Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Project Nightingale, Shame on Govt and Google

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Nobody was told or knew. WTH? Consent is not required. Yeesh

Google is NOT responding to media inquiries either.

Google is reportedly gathering health data on millions of ...

At least 150 Google employees are assigned to this secret program where they have full access. What about the Ascension employees? What about ethics and HIPAA laws? What about Nancy Pelosi and all those Democrats, only democrats that voted for Obamacare? Seems the very small mice type inside the HIPAA law does in fact allow portability of private health information without the patient’s knowledge or approval.

Everyone involved is preaching full legal compliance and this is all allegedly for AI, artificial intelligence operations. If you go asking questions, all this is housed in the Google cloud system.

By the way, Ascension is a Catholic chain of 2600 hospitals.

Google has partnered with one of the largest health care systems in the country to collect data on millions of American patients, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The venture, called Project Nightingale, allows Google to obtain access to personal health care data from Americans across 21 states through its partnership with Ascension, people familiar with the matter told the Journal, which also relied on internal documents for its report.

The data Google has access to includes lab results, doctor diagnoses, hospitalization records and health histories with names and date of births. Neither patients nor doctors were informed that Google was collecting the data, according to the Journal, and at least 150 Google employees have access to the information.Ascension, based in St. Louis, is the second-largest health care system in the country. Google started the project with Ascension last year with the goal of using the data to create new software based on artificial intelligence and machine learning for patients to make their own recommendations for their care.

The Hill has reached out to Google and Ascension for comment.

Big tech companies such as Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have all made efforts to dig into the health care industry, but they haven’t reached a deal this extensive, according to the Journal.

Questions have been raised about whether Google’s actions broke federal law, but privacy experts say it doesn’t.

The experts reference the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 that says data can be shared with business partners without consent of the patient “only to help the covered entity carry out its health-care functions,” the Journal reported.

 

Syrian Henchmen Financial Sanctuary in Moscow

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2011: Hillary Clinton declared that Bashir al Assad was a reformer.

Primer:

Rami Makhlouf: Wealthy, powerful cousin of Syria’s president

Makhlouf, 45, is Syria’s richest man and a member of what was described during U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearings as a powerful “mafia” that also includes Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad, Makhklouf’s cousin. Before his country plunged into civil war, Makhlouf was allegedly worth $5 billion thanks to his control of monopolies and semi-monopolies in the air travel, telecommunications, real estate, oil and construction sectors. Makhlouf is on U.S. sanctions lists and is a known beneficiary of corruption.

***

Several Makhlouf family members, close cousins and accomplices of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, have purchased tens of millions of dollars’ worth of properties in Moscow’s prestigious skyscraper district.

Headed by al-Assad’s uncle, Mohammed Makhlouf, the Makhloufs are considered to be Syria’s richest and second most important family. Before 2011, they controlled 60 percent of the Syrian economy, ostensibly acquired through years of corruption and intimidation.

GlobalWitness:

Our exposé of the Makhloufs’ properties is rare supporting evidence that lends substance to rumours of regime money being funnelled out of Syria throughout the war. Information about the regime’s assets and finances is notoriously scarce due to the terror fostered by al-Assad’s apparatus at home and abroad.

Our investigation further shows that the loans secured against some of the properties could be for the purposes of laundering money from Syria into Moscow. This opens the possibility that the money could then be moved into other jurisdictions, such as the EU, where members of the family are sanctioned.

Of the newly-revealed Moscow property purchases, the largest amount was bought by Hafez Makhlouf, one of Bashar al-Assad’s first cousins.

Hafez is accused of overseeing the killings and torture of detainees and protestors. Most of Hafez’s purchases were arranged using an opaque Lebanese loan structure that bears several hallmarks of money laundering, possibly with the purpose of moving the money beyond Russia.

Russia has been a key ally of the al-Assad family over their almost 50-year rule. It intervened on their side of the war in Syria in 2015, turning it in their favour through airstrikes and land offensives on opposition-controlled territory.

Reports of Russian banks aiding the Syrian regime surfaced in 2012 and 2013, after Western sanctions hit and the more powerful family members were stripped of European visas and their EU and Swiss bank accounts were frozen. Now it seems that the Syrian regime has been using Moscow as an alternative safe haven, and possibly a potential gateway for its ill-gotten gains to enter the wider financial system.

Hafez Makhlouf, who purchased US$22.3 million worth of property in Moscow’s ‘City of Capitals’ towers, was head of the Damascus ‘Section 40’ of Syria’s infamous General Intelligence Directorate until late 2014. This is the Syrian agency charged with quelling internal dissent, formerly and popularly known as the State Security service. As Damascus is the capital, this was already an important role, but Hafez appears to have had a great deal more authority than this official title reflects.

Testimony collected by Syrian human rights groups about Hafez’s Section 40 and its command branch, the Al-Khatib Branch, as well as wider testimony collected by journalists about the systemic use of torture by Syria’s intelligence services, points to how Hafez would have potentially overseen the detention of  thousands of Syrians and their subsequent abuse, and, in some cases, even murder.

Moreover, multiple regime defectors have since testified, in a 2019 book by journalist Sam Dagher, that Hafez was a hard-line member of Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle and one of his most influential advisers. According to the testimony, Hafez was one of two main advocates for crushing the demonstrations in 2011. Dagher’s book includes testimony from witnesses who saw Hafez shooting civilians in Douma and giving shoot-to-kill orders on hundreds of peaceful protestors in Daraa and Homs.

Makhlouf Family Tree Diagram english  When buying the Moscow office space in 2016, Hafez Makhlouf’s Russian-registered property companies took out loans using 11 of the properties as collateral. The complex structure of these loans disguises Hafez’s connection to the funds. This is characteristic of money laundering and could have been designed to establish money flows between Russia and Syria which would appear unconnected to Hafez, raising the possibility that the ultimate aim is to move the money out of Russia.

The loans were provided to Hafez’s Russian companies by a Lebanese company called Nylam SAL Offshore. The company is classified as ‘offshore’ in Lebanon; while Lebanese ‘offshore’ companies do not hide their owners like offshore companies in so-called secrecy jurisdictions like the British Virgin Islands, these companies do benefit from enhanced banking secrecy. The exact amount loaned by Nylam is unknown.

In 2018, two years after the property purchases, Hafez, the sole shareholder of his three Russian companies, passed his shares to Briana SAL Offshore, a Lebanese company with identical shareholders, directors and address as Nylam. Russian corporate records for the Russian property companies contain details about Briana because it is a shareholder. These records show that Briana states its country of business as Syria.

Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, provided banking services for at least one of the Russian property companies formerly owned by Hafez and now owned by Briana, a Russian corporate database shows.

As the loans from Nylam to Hafez’s Russian companies were international (coming into Russia from Lebanon), it is feasible that they were transacted in US dollars, which is the commonly used international currency. If that were the case, the money could have transited through Sberbank’s SWIFT payment system, which, according to anti-money laundering expert Graham Barrow, could risk breaching the terms of the US sanctions against Hafez Makhlouf.

The convoluted nature of the loans taken against the properties should have raised red flags with Sberbank, but it is unclear what due diligence was carried out on the loans.

Sberbank’s dealings with the Makhloufs are part of a broader pattern of major Russian banks helping the Syrian regime. In 2012 and 2013, both Reuters and Wall Street Journal reported that the al-Assad regime held accounts at Gazprombank and VTB, two of Russia’s largest banks, which, like Sberbank, have extensive international correspondent banking relationships. More here.

Will the Investigations Include the Unmasking Scandal?

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2016: Primer

Could it be that the Obama White House called for a favor from the Washington Post to help on this? The Obama White House used media to an historic art form including selling the bad Iran nuclear deal. Anyway…

The operatives needed to have the list of names first and Trump shared some names that included Whalid Phares, Joe Schmitz and Carter Page. Remember the FISA application scandal listed Carter Page’s name. Further, Joe Schmitz, a former Defense official and lawyer was also a top executive at Blackwater. No wonder there was the festering story about Eric Prince and his alleged nefarious meeting in the Seychelles with Putin’s money-man, Kirill Dmitriev.

Dots connecting…

Moving forward to April of 2017…

Per Eli Lake at Bloomberg:

Facebook Rolling Out “Educational Tool” to Help Users Spot ...

White House lawyers discovered that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Lake further reports that Rice’s pattern of requesting unmasking was discovered by Trump National Security Council staffer Ezra Cohen-Watnick, whom The New York Times reported last week was one of Nunes’s sources. Cohen-Watnick informed the White House Counsel’s office, Lake reports.

Okay, then we heard that the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power also ordered unmaskings, of which she later denied.

Samantha Power testified in Gowdy’s committee last week, and Fox News reported weeks before her appearance that she was thought to have made as many as 260 requests to “unmask” Americans caught up in the surveillance of non-U.S. citizens.

But Tuesday evening, Gowdy told Fox News that Power told his committee that she was not the official requesting that unmasking in every case. More here.

Moving way ahead to February of 2017, enter Congressman Adam Schiff.

Donald Trump believes House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff is trying to hire White House employees to gain an edge in his investigation of foreign attempts to influence the president, people familiar with the matter said.

Schiff has hired one former career official at the National Security Council, Abigail Grace, who left the White House last year, the people said. She has a congressional email address and is listed in a directory as working for the Intelligence Committee’s Democratic majority.

A second career employee detailed to the Trump White House is also considering joining Schiff’s staff, according to people familiar with the matter. They didn’t identify the person. More here.

Abigail was a research associate with the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New America Security.

The Washington Examiner has reported that two ex-NSC staffers are now employed by Schiff. Abigail Grace, who worked at the NSC until 2018, was hired in February, while Sean Misko, an NSC aide until 2017, joined Schiff’s committee staff in August, the same month the whistleblower submitted his complaint.

Eric Ciaramella, the alleged Ukraine whistleblower, was a guest of Vice President Joe Biden at a glitzy lunch in October 2016 to honor the prime minister of Italy.

Biden co-hosted the banquet with former Secretary of State John Kerry for then-Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Ciaramella, who is of Italian heritage, was among the U.S. officials who accepted an invitation. This week, the Washington Examiner reported that Ciaramella is now a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia on the National Intelligence Council, reporting to the director of national intelligence. More here.

Now remember during a hearing where AG William Barr asserted there were indications of the government spying on the Trump campaign? Barr has seen major indicators that such activity did occur and hence he hired U.S Attorney John Durham to track the records of the origins of the Russia investigation. The Democrats and media blew up about the term ‘spying’. Well then debates happened in the public square about spying versus surveillance. Okay, how about moles? How about using encrypted text messages between groups of operatives? How about all of it?

America is waiting and waiting and waiting for the IG report, for the Durham report, for the declassification of documents….waiting and waiting.

So when it comes to the list of witnesses that the Republicans are asking Congressman Schiff for permission to provide testimony, the list should be much larger. Others that should be included are: Lisa Monaco, Dennis McDonough, John Brennan, James Clapper, Samantha Power, Mike Morell, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, George Soros, Igor Sikorsky, Col. Andriy Ordynovych among others.

Waiting and waiting…

 

 

 

 

Obama Admin Tried to Partner with Burisma

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Where is Chairman Adam Schiff now? He brought in George Kent, the former charge d’affair at the Kiev embassy for testimony. And the whistle blew except Schiff did not run out to the hallway outside his office to the nearest microphone.
Hat tip again to John Solomon for his report and tireless investigative work.
In part from his report:

George Kent, the former charge d’affair at the Kiev embassy, said in testimony released Thursday that the State Department’s main foreign aid agency, known as USAID, planned to co-sponsor a clean energy project with Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas firm that employed Hunter Biden as a board member.

At the time of the proposed project, Burisma was under investigation in Ukraine for alleged corruption. Those cases were settled in late 2016 and early 2017. Burisma contested allegations of corruption but paid a penalty for tax issues.

Kent testified he personally intervened in mid-2016 to stop USAID’s joint project with Burisma because American officials believed the corruption allegations against the gas firm raised concern.

“There apparently was an effort for Burisma to help cosponsor, I guess, a contest that USAID was sponsoring related to clean energy. And when I heard about it I asked USAID to stop that sponsorship,” Kent told lawmakers.

When asked why he intervened, he answered: “”Because Burisma had a poor reputation in the business, and I didn’t think it was appropriate for the U.S. Government to be co-sponsoring something with a company that had a bad reputation.”

Kent’s testimony confirms earlier text messages I reported on in September. Those text messages show that Devon Archer — Hunter Biden’s business associate and fellow board member on Burisma — boasted to an American lawyer in December 2015 that the pair was seeking to do a project with USAID.

And internal State memos I obtained this week under FOIA show Hunter Biden and Archer had multiple contacts with Secretary of State John Kerry and Deputy Secretary Tony Blinken in 2015-16, and that Burisma’s own American legal team was lobbying State to help eliminate the corruption allegations against it in Ukraine.

Hunter Biden’s name was specifically invoked as a reason why State officials should assist, the memos show. A month after Burisma’s contact with State, Joe Biden leveraged the threat of withholding U.S. foreign aid to force Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who at the time was overseeing the Burisma probe.

Joe Biden says he forced the firing because he believed Shokin was ineffective, but Shokin says he was told he was fired because the American ice president was unhappy the prosecutor would not drop the Burisma probe.

Okay, so just to continue to check things out here for context and details, I trotted over to the Obama White House archives…BINGO! YIPPEE….Solomon is right on point.

Image result for usaid ukraine energy

2014 and read carefully the following:

For Immediate Release
April 21, 2014

FACT SHEET: U.S. Crisis Support Package for Ukraine

President Obama and Vice President Biden have made U.S. support for Ukraine an urgent priority as the Ukrainian government works to establish security and stability, pursue democratic elections and constitutional reform, revive its economy, and ensure government institutions are transparent and accountable to the Ukrainian people.  Ukraine embarks on this reform path in the face of severe challenges to its sovereignty and territorial integrity, which we are working to address together with Ukraine and our partners in the international community.  The United States is committed to ensuring that Ukrainians alone are able to determine their country’s future without intimidation or coercion from outside forces.  To support Ukraine, we are today announcing a new package of assistance totaling $50 million to help Ukraine pursue political and economic reform and strengthen the partnership between the United States and Ukraine.

Elections and Constitutional Reform:  Constitutional reform and free and fair elections are keys to Ukraine’s democratic development.  Assistance in this area is a down payment on the country’s democratic development.  We stand ready to provide further assistance to the new government after elections.

  • The United States is contributing an $11.4 million package to support the integrity of the May 25 elections.   These funds are being used to advance democratic processes – not to support a particular candidate or electoral outcome.  These efforts include voter education programs, transparent election administration, effective oversight of the election process, election security and a redress of infractions, and a diverse, balanced and policy-focused media environment.
  • The United States is contributing support and monitors to the OSCE’s election observation mission and other monitoring groups.  U.S. funded programs will provide at least 250 long-term observers and over 1,700 short-term observers.
  • We are also sending additional experts to provide advice on issues such as constitutional checks and balances, local governance, public participation, and the establishment of an independent, transparent judicial system.

Economic Assistance:  The United States has already signed a $1 billion loan guarantee to help Ukraine meet its financial obligations and protect vulnerable citizens from the impact of economic adjustments.  We have also supported Ukraine’s work with the IMF to secure a loan program worth $14-$18 billion.   As these U.S., IMF, and European funds begin to flow, we will have technical experts from the U.S. Treasury Department on the ground to help the Ukrainian government allocate them effectively to stabilize the economy and ensure all the regions benefit.  Currently, there are three banking advisors in Kyiv and we will be deploying public debt management and macroeconomic advisors in the coming week.  We are also committed to providing additional technical assistance in the areas of budget and tax administration.

Energy Security:  Over the coming weeks, expert teams from several U.S. government agencies will travel to the region to help Ukraine meet immediate and longer term energy needs.

  • Today, a U.S. interagency expert team arrived in Kyiv to help Ukraine secure reverse flows of natural gas from its European neighbors.  The team will continue on to Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia in the coming days to work on the details of these arrangements.  Reverse flows of natural gas will provide Ukraine with additional immediate sources of energy.
  • U.S. technical experts will join with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and others in May to help Ukraine develop a public-private investment initiative to increase conventional gas production from existing fields to boost domestic energy supply.  A technical team will also engage the government on measures that will help the Ukrainian government ensure swift and environmentally sustainable implementation of contracts signed in 2013 for shale gas development.
  • Department of Energy and USAID specialists will travel to Ukraine next month to provide advice on how to maximize energy efficiency, which could deliver potentially huge cost savings to Ukraine and rationalize energy consumption.

Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption:  The United States is committed to helping Ukraine break the cycle of corruption that acts as a tax on business, an impediment to economic growth, and a drain on public trust in government.  Technical advisors from the Departments of State and Justice have already been advising the government on anti-corruption measures.  Today we are expanding this assistance program with additional commitments.

  • Attorney General Holder will co-host an international conference in London April 29-30 to help identify, trace, and recover proceeds of corruption stolen by the former regime.  This is part of an ongoing effort, including work by an FBI investigative team on the ground in Kyiv to help the government of Ukraine recover assets stolen from the Ukrainian people.
  • The United States will provide advice and assistance to help modernize Ukraine’s government procurement in accordance with international standards, including the creation of a vetted anti-corruption unit.   We will offer technical assistance to that vetted unit to help build a sustainable anti-corruption regime within Ukraine, as we have done with substantial results in other parts of the world.
  • Specialized teams of prosecutors and investigators will help the Ukrainian government with other forms of technical assistance to put in place the proper legal and regulatory framework to fight corruption.  The teams will also serve as a resource to ensure follow-through and effective implementation.

People-to-People Ties:  To further strengthen ties between the people of Ukraine and the United States, we are announcing our intent to establish a new bilateral visa regime that will extend the standard validity of visas for businesspeople and tourists from 5 years to 10 years on a negotiated reciprocal basis.

Security Assistance:  In addition to the $50 million package, today we are announcing the provision of $8 million of non-lethal military assistance to allow the Ukrainian armed forces and State Border Guard Service to fulfill their core security missions.  The additional supplies include:

  • Explosive Ordnance Disposal equipment and handheld radios for Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
  • Engineering equipment, communications equipment, vehicles, and non-lethal individual tactical gear for Ukraine’s Border Guard Service.

This is in addition to the $3 million of Meals Ready to Eat and nearly $7 million of health and welfare assistance the United States is already providing to Ukraine.  The United States will continue to actively review requests for additional support as Ukraine’s government further modernizes its armed forces and deals with evolving threats.

The Lawyer’s Plot for the Coup Against Trump

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Have you met Edward Luttwak? You can be sure the lawyer for the Whistleblower has. Luttwak published a book titled Coup D’ Etat, the practical handbook.

Coup d’État astonished readers when it first appeared in 1968 because it showed, step by step, how governments could be overthrown. Translated into sixteen languages, it has inspired anti-coup precautions by regimes around the world. In addition to these detailed instructions, Edward Luttwak’s revised handbook offers an altogether new way of looking at political power—one that considers, for example, the vulnerability to coups of even the most stable democracies in the event of prolonged economic distress.

So we have this cat, Mark Zaid. Within minutes of the inaugural event for President Trump, Zaid’s tweets began stating the coup has begun. Now the question is who in Washington DC was watching, considering and conspiring to join the coup army…plenty.

Mark Zaid: It’s troubling that Trump gave Jared Kushner security clearance

Zaid is a known quantity inside the Beltway.

Zaid is a recognized expert in Federal court especially in whistle-blower cases. These cases almost always include leaking or publishing classified material as such is/was the case of Edward Snowden. The Zaid law firm, where he is the managing partner includes at least 5 other lawyers handling cases of national security, diplomatic immunity, defamation cases and international transactions. Zaid is the founder of the James Madison Project, a non-profit organization that takes on government agencies for alleged wrong-doing, coverups and secrecy policies. Note however he never took on Hillary and Libya…or the email server scandal….

Mr. Zaid has testified before several committees in the House and the Senate all with the twist of meeting the ‘curiosity of this town’ as noted on the law firms website. With his early launch of the coup has started, you can bet some of this friendlies on The Hill followed his legal handbook and we are now enduring what Congressman Nunes calls a paper coup. Zaid has TS/SCI clearance and that add more bona fides to his power within the offices of the Democrats that include for sure Speaker Pelosi that is often providing all the permissions needed to Congressman Adam Schiff leading the impeachment inquiries.

Does anyone wonder how come Mr. Zaid never took any whistle-blower cases as they related to the Obama administration or even John Kerry with regard to the Iran deal? How about the IRS targeting operation or any of the other scandals in recent years….just sayin…

Okay, then there is also the other lawyer and law firm that has Andrew Bakaj with Compass Rose Legal Group.

 

 

An attorney who left the CIA in 2014 after facing professional retaliation for trying to work with intelligence community whistleblowers is now representing the U.S. official who reportedly filed a complaint alleging wrongdoing by President Trump.

Attorney Profiles – Compass Rose Legal Group, PLLC

Andrew Bakaj, a national security attorney working for Compass Rose Legal Group, a Washington national security law firm, has taken on the still unidentified whistleblower as his newest client, according to information first reported by the New York Times and confirmed by Yahoo News.

According to his Linkedin profile, Bakaj was an intern at the U.S. State Department from June 2002 to August 2002 at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine. He, “Created the Embassy’s fraud database, performed various counter-fraud duties, interviewed visa candidates, translated official Ukrainian/Russian documents into English, and represented official U.S. interests at various events throughout Ukraine.

On September 24, Bakaj sent a ‘Notice of Intent to Contact Congressional Intelligence Committees’ letter to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who took over for Dan Coats directly with the complaint. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff, who was copied on Bakaj’s letter, responded the same day. Schiff, who represented California’s 28th congressional district, asked for the whistleblower to come in for “voluntary interview” after Maguire testifies in a rare, open session Thursday, September 26, in a “secure location.”

Bakaj made a $100 campaign contribution to former Vice President Joe Biden’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign through ActBlue, according to Federal Election Commission records. He made the contribution on April 26, 2019. ActBlue is a nonprofit that facilitates contributions to Democratic candidates.

Bakaj interned for Senator Chuck Schumer in the spring of 2001 and for then-Senator Hillary Clinton the fall of the same year. Hat tip.