.

Earlier this year, according to Israel, the United States allowed Iran to purchase used airplanes for an airline that the United States has blacklisted for its ties to Hezbollah and the Iranian National Guard. More details here from al Monitor.


Human Rights Report

Via Free Beacon: Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is seeking to fine the State Department for illegally withholding the release of a key report on Iranian human rights abuses that was supposed to be released earlier this year, but was withheld, according to sources, in order to appease Iran as negotiations over its nuclear program approach a June 30 deadline.

The Obama administration was legally obligated to release a full report outlining the state of Iranian human rights by Feb. 25 but has so far declined to do so.

Cruz and other senators petitioned the State Department in May to comply with federal law compelling the report’s public release.

“That report was due by law on February 25,” Cruz told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview. “The Obama State Department simply ignored the law. They refused to produce the report. Months have gone by and they continue to refuse to produce the report.”

Angered by this delay, Cruz is gearing up to file legislation this week that would fine the State Department 5 percent of its budget for every 30 days it postpones releasing the report, according to a copy of the bill viewed by the Free Beacon.

“It is a penalty for willfully violating federal law,” Cruz explained. “This is also a policy decision that is profoundly counterproductive.”

“This simply puts a financial bite into the obligation because the Obama administration has demonstrated a willingness over and over again to violate federal law,” Cruz added.

Iran has long been a leading violator of human rights, carrying out hundreds of state-sanctioned executions and abusing the human rights of its citizens. Iran also continues to imprison several American citizens who human rights advocates report are being abused.

Cruz said the report is likely being delayed in order to avoid upsetting the Iranians and potentially harming ongoing nuclear discussion.

“It appears that both President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are trying to sweep under the rug Iran’s horrific human rights record because, presumably, acknowledging that fact would be inconvenient” for the ongoing diplomacy with Iran, Cruz said.

The policy, he added, appears to be “surrender everything to the Iranian mullahs in a hope they will accede to a [nuclear deal that only accelerates their acquiring nuclear weapons.”

The lawmaker and current presidential candidate went on to accuse the administration of ignoring Iranian human rights abuses.

“This administration has consistently refused to address the human rights violations” committed by Iran, including the imprisonment of Americans such as Saeed Abedini and Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Cruz said.

“The Obama administration seems more focused on swilling Chardonnay with Iranian despots then on securing the release of American citizens wrongly imprisoned,” he said.

In a June 9 letter to Cruz, the State Department claimed the report’s release had been delayed due to Kerry’s intense travel schedule and need to present the report in person.

“The secretary’s participation in the report rollout, even if it must be delayed by his travel, elevates the report,” the State Department said, according to a copy of the letter. “The secretary has needed to travel abroad for extended periods, often on short notice, during the past three months to address a variety of pressing foreign policy concerns.”

“We intend to release the report as soon as possible and will keep you informed,” the letter states.

Cruz criticized the State Department’s response.

“It has been 115 days since the expiration of the statutory deadline” to release the report, he said. “Secretary Kerry has not been on the road continuously for 115 days.”

Kerry, though recently injured and still recovering, phoned in via video link to the State Department’s daily briefing on Tuesday. He did not use to the opportunity to present the Iran report, sources pointed out.

A State Department official would not comment on record about when the report would finally be released.

 

Fleecing of America in Afghanistan Schools

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Probes started into potential U.S. spending on “ghost schools” in Afghanistan

Officials in Washington and Kabul are examining whether U.S. funds were spent for schooling in Afghanistan that never occurred

By: The Center for Public Integrity

Nils Kauffman, who served as an education officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Afghanistan, said he noticed irregularities at a vocational training institute the agency was funding during his visits to its campus in downtown Kabul in 2012 and 2013. He recalls being surprised not to see any students in the institute’s laboratories, where volt meters and scientific equipment remained in their original packaging.

Though Kauffman spied students elsewhere, he said he could never get a reliable account of how many were actually enrolled at the school. He also could not verify that the institute had addressed what a 2011 external audit called a host of “deviations” from sound practices, including a lack of accounting software, a cash-based payment system, and $118,000 in spending by the school over a five month period on weapons, international travel, and salary supplements.

Kauffman didn’t have the authority to demand a new, broader audit of the institute, but he reported his concerns to his superiors at USAID. They never acted, he said, and he recalls an official in the agency’s Office of Afghanistan-Pakistan Affairs expressing worry that canceling the institute’s funding would create what the official called “bad press.”

“Every time something came up, they jumped to keep this guy [the institute’s leader] happy, despite the problems, despite the lack of financial transparency,” said Kauffman, who is now a private development consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In fact, USAID continued giving the institute funds, totaling at least $12.3 million through last Sunday, according to USAID spokesman Sam Ostrander.

Kauffman’s experience is only a small part of the controversy suddenly surrounding the long-running U.S. effort to promote the education and training of the largely illiterate population in Afghanistan. More than three-quarters of a billion dollars in U.S. funds have been used to finance the effort, and USAID has repeatedly depicted it as one of its signal accomplishments there.

Last month, Afghanistan’s newly-appointed education minister raised questions about the veracity of that claim when he told his country’s parliament that some aid funds had flowed to so-called “ghost schools, which are only on paper,” according to several Afghan media accounts of the May 27 session. The minister, Assadullah Hanif Balkhi, said that officials in the previous government — in power from 2004 to 2014 — lied about the number of schools to obtain more foreign funds.

“It is a fact that there are no schools in some parts of the country, but all the expenses — including teachers’ salaries — are being paid, and now we will bring reforms to this waste,” Balkhi told the parliament, according to Tolonews, a publisher and broadcaster based in Kabul.

Asked to provide more detail, a spokesman for the ministry, Kabir Haqmal, later told NBC News — the Center for Public Integrity’s publication partner for this article — that the matter is still under investigation. In some cases, he said, schools may have been closed due to fighting while “permanent absentees” were kept on the books for years, following a requirement of Afghan law.

“There could be schools that do not exist, but we [are] assessing all our records and so far have not found any such instances,” Haqmal said. “That does not mean there are no ghost schools, but we just do not have that information yet. We are taking this very seriously and will share our finding with public very soon.”

The new minister’s claims have provoked the top federal auditor for U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, John F. Sopko, to express concern that “U.S. and other donors may have paid for schools that students do not attend and for the salaries of teachers who do not teach.”

In a June 11 letter to acting USAID administrator Alfonso E. Lenhardt, released by Sopko on June 18, Sopko said the allegations about “ghost schools, ghost students, and ghost teachers call for immediate attention,” and asked the agency to explain within two weeks what it is doing to investigate the reliability of its data and the potential misuse of its funds.

Accurate data, Sopko said, “is essential for gauging progress in USAID’s education programs and for making future funding decisions.”

USAID spokesman Ostrander, in an emailed response to questions, said the agency will provide a detailed reply to Sopko by the June 30 deadline. According to a written statement Ostrander provided to the Center for Public Integrity from Larry Sampler, assistant to the USAID administrator for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the agency has already asked the Afghan Education Ministry for more information. USAID currently has a full-time employee assigned to help the ministry improve the reliability of its data, according to Sampler’s statement.

Like all the agency’s projects in Afghanistan, “USAID-implemented education projects adhere to the Agency’s strict practices for monitoring their performance and success,” Sampler wrote.

USAID has repeatedly boasted about its role in raising enrollment rates in Afghanistan, citing Afghanistan Education Ministry data. More than eight million Afghan students were enrolled in 2013, compared to just 900,000 in 2002, according to data that Sopko cited in his most recent quarterly report. He said USAID had acknowledged these figures could not be independently verified, however.

At the Afghanistan Technical Vocational Institute, where Kauffman said he observed irregularities, 4,529 students have so far graduated “with the support of USAID and other sponsors,” Ostrander said. But the institute’s founder and director, Sardar Roshan, reached by cell phone in Kabul, told the Center for Public Integrity that the total number was “close to 7,000.” Ostrander told the Center for Public Integrity he could not explain the discrepancy.

Roshan’s tight connections to Washington

Roshan served as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan from 1992 to 1994, as the country’s minister of education from 1990 to 1992, and as a “rebel commander” liaising between “anticommunist forces and the U.S. government” in the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan during the 1980’s, according to his Linkedin profile.

Roshan denies that the institute has ever misreported its student population, saying the “ghost schools” are in rural provinces, but that his institute in downtown Kabul “could not fake students even if we wanted to.” He says he is highly proud of the institute. “When I’m in the international airport, when I walk into a bank in Kabul, when I look at the provincial governments, I see my graduates in every corner,” he said.

Rajiv Shah, the administrator of USAID from 2010 until February, singled the vocational institute out for special praise in a July 2013 speech at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. “Today, we have more than 8 million children in schools with over 30 percent of who are girls. These investments have resulted in over 30,000 young women finishing secondary school and more than 40,000 young women seeking to earn university degrees today,” Shah said. “I’ve had the chance to meet some of these young women on visits to places like the Afghan Vocational Training Institute, watching them come in from around the country to develop marketable skills so they can triple or quadruple their earning potential upon graduation.”

But Kauffman, the former USAID education officer, was not alone in in voicing concerns about the institute’s achievements. In early 2012 – more than a year before Shah’s speech — USAID’s inspector general had reported there was “little evidence” that the agency’s support of the school, known as the Afghanistan Technical Vocational Institute, had strengthened its “overall technical capacity” or empowered Afghan youth. It said the project that included the institute “lacked clearly defined goals, objectives, and priorities.”

The institute began receiving USAID funds in 2007, according to Roshan and Ostrander. The funds were initially for scholarships, and were paid under USAID’s Afghanistan capacity-building program, Roshan said. But the financing was switched to the agency’s education department in 2010, under a subcontract with Education Development Center, Inc., a Massachusetts-based non-profit organization. Students were supposed to be trained in business management, construction, horticulture, information and communication technology, and automotive repair, according to the USAID webpage about the institute.

After the 2011 audit by accounting firm Grant Thornton’s Afghanistan office, USAID staff twice came to inspect the institute. But Kauffman said the institute obstructed efforts by USAID teams to dig deeper into its records, a claim supported by a copy he provided of USAID’s internal report about its site visits in July and August 2011.

The report states that the inspectors were “unable to meet all technical staff, check the systems, or gather sample documentation,” partly because the staff “were instructed by their headquarters not to disclose any documents” to them. It complained that Roshan and his ex-finance officer only met with them for 50 minutes, and said that as a result they were unable to learn whether the Institute had addressed key concerns the audit raised, including many involving its handling and disbursement of donor funds.

One person was, inappropriately, still responsible for handling petty cash, writing checks, and entering financial data into the computer, the report said.  And the “most important gap” identified by the auditors — the fact that the institute paid its employees’ salaries in cash rather than traceable bank transfers — was still a problem, the inspectors wrote. Multiple reports by Sopko have described this as a frequent practice in Afghanistan.

Roshan denied making any attempt to obstruct the inspection. He told the Center for Public Integrity that many of these problems were resolved by the institute directly after the audit appeared, though he acknowledged that the institute had continued to use a cash-based payment system until 2013. Ostrander similarly said the institute had made progress since undergoing a separate assessment of its business model.

Roshan sent the Center for Public Integrity a lengthy rebuttal to the Grant Thornton audit, accompanied by documents including templates for payment vouchers, time sheets, a 19-page accounting manual, and its personnel policy. He defended the spending on weapons, saying the institute needed shotguns for the protection of its staff and students. The international travel was for his own visits to the U.S., he said. And the salary supplements were “necessary,” he said, to keep American teachers at the institute.

“I admit shortfalls in the finance/procurement systems,” Roshan told the Center for Public Integrity in an emailed statement, but some were “nothing but symptoms of failure of the counterpart/donor to deliver technical and financial assistance” in a timely and consistent manner.

Roshan said further that the issues raised in the audit stemmed from friction between Education Development Center, Inc. and USAID. Indeed, the agency’s 2012 inspector general report said the two entities had disagreed about “key elements of the design” of the larger educational project that Washington was financing, and said that this had hampered progress. “We were just caught in the tug of war,” Roshan said.

Alison Cohen, a spokeswoman for Education Development Center, Inc., said in an emailed statement that her firm “did as it was required,” and USAID found no mismanagement of its funds “on the part of EDC.” She said the firm is “fully committed to achieving the highest level of compliance” with its contracts, a quality recognized by “dozens of federal agencies, state and local governments, and private organizations” that have given it funds.

Finding various ways to keep the funds flowing

A few months after the USAID site visits, the agency stopped funding the institute through Education Development Center and found what Kauffman described as an alternative path: It modified one of its ongoing funding agreements with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN Habitat) to add continuing technical and financial support for the institute.

But UN Habitat leaders raised their own concerns about the institute’s accounting and spending practices, informing USAID staff at an April 2012 meeting that Roshan’s salary and benefits package was $17,600 per month, according to a memo five months later from the director of USAID’s Office of Social Sector Development, Carol Horning, to the agency’s Afghanistan mission director. Annual per capita gross national income in Afghanistan was $1,940 that year, according to World Bank data.

Roshan denied he was paid $17,600 but declined to say what his salary was at the time. He said he had salaries that “were not on an Afghanistan scale” because he was an American citizen, and lived in Maryland for periods during the early 2010s. “I singlehandedly created the institute from scratch,” he said. “I was compensated less than half of what I should have received.” Roshan stepped down as the CEO this year, according to both Roshan and Ostrander, but Roshan said he remains the president until its board selects a new one.

The UN Habitat funding method worked for most of 2012, but on November 19, 2012, as it was drawing to a close, Roshan wrote directly to Shah, suggesting that “urgent funding be continued through an appropriate USAID mechanism for a period of time to avoid an abrupt closure” of the institute, according to an email that Roshan provided the Center for Public Integrity.

Shah responded less than four hours later, according to a second email that Roshan provided the Center for Public Integrity, thanking Roshan for his note and sending a copy to USAID’s assistant administrator for Afghanistan and Pakistan “so we could explore this issue and get back to you.” McKenzie Stough, a spokesperson at Georgetown University, where Shah is now a distinguished fellow at the School of Foreign Service, said that she had conveyed a request for comment to Shah’s personal assistant, but no response was forthcoming.

Eleven days after Roshan’s email exchange with Shah, Afghanistan’s then-education minister Farooq Wardak signed a letter to U.S. Ambassador James B. Cunningham — identical in wording to the email that Roshan had sent Shah.

USAID’s Afghanistan mission director at the time, Ken Yamashita, met with Roshan on December 10, 2012, and proposed that USAID continue supporting the institute but disburse the funds as a part of an overall USAID financial support to the Education Ministry, according to an email from USAID official Kerry Pelzman to several colleagues, which was obtained by the Center for Public Integrity. Yamashita, who is now a regional director at the Peace Corps, told the Center for Public Integrity by email that he did not dispute this account.

Twelve days later, Yamashita met with Wardak to seal the deal, according to a December 29, 2012, letter from him to Wardak. In it, Yamashita thanked him for his “receptivity to inclusion of support for ATVI as part of USAID’s on-budget support to the Ministry of Education,” and promised to let Cunningham know that Wardak’s November letter had “borne fruit.” Cunningham, who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, did not respond to phoned and emailed requests for comment.

Yamashita’s optimism was premature. Funding for the institute did not end up going through the Education Ministry, according to Kauffman, who said he heard the USAID finance department had objected to providing such general support. But in June 2013, USAID began providing another million dollars in direct funding for the institute, good for the next two years, according to the statement it posted on the Web. That funding expired on June 14, 2015.

Ostrander said the direct grant would not be renewed, but said USAID expects to start funding the institute again soon, this time through The Asia Foundation. The funding is meant to improve administrative functions and — subject to compliance with what Ostrander described as “certain requirements and standards” — cover its operating expenses. Ostrander said he could not immediately tell the Center for Public Integrity how much funding would be transmitted to the institute under the new agreement.

Roshan said however that he expects The Asia Foundation funding to net his institute $300,000 over the next six months. Two spokeswomen for The Asia Foundation did not reply to phoned and emailed requests for comment.

There’s “no way” the institute could continue to exist without international support, Kauffman said.

 

Welfare Use by Immigrant Households with Children

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Some studies speak for themselves. This one is chilling. It demonstrates failure, lack of control and management as well as a continued monetary magnet that wont soon or ever go away.

 

A Look at Cash, Medicaid, Housing, and Food Programs

by: The Center for Immigration Studies

Thirteen years after welfare reform, the share of immigrant-headed households (legal and illegal) with a child (under age 18) using at least one welfare program continues to be very high. This is partly due to the large share of immigrants with low levels of education and their resulting low incomes — not their legal status or an unwillingness to work. The major welfare programs examined in this report include cash assistance, food assistance, Medicaid, and public and subsidized housing.

Among the findings:

  • In 2009 (based on data collected in 2010), 57 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal and illegal) with children (under 18) used at least one welfare program, compared to 39 percent for native households with children.
  • Immigrant households’ use of welfare tends to be much higher than natives for food assistance programs and Medicaid. Their use of cash and housing programs tends to be similar to native households.
  • A large share of the welfare used by immigrant households with children is received on behalf of their U.S.-born children, who are American citizens. But even households with children comprised entirely of immigrants (no U.S.-born children) still had a welfare use rate of 56 percent in 2009.
  • Immigrant households with children used welfare programs at consistently higher rates than natives, even before the current recession. In 2001, 50 percent of all immigrant households with children used at least one welfare program, compared to 32 percent for natives.
  • Households with children with the highest welfare use rates are those headed by immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (75 percent), and Ecuador (70 percent). Those with the lowest use rates are from the United Kingdom (7 percent), India (19 percent), Canada (23 percent), and Korea (25 percent).
  • The states where immigrant households with children have the highest welfare use rates are Arizona (62 percent); Texas, California, and New York (61 percent); Pennsylvania (59 percent); Minnesota and Oregon (56 percent); and Colorado (55 percent).
  • We estimate that 52 percent of households with children headed by legal immigrants used at least one welfare program in 2009, compared to 71 percent for illegal immigrant households with children. Illegal immigrants generally receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children.
  • Illegal immigrant households with children primarily use food assistance and Medicaid, making almost no use of cash or housing assistance. In contrast, legal immigrant households tend to have relatively high use rates for every type of program.
  • High welfare use by immigrant-headed households with children is partly explained by the low education level of many immigrants. Of households headed by an immigrant who has not graduated high school, 80 percent access the welfare system, compared to 25 percent for those headed by an immigrant who has at least a bachelor’s degree.
  • An unwillingness to work is not the reason immigrant welfare use is high. The vast majority (95 percent) of immigrant households with children had at least one worker in 2009. But their low education levels mean that more than half of these working immigrant households with children still accessed the welfare system during 2009.
  • If we exclude the primary refugee-sending countries, the share of immigrant households with children using at least one welfare program is still 57 percent.
  • Welfare use tends to be high for both new arrivals and established residents. In 2009, 60 percent of households with children headed by an immigrant who arrived in 2000 or later used at least one welfare program; for households headed by immigrants who arrived before 2000 it was 55 percent.
  • For all households (those with and without children), the use rates were 37 percent for households headed by immigrants and 22 percent for those headed by natives.
  • Although most new legal immigrants are barred from using some welfare for the first five years, this provision has only a modest impact on household use rates because most immigrants have been in the United States for longer than five years; the ban only applies to some programs; some states provide welfare to new immigrants with their own money; by becoming citizens immigrants become eligible for all welfare programs; and perhaps most importantly, the U.S.-born children of immigrants (including those born to illegal immigrants) are automatically awarded American citizenship and are therefore eligible for all welfare programs at birth.
  • The eight major welfare programs examined in this report are SSI (Supplemental Security Income for low income elderly and disabled), TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), WIC (Women, Infants, and Children food program), free/reduced school lunch, food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), Medicaid (health insurance for those with low incomes), public housing, and rent subsidies.

Introduction

Concern that immigrants may become a burden on society has been a long-standing issue in the United States. As far back as colonial times there were restrictions on the arrival of people who might become a burden on the community. This report analyzes survey data collected by the Census Bureau from 2002 to 2009 to examine use of welfare programs by immigrant and native households, particularly those with children. The Current Population Survey (CPS) asks respondents about their use of welfare programs in the year prior to the survey,1 so we are examining self-reported welfare use rates from 2001 to 2009. The findings show that more than half of immigrant-headed households with children use at least one major welfare program, compared to about one-third of native-headed households. The primary reason immigrant households with children tend to have higher overall rates is their much higher use of food assistance programs and Medicaid; use of cash assistance and housing programs tends to be very similar to native households.

Why Study Immigrant Welfare Use?

Use of welfare programs by immigrants is important for two primary reasons. First, it is one measure of their impact on American society. If immigrants have high use rates it could be an indication that they are creating a net fiscal burden for the country. Welfare programs comprise a significant share of federal, and even state, expenditures. Total costs for the programs examined in this study were $517 billion in fiscal year 2008.2 Moreover, those who receive welfare tend to pay little or no income tax. If use of welfare programs is considered a problem and if immigrant use of those programs is thought to be high, then it is an indication that immigration or immigrant policy needs to be a adjusted. Immigration policy is concerned with the number of immigrants allowed into the country and the selection criteria used for admission. It is also concerned with the level of resources devoted to controlling illegal immigration. Immigrant policy, on the other hand, is concerned with how we treat immigrants who are legally admitted to the country, such as welfare eligibility, citizenship requirements, and assimilation efforts.

The second reason to examine welfare use is that it can provide insight into how immigrants are doing in the United States. Accessing welfare programs can be seen as an indication that immigrants are having a difficult time in the United States. Or perhaps that some immigrants are assimilating into the welfare system. Thus, welfare use is both a good way of measuring immigration’s impact on American society and immigrants’ adaptation to life in the United States.

Read on if you dare by clicking here.

Hillary DID have Accomplishments at State Dept

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Sheesh, it is true she did have many accomplishments but they are not the successes she would use for boasting.

She raised lots of money for the Clinton Foundation, she opened the pathway for Russia to control up to 50% of the uranium output of the United States and she was complicit is the death of four dead Americans.

Her best achievements at State was obstruction and cover-ups.

Sexual harassment complaints at State Department soar under Clinton, Kerry

In part from the Washington Times:

In a disclosure with political implications for 2016, the State Department’s chief watchdog reported Thursday that worker harassment complaints have nearly tripled inside the agency during the tenures of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry but the agency still doesn’t have mandatory training for all employees.

“A significant increase in reported harassment inquiries in the Department of State over the past few fiscal years supports the need for mandatory harassment training,” the department’s inspector general warned in a new oversight report that reviewed the agency’s civil rights office.

The report states that formal harassment claims rose from 88 cases in 2011 during Mrs. Clinton’s third year as America’s top diplomat, to 248 in 2014, Mr. Kerry’s second year as secretary. Hundreds more informal complaints were lodged during the same period.

Last year, 43 percent of the new complaints alleged harassment or unfair hirings or promotions while 38 percent raised sex discrimination or reprisals, the report said.

The report said some of the increases could be attributed to growing knowledge among employees about sexual harassment issues and the procedures for reporting it.

The inspector general said the Office of Civil Rights has made strides in improving the quality, speed and quantity of its work in recent years but that performance issues remains, such as a need to rebalance workloads, reassess positions and complete delinquent performance evaluations. The office has two civil rights complaints pending against itself, it added. More sordid details are here.

Hold on there is more….and personally I read the emails in Wikileaks a few years ago.

Records suggest Hillary chief of staff blocked probe of ambassador nominee

From the Washington Examiner:

 Top State Department staff under Hillary Clinton allegedly blocked an  investigation into the president’s nominee for ambassador to Iraq.

The ambassador-designate, Brett McGurk, was accused of engaging in inappropriate behavior with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal and funneling her information he was not authorized to disclose.

McGurk withdrew his name from consideration for the ambassadorship in the face of a growing scandal over emails that revealed his extra-marital affair with the reporter, Gina Chon. His relationship with the journalist prompted concerns among Republican lawmakers, although the extent of the internal cover-up of his conduct was not then known.

McGurk is presently one of President Obama’s key advisers on the Islamic State, having survived the scandal in 2012 with the help of higher-ups in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

“There were rumors inside the State Department that the investigation into McGurk’s actions in Iraq was squashed at the very highest levels,” Van Buren told the Washington Examiner.

Van Buren retired from the State Department in 2012 after a lengthy legal battle with the State Department over whistleblower disclosures he made in a book about his time in Iraq with the agency from 2009 to 2010.

During his nearly quarter-century at the State Department, Van Buren said he saw a variety of management styles from the secretary’s office as agency leadership shifted.

“I think what a lot of State Department people felt was that previous secretaries were focused more on protecting the institution and, by extension, themselves,” he said. “Whereas the Clinton people were 90 percent concerned about protecting Hillary and maybe 10 percent concerned about protecting the institution.”

Although the investigation was eventually closed in July 2013, speculation that he was about to be named to another high-level position involving Iraq began swirling months earlier.

McGurk is presently Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.

His high-profile role puts him at the forefront of the conflict with the Islamic State. For example, he appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday to announce the government’s intention to equip tribal fighters in Iraq to support their fight against the Islamic State.

McGurk’s affair with Chon, to whom he is now married, became the subject of public scrutiny after a 2012 “computer hacking incident” in Baghdad resulted in the publication of racy emails back and forth between the two while he was in line to be the next ambassador to Iraq.

The leaked emails suggested at the time the two had a sexual relationship. But they also suggested the ambassador-designate may have given sensitive information to the reporter.

The communications show McGurk asked Chon to text him on his Blackberry because texting was a “better way to engage in sensitive deliberations” than emailing from his government address.

Several messages between McGurk and the Journal reporter suggested he used his position to provide Chon with access to Iraqi sources. Yes, there are more details on this one too.

In case that is not enough on the details of Iraq, Blackberry phones, emails and more….click here.

 

 

 

 

Loretta Lynch Played the Hillary Game in 2014

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Dinesh D’Souza made a movie about Barack Obama’s history. The White House did not like that at all.

The DoJ and the FBI were spun into action to dig up anything they could find on D’Souza and found a case where there was a straw-man campaign contribution made for $20,000. The New York attorney for Manhattan, Preet Bharara, an Obama appointee indicted D’Souza and he was sentenced to house arrest, community service and a fine. This is important because there was a case in much earlier in the year of 2014 that was much more serious and egregious.

Sant Singh Chatwal pled guilty to evading federal election campaign and witness tampering by attempting to obstructing the grand jury. His monetary donation was $180,000 through straw donors as well and they too were reimbursed. For the full summary found on the Justice Department website, click here.

Chatwal was merely sentenced to 3 years probation and a $500,000 fine. He called on many people of influence to write letters on his behalf to present to the court speaking to his generosity and community service. On the other hand, he was also known for saying in order to gain access for influence of politicians, money was the key, and he used it.

From the NYT‘s: Looking deeper at the connections to the Clintons and the White House we see several relationships.

Mr. Chatwal, 70, is the president of Hampshire Hotels and Resorts, and his business consists of 12 hotels and 36 restaurants and bars. He leads a lively social life, as seen in the New York magazine feature on his son Vikram’s wedding and in state dinners at the White House.

He pleaded guilty in April to sending more than $180,000 in campaign contributions from 2007 to 2011 to three federal candidates, identified as Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Representative Kendrick B. Meek of Florida. There is a limit on how much individuals can contribute to campaigns, so Mr. Chatwal devised an illegal straw donor scheme, prosecutors said, asking acquaintances to give, then reimbursing them.

Vikram Chatwal, a former model and actor who has dated celebrities like Gisele Bündchen and now works in the hotel business, “while able to pursue business interests when healthy, has suffered from severe alcohol and drug dependence for more than a decade,” the submission read.

Vivek Chatwal, whose wedding at the Tavern on the Green was attended by Bill and Hillary Clinton and Senator Charles E. Schumer, is afflicted with a disease or problem that was excised from the sentencing memorandum, but requires treatment by psychiatrists. “Vivek cannot be left alone,” the document noted, explaining that he is brought daily to Mr. Chatwal’s office where he or an employee watches him.

 Most noteworthy of these two cases is they both had the same judge, I. Leo Glasser. Any more questions of the power of money, influence or favoritism?