Category Archives: Legislation

Willful Blindness and DHS Policy CVE Grant Program

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Philip B. Haney, a founding member, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Customs & Border Protection (CBP) and author of the must-read book See Something, Say Nothing

Last week I testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts at a hearing entitled, “Willful Blindness: Consequences of Agency Efforts To Deemphasize Radical Islam in Combating Terrorism.”

Philip Haney/Breitbart: I am a recently retired Customs & Border Protection (CBP) agent. I was named a Founding Member of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at its inception on March 01, 2003. During my 12 years serving inside DHS under two administrations, I witnessed a series of events which ultimately prompted me to become a whistleblower, releasing critical documents to Members of Congress as I felt necessary to comply with my oath to the Constitution.

First, in January of 2008, I received what is now known as the “Words Matter Memo,” which was circulated internally by the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) division of DHS. The full title of the document was “Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims,” and it read in part:

 [T]he experts counseled caution in using terms such as, “jihadist,” “Islamic terrorist,” “Islamist,” and “holy warrior” as grandiose descriptions.

Collapsing all terrorist organizations into a single enemy feeds the narrative that al-Qaeda represents Muslims worldwide.

We should not concede the terrorists’ claim that they are legitimate adherents of Islam. Therefore, when using the word [Islamic], it may be strategic to emphasize that many so-called “Islamic” terrorist groups twist and exploit the tenets of Islam to justify violence and to serve their own selfish political aims.

Regarding jihad, even if it is accurate to reference the term (putting aside polemics on its true nature), it may not be strategic because it glamorizes terrorism, imbues terrorists with religious authority they do not have, and damages relations with Muslims around the globe.

I submitted a seven-point response listing serious substantive concerns about this memo, but received no response.

On November 24, 2008, a decision came down in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial, the largest terror financing case in American history. During that trial, the federal government had established that a number of organizations were appropriately named as unindicted co-conspirators along with HLF, including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).

Specifically, the judge ruled that federal prosecutors had “produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF… and with Hamas.” In addition, the judge ruled that that these organizations had direct links to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest and largest Islamic fundamentalist organizations in the world, founded in 1928 in Egypt to reestablish the Caliphate, whose motto includes “Jihad is our way, and death in the service of Allah is the loftiest of our wishes.”

I made note of the decision, and explored links between these groups and potential extremist and terrorist activity. But on October 15, 2009, I was ordered by DHS to ‘modify’ linking information in about 820 subject records in the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or “TECS records” to remove ‘unauthorized references to terrorism.’ I was further ordered not to input any more Memoranda of Information Received, or MOIRs, to create no more TECS records, and to do no further research on the topics I was exploring.

On November 5, 2009, at Ft. Hood, Texas, Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people, including one who was pregnant, and wounded 32 others, while calling out “Allahu akbar!” meaning “God is great” in Arabic.

Hassan was a U.S. Army major who had exchanged emails with leading al Qaeda figure Anwar Awlaki – which the FBI had seen and decided not to take action – in which he asked whether those attacking fellow U.S. soldiers were martyrs. He had also given a presentation to Army doctors discussing Islam and suicide bombers during which he argued Muslims should be allowed to leave the armed forces as conscientious objectors to avoid “adverse events.” The Pentagon refused for five years to grant victims Purple Hearts, designating the attack “workplace violence.”

On January 27-28, 2010 an ‘Inaugural Meeting’ occurred between American Muslim leaders and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, hosted by DHS CRCL. The Inaugural Meeting created controversy because it included a number of Islamic fundamentalist individuals and organizations.

For instance, the meeting included at least one organization that was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 HLF Trial and established to have associations with the now-shuttered HLF and with Hamas, namely ISNA. According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), the group’s representative who attended the meeting, Ingrid Mattson, has “an established pattern of minimizing the nature of extremist forms of Islam and rationalizing the actions of Islamist terrorist movements.” Another invited group, the Muslim American Society (MAS), was actually formed as the United States chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1993.

Likewise, in the Spring of 2010, the Administration convened the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Working Group under the authority of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC), again raising questions because of those named to it.

They included Omar Alomari, who once wrote that jihad was “the benign pursuit of personal betterment. It may be applied to physical conflict for Muslims, but only in the arena of Muslims defending themselves when attacked or when attempting to overthrow oppression and occupation,” asserting further that “”Jihad as a holy war is a European invention, spread in the West”; Mohamed Elibiary, who has asserted that it was “inevitable that [the] ‘Caliphate’ returns” and ultimately was let go from the HSAC amid charges he misused classified documents; and Dahlia Mogahed, who has decried “lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism” and holds that “Islamic terrorism’ is really a contradiction in terms” to mainstream Muslims “because terrorism is not Islamic by definition.”

So by the Spring of 2010, we had come to the point that a CBP Officer was literally removing information connecting the dots on individuals with ties to known terror-linked groups from TECS, while the Administration was bringing the same individuals into positions of influence, to help create and implement our counter-terror policy, in the context of actual terror attacks taking place.

On August 30, 2011, the DHS Chief Council approved a project I initiated looking into Islamic fundamentalist group Tablighi Jamaat (TJ). On November 15, 2011, I began a temporary duty assignment at the National Targeting Center (NTC). A short time later, I was assigned to the Advanced Targeting Team, where I worked exclusively on the TJ Project, which was quickly upgraded to a global-level case.

On March 15, 2012, seven lawyers and three senior executive service (SES) administrators met with management personnel at the NTC to express concern for our focus on TJ, because it is not a designated terrorist group, and therefore the project might be “discriminating” against its members because they are Muslim. On June-July, 2012, the TJ Initiative was ‘taken in another direction,’ (i.e. shut down). The Administration took this action despite the fact that [1] in nine months, we had conducted 1,200 law enforcement actions, [2] I was formally commended for finding 300 individuals with possible connections to terrorism, and [3] 25% of the individuals in Guantanamo Bay had known links to Tablighi Jamaat.

On August 22, 2012, The Institute of Islamic Education (IIE) case that today links both the Darul Uloom Al-Islamiya mosque attended by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the San Bernardino shooters, and the Fort Pierce mosque attended by Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, was entered into TECS. But once again, on September 21, 2012, all 67 records in the IIE case were completely deleted (not just ‘modified’) from TECS.

On September 21, 2014, I was relieved of my service weapon, all access to TECS and other programs was suspended, my Secret Clearance was revoked, and I was sequestered for the last 11 months of my career with no assigned duties.

On December 2, 2015, the San Bernardino shootings occurred, and I immediately linked the mosque in San Bernardino to the IIE case (with the 67 deleted records), and to the Tablighi Jamaat case (which was shut down).

On June 09, 2016, the Homeland Security Advisory Council Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Subcommittee issued an Interim Report and Recommendations. The report recommended in part using American English instead of religious, legal and cultural terms like “jihad,” “sharia,” “takfir” or “umma.”

On June 12, 2016, the shootings in Orlando occurred, and I linked Omar Mateen’s mosque in Fort Pierce, FL to the IIE & TJ case. And on June 19, 2016, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that her Department of Justice would release redacted 9-11 call transcripts for Mr. Mateen.

The threat of Islamic terrorism does not just come from a network of armed organizations such as Hamas and ISIS, who are operating ‘over there’ in the Middle East. In fact, branches of the same global network have been established here in America, and they are operating in plain sight, at least to those of us who have been charged with the duty of protecting our country from threats, both foreign and domestic.

The threat we face today, which continues growing despite the willful blindness of those who insist on pretending otherwise, is not “violent extremism,” “terrorism,” or even “Jihad” alone, but rather, the historical and universally recognized Islamic strategic goal of implementing Shariah law everywhere in the world, so that no other form of government (including the U.S. Constitution) is able to oppose its influence over the lives of those who must either submit to its authority, become second-class citizens, or perish.

Ignoring that reality has arguably cost at least the lives of those in Ft. Hood, San Bernardino and Orlando, and will cost many, many more if it is allowed to continue.

FY 2016 Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Grant Program

Department of Homeland Security: In December, 2015, Congress passed the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2016 (Public Law 114-113). Sec. 543 of the Act and the accompanying Joint Explanatory Statement provided $10 million for a “countering violent extremism (CVE) initiative to help states and local communities prepare for, prevent, and respond to emergent threats from violent extremism.”

The Department of Homeland Security issued a notice of funding opportunity on July 6, 2016 announcing the new Countering Violent Extremism Grant Program, the first federal grant funding available to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and institutions of higher education to carry out countering violent extremism programs.

These new grants will provide state, local and tribal partners and community groups—religious groups, mental health and social service providers, educators and other NGOs—with the ability to build prevention programs that address the root causes of violent extremism and deter individuals who may already be radicalizing to violence.

This initiative builds on Secretary Johnson’s September 2015 announcement of the creation of the Office for Community Partnerships. This Office has worked to take the Department’s CVE mission to the next level and find innovative ways to support local communities and address the evolving threat environment. This grant program supports that line of effort.

For an overview of the program and eligibility, please consult this Fact Sheet.

Interested applicants can view the Notice of Funding Opportunity and begin the application process.

Frequently Asked Questions can be found here.

FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook

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FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook

There is no way of getting around this: According to Director James Comey (disclosure: a former colleague and longtime friend of mine), Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was “extremely careless” and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services. Yet, Director Comey recommended against prosecution of the law violations he clearly found on the ground that there was no intent to harm the United States. In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence. Read more here from National Review, Andrew McCarthy

Does Comey, Director of the FBI really have all the evidence to recommend no prosecution?

Clinton-related State Dept. records delays are mounting up

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just five months before the presidential election, the State Department is under fire in courtrooms over its delays in turning over government files related to Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

In one case, the agency warned it needed a 27-month delay, until October 2018, to turn over emails from Clinton’s former aides, and the judge in another case, a lawsuit by The Associated Press, wondered aloud whether the State Department might be deliberately delaying until after the election.

“We’re now reaching a point where there’s mounting frustration that this is a project where the State Department may be running out the clock,” said U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon. The judge said he was considering imposing penalties on the agency if it failed to meet the next set of deadlines he orders. Leon wondered aloud at one point whether he might impose penalties for again failing to deliver records on time. He mused about “a fine on a daily basis” or “incarceration.”

“I can’t send the marshals, obviously, out to bring in the documents, at least they wouldn’t know where to go, probably,” Leon said.

Secretary of State John Kerry and other officials have said they are committed to public transparency, vowing that the State Department will improve its practices under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Last year, after an inspector general’s audit harshly critical of the agency, Kerry appointed a “transparency coordinator,” Janice Jacobs, and said the agency would “fundamentally improve our ability to respond to requests for our records.”

But in three separate court hearings last week, officials acknowledged that their records searches were hobbled by errors and new delays and said they need far more time to produce Clinton records. In other cases where the agency has already reached legal agreements with news organizations and political groups, the final delivery of thousands of records will not come until months after the November election — far too late to give voters an opportunity to analyze the performance of Clinton and her aides.

State Department spokesman John Kirby blamed the spiraling delays on mounting requests for more files. “These requests are also frequently more complex, and increasingly seeking larger volumes of documents requiring more time, more resources and frankly, more interagency coordination,” Kirby said.

The State Department said in court that it had miscalculated the amount of material it expected to process as part of a public records lawsuit from Citizens United, a conservative interest group. In basic searches of 14,000 pages of records, officials failed to include the “to” and “from” lines of the messages, missing many possible records.

“These delay tactics by the Obama administration look like nothing more than an assist to former Secretary Clinton,” said the group’s president, David Bossie.

The AP had better luck asking for files about the role Clinton or her aides played in a 2011 decision allowing the British defense contractor BAE Systems plc to avoid being barred from government work and instead pay a $79 million fine. The AP received some records, but last week, the judge said he will likely order the State Department to turn over remaining files in September instead of mid-October, as the agency proposed.

Government lawyers said they need to review thousands of pages and allow the files to be examined by BAE’s lawyers in case the company identifies proprietary material that would need to be censored.

“I’m not going to set them for October, two weeks before the election, that’s ridiculous,” Leon said.

In a third court case, the Gawker.com news site was told by State Department lawyers last week that the agency had failed to provide at least 100 email attachments from Philippe Reines, a Clinton aide who used a private account to send work-related messages. Gawker and the agency agreed that the State Department would turn over the missing material by September.

Also last week, during another legal proceeding involving Huma Abedin, Clinton’s closest aide and her former deputy chief of staff, Abedin said she “was never asked to search my emails for anything related to FOIA when I was at State.”

Logs of requests showed that Abedin’s emails had been sought at the time by reporters for Gawker, Huffington Post and other organizations.

Kirby told the AP that he could not comment on whether Abedin’s files were properly searched during Clinton’s tenure. But he added that “we have acknowledged that historically we did not have a consistent practice for searching emails in the Office of the Secretary.”

Nearly 1 Million Immigrants Ignoring Deportation

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It is quite interesting that the Obama administration can release proven known terrorists from the Guantanamo Detention Center to either home countries or any other country that the administration colludes with to accept them.

We have a former detainee that was released to Uruguay that has fled alleged to Brazil.

 MiamiHerald

But…..this policy does not seem to apply to the Department of Homeland Security or ICE.

Specifically, the law states:

On being notified by the [DHS Secretary] that the government of a foreign country denies or unreasonably delays accepting an alien who is a citizen, subject, national, or resident of that country after the [DHS Secretary] asks whether the government will accept the alien under this section, the Secretary of State shall order consular officers in that foreign country to discontinue granting immigrant visas or nonimmigrant visas, or both, to citizens, subjects, nationals, and residents of that country until the [DHS Secretary] notifies the Secretary that the country has accepted the alien. (8 U.S.C. § 1253(d); Emphasis added.)

Nearly 1 million immigrants — including more than 170K convicts — ignoring deportation

WashingtonTimes: Nearly 1 million immigrants are ignoring deportation orders to remain in the U.S. — including more than 170,000 convicted criminals, according to a new report Thursday that suggests the government’s deportation efforts are still falling short.

Only a small fraction of the immigrants are even being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), meaning most of them remain free on the streets, where they can commit crimes and continue living in the shadows, according to the study by Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

“The fact that almost 10 percent of the illegal resident population has already been ordered removed and is still here illustrates just how dysfunctional our immigration enforcement system is. It also should be of great concern that 20 percent of them are conviction criminals, and that most of these are at large in our communities,” Ms. Vaughan said.

She said the 925,193 aliens who were still here despite a deportation order break down into three categories. In some cases their home countries refuse to take them back, and U.S. officials feel constrained by law to release them; other times they are released by sanctuary cities, who help thwart deportations; and still others abscond on their own.

Mexicans account for the most aliens, with nearly 200,000 ignoring deportation orders. About a third of those are convicted criminals, Ms. Vaughan said. El Salvador accounts for more than 150,000 of the aliens, but just 10,000 of them are convicted criminals.

Perhaps most troubling is that the population is steadily growing, with the Obama administration tracking down fewer than 10,000 fugitives a year on the streets. Even when criminals snagged by checking local prisons and jails are included, the number of those deported from the interior of the U.S. is far less than 100,000.

But some 179,040 new criminal aliens were given final orders or removal in 2015 yet remained in the country, Ms. Vaughan said, citing data obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Related reading: 121 Criminals Charged with Murder Following Release from Custody Pending Deportation Jun 15, 2015 Grassley, Sessions Call for Multi-Department Response to Failed Removals

Related reading: The law requires the State Department to impose visa sanctions on countries that won’t take their own citizens back, a requirement Secretaries Clinton and Kerry have simply ignored. NRO

Univ. of Phoenix, Obama’s Post Presidency Career?

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Okay, let the investigations begin…..the collusion, the government subsidies and partners….hummm

Bid to buy for-profit college by former Obama insiders raises questions

‘There is at least a taste of unseemliness involved in this,’ a former top education official said.

Barack Obama and Marty Nesbitt
Longtime Obama friend Marty Nesbitt’s private equity firm Vistria Group has mounted a charm offensive on Capitol Hill to talk up the proposed sale of the for-profit University of Phoenix. | Getty

Politico: As the Obama administration cracks down on for-profit colleges, three former officials working on behalf of an investment firm run by President Barack Obama’s best friend have staged a behind-the-scenes campaign to get the Education Department to green-light a purchase of the biggest for-profit of them all — the University of Phoenix.

The investors include a private equity firm founded and run by longtime Obama friend Marty Nesbitt and former Deputy Education Secretary Tony Miller. The firm, Chicago-based Vistria Group, has mounted a charm offensive on Capitol Hill to talk up the proposed sale of the troubled for-profit education giant, which receives more than $2 billion a year in taxpayer money but is under investigation by three state attorneys general and the FTC.

What stands out about the proposed deal is that several key players are either close to top administration officials, including the president himself, or are former administration insiders — especially Miller, who was part of the effort to more tightly regulate for-profit colleges at the very agency now charged with approving the ownership change. For-profit college officials have likened those rules to a war on the industry, and blame the administration for contributing to their declining enrollments and share prices.

The proposed sale carries high stakes for taxpayers, students and investors: The University of Phoenix’s financial stability may depend on the $1.1 billion acquisition. If the company were to fail, more than 160,000 students could be displaced and the government would be on the hook for hundreds of millions in student loans.

But the investors’ effort to seek Education Department approval of the school’s ownership change also raises questions about potential conflicts of interest.

“There is at least a taste of unseemliness involved in this,” said Mark Schneider, a former top education official under President George W. Bush. “They regulate it. They drive the price down. …They are buying it for pennies on the dollar.”

Vistria Group said it isn’t seeking special treatment. “We expect the Department to evaluate this proposed transaction on the merits,” the company said in a statement.

Vistria is part of a consortium of investors involved in the proposed acquisition, which has already won over shareholders of the school’s parent company, Apollo Education Group. But now the investors need the Education Department and the school’s accreditors to sign off on the ownership change to keep the federal money flowing — most of it in the form of student loans and Pell Grants.

Related reading: Apollo Education

Related reading: Vistria Money

With those decisions looming, Miller and at least one other former Obama insider have met with staff to Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), looking to reassure some of the loudest critics of for-profit colleges in the president’s own party, several Senate aides confirmed to POLITICO. Those lawmakers have pushed Obama’s Education Department to be even tougher on for-profit colleges.

Miller has also met with staff members working for other committee members, including Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), and Bob Casey (D-Pa.), as well as with Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate education committee. Nesbitt was not part of those Capitol Hill meetings, according to the aides.

The investors’ pitch is that they will turn around the beleaguered education company company and boost student outcomes. In announcing the sale, Miller said in a statement that the investors are committed to running the University of Phoenix “in a manner consistent with the highest ethical standards.”

But the specter of former insiders pushing the sale of a company in an industry that has long been in the administration’s crosshairs is not lost on critics. For seven years, the Obama administration has waged a crackdown on poor quality and predatory practices at many for-profit colleges, with the president himself excoriating some schools for “making out like a bandit” with federal money, but saddling students with big debts and leaving them unprepared for good jobs. He did not name the schools.

“It’s ironic that a former senior official at the Department of Education — an agency that has intentionally targeted and sought to dismantle the for-profit college industry — would now take the reins at the country’s largest for-profit college,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican who leads the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s higher education subcommittee.

“Mr. Miller will soon learn firsthand how the harmful regulations he helped develop will limit the choices of students and create burdensome red tape for his institution,” she added.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — a longtime defender of the University of Phoenix — told POLITICO he blames the administration’s hard-charging regulatory approach for helping to drive down the company’s stock price and contributing to its decision to sell.

“I know it was the attacks that drove the stock price down,” McCain said. “It’s very clear.”

The sale price, which shareholders approved last month after initially balking at a lower price, is considered a bargain by some industry observers. The day Obama was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2009, the company’s stock closed at $86.54 per share. Today, it’s trading at around $9, although a recovering economy, unfavorable media coverage and the for-profit industry’s general slump have also contributed to that drop.

Some Senate Democrats said they are also uneasy with the investors’ plan to take the university private, which means it would no longer have to publicly disclose information such as executive compensation, lawsuits or when it’s a target of investigations. Those details are useful to prospective students, they say, at a time when the school faces inquiries from both state and federal authorities.

“Essentially, a company that receives more than $2 billion annually from federal taxpayers — nearly 80 percent of its revenue — is going dark, and it’s happening at a time when the University of Phoenix has come under increased scrutiny from state and federal regulators,” Durbin wrote in a March letter to the Education Department.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said the university’s “questionable track record is already a point of concern, and there are many questions as to whether the sale of its parent company is in the best interests of both students and taxpayers.”

Who’s who

Several players in the deal have close ties to the Obama administration they’re now attempting to influence.

160628_tony_miller_ap_1160.jpg
Former Deputy Education Secretary Tony Miller was part of the effort to more tightly regulate for-profit colleges at the very agency now charged with approving the ownership change. | AP Photo

 

 

First among them is Miller— the former No. 2 in Obama’s Education Department until he left in 2013 and who is now a partner and chief operating officer of Vistria Group. He would become chairman of the university’s parent company if the sale goes through.

Miller, who spent more than four years as a top Education Department official, represented the administration during nearly a dozen meetings with for-profit education companies — including the very company his firm is now seeking to buy, department records show. The meetings centered on controversial “gainful employment” proposals to cut off financial aid from programs where students leave with high debt and poor job prospects.

Other players in the Capitol Hill effort include Jonathan Samuels, who was responsible for pushing Obama’s agenda through Congress during his nearly six years working in legislative affairs at the White House. Samuels, who now works for Vistria Group, has joined Miller in at least some of his meetings on the Hill, according to a Senate aide. Vistria has also enlisted former White House Deputy Communications Director Amy Brundage, who is working at the Washington public affairs firm SKDKnickerbocker.

“The irony is not lost on us,” said one Republican congressional aide, who asked for anonymity to speak freely. “It’s quite rich, when you have former Obama administration officials who used to denigrate for-profit education now profiting off it.”

Nesbitt, meanwhile, is a co-founder and co-CEO of Vistria Group and widely considered the president’s closest friend. He is Obama’s frequent golf and basketball partner, while his wife, Anita Blanchard, is an obstetrician who delivered Malia and Sasha Obama. Nesbitt acted as treasurer for both of the president’s campaigns and heads the Obama Foundation, which is planning his presidential library.

Nesbitt is also a former business associate of Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker; he set up Vistria Group in 2013, more than a year after the sale of The Parking Spot, an airport parking company he started with Pritzker’s backing. One of Vistria’s investors has been a charitable foundation called The Pritzker Traubert Foundation, started by Pritzker, federal tax records show. Pritzker resigned from her position at the foundation when she became a cabinet member in 2013. A Commerce Department official said she has not been involved with discussions about the University of Phoenix sale.

Nesbitt, Miller, Samuels and Brundage all declined to comment to POLITICO about the nature of Vistria’s meetings with lawmakers or whether they had reached out to Education Department officials to discuss the potential sale. At the request of the company’s public relations firm, reporters submitted written questions about the meetings, allegations of possible conflicts of interest and how the company plans to turn around the University of Phoenix. Vistria responded with a four-sentence statement.

“We believe that the University of Phoenix, with our support, is poised to be a leader serving the adult learner, by graduating students with the knowledge and skills that employers value, at a cost to the student that ensures a compelling return on her or his educational investment,” the statement said.

“We believe that high-quality outcomes, whether from nonprofit or for-profit institutions, is what is needed in the sector and what matters most. We expect the Department to evaluate this proposed transaction on the merits. The parties have engaged in the formal acquisition review process through regular order.”

The Education Department also declined to answer POLITICO’s questions about whether Nesbitt, Miller or Samuels had discussed the proposed sale with department officials. It refused to provide a copy of the paperwork the investors submitted to kick off the regulatory approval process.

Vistria is one of three investment groups involved in the deal — the others are Wall Street giant Apollo Global Management (no connection to Apollo Education) and Najafi Companies. A spokeswoman for a firm representing Apollo Education declined to say how much each investor had agreed to contribute. But in addition to capital, Vistria brings Obama administration connections that could help pave the way for a smooth approval process and working relationship with government regulators afterward.

It’s quite common for for-profit education companies to hire people who were former regulators, accreditors, politicians or established higher education officials, said Kevin Kinser, an education professor at the State University of New York at Albany who has studied for-profit colleges.

Kinser said it gives the schools a “sense of legitimacy” and understanding of how systems work “for them to do what they need to do.”

Durbin, a reliable Obama ally in the Senate, said he’s not close enough to Nesbitt to know why he got involved with the acquisition.

“He’s an investor, and I’ll just say he thinks this is a good investment,” Durbin said. “I hope that Marty will bring to this endeavor a sense of reform and will create a new for-profit school that truly does serve its students.”

The holding company set up by the investors to buy the University of Phoenix has also paid $80,000 to lobbyists. The lobbying team includes Marc Lampkin — a longtime counsel to former House Speaker John Boehner — at the high-powered D.C. firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

Trace Urdan, a for-profit college analyst who heard Miller describe Vistria’s plans at a recent conference, said Miller appeared “quite earnest.” Miller emphasized that the prospective owners plan to use data to monitor student performance and to make improvements, Urdan said.

“He thinks the size of the university is a real strength to be exploited and the implication is there is a lot of data, so you can analyze the data and figure out what works and doesn’t work,” Urdan said.

The potential sale offers a potential lifeline for the university. But there’s pressure to get the government’s approval quickly since the parent company has warned in regulatory filings that if the sale isn’t completed by October, its worsening financials might sink the deal. Either way, the company says that a further decline in its stock price could lead to regulatory problems that “severely stress” its liquidity.

If the company were to fail, either before or after the proposed sale, current students would be entitled to have their loans forgiven. Taxpayers have already spent more than $90 million on student loan forgiveness resulting from last year’s collapse of the Corinthian Colleges chain.

The Phoenix juggernaut

Founded in 1976, with a class of just eight students, the University of Phoenix became a pioneer in the burgeoning field of career education for adults ― providing flexibility for busy working adults looking for vocational education, especially after the advent of online programs in the late 1980s.

But as the school grew larger, hitting more than half a million students in 2010, critics say it lost its way in terms of the quality of its programs, high costs and aggressive recruiting tactics.

In recent years, scrutiny from state and federal authorities, a flurry of negative media stories and an improving economy combined to send enrollment plunging by more than two-thirds. In April, the university announced it would lay off 470 employees, or nearly 8 percent of its workforce.

The university currently faces investigation by the attorneys general of California, Massachusetts and Florida, according to regulatory filings. Its parent company disclosed last year that the FTC had requested information on a “broad spectrum” of its business practices, including “marketing, recruiting, enrollment, financial aid, tuition and fees, academic programs, academic advising, student retention, billing and debt collection, complaints, accreditation, training, military recruitment, and other compliance matters.”

Early in the Obama administration, in 2009, the Justice Department announced the University of Phoenix had agreed to pay $78.5 million to settle allegations the school had been fraudulently collecting taxpayer money. Two former recruiters had alleged the school created fake employee personnel files to hide the fact it was illegally giving recruiters gifts and free trips based on the number of students they brought in. The university did not acknowledge any wrongdoing in the settlement.

Last fall, the Pentagon took the unusual step of temporarily prohibiting the University of Phoenix from recruiting on military bases. The alleged violations included the misuse of military seals and trademarks, and conducting activities on military bases without proper permission. The ban was reversed three months later.

Many of the university’s students struggle with debt: Data released by the Obama administration’s College Scorecard last year shows that a majority of students who took out federal loans to attend the University of Phoenix did not end up making even a dollar’s worth of progress in paying down their debt after five years ― a sign their debts may not be manageable.

Yet the school continues to be popular, especially with veterans. Last year, about 45,000 GI Bill recipients enrolled at the University of Phoenix, at a cost of $290 million to taxpayers.

The university’s parent company is also seeing big international growth: Its global division serves more than 150,000 learners worldwide, with online and campus-based programs in countries such as Australia, India, Mexico and Chile, according to a company filing. While the international schools are a small share of total revenue, the footprint of its global division has been expanding.

‘Black box’ approval process

The process by which the Education Department will make a decision on the ownership change — and who will make that decision — has been shrouded in secrecy, say some for-profit college critics.

Bob Shireman, a former Obama Education Department official who was one of the architects of the for-profit college crackdown, called the approval process for college ownership changes a “black box.”

While the White House keeps logs to document who comes and goes to speak to executive branch officials, no one knows who is lobbying the Education Department on the sale, said Ben Miller, a former Obama Education Department staffer who is now senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress.

Asked about its decision-making process, a department official said the approval of the ownership change will be handled by the Office of Federal Student Aid, the department’s business operations arm, “in consultation with a variety of other offices,” which they declined to name.

“As we have said in the past, what’s good for students is at the heart of our review of this sale,” Dorie Nolt, the department’s press secretary, said in a statement. “We will work with Apollo to ensure that the new owner is focused on improving student outcomes.”

Shireman and Ben Miller say they want the department to use its leverage to impose conditions on the approval of the ownership change, such as requiring the university to rely less heavily on federal Pell Grants and other taxpayer programs, and to seek out more students who are willing or able to pay out of pocket.

Even if those conditions happen, Durbin said he’s skeptical the investors can pull off a turnaround, which he said previous owners failed to accomplish.

“I have met with the Apollo [Education Group] people over the years,” Durbin said. “Every meeting was preceded by ‘we’re different,’ and then it would turn out … they weren’t so different.”

Miller insists this ownership team will turn things around. In a letter to The Wall Street Journal in February, he said his company is committed to making the University of Phoenix “the most trusted provider of career-relevant higher education for working adults in the country.”

The new owners will prevail on the merits, he said.

“Success in today’s environment,” he wrote, “isn’t predicated on special treatment from regulators or legislators.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FEC Dems Voted to Punish Fox News

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Is there ANY Federal government agency that is not partisan? Heh….just listening to the White House spokesperson, Josh Earnest, you would think that anyone across the country that is not a leftist liberal not only is mentally defective but should be on trial for sedition, or something. So, we have the Federal Election Commission this time.

Perhaps here would be a good place to install a reminder about Lois Lerner, of IRS targeting fame. In part from Forbes:

Al Salvi’s a pretty sophisticated lawyer and he talked to the lawyer at the other end of the line and said to that person, ‘Give me the person, and let me talk to the person who had authority on this case. Because you don’t understand—I won, you lost, I’m not going to pay any money. Let me talk to the person with authority on the case at the Federal Election Commission.’ That person got on the phone with Al Salvi and said this, ‘If you pledge never to run for office again, we’ll drop this case.’ Al Salvi said, ‘Put that in writing.’ The person said, ‘We don’t put that in writing and we never lose.’ That person was Lois Lerner.

Now, you take that disposition. You take that attitude. You take that long arm of a bureaucrat and reach into the sanctity of the ballot booth. And you’ve got a real problem. And you up the wattage on that, and you move her over, and you give her the type of authority not that the Federal Election Commission has, but the Internal Revenue Service. To grab somebody by the throat and do whatever they want with them with the possibility of imprisoning them. That is a problem. And that’s a problem that Representative Renacci is trying to make go away. Full story is here.

Fox targeted by FEC Dems in first-ever vote to punish debate sponsorship

WashingtonExaminer: Finally making good on long-harbored anger at conservative media, Democrats on the Federal Election Commission voted in secret to punish Fox News’ sponsorship of a Republican presidential debate, using an obscure law to charge the network with helping those on stage.

It is the first time in history that members of the FEC voted to punish a media outlet’s debate sponsorship, and it follows several years of Democratic threats against conservative media and websites like the Drudge Report.

The punishment, however, was blocked by all three Republicans on the commission, resulting in a 3-3 tie vote and no action.

A Republican FEC commissioner leading that fight, Lee E. Goodman, revealed the vote to Secrets Wednesday and said the official report of the May 26 executive vote will be released Thursday.

Goodman has led the fight against several other efforts to censor conservative media by Democrats on the FEC.

“The government should not punish any newsroom’s editorial decision on how best to provide the public information about candidates for office,” he said. “All press organizations should be concerned when the government asserts regulatory authority to punish and censor news coverage.”

At issue was the August 6, 2015 Fox presidential debate. Initially, the network planned to host one debate featuring 10 candidates. But as the date got close and the nearly two dozen GOP presidential candidates were close in the polls, Fox added a second debate that included seven other candidates.

One of the candidates left out filed a complaint to the FEC, charging that Fox was essential making an contribution to the 17 candidates in the debate by letting them have a voice in the debate.

CNN did the same thing, but there is no indication that they faced a complaint.

Goodman provided details about the vote to Secrets in hopes of highlighting the anti-conservative agenda pushed by Democratic FEC Commissioners Ann Ravel, Ellen Weintraub and Steven Walther.

In a statement, Goodman wrote:

A complaint was filed with the FEC alleging that Fox News’ editorial decision to expand the debate from one debate to two debates, and to include 7 candidates in the undercard debate, constituted an illegal corporate contribution by Fox News to the candidates who participated in the debate. The FEC had to decide whether to enforce the corporate contribution ban against Fox News.

Astonishingly, three FEC commissioners (Weintraub, Ravel, Walther) concluded that Fox News violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by making a prohibited corporate contribution to the 7 candidates invited to the debate. That is, by expanding the debate format to a broader group of candidates, Fox News violated the law.

He added:

Three FEC commissioners (Lee Goodman, Matthew Petersen, Caroline Hunter) blocked this regulatory overreach into newsroom editorial judgments. Commissioners Petersen and Hunter and I voted to free Fox News’ editorial judgments from the FEC’s regulatory jurisdiction under the Free Press Clause of the Constitution and the Press Exemption in the Federal Election Campaign Act. Congress included in the Act an explicit exemption for the press and we respect Congress’ decision.

Only once has the commissioned threatened sponsorship of debates. In 1980, the commission moved to censor the Nashua, N.H. Telegraph for planning a debate between Ronald Reagan and then Vice President George H.W. Bush. The paper pulled out, so Reagan paid the costs himself. It is a debate famous for Reagan barking “I’m paying for this microphone” when a moderator tried to cut him off.