Category Archives: Trump Administration

Game on: Eric Holder Hired to Fight Trump

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So, as California is officially a sanctuary state, you can bet there will be additional states collaborating and joining the fight like Illinois. The Left has been colluding for several weeks and here is but one decision that is part of the search and destroy mission of the new Trump administration.

Immigrants and illegals are a protected class and they along with a state legislature are mobilizing for a fight that affects Americans, America, the sovereignty and standing law.

Immigrants now have an official lobby operation as they get full representation by Eric Holder and his law firm. This is likely an operation that has passed through the offices of the White House.

One must wonder if DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson or Loretta Lynch from the DoJ will join this battle-plan as well….

California Democrats hire Eric Holder to fight Trump

LOS ANGELES— Democratic lawmakers in the California legislature have retained former US Attorney General Eric Holder to help in any legal battles with President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The move is an indication that lawmakers in the nation’s most populous state, where Democrats hold two-thirds majorities in both houses of the legislature, are girding for possible court battles after Trump takes office on January 20.

Last month, leaders of both houses introduced bills to protect immigrants living in the country illegally from anticipated efforts by a Trump administration to increase deportations. In addition, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has made combating climate change a priority for the state.

“Having the former attorney general of the United States brings us a lot of firepower in order to prepare to safeguard the values of the people of California,” Kevin de León, the Democratic leader of the state Senate, told The Times. “This means we are very, very serious.”

A representative from de León’s office could not immediately be reached for comment early Wednesday.

“I am honored that the Legislature chose Covington to serve as its legal adviser as it considers how to respond to potential changes in federal law that could impact California’s residents and policy priorities,” Holder said in a statement, according to The Times.

California voted decisively for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November 8 presidential election, choosing the former first lady over Trump by 28 percentage points.

**** Covington and Burling has been a legal lobby operation for corrupt entities for a while. Please note this particular example below:

Western SaharaResource Watch (WSRW) has been writing since 2008 about Covington & Burling’s collusion with OCP. In particular, WSRW has investigated a secret “independent opinion,” written by Covington that has “been used by phosphate importing firms to defend their unethical trade.” Despite repeated attempts to get a copy of that opinion, WSRW has reported: “the opinion has never been released to the public. The law firm consistently refuses to reply to requests from civil society or Saharawis.” An April 2012 paper from one of the U.S. importers, PotashCorp, titled “PhosphateRock from Western Sahara,” gives us, however, a pretty good picture of Covington’s point of view.  Acknowledging that they had “recently received, on a confidential basis” two legal analyses by Covington & Burling and DLA Piper, they tell us that those opinions “concluded that OCP’s operations in the region directly benefit the people of the region and are consistent with international legal obligations.” This conclusion is directly contradicted by any number of reports and analyses that the indigenous Sahrawi benefit little from the phosphate trade, hold few of the phosphate industry jobs, and have never been consulted on or acquiesced in the exploitation. While it would certainly be enlightening to see a copy of Covington’s opinion, they are obviously basing their conclusion on the condition of the several hundred thousand illegal settlers who have been lured to the territory with subsidies and jobs. The Fourth Geneva Convention specifically prohibits colonizing occupied territories. This is directly akin to concluding that life on the West Bank is lovely, based on the living conditions of the illegal Israeli settlers. WSRW supplies us with a good list of Recommended Reading on all this.

Covington lobbying on behalf of OCP has been hard to trace, specifically because they have chosen to register their work under the LDA, which does not require the registrant to list contacts or activities (see more on this below). All we really learn from the listings is their intention to lobby several governmental agencies and Congress on “Promoting economic integration in the Maghreb and enhanced economic relations between the Maghreb and the United States.” It does not appear to be a coincidence, however, that two of Covington’s registered OCP lobbyists, Stuart Eizenstat and Marney Cheek, should turn up in 2009 as participants in a thing called the North Africa Policy Paper Project that produced the seriously flawed and thoroughly biased policy paper, Why the Maghreb Matters: Threats, Opportunities, & Options for Effective US Engagement in North Africa. Eizenstat is listed as co-chair (along with I.William Zartman) and Cheek as staff. In a nutshell, the report identifies resolution of the stalemate over the Western Sahara as the key to unlocking the potential of greater Maghrebian integration and controversially endorses “the [Moroccan] formula of autonomy/sovereignty now before the UN” as “a basis for a viable solution.” The Moroccan autonomy plan has been widely condemned by international legal scholars – including our foremost self-determination authority, Hurst Hannum – as illegal under international law because it doesn’t provide for an expression of the will of the original inhabitants of the territory. More details here.

Bill to Freeze $$ to State Dept, Until Embassy in Jerusalem

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Read the proposed legislation here.

 Currently in Tel Aviv

Congress to Freeze State Department Funds Until U.S. Embassy Moves to Jerusalem

Bill seeks to counter Obama admin refusal to call Jerusalem Israel’s capital

FreeBeacon: A delegation of Republican senators is moving forward with an effort to freeze some funding to the State Department until the U.S. embassy in Israel is formally moved to Jerusalem, according to new legislation.

The legislation comes as the Obama administration continues to face criticism over its behind-the-scenes effort to forward a United Nations resolution condemning Israel.

The Obama administration, like previous administrations, does not formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city and has worked to stymie efforts to move the U.S. embassy there.

While Congress first approved legislation to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 1995, the new bill threatens to cut State Department funding until the relocation is complete.

The effort is being spearheaded by Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), and Dean Heller (R., Nev.), all of whom support efforts by the incoming Trump administration to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem after years of debate.

“Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of Israel,” Cruz said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s vendetta against the Jewish state has been so vicious that to even utter this simple truth—let alone the reality that Jerusalem is the appropriate venue for the American embassy in Israel—is shocking in some circles.”

“But it is finally time to cut through the double-speak and broken promises and do what Congress said we should do in 1995: formally move our embassy to the capital of our great ally Israel,” Cruz said.

The legislation orders the White House to identify Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which the Obama administration has refused to do. The bill will freeze a significant portion of the State Department’s funding until it completes the relocation.

In the past, the Obama White House has been caught scrubbing captions on official photographs that labeled Jerusalem as part of Israel. The administration also was entangled in a Supreme Court case when it refused to permit an American family to list its child’s birthplace as “Jerusalem, Israel.”

Heller said the legislation could help repair America’s relationship with Israel, which has become strained under the Obama administration.

“For years, I’ve advocated for America’s need to reaffirm its support for one of our nation’s strongest allies by recognizing Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel,” Heller said in a statement. “It honors an important promise America made more than two decades ago but has yet to fulfill. While administrations come and go, the lasting strength of our partnership with one of our strongest allies in the Middle East continues to endure.”

Rubio also championed the bill in a statement, saying it will finally close loopholes that have permitted the Obama administration to ignore congressional calls to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital.

“Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state of Israel, and that’s where America’s embassy belongs,” Rubio said. “It’s time for Congress and the president-elect to eliminate the loophole that has allowed presidents in both parties to ignore U.S. law and delay our embassy’s rightful relocation to Jerusalem for over two decades.”

Budget Reconciliation to Repeal Obamacare

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The Democrats under the lead of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are complaining that the Republicans have no alternative plan to replace Obamacare. Nancy Pelosi is telegraphing the same thing and Barack Obama is headed to the Hill on Wednesday in an attempt to work his side of the aisle in Congress to save his signature law.

 CNN

In part from CNN: Democrats are pointing to two new provisions added in the rules package that they say are designed to help the GOP effort to repeal Obamacare.

One change would allow exceptions to the rule instituted by House Republicans in their recent budget plan that limits votes on any legislation that increases the federal deficit by $5 billion over a specific period. Republicans typically require any proposal that adds to the deficit has to be fully offset with cuts to other programs.
“This rule is a set-up to overturn the Affordable Care Act,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi maintained on Tuesday.
Democrats also say that another change dealing with committee oversight could open up federal entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security to potential funding cuts. The new GOP rule directs certain committees to draft recommendations for shifting these programs from the mandatory side of the federal ledger to the discretionary side. While Democrats admit this is “inside baseball” they say that if it’s implemented it could mean Congress would decide funding details for all of these programs as annual spending bills, potentially removing the automatic funding stream they now receive.

The Republicans have worked for several years on alternate solutions and kept them under wraps until a new Congress was seated. It must be known that no user of Obamacare will be left without coverage one the law is repealed as an item on the table is to give Obamacare subscribers several months and perhaps up to a year to go back into the private market for coverage with the use of subsidies and or block grants issues to the states.

***

Sen. Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, introduced a budget resolution on Tuesday that would repeal the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

The resolution utilizes the reconciliation process to repeal elements of the health care law, since Republicans do not have a 60-seat majority that would allow them to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Reconciliation could be used to repeal parts of Obamacare with only 51 votes, similar to how Democrats used the reconciliation process to amend tax and spending provisions contained in Obamacare in 2010.

Republicans can use reconciliation to “fast-track” repeal and send legislation to President-elect Donald Trump’s desk as soon as possible. More here.

*** There are two other items regarding Obamacare that remain in question and will require diligence by conservatives.

They include: The lawsuit against Obama, Burwell and Treasury for funding subsidies and insurance provider bailouts from Treasury without the advise and consent of Congress. The other item is the severability clause, which stated if one part of the law goes away in any form, the law in full collapses.

Speaker Ryan put out this statement today:

WASHINGTON—Today, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) released the following statement after the Obamacare repeal resolution was introduced in the Senate:

“This is the first step toward relief for Americans struggling under Obamacare. This resolution sets the stage for repeal followed by a stable transition to a better health care system. Our goal is to ensure that patients will be in control of their health care and have greater access to quality, affordable coverage. Today we begin to deliver on our promise to the American people.”

 

  1. Repeal Is Relief
  2. Obamacare Has Failed the American People
  3. How Obamacare Is Getting Worse
  4. The Tools It Takes to Repeal Obamacare
  5. A Stable Transition to a Better Health Care System

 

Netanyahu will not Attend Paris Peace Summit

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Did any of those votes at the UN for the recent resolution endorsed by John Kerry, Samantha Power and the Obama White House remember this?

Now would be a good time to refer to an earlier post on this site:

Documents: Mahmoud Abbas Former KGB, Syria

 

The documents reveal an extensive relationship between the Soviet Union and the nascent Palestinian nationalist movement that began in the late 1960s. At the time, the Soviets established a covert channel with Yasser Arafat’s terror-inclined guerilla group, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, or PLO. Abbas held an integral role in these backdoor communications, functioning as liaison. Accordingly, the PLO closely collaborated with the KGB, receiving Soviet arms to launch asymmetrical warfare against the State of Israel. More from DailyWire.

January 15, there is a Peace Summit in Paris, Prime Minister Netanyahu will not attend. Below could be the reason for that decision.

TEL AVIV, January 2. /TASS/. A meeting of Palestine’s major forces Fatah and Hamas alongside representatives of other factions seeking to restore unity among the Palestinians will be held in Moscow on January 15, Wasel Abu Yousef, a PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) Executive Committee member, said cited by Israel’s The Jerusalem Post daily on Monday.  

“The Russians will host a meeting of Fatah, Hamas and other Palestinian officials in Moscow in the middle of January to discuss reconciliation,” Yousef said.  

The PLO official added that the talks in Russia would be held simultaneously with an international peace conference in Paris scheduled for the same day, January 15.  

“The Palestinian leadership wants to demonstrate that it is working on both the peace process through the Paris conference and reconciliation by way of the Moscow meeting,” he said.  

On June 3, 2016 Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, the special presidential envoy for the Middle East and Africa, at the first international conference on the Israeli-Palestine settlement in Paris called “the split among Palestinians” as “another negative factor hampering the peace progress.”  

“This issue should be resolved as the priority task so that the Palestinians present a single and united delegation at the talks on the final status,”  Bogdanov said at the time.  

“Russia fully supports efforts on soonest restoration of inter-Palestinian unity on the basis of PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and Arab Peace Initiative, holds dialogue with representatives of the whole range of Palestinian forces, first of all Fatah and Hamas, in the interests of achieving appropriate agreements. We hope that such approach is shared by other members of the international community,” the diplomat concluded.  

In May 2011, a first meeting behind closed doors took place at a health resort near Moscow in an attempt to reconcile major Palestinian groups, including Fatah and Hamas. High-ranking officials of key Palestinian movements arrived in Russia after Fatah and Hamas had sealed a deal in Cairo to form a Palestinian government of “professionals.”  

A split between Palestine’s two major forces, Fatah and Hamas, occurred after the parliamentary elections in Palestine in 2006 when Hamas won. In June 2007, its militants seized power in Gaza Strip. Since then, Palestine has been divided into two parts: Fatah controls West Bank and Hamas controls the Gaza Strip.

 

FBI: 7,700 Terrorist Encounters in USA in 2015

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In a wide-ranging request for documents and analysis, President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team asked the Department of Homeland Security last month to assess all assets available for border wall and barrier construction.

Reuters: The team also asked about the department’s capacity for expanding immigrant detention and about an aerial surveillance program that was scaled back by the Obama administration but remains popular with immigration hardliners. And it asked whether federal workers have altered biographic information kept by the department about immigrants out of concern for their civil liberties.

The requests were made in a Dec. 5 meeting between Trump’s transition team and Department of Homeland Security officials, according to an internal agency memo reviewed by Reuters. The document offers a glimpse into the president-elect’s strategy for securing the U.S. borders and reversing polices

The requests were made in a Dec. 5 meeting between Trump’s transition team and Department of Homeland Security officials, according to an internal agency memo reviewed by Reuters. The document offers a glimpse into the president-elect’s strategy for securing the U.S. borders and reversing polices

The requests were made in a Dec. 5 meeting between Trump’s transition team and Department of Homeland Security officials, according to an internal agency memo reviewed by Reuters. The document offers a glimpse into the president-elect’s strategy for securing the U.S. borders and reversing policesput in place by the Obama administration. 

Trump’s transition team did not comment in response to Reuters inquiries. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to comment.

In response to the transition team request, U.S. Customs and Border Protection staffers identified more than 400 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, and about the same distance along the U.S.-Canada border, where new fencing could be erected, according to a document seen by Reuters.

Reuters could not determine whether the Trump team is considering a northern border barrier. During the campaign, Trump pledged to build a wall and expand fencing on parts of the U.S.-Mexico border but said he sees no need to build a wall on the border with Canada.

One program the transition team asked about, according to the email summary, was Operation Phalanx, an aerial surveillance program that authorizes 1,200 Army National Guard airmen to monitor the southern border for drug trafficking and illegal migration. Much more here from Reuters.

For perspective:

FBI: 7,700 Terrorist Encounters in USA Last Year

The jihad is crossing the southern border: a majority of encounters in Arizona were with Islamist groups.

From 9/2016: Breitbart news has received a collection of leaked documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that show a massive number of terrorist encounters, especially in border states.  The documents are not classified, though they are marked sensitive.  7,712 terrorist encounters occurred from July 20, 2015 and the same date a year later — last year, in short.

Some of the documents pertain to the entire U.S., while others focus specifically on the state of Arizona.  The states with the highest encounters are all border states. Texas, California, and Arizona–all states with a shared border with Mexico–rank high in encounters…. Most significantly, the map shows that many of the encounters occurred near the border outside of ports-of-entry, indicating that persons were attempting to sneak into the U.S.

Page Six shows a pie chart indicating that the majority of encounters in Arizona were with Islamic known or suspected terrorists, both Sunni and Shi’a.

 

That last is surprising, as one would expect drug cartels to make up the majority of such encounters.  The leak comes at a time when the FBI’s crime reporting shows an increase in violent crime across the country.

The Shiite terrorist organization Hezbollah has developed connections with the Latin American drug cartels because of its prominent role in heroin.  Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) controls the opium trade from the poppy fields in Afghanistan to the Levant, and they provide a great deal of opium to Hezbollah.  Hezbollah has a refining capacity in Lebanon that allows them to provide a substantial part of the world’s heroin.  They trade heroin to the Latin American drug cartels for other illegal money-making opportunities, forged documents, and access to the Americas.  Hezbollah’s operations produce between ten and twenty million dollars in revenue for its American operations, which are based out of a large Lebanese immigrant community in what is called the “Tri-border region,” an area between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina.

In addition to its money-making ventures, Hezbollah provides the cartels with military training.  As one of the world’s foremost guerrilla organizations, Hezbollah finds that its military trainers are sought after commodities.  They are able to parley those connections in order to perform operations in Mexico.  Their ability to infiltrate the United States, in order to conduct terrorist violence in service to Iran, is highlighted by these leaked FBI documents.

The role of Sunni groups is less fully understood, but it was a concern for the intelligence section of the United States military’s Southern Command according to another set of leaks earlier this year.

Sunni extremists are infiltrating the United States with the help of alien smugglers in South America and are crossing U.S. borders with ease, according to a U.S. South Command intelligence report.  The Command’s J-2 intelligence directorate reported recently in internal channels that “special interest aliens” are working with a known alien smuggling network in Latin America to reach the United States….  Army Col. Lisa A. Garcia, a Southcom spokeswoman, did not address the intelligence report directly but said Sunni terrorist infiltration is a security concern.

“Networks that specialize in smuggling individuals from regions of terrorist concern, mainly from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the Middle East, and East Africa, are indeed a concern for Southcom and other interagency security partners who support our country’s national security,” Garcia told theWashington Free Beacon….  “In 2015, we saw a total of 331,000 migrants enter the southwestern border between the U.S. and Mexico, of that we estimate more than 30,000 of those were from countries of terrorist concern,” she said….

[T]he Southcom intelligence report revealed that the threat of Islamist terror infiltration is no longer theoretical. “This makes the case for Trump’s wall,” said one American security official of the Southcom report. “These guys are doing whatever they want to get in the country.”

Here at CounterJihad, we reported on Southern Command’s commander, Admiral Kurt Tidd, and his testimony before Congress on the threat.  Tidd reported that a number of terrorists were transiting the region who had gone to Syria and fought for the Islamic State (ISIS) and other radical groups.  Their ability to return to Latin America was smooth, given that they actually had legal travel documents.

Whether they can then pass into the United States is an open question.  The leaked FBI documents only talk about actual law enforcement encounters with people on terrorist lists.  How many are infiltrating without encountering law enforcement?