Teach Younger Voters Hillary’s History

Posted on May 11, 2016May 11, 2016 by Denise Simon

This will not be in any chronological order:

Paula Jones lawsuit

ChinaGate

TrooperGate

Mena Airport Drug Scandal

Rose Law Firm

WhiteWater and Savings and Loan

Hillary’s Radical Summer, Black Panthers

Hillary’s College Thesis, Saul Alinsky

White House TravelGate

Vince Foster is Dead

HillaryCare

Bill, Jeffrey, Planes and Sin Island

Yes, Bill was Impeached

Clinton did Steal White House Stuff

Clinton Showdown with FBI Liaison

Bill Clinton let bin Ladin Go

Bill Ordered Sandy to Stuff the Documents in his Pants

Need more? Okay, one more?

They Stole all the ‘W’s…. lots of damage

Whitewater: Twelve Versions of Hillary Clinton Draft Indictment, 451 Pages, Withheld By National Archives

JudicialWatch: New details continue to emerge from Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act fight with the National Archives over the release of draft indictments of Hillary Clinton in the Whitewater case. According to the Archives, release of the indictments—drafted by an independent counsel examining the Clintons’ relationship to a corrupt Arkansas S&L and an alleged cover-up—would violate grand jury secrecy and Mrs. Clinton’s personal privacy. FOIA request denied.

Judicial Watch declined to take “no” for an answer, and so off to court we went. The case is now in the hands of a federal judge.

In the course of litigation, new facts have come to light. Under FOIA, the Archives must produce a “Vaughn Index”—a tantalizing and at times maddening document. A Vaughn Index is the government saying: we are not giving you the documents, but here is an “index” of what we are not giving you, and why we are not giving it to you. Your tax dollars at work.

In the National Archives Vaughn Index for the case, we learn that the government is sitting on at least twelve versions of the the draft indictment of Mrs. Clinton, including one “listing overt acts.” From the public record, we know that the Whitewater case centered around whether Mrs. Clinton, while First Lady, lied to federal investigators about her role in the corrupt Arkansas S&L, concealed documents (including material under federal subpoena), and took other steps to cover-up her involvment. Prosecutors ultimately decided not to indict Mrs. Clinton, concluding that they could not win the complicated, largely circumstantial case against such a high-profile figure.

The draft indictments range from three to forty pages—the former likely excerpts or “scraps” from longer documents, the Vaughn Index indicates. Some of the drafts doubtless are copies but many clearly are not. A total of 451 pages of draft indictments are being withheld by the Archives.

In its final brief in the case, Judicial Watch took a wrecking ball to the Archives’ grand jury secrecy and personal privacy claims. Judicial Watch noted “the truly enormous quantities of grand jury material already made public” in the independent counsel’s final report. Judicial Watch provided the court with a detailed list of grand jury and non-grand jury material that had already been made public. If there ever was a valid claim to grand jury secrecy in this closely scrutinized case, it is long gone.

The Judicial Watch brief noted that the Archives “fails to identify a single, specific privacy interest Mrs. Clinton still has in the draft indictments” following publication of the independent counsel’s report and “hundreds of pages of grand jury materials, non-grand jury materials, and independent counsel legal theories and analysis that are already in the public domain.”

A typical FOIA privacy claim centers on unwarranted invasions of personal privacy. But in Mrs. Clinton’s case, the brief noted, the Archives “makes no claims that disclosure of the draft indictments will reveal any particular personal, medical or financial information about Mrs. Clinton, much less anything intimate or potentially embarrassing.”

Mrs. Clinton of course is one of the most famous women in the world, a former First Lady, senator and secretary of state, and the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president of the United States. The findings of an investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton told the truth to federal investigators and withheld evidence under subpoena while she was First Lady is clearly matter of public interest as voters weigh her suitability for the highest office in the land.

Clinton Cash, Coming to a Theater Near You

Posted on May 10, 2016May 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

‘Clinton Cash’ doc set to stir up controversy as it debuts at Cannes

MSNBC: CANNES, France — A massive police force will be guarding the Cannes Film Festival this year. But the only scuffle on the horizon may come in response to the right-wing producers of a devastating new documentary about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s alleged influence peddling and favor-trading. That film, “Clinton Cash,” screens here May 16 and opens in the U.S. on July 24 — just before the Democratic National Convention.

The allegations are as brazen as they are controversial: What other film at Cannes would come up with a plot that involves Russian President Vladimir Putin wrangling a deal with the alleged help of both Clintons, a Canadian billionaire, Kazakhstan mining officials and the Russian atomic energy agency — all of which resulted in Putin gaining control of 20 percent of all the uranium in the U.S.?

MSNBC got an exclusive first look at “Clinton Cash,” the flashy, hour-long film version of conservative author Peter Schweizer’s surprise 2015 bestseller, which The New York Times called the “the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle.” The Washington Post said that ”on any fair reading, the pattern of behavior that Schweizer has charged is corruption.” Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta denounced the book as a bunch of “outlandish claims” with “zero evidence.”

The film portrays the Clintons as a greedy tag team who used the family’s controversial Clinton Foundation and her position as secretary of state to help billionaires make shady deals around the world with corrupt dictators, all while enriching themselves to the tune of millions.

The movie alleges that Bill Clinton cut a wide swathe through some of the most impoverished and corrupt areas of the world — the South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, India and Haiti among others — riding in on private jets with billionaires who called themselves philanthropists but were actually bent on plundering the countries and lining their own pockets.

In return, billionaire pals like Frank Giustra and Gilbert Chagoury, or high-tech companies like Swedish telecom giant Ericsson or Indian nuclear energy officials — to name just a few mentioned in the film — hired Clinton to speak at often $750,000 a pop, according to “Clinton Cash.” When a favor was needed at the higher levels of the Obama administration to facilitate some of the deals, Hillary Clinton was only willing to sign off on them, the movie reports.

As a film, it powerfully connects the dots — whether you believe them or not — in a narrative that lacks the wonkiness of the book, which bore a full title of “The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.”

It packs the kind of Trump-esque mainstream punch that may have the presumptive GOP nominee salivating. He recently declared, “We’ll whip out that book because that book will become very pertinent.”

The hour-long documentary is intercut with “Homeland”-style clips of the Clintons juxtaposed against shots of blood-drenched money, radical madrassas, villainous dictators and private jets, all set to sinister music.

Produced by Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, with Schweizer as the film’s talking head, the documentary might be easy to dismiss as just another example of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” the former secretary of state referenced so many years ago.

But what complicates matters for Hillary Clinton’s campaign is that the book resulted in a series of investigations last year into Schweizer’s allegations by mainstream media organizations from The New York Times and CNN to The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, many of which did not dispute his findings — and in some cases gathered more material that the producers used in the film. More recently, some information uncovered in the Panama Papers has echoed some of Schweitzer’s allegations in the movie and book.

The Clinton campaign loudly denounced the book as a “smear project” last year and Schweizer’s publisher, the Murdoch-owned Harper Collins, had to make some corrections to the Kindle version. But the changes, in the end, involved seven or eight inaccuracies, some of which were fairly minor in the context of the larger allegations, Politico reported.

Neither the Clinton campaign nor the Clinton Foundation responded to calls and emails requesting comment about the film Tuesday.

One of the most damning follow-ups to Schweizer’s most startling accusation — that Vladimir Putin wound up controlling 20 percent of American uranium after a complex series of deals involving cash flowing to the Clinton Foundation and the help of Secretary of State Clinton — was printed in The New York Times.

Like Schweizer, the Times found no hard evidence in the form of an email or any document proving a quid pro quo between the Clintons, Clinton Foundation donors or Russian officials. (Schweizer has maintained that it’s next to impossible to find a smoking gun but said there is a troubling “pattern of behavior” that merits a closer examination.)

But the Times concluded that the deal that brought Putin closer to his goal of controlling all of the world’s uranium supply is an “untold story … that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.”

“Other news outlets built on what I uncovered and some of that is in the film,” Schweizer, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, told NBC News Tuesday. “To me the key message is that while U.S. politics has long been thought to be a dirty game, it was always played by Americans. What the Clinton Foundation has done is open an avenue by which foreign investors can influence a chief U.S. diplomat. The film may spell all this out to people in a way the book did not and it may reach a whole new audience.”

China, Unfettered Espionage Against U.S.

Posted on May 9, 2016May 9, 2016 by Denise Simon

Did China Just Steal $360 Billion From America?

Gordon G. Chang/Forbes:

“The FBI has obtained information regarding multiple malicious cyber actor groups that have compromised sensitive business information from U.S. commercial and government networks through cyber espionage,” warned the law enforcement agency on the 2nd of this month. At about the same time, the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Security Service of the Department of Defense issued similar alerts.

The principal group in question is believed to be the one codenamed APT6. The three letters stand for Advanced Persistent Threat, and this group appears to be among the first tagged as an “APT.”

Kurt Baumgartner of Russian firm Kaspersky Lab suggests APT6 is state-sponsored.That sounds correct because as Craig Williams WMB -4.47% at Talos, a part of Cisco, notes, it is “an advanced, well-funded actor.”

Baumgartner declined to identify APT6’s nationality, but others have. Vice Media’s Motherboard reports that experts think the group is Chinese. As the FireEye security firm notes, APT6 is “likely a nation-state sponsored group based in China.”

In any event, APT6 has caught the attention of the FBI. The group also appears to be the subject of the Bureau’s February 12 alert.

Related reading from the FBI

The February 12 alert says the group in question was attacking U.S. networks “since at least 2011,” but Baumgartner thinks it was active as early as 2008.

In September of last year during Xi Jinping’s state visit, President Obama said the U.S. and China had reached “a common understanding on the way forward” on cybertheft. Washington and Beijing, he said, had affirmed the principle that neither government would use cyber means for commercial purposes.

China indeed affirmed that principle, and the agreement was, as Adam Segal and Tang Lan write, “a significant symbolic step forward.” The pair correctly note that “trust will be built and sustained through implementation.”

As might be expected, there was little implementation on the Chinese side at first. CrowdStrike , the cyber security firm, for instance, in October reported no letup in China’s cyber intrusions into the networks of American corporates.

Related: Economic Terrorism

Beijing, according to the Financial Times, has since reduced its cyber spying against American companies. As Justin Harvey of Fidelis Cybersecurity told the paper, “What we are seeing can only be characterized as a material downtick in what can be considered cyber espionage.”

And FireEye noted that all 22 Chinese hacking units identified by the firm as attacking American networks discontinued operations.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration is not declaring victory quite yet, and for good reason. “The days of widespread Chinese smash-and-grab activity, get in, get out, don’t care if you’re caught, seem to be over,”says Rob Knake, who once directed cyber security policy at the National Security Council and is now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There’s a consensus that activity is still ongoing, but narrower in scope and with better tradecraft.”

Whether espionage is overt or not, the damage to American business is still large. According to the May 2013 report of the Blair-Huntsman Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, “The scale of international theft of American intellectual property is unprecedented—hundreds of billions of dollars per year, on the order of the size of U.S. exports to Asia.”

William Evanina, America’s chief counterintelligence official, told reporters in November that hacking espionage costs U.S. companies $400 billion each year and that China is responsible for about 90% of the attacks. Beijing’s haul, therefore, looks like something on the order of $360 billion.

And how do we know the Chinese are culprits? For one thing, bold Chinese cyber thieves like to show their victims the information they have stolen.

Moreover, the U.S. government has gotten better at attribution, going from being able to attribute one-third of the attacks to more than two-thirds. The improvement is largely due to the government’s partnership with the private sector. Microsoft, Google, and Twitter, for example, will share information if they detect attacks on their customers.

And their customers are still getting attacked. “We continue to see them engage in activity directed against U.S. companies,” said Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, in early April in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The questions I think that we still need to ask is, is that activity then, in turn, shared with the Chinese private industry?”

It’s right for Rogers to be cautious, but it would be strange for Chinese hackers not to share as they have done in the past. At the moment, there is little reason for Beijing to stop hacking, because Washington is not willing to impose costs on China for its “21st century burglary.”

There was the May 2014 indictment of five officers of the People’s Liberation Army for cyberattacking American businesses, like Alcoa and U.S. Steel, and the United Steelworkers union. That move, while welcome, was overdue and only symbolic. The Blair-Huntsman Commission suggested an across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods, but the imposition of a penalty of that sort is unlikely without a radical change of thinking in Washington.

Therefore, the FBI, even after all these years, is just playing catch up. The February alert is a tacit admission that the U.S. government is not in control of its own networks said Michael Adams, who served in U.S. Special Operations Command. “It’s just flabbergasting,” Adams told Motherboard. “How many times can this keep happening before we finally realize we’re screwed?”

The People’s Republic of China is still committing monumental thefts in large part because successive American governments cannot get beyond half-measures.

Beijing may be an intruder, but Washington somehow finds it unseemly to lock the door and punish the thief.

Questions and Anger on Transfer of El Chapo

Posted on May 9, 2016May 9, 2016 by Denise Simon

The Transfer of Mexican Drug Boss ‘El Chapo’ to a Less-Secure Prison Raises Concerns
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” says the former head of the DEA

Time: (MEXICO CITY) — Questions arose on both sides of the border about the decision to relocate convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to a region that is one of his cartel’s strongholds, and a Mexican security official acknowledged Sunday that the sudden transfer was to a less-secure prison.

The official said that in general the Cefereso No. 9 prison on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, is not as impregnable as the maximum-security Altiplano facility near Mexico City where he had been held. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss Guzman’s case publicly and agreed to do so only if not quoted by name.

The official said, however, that Guzman is being held in a maximum-security wing where the same protocols are being enforced as in Altiplano, including 24-hour monitoring via a camera in his cell.

Multiple analysts told The Associated Press that there was no sign of a link between the prison switch and extradition.
There will be no escape, ” Duarte told local media. “If he was brought here from Altiplano it’s because the security conditions are way above those of Altiplano, that’s what the federal government settled on.”

Drudge and Breitbart Wont Tell You this on Trump

Posted on May 6, 2016May 6, 2016 by Denise Simon

Mnuchin’s had a hand in the Southern California regional bank that was drowning in bad mortgages after the financial crisis of 2008. Mnuchin and a group of investors, including John Paulson and George Soros, bought the bank for $1.55 billion and turned it around changing the name in the process. OneWest now has assets of $25 billion and $14 billion in deposits.

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Trump’s new finance chair Steven Mnuchin was sued over Madoff fraud profit

Donald Trump’s new national finance chairman was sued in 2010 for the return of $US3.2 million ($4.3 million) in fake profit from his mother’s account with Bernard Madoff, the mastermind of a $US17.5 billion Ponzi scheme. More here.

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Trump Finance Chair Ran a Bank That Cashed in on Taxpayer Bailouts

FreeBeacon: Donald Trump’s newly-appointed national finance chairman, Steven Mnuchin, ran a bank that made billions of dollars off of taxpayer bailouts and cost the federal government an estimated $13 billion.

Mnuchin, a hedge-fund manager, worked as a partner for Goldman Sachs before assembling a group of billionaires to take over IndyMac Bank, based in California, after its subprime mortgage business collapsed in 2008.

Mother Jones reported:

Mnuchin’s group paid roughly $1.55 billion and received a promise from the [Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation] FDIC to cover a portion of the losses on bad loans within the IndyMac pool. The FDIC’s losses on these assets have since ballooned to an estimated $13 billion. The FDIC took on most of the risk, but Mnuchin and his partners, who named their new bank OneWest, ended up doing spectacularly well. They parlayed their $1.55 billion investment into a $3.4 billion payday last year, when Mnuchin engineered the sale of OneWest to another California bank, CIT. Along the way, OneWest issued more than $2 billion worth of dividends to shareholders. The tremendous profits the bank made, with taxpayers on the hook for IndyMac’s bad bets, raised eyebrows across the industry.

Furthermore, OneWest has been accused of risky and predatory loan practices, which prompted California community groups and a legal aid agency to ask Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to halt the sale of OneWest to CIT last year before the bank paid reparations.

Trump’s criticism of big banks, Wall Street, and hedge-fund managers appears to conflict with his appointment of Mnuchin to a top post in his campaign.

Last year, Trump characterized hedge fund managers as “paper pushers” who are “getting away with murder” by not paying their fair share of taxes under the current tax code.

“The hedge fund guys didn’t build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky,” Trump said during a phone interview televised on CBS News. “They are energetic. They are very smart. But a lot of them–they are paper-pushers. They make a fortune. They pay no tax. It’s ridiculous, OK?”

Mnuchin’s contributions to Democrats further complicate his position on the presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign. Mnuchin has contributed thousands to committees supporting Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and other Democratic politicians, the Washington Free Beacon reported Thursday.

“Steven is a professional at the highest level with an extensive and very successful financial background,” Trump said in a statement announcing Mnuchin as his finance chair. “He brings unprecedented experience and expertise to a fundraising operation that will benefit the Republican Party and ultimately defeat Hillary Clinton.”

**** Deeper dive from Heavy.com

Steven Mnuchin: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

A Wall Street banker and Hollywood movie producer, who has contributed to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and other Democrats in the past, has been named as Donald Trump’s national finance chairman.

Steven Mnuchin, 53, was added to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s team on Thursday, Trump’s campaign announced in a press release.

“It’s a great privilege to be working with Mr. Trump to create a world class finance organization to support the campaign in the general election,” Mnuchin said in a statement.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. He Contributed to Hillary Clinton’s Senate Campaigns & 2008 Democratic Presidential Campaign but Has Also Supported Republicans

Steven Mnuchin has contributed more than $120,000 to both Democrats and Republicans over the past two decades, Politico reports. About $64,000 of those contributions went to Democratic candidates and $40,000 to Republicans, according to Politico.

He gave $7,000 to Clinton’s 200 and 2006 Senate bids, and also contributed to her 2008 Democratic presidential campaign. He contributed $2,300 to President Barack Obama’s 2007 presidential campaign.

In 2011 he contributed $2,500 on two occasions to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and gave $20,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2012. He has also contributed to John Edwards, Chuck Schumer, Rudy Giuliani, Al Gore and John Kerry, Politico reports.

Mnuchin’s political past does not differ much from that of his new boss.

Trump has also contributed to Clinton’s campaigns in the past. The presumptive GOP presidential nominee has said it was important for his business interests to support political candidates on both sides.

2. He Began His Career at Goldman Sachs Before Working for the George Soros-Funded OneWest Bank Group LLC

Mnuchin, a Yale University graduate, began his career at Goldman Sachs, rising to become a partner, according to the press release from Trump’s campaign.

After working at Goldman Sachs for 17 years, Mnuchin became the chairman and CEO of OneWest Bank Group LLC, a bank holding company, from 2009 to 2015. According to Politico, OneWest Bank Group was funded partly by George Soros, a major Democratic donor who has given millions to Hillary Clintons super PAC.

He is currently the chairman and CEO of Dune Capital Management LP, a private investment firm.

3. Trump Says Mnuchin Brings ‘Unprecedented Experience & Expertise’ to the Campaign

Trump praised Mnuchin in a statement announcing his new role with the campaign.

“Steven is a professional at the highest level with an extensive and very successful financial background. He brings unprecedented experience and expertise to a fundraising operation that will benefit the Republican Party and ultimately defeat Hillary Clinton,” Trump said.

The campaign said, “Mr. Trump is the presumptive Republican Nomination for President of the United States and is taking steps to gear up for a General Election against Democratic Nominee Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump has self-funded his successful primary battle and will likewise be putting up substantial money toward the general election.”

4. He Was an Executive Producer for ‘American Sniper,’ ‘The Lego Movie,’ & ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

In addition to his extensive ties to Wall Street, Mnuchin is also connected to Hollywood.

Mnuchin has been an executive producer on several films since 2014, including “American Sniper,” “The Lego Movie,” “Mad Max:Fury Road,” “Black Mass,” “The Intern” and “Entourage,” according to his IMDB.com page.

5. He Is Divorced & Has 3 Children

Steven Mnuchin and his wife, Heather Crosby, divorced in 2014.

They have three children together. The couple married in 1999, according to their New York Times wedding announcement.