Category Archives: Presidential campaign

Suspicious Facts Behind the Iowa App

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Remember when Hillary Clinton said nobody liked Bernie Sanders?

Remember when Hillary Clinton claimed Tulsi Gabbard was a Russian operative?

As the country waits for the first caucus results from Iowa, there are some very suspicious details behind this reporting app that you, the reader should know. Caucus chaos may have been human error with coding or possibly all purposeful….you be the judge as you read on.

Iowa Caucus Rules Change Could Produce Three Winners

The Iowa Democratic Party declined to allow officials at the Department of Homeland Security to vet the app intended to tally the votes during Monday’s botched first-of-the-nation caucuses. (remember when the Hillary presidential campaign refused FBI access to server log-ins due to foreign cyber penetrations)

Troy Price, the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, said in a statement on Tuesday morning that officials have “every indication” the app was not hacked, noting the systems were tested by independent cybersecurity consultants prior to the caucuses on Monday. But, he said there were “inconsistencies” in the results, the underlying cause of which was “coding issues.”

*** Iowa Democratic Caucus Results Delayed by Technology ...

The app, according to several news reports, was developed by the secretive for-profit tech firm Shadow Inc., which has ties to and receives funding from ACRONYM, a Democratic digital non-profit organization. Shadow’s CEO is Gerard Niemira, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“State campaign finance records indicate the Iowa Democratic Party paid Shadow… more than $60,000 for ‘website development’ over two installments in November and December of last year,” HuffPost reported late Monday. “A Democratic source with knowledge of the process said those payments were for the app that caucus site leaders were supposed to use to upload the results at their locales.”

Shadow has also been paid for services by the Nevada Democratic Party and the presidential campaigns of former Vice President Joe Biden and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Democratic Party officials kept the details of the app as well as Shadow’s involvement hidden from the public ahead of the Iowa caucus. But as Monday night wore on and frustration with the delayed reporting of the caucus results boiled over, journalists began scrutinizing the new technology and its developer more closely.

The New York Times, citing anonymous people who were briefed on the app by Iowa Democratic Party officials, reported that the app was hastily constructed in just two months and “not properly tested at a statewide scale.”

In a statement released in the early hours of Tuesday morning, ACRONYM spokesperson Kyle Tharpe attempted to distance his group from Shadow’s technology.

“ACRONYM is an investor in several for-profit companies across the progressive media and technology sectors,” said Tharpe. “One of those independent, for-profit companies is Shadow Inc., which also has other private investors. We are reading confirmed reports of Shadow’s work with the Iowa Democratic Party on Twitter, and we, like everyone else, are eagerly awaiting more information from the Iowa Democratic Party with respect to what happened.”

***

An app created by a tech firm run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign is taking heat for the unprecedented delay in reporting Democratic caucus results from Iowa. The company wasfounded in 2017 “to educate, inspire, register, and mobilize voters,” according to its website. Shadow started out as Groundbase, a tech developer co-founded by Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis, who worked for the tech team on Clinton’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic nomination.

Niemira had previously worked at kiva.org, a nonprofit that makes loans to entrepreneurs and others in the developing world, and Davis had spent eight years as an engineer at Google. ACRONYM’s founder and CEO is Tara McGowan, a former journalist and digital producer with President Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.

There were signs of trouble with the app even before Monday night. Opportunities to train on the app in advance of caucus night did not bode well, Grennan said.

“They had all these issues,” he said. “We were supposed to be getting invitations to use it. The invites would never arrive.” The communications he did receive were confusing, he said.

When the big night came, Grennan, who was running the caucus site at Grinnell College, said the app appeared to be working as he input results, but he couldn’t tell with certainty.

“I kept getting kicked off,” Grennan said, adding that the app would reset if stopped part-way through. He decided to call the party’s hotline with a question, but after nearly half an hour on hold, he gave up. “I’m 90% sure it went through [on the app.] I’ll have to work under the assumption that if it’s not there, they’re going to call me.”

Among Shadow’s clients is Pete Buttegieg’s presidential campaign, which paid $42,500 to the firm in July 2019 for “software rights and subscriptions,” according to disclosures to the FEC. A spokesman for the campaign says the payment was for a service used to send text messages to voters. The campaigns of Joe Biden and Kirsten Gillibrand, who withdrew from the race last year, also made smaller payments to Shadow. More from the LATimes.

Are Voters this Stupid when it Comes to Bernie Sanders?

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The legislators on the Left are always voting for laws that protect us from ourselves, taking away independent thought and decisions. It is a double edge sword for sure, some people need others to make decisions for them.

Laws where an individual’s behavior hurts others in all forms does have some merit…but c’mon Bernie and the same goes for Vermont and Iowa or any Bernie voters across the nation.

Bernie Sanders raises $3.3 million in first 10 hours after ...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) in his first-ever campaign for the Senate made the legalization of all drug use one of the cornerstones of his policy platform.

Recruited in a 1972 special election as the Senate candidate for Vermont’s Liberty Union Party, Sanders promised that if elected, “All laws relating to prohibition of abortion, birth control, homosexual relations, and the use of drugs would be done away with,” the Rutland Daily Herald reported in December 1971.

“In a free society, individuals and not government have the right to decide what is best for their own lives, as long as their actions do not harm others,” Sanders said during the campaign for the seat he would eventually win in 2006. (source)

***

As the DEA explained in its 2019 National Drug Threat Assessment, also released Thursday, most synthetic opioids are produced in China and Mexico; methamphetamine and heroin are primarily Mexican, and much cocaine is produced in Colombia. All of the drugs are routinely smuggled over the porous southwestern border or, in the case of Chinese goods, sent in using the U.S. mail.

“We’re pleased that in 2018, drug overdose deaths declined over 4 percent overall, with even greater decreases—over 13 percent—in overdoses from controlled prescription opioids,” DEA acting administrator Uttam Dhillon said Thursday. “Many challenges remain, however, including the spread of fentanyl and methamphetamine across the country. DEA and its partners will continue to work diligently to combat the drug trafficking organizations that bring these deadly substances into our country and endanger the American people.”

As the drug crisis changes shape, lawmakers continue to struggle over how best to combat it. On Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives finally passed an extension of the DEA’s temporary scheduling of fentanyl’s synthetic analogs, giving law enforcement another year to prosecute traffickers in substances like acetyl fentanyl and carfentanil under the strictest section of the Controlled Substances Act. Eighty-six House Democrats, however, objected, with several taking to the floor to argue that a “public health” approach is preferable to the incarceration of drug dealers. (source)

***

Since fentanyl and carfentinil can be absorbed through the skin, eyes, or respiratory system, there is a very real danger for secondary exposures for firefighters and EMS personnel from drug residue on a patient’s clothing, furniture, and even carpeting. There have been numerous documented cases in the United States of firefighters and EMS personnel experiencing respiratory distress and other overdose symptoms after coming into incidental contact with fentanyl and carfentinil residue in the course of providing patient care. The lethality and ease of coming into contact with the drug underscores the need for firefighters and EMS personnel to exercise extreme caution when responding to suspected opioid-related calls. All responders should be careful to appropriately don and doff any personal protective equipment selected for use when responding to these calls.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration recently published a handbook and roll call video to educate first responders on the dangers presented by fentanyl and carfentinil. Fire chiefs should work closely with their medical directors to review this information and design protocols to protect firefighters and EMS personnel from exposures to these dangerous narcotics. Fire chiefs also should maintain regular contact with their law enforcement partners to understand which narcotics may be most prevalent in their communities. (source)

*** Has Bernie explained any of that? Not so much. Consider the real destruction of the thousands and thousands of the narcotic generation and the labor output competition with other nations.

Bernie sees the “War on Drugs” as a costly, destructive, and ineffective policy. Current drug laws have not worked. After spending billions of dollars and destroying millions of lives, there has been no real decrease in drug accessibility or use, as evidenced by the opioid epidemic, the rising rates of heroin use, and the scourge of meth. Bernie believes treatment, not punishment, is the answer, and he’s repeatedly introduced legislation to extensively reform the criminal justice system along these lines.

War on Drugs: The fifty year war on drugs is a failed policy that has led to mass incarceration of nonviolent offenders and has unfairly targeted people of color.

Treatment for Drug Offenders: Nonviolent drug offenders should not be incarcerated. Instead, they should have access to affordable treatment to address their drug dependencies.

Legalize Marijuana: Marijuana ought to be legalized.

Addressing the Heroin and Opioid Epidemics : Heroin and opioid abuse is at epidemic levels, and the U.S. is not addressing the crisis with the urgency and seriousness that is required. We must address this crisis by providing resources, proper treatment and healthcare professionals to the communities struggling with this epidemic.

Here’s a link to Bernie’s plan to legalize marijuana and his comprehensive plan, Justice and Safety for All,  to reform the criminal justice system.

 

 

Carter Page Sues all of Them

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As closing arguments are delivered in the Senate impeachment trial, one must note that the House Manager’s Team has made the same points day in and day out while overlooking the other part of the whole concocted scheme against President Trump. The other part is the successful plot against Donald Trump that was launched many months before he even took the Oath of Office for the presidency, Crossfire Hurricane. Carried through to Mueller investigation, it is proven that the ‘dossier’ was complied using foreign entities, some still unnamed.

That plot, using foreign interference was to interfere in our domestic election process. The choreographed operation continued through to the end of the impeachment trial in the Senate. Once, Trump is acquitted, brace for impact as the LEFT will not stop unless they are exposed in full and perhaps that will begin in earnest by two channels. The work pledged by Senator Lindsey Graham is characterized as a systematic examination of all things stemming from the contentious phone call between President(s) Trump and Zelensky. The other channel is the lawsuit filed by former volunteer foreign policy advisor, Carter Page.

Did Carter Page contacts give Obama FBI window into Trump ...

Page is suing the Democrat National Committee, Perkins Coie, LLP. and Michael Sussman. Carter Page has requested a trial by jury.

In a short summary of the Carter complaint:

As part of this effort, Defendants developed a dossier replete with falsehoods about numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign—especially Dr. Page. Defendants then sought to tarnish the Trump campaign and its affiliates (including Dr. Page) by publicizing this false information.

Defendants’ efforts mobilized the news media against Dr. Page, damaging his reputation, and effectively destroying his once-private life. The Defendants’ wrongful actions convinced many Americans that Dr. Page is a traitor to the United States, and as a result he has received—and continues to receive—multiple death threats. Dr. Page’s businesses have suffered greatly from the false, malicious information spread by Defendants.

In short, Defendants’ actions have not only damaged Plaintiffs’ reputations and financial prospects, they have even caused Dr. Page to reasonably fear for his safety. Defendants misrepresented Dr. Page’s connections to and interactions with certain foreign nationals in order to create the false impression that Dr. Page—who served his country honorably in the United States Navy and in the private sector—was in fact an agent of a foreign power, Russia. Defendants leveraged these fabrications within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) and the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”), leading these agencies to present false applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”).

As a result, Dr. Page was wrongfully and covertly surveilled by the United States government pursuant to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) warrants for more than a year, and has seen his reputation ruined and his personal safety threatened.

For clarity on the Defendants:

Defendant Perkins Coie LLP (“Perkins Coie”) is an international law firm with over 1,000 lawyers. Perkins Coie has twenty offices worldwide, and its Chicago office has about 144 lawyers and officers. Approximately 67 Perkins Coie partners operate out of the Chicago office.

Defendant Marc Elias is a natural person who is domiciled in Washington, DC. He is a Partner at Perkins Coie. Elias represents the DNC, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Priorities USA, Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC. Elias also represented then-U.S. Senator from Illinois Barack Obama from at least as early as 2006, including throughout the period that Obama served as United States President and titular head of the DNC. Elias has served as chair of Perkins Coie’s political law practices since after the start of the Obama Administration in 2009. In 2016, he organized the opposition research which led to the U.S. Government’s surveillance abuse against Plaintiff.

Defendant Michael Sussman is a natural person who is domiciled in Washington, DC. He is a Partner at Perkins Coie and has represented the DNC.

The timing of this complaint will assist the Lindsey Graham investigative team in the Senate under what is known in legal jargon as discovery. This is the process where documents, communications and interrogatories are gained by both sides of the case.

For additional clarity:

In April 2016, as agents of the DNC, Elias, Sussman and Perkins Coie retained Fusion GPS on the DNC’s behalf to produce negative information on then-candidate Trump.Defendants funded Fusion GPS’s research. Fusion GPS reported to Elias the information from its research.

You are encouraged to read the full complaint to expel false notions found in news media and in social media for context and accuracy found here.

 

 

Have You Met Andrii Telizhenko?

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So, we have the phone call whistle-blower, Eric Ciaramella visiting the Obama White House according to visitor logs an estimated 200 times. What?

Ciaramella held the positions of National Security Council director for Ukraine under Susan Rice and director of Baltic and Eastern European Affairs in the Office of Vice President Joe Biden. Ciaramella was advised by Adam Schiff’s staff to fill out a complaint on the Trump/Zelensky phone call and given the text of the complaint, it is obvious it was drafted by lawyers likely out of Schiff’s office, maybe even Daniel Goldman himself.

Coming from Senator Rand Paul’s Twitter feed is this little gem posted on January 16, 2020.

Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) | Twitterhttps://twitter.comType a message

Anyway, Eric Ciaramella hosted a particular meeting on January 16, 2016 in room 230A at the Obama White House to discuss Ukraine, especially Burisma and the ‘Bidens’. Eric Ciaramella also hosted and chaired a meeting in Room 374 of the Eisenhower Executive Office, which seems to be a planning session to re-open an investigation of Paul Manafort which was to review the information that Alexandra Chalupa had gathered on Manafort and she was paid by the DNC to do so.

Artem Sytnyk, the director of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), a Soros group. Sytnyk was put on the public register of person who committed corrupt related crimes in Ukraine.

Others at the meeting included:

Jeffrey Cole: Resident Legal Advisor at U.S. Embassy, Ukraine (FBI)

Anna Iemelianova: Special Legal Counsel for the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine

Nazar Kholodnitsky: Ukraine’s Chief anti-corruption Prosecutor

Svitlana Pardus: Operations, DoJ, U.S. Embassy, Ukraine

David Sakvarelidze: Deputy General Prosecutor, fired in March of 2016

Andris Razans: Ambassador of Latvia in Belgium (important, read below)

Liz Zentos: National Security Council Director of Eastern Europe

Catherine L. Newcombe: Eurasia legal programs at the DoJ Criminal Division

This meeting was where the Ukraine corruption and the Biden/Burisma plot was launched to protect the infectious relationships.This meeting’s central objective was to tell Ukraine to no longer investigate/probe Burisma and to allow the FBI to take full control. Kiev did not agree and hence later Biden stepped in with his threat to withhold the $1 billion loan guarantees unless Ukraine complied.

Andrii Telizhenko was in that meeting too and has since been cooperating in full with Rudy Giuliani and is essentially a whistleblower.

My Dinner With Andrii | Talking Points Memo Andrii Telizhenko

Telizhenko was previously a political office in the Ukrainian embassy. Ukraine was financially desperate to follow all instructions put forth by the United States during the Obama administration and now is having to do the same with a new administration under President Trump and the new Ukraine president Zelensky for any kind of survival to maintain stability and not fall to Russian aggression or annexation.

Confusing right?

Then it seems the FBI did gain some control and curiously, a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John Buretta was hired to defend Burisma president Nikolay Zlochevskyi for income tax evasion and money-laundering. The truth be told, Burisma bought justice by agreeing to pay $7.4 million in back taxes and fines. Burisma can hire who they want and did but having Devon Archer and Hunter Biden on the Board did allow for political cover, access and favors.

In 2014, Prime Minister Theresa May held a summit for where leaders from a handful of countries attended to plot out a plan to provide Ukraine with some leadership guidance and financial assistance after the billions stolen by the former Ukraine president Yanukovich and others in the government from the coffers of the Ukrainian treasury and various banks. Over the years, in fact, hundreds of billions had been stolen…you read that right. Those monies traced to various countries and accounts (tax havens) around the world including South East Asia, the Caribbean, Cyprus, London, Latvia, Luxembourg, and even Liechtenstein.

One account held in a London bank belonged to Mykola Zlochevsky who at the time was not only the Ukraine Resource Minister but the CEO of Burisma. All the while, Russia had officially annexed Crimea and had immediate plans to do the same with Ukraine. Ukraine had no money to fight a war and needed immediate financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund and guidance from the United States, hence then President Obama assigned the Ukraine portfolio to Vice President Biden. Various banks around the world that could be attributed to belonging to Ukraine, or by corrupt oligarchs were frozen. This was to stop the bleeding and begin a full and comprehensive investigation by various financial fraud experts of Western nations.

It is no wonder that big print and cable news media is attacking Rudy Giuliani as he as Trump’s personally attorney and former prosecutor has been investigating all of this for a very long time and has a cache of tangible evidence. To complicate matters even more, we have Andrii Derkach who initiated the criminal case of the interference in the U.S. elections.

In part from a long Guardian article published on April 12, 2017:

On 19 January, the day before Trump’s inauguration, Zlochevsky’s gas company announced it was becoming a funder of the Atlantic Council, a prominent Washington thinktank. The Atlantic Council declined to say exactly how much money the tycoon had offered, only that his donation had been between $100,000 and $249,000. A month later, Burisma hired a new director. Joseph Cofer Black does not appear to have any more experience of Ukraine than his colleague Hunter Biden but – as an ex-ambassador and a former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism centre under George W Bush – he is likely to have lots of useful contacts in Washington.

Zlochevsky’s last public appearance was in June 2016 at a Burisma-organised alternative energy forum, co-hosted in Monaco by Prince Albert II, who made the keynote speech. Photographs of the event showed Hunter Biden posing with various comfortably retired ex-politicians, wearing a blue suit twinned with highly-polished brown shoes. Zlochevsky was tanned and healthy in an open-necked shirt, while a more formally dressed Prince Albert placed a solicitous hand on his back.

Perhaps there should be witnesses in the Trump impeachment trial in the Senate, in fact there should be 200-300 of them and not only should Hunter Biden and the whistleblower be among the witness list, but Eric Holder needs to be on the hot seat too.

Complicated…right?

 

Carter Page is Due Big Money, Manafort May Get Relief

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The FISA Court released a few days ago a ruling that at least 2 (the last 2) of the 4 secret surveillance applications against Carter Page were in valid. The first 2 applications are under review and may see the same ruling.

So, former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe are for sure on the legal hot seat as is Dana Boente. At the Department of Justice, at the time Rod Rosenstein had the final signature relying on the lower level FBI certifications of validations.
Carter Page has an excellent case now against the government for violations by the government for illegal search/surveillance/wire-tap(s) warrants and based on the timing, now in-prison Paul Manafort may have a case against the government as well. The Manafort case is not yet resolved based on timelines and use by the Mueller investigation.

This places more layers to the operatives in government perhaps as directed by the Democrat Party to use government power and people for explosive political missions. A new plateau of government collusion it seems.

The timing of this release appears to have some purpose and will affect the impeachment trial in the Senate where the Trump defense team may just use this information to their advantage and the House impeachment managers (Schiff/Nadler) and Speaker Pelosi will be working overtime to draft a twisted defense response.

Image result for fisa court carter page photo source/Forbes

Federalist: Authority granted to the federal government to secretly wiretap and spy on former Trump affiliate Carter Page was “not valid,” the nation’s top spy court noted in a secret ruling penned earlier this month. The order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which was created and authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), was initially signed and issued on January 7, 2020, but was not declassified and released until Thursday afternoon.

Judge James Boasberg, the current federal judge presiding over the FISA court, wrote in his order that at least two of the four FISA applications against Carter Page were unlawfully authorized. Additionally, according his order, the Department of Justice similarly concluded following the release of a sprawling investigate report on the matter by the agency’s inspector general that the government did not have probable cause that Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. The FISA law states that American citizens cannot be secretly spied on by the U.S. government absent probable cause, based on valid evidence, that an American is unlawfully acting as a foreign agent.

“DOJ assesses that with respect to the applications in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679, ‘if not earlier, there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power,’” Boasberg wrote, referring to the final two of the four FISA applications to spy on Page. “The Court understands the government to have concluded, in view of the material misstatements and omissions, that the Court’s authorizations in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679 were not valid.”

Boasberg’s ruling noted that DOJ had not yet taken a position on the lawfulness of the first two applications against Page, but was currently collecting information to assess whether those two spy applications were also invalid. The invalid applications specified by Boasberg were dated April 7 and June 29 of 2017. The false and invalid April 7 application was personally signed by James Comey, while the false and invalid June 29 application was signed by Andrew McCabe. Both men were referred for criminal prosecution by the inspector general. Former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who is alleged to have offered to wear a wire against President Donald Trump, also signed off on the false June 29 FISA warrant against Page.

The FISA court order also noted that it is a federal crime for any federal official to “intentionally…disclose[] or use[] information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having any reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized” by law. The following sentence of Boasberg’s ruling is redacted, raising questions about whether the government used any information obtained pursuant to the now-invalid Page surveillance warrants in other cases.

The final warrant against Page overlapped with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The final three-month authorization to spy on Page was signed nearly six weeks after Mueller was appointed, meaning that Mueller may have had real-time access to and utilized nearly five months worth of surveillance of Page during the course of Mueller’s investigation. If his office used any of the information in subsequent cases, the declaration that the final two spy warrants against Page were invalid could potentially nullify previous or future convictions sought by Mueller’s office.

Surveillance under FISA is not limited to the individual targeted, as the government also surveils individuals with whom the target communicates, and individuals with whom those individuals communicate. That process is called the “two-hop” rule and allows the government to spy on and collect information and communications from individuals who are two degrees separated from the actual surveillance target. Therefore, even if Page never personally spoke to Trump on the phone, the government could still eavesdrop on Trump’s conversations if Page spoke to someone who had spoken to or electronically communicated with the president. It is not known whether the government used the two-hop process on Page to sweep up information from former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, or even the president himself.

In his January 7 order, Boasberg directed DOJ to retain and sequester all information and evidence relevant to both the Carter Page applications, the inspector general investigation of FISA abuse, and any additional DOJ investigations related to or spawned by the inspector general’s report. Boasberg told DOJ to provide all of the required information to the FISA court no later than January 28.