It’s Real –> Financial Transactions over $600 to the IRS

There are countless payment platforms known as digital wallets (apps) now. PayPal, QuickBooks, Wise, Venmo, Zelle, Stripe, ApplePay, GooglePay, Xoom are just a few. Included should also be online sales apps like Marketplace by Facebook and OfferUp. Digital money is moved there also. All digital transactions get reported…..leading up to $600.00, in fact $600.00 has nothing to do with the whole matter..

Perhaps it is a good time to quit using them and going to the old fashion cash method which would put cashiers in a panic….

Why go to cash? Well, after the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and it was revealed that the IRS would be more than double it’s size…perhaps they need all those people to investigate all transactions leading up to that pesky $600.00.

The following website has a great summary 

by Jon Miltimore

A proposal from the Biden Administration that would require banks to monitor personal accounts and report all financial transactions over $600 to the IRS is under fire.

On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defended the proposal on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” calling the collection of financial information “routine” after some in the banking community criticized it as an unprecedented invasion of privacy.

“It’s just a few pieces of information about individual bank accounts,” the secretary said.

Others disagree with Yellen’s description of the Treasury Department’s proposal, however.

Last month, economist Peter Jacobsen noted the change would give the IRS an “unprecedented look into the finances of many Americans.”

“Even the powerful political will behind the 2002 ‘Patriot Act’ only led to requirements that banks report suspicious transactions of $5,000 or more,” Jacobsen observed.

More recently, a former Kansas City Fed president argued the policy was a dangerous trap that was being laid for the middle class.

“It’s a massive search without a search warrant,” said Thomas Hoenig, who served as president of the Kansas City Fed from 1991 to 2011. “It will be the middle class and the upper middle class who will be caught in this.”

Hoenig also pointed out that, in contrast to wealthier Americans, most in the middle class do not have lawyers and accountants they can rely on to help them navigate matters with the IRS.

“In the collection of the data, there will be false positives,” Hoenig said. “That means individuals will be approached by the government about what they’re doing and they will have to spend additional funds to defend themselves. It’s a really bad idea.”

Hoenig also said the regulation would “cost billions,” since banks will have to collect the data and present it in a usable format for the IRS.

The Treasury Department regulation is being proposed as the Biden Administration seeks to whip up enough votes to push through a $3.5 trillion reconciliation spending bill. The legislation, Americans are told, will be financed through taxes on “the rich.”

The great economist Ludwig von Mises, however, once warned that individuals should be wary of collectivist policies in sheep’s clothing.

“The masses favor socialism because they trust the socialist propaganda of the intellectuals,” Mises observed. “The intellectuals, not the populace, are molding public opinion.”

One of the great lies that has been perpetuated for decades is that the welfare state can be financed if only the rich would pay “their fair share.” This message, unsurprisingly, polls quite well; but a brief look at history shows that there are limits to what the rich can shoulder in taxes—the welfare states of Europe are financed heavily by middle-class taxes—and the rich in the US already pay an astonishing percentage of the federal tax burden.

Yellen understands this, which is why the Treasury Department’s policy is designed to raise revenue by enforcing greater tax compliance—from everyone.

“There’s an enormous tax gap in the US estimated at $7 trillion over the next 10 years in terms of a shortfall of tax collections to what we believe we are owed,” says Yellen.

Yellen’s last words—what “we are owed”—are telling. They show that when it comes to bureaucrats getting property they see as theirs, something as abstract as “privacy” will not stand in their way.

Defenders of the Treasury Department policy say the IRS would be monitoring annual cash flows, not individual transactions, so that makes the policy okay.

“A simple way for the IRS to get a sense of where that might be is just a few pieces of information about individuals’ bank accounts,” Yellen said. “Nothing at the transaction level that would violate privacy; simply aggregate inflows into the account over the year and aggregate outflows. And that would really help the IRS target their auditing resources, which we have proposed to greatly expand.”

As Mises’ quote implies, government officials are often guilty of saying one thing and doing another. But in this case, Yellen is being refreshingly candid in what the Treasury Department is after.

The government wants to monitor the inflows and outflows of (private) individual bank accounts so the IRS can do more audits with “greatly expanded” resources to allow the federal government to collect trillions of dollars they are “owed.”

Take Yellen at her word—but don’t believe for a minute these audits will only fall on “the rich.”

The Stasi Tactics of the DoJ at Mar A Lago

Stasi, the most feared institution of the East German Communist government….

Let’s start with what should be one of the most dangerous lawyers in Washington DC shall we?

 

Now that we have established that, it is important to understand his role in all things against not on Trump but supporters and conservatives. One cannot overlook the fact that the FBI lied on several applications and warrant details at the FISA Court on all items of the #RussiaHoax. Lying has become a political disease inside the Beltway.

As a primer, not one person in media is noting how president Obama and vice-president Biden took their own selective documents and have sequestered them for the presidential library and warehoused at University of Delaware, respectively. Neither allows any public access.

After all the commentary from the consequences of the FBI Washington DC Field Office performing the raid at Mar A Lago allegedly over a National Archives causal referral to the Department of Justice, The Daily Mail appears to have the best detailed summary for context.

Based on the Presidential Records Act which was enacted after the Watergate scandal, considering the following details by The Daily Mail:

FBI agents who raided Donald Trump‘s Florida estate have been in discussions since June with his legal team about a trove of presidential documents on the property, it emerged on Monday night, as speculation continued to swirl about what exactly they were looking for.

The raid was carried out on Monday, and confirmed by Trump himself. The White House is believed to have learnt of the raid when the rest of the world did, and was not informed in advance.

In February it emerged that Trump had taken classified documents out of the White House when he left in January 2021, and some of those were handed over to the National Archives.

Monday’s raid is thought likely to be related to the remaining boxes of documents, although it remained unclear why the FBI decided to raid the estate.

Trump himself was in New York City at the time, and was pictured on Monday evening leaving Trump Tower in Manhattan.

CNN reported on Monday evening that investigators were at Mar-a-Lago on June 8, meeting Trump’s lawyers to discuss the documents.

Trump was not questioned, the network reported, but stopped by and greeted the investigators and his two attorneys.

The two attorneys then took the investigators to a basement room and showed them where the documents were stored.

Five days later, Trump’s attorneys received a letter asking them to enhance the security on the store room, and a padlock was then placed on the door.

It’s unclear why the FBI then decided to raid the property.

‘Something has happened and they are no longer confident that those records are safe,’ said Shawn Wu, a former federal prosecutor.

News of the raid came after photos were published showing shredded documents stuffed down a toilet.

Maggie Haberman, New York Times correspondent, first mentioned the reports of the destroyed documents in February, but on Monday she tweeted photos.

Trump himself denied destroying documents and flushing them down the toilet.

The raid comes as Donald Trump is considering another bid for the presidency and his actions after the 2020 election, where he tried to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory, are under investigation by lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

It began on Monday morning and took several hours.

It is highly unusual for a federal raid to take place at the residence of a former commander in chief.

‘These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,’ said Trump on Monday night.

‘Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.

‘After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.’

Trump, in his lengthy statement condemning the raid, called it ‘prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections.’

The Justice Department would not say whether Attorney General Merrick Garland had personally authorized the search, but it is considered highly unlikely a raid on a former president would take place without the AG giving it the stamp of approval.

The FBI gave US Secret Service agents at Mar-a-Lago advance notice and they cooperated letting them into the property, NBC News reported.

The Secret Service agents did not take part in the investigation or search.

This meant the FBI did not have to break into the property or break down any doors.

A search warrant does not suggest that criminal charges are near or even expected, but it would have to be court authorized.

In February, it first emerged that Trump took classified documents out of the White House and to his Mar-a-Lago resort – including some labeled ‘top secret.’

Congress opened up an investigation into Trump’s handling of White House records after he denied that he flushed official documents down the toilet and insisted he handed over boxes to the National Archives willingly.

‘Also, another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book,’ he wrote in a statement.

National Archives officials earlier this year recovered 15 boxes of White House materials from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence – in apparent contravention of the federal records acts – and reports emerged in February that the former president would often rip official documents and send others to be incinerated at the Pentagon.

Trump insisted that the transfer of boxes to the National Archives and Records Administration was done ‘openly and willingly’.

In response to the seizure of materials, the House Oversight and Reform Committee opened a probe into Trump’s improperly removing or destroying White House documents.

‘Removing or concealing government records is a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison,’ the congressional letter to NARA Archivist David Ferriero notes.

Trump also dismissed the probe, claiming: ‘The media’s characterization of my relationship with NARA is Fake News. It was exactly the opposite! It was a great honor to work with NARA to help formally preserve the Trump Legacy.’

In her forthcoming book Confidence Man, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman claims that White House staff found wads of printed paper clogging a toilet and believed Trump was the culprit, according to an Axios report.

‘As I was reporting out this book, I learned that staff in White House residence would periodically find the toilet clogged,’ she said.

‘The engineer would have to come and fix it.

‘And what the engineer would find would be wads of clumped up wet, printed paper – meaning it was not toilet paper.

‘It was either notes or some other piece of paper that they believe he had thrown down the toilet.’

She did not speculate further on what was on the papers – claiming it could even just be post-it notes to himself.

During his presidency, Trump often raised eyebrows when he would lament on water pressure in Washington, D.C. claiming his administration was looking into relaxing water-saving regulations for toilets, sinks and showers.

‘People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once. They end up using more water,” Trump said while talking with business owners in December 2019.

‘The EPA is looking at that very strongly at my suggestion.’

Trump would repeat at rallies that people end up using more water by flushing multiple times or showering for longer than usual.

The former president pointed in his statement to the hypocrisy of the investigation into his handling of documents and keeping of mementos, questioning why his rival Hillary Clinton wasn’t forced to hand over her 32,000 emails.

‘I have been told I was under no obligation to give this material based on various legal rulings that have been made over the years,’ Trump said.

‘Crooked Hillary Clinton, as an example, deleted and acid washed 32,000 emails and never gave that to the government,’ he added.

‘Then, they took large amounts of furniture out of the White House. And Bill Clinton kept numerous audio recordings that the archives wanted, but were unsuccessful at getting after going to court.

‘We won’t even mention what is going on with the White House in the current, or various past administrations.

‘In the United States there has unfortunately become two legal standards, one for Republicans and one for Democrats. It should not be that way!’

The National Archives and Records Administration has asked the Justice Department to look into the former president’s removal of White House records as he left office – opening up a new area of potential legal exposure for Trump.

Charging a former president with violating the Presidential Records Act if any misconduct were ever established would be new territory, and Trump has already survived two impeachments while fighting off probes of his business in Manhattan and contending facing an election probe in Georgia.

The House January 6th Committee’s probe, which recently received a trove of Trump White House records, has also brought to light Trump’s penchant for tearing up documents while in office.

Archival officials have been required to tape together documents in an effort to preserve materials that under law are the property of the U.S. government, not the president who creates or receives them.

The House Oversight panel, chaired by New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, is asking NARA to provide clarification on what it found in the 15 boxes it seized from Trump in Mar-a-Lago.

‘Please provide a detailed description of the contents of the recovered boxes,’ one of the points insists in the letter to Ferriero.

Another asks: ‘Is NARA aware of presidential records that President Trump destroyed or attempted to destroy without the approval of NARA?’

‘If so, please provide a detailed description of such records, the actions taken by President Trump to destroy or attempt to destroy them, and any actions NARA has taken to recover or preserve these documents.’

The government watchdog group Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive called for the DOJ to investigate, saying Trump ‘likely violated criminal laws barring the destruction of government records.

‘Donald Trump’s repeated and apparently willful destruction of his presidential records threatens to deny the American people a full historical record of his presidency and an opportunity to hold him and his administration fully accountable for their actions while in power,’ said CREW President Noah Bookbinder.

‘There is no excuse for hiding important information from the public. The Department of Justice must act to investigate and to hold Trump accountable for his reckless behavior ‘

Among the items items the National Archives retrieved from Mar-a-Lago is the infamous hurricane map that the president allegedly scrawled on with a Sharpie pen to expand its possible path.

Another keepsake that a source told the Post had been removed was a mini replica of Air Force One that Trump proudly displayed in the Oval Office, after involving himself in details of a redesign all the way down to a paint job.

A former aide said Trump displayed at Mar-a-Lago a ‘mini replica of one of the black border-wall slats’ that Trump helped design for his border wall.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee is opening a probe into Trump's document handling after a report revealed Archives officials retrieved 15 boxes of materials from Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence

The trove of information Trump failed to hand over when he left the White House in January, 2021 includes his ‘love letters’ with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

It also included original versions of the letter former President Obama left for Trump in the top drawer of the Resolute Desk, where he told his successor: ‘We are just temporary occupants of this office.

‘That makes us guardians of those democratic institutions and traditions – like rule of law, separation of powers, equal protection and civil liberties.’

Federal record-keeping laws establish jail time and possible forfeiture of office for those convicted of serious crimes.

Congress enacted the Presidential Record Act after Watergate, and after Congress stepped in and ‘seizing Richard Nixon’s papers as if they were in a crime scene,’ said Dr Timothy Naftali, former head of the Nixon Library.

The New York University professor told DailyMail.com that record-keeping laws are not just designed to help historians and researchers, but to constrain behavior.

‘And it’s the knowledge, I would think, that people with power have that in the future we will know what they did, which has a I think useful and healthy constraining effect on them. That there will ultimately be accountability,’ he said.

‘They also understand that the actions that they might take for an authoritarian president could hurt them in the future that is healthy for constitutional republic.’

The retrieval follows reports the National Archives had to tape Trump documents back together after he ripped them office, routinely destroyed documents and had files put in ‘burn bags’ and sent to the Pentagon to be incinerated.

The president also often had White House staffer put documents in ‘burn bags’ to be destroyed via incineration at the Pentagon rather than preserved, a senior Trump White House official told the Washington Post.

So-called burn bags look similar to a paper grocery bag and are widely available throughout the White House complex, as well as at organizations who deal with top-secret information like the CIA and NSA.

Burn bags are a superior alternative to shredding.

The New York Times reported that the trove of information includes the infamous map, which was printed on a poster to show the storm track of Hurricane Dorian in 2019 during a live televised briefing.

Trump had tweeted earlier that ‘in addition to Florida — South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.’

The black lines hastily added to the map appeared to justify Trump’s statement, even though Alabama’s national weather office had contradicted Trump’s claim by writing: ‘Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.’ Trump said afterwards that under projections, Alabama was going to be hit ‘very hard.’

‘The Presidential Records Act mandates that all Presidential records must be properly preserved by each Administration so that a complete set of Presidential records is transferred to the National Archives at the end of the Administration,’ Archivist David S. Ferriero said in the statement.

He said the agency ‘pursues the return of records whenever we learn that records have been improperly removed or have not been appropriately transferred to official accounts.’

He called the records act ‘critical to our democracy,’ and defended its purpose, without rebuking Trump directly.

Ferriero further stressed the importance of adherence to the PRA by all Presidents.

‘Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an Administration, there should be no question as to need for both diligence and vigilance. Records matter,’ he concluded.

House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said she plans to ‘fully investigate’ the matter to make sure the records are with the Archives, ‘rather than stashed away in Trump’s golf resorts.’

The Washington Post, which broke the story of the transfer, reported that Trump’s records stash also included unidentified ‘gifts.’

The post-Watergate records statute resulted in a section of the U.S. Code on concealment or mutilation of documents.

It states that: ‘Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.’

It continues: ‘Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term ‘office’ does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.’

The 15 boxes of information included letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that had been improperly removed by the ex commander-in-chief.

Under the Presidential Records Act, memos, notes, letters, emails, faxes and other written correspondence related to the president’s official duties must be handed to the National Archives for preservation.

Continue reading here and view the associated photographs.

 

How Many Biden Officials Were Involved in RussiaGate?

Hat tip to Paul Sperry….well done.

Several individuals connected to a 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign plot to cast Donald Trump as a covert Kremlin collaborator are working in high-level jobs within the Biden administration – including at least two senior Biden appointees cited by Special Counsel John Durham in his “active (and) ongoing” criminal investigation of the scheme, according to recently filed court documents.

Jake Sullivan, who now serves as Biden’s national security adviser, and Caroline Krass, a top lawyer at the Pentagon, were involved in efforts in 2016 and 2017 to advance the Clinton campaign’s false claims about Trump through the media and the federal government, documents show. Other evidence shows that two other Biden officials – senior State Department official Dafna Rand and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler – also are entangled in the so-called Russiagate scandal.

It’s not known whether these Biden appointees have been interviewed by Durham’s investigators. But as the probe widens, some government ethics watchdogs anticipate that Biden’s presidency could be pulled into the scandal, which saw the FBI abuse its surveillance powers to spy on a Trump campaign adviser based on Clinton opposition research.

Just as the Democrats have used their control of Congress to cast President Trump and the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol as threats to American democracy, Republicans are vowing if they regain power after November’s congressional elections to investigate the years-long effort to question Trump’s 2016 victory and undermine his presidency.

The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Turner, recently pledged to hold hearings and issue subpoenas “to get to the bottom of [Russiagate] so this never happens again, so we never have Americans having to distrust their own government because of the politicization of the FBI [and] of our intelligence community.”

RealClearInvestigations has learned that Congress has referred to the Special Counsel’s Office at least a dozen cases of potential perjury involving former Clinton campaign officials and Obama administration officials who have testified behind closed doors about their involvement in Russiagate. Hill lawyers and investigators have met with Durham’s staff about the criminal referrals stemming from the sworn depositions.

Republican sources say that the roles played in Russiagate by Krass, Sullivan, Rand, and Gensler may be among the first to draw attention in hearings. Although the full range of their efforts has not been made public, here’s what is known so far.

Caroline Krass:
Clinton Donor and Top CIA Lawyer

Krass, 54 – whom Biden appointed as general counsel of the Defense Department early last year – is the former top CIA lawyer cited by Durham as “General Counsel of Agency-2” in his indictment of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.

Durham alleged Sussmann first tried to plant a fabricated report with the FBI’s general counsel about a secret cyber-link between Trump and Russia-based Alfa Bank in order to set in motion an investigation of Trump before the 2016 election. Then, after the election, Sussmann filed a similar report with Krass’ legal shop at the CIA, the prosecutor said.

Although a Washington, D.C. jury in May acquitted Sussmann of lying about who was paying him to approach the FBI, the trial revealed that FBI field agents specializing in cyber crimes debunked his report within days of receiving it, and even suspected some of the evidence was cooked up. “We think it’s a set-up,” one agent warned in an internal FBI email. FBI brass working under then-Director James Comey, however, prolonged the investigation for several months.

Nevertheless, after Trump won the election, Sussmann brought the same Trump-Alfa Bank ruse to Krass – a Clinton donor and Obama appointee, then working under CIA Director John Brennan. Durham has found evidence that Krass welcomed the tip.

“We’re interested,” he said Krass told him in their December 2016 phone call. “We’re doing this review and I’ll speak to someone here, and someone will get back to you to arrange a meeting.”

Krass allegedly told Sussmann she would consider the information for inclusion in the intelligence review of alleged Russian interference in the election that Obama had ordered at the time. A declassified version of the review, known as the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), was released to the public the next month and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of meddling in the election to help Trump win. A classified version included an annex with several unfounded and since-debunked allegations against Trump developed by the Clinton campaign as part of the so-called Steele dossier. It’s not known if the two-page annex, which claimed the allegations were “consistent with the judgments in this assessment,” included the Alfa Bank canard, since several sections remained blacked out when it was made public in 2020.

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File
John Brennan, Obama CIA Director: His agency seemed eager to move on any allegation against Trump.

The ICA became a foundational document for subsequent Trump-Russia probes and has been used by Democrats and the media to suggest the 2016 election was stolen from Clinton.

“The greatest concern with the role of Krass is her ‘interest’ [in Sussmann’s tip] despite the lack of foundational support [for it],” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told RCI. “As with the FBI, the Clinton campaign found eager [Obama] officials to move on any such allegation [against Trump].”

On Feb. 9, 2017, Sussmann secured a sit-down meeting at CIA headquarters with “a representative from the Office of General Counsel,” according to documents reviewed by RCI, where he turned over more dubious material allegedly linking Trump to Russia. The CIA lawyer he met with worked under Krass, who did not leave the agency until several months later, despite the change in administrations.

The attorney, identified at trial only as “Steve M.,” said he would pass the tips on to CIA technical experts, as well as an FBI liaison officer, but they too dismissed the data as “self-generated,” meaning they appeared to be designed to arrive at a predetermined conclusion of a nefarious cyber-link. Complete datasets were withheld from the CIA.

Apparently, the CIA did not even ask for the source of Sussmann’s walk-in tip, including where he got the data files he gave the agency. The FBI exhibited a similar lack of curiosity when Sussmann reported the false Trump-Alfa Bank connection.

However, like FBI brass, Krass and her boss at the time, CIA chief Brennan, were aware of Clinton campaign efforts to portray Trump as a Kremlin agent, and it was no secret that Sussmann’s Perkins Coie law firm represented her campaign.

“As Brennan’s top lawyer, she would know everything about that,” said Kash Patel, the former House Intelligence Committee investigator who interviewed Sussmann in a closed-door deposition in December 2017, and was the first to discover the Alfa Bank smear operation he ran at the FBI and CIA on behalf of Clinton campaign operatives.

AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Peter Strzok: FBI man opened an investigation, not of Clinton, but the Trump campaign.

Evidence shows that Krass had other reasons to be skeptical of Sussmann’s claims. As legal adviser to Brennan, she was involved in the referral her boss made to the FBI in 2016 to open a counterespionage case to find out how Russian intelligence intercepted information about Hillary Clinton’s plan to tie up Trump in a Kremlin scandal. The intercept revealed the Russians were on to a plot by Clinton and her then-foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan to “stir up” a scandal on Trump about Russia during the Democratic convention in late July 2016.

Brennan appears to have been less concerned about the Clinton campaign’s disinformation campaign than the fact Moscow knew about it. This so alarmed Brennan that he briefed Obama about it, according to a summary of his handwritten notes, declassified in 2020.

The referral, known as a counterintelligence operational lead (CIOL), was sent to Comey, who in turn forwarded it to then-FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok to investigate.

Strzok – who was fired by the FBI after his anti-Trump views became public – opened an investigation, not of Clinton but the Trump campaign. Krass’ chief of staff at the time, Brian Greer, confirmed that the purpose of the CIOL was not to investigate the Clinton campaign’s dirty tricks, but to run a counter-spying probe to see if the Russians had penetrated the Clinton camp. The concern, he said, was that Clinton “may have been spied on by a hostile intelligence service.”

(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Hillary Clinton: CIA lawyer Krass donated at least $3,575 to Clinton’s 2016 and 2008 campaigns for president.

Seemingly reflecting the attitude of his former boss at the spy agency, Greer opined that “there’s nothing illegal about” what Clinton did to Trump. “Even if it’s unsavory,” he shrugged, “that’s just politics.”

Federal campaign records reveal that Krass donated at least $3,575 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 and 2008 campaigns for president. Before Obama appointed her to the CIA in 2014, she served as his special counsel for national security affairs in the White House.

Brennan’s handwritten notes were turned up by Durham and opened a new track in his investigation, which early on had appeared to clear the CIA of wrongdoing. But now Durham is actively investigating this CIA front, according to one of his pre-trial filings. His grand jury has interviewed at least eight current and former CIA employees, and he is seeking out other agency employees who may have attended the meeting with Sussmann.

“The government has been undertaking additional steps to determine if additional personnel were, in fact, present at this [Feb. 9] meeting with [CIA] employees,” Durham noted. “In addition, the Special Counsel’s Office maintains an active, ongoing criminal investigation of these and other matters that is not limited to the offense charged in the [Sussmann] indictment.”

FNC
Kash Patel, ex-House congressional prober: Russiagate conspirators in the Biden administration “must be held accountable or they’ll only abuse their power again.”

It could not be determined if Krass is among former CIA employees interviewed by Durham’s team. Durham’s office remains tight-lipped, and neither the CIA nor Pentagon responded to requests for comment. Attempts to reach Krass were also unsuccessful.

During his 2017 House Intelligence Committee interview, Sussmann and his lawyer promised to provide the committee copies of all the documents he gave to the CIA, but Patel said they failed to turn them over. The former staff counsel said he is confident Durham has obtained them.

Meanwhile, Judicial Watch is suing the CIA for all its records of contacts with Sussmann under the Freedom of Information Act. The Washington-based watchdog group recently filed the lawsuit after the CIA failed last year to reply to a request for the records, including notes, related to agency phone conversations and meetings with the Clinton campaign attorney.

“The CIA is in cover-up mode about its communications with the [Clinton] lawyer implicated in a shady spy operation against President Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “What is the CIA hiding about its role in this plot against Trump?”

Fitton maintains that what happened at the CIA could be an even bigger scandal than what happened at the FBI.

As one of the Intelligence Community’s top attorneys, Krass also was involved in Obama’s sudden decision after Trump won to make it easier for the CIA and FBI to root through raw personal communications intercepted globally by the National Security Agency, according to sources familiar with high-level legal consultations regarding the revision to spying rules at the time. 

The departing president’s executive order relaxing rules for mining the NSA’s highly classified databases went into effect less than three weeks before Trump took office. At the same time, the White House rushed to preserve all intelligence related to Trump and Russia and disseminate it across U.S. agencies.

The order, known as “12 Triple 3,” allowed the FBI for the first time to sift through large troves of incidental communications – including phone calls and emails – involving U.S. citizens, without NSA filtering or even wiretap warrants. In effect, agents could put advisers and appointees of Trump, along with their family members and friends, under warrantless surveillance.

The easing of longstanding restrictions on intelligence-sharing set off a massive fishing expedition.

The FBI didn’t have much time to exploit the raw intercepts before Trump put his own people in place. So in a last-minute scramble, it asked both the CIA and NSA to search their holdings and collect as much information as possible on Russian oligarchs and other figures for any links to Trump and his advisers – namely, Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Carter Page.

Read the full summary here.

Hillary Sold our Uranium, Is Biden Selling our Lithium?

As a reminder about the U.S. uranium, click here to refresh your memory about Uranium One and Hillary Clinton. Disgustingly, it appears Hillary finessed this scandal too.

Now we have yet another very similar scandal and it involves the Biden administration and lithium which is used for batteries…for those electronic vehicles. Lithium is not only used for batteries but also for amour plating, special glasses, air conditioning and often in drugs for manic depression. Chile and Brazil are large producers of lithium, yet the United States does have deposits and is way behind China in ownership and uses.

That condition is getting worse it seems due to the constant deference of the Biden administration to China.

The BBC reported earlier this month that the FBI Director Christopher Wary met with the head of MI5 to mutually discuss the epic threats of China. Wray stated in part:

Wray warned the audience – which included chief executives of businesses and senior figures from universities – that the Chinese government was “set on stealing your technology” using a range of tools.

He said it posed “an even more serious threat to western businesses than even many sophisticated businesspeople realised”. He cited cases in which people linked to Chinese companies out in rural America had been digging up genetically modified seeds which would have cost them billions of dollars and nearly a decade to develop themselves.

He also said China deployed cyber espionage to “cheat and steal on a massive scale”, with a hacking programme larger than that of every other major country combined.

One has to wonder if Wray did this in public fashion because the Bureau’s cases and intelligence are being ignored in the Presidential Daily Briefings at the White House.

Anyway, back to the lithium.

Steve Miller authored a piece at Real Clear Investigation that reads in part:

A Chinese-dominated mining company has procured millions of dollars in American subsidies to extract lithium in the United States – but, given a dearth of U.S. processing capacity, the mineral is likely to be sent to China with no guarantee that the end product would return as batteries to power President Biden’s envisioned green economy.

Critics say the scenario would increase U.S. energy dependence on a hostile power – one accused of using forced labor in the manufacture of both lithium batteries and solar panels – and undercuts the Biden administration’s emphasis on domestic sourcing of green energy.

Lithium has taken the spotlight in Biden’s energy plan, since it is a key element needed to produce batteries for electric vehicles and solar panel storage. The administration acknowledges the lithium processing challenge – tacitly – in a June 2021 report produced by the U.S. Department of Energy. “The nation would benefit greatly from development and growth of cost-competitive domestic materials processing for lithium-battery materials,” the report reads.

The White House in March issued an order invoking the Defense Production Act, a 1950’s-era law meant to prioritize production of materials in the name of national security. The action allows the federal government to direct taxpayer funds to private companies to extract more lithium in the U.S. – including foreign-based interests.

Prominent in the initiative is Canadian-based Lithium Americas, a publicly traded group whose largest shareholder is Chinese-owned lithium mining giant Ganfeng Lithium, which is currently under investigation in China for alleged insider trading.

Lithium Americas is seeking to mine lithium from Thacker Pass, an 18,000-acre wilderness area on the Nevada-Oregon border. If the mining is approved, Thacker Pass would join a mine at Silver Peak outside of Tonopah, Nevada, as one of the only active lithium mines in the U.S. The company projects it will yield 80,000 tons of lithium a year, which would make it one of the largest lithium mines in the world, producing a quarter of the world’s demand.

Lithium Americas’ local company, Lithium Nevada, has been approved to receive Nevada tax abatements worth $8.5 million. And the parent company has applied for a loan through the Department of Energy. Read the full summary here.

photo from Nevada Division of Environmental Protection website

Seems the Federal government is approving all kinds of sell off deals for China including oil from our emergency reserves, much less real estate. Exactly who is ultimately approving all this as members of the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States and why is the president not using his pen to veto/forbid the transactions? (rhetorical)

Exactly When Does Fentanyl get Included in Title 42?

President Biden is completely absent and indifferent to this crisis and so is the Department of Justice. Just consider this from two days ago…

SANTA ANA, Calif. (KABC) — A Fullerton man is facing several felony charges for possessing enough fentanyl to kill 12 million people, nearly four times the population of Orange County, authorities announced Friday.

According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, 60-year-old Alfonso Gomez-Santana was arrested Wednesday when California Highway Patrol Officers pulled him over near South Lemon Street and Orangethorpe Avenue in Fullerton. Officers found four kilos of fentanyl inside his vehicle and 20 more kilos in his home. They also found $250,000 worth of fentanyl pills and 122 grams of methamphetamine, according to authorities.

Fentanyl Bust photo 1 Fentanyl Bust photo 2Fentanyl Bust photo 3 source

The district attorney’s office said it takes about 2 milligrams of fentanyl to be considered a lethal dose.

“It is unconscionable that someone who has the ability to kill 12 million people is facing just a handful of years in jail,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer in a news release. “Fentanyl is a national epidemic that killed more than 100,000 Americans last year and it’s not going to stop unless we have the tools as prosecutors to hold these drug dealers and drug manufacturers accountable for peddling death. Every parent in America should be petrified that one day they are going to walk into their child’s bedroom and find them dead because their child thought they were experimenting with recreational drugs and instead drug dealers sold them a deadly dose of fentanyl. This is not fear-mongering; this is reality – and if we don’t start strengthening penalties for drug dealers it’s going to be the reality for you or someone you love.”

Gomez-Santana has been charged with one felony count of sale or transport of a controlled substance and two felony counts of possession of sale with intent to sell.He faces a maximum sentence of six years and eight months in jail if convicted on all counts.

In November, Orange County prosecutors issued a warning to drug dealers, manufacturers, and distributors, saying if their deals result in someone’s death, they could be charged with murder.

Now to the matter of Title 42….

There are many chapters inside Title 42….all under the code dealing with public health….it was originally launched in 1944 to prevent the spread of communicable diseases and is managed by the CDC. In short, it is to prevent entry into the United States anything that is a threat to U.S. health law. So how does fentanyl get into the United States? Mostly trafficking through the southern border and in other cases through the U.S. Postal system. We know precisely how the supply chain operates and who is responsible. Really you say?

Yes….learn about the King Pin Act –>

Introduction
The Administration has released the names of three Mexican organizations against which the President has decided to impose sanctions pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (the “Kingpin Act”) (21 U.S.C. 1901-1908, 8 U.S.C. 1182).  Kingpin Act targets, on a worldwide basis, significant foreign narcotics traffickers, their organizations, and operatives.

Background
The Kingpin Act became law on December 3, 1999.  Its purpose is to deny significant foreign narcotics traffickers, their related businesses, and their operatives access to the U.S. financial system and to prohibit all trade and transactions between the traffickers and U.S. companies and individuals.  The Kingpin Act authorizes the President to take these actions when he determines that a foreign person plays a significant role in international narcotics trafficking.  Congress modeled the Kingpin Act on the effective sanctions program that the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) administers against the Colombian drug cartels pursuant to Executive Order 12978 issued in October 1995 (“Executive Order 12978”) under authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”).

Implementation
The Kingpin Act requires that the Secretary of the Treasury, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency coordinate to identify drug kingpins and propose them to the President for sanctions.  The Department of Homeland Security and the Directorate of National Intelligence are also included in the process.  The Act calls for the President to report to specified congressional committees by June 1 of each year on those “foreign persons [he] determines are appropriate for sanctions” and stating his intent to impose sanctions upon those Significant Foreign Narcotics Traffickers pursuant to the Act.  While previous Presidential determinations have been tied to the statutory June 1 timetable, the President may also identify Significant Foreign Narcotics Traffickers at any other time pursuant to the Act.

Under the Kingpin Act, the President may identify foreign entities as well as foreign individuals as Significant Foreign Narcotics Traffickers, or “kingpins”: a foreign person is defined in the Act as “any citizen or national of a foreign state or any entity not organized under the laws of the United States, but does not include a foreign state.”  Likewise, the President is not required to designate Colombian persons exclusively under Executive Order 12978, and may impose sanctions on a Colombian individual or entity under the Kingpin Act, which is intended to be global in scope.

The long-term effectiveness of the Kingpin Act is enhanced by the Department of the Treasury’s authority (in consultation with appropriate government agencies and departments) under the Act to make derivative designations of foreign individuals and entities that provide specified types of support or assistance to designated traffickers, or that are owned or controlled by such traffickers, or that act on their behalf.  This authority broadens the scope of application of the economic sanctions against kingpins to include their businesses and operatives.  Including this year’s action, the President has named a total of 78 Significant Foreign Narcotics Traffickers since the first set of kingpins was announced on June 1, 2000.  The Department of the Treasury’s OFAC has issued a total of 496 derivative designations pursuant to its authorities under the Kingpin Act; these entities and individuals are subject to the same sanctions that apply to kingpins.

Individuals who violate the Kingpin Act are subject to criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison and/or fines pursuant to Title 18 of the U.S. Code.  Entities that violate the Act face criminal penalties in the form of fines up to $10 million; officers, directors, or agents of an entity who knowingly participate in a violation of the Kingpin Act are subject to criminal penalties of up to 30 years in imprison and/or a $5 million fine.  The Kingpin Act also provides for civil penalties of up to $1.075 million against individuals or entities that violate its provisions.

So, most of us know about some king-pins….El Chapo was a king-pin…then there are the cartels that are making billions per month not only trafficking narcotics but people across our southern border.
It all begins in China and the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party. There are other countries for sure inside the supply chain map that include India, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and more…the Chinese mafia is well connected to the Mexican mafia, hence the Mexican drug cartels.
The Sinaloa cartel has a sizeable network in China for narcotics including fentanyl but also for money laundering. Then in balance, China has a large network in Mexico. There are a couple of standout names of which you can research on your own but they include:
14K
Zheng Cartel
Broken Tooth
Tse Chi Lop’s Sam Gor Syndicate
Big Circle Boys
In closing but not the end of the story, the U.S. Treasury has a 33 page list of ‘sanctions pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics KingPin Designation Act. Sanctions dont work so well …..do they?