UNESCO Denies Jerusalem Israel History in Vote

Posted on October 26, 2016October 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

Jerusalem (AFP)- Israel recalled its ambassador to UNESCO for consultations Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced, after a second resolution accused of denying the Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN body, Carmel Shama Hacohen, told public radio that “we are studying the possibility of breaking all contact with UNESCO”.

Despite what an Israeli official called long efforts to get the resolution amended or dropped, the heritage committee, made up of 21 member states, adopted the text proposed by Kuwait, Lebanon and Tunisia.

The resolution refers throughout to the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif religious complex, without using the Israeli name “Temple Mount,” according a copy seen by AFP.

The 14-hectare (35-acre) rectangular esplanade at the southeastern corner of the Old City is the third holiest site in Islam and the most holy in Judaism. More here.

Related reading: The First Temple – Solomon’s Temple

UNESCO approves new controversial resolution on Jerusalem

PARIS (AP)— The U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO condemned as “inflammatory” a resolution approved Wednesday by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee on the status of conservation of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls — a document that Israel says denies Judaism’s deep ties to the holy site Temple Mount.

In Wednesday’s secret ballot, the international body agreed to retain the site on the list of endangered world heritage and criticized Israel for its continuous refusal to let the body’s experts access Jerusalem’s holy sites to determine their conservation status. The document refers to the Jerusalem site that Jews called Temple Mount only by its Arab name — a significant semantic decision also adopted by UNESCO’s Executive Board last week that triggered condemnation from Israel and its allies.

“This item should have been defeated … These politicized and one-sided resolutions are damaging the credibility of UNESCO,” U.S. Ambassador Crystal Nix Hines said in a statement to The Associated Press. “These resolutions are continuously one-sided and inflammatory.”

The resolution was passed by the World Heritage Committee’s 21 member countries. Ten countries voted for, two against, 8 abstained and one was absent. Neither Israel, the U.S. nor Palestine is on the World Heritage Committee.

Israel suspended ties with UNESCO earlier this month over a similar resolution.

Elias Sanbar, the Palestinian ambassador to UNESCO, fired back at those upset with the resolution, which was sponsored by his delegation.

“What Israel wants, in fact, is to put politics in religion. This is the most dangerous thing that is happening now in UNESCO,” Sanbar told the AP. “They are politicizing religion and this is very dangerous.”

The resolution is the latest of several measures at UNESCO over decades that Israelis see as evidence of ingrained anti-Israel bias within the United Nations, where Israel and its allies are far outnumbered by Arab countries and their supporters.

The site in Jerusalem has been on UNESCO’s endangered list since 1982.

UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list is known throughout the world for its work in highlighting sites of historic and cultural significance, and endangered global heritage.

Related reading: US lawmakers urge UNESCO panel to reject text erasing Jewish ties to Temple Mount

Senators, Congressmen call on World Heritage Committee to vote against ‘yet another attempt to rewrite history’

****

It’s time to disband UNESCO

Rubin/AEI: On October 13, 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a body charged with protecting and defending culture and cultural heritage, voted on a resolution denying Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. The good news, as UN Watch noted, is that the resolution passed with only a plurality 17 countries abstaining. Normally, anti-Israel resolutions pass with overwhelming majorities.

Still, the resolution is itself so toxic that it delegitimizes UNESCO and raises questions about its continued existence. In effect, UNESCO has become so polluted by political hate, that it has embraced a resolution that advances a counterfactual narrative completely at odds with the archaeological, cultural, and historical record. It is one thing to criticize Israel and Israeli politics, but it’s quite another to suggest that there is neither Jewish history nor legitimate ties to Jerusalem. That’s akin to saying Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was never a church or that Cordoba cathedral was never a mosque. In effect, rather than advance cultural preservation, UNESCO is laying the ground work for ethnic and sectarian cleansing.

Among the countries voting for the UNESCO resolution were China, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, and Mexico. In effect, they demonstrate how easy it is to abet hatred and anti-Semitism so long as the money coming from Arab states and Iran is right. Again, diplomatic opposition to Israeli policies is no excuse, as UNESCO is supposed to be a cultural institution. The abstainers, however —among them France, India, Argentina, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, Greece, and Italy — really are no better. After all, at issue is a clear matter of historical fact. Only six countries — the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia — opposed the resolution.

Organizations form for good reasons. Few foresaw how the UN Human Rights Commission (later the UN Human Rights Council) would transform itself into a body to launder and excuse the worst human rights violations. When the UN founded the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the organization genuinely hoped they could resettle Palestinian refugees in Arab countries within a few years and disband; its founders never would have believed UNRWA would become a mechanism to launder money for terrorists and hide their weaponry. UNESCO is simply the latest organization that has outlived its utility and now threatens more harm than good. The UN General Assembly and Security Council are valuable as places for countries to meet and discuss common problems, but outgoing UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been far more interested in traveling and grandstanding than repairing the internal rot that infuses the organization over which he presides.

Already, some UN diplomats are scrambling to paper over the UNESCO resolution and, feeding from the trough of bloated UN salaries, why shouldn’t they? But sometimes, when gangrene sets in, the best recourse is amputation. It’s time to let UNESCO fade into the dustbin of history and allow a new organization — perhaps one less beholden to politics and therefore outside the formal mechanisms of the UN — assume the responsibility to protect cultural heritage.

Justice Department’s Bank Terrorism Funding Radical Orgs/Activism

Posted on October 26, 2016October 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

Congress held hearings, defunded several of these programs, but Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch found innovative methods to continue the funding by financial terrorism and extortion. This is all without the oversight of Congress and mostly in legal secrecy.

In part from the report by the Government Accountability Institute:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith took a very direct approach

in his January 25, 2012 correspondence addressed to Eric Holder. He stated:

I am concerned that the terms of the Justice Department’s recent settlement

with Countrywide Financial Corporation and certain affiliates (collectively,

“Countrywide”) will allow the Department to give large sums of money to

individuals and organizations with questionable backgrounds or close

political ties to the White House without any guidelines or oversight. If that is

to be the case, this sort of backdoor funding of the president’s political allies

would be an abuse of the Department’s law enforcement authority.85

He was specifically addressing a December 28, 2011 DOJ settlement with Countrywide,

which required that Countrywide deposit $335 million into an interest-bearing escrow

account to remedy alleged violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Fair Housing

Act.86

****

The Rise and Fall of ACORN

Saul Alinsky’s influence is undeniable. Since the publication of Reveille for Radicals

in 1946 and Rules for Radicals in 1971, grassroots organizations have been launched for the

purpose of community organizing and systemic social/political change.91 As the movement

grew, organizers created several national support organizations including the Industrial

Areas Foundation (IAF) which was founded by Alinsky. Other organizations that grew out

of the Alinsky philosophies included NACA, and ACORN. One of the first was The National

Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), an activist organization founded in 1966, focused on

welfare rights.92 Both John Calkins, founder of The Direct Action and Research Training

Center (DART) and Wade Rathke founder of ACORN worked with the NWRO.93 Other

groups that appeared on the community organizing scene who modeled Alinsky’s style of

activism were groups like DART, National People’s Action (NPA) and La Raza.

One of the chief beneficiaries of this wealth redistribution by the federal

government has been ACORN. In its July 2006 report, “Rotten ACORN, America’s Bad Seed,”

the Employment Policies Institute described ACORN as a “multi-million-dollar

multinational conglomerate.”94 The report described ACORN’s hunger and pursuit of

political power:

ACORN’s no-holds-barred take on politics originates from its philosophy,

which is centered on power. An internal ACORN manual instructed

organizers to sign up as many residents as possible because “this is a mass

organization directed at political power where might makes right.”95

This sentiment aligns with the Marxist underpinnings of the Students for a

Democratic Society, a group that housed Rathke. ACORN enjoyed rapid growth facilitated

through government grants and contracts before, during, and after the 2008 election.

Handwritten notes obtained from an FBI investigative file by Judicial Watch through a FOIA

request indicate ACORN’s headquarters was working for the Democratic Party.96 During

and after the 2008 election there were numerous allegations of massive fraud on the part

of ACORN.97 In 2009, several major scandals involving ACORN and its affiliated groups

broke into the national news. These included rampant embezzlement, fraud, and evidence

that ACORN and their affiliated groups were advising individuals how to break the law.98

A July 23, 2009 Staff Report for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on

Oversight and Government Reform in its title asked, “Is ACORN Intentionally Structured as

a Criminal Enterprise?” Then offers the following findings in its executive summary:

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has

repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systemic fraud. Both structurally and

operationally, ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections

to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal

money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the

American electorate.

Emerging accounts of widespread deceit and corruption raise the need for a

criminal investigation of ACORN. By intentionally blurring the legal distinctions

between 361 tax-exempt and non-exempt entities, ACORN diverts taxpayer and taxexempt

monies into partisan political activities. Since 1994, more than $53 million

in federal funds have been pumped into ACORN, and under the Obama

administration, ACORN stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in available

stimulus funds.

Operationally, ACORN is a shell game played in 120 cities, 43 states and the District

of Columbia through a complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities, to use

taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to distract

investigators. Structurally, ACORN is a chess game in which senior management is

shielded from accountability by multiple layers of volunteers and compensated

employees who serve as pawns to take the fall for every bad act.99

One of the events described in the report was the cover-up of the embezzlement of

$948,607.50 by Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke.100 These and

other events led to a ban on all federal funding for ACORN affiliated groups in 2009.101

Fox News reported that the former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his

top aides renamed New York ACORN to New York Communities for Change (NYCC), used

the same office and stationary as New York ACORN and employed many of the same staff as

previously employed by New York ACORN.106 In 2013, Fox News and several other news

outlets reported that contracts for services known as Navigator grants under Obamacare

were awarded to former associates of ACORN and its affiliated organizations. Wade Rathke

had announced in September 2013 that The United Labor Unions Council Local 100, a New

Orleans-based nonprofit, would take part in a multi-state “navigator” drive to help people

enroll in Obamacare.107

****

In the most recent consent orders from Bank of America, Citigroup and

JPMorgan settlements offered credit for giving to nonprofits. These not only require banks

to make donations to nonprofits but incentivize them to give more than the required

amount. The evolution of these consent orders illustrates the growing effort by the current

administration to funnel money to these nonprofit groups.

The DOJ limited distributions to “HUD approved housing counseling agencies,” such

as the groups set to receive mandatory minimum payments under the Citigroup and Bank

of America settlements, and incentivized payments under many of these settlements. These

organizations had been preapproved by prior administrations. These included La Raza,

Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) and part of the old ACORN

network who in the wake of the scandal and congressional prohibition against further

funding restyled itself as the Mutual Housing Association of New York (MHANY). The HUD

website lists MHANY’s contact as Ismene Speliotis. Speliotis previously served as the New

York director of ACORN Housing. Furthermore, an examination of tax returns for the

nonprofit reveals that MHANY Management, Inc. maintained the EIN (72-1303737)

previously used by New York ACORN Housing Company, Inc. Between the 2007 and 2008

tax filings, only the group’s name had changed.147 This corporate entity was merely New

York ACORN Housing Company, Inc. rebranded with a new name and clothed in a new

“moral garment.” Despite the prohibition on ACORN funding from Congress, New York

ACORN Housing Company, Inc. had sidestepped congressional intent by simply changing its

name.

****

In September 2012, FHC hosted its annual conference in Orlando. The keynote

speaker for day two: Judith Browne Dianis,198 longtime liberal activist, attorney, and

scholar.199 In its 2012 post-election newsletter, FHC published Browne Dianis’s editorial on

that election.200 She did not mention the word “housing” once. Instead, she denounced what

she termed “the greatest rollback on voting rights in more than a century.” This was her

terminology for the “partisan” voter ID laws passed that year, and the subject of so much

litigation. Furthermore, as its website clearly shows, Browne Dianis’s Advancement Project

was in the thick of this litigation.201 In her FHC editorial, she condemned those laws at

length, and called for Election Day to be made a national holiday, and a “next generation

voting-rights movement.”202 She denounced other practices that she claimed amount to

voter suppression. She quoted the recently re-elected Barack Obama on these same issues.

So who was she and how did she find her way to the editorial page of the FHC

newsletter and the keynote speaker slot at the FHC convention? Advancement Project’s tax

return for 2012 lists a grant of $25,000203 to a 501(c)(4) advocacy group known as Florida

New Majority.204 The grant was designated as “Voter Protection Program” – amounting to

nearly one-tenth of the approximately $280,000.00 in grants given out by Browne-Dianis’s

nonprofit, the Advancement Project, for such purposes that year.205 Interestingly, the

Florida New Majority’s 990 for 2012 says nothing about protecting voters, but includes

nearly half-a-million dollars to “reach and mobilize voters during the 2012 elections with

the objective of promoting progressive federal and state legislators…” (emphasis added)206

****

Asian Americans for Equality: Margaret Chin and John Choe

Margaret Chin cut her political teeth as a student activist in the Communist Workers

Party (CWP) while attending the City College in the 1970s. It was Chin who stood before

the cameras and condemned the killing of five of her party members in Greensboro, North

Carolina where the CWP had sponsored a “Death to the Klan” rally which led to an armed

confrontation with the Klan.221 The “Communist” moniker would not serve them well in

their efforts to influence politics in New York City, but a solution was forthcoming. In 1974,

protests erupted in Manhattan’s Chinatown and Asian Americans for Equal Employment

was formed to fight discriminatory hiring practices on a federally-financed construction

project. A “stunning civil rights victory” ultimately led to the founding of Asian Americans

for Equality (AAFE) and a continued focus on “civil liberties” issues.222 Chin, a founding

member of AAFE223 and other members of the CWP, found great success in identifying an

issue important to the community and wrapping themselves in it. We know this because of

the overlap of individuals involved the CWP and AAFE. Many of the founders of AAFE were

also active with the CWP. AAFE shared an address and phone number with the CWP for

several years. It seemed that CWP veterans regularly ended up as AAFE officers. Chin

served as President of AAFE from 1982 to 1986 and was associated with AAFE until 2008

when she began efforts to run for the city council. Her work at AAFE served as a launching

pad into New York politics and in 1986 and with the help of the progressive liberal group,

the Village Independent Democrats, she was elected to the Democratic State Committee

were she served two terms. The AAFE afforded Chin the kind of resources and respectable

platform from which she could chase her political aspirations.224

In 2009, AAFE announced it had joined the NeighborWorks America charter.225 With

this came the “seal of approval” from HUD and federal funding. NeighborWorks funding also

increased—from just over $250,000 in 2008, the year before the announcement, to over

$700,000 in 2013 alone. In total, since 2008, AAFE has received over $4 million in grants from

NeighborWorks.226 Some have not only lamented, but have charged that the AAFE has left

its activist routes to become no more than a “housing developer.” As the New York Times

described it:

Down from the ramparts, fists unclenched, their protest signs long ago set aside,

Asian Americans for Equality — leaders among a cadre of community groups that

brought thousands of demonstrators into the streets of Chinatown and to the steps

of City Hall in the mid-1970’s — is now a major landlord and residential developer.

That same article published the following criticisms:

“I think AAFE has aligned itself with business interests and political interests at the

expense of Chinatown’s residential and low-wage workers,” said Margaret Fung,

executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. ”They

want to acquire properties or city-owned buildings so that they can be the

developers, instead of some other group. They favor themselves.”

****

A Rising New Star

In January 1993, an article in Chicago Magazine described how “a huge black turnout

in November 1992 altered Chicago’s electoral landscape-and raised new political

star.”243 Leading up to the election George Bush had been making gains on Bill Clinton in

Illinois. Carol Moseley Braun who had previously been seen as “unstoppable” was on the

ropes amidst allegations regarding her mother’s Medicare liability. Even so, she was able to

win her seat and Bill Clinton won the state. The article attributed their success to “…the

most effective minority voter registration drive in memory…” which was the result of the

efforts of Project Vote. At the helm of Project Vote was a young lawyer named Barack

Obama.

Sandy Newman, a lawyer and civil rights activist who founded Project Vote

explained the work of the nonprofit organization in the election as follows:

Project Vote! is nonpartisan, strictly nonpartisan. But we do focus our efforts on

minority voters, and on states where we can explain to them why their vote will

matter. Braun made that easier in Illinois. (emphasis added)

Project Vote’s work in voter registration was hailed as the reason Braun was elected

drawing a direct correlation with voter registration activities and election outcomes.

Indeed, in another portion of the article the writer contrasts the old way of doing things

and the new paradigm created by Mr. Obama’s efforts through the nonprofit:

To understand the full implications of Obama’s effort, you first need to understand

how voter registration often has worked in Chicago. The Regular Democratic Party

spearheaded most drives, doing so using one primary motivator: money. The party

would offer bounties to registrars for every new voter they signed up (typically a

dollar per registration). The campaigns did produce new voters. “But bounty

systems don’t really promote participation,” says David Orr, the Cook County

clerk….

The article suggests that the old political engine previously supplied by the “Regular

Democratic Party” had now been replaced by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and its leader, Barack

Obama.244

****

Billionaire George Soros founded data utility company, Catalist, to mobilize liberal

voters through nonprofits. Catalist provides the advanced data analysis necessary for

micro-targeting and is building a base of voters and contributors for the exclusive use of

progressive left-leaning groups. Its compatriot is an organization called Nonprofit VOTE

whose goals include providing “high quality resources for nonprofits and social service

agencies to promote voter participation and engage with candidates on a nonpartisan

basis.”247 Their website mentions that Nonprofit VOTE is a nonpartisan organization, and

they acknowledge the demographics of the voters that nonprofits are most likely to reach

are “young, low-income, and diverse populations.”248 Studies have shown that this

demographic is most likely to vote Democrat. As the Wyss memorandum points out these

populations “tend to be reliably progressive on economic […] issues.”249

In 2012 and 2014 Nonprofit VOTE ran pilot projects to increase voter turnout

through nonprofits. The project report acknowledged the help of Catalist, LLC, an

organization that “works with and for data-driven progressive organizations to help them

effect change: issue advocates, labor organizers, pollsters, analysts, consultants, campaigns,

and more.”

The two stated goals of the project were to:

• “For nonprofits already doing voter engagement and those considering it, the goal

of Track the Vote program was to provide tangible data to assess the impact of

nonprofits on increasing voter participation—using that data to ground their work

in outcomes and make the case for voter engagement as an ongoing priority.”

Read the full report here.

How is This not a War Crime in Syria Due to Russia and Assad?

Posted on October 26, 2016October 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

Both John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov know what Russia is doing in Aleppo is a war crime.

Reuters: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry voiced concern to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday about renewed fighting and air strikes in the Syrian city of Aleppo after a break of several days, the State Department said.

Lavrov and Kerry discussed the situation in Syria in a phone call and agreed that experts from several countries meeting in Geneva would continue searching for ways to resolve the Aleppo crisis, the State Department and Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.

Lavrov told Kerry the United States must fulfil its obligation to separate moderate opposition groups from “terrorists” in Syria, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. More here.

Leaflets dropped in Aleppo: “If you don’t evacuate you will be eliminated. Everyone has abandoned you, no one will help you”

**** Hezbollah to stay in Syria until ‘apostate project’ defeated

BEIRUT (AP) — Fighting returned to Syria’s Aleppo Sunday after a cease-fire to allow rebels and civilians to leave the city’s besieged eastern districts expired with no evacuations.

As rebels and pro-government forces battled in the contested city’s southern countryside, a pro-opposition media outlet circulated footage of a powerful and hard-line Islamist rebel coalition announcing that the campaign to break the government’s siege of the city’s east would begin “within hours.”

Jaish al-Fatah commander Ali Abu Adi al-Aloush told the Qasioun News Agency that “zero hour has drawn near,” and that militants and kamikaze fighters had begun moving toward Aleppo. It was unclear when the interview was recorded.

A second northern Syrian rebel coalition meanwhile warned civilians in Aleppo to stay away from government positions around the contested city.

Meanwhile in Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah cast the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar Assad as a facade designed to weaken Iran’s regional access and make “changes to the map”, vowing to stay in the country until it could “defeat the apostate project.”

Nasrallah in a speech Sunday afternoon said the Syrian rebellion is “not about the fall of the regime, but about targeting the axis of resistance,” a reference to the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance. Assad has long provided a corridor for Iranian weapons shipments to the Lebanese militant group which grew out of the resistance to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon’s south between 1982 and 2000. Thousands of Hezbollah fighters are on the ground in Syria in defense of Assad’s government and senior commanders in Iran’s powerful Republican Guard are in advisory positions.

Government artillery shelled the strategically important village of Khan Touman, which overlooks the highway connecting Aleppo and government-held cities in the center of the country, the activist-run Shahba Press reported Sunday. Rebels led by al-Qaida-linked militants took the town from government forces in a surprising advance last May, dealing a setback to the joint Russian-Syrian campaign to expel rebels from Aleppo.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported incremental advances for pro-government forces against al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front militants in the city’s southern countryside.

Al-Manar TV, run by Hezbollah, broadcast footage of tanks and fighters advancing under heavy fire along a ridge reportedly in the Aleppo countryside.

A spokesman for the Nour el-Din al-Zinki rebel faction in Aleppo said an operation to break the government’s siege of the rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo was “coming.”

Yasser al-Yousef clarified rebels would not target civilians in Aleppo’s government-held districts, but warned of collateral damage from the anticipated operations.

The escalations follow the conclusion of a three-day cease-fire arranged by the Russian and Syrian military commands to allow rebels and civilians to leave eastern Aleppo. No evacuations were seen during the period.

The fighting around Aleppo ran in parallel with renewed clashes further away from the city between Turkish-backed opposition forces and Syrian Kurdish forces over territory formerly held by the Islamic State group. The activist-run Aleppo Media Center said Turkish forces struck over 50 Kurdish positions on Sunday alone. The U.S. has backed both the Turkish-backed forces and the Syrian Kurdish forces in the area, though it has clarified that it does not support the Syrian Kurdish forces that have come under Turkish attack in the Aleppo countryside.

The Turkish military intervened in the Syrian war in August this year under orders from Ankara to clear the border area of Islamic State fighters and U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces linked to Turkey’s own outlawed Kurdish insurgency. The Turkish government considers both to be terrorist groups.

To the country’s south, a 24-truck convoy arrived at the formerly besieged town of Moadamiyeh, in the suburbs of Damascus, to deliver food, winter clothes, lamps, and medical supplies.

The convoy was the first to reach Moadamiyeh since a deal was made to restore the government’s authority over the former bastion of rebel strength and support. The government recently granted safe passage out to some 2,000 rebels and civilians.

Local resident Mahmoud, who did not give his name out of security concerns, said the materials would be distributed Monday.

He said locals have been able to move freely in and out of Moadamiyeh for the first time in years and that the prices of goods were cheaper in areas that were under government control.

The Letter to James Comey, Director of the FBI

Posted on October 25, 2016October 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

October 25, 2016

A Retired FBI Agent Addresses James Comey on the Hillary Clinton Investigation

By Hugh Galyen

Mr. James Comey, Director

Federal Bureau of Investigation

J. Edgar Hoover Building

935 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W

Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

Sir,

I am writing regarding your public statement in July, 2016 informing the American people that the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton was being closed without referring it to a Federal Grand Jury or the Attorney General of the U. S. for a decision whether or not to indict her. Strangely, you eloquently laid out enough of the evidence deduced from the investigation to strongly indicate there was abundant evidence uncovered during the investigation and interview of her to not only indict but to convict her in Federal Court. However, you personally re-worded and soft-pedaled the actions she took as Secretary of State describing her actions as “extremely careless” in using a personal email and un-secured server for her communications while Secretary of State. You rewrote the statute, which is not your job.

As a retired Special Agent of the FBI, I have standing to write this letter. My thirty years in law enforcement, including 22 years as a Special Agent with the FBI have given me the knowledge, expertise and experience to question and confront you for your perplexing actions, which (as you well know) were outside the normal standard operating procedure of the FBI and Federal judicial procedures. Some of the finest people in the world proudly carry the credentials of FBI Agent and you have soiled them and not allowed them to speak. But I will not be silent.

Sorry, but NO SIR, MS Clinton was not merely careless or extremely careless. She was not even negligent or grossly negligent (as the statute requires). Hillary Clinton was knowingly purposeful in her decisions and actions to set up a server under her exclusive control and possession in order to control what information was available to the American public and Congress regarding her actions as Secretary of State. Furthermore, she took those government owned communications into her personal possession after leaving her position and knowingly and willingly attempted to destroy them so her nefarious actions could never be known or used as evidence of her corrupt moral character against her.

Sir, what possessed you? Did you cave in to political pressure to unilaterally come to this decision? I fear that is the case, and Rule of Law be damned. I am embarrassed for and ashamed of you. You have set a precedent that can never be rectified… and certainly not justified. Shame on you, Sir. You ought to resign right now in disgrace for what you have done to tarnish the reputation of the finest Law Enforcement Agency in the world… for entirely political reasons.

Normally, an investigation will be assigned to an agent, or team of agents with one being the Case agent, or the lead investigator. When the investigation is complete, an investigative report will be presented to the U.S. Attorney for the Federal District involved. It would be the U.S. Attorney who decides whether to decline prosecution for that investigation… NOT the FBI agent. But in the Clinton investigation, YOU (unilaterally) decided not to forward the investigation to the U.S. Attorney or the Attorney General of the U.S., but instead personally made the decision not to prosecute her or even provide the information to a Federal Grand Jury. You were wrong to take this upon yourself.

Sir, in order to indict a subject, only a preponderance of evidence, or 51% is needed for probable cause to exist. You did not think even that level of probability existed? Who do you think you are fooling? What judicial proceeding did you think you were following?

Throughout my years with the FBI, I (along with my fellow agents) took great pride in conducting each investigation in an unbiased manner regardless of the subject’s position or standing in the community.

All were treated equally under the law. But you, Sir, decided to allow this corrupt, evil and nasty human being to go free and unchallenged for her treasonous actions (yes, treasonous, in my opinion) which threatened the security of this nation. Furthermore, you stopped short of investigating the Clinton Foundation as a RICO case (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization. This is a RICO case if

there ever were one. Even an untrained person can tell from the communications which were recovered that Hillary Clinton spent more time working for the Clinton Foundation while Secretary of State than on State Business. It may be argued that Hillary did not do any State business UNLESS the Clinton Foundation benefitted. You decided to just let this uncomfortable truth alone without addressing it.

I will conclude with this: Following my retirement from the FBI, I volunteered for a 12 month tour of duty in Afghanistan as a Law Enforcement Professional, embedded with U.S. forces as a subject matter expert in counter-terrorism investigations. For most of that year I operated “outside the wire” patrolling with the troops, interviewing witnesses to IED incidents and gathering evidence on the bad guys. The results of my work would then be reported through secure channels to the Commanding Officer. All reports and communications were required to be transmitted via secure and encrypted devices. Occasionally my remote location in the mountains of Afghanistan made transmission impossible and I would have to fly back to Bagram Air Base in order to securely report to the Commander of the battle space. It would have been convenient if I could have just called the Commander on my personal cell phone or written him an email on my personal laptop. But, had I done so I would have been reporting classified information via an unsecured device and it could have been compromised. These were, relative to Secretary of State communications, low level classifications of Secret. Had I ever sent even one in such a manner I would have been prosecuted and sent to Federal Prison for 20 years or so. That is how serious this violation is considered.

Now, because of you, Hillary Clinton is allowed to continue her RICO activities and is running for President of the United States, the most powerful position in the world. You have trampled on the Rule of Law and destroyed the trust of the American people in the FBI and in unbiased enforcement of the law. How do you sleep at night? It is time for you to go and work for the Clinton Foundation.

Sincerely,

Hugh W. Galyean

(FBI Agent, Retired)

Hat tip to Mr. Galyean and American Thinker

POTUS Lied about Knowing of the Private Hillary Email Server

Posted on October 25, 2016October 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

…and Cheryl Mills knew Obama lied…

Politico: A top Hillary Clinton aide expressed alarm in early 2015 that President Barack Obama claimed he was unaware of Clinton’s private email server until he learned about it in the news.

“We need to clean this up – he has emails from her – they do not say state.gov,” said Clinton adviser Cheryl Mills in a hacked email posted Tuesday on WikiLeaks.

As the scandal over Clinton’s use of a private email server was still emerging in March 2015, Obama told CBS News that he learned about the arrangement through the media. “The same time everybody else learned it through news reports,” Obama told CBS News’ Bill Plante.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest later clarified that while the president knew about Clinton’s email address, he “was not aware of the details of how that email address and that server had been set up.”

Clinton’s campaign declined to confirm the authenticity of the emails. White House spokesman Eric Schultz pointed to Earnest’s comments from March when asked for comment about the email exchange.

In part from FreeBeacon:

The email came less than a week after the New York Times broke the story on Clinton’s use of a private email address to conduct official State Department business.

Subsequent interviews by the FBI in the course of its probe into Clinton’s email practices revealed that Obama had emailed Clinton at her personal address using a pseudonym.

Two days after Mills’ email, White House press secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged that Obama had emailed Clinton at her personal address, but said that was consistent with his public remarks.

“The point that the president was making is not that he didn’t know Secretary Clinton’s email address, he did,” Earnest said. “But he was not aware of the details of how that email address and that server had been set up or how Secretary Clinton and her team were planning to comply with the Federal Records Act.”

However, the wording of the question to Obama appears to contradict that explanation.

Though personal email accounts can be hosted by virtually every major email provider—services such as Gmail and Yahoo—Obama was asked specifically about Clinton’s use of an email system “outside the U.S. government,” which would include not just a private email server but an account hosted by anyone other than the State Department.

Mills’ email was one of thousands released by the group Wikileaks after hackers believed to be acting in concert with the Russian government breached Podesta’s personal email account.

Additional hacked emails show Clinton confidantes worried about the fallout from the Times story, including one who suggested that Clinton and other aides using her private email system knew what they were doing could land them in hot water.

“Why didn’t they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy,” wrote Center for American Progress president and informal Clinton adviser Neera Tanden in an email to Podesta on the day the Times story broke.

“I guess I know the answer,” she wrote in a follow-up. “They wanted to get away with it.”

Podesta appeared to acknowledge that Mills and Clinton aides David Kendall and Phillip Reines had been misleading about their roles in about the email controversy.

“Speaking of transparency, our friends Kendall, Cheryl and Phillipe sure weren’t forthcoming on the facts here,” he wrote to Tanden.

Reines was later denied an official role on the Clinton campaign after a long email diatribe in response to Washington Free Beacon inquiries into his and Clinton’s email practices.

**** What may have been was exponentially worse: