Category Archives: Media corruption

ACLU Calls for Dissolving DHS

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Any of these organizations calling for a restoration of law and order yet? Biden or Harris? Nah, but read on….

Primer:

A judge in Portland, Ore., is proposing that the uniforms of federal agents responding to long-running protests and unrest in that city be emblazoned with easily visible numbers so officers can be easily identified if they commit abuses.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon aired the suggestion Friday in connection with a lawsuit he’s overseeing that accuses city police and federal law enforcement officers of unjustified use of force against journalists and legal observers monitoring the protests, which have centered in recent weeks on the main federal courthouse in Portland.

“I do think it might be appropriate to require any federal law enforcement officer who steps out of the federal courthouse building to wear a unique identifying code,” Simon said during a 90-minute teleconference with lawyers involved in the case. “I’m taking this very, very seriously.”

The judge said he was considering ordering that federal agents — including scores of officers the Trump administration dispatched to the city from across the country — wear numbers about 8 inches high that would make it easier to assess whether some officers are violating a temporary restraining order the court issued last week.

Simon said he was thinking of something like the jerseys professional sports players wear, minus the names, which he said would expose law enforcement officers to the threat of doxing by the public.

The judge’s restraining order bars law enforcement from targeting journalists or legal observers and also gives those categories of individuals the right to remain in areas even if authorities require the general public to disperse because of riotlike conditions. More here.

*** https://s.abcnews.com/images/US/portland-protest-officer-rt-jt-200718_1595087284472_hpMain_16x9_992.jpg Note police on the uniforms

So, we now have judges that condemn the actions of law enforcement while the judges never seem to ask questions of Soros DA’s not prosecuting the militants in these cities. And the ACLU is for the most part taking the same position without consideration to all the work and departments within DHS.

*** https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/103/7d8/36268f7317b3d89f028b34d88ac4725d66-portland-troops.1x.rsocial.w1200.jpg Note here he has identifiers.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday called for the dissolution of the Department of Homeland Security, calling it a “fail[ed] experiment” that has become a “badge of shame” under President Trump.

“Nearly 20 years of abuse, waste, and corruption demonstrate the failure of the DHS experiment. Many knew DHS to be an ineffective superagency, but President Trump has converted DHS into our government’s most notable badge of shame,” the organization said in a series of tweets Monday.

“Dismantling DHS, breaking it apart into various federal agencies, and shrinking its federal budget will allow for more effective oversight, accountability and public transparency,” it added.

The organization linked to a USA Today op-ed by executive director Anthony Romero that specifically cites the “unlawful and shocking” deployment of DHS personnel to Portland, Ore.

In the op-ed, Romero noted several former DHS and national security officials who have expressed dismay at the recent trajectory of the department.

Former Secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff have both criticized the Portland deployment, while former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke has called for DHS to be dismantled.

In addition, Romero wrote that DHS is an “ineffective superagency” made up of 22 different agencies with contradictory mandates.

“Dismantling DHS, breaking it apart into various federal agencies, and shrinking its allocation of federal dollars will allow for more effective oversight, accountability and public transparency,” he wrote.

DHS was set up by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The idea at the time was to increase the importance of homeland security by unifying various parts of the government under one umbrella.

But criticism of DHS has increased over the years, and particularly over the last few months amid reports of federal police in unmarked vans detaining people in Portland.

“The spun-off agencies will have clearer missions and more limited functions,” Romero wrote. “A behemoth of a federal agency too easily hides its problems and failings. Congressional oversight can be more readily divided among various congressional committees. Smaller agencies with clearer mandates will make the Cabinet-level jobs more attractive to top-notch professionals.”

The ACLU in July sued DHS and the U.S. Marshals Service over the Portland deployment. Plaintiffs in the case include the Portland Mercury as well as several journalists and legal observers who claim agents assaulted them.

Lawsuit Alleges Violations of Media Matters and Hillary in 2016

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Primer:

Media Matters raked in as much as $2 million in coronavirus relief loans as the left-wing blog slammed the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, according to federal records released on Monday.

Records show that Media Matters, the progressive activist group founded by Clinton loyalist David Brock in 2004, received between $1 million and $2 million from the government’s Paycheck Protection Program. The loan represents a significant portion of the group’s annual income, which was listed as $11 million in 2017, according to tax records. Media Matters is bankrolled by the Democracy Alliance, one of the largest progressive donor groups in the country. The deep-pocketed philanthropy network has steered hundreds of millions of dollars to liberal groups since it was founded in 2005—and pledged to distribute $100 million in 2020 alone. More here.

*** David Brock it appears needed (needs) the funds to fight of one of many lawsuits and not for keeping his employees on the payroll.

How David Brock Built an Empire to Put Hillary in the ...

RCI:

David Brock, the onetime anti-Clinton journalist turned Hillary Clinton ally and aggressive promoter of Democratic media narratives in recent decades, faces legal actions and disclosures portraying his organizations as working so closely with the Clinton campaign in 2016 that they broke the law.

The conservative Patriots Foundation alleges in a lawsuit being filed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that an improperly porous relationship among four Brock-founded organizations amounted to illegal coordination with the Clinton campaign in violation of Federal Election Commission regulations. The best known of the four groups is Media Matters for America, which highlights what it calls media bias from the right. The other three are the American Bridge 21st Century PAC; the American Bridge 21st Century Foundation; and the Correct the Record PAC.

“American Bridge 21st Century PAC claimed that it was independent of the Clinton campaign so that it could make independent expenditures,” the Patriots Foundation said in a statement provided to RealClearInvestigations. “American Bridge is run by the same people who run Media Matters and Correct the Record, however, which we know coordinated with the Clinton campaign.

“They all work from the same offices,” the statement continued, “Brock was paid by all of them, American Bridge and Correct the Record shared at least 6 employees, and Correct the Record made in-kind contributions to American Bridge PAC. American Bridge’s supposedly independent activity was just as coordinated as Media Matters’ and Correct the Record’s activity – meaning that American Bridge’s [expenditures] were really excessive and illegal contributions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

Representatives for the organizations did not respond to requests for comment (Correct the Record is now inactive).  Nor did Brock himself or the Clinton campaign.

This past April, the Patriots Foundation filed an FEC complaint against Brock’s organizations. Since the agency hasn’t acted on it within a requisite 120 days, the Patriots Foundation is now suing the FEC as allowed under campaign finance laws. The Patriots Foundation also filed complaints with the IRS last spring regarding Media Matters and the American Bridge Foundation, but there is no legal remedy to force the IRS’s hand in court as with the FEC.

The tactics of Media Matters are generally acknowledged as politically aggressive in a way many see at odds with the organization’s 501(c)(3) nonprofit tax status, which stipulates nonpartisanship. In 2008, The New York Times described Media Matters as a “nonprofit, highly partisan research organization.” The Patriots Foundation alleges that in 2016 Media Matters ceased merely appearing to be partisan — it acted openly as an arm of the Hillary Clinton campaign. A December 2016 report in the liberal-leaning magazine the New Republic, highlighted by the group, substantiates this assessment:

The organization [Media Matters] had long ceased to be a mere watchdog, having positioned itself at the center of a group of public relations and advocacy outfits whose mission was to help put Clinton in the White House. … In our numerous conversations with past Media Matters staff, there was a consensus that in the lead-up to Clinton’s announcement of her candidacy in 2015, the organization’s priority shifted away from the mission stated on its website — “comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation” — and towards running defense for Clinton. The former staffers we spoke to largely felt that this damaged Media Matters’ credibility and hurt the work it did in other areas. “The closer we got to the 2016 election the less it became about actually debunking conservative misinformation and more it became about just defending Hillary Clinton from every blogger in their mother’s basement,” one former staffer told us. This was, moreover, a repeat of what Media Matters did in 2008, when there was a rift between staffers and management over the favoring of Clinton in her race against then-Senator Barack Obama.

Media Matters staffers recounted internal fights over the group’s devotion to Clinton. Employees were ordered to critique NPR’s Terry Gross for asking Clinton some questions about why it took her so long to support same-sex marriage.

But the staff reportedly felt Gross’ questions were fair, and according to the New Republic, “nearly everyone we spoke to who worked there at the time felt that a similar article would not have been written about a different politician.” Media Matters’ research director, Jeremy Holden ended up writing the story because other staffers were unwilling to put their name on it. Holden did not respond to a request for comment.

Media Matters employees were also reportedly frustrated by the organization’s obsession with defending Clinton at the expense of other liberal causes. “Former staffers pointed out several stories that fell within Media Matters’ ambit that should have been better covered. … On the site, there are 1,468 posts tagged with ‘Hillary Clinton’ as opposed to just 26 tagged ‘Bernie Sanders,’” according to the New Republic.

In addition to media reports, internal communications at the Clinton campaign further reveal that it was treating Media Matters as a campaign surrogate and coordinating with the group.

Internal communications at the Clinton campaign released by WikiLeaks reveal that the Brock groups Media Matters (MMFA) and Correct the Record (CTR) were treated as campaign surrogates.
WikiLeaks

A campaign strategy memo released by WikiLeaks notes that the Clinton campaign reported using the Brock group to “muddy the waters” when it came to issues where Clinton was vulnerable by “working with MMFA to highlight examples of when the press won’t cover the same issues with Republicans.” Another email released by WikiLeaks has Clinton’s press secretary, Nick Merrill, planning to push back on a Vanity Fair story about Clinton campaign vice chair Huma Abedin, which hadn’t been published yet, saying, “We have MMFA, CtR, and core surrogates lined up, which we can expand on tomorrow.” Media Matters published a piece criticizing the Vanity Fair story the following day.

“CtR” in Merrill’s email refers to the Correct the Record PAC. The PAC has been dormant since the 2016 election cycle, but “coordinat[ed] directly with Clinton’s campaign,” Politico reported. The CTR PAC even took money directly from the Clinton campaign – during the 2016 election cycle CTR took in $8.5 million in donations, including a donation of $275,615 in 2015 from Hillary for America. From its inception, the PAC skirted rules that prevent such entities and campaigns from directly coordinating with campaigns by claiming all its activities were covered by an FEC exemption regarding public communications.

“Correct the Record believes it can avoid the coordination ban by relying on a 2006 Federal Election Commission regulation that declared that content posted online for free, such as blogs, is off limits from regulation,” notes a 2015 Washington Post report. “The ‘Internet exemption’ said that such free postings do not constitute campaign expenditures, allowing independent groups to consult with candidates about the content they post on their sites.” The Patriots Foundation FEC complaint strongly disputes that the operations of the CTR PAC were defensible under this interpretation, noting that the PAC spent money on polling and other activities that don’t constitute communications.

Organizationally, there also appears to have been not much separation between CTR and Brock’s other PAC, American Bridge. “During the 2016 election, Brock claimed that AB PAC remained independent of both the Clinton campaign and CTR PAC so that it could make independent expenditures in support of Clinton,” notes the Patriots Foundation FEC complaint. “However, he continued to collect a salary from both PACs, and disclosure reports show that the committees shared at least seven overlapping staff members at various times during 2016. Moreover, AB PAC reported making in-kind disbursements to CTR PAC in 2016.” (In addition to getting paid by both PACs, Brock drew a salary of $278,566 from Media Matters as well, 2017 tax records show.

Overall, the American Bridge Foundation was the largest donor to the AB PAC in the 2016 and 2018 election cycles. As a 501(c)4 nonprofit, the AB Foundation is not required to disclose its own donors. Other notable donors to the AB PAC include George Soros, who gave AB PAC $2 million between 2015 and 2016. Some of America’s biggest unions – the SEIU, AFL-CIO, NEA, AFT, and AFSCME – all made six-figure donations in the 2016 election cycle. And Win McCormack, the owner and publisher of the New Republic, gave $100,000 to the AB PAC five months before his publication ran the story on Media Matters’ troubles.

Not the First Time

The Patriots Foundation alleges that the legally required separation between the groups did not exist. The two organizations shared staff, office space, and equipment, but the AB Foundation stated in IRS filings the “two entities have entered into a cost-sharing agreement to allocate shared overhead costs so that neither entity is financially supporting the activities of the other.”

But other audited financial statements from the AB Foundation note they did “not have a formal agreement relating to the allocation of expenses between the two entities” and “allocations were made based on management and budget estimates.” Those estimates varied wildly. The AB Foundation gave the PAC some $2.9 million “for salary, rent, and expenses” in 2015; $720,000 in 2016; $4.5 million in 2017; and $3.3 million in 2018. In many of those years, the AB Foundation also claimed to owe AB PAC more than it paid, also by varying amounts.

This is not the first time one of Brock’s organizations has been challenged for running afoul of FEC regulations. Last year, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint regarding the Correct the Record PAC’s claim that it could coordinate with the Clinton campaign under the public Internet communications exemption. FEC attorneys agreed with the Campaign Legal Center but the FEC, which has been understaffed during the Trump administration, only had four of six members on the commission. The complaint was dismissed when the two GOP commissioners sided with the CTR PAC, leaving the commission deadlocked. The Campaign Legal Center is still litigating the matter.

The Patriots Foundation complaint is different in that it addresses the coordination across all of the Brock organizations, as well as the allegations American Bridge PAC inaccurately reported the operational costs it shares with the American Bridge Foundation.

The Patriots Foundation told RealClearInvestigations it is not seeking remedies from the FEC beyond what was outlined in its original complaint. That complaint asks the FEC to “elicit admission of the violations from each of the respondents, conduct a robust investigation to determine the scope of the alleged violations, bar respondents from continuing violative activities, and collect civil penalties in amounts commensurate with the gravity of these serious ongoing violations.”

The IRS action filed by the Patriots Foundation seeks to revoke the tax-exempt status of Media Matters and the AB PAC, and calls for both to be compelled to pay applicable taxes while improperly operating as tax exempt, plus applicable financial penalties, while referring both to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

 

Tip Sheet on Kamala Harris

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          1. Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India.
          2.  Harris said she believed women who accused Biden of inappropriate touching.’I believe them, and I respect them being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it’.
          4. Harris was the designated pit bull to attack Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearing. At one point when he was holding a worn copy of the Constitution that he kept in his coat pocket, she referred to it as THAT BOOK showing her disdain for his fidelity to the Constitution. Read more here.
          5. As both a district attorney and state attorney general, Harris pushed for a new statewide law that lets prosecutors charge parents with misdemeanors if their children are chronically truant.
          6. Harris strongly supports “familial DNA searching,ˮ in which police take DNA samples from crime scenes and compare them to existing databases to look for not just any direct matches in criminal databases, but any familial matches.
          7. In her first speech on the Senate floor, Harris declared, “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” She later avowed the belief that illegal immigration is “a civil violation, not a crime.”
          8. In October 2017, Harris declared that she would rather shut down the government than vote for a spending bill that did not address the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and ensure those covered by the program would not be deported. “I will not vote for an end-of-year spending bill until we are clear about what we are going to do to protect and take care of our DACA young people in this country,” she said. And she has kept her word, at least so far. More details here from NR.
          9. Harris did not protect the Catholic Daughters of Charity Health System but rather finessed the sale as a favor to SEIU.
          10. Harris says Americans need to be “educated about the effect of our eating habits on our environment,” and says she would change the dietary guidelines to reduce the amount of red meat you can eat.
          11. Harris will push Congress to provide monthly economic impact payments to qualifying Americans that are recurring.
          12. Harris and her Senate colleagues pushed for the inclusion of a provision that would cancel at least $10,000 of student debt for all borrowers.
          13. Harris insisted that the 2017 tax reform law must be repealed in its entirety.
          14. Harris has a long record of action on climate change including investigating Exxon Mobil XOM in 2016, voting against repeals of methane emissions, and sponsoring the resolution of disapproval for the 2019 rollbacks on power plant carbon pollution limits.
          15. Her plan, by 2045 we will have basically zero emission vehicles only,” but her climate plan calls for 100% of vehicles as soon as 2035.
          16. She lied about smoking pot listening to Snoop and Tupac.

Her sister Maya is a lawyer, public policy advocate, and television commentator. She is a political analyst for MSNBC and in 2015 was appointed as one of three senior policy advisors to lead the development of an agenda for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She was formerly a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. From 2008 until she took her current position, she was Vice President for Democracy, Rights and Justice at the Ford Foundation. Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, she served as the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California. Swampy huh? Oh and Maya is married to Tony West. West previously served as the Associate Attorney General of the United States, the third highest-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice; and Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division, the largest litigating division in the Department of Justice.

California Attorney General Kamal Harris marries Douglas Emhof Kamala Harris’ Criminal Justice Policies Blasted After ...

The Lincoln Project Expands to Senators

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Primer:

Since its inception of The Lincoln Project last November — announced with a blistering New York Times op-ed — the brainchild of George Conway, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson and John Weaver has raked in more than $19.4 million, according to FEC filings, and has needled President Trump repeatedly with provocative TV ads.

But the group — which the National Review on Monday dubbed “The Grifter Project” and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) last week dismissed as a “cabal of political consultants all in it for the money” — don’t exactly practice what they preach.

Co-founder Weaver, a political consultant known for his work on John McCain’s and John Kasich’s presidential campaigns, registered as a Russian foreign agent for uranium conglomerate TENEX in a six-figure deal last year, filings with the Department of Justice show.

TENEX’s parent company is Rosatom, a Russian state-owned corporation that also owns Uranium One — the company that paid Bill Clinton $500,000 in speaking fees and millions to the Clinton Foundation after then-President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed off on the controversial merger in 2010.

Weaver backed out of the lobbying gig in May 2019 and called it “a mistake” in a tweet in which he denied having taken any money from TENEX. Read more here.

The Lincoln Project (aka Grifter Project) Out to Destroy ...

The former GOP operatives behind The Lincoln Project are expanding their list of Republican targets, infuriating allies of President Trump‘s and national Republicans scrambling to preserve the GOP majority in the Senate.

In addition to a relentless negative ad campaign against Trump, the group has so far spent more than $1.3 million attacking Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), who is among the most vulnerable GOP senators up for reelection. That’s by far the most they’ve spent on any Senate candidate.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings reveal The Lincoln Project has also targeted more than a half-dozen other Republicans up for reelection in 2020, including Sens. Cory Gardner (Colo), Martha McSally (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), John Cornyn (Texas) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

The group is running ads in support of Democratic Senate candidate Steve Bullock in Montana and independent Al Gross in Alaska, who are seeking to unseat Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), respectively.

Reed Galen, a strategist for the group, told The Hill that “the Senate map has expanded” and that off-cycle Senate Republicans “shouldn’t believe their day won’t come.” The Lincoln Project has invested very small amounts in ads going after Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).

Galen said the group is also “taking a look at the House,” with a potential announcement on that front coming soon. In addition, The Lincoln Project is planning a “substantive and robust” effort to encourage voters to send in mail or absentee ballots.

Lincoln Project Ad Gets Twice As Many Views In 12 Hours As ...

The Lincoln Project is taking heat from Republicans for backing challengers to blue-state GOP senators and moderates, such as Collins, who voted against Trump’s efforts to repeal ObamaCare. Galen defended the attacks, saying they’ll target anyone who they believe has inadequately fought back against Trump.

The Lincoln Project has gone viral with ad campaigns attacking Trump and any GOP senator they believe has not done enough to stand up to the president.

The group’s senior members were well-known Washington Republicans before they turned to electing Democrats. The team includes lawyer George Conway, the husband of White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, as well as veteran GOP operatives and strategists Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt and John Weaver.

Republicans working to reelect Trump and maintain the majority in the Senate are hitting back, alleging that the former GOP operatives are “grifters” who have taken up electing Democrats because they lost their cushy establishment jobs when Trump was elected.

They’re accusing The Lincoln Project of being a “scam” PAC that funnels money directly to firms with close ties to the founders.

“The Lincoln Project is comprised of grifters who are nothing more than agents of the Democrat Party,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Steve Guest. “Above all else, these political opportunists are solely concerned with making a quick buck for themselves.”

The Lincoln Project has routed millions of dollars through firms owned or run by two of its co-founders, Galen and Ron Steslow, the president of the consulting firm TUSK Inc. More here from The Hill.

CIA Fought with FBI over Unvetted Steele Dossier

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Except perhaps if you challenge former CIA Director John Brennan.

CIA Director John Brennan: ISIS Could Carry Out More ...

Poor lil John, he is trying to write a book and wants access to some of his CIA files and notes. That request has been denied. His book titled Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad, slated for release in October may not have some citations or chapters in it because he has been denied access to classified material. President Trump and his security clearance was apparently never revoked. Hummm.

Meanwhile, it appears the large share of the RussiaGate operation against Donald Trump is in fact owned by the FBI. There are some CIA operatives however that do need to be explained, beginning with Eric Ciaramella.

The FBI continued to rely on intelligence from Christopher Steele, the former British spy who alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, even after the CIA warned his allegations were “very unvetted,” according to newly declassified documents.

“We would have never included that report in a CIA-only assessment because the source was so indirect. And we made sure we indicated we didn’t use it in our analysis, and if it had been a CIA-only product we wouldn’t have included it at all,” the CIA’s deputy director of analysis told the Senate Intelligence Committee in an April 21 report.

The report, declassified on Tuesday, shows that the FBI successfully pushed to include Steele’s information in a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election after a “bitter argument” with the CIA.

While multiple claims by Steele have since been debunked by investigators, the bureau had also used Steele’s intelligence to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Then- FBI director James Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe argued that Steele’s information was relevant to the question of Russian interference in the 2016 election and lobbied the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to include Steele’s dossier in the January 7, 2017 ICA.

On Dec. 20, 2016, Comey had tried to include Steele’s information in the body of the ICA but John Brennan, then- CIA director, “pushed back,” saying he was “very concerned about polluting the ICA with this material.” The agency eventually agreed to add the information in a two-page annex to the ICA on Dec. 29, 2016.

An assistant director for an intelligence agency supported the annex’s information regarding Russia’s election-related efforts, but warned allegations of collusion involving members of the Trump campaign was uncorroborated, according to the report.

“I can tell you that there is no information coming from [redacted] sources that would corroborate any of that,” the official told the Senate panel, adding that Steele’s Trump-related information was “very unvetted.”

Brennan told the committee that someone in the British government had called him to clarify that they were not involved in creating the dossier.

“He wanted to make sure that I understood and that others in the senior officialdom of the U.S. government understood that that officer, Steele, had been a former [redacted] but had no current relationship with [redacted] and that dossier was not put together in any way with [redacted] support,” Brennan said. “So he wanted to make sure there was a separation there.”