Category Archives: U.S. Constitution

Meet Some that Donate To Donald and Hillary and Why

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The ‘why’ is the real problem actually. No one is pointing to specific policy positions, objectives or character. The electorate remains uninformed and likes the station of ‘low information’. The Hat, Really? Nothing about liberty, national security or repealing bad legislation….

Meet the people who have donated to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

Analysis reveals one of Election 2016’s smallest — and oddest — clubs

PublicIntegrity: Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump have precious little in common.

But the two all-but-certain presidential nominees do share this: at least three-dozen campaign contributors who gave money to both of them, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of federal campaign finance filings.

The donors compose one of the nation’s smallest political clubs, to be sure, although it has its share of notable members. They include a former U.S. ambassador to Sweden, the heiress to the National Enquirer fortune, the mother of an Ohio state senator, a professional poker player, a writer for the ABC hit television series “Castle” and a law professor who has challenged the constitutional eligibility of former Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz.

The reasons for their double dealings vary. Some gave to both politicians after undergoing ideological conversions. Others donated because they were asked by friends or trusted associates. Some Clinton supporters just wanted Trump’s iconic “Make America Great Again” hats — even if the money they spent would aid the billionaire businessman’s presidential bid.

While Americans may only vote for one presidential candidate come November, there’s nothing stopping them from giving money to multiple White House hopefuls. Nine of these overlapping donors contributed $2,700 — the legal maximum allowed during the primary — to both Clinton and Trump.

Others gave more modest sums.

With the primary season now nearing its end, both Clinton and Trump are also aiming to make inroads with voters who typically vote for the other party in order to prevail on Election Day in November.

Trump is hoping his populism can win over some Democrats, while Clinton believes that Trump’s brash antics will attract some Republicans to support her candidacy.

Both can already claim some converts.

Changes of heart

For instance, Victor Williams, a law professor at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., last year donated $400 to Clinton’s campaign as a “dutiful Democrat.”

But he now says he’s “a Trump man” — and has donated $5,400 to Trump’s campaign, $2,700 toward the primary and $2,700 toward the general election.

Another way he’s trying to help Trump: He’s been the main force behind a so-far-unsuccessful New Jersey lawsuit challenging Cruz’s eligibility to be president. Cruz’s mother was a U.S. citizen living in Canada when she gave birth to her son. (Presidents must be “natural-born citizens.”)

In order to have legal standing for the case, Williams himself also launched a long-shot presidential bid.

On his campaign website, Williams asserts that Clinton should be “criminally indicted” for some of her actions as secretary of state. He further argues that “we must replace the feckless, weak Barack Obama with a strong, determined 45th president.”

“What I’m genuinely excited about is the possibility that the established political order and those elites who have been at the trough for 40, 50 years will be sent home,” Williams told the Center for Public Integrity. “It’s really now or never.”

Then there’s Anthony Brennan, the owner of a Long Island, New York-based heating and air conditioning company. He says he regrets donating $2,700 to Clinton, whom he calls “corrupt to the core.”

“I have no faith whatsoever that this lady can run a country,” said Brennan, explaining that he made the contribution to Clinton after being asked to give by some people with whom he does business — and before he had done any research on her.

Campaign finance records indicate Brennan has now also contributed $244 to Trump — money that, he explained, went toward Trump gear, stickers and the 40 Trump signs he now displays in his yard.

“The country has written off the hard-working men who are the backbone, who keep this government funded with our payroll taxes,” Brennan told the Center for Public Integrity, adding that he plans to donate up to $100,000 to pro-Trump efforts this year because “our country is in need.”

“Finally there’s a voice for us,” he continued.

Professional poker player Daniel “Miami Boss” Suied also likes Trump’s economic views.

Suied, who gave Clinton’s campaign $500 last year at the behest of some Democratic Party friends in Florida, has also donated $367 to Trump’s campaign, including at least $200 in April.

“I was a huge fan of Bill Clinton,” Suied told the Center for Public Integrity. “I like Trump now.”

Making hats great again

Meanwhile, New York City-based lawyer Chris DiAngelo, a self-described “Rockefeller Republican,” told the Center for Public Integrity he gave Clinton’s campaign $2,700 last June, after being asked by a friend.

Six months later he became a Trump campaign donor because, he says, he purchased six of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hats for a New Year’s Eve party.

A “big hit” is how DiAngelo described the headwear.

So who will DiAngelo be supporting in November? “It’s probably either going to be Hillary or nobody,” he said. “Unless Trump does something amazing, like, I don’t know, the pope is his running mate.”

Television writer and producer Moira Kirland — whose credits include ABC’s “Castle,” CBS’s “Madam Secretary” and the CW’s “Arrow” — is a registered Democrat who likewise became a Trump donor after buying merchandise.

“I just wanted to wear that ‘Make America Great Again’ shirt ironically in January!” said Kirland, who is listed in campaign finance records as giving $211 to Trump and $900 to Clinton.

A similar story played out for Adam Conner, who works for technology company Slack in Washington, D.C., and spent $533 buying Trump hats while at the same time giving $360 to Clinton’s campaign.

“I thought they’d be good gifts and a fun collector’s item and didn’t think I’d have very long to buy them. Guess I was wrong,” Conner told The Daily Beast earlier this year.

Reached by the Center for Public Integrity, Conner stressed that he was “a committed Democrat who will support the Democratic nominee,” even if his hat purchases helped fund Trump’s campaign.

Giving big, saying little

For some of the people who have given money to both Clinton and Trump, their motivations aren’t readily apparent. Nor are they particularly willing to discuss their political giving.

For instance, campaign finance records show that Nancy Beang, the former executive director of the Society for Neuroscience, donated $2,700 to Clinton in July. She then donated $250 to Trump in January.

Reached by phone, Beang, who was a member of the District of Columbia Women for Hillary Council during Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, declined to comment.

In March, Beang told The Daily Beast that she was backing Trump because she thought he would “make America great again.”

For his part, Jeffrey Sherman, a financial advisor at J.P. Morgan Securities in Boston, gave $1,000 to Trump shortly after Trump launched his presidential bid last summer. Yet he’s also given $739 to Clinton so far this year.

Why?

“I’m not commenting,” Sherman told the Center for Public Integrity. “I’m the wrong guy to help you out.”

Meanwhile, campaign finance disclosures show that Lyndon Olson — who served as the U.S. ambassador to Sweden under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001 — gave $2,700 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign last year. But he also contributed $796 to Trump in February.

Philanthropist Lois Pope, heiress to the National Enquirer fortune, likewise contributed $2,700 to Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid. But she’s also given Trump $423 and has attended multiple events for him this year, often sporting sequined, pro-Trump regalia.

Then there’s lawyer Eric Yollick, who earlier this year lost a GOP primary for district judge in Texas. Yollick, who refers to himself as a “constitutional conservative” and pledged to “make our courthouse great again,” has donated $2,600 to both Trump and Clinton.

Olson, Pope and Yollick did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Like buying extra lottery tickets’

Ohio Democrat Janet Cafaro is another donor who’s given significant sums to both Clinton and Trump.

Campaign finance records show she gave Clinton $2,700 in November and $2,700 to Trump in March.

Who is Janet Cafaro? She’s the mother of Democratic state Sen. Capri Cafaro of Ohio and the wife of developer John “J.J.” Cafaro.

The Cafaros, a wealthy Ohio family, have experienced both the glamorous and gritty aspects of politics.

On one hand, they’ve hosted President Bill Clinton at their sprawling, Tudor-style mansion in Chevy Chase, Maryland. On the other hand, John Cafaro was fined in 2002 for bribing former U.S. Rep. James Traficant of Ohio, whom he testified against in court.

Janet Cafaro could not immediately be reached for comment, but Capri Cafaro told the Center for Public Integrity she asked her mother to donate to Clinton ahead of a local event.

“There’s no ideological reason behind their financial support for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump,” Cafaro said of her parents’ political giving. (John Cafaro, like Janet Cafaro, has also donated $2,700 to Trump.)

Only a handful of other donors have contributed $2,700 to both Clinton and Trump.

They include Steve Gorlin, the vice chairman of biotechnology company NantKwest; Scott Powell, the president of the Sacramento Jet Center; and Scott Shleifer of investment company Tiger Global Management, according to federal records. None could be immediately reached for comment.

Political observers note that for some donors, backing multiple candidates can be about access and hoping to influence a politician’s agenda.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, has said that “donating to multiple candidates is like buying extra lottery tickets” because “you have more chances to wind up in the winner’s circle, with all the perks of having backed the victor.”

Ahead of the 2012 election, dozens of donors contributed to both President Barack Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics. Likewise, during the 2008 election, about two-dozen donors gave at least $2,300 to both Obama and Republican John McCain.

To be certain, the roughly three-dozen campaign donors shared by Clinton and Trump identified by the Center for Public Integrity represent a conservative estimate as only people who give a candidate at least $200 must be publicly disclosed.

Through April 30, Trump has raised about $10.5 million from people who each gave less than $200 and whose names have not been publicly released. Clinton, meanwhile, has raised about $40.2 million from such small-dollar donors.

Moreover, as Trump now turns to more traditional sources of campaign cash — he’s largely been self-funding his presidential bid to date — the number of donors he shares with Clinton will likely grow.

Undecided between Clinton and Trump

While polls do regularly show a portion of voters still undecided between Clinton and Trump, you might not expect someone who’s opened up their wallet to support a politician to fall into that category.

Yet that’s the case for at least one Florida man who has contributed $287 to Trump and $899 to Clinton.

Michael Ginsberg, a Tampa-based lawyer, explained that his giving was not ideological.

“I’ve gone to their stores and bought things,” he said, adding that he’s been collecting political memorabilia — mainly buttons — since he was a kid and has a collection that now numbers in the hundreds, if not thousands, of items.

“I’m sort of torn between the two,” Ginsberg said of Clinton and Trump. “Both have things of interest and elements of concern.”

Chris Zubak-Skees and Ben Wieder contributed to this report.

This article was co-published with The Daily Beast.

IG Report on Hillary Not Following Guidelines

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Only today the report was given to members of Congress for review. So maybe that ‘security review’ thing Hillary continued to mention was the IG’s report. Well hee hee, if so, Hillary flunked that review.

Would you like to read the report? Here is the 83 page Inspector General summary for your convenience. The Inspector General is a neutral position and the report does make recommendations. The report does become part of the FBI two track investigation. Consider the timing of all of this, the hearings in Congress, the interrogatories by Judicial Watch, the extradition of the hacker Guccifer who appeared in court today and pled guilty, the leak of the Terry McAuliffe donations and now this. Hummmm….

 

 

OIG makes eight recommendations. They include issuing enhanced and more frequent guidance on the permissible use of personal email accounts to conduct official business, amending Departmental policies to provide for administrative penalties for failure to comply with records preservation and cybersecurity requirements, and developing a quality assurance plan to address vulnerabilities in records management and preservation. The Department concurred with all of OIG’s recommendations.

The title:

Office of the Secretary: Evaluation of Email Records Management and Cybersecurity Requirements

State Dept. watchdog: Clinton violated email rules

The inspector general report is the latest headache for Clinton in the scandal over her exclusive use of private email for State business.

Politico: A State Department watchdog concluded that Hillary Clinton failed to comply with the agency’s policies on records while using a personal email server that was not approved by agency officials even though it should have been, according to a report released to lawmakers on Wednesday.

The long-awaited findings from the agency’s inspector general, which also revealed Clinton expressing reluctance about using an official email account and apparent hacking attempts on her private server, were shared with Capitol Hill Wednesday, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO. It’s the latest turn in the headache-inducing saga that has dogged Clinton’s campaign.

While the report concludes that the agency suffers from “longstanding, systemic weaknesses” with records that “go well beyond the tenure of any one Secretary of State,” it specifically dings Clinton for her exclusive use of private email during her four years at the agency.

“Secretary Clinton should have preserved any Federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary,” the report states. “At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”

The report also notes that she had an “obligation to discuss using her personal email account” but did not get permission from the people who would have needed to approve the technology.

“According to the current [chief information officer] and assistant secretary for diplomatic security, Secretary Clinton had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business with their offices, who in turn would have attempted to provide her with approved and secured means that met her business needs,” the report reads. “However, according to these officials, [the relevant people] did not — and would not — approve her exclusive reliance on a personal email.”

The watchdog also “found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server.”

The report also included a revealing November 2011 exchange in which Clinton’s right-hand staffer Huma Abedin discussed with her the possibility of putting her on a State Department email because her messages were not being received by State staff.

Clinton responded with concerns of privacy issues.

“We should talk about putting you on [S]tate email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam,” she wrote.

Clinton responded: “Let’s get separate address or device but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.”

The watchdog’s findings could exact further damage to Clinton’s campaign, and they provide fresh fodder for Trump, who has already said he will go after Clinton for the email scandal “bigly.” The Democratic frontrunner’s bid for the White House has already been hindered by high unfavorability ratings, with people saying they don’t trust her.

The report represents the latest pushback — in this case by a nonpartisan government entity — against her campaign’s claim that she did not break any rules and that her use of a private server was completely allowed.

The report also details how some technology staff said they were instructed to not talk of Clinton’s email set-up after they raised concerns about the unusual arrangement. It also includes conflicting information about whether the private email server had been approved by the State Department’s legal staff.

“In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal recordkeeping requirements,” the document states. “According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further. As previously noted, OIG found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Adviser reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton’s personal system.”

The watchdog report goes on to say that a staff member from the office that handles information technology for the Office of the Secretary recounted the hush nature of the email arrangement.

“According to the other S/ES-IRM staff member who raised concerns about the server, the Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again,” the report states.

The report further gets into security concerns about the private email server, including some fears that the server was vulnerable to hackers.

It states that a non-State adviser to Bill Clinton, who was the original user of the server later taken over by Hillary Clinton, shut down the server in early 2011 because of hacking concerns.

“On January 9, 2011, the non-Departmental advisor to President Clinton who provided technical support to the Clinton email system notified the Secretary’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations that he had to shut down the server because he believed ‘someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in i didnt [sic] want to let them have the chance to,’” the report says. “Later that day, the advisor again wrote to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, ‘We were attacked again so I shut [the server] down for a few min.’”

The report goes on to detail another incident in May and says that Clinton and her staff did not appropriate report the matters.

“Notification is required when a user suspects compromise of, among other things, a personally owned device containing personally identifiable information,” it says. “However, OIG found no evidence that the Secretary or her staff reported these incidents to computer security personnel or anyone else within the Department.”

State has since deemed more than 2,000 of her messages as classified, including several that were upgraded to the most sensitive national security classification, “top secret.” And the FBI is still probing whether any laws were broken laws by putting classified information at risk — or whether her staff improperly sent sensitive information knowing it wasn’t on a classified system.

At the very least, State’s inspector general says she didn’t do what she was supposed to, though it also notes widespread email issues across the tenures of five secretaries of state, not just Clinton.

“OIG recognizes that technology and Department policy have evolved considerably since Secretary Albright’s tenure began in 1997. Nevertheless, the Department generally and the Office of the Secretary in particular have been slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks associated with electronic data communications, particularly as those risks pertain to its most senior leadership,” the report concluded. “OIG expects that its recommendations will move the Department steps closer to meaningfully addressing these risks.”

The report states that its findings are based on interviews with current Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessors Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

Clinton and her deputies, however, declined the IG’s requests for interviews. Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills and top deputies Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin are among those who did not cooperate with the probe.

Clinton and her allies have contended she did nothing illegal by choosing to set up a private email server and account at her Chappaqua, New York, home, and that she was not trying to evade public records requests. Instead, Clinton has said she was motivated by the desire for convenience, though she has conceded it was not the best choice.

The State Department has released roughly 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to her former agency at its request in December 2014. While there were no apparent bombshells in the content of the messages, the number of emails later deemed classified has raised questions about the security and wisdom of the set-up.

Clinton has also faced scrutiny for instructing her staff to delete about 32,000 messages deemed personal by her team. It’s unclear how many of those emails the FBI may have been able to recover from her server — which was turned over to authorities last August — or whether those messages will eventually be made public.

The report gives more details of the under-the-radar work of Clinton’s top technology staffer, Bryan Pagliano, who she paid to maintain her private email server. State’s chief information officer and deputy chief information officers, Pagliano’s direct bosses, told investigators that he never informed them of his side duties. They “believed that Pagliano’s job functions were limited to supporting mobile computing issues across the entire Department.”

“They told OIG that while they were aware that the Senior Advisor had provided IT support to the Clinton Presidential campaign, they did not know he was providing ongoing support to the Secretary’s email system during working hours,” the report reads.

The top technology officers also told investigators they “questioned whether he could support a private client during work hours, given his capacity as a full-time government employee.”

Pagliano took the Fifth and refused to answer questions on the matter before Congress but received immunity from the FBI to talk about the email arrangement. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been eager to question him on whether Clinton intentionally used private email because she didn’t want anyone getting access to her messages.

 

 

 

DOJ: Lawyers Behind the N. Carolina Bathroom Lawsuit

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Radicals….throughout the whole Justice Department but here are the backgrounds of those who Loretta Lynch has assigned to sue North Carolina on the bathroom (genderless) lawsuit. Terrifying….

The Justice Department sent out the guidance letter to public schools in several languages and that document is here.

This is a matter placed under Title IX, Sex Discrimination.

By the way, make sure you use proper words as you could be sued in this regard as well.

A sign marks the entrance to a gender-neutral restroom at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vt.

These Are the Radical DOJ Lawyers Suing North Carolina Over Transgender Bathroom Use

By J. Christian Adams

PJ Media published the Every Single One series in 2011. The series documented the Obama administration’s hiring of radical lawyers to fill the career ranks in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

Every single one of the new attorney hires were radical leftists or partisans.

Since 2011, the situation has only gotten worse. Much worse.

The Civil Rights Division exercises enormous power over the everyday lives of Americans: they are involved in employment, education, housing, religious liberty, abortion, prisons, policing, and much, much more.

The radical beliefs of these radical lawyers have turned into radical administration policies.

The most recent example? The lawsuits aimed at North Carolina intended to create a federal civil right for men to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.

We have already provided the resumes of the new lawyers who will oversee the 2016 elections. Now let’s meet the ones who want to oversee bathrooms.

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The complaint filed by North Carolina had Justice Department lawyers from the Employment Litigation section as well as other DOJ Civil Rights Division sections.

Chief Delora Kennebrew

The Employment Section is headed by Delora Kennebrew.

Kennebrew hails from Savannah, Georgia. She was president of the Black Law Student Association at Mercer University’s law school in Macon.

Under Kennebrew, the Employment Section has pursued case after case against fire departments and other municipal entities, forcing them to abandon qualification tests where blacks and Hispanics scored lower than whites. Other settlements have forced municipalities to pay tens of thousands of dollars for using qualification tests for fire and police jobs.

One case she oversaw against Austin, Texas, forced the city to set aside 30 jobs for black and Hispanic applicants.

Kennebrew is listed as the point of contact in the letter North Carolina received from the Justice Department this month. That means she is the central manager on the matter.

Kennebrew is most certainly a member of the Senior Executive Service. That means that an incoming Trump administration can move her after January 2017 to any other federal agency in any part of the country, such as the National Weather Service in Duluth.

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Candyce Phoenix

Candyce Phoenix is also on the complaint suing North Carolina.

Her resume noted her senior thesis was devoted to a “case study of race and FedEx field,” the football stadium where the Washington Redskins play.

Phoenix majored in “Comparative Ethnic Studies” at Columbia, where she was a columnist for the student newspaper. You can read her writings here. Her favorite topics? Race, race, and race.

In a column titled “Hear Ye, Hear Ye, All Negroes,” she wrote about President George Bush’s “bogus” visit to Howard University:

[Bush] was ecstatic to be able to visit the Negroes on such an important occasion. Needless to say, Bush was not well received, which was to be expected given his recent two percent approval rating among African Americans. One of my classmates said it best when she complained that having Bush on campus was “like inviting the master to the slave cabins for dinner.”

Phoenix also penned “It Was Raining Oreos,” which refers to former RNC Chairman Michael Steele with a racial epithet. She wrote “What I Learned from White People at Howard” (she learned the best ones are “race traitors”). She also wrote “I’m Black,” which stated: “Our curriculum places disproportionate importance on white scholars and effectively denies the importance of scholars of color.”

Yes, yes, we heard it all before. But these are the sort of views held by lawyers earning six-figure taxpayer-funded salaries to fundamentally transform America.

The race-soaked discontent with America no longer is confined to crackpots on campus.

Candyce Phoenix Candyce Phoenix

Phoenix’s qualifications didn’t end with her tiresome critical race studies dogma. She was an activist from the start. Phoenix served as the “United Students of Color Campus Liaison” at Columbia — a real office.

She served as the events chair for the American Constitution Society, a left-wing lawyers club that has mostly failed in its efforts to match the heft and influence of the Federalist Society. She worked with the left-wing “Election Protection” organization, which funnels potential plaintiffs toward civil rights organizations.

She also did a stint with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, an organization that routinely fights election integrity laws like Voter ID. (Thankfully, those efforts have recently failed, such as in North Carolina.)

Now, buckle up:

After a Danish cartoonist was nearly murdered by an Islamist with an axe, Phoenix wrote to the Washington Post:

[D]o Muslims really have avenues to express their discontent by what we consider normal democratic means? And if they do, do we listen?

Phoenix started at DOJ less than a year ago, which means she hasn’t vested into civil service protections and can also be moved by a new administration.

Alisa Philo

Philo, hired in October 2015, was co-president of Women of Stanford Law, an organization with a “Social Justice Committee” that organizes “donation based efforts and social justice programing” at Stanford Law School.

Alisa Philo

Philo clerked for First Circuit Court of Appeal Judge Sandra Lynch (appointed by Clinton) and federal Judge Keith Ellison (Clinton). Philo also began her tenure at Justice less than a year ago; she too has not vested her employment.

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Nadia Said

Said was a fellow at Equal Justice America, but her real Civil Rights Division bona fides came from her time spent at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.

The Chicago Lawyers’ Committee was originally designed to end official discrimination, but it has since morphed into a Tides Foundation, Soros-funded leftist organization pushing radical legal theories.

The group has opposed election-integrity measures. It has deployed teams of lawyers to polling locations ostensibly to protect voting rights, but in practice to aid Democrats.

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Christina Cheung

Christina Cheung says she worked as a political consultant prior to her hiring at the Justice Department in 2015. Since becoming a Justice Department lawyer, she has also become a Hillary Clinton donor. When working with Gloria Allred in private practice, Cheung was involved in attempts to torque campus sexual assault cases against universities such as Boise State.

Christina Cheung

That complaint said colleges are required to “take proactive measures to prevent sexual harassment and violence,” and that “the mere presence” of an accused perpetrator on campus “gives rise to a sexually hostile atmosphere.”

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Richard Sexton

Sexton came to the Justice Department from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision. While at the EEOC, he brought cases against businesses such as Service Master, Terminix, Subway franchises, and prison management companies.

Richard Sexton

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Catherine Sellers

Sellers worked at “Legal Voice,” a group in Seattle dedicated to “transgender rights,” “protecting reproductive justice,” and “advancing economic justice.”

The resume Sellers submitted to the Justice Department for employment consideration documents her time at the Yale University Art Gallery. Wrote Sellers:

Recruited diverse student groups to co-host gallery events and organized “Yale Liberal Party debate on art repatriation, Day With(out) Art” event recognizing LBGT artists and a collaborative tour focusing on women’s issues.

She was involved in the Immigrant Families Advocacy Project, a group dedicated to providing legal services to illegal aliens.

See below: the Justice Department does not want you to see her entire resume. They redacted a portion pertaining to “interests”:

Catherine Sellers

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Kunti Dudakia Salazar

Kunti Dudakia Salazar was an A-team leftist activist before she came to the Justice Department in June of 2015. She graduated summa cum laude with a Woman’s Studies degree from UCLA. There, she was active in both the African student union as well as the Indian student union. She also won the Constance Coiner award for “research on feminist/working class issues.”

Kunti Dudakia Salazar

At law school in Berkeley, she was a founding member of the “Women of Color Collective,” a group dedicated to providing “a supportive space for African-American, Asian-American, Latina, Native-American, and other women and transgender students of color.” Hard to imagine that could have been in short supply at Berkeley.

The Facebook page for the organization toggles between farce and frightening, reframing the student experience through the lens of race and oppression.

She also worked for the Henderson Center for Social Justice on issues “regarding black women, mental health and incarceration,” and served as the “activist coordinator” for the “Berkeley Critical Race Studies Scholars Society.”

She worked for the ACLU in Los Angeles on “racial profiling” and “police misconduct” issues.

The Justice Department also redacted her interests, as well as the name of a professor — David Sklansky — with whom she worked on a law review article.

Dudakia Salazar began her time at the Justice Department in June 2015, and thus her probationary period has not yet ended.

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Stay tuned to learn about the other Civil Rights Division sections suing North Carolina over trans rights.

IRS Comish Refused to Show up to Proceedings

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The IRS Commissioner refused to show up stating he was busy as he just returned from China. What?

Committee Resolution for Censure

Congress produces film chronicling IRS scandal at John Koskinen impeachment hearing DailyWorldwideNews

‘Koskinen has misled us’: House weighs impeaching IRS chief

Westwood/Examiner: Members of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday weighed evidence against Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen, who faces an impeachment resolution in the House.

“On his watch, volumes of information crucial to the investigation into the IRS targeting scandal were destroyed,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “Before the tapes were destroyed, congressional demands, including subpoenas, for information about the IRS targeting scandal went unanswered.”

Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the panel’s ranking Democrat, said the seven-month-old impeachment measure had “virtually no chance of success” in the Senate and argued the charges against Koskinen have been “debunked” by previous probes.

Koskinen has faced opposition from Republican lawmakers for what they see as an insufficient response to congressional investigations into allegations that the IRS targeted conservative groups.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, served as a witness at Tuesday’s hearing alongside Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., also a member of the oversight panel.

The pair of Republican lawmakers presented evidence from their committee’s investigation, which began under former Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Issa objected to Democrats’ attempts to include Koskinen’s nine-page testimony, which he released ahead of the hearing along with a letter declining an invitation to appear, in the official record.

To be candid … this is sort of Lois Lerner revisited,” Issa said, calling Koskinen’s letter a “self-serving statement.” “The opportunity to say what you want to say and not be cross-examined would seem to be inappropriate.”

Lerner, former head of the tax agency’s nonprofit arm, drew fire when, in an appearance before Congress, she made an opening statement in her defense and then invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and declined to answer any additional questions.

Although House Republicans first voted to impeach Koskinen in October, they did not introduce a censure measure until last week.

Koskinen wrote in a letter to the committee Monday that he could not attend the hearing because his schedule is too “crowded” and he was not given sufficient notice that the hearing was taking place.

Chaffetz highlighted Koskinen’s failure to provide documents to his committee. Republican lawmakers have accused the IRS commissioner of intentionally misleading investigators by promising to hand over records he knew to be missing.

“Over the course of our investigation, Mr. Koskinen has misled us about the efforts taken to locate and preserve Lois Lerner’s emails,” Chaffetz said. “His actions are in contradiction of the initial promises he made during his Senate confirmation hearings.”

Chaffetz noted that, one month after discovering Lerner’s emails, IRS employees magnetically erased 422 backup tapes that contained thousands of the ousted official’s records. Congress had already requested copies of those emails.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew issued a statement to the committee Tuesday in defense of Koskinen.

“John Koskinen is an outstanding public servant of the highest integrity with decades of experience leading both public and private institutions,” Lew said. “From the day he began his leadership of the IRS, John and his staff have cooperated with Congress.‎ And despite facing massive budget cuts, the IRS continues to carry out its mission of enforcing our nation’s tax laws while striving to provide quality service to taxpayers.”

 

The Hillary Hacker to Plead Guilty, Iceberg Ahead

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Hacker who got some Clinton emails set to plead guilty

Deal could give prosecutors right to question Romanian Marcel Lazar, known online as ‘Guccifer.’

Politico: A Romanian computer hacker who obtained some of Hillary Clinton’s emails by breaking into the account of one of her advisers is expected to plead guilty this week, clearing the way for his unfettered cooperation with federal prosecutors.

Marcel Lazar, who was extradited from Romania in March to face U.S. charges, claimed in interviews aired earlier this month that he also hacked into the Democratic presidential candidate’s personal server. However, that claim has not been verified and a spokesman for Clinton’s presidential campaign has rejected the idea that Lazar ever made it into her server.

Lazar is scheduled to appear in federal court in Alexandria, Va. Wednesday morning for a change of plea hearing, according to court records. A prosecution spokesman and a defense attorney for Lazar did not immediately respond to messages seeking confirmation that the guilty plea is part of a plea bargain with prosecutors. Such deals usually oblige a defendant to assist authorities in all ongoing investigations.

Lazar was indicted in 2014 on nine felony charges stemming from his alleged hack into the emails of several prominent Americans, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a relative of former President George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, and former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal. A set of Blumenthal’s emails were published online in 2013, disclosing a private email address Clinton used. She later changed the address.

Clinton’s email arrangement is the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation, believed to be focused on how email messages deemed classified wound up on her server. Some reports have speculated that Lazar could demonstrate how vulnerable Clinton’s unusual email set-up was to foreign hackers, but it’s unclear how significant that fact would be to a decision about whether to seek criminal charges against Clinton or others involved in creating or using the unofficial email system.

Lazar had been set to go to trial in September.

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Even as Hillary Clinton tries to put questions about her private email server behind her, the FBI has stepped up inquiries into the security of the former secretary of state’s home-made email system and how aides communicated over email, POLITICO has learned.

The FBI’s recent moves suggest that its inquiry could have evolved from the preliminary fact-finding stage that the agency launches when it receives a credible referral, according to former FBI and Justice Department officials interviewed by POLITICO.

“This sounds to me like it’s more than a preliminary inquiry; it sounds like a full-blown investigation,” said Tom Fuentes, former assistant director of the FBI. “When you have this amount of resources going into it …. I think it’s at the investigative level.”

The FBI declined to respond to questions about the scope of its ongoing work.

But POLITICO learned that around early October, the FBI requested documents from a company involved in the server arrangement after Clinton left State. It also interviewed a former high-ranking

policy official at State about the contents of top Clinton aides’ emails.

The official, who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity, said the questions explored whether anyone at State was concerned about classified information being put at risk by communicating via email. The source did not know of any such concerns.

Confirmation of the interview and document requests is the first public indication that the agency is moving ahead with its inquiry – and possibly expanding it.

The former State official interviewed by the FBI, for example, had little to do with the Clinton server set-up or any approval process allowing her to use personal email for work — suggesting the FBI’s initial inquiry about the actual physical security of Clinton’s home-made server now also includes looking at the content of messages shared by staff.

Former FBI and Justice officials familiar with the investigative procedures on such matters said the agency must determine two main things: whether the use of an outside email system posed any risks to national security secrets and, if so, whether anyone was responsible for exposing classified information.

FBI Director James Comey acknowledged in October that his agency was probing the server matter generally and believed it had the resources to look into the issues, though he didn’t give specifics.

Over the summer, the Department of Justice said it received a referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General about potentially exposed classified information on Clinton’s home-made email server. The referral, Justice said at the time, was not criminal in nature but focused on the counterintelligence law governing national security secrets.

The matter at the time was considered a “preliminary” inquiry.

Clinton’s campaign and lawyers have said they are cooperating, turning over her server and a thumb drive backup of her messages to the FBI. They’ve also said they’re encouraging everyone who worked on the server issue to do the same. Platte River Networks, the Denver-based company that housed her server since she left State in 2013, for example, has said it’s cooperating; so has Datto, another tech company that provided a cloud backup of Clinton’s messages.

But exactly who they’re talking to at the staff level has been unclear. For example: Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff at State and lawyer who helped determine which of her emails were personal and work related, wouldn’t say in a recent Washington Post interview whether she had been contacted due to confidentiality surrounding the FBI’s work.

The FBI ultimately decides whether to take a preliminary inquiry to a full-fledged investigation — and if it does so, it is under no obligation to say so publicly. The classification level of any compromised information “may be a factor in determining whether an FBI investigation is warranted,” reads an overview of FBI procedures.

In its review of Clinton’s emails, the State Department has classified more than 400 messages so far — materials that would not therefore be allowed on a homemade email system, although Clinton has said that none of them were marked classified at the time she or her staff received or sent them.

POLITICO reported on Friday that some of the original messages that triggered the referral — a couple messages the ICIG said were “top secret,” the most sensitive national security material — were no longer considered that protected.

Sources told POLITICO this week that as of a month ago, the Justice Department had not determined how to proceed with Bryan Pagliano, Clinton’s top IT expert who oversaw her server but took the Fifth and refused to answer questions when subpoenaed by Congress earlier this year.

Republican lawmakers have weighed an immunity agreement for Pagliano, which would bar him from prosecution and allow him to talk about what he knew of the server: who approved it, why and the security surrounding the system.

His lawyer, reached Thursday, would not confirm whether he’s even been contacted by the FBI.

The agency has asked for documents from Tania Neild, the New York-based technology broker for millionaires, who put the Clintons in touch with Platte River Networks.

Neild confirmed the FBI request in an interview with POLITICO, saying the agency asked her to appear with written documents relating to the advice she gave to her client about negotiating with Platte River. Her company, InfoGrate, acts as a middle man between high-worth individuals and companies that oversee their personal technologies, such as emails.

Neild operates under a confidentiality agreement with all her clients. She said the nondisclosure arrangement precluded her from cooperating with the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which is also investigating the server issue and reached out to her for an interview. But the FBI notice, she said, trumped her confidentiality agreement.

Her lawyer would not confirm any contact they may or may not have had with the Department of Justice or the FBI.

“What we did receive were inquiries from [the Senate Homeland Committee] that are looking into various things,” said Ron Safer, of Chicago’s Schiff Hardin. “And whether we have had communications with anybody else, I really can’t say at this point.”

Due to secrecy surrounding any FBI investigation, it is impossible to know exactly where the FBI stands. And since the issue involves the 2016 Democratic front-runner, the work is even more sensitive.

Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division, said Justice is likely worried about issuing formal legal notices “because they know it will get out, and then you’re talking about a grand jury investigation.” But he said it’s “not uncommon” for companies to require subpoenas, court orders or other legal notices to cooperate to save their corporate reputation, which could otherwise be jeopardized for sharing personal information.

“I am sure there is hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth across the street at the Hoover Building because you’re going to have people saying ‘I don’t want to produce X documents. Give me a piece of paper that covers me.’ And that’s where push is going to come to shove,” Hosko said.