Category Archives: Treasury

WH Visitor Logs Shows the Pro-Iran U.S. Posture

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In 2013, NAIC, National Iranian American Council was ordered to pay almost $200,000 due to failure to disclose and comply with lobby rules.

Trita Parsi, the founder of NAIC has frequent access to the White House and exploits that access for the mission to lift sanctions on Iran of which has been most effective during the talks of the P5+1.

Parsi has been at it a very long time and he drafted this fancy document on the sanctions and in full defense of Iran. “Never Give In, Never Give Up”

Parsi also has an interesting

In part from FreeBeacon:

“Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which has been accused of lobbying on the regime’s behalf, has met a handful of times with the White House between 2013 and 2014, according to visitor logs.

Parsi and NIAC have been key advocates for the administration’s diplomacy with Iran and have been present during various rounds of negotiations.

Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund—a group that has been at the center of attempts to try to sell a deal with Iran—is also listed on White House visitor logs.

Cirincione’s organization has been a key funder of organizations such as NIAC and J Street as they seek to promote a final nuclear deal with Iran and the administration’s efforts.

Ploughshares has been identified in reports as working on a “behind the scenes strategy” with senior White House officials such as Ben Rhodes to help promote the deal.

Plougshares has spent more than $7 million funding organizations and experts that have publicly defended the administration’s concessions to Iran in talks, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“The Ploughshares coalition includes a former Iranian government spokesman, the liberal Jewish organization J Street, and a group of former American diplomats who have held private talks with Iranian government officials,” the Journal reported in March.

In the case of Sfard, a White House NSC official declined to provide further details about his meeting or comment when contacted by the Free Beacon. In addition to the PLO, Sfard also has worked with Breaking the Silence, a far-left group that seeks to launch war crimes charges against Israelis and those in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), according to a dossier published by NGO Monitor, which tracks anti-Israel groups and actors.”

The lobby work begins on lawmakers on the missiles

Pro-Tehran Lobby Demands Iran Be Given Ballistic Missiles

Group pushing Iranian arms on Capitol Hill by Adam Kredo

FreeBeacon:

A pro-Tehran advocacy group long accused of concealing illicit ties to the Iranian regime is lobbying Congress in support of a demand that America repeal a United Nations arms embargo limiting the Islamic Republic’s ability to stockpile arms, including ballistic missiles, which could be used to carry nuclear payloads, according to a copy of an email sent by the group to various lawmakers.

The National American Iranian Council (NIAC), which has long been suspected of acting as Tehran’s lobbying shop in Washington, D.C., sent lawmakers an email on Friday asserting that “the Iranian arms embargo will need to be disposed of as part of a final agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.”

The email comes roughly a week after Iranian diplomats issued a similar demand during ongoing talks in Vienna between world powers and Iran. The new condition has been blamed for grinding negotiations to a halt, as diplomats blew through a third self-imposed deadline this weekend.

The NIAC email on ballistic missiles is in step with Iran’s potentially deal-breaking demands.

“The UN embargo imposed on Iran’s trade in certain conventional arms was specifically imposed by the Security Council to deal with the nuclear dispute,” wrote Tyler Cullis, who is identified in the email as a legal fellow at the council.

Cullis writes: “Starting with [United Nations Security Council resolution] UNSCR 1747 in 2007, the Security Council imposed a ban on Iranian arms exports. The Council followed up this export ban with more comprehensive restrictions on the sale to or from Iran of certain heavy-weapons, including battle tanks, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, and the like in 2010 via UNSCR 1929.”

NIAC maintains that such restrictions should be lifted as part of a nuclear agreement, even though they are not specific restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program.

A range of sources who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon—including analysts, former intelligence officials, as well as current and former congressional staffers—challenged both the legal analysis and motivation of NIAC’s letter to lawmakers.

Critics remain concerned that such a move could legally allow Iran to funnel arms to terror groups such as Hezbollah and militias in Yemen.

One former congressional staffer involved in the crafting of sanctions legislation over the years dismissed NIAC’s claims as unfounded and flatly misleading.

“NIAC is the same group that lobbies Congress to defund human rights and democracy promotion programs in Iran for fear of undermining the mullahs,” said one former senior Senate aide with intimate knowledge of Iran sanctions. “What the Iran lobby doesn’t want you to know is that UN Security Council sanctions are directly tied to the dismantlement of Iran’s ballistic missile program—a key element being excused from the P5+1 agreement.”

One senior congressional aide familiar with efforts to sanction Iran said NIAC is widely viewed as Tehran’s in-house lobbying shop.

NIAC has absolutely no credibility on Capitol Hill, where that organization is viewed as a de facto lobbyist for the Iranian regime,” said the senior congressional staffer.

“To cite the latest example, for many months NIAC has opposed the inclusion of ballistic missile limitations or anything else non-nuclear in the negotiations with Iran, yet today NIAC sent an email to congressional staff that actually backs up the Iranian regime’s ridiculous, last-second demand that the United Nations drop its non-nuclear arms embargo on Iran,” the source said.

Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser for George W. Bush, said the Iranian arms embargo will become even more critical in future years.

“The arms embargo on Iran is even more critical today than when it was imposed in 2007 in UN Security Council Resolution 1747,” Abrams explained. “Since then Iran has helped kill or maim thousands of Americans in Iraq, has sent more and more arms to Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria, has intervened in Yemen, and now has an expeditionary force of Revolutionary Guard troops fighting in Iraq and Syria.”

“To end the arms embargo now would be throwing gasoline in a fire: the flames would spread. It is dangerous and absolutely against U.S. national security interests to lift the arms embargo on Iran,” Abrams said.

One Western source present in Vienna and apprised of the talks cast doubt on NIAC’s legal analysis concluding that the arms embargo was only aimed at Iran’s nuclear program.

“The Security Council had moved beyond Iran’s nuclear work before the first arms embargo was even imposed,” said the Western source. “UNSCR 1737 sought ‘to constrain Iran’s development of sensitive technologies in support of its nuclear and missile programs.”

“Subsequent resolutions reaffirmed that language, and ultimately UNSCR 1929 demanded an arms embargo ‘until such time as the Security Council determines that the objectives of these resolutions have been met,” the source explained.

NIAC has long been viewed as a pro-Tehran lobbying outfit that tows the regime’s line in the halls of Congress.

In 2012, NIAC was ordered to pay reparations to an Iranian dissident who sued the organization for allegedly concealing its ties to the Iranian regime. NIAC was ordered to pay thousands to the defendant and was upbraided by a federal judge for hindering the discovery process in the case.

In recent years, NIAC has spearheaded lobbying efforts on the Hill to threaten lawmakers into supporting a deal with Iran that fully removes economic sanctions and permits the Islamic Republic to retain key aspects of its nuclear infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry announced late Friday that talks will continue through next week.

“We have a couple of different lines of discussion that are going on right now, but I think it’s safe to say that we have made progress today,” Kerry said in a statement to reporters. “The atmosphere is very constructive.”

 

Meet Vahid Alaghband, a Clinton Donor and Pelosi?

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I’m Iranian

Treasury Designates Iranian Commercial Airline Linked to Iran’s Support for Terrorism (2011)

Bloomberg: After completing the 1.1 billion euro ($1.4 billion) buyout of Germany’s Kloeckner & Co., the world’s largest independent steel distributor, Vahid Alaghband was a perfect candidate to address “cross-border mergers — challenges and pitfalls” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The Iranian-born founder and chairman of London-based steel trading company Balli Group Plc never got the chance. As he traversed the Zurich airport on Jan. 23, 2003, immigration police detained him on a German arrest warrant.

Without Alaghband’s knowledge, WestLB AG, Germany’s third-biggest state-owned bank and his partner in the Kloeckner takeover, had filed a criminal complaint almost a year earlier accusing him of unlawfully removing 120 million euros from Kloeckner.

Instead of starring in Davos, Alaghband, 53, spent the next 11 months in jail, first in Zurich and then in Duisburg, the German city where Kloeckner was based. In February 2003, the same prosecutor’s office that’s investigating Alaghband charged Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Josef Ackermann with breach of trust for his role as a Mannesmann AG director in paying bonuses during Dusseldorf-based Mannesmann’s unsuccessful attempt to fend off a takeover by Vodafone Group Plc. In both cases, foreign acquirers bought German icons and suffered as a result.

Excerpt from I’m Iranian: Fifteen months after his release from jail, Alaghband is back to running Balli. Last year, the company increased revenue 50 percent to $2 billion as demand and prices for steel surged.  Alaghband is busy as a member of the international council of the Asia Society, the New York-based organization that John D. Rockefeller founded to promote understanding between Asia and the U.S.

Alaghband says even if the Kloeckner acquisition ran afoul of German laws, he could have resolved the differences.

“In any cross-border merger, there are things that fall between the cracks,” he says. “When you have a plumbing problem, you fix it, not blow up the house.”

As for the circumstances that stripped the Iranian millionaire’s fortune in the 1970s and then allowed him to rebuild, only to have his freedom and his property seized again, Alaghband says: “I had lost my assets in Iran once. I didn’t think it was going to happen again in Germany, in the middle of Europe.”

Now the real read begins

Clinton Foundation Donor Violated Iran Sanctions, Tried to Sell 747s to Tehran

From the DailyBeast:
Vahid Alaghband’s firm did business with an Iranian airline accused of shipping guns and troops to Syria.
An Iranian businessman accused by the U.S. government of violating sanctions on Tehran donated money to the Clinton Foundation, The Daily Beast has confirmed.Vahid Alaghband’s Balli Aviation Ltd., a London-based subsidiary of the commodities trading firm Balli Group PLC, tried to sell 747 airplanes to Iran, despite a federal ban on such sales. The company pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal information in 2010. In its plea agreement with the Department of Justice, Balli Aviation agreed to pay a $2 million criminal fine, serve five years corporate probation, and pay an additional $15 million in civil fines. The hefty sum was “a direct consequence of the level of deception used to mislead investigators,” Thomas Madigan, a top Justice Department official, said at the time.

Alaghband is one of an array of questionable actors who’ve been found in recent months to give to the Clinton Foundation.  The gifts  – from foreign governments with human rights violations like Qatar, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and China as well as  FIFA, soccer’s corrupt governing body – have complicated Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president and raised questions as to whether these entities were trying to curry favor with the former Secretary of State.

But Alaghband stands out from the rest, because the beneficiary of his firm’s deals with Tehran was an Iranian airline accused by the U.S. government of working with the regime’s foreign intelligence operatives and shipping arms and troops to Syria. Plus, if an agreement between Iran and the world’s major powers is concluded in the coming days – as is widely expected – operators like Alaghband could stand to benefit. Hillary Clinton will be put in the awkward position of either defending the act of the Obama administration in which she once served or criticizing the culmination of a U.S.-Iran rapprochement effort, which her State Department began.

One of the two counts against Balli Aviation was that it “conspired to export three Boeing 747 aircraft from the United States to Iran,” according to a Justice Department statement, without first obtaining the necessary export licenses from the U.S. government. The company then used its Armenian airline subsidiary to buy the 747s with financing obtained from Mahan Air, Iran’s largest private airline, which is thought by the State Department to be controlled by former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

In 2011, the Treasury Department sanctioned the airline for “providing financial, material and technological support to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF),” or the expeditionary arm of the Islamic Republic’s praetorian military division, now heavily active in both Syria and Iraq. At the time, the Treasury Department accused the Qods Force of “secretly ferrying operatives, weapons and funds” on Mahan flights.

On the Clinton Foundation website, Alaghband’s company is listed as a donor in the $10,001 to $25,000 bracket. Moreover, on the website for Balli Real Estate, a property investment and development subsidiary also based in the UK, his personal bio describes him as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative.

This affiliation, along with his donation to the Foundation, came as a surprise to Alaghband.

“I am not a member of the Clinton Global Initiative,” he told The Daily Beast from London. “I attended a few meetings. The last meeting was 10 years ago. I don’t recall having ever made a contribution.” Asked why he was listed as a member of the CGI on his own corporate website, he said: “I haven’t seen this website recently. If attending a few meetings makes you a member, I don’t know.”

A source familiar with the Clinton Foundation told The Daily Beast that “Vahid Alaghband was never a member of CGI in a personal capacity.” However, the source added, “In 2007, Balli Group paid a onetime CGI membership fee and they designated him as their delegate to the meeting.”

Alaghband did recall giving money to another influential organization — the Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Brookings Institution. The donation he gave was to Brookings’ former Middle East policy shop, the Saban Center, which had been named for its major benefactor, the Israeli billionaire Haim Saban. (Staunchly pro-Israel, Saban is also, coincidentally, an avowed supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions.)

In 2007, Alaghband offered to give a $900,000 donation to run for three years to Brookings via the U.S.-based PARSA Foundation, “the first Persian community foundation in the U.S. and the leading Persian philanthropic institution practicing strategic philanthropy and promoting social entrepreneurship around the globe,” as the foundation’s website describes it.

Keynote Speaker Pelosi

Emails obtained in the discovery process of a separate libel case show that Alaghband, who had already donated at least $50,000 to PARSA, initially intended to make a pass-through donation via the foundation to Brookings.

But Alaghband says that he never ultimately used PARSA as a conduit for his donation; instead made his contribution directly to the Saban Center. He claims that the amount given was “far less” than $900,000 but declined to specify how much. Furthermore, he insisted, the money wasn’t ear-marked for any specific project or research use. “Our donation went to the Saban Center and they had full discretion as to what to do with it,” Alaghband said. “Martin Indyk had discretion over the use of the funds.”

Indyk, who headed the Saban Center from 2002 to 2013, is today the Vice President and Director for Foreign Policy at Brookings. He also served— twice—as U.S. ambassador to Israel under the Clinton administration. In 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry named Indyk the U.S. envoy to the Middle East.

“When we took the donation nobody knew there were any problems with Alaghband,” David Nassar, the Vice President of Communications for Brookings, told The Daily Beast, speaking on behalf of the think tank. Nassar also specified that the donation came from Balli Group bank accounts, not from Alaghband’s personal accounts. (Full disclosure: Daily Beast executive editor Noah Shachtman previously did work as a non-resident fellow in Brookings’ foreign policy division.)

A former Brookings staffer with direct knowledge of the donation told The Daily Beast said that, on the contrary, Alaghband’s problems with the U.S. government were known to the think tank at the time and that the money helped finance the work of Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department policy advisor and Republican advocate of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement.

Nassar told The Daily Beast that the suggestion that Alaghband’s donation was intended to bolster Maloney’s pro-rapprochement research was false. “The money was general funding for the Persian Gulf Initiative and not directed at any particular issue or any particular scholar,” he said. Nevertheless, the Persian Gulf Initiative was a program run by the Saban Center and Maloney worked on it.

Maloney is married to Ray Takeyh, an Iran scholar who served in the Obama White House in 2009 and who, during that period, was one of the lead advocates of engagement with Tehran.

Since leaving the administration, Takeyh has emerged as a scathing critic of his former employer’s nuclear diplomacy. But in 2008, Maloney and Takeyh jointly published a 34-page white paper with the Saban Center titled, “Pathway to Coexistence: A New U.S. Policy toward Iran.”  Arguing that the longstanding U.S. policy of containment “is actually obsolete because Iran is no longer an expansionist power,” they called not for a mere “policy shift but for a paradigm change” in Washington.

In many ways, the paper essentially forecasted what Obama administration’s approach to dealing with Iran, from the largely hands-off approach to Iran’s bloody 2009 Green Revolution to the present-day compromises on its nuclear program.

Alaghband’s legal troubles did not appear to affect his relationship with Brookings a year after Balli Aviation was hit by the U.S. Commerce Department with a temporary ban on his Iranian export business. In February 2009, he spoke at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, where Brookings has another Middle East center, this one bankrolled by the Qatari government. The forum, in fact, was organized by the Saban Center on behalf of that government.

Alaghband, for his part, insists that he did nothing wrong, despite his company’s guilty plea.

“The settlement [with the Justice Department] was one under which we did not have to accept liability. We just agreed to make a payment and settle out of court,” he told The Daily Beast. “We had to establish a compliance program and do all of those things. The transactions we were engaged in was reviewed by and subject to a legal to a legal opinion both in the UK and U.S. about the compliance of with sanctions. We proceeded on this basis.”

The settlement also represented the largest civil penalty ever imposed by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

PARSA’s second largest recipient of grants is the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a Washington, D.C.-based lobby group close to the Iranian regime, which advocates an end to all U.S. sanctions on Iran. It received a total received a total of $591,500 from the foundation. Alaghband’s brother, Hassan Alaghband, who is also the CEO of the Balli Group, spoke at a organized conference in Tehran by one of NIAC’s founders in June 2007, at which he spoke about Western companies doing business in Iran and cited Balli’s client, Caterpillar, as a case study.

The Balli Group PLC had once been the world’s second-largest steel trader but it declared bankruptcy in 2013. A major reason for its folding? U.S. sanctions on Iran.

 

 

United Nations New Order of the Globe Influenced by BRICS

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BRICS is a group of nations that include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. BRICS is taking control of global insecurity and the charge is actually led by Russia.

BRICS has their own financial security system and at all costs will protect and enhance their money power worldwide. The president of Brazil was in the White House this past week where several discussions took place and more than likely Barack Obama was opening the pathway for the United States to cooperate with BRICS and abdicating power to BRICS and the United Nations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with the leaders of emerging powers in the Russian city of Ufa for a summit widely seen as an attempt by Moscow to show it is not isolated despite its standoff with the West over the conflict in Ukraine.
The leaders of the BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — adopted a declaration expressing “deep concern” about the deadly conflict in eastern Ukraine pitting government forces against pro-Russian separatists. 
The document called on both sides to abide by a cease-fire signed in February by Ukraine, Russia, the rebels, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Ukraine and the West, however, have accused Moscow of continued support for the separatist fighters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) meets with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rohani, during a meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Ufa, Russia, on July 9.
The Iranian nuclear issue was also on the agenda of the summit, which takes place as negotiators from Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States are working in Vienna to strike a deal to curb Tehran’s controversial nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
BRICS nations voiced confidence that the Vienna talks will result in a deal.

Enter the United Nations Security Council and Ban Ki-moon

UN Security Council

Ban Ki-moon to Welcome BRICS’ Intention to Reform UN Security Council

UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman said that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself talked about the need for reform of the Security Council and he supports strong intention of BRICS countries to reform the UN Security Council.

UFA (Sputnik), Anastasia Levchenko — The UN chief will support the BRICS initiative to reform the UN Security Council, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman told Sputnik on Thursday, adding the BRICS format could prove effective when addressing international issues.

He said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will welcome the strong intention of BRICS countries to reform the UN Security Council in order to make it more representative for states with growing political and economic influence.

“The Secretary-General himself has talked about the need for reform of the Security Council, the need for the institutions to evolve and reflect the world as it is today. I know that Secretary-General will be very supportive of member states addressing seriously the question of the Security Council reform,” Feltman said, commenting on the BRICS states’ intention to reform the UNSC.

However, it “will be up to the member states themselves to decide what is the best approach for reforming Security Council,” he emphasized.

The UN Security Council consists of five permanent members with veto power – China, Russia, France, Russia, Britain, and the United States – and ten non-permanent members, elected by the General Assembly for a two-year term.

Russia and China are also part of the BRICS club of developing countries, along with Brazil, India, and South Africa. The nations are meeting in the Russian city of Ufa to step up integration and arrange financial assistance to projects in member countries, as well as in other emerging markets.

Feltman admitted that BRICS countries have great political weight, but they or any other group of countries cannot be considered as an alternative to the UN Security Council.

“BRICS represent a very important set of countries, and there are many examples where BRICS format can be useful for international developments, peace and security etc. I think we all recognize the strength of the BRICS format, strength of BRICS grouping. But I think it is hard for any other organization or group of states to replicate the Security Council,” Feltman told Sputnik.

Earlier in the day, BRICS said in its declaration that it had a flexible format, allowing it to address a much wider range of international issues than the UN Security Council. The document also addressed a range of issues that undermine global stability, including dealing with the root cause of recent hike in illegal migration and preventing foreign military interventions.

 

 

 

When Ignoring the Enforcement of Law Becomes a Wider Threat

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There are an estimated 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States and some you would never imagine existed. For a sampling click here.

Further, click here for the evidence of organizations, missions and the functional manuals all justice and enforcement components.

If you would like to understand justice and enforcement statistics, click here. Indeed, there is a great argument that should happen that there are too many laws to be enforced much less those that are not prosecuted. All the while, when those that are omitted or discretion is used, the damage which speaks to the psyche of the criminal has yet to be fully understood as a threat to security and lawlessness.

Enter Victor Davis Hanson, where he authored a cogent piece on the threat of more lawlessness and anarchy.

Why disregard of law is America’s greatest threat

Citizens may ask why they should obey the rules when illegals go scot-free

Barbarians at the gate usually don’t bring down once-successful civilizations. Nor does climate change. Even mass epidemics like the plague that decimated sixth-century Byzantium do not necessarily destroy a culture.

Far more dangerous are institutionalized corruption, a lack of transparency and creeping neglect of existing laws. All the German euros in the world will not save Greece if Greeks continue to dodge taxes, featherbed government and see corruption as a business model.

Even obeying so-called minor laws counts. It is no coincidence that a country where drivers routinely flout traffic laws and throw trash out the window is also a country that cooks its books and lies to its creditors. Everything from littering to speeding seems negotiable in Athens in a way not true of Munich, Zurich or London.

Mexico is a naturally richer country than Greece. It is blessed with oil, precious minerals, fertile soils, long coastlines and warm weather. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens should not be voting with their feet to reject their homeland for the United States.

But Mexico also continues to be a mess because police expect bribes, property rights are iffy, and government works only for those who pay kickbacks. The result is that only north, not south, of the U.S.-Mexico border can people expect upward mobility, clean water, adequate public safety and reliable power.

In much of the Middle East and Africa, tribalism and bribery, not meritocracy, determine who gets hired and fired, wins or loses a contract, or receives or goes without public services.

Americans, too, should worry about these age-old symptoms of internal decay.

The frightening thing about disgraced Internal Revenue Service bureaucrat Lois Lerner’s knowledge of selective audits of groups on the basis of their politics is not just that she seemed to ignore it, but that she seemingly assumed no one would find out, or perhaps even mind. And she may well have been right. So far, no one at the IRS has shown much remorse for corrupting an honor-based system of tax compliance.

Illegal immigration has been a prominent subject in the news lately, between Donald Trump’s politically incorrect, imprecise and crass stereotyping of illegal immigrants and the shocking murder of a young San Francisco woman gratuitously gunned down in public by a Mexican citizen who had been convicted of seven felonies in the United States and had been deported five times. But the subject of illegal immigration is, above all, a matter of law enforcement.

Ultimately, no nation can continue to thrive if its government refuses to enforce its own laws. Liberal “sanctuary cities” such as San Francisco choose to ignore immigration laws. Imagine the outcry if a town in Utah or Montana arbitrarily declared that federal affirmative action or gay marriage laws were null and void within its municipal borders.

Once an immigrant has successfully broken the law by entering and residing in the United States illegally, there is little incentive for him to obey other laws. Increasing percentages of unnaturalized immigrants are not showing up for their immigration hearings — and those percentages are higher still for foreign nationals who have been charged with crimes.

The general public wonders why some are selectively exempt from following the law, but others are not. If federal immigration law does not apply to foreign nationals, why should building codes, zoning laws or traffic statutes apply to U.S. citizens?

Consider the immigration activists’ argument that immigration authorities should focus only on known felons and not those who only broke immigration law. This is akin to arguing that the IRS shouldn’t worry about whether everyday Americans pay their income taxes and should enforce the tax laws only against those with past instances of tax avoidance.

But why single out the poor and foreign-born? Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton once pocketed a $100,000 cattle-futures profit from a $1,000 investment, with help from an insider crony. A group of economists calculated the odds of such an unlikely return at one in 31 trillion. Mrs. Clinton then trumped that windfall by failing to fully pay taxes on her commodities profits, only addressing that oversight years later.

Why did Mrs. Clinton, during her tenure as secretary of state, snub government protocols by using a private email account and a private server, and then permanently deleting any emails she felt were not government-related? Mrs. Clinton long ago concluded that laws in her case were to be negotiated, not obeyed.

President Obama called for higher taxes on the wealthy. But before doing so, could he at least have asked his frequent adviser on racial matters, Al Sharpton, to pay millions in back taxes and penalties?

Might the government ask that its own employees pay the more than $3 billion in collective federal back taxes they owe, since they expect other taxpayers to keep paying their salaries?

Civilizations unwind insidiously not with a loud, explosive bang, but with a lawless whimper.

 

 

Judge Hanen Orders Top DHS Brass to Texas

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U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen is NOT pleased with the Department of Homeland Security over lies, non-compliance and obstruction.

For some background:

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kathleen Hartnett could not explain why multiple DOJ lawyers — herself included — told the court multiple times over two and a half months that DHS would not be accepting requests for deferred action under the challenged order until mid February. She implausibly claimed that the legal team thought the injunction request did not apply to the expansion of DACA under the president’s November order — despite the clear words of the states’ initial filings and explicit statements made in court. It seems clear what Hanen thinks happened:

“When I asked you what would happen and you said nothing, I took it to heart. I was made to look like an idiot,” Hanen told Hartnett. “I believed your word that nothing would happen. . . . Like an idiot, I believed that.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415795/did-doj-lie-judge-hanen-editors

Dated July 7, 2015:

Judge Hanen has ordered Secretary Jeh Johnson; Gil Kerlikowske, the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Kevin McAleenan, Deputy Chief of U.S. Border Patrol, Sarah Saldana, Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Leon Rodriguez, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to his courtroom to answer for their non-response to his order.

Reading the order issued by Judge Hanen, it proves his tolerance has been exploited by all the agencies above. Hat tip to Josh Blackman.

§

ORDER
This Court held a hearing on June 23, 2015, at which time both parties indicated that they are making progress toward a resolution of discovery requests made by the Plaintiffs with regard to the Government’s belated revelation that it had implemented portions of the November 20, 2014DHS Memorandum prior to the February 18, 2015 start date provided to Plaintiffs and the Court by defense counsel. Given the fact that counsel for both sides indicated that progress has been made and have requested more time to reach an agreement, this Court granted the parties additional timeto seek a resolution of these pending issues. The parties are to file a status report with the Courtdescribing any agreement reached on Plaintiffs’ discovery requests and any resolution with regard to the approximately 108,800 individuals who were granted benefits pursuant to the 2014 DHSMemorandum between the date of that Memorandum and this Court’s injunction. The parties haveuntil July 31, 2015, to file that status report. The Court will resolve any and all questions regardingfuture discovery and/or sanctions once it reviews the parties’ report.This, however, does not resolve the issue as to the approximately 2,000 individuals that weregiven various benefits in violation of this Court’s order after the injunction was issued. The Courtwas first apprised by the Government of the violations of its injunction on May 7, 2015. It admitted that it violated this Court’s injunction on at least 2,000 occasions—violations which have not yet been fixed. This Court has expressed its willingness to believe that these actions were accidentaland not done purposefully to violate this Court’s order. Nevertheless, it is shocked and surprised at the cavalier attitude the Government has taken with regard to its “efforts” to rectify this situation. The Government promised this Court on May 7, 2015, that “immediate steps” were being taken toremedy the violations of the injunction. [
See
Doc. No. 247]. Yet, as of June 23, 2015—some sixweeks after making that representation—the situation had not been rectified. With that in mind, theCourt hereby sets a hearing for August 19, 2015, at 10:00 a.m. Each individual Defendant mustattend and be prepared to show why he or she should not be held in contempt of Court. In additionto the individual Defendants, the Government shall bring all relevant witnesses on this topic as theCourt will not continue this matter to a later date. The Government has conceded that it has directlyviolated this Court’s Order in its May 7, 2015 Advisory, yet, as of today, two months have passed since the Advisory and it has not remediated its own violative behavior. That is unacceptable and,as far as the Government’s attorneys are concerned, completely unprofessional. To be clear, thisCourt expects the Government to be in full compliance with this Court’s injunction. Complianceas to just those aliens living in the Plaintiff States is not full compliance.If the Government remedies this situation and comes into compliance with this Court’sinjunction by July 31, 2015, it shall include a summary of that situation in the July 31, 2015 reportto the Court. If the Court is satisfied with the Government’s representations, it will cancel theAugust 19, 2015 hearing. Otherwise, the Court intends to utilize all available powers to compel compliance.
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This Court began its last hearing by explaining its reluctance to sanction any party or attorney. If nothing else, sanctions bog both the parties and the Court down on side issues thatdetract their attention from the real focus: the merits and resolution of the case. Nevertheless, noreasonable person could possibly consider a direct violation of an injunction a side issue. Furthermore, at some point, when a non-compliant party refuses to bring its conduct intocompliance, one must conclude that the conduct is not accidental, but deliberate. If these violationshave not been corrected by the end of this month, absent very compelling evidence, which this Courtwill be glad to consider, the only logical conclusion is that the Government needs a stronger motivation to comply with lawful court orders. Neither side should interpret this Court’s personal preference to not sanction lawyers or parties as an indication that it will merely acquiesce to a party’s unlawful conduct.Signed this 7th  day of July, 2015. ________________________________ Andrew S. HanenUnited States District Judge
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