Category Archives: Presidential campaign

Prisoner Swap with Iran, So Far 4 for 7 and Counting

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1:35 PM, EST Update:

The names of those who had Interpol red notices lifted by the State Department, the Department of Justice and the White House:

Mohammad Abbas Mohammadi, Kurosh Taherkhani, Sajjad Farhadi, Seyed Ahmad Abtahi, Gholamreza Mahmudi, Hamid Arabnezhad, Ali Mo’attar, Mohammad Ali She’rbaaf, Amin Ravan, Behruz Dowlatzadeh, Said Jamili, Jalal Salami, Matin Sadeghi, Alireza Mo’azami-Gudarzi.

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Today, Barack Obama issued at least 3 pardons to Iranians in U.S. prisoners for violating Iran sanctions. Likely, there are other prisoners that will be part of a future swap in coming days.

Switzerland facilitated Iran-U.S. prisoner swap, Iran’s UN ambassador tells state TV.

Confirmed: Hamid Arabnejad, CEO of Mahan, which delivers weapons to Assad daily, to be taken off Interpol list as part of swap.

12:46p

America does not do prisoner swaps, at least until Barack Obama, where it has become and epidemic. Further, we still don’t know the status of former DEA/FBI operative Robert Levinson who was last heard from in 2011 and was kidnapped on Kish Island, as the Iranians continue to say they never heard of him.

The State Department has dropped Interpol ‘red notices’ on several others, those names have not been formally announced but several included those involved in the AIMA bombing in Buenos Aries, Argentina.

August, 2015: BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — An international arrest warrant for Iran’s former defense minister in the AMIA Jewish center bombing will not be lifted under the Iran nuclear deal, U.S. officials said.

Ahmad Vahidi is still being sought in connection with the deadly 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires center and nothing will change under the agreement between Iran and the world powers reached last month, according to the State Department.

“Nothing in the recently concluded Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, or JCPOA, on Iran’s nuclear program has an impact on or removes the Red Notice for General Vahidi issued by Interpol, in relation to the 1994‎ bombing in Argentina,” the State Department said in a statement Friday, two days after Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman asked Secretary of State John Kerry about Vahidi’s status in a letter. “And we continue to urge the international community and Argentine authorities to do whatever is necessary to hold the AMIA bombers accountable for that atrocity.

Along with Vahidi, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and its officials remain sanctioned in the United States because they were listed for reasons outside the scope of the agreement, the statement said.

Timerman’s letter also was sent to European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that “the E.U.’s planned delisting of Tehran’s former minister of defense, retired Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, is among a group of Iranian military officers, nuclear scientists and defense institutions set to be rehabilitated internationally in the wake of the nuclear accord.”

The State Department added in its response that “our secondary sanctions will also stay in force, which means that foreign banks and companies could be exposed to sanctions if they engage in transactions with these listed individuals.”

Since Vahidi is not listed under any nuclear-related activities, the State Department said, he will remain on the Interpol list for eight more years.

Timerman, who is Jewish, in February asked Kerry to include the AMIA attack in the negotiations with Iran, but the attack was not part of the talks.

March of 2015:

Interpol won’t lift warrants for 6 Iranians in AMIA bombing

Arrest orders to remain active despite Tehran’s participation in probe of 1994 terror attack

The above position of not lifting the red notices has been declared null and void by Barack Obama as of January 16, 2016 in the larger mission of additional prisoner swaps.

VIENNA (AP) — The latest developments as Iran and world powers prepare to implement a landmark deal reached last year to curb Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions (all times local).

5:30 p.m.

U.S. and Iranian officials say Iran is releasing four detained Iranian-Americans in exchange for seven Iranians held or charged in the United States.

The major diplomatic breakthrough was announced Saturday as the implementation of a landmark nuclear deal appeared imminent.

U.S. officials say the four Americans, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, former Marine Amir Hekmati and pastor Saeed Abidini, were to be flown from Iran to Switzerland on a Swiss plane and then brought to a U.S. military base in Landstuhl, Germany, for medical treatment.

In return, the U.S. will either pardon or drop charges against seven Iranians — six of whom are dual citizens — accused or convicted of violating U.S. sanctions. The U.S. will also drop Interpol “red notices” — essentially arrest warrants — on a handful of Iranian fugitives it has sought.

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5:10 p.m.

There are conflicting reports about the identities of the four prisoners released by Iran.

Iranian state TV on Saturday announced that four prisoners holding dual Iranian-American citizenship were released, without elaborating. The announcement fueled speculation that Jason Rezaian, the jailed Washington Post bureau chief, was among them.

An official close to Iran’s judiciary told The Associated Press that the prisoners included Rezaian, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati and pastor Saeed Abedini. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

It was unclear who the fourth person was. Iranian state TV later reported it was Siamak Namazi, the son of a politician from the era of the shah, while the official IRNA news agency said it was Nosratollah Khosravi. The accounts could not be reconciled immediately.

— Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran, Iran

4 p.m

A source close to Iran’s judiciary is telling The Associated Press that four Iranian-Americans have been freed from prison in Iran: Washington Post bureau chief Jason Rezaian as well as Amir Hekmati, Saeed Abedini and Siamak Namazi.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the four were freed Saturday in exchange for the release of seven Iranians held in U.S. prisons. He didn’t name the Iranians but said the seven have already arrived in Tehran.

He says “authorities at the top had agreed to free the four Iranian-Americans only after the Iranian prisoners land in Tehran.”

— Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran

3:45 p.m.

A source close to Iran’s judiciary is confirming to The Associated Press that jailed Washington Post bureau chief Jason Rezaian is one of four dual-national prisoners freed today by Iran’s government.

Iranian state television announced the release of the four prisoners on Saturday but gave no names.

The source spoke on condition of anonymity since he was not authorized to publicly speak to the media.

— Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran

3:30 p.m.

Iranian state television says the government has freed four dual-nationality prisoners.

The report Saturday did not identify the prisoners but it comes amid speculation that jailed Washington Post bureau chief Jason Rezaian, a dual Iran-U.S. citizen convicted of espionage in a closed-door trial in 2015, could be among them.

The report by the semi-official ISNA news agency quotes a statement from the Tehran prosecutor’s office as saying the inmates were freed “within the framework of exchanging prisoners,” without elaborating.

The U.S. would not immediately confirm the Iranian report. But the family of one of the U.S prisoners received unofficial word from Iran that their relative was being released today, according to a person close to that family.

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11:20 a.m.

The EU’s top diplomat has met with Iran’s foreign minister for talks on implementing the nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers, as the U.N. atomic agency works on a report certifying that Iran has met its commitments under the accord.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will join Federica Mogherini of the European Union and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Vienna, the headquarters of the U.N’s International Atomic Energy Agency, later Saturday.

IAEA certification that Iran is honoring its obligations would trigger sanctions relief for Iran worth an estimated $100 billion.

Under the July 14 deal between Iran and six world powers, Tehran Iran agreed to crimp programs it could use to make nuclear weapons in return for an end to international nuclear-related sanctions

Iran says it has no interest in such arms.

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11:15 a.m.

Iranian hard-liners are accusing moderate President Hassan Rouhani of “burying” the country’s nuclear program as Tehran and world powers are on the verge of implementing a historic nuclear accord.

Under the front-page headline “Nuclear Burial,” Hard-line daily Vatan-e-Emrooz on Saturday criticized the removal of the core of Iran’s only heavy water reactor, which was filled in with cement earlier this week as one of the final steps under the agreement.

The Javan daily says filling in the reactor is “hurting national pride.”

It says the Iranian people hope that the “bitterness of filling the Arak reactor with cement will be accompanied with the sweetness of filling their table,” referring to the lifting of crippling international sanctions.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif earlier said that the imminent release of a U.N. compliance report would trigger “Implementation Day,” with Iran receiving billions in sanctions relief in return for limiting its nuclear activities.

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10:40 a.m.

Iran’s foreign minister says an imminent compliance report by the U.N. nuclear agency will trigger the implementation of the historic nuclear accord reached with world powers last year, bringing a “good day” for Iran.

Mohammad Javad Zarif says the report will mark “Implementation Day,” when world powers provide Iran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for it curbing its nuclear program.

Speaking in Vienna on Saturday, where he was to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and top EU diplomat Federica Mogherini, Zarif called for greater cooperation to fight the “terrorism and extremism” that has engulfed the Middle East. His comments were broadcast on state TV.

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WaPo: The full story of Jason Rezaian: On July 22, 2014, Iranian authorities crashed into the Tehran home of Washington Post Iran correspondent Jason Rezaian and arrested him and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, also a journalist. Rezaian was taken to Iran’s infamous Evin Prison, where he was put in solitary confinement for months, without a word of explanation to his family or to the outside world. Salehi, an Iranian citizen, was released on bail last fall.

Iran has said it will release Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, according to Iranian media.

Along with Rezaian, three other detained Americans are being released in a swap for seven people imprisoned or charged by the United States.

Rezaian’s incarceration was the longest, by far, for a Western journalist in Iran since the 1979 revolution that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power.

Throughout his captivity, the 39-year-old California native has been subjected to grueling interrogations and repeated deprivations, forced to stay for weeks in a bare cell without a mattress or even a toilet, family members said after they were allowed to speak with him.

Rezaian has been periodically deprived of medicine for his high blood pressure, family members said, and his physical condition has deteriorated, with dramatic weight loss, back pain and chronic eye and groin infections.

Top U.S. officials, including President Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry, have repeatedly demanded Rezaian’s release, echoing similar calls by other Western governments, human rights groups and Washington Post leadership, which has asserted the correspondent’s innocence.

July 25, 2014 : Iran confirms that Rezaian has been detained.

July 29, 2014: Wendy Sherman, undersecretary of state for political affairs, tells the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States formally called for the immediate release of Rezaian, his wife and two other U.S. citizens detained the same night.

Aug. 6, 2014 : Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Hassan Ghashghavi, says the detention is “an internal matter” and says the country does not acknowledge Rezaian’s U.S. citizenship.

Aug. 20, 2014:A photojournalist who worked with Rezaian and Salehi and also was detained is released on bail.

Sept. 17, 2014: In an interview with NPR, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says Rezaian is “facing interrogation in Iran for what he has done as an Iranian citizen” but declines to name any crime. He says Iran’s judiciary “has no obligation to explain to the United States why it is detaining one of [Iran’s own] citizens.”

Douglas Jehl, The Post’s foreign editor, responds in a statement that Rezaian and his wife are “fully accredited journalists, and we remain mystified by their detention and deeply concerned about their welfare.”

Ali Rezaian, Jason’s older brother, says in a statement: “Neither I nor my mother have been permitted any communication with Jason. We remain concerned about their health and implore the Iranian authorities to release them in compliance with Iran’s existing laws and constitution.”

Oct. 5, 2014: Ali Rezaian says Salehi was released on bail during the previous week and was permitted one visit with her husband.

Dec. 6, 2014: After nearly five months of detention, Rezaian is charged after a 10-hour court proceeding that is closed to the public. He is denied legal representation and is accompanied by a government-appointed Farsi translator. He is denied bail.

Dec. 11, 2014: Mary Rezaian appears on video and pleads for her son’s release.


Jason Rezaian’s wife, Yeganeh Salehi, and his mother, Mary Rezaian, in Tehran on July 13 after the Washington Post correspondent’s third hearing at the Revolutionary Court. They were not allowed to attend the closed-door session, and Jason Rezaian’s attorney was barred from publicly discussing the proceedings. (Vahid Salemi/AP)

Jan. 14, 2015: Jason Rezaian’s case is transferred to a branch of the Revolutionary Court, which is closely aligned with Iranian intelligence services.

Feb. 1, 2015:Judge Abolghassem Salavati is picked to preside over the trial, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. He is one of six judges who are leading a crackdown on journalists and political activists in Iran, according to human rights groups. He formally charges Rezaian, then prohibits his chosen attorney from representing him.

Feb. 8, 2015: At a Munich Security Conference session, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius asks Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, about Rezaian. “I hope that he will be cleared of the charges in a court of law,” Zarif answers, “and that will be a good day for me.”

Much more to his story is found here.

 

Newton Schwartz, Esq. Files First Lawsuit Against Cruz

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Schwartz-v-Cruz-complaint

Hat tip to J. Christian Adams, he found that Schwartz actually has a history of behavior violations with regard to BAR Associations. Click here to read the documents. Further, Schwartz is a Bernie Sanders supporter.

January 14, 2015, Newton Schwartz filed the first lawsuit against Ted Cruz challenging his legal ability to be president of the United States. This matter was a core and heated exchange during the last Fox Business Republican debate between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

 

Obama: Naysayers on Economy, Peddling Fiction

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The market is spiraling. China who is the second largest U.S. debt holder has an economy that is spiraling oil prices are spiraling and what about WalMart?

Walmart to shutter 269 stores – including more than half in US

Guardian: The retail giant announced it is working to transfer 10,000 US employees to nearby stores, as CEO said closings are ‘necessary to keep the company strong’

Walmart is closing 269 stores, more than half of them in the US and another big chunk in its challenging Brazilian market. The stores being shuttered account for a fraction of the company’s 11,000 stores worldwide and less than 1% of its global revenue, but according to workers’ group Making Change at Walmart, this announcement will affect 10,000 US employees.

More than 95% of the stores set to be closed in the US are within 10 miles of another Walmart. The Bentonville, Arkansas, company said it is working to ensure that workers are placed in nearby locations.

The store closures will start at the end of the month, and many closures will be of the company’s Walmart Express stores: all 102 of them (out of the 154 locations to be shuttered in the US).

In 2011, Walmart Express marked the retailer’s first entry into the convenience store arena. The stores are about 12,000 square feet and sell essentials like toothpaste. But the concept never caught on as the stores served the same purpose as Walmart’s larger Neighborhood Markets: fill-in trips and prescription pickups.

By: Greg Campbell

During his final State of the Union Address on Tuesday, amidst his unseemly campaign politicking in a year where he is ineligible for reelection, President Obama sniped at Republicans and touted supposed economic successes that have occurred under his stewardship.

He even insisted that anyone “claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”

To hear Obama speak of supposed economic success is hardly surprising; the president has long kept his own counsel and obliged himself his own conjured facts and false realities.

His administration has touted “bringing peace to Syria” as an accomplishment. As Obamacare takes effect like Cancer metastasizing in a body, he continues to assert that Americans love it and that it is working. He insisted just last week that he held the constitutional authority to undermine the Second Amendment without Congress.

So, it is of little surprise to discover that this same delusional man asserted that it is those who warn of Obama’s economy that are “peddling fiction.”

The fact is that by simple and complex metrics alike, it’s easy to see the devastating toll his “leadership” has taken on our nation’s financial health.

It turns out that not only is Obama being less-than-honest, but he’s outright lying. Obama’s economy can boast of the worst economic numbers in over 80 years!

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The economic expansion—already the worst on record since World War II—is weaker than previously thought, according to newly revised data.

From 2012 through 2014, the economy grew at an all-too-familiar rate of 2% annually, according to three years of revised figures the Commerce Department released Thursday. That’s a 0.3 percentage point downgrade from prior estimates.

The revisions were released concurrently with the government’s first estimate of second-quarter output.

Since the recession ended in June 2009, the economy has advanced at a 2.2% annual pace through the end of last year. That’s more than a half-percentage point worse than the next-weakest expansion of the past 70 years, the one from 2001 through 2007. While there have been highs and lows in individual quarters, overall the economy has failed to break out of its roughly 2% pattern for six years.

Obama, admittedly, came to office at a time when America was in trouble. Applying for the job of president, he promised to help revitalize the economy. What came from him and his Democratic minions in Congress was a punishing program of job-killing economic burdens on job creators and an expansion of government increased government dependency and that squeezed more and more out of the middle class and the lower class.

The Daily Caller reports on Obama’s failures:

Over the first five years of Obama’s presidency, the U.S. economy grew more slowly than during any five-year period since just after the end of World War II, averaging less than 1.3 percent per year. If we leave out the sharp recession of 1945-46 following World War II, Obama looks even worse, ranking dead last among all presidents since 1932. No other president since the Great Depression has presided over such a steadily poor rate of economic growth during his first five years in office. This slow growth should not be a surprise in light of the policies this administration has pursued.

An economy usually grows rapidly in the years immediately following a recession. As Peter Ferrera points out in Forbes, the U.S. economy has not even reached its long run average rate of growth of 3.3 percent; the highest annual growth rate since Obama took office was 2.8 percent. Total growth in real GDP over the 19 quarters of economic recovery since the second quarter of 2009 has been 10.2 percent. Growth over the same length of time during previous post-World War II recoveries has ranged from 15.1 percent during George W. Bush’s presidency to 30 percent during the recovery that began when John F. Kennedy was elected.

Facts and figures are to Obama like BBs to a tank; they just simply bounce-off without having any real effect.

When he and his fellow Democrats encounter facts that do not jibe with their preferred narratives, they simply deny reality in favor of crafting a new one to spoon-feed to the lapdog media and the government-dependent and government-created invalids who are willing to believe his lies without any semblance of critical thought.

In truth, it takes no economic genius to understand our situation. It requires just some honest observation.

Are jobs more plentiful than they were before?

Is it easier to obtain the American dream now than before?

Is $18 trillion+ in national debt a good indicator of economic stability?

FBI Expanding Clinton Investigation to Public Corruption

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There are 150 FBI agents assigned to work the Clinton public corruption scandal of which the Clinton Foundation is at the core.

FBI’s Clinton probe expands to public corruption track

EXCLUSIVE: The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible “intersection” of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws, three intelligence sources not authorized to speak on the record told Fox News.

This new investigative track is in addition to the focus on classified material found on Clinton’s personal server.

“The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed,” one source said.

The development follows press reports over the past year about the potential overlap of State Department and Clinton Foundation work, and questions over whether donors benefited from their contacts inside the administration.

The Clinton Foundation is a public charity, known as a 501(c)(3). It had grants and contributions in excess of $144 million in 2013, the most current available data.

Inside the FBI, pressure is growing to pursue the case.

One intelligence source told Fox News that FBI agents would be “screaming” if a prosecution is not pursued because “many previous public corruption cases have been made and successfully prosecuted with much less evidence than what is emerging in this investigation.”

The FBI is particularly on edge in the wake of how the case of former CIA Director David Petraeus was handled.

One of the three sources said some FBI agents felt Petraeus was given a slap on the wrist for sharing highly classified information with his mistress and biographer Paula Broadwell, as well as lying to FBI agents about his actions. Petraeus pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in March 2015 after a two-plus-year federal investigation in which Attorney General Eric Holder initially declined to prosecute.

In the Petraeus case, the exposure of classified information was assessed to be limited.

By contrast, in the Clinton case, the number of classified emails has risen to at least 1,340. A 2015 appeal by the State Department to challenge the “Top Secret” classification of at least two emails failed and, as Fox News first reported, is now considered a settled matter.

It is unclear which of the two lines of inquiry was opened first by the FBI and whether they eventually will be combined and presented before a special grand jury. One intelligence source said the public corruption angle dates back to at least April 2015.  On their official website, the FBI lists “public corruption as the FBI’s top criminal priority.”

Fox News is told that about 100 special agents assigned to the investigations also were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, with as many as 50 additional agents on “temporary duty assignment,” or TDY. The request to sign a new NDA could reflect that agents are handling the highly classified material in the emails, or serve as a reminder not to leak about the case, or both.

“The pressure on the lead agents is brutal,” a second source said. “Think of it like a military operation, you might need tanks called in along with infantry.”

Separately, a former high-ranking State Department official emphasized to Fox News that Clinton’s deliberate non-use of her government email address may be increasingly “significant.”

“It is virtually automatic when one comes on board at the State Department to be assigned an email address,” the source said.

“It would have taken an affirmative act not to have one assigned … and it would also mean it was all planned out before she took office. This certainly raises questions about the so-called legal advice she claimed to have received from inside the State Department that what she was doing was proper.”

On Sunday,  when asked about her email practices while secretary of state, Clinton insisted to CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” “there is no there, there.”

The Ted Cruz Birth Citizenship Facts

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Donald Trump and a few others including John McCain are formally challenging Ted Cruz on his birthright eligibility to be President. These arguments were not cast at Barack Obama’s eligibility even though Hillary Clinton was the first ‘birther’ laying into public judgment questions about his history. This question has never officially been answered as Obama signed an executive order terminating all access to his historical family records.

Below are the facts on Ted Cruz.

Eleanor Darragh, mother of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), was born in Delaware on Nov. 23, 1934, establishing her citizenship by birth–and, according to U.S. law, that of her son, even though he was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on Dec. 22, 1970.

Breitbart: The Cruz for President campaign provided Breitbart News exclusively with the birth certificate.

Later, Ted Cruz’s own birth certificate listed his mother as “Eleanor Elizabeth Wilson.” “Elizabeth” was her mother’s first name, and “Wilson” is a surname from a previous marriage.

 

Eleanor Darragh Birth Certificate

The Cruz campaign was responding to inquiries from Breitbart News about a document showing that both of Cruz’s parents had been named on a list of voters in Calgary for the 1974 Canadian federal election.

Only Canadian citizens were (and are) able to vote in federal elections. The lists were compiled through a door-to-door process of “enumeration” by registrars, and were publicized partly so that mistakes could be corrected.

According to Elections Canada–the independent, non-partisan agency that runs Canadian elections–“voters were sent a copy of the list showing the name, address and occupation of all voters in the relevant poll.”

Mistakes were frequent (i.e. “Raphael” instead of “Rafael”), and voters were given the opportunity to fix errors.

Ezra Levant, a Canadian conservative journalist who was born and raised in Calgary, recalled the process of enumeration.

“It was like a census… they were very quick and non-obtrusive visits, someone standing in your doorstep,” he told Breitbart News via e-mail. “They certainly didn’t ask for ID.

“It is not surprising to me that there may be a spelling error in someone’s name. A name appearing on the list would not necessarily indicate that they were a citizen, or that they themselves had even spoken to the enumerator—someone else in the household may have spoken for them,” Levant added.

The Cruz campaign told Breitbart News on Friday that Cruz’s mother had never become a Canadian citizen.

“She was in Canada on a work permit and never became a permanent resident, let alone a citizen,” said Jason Johnson, chief strategist for the Cruz campaign.

“She never registered to vote and never applied for Canadian citizenship.”

In a subsequent statement to Breitbart News, Johnson added:

“Eleanor was never a citizen of Canada, and she could not have been under the facts or the law. In short, she did not live in Canada long enough to be a Canadian citizen by the time Cruz was born in 1970: Canadian law required 5 years of permanent residence, and she moved to Canada in December 1967—only 3 years before Senator Cruz’s birth.”

The campaign could not provide her Canadian work permit.

Canadian immigration authorities could not provide Breitbart News with additional documents, citing Canadian privacy laws.