Clinton Cash, Coming to a Theater Near You

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheryl Mills and her Lawyer, Walked Out

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

Off limits….

Isn’t it interesting that Cheryl Mills and her attorney Beth Wilkinson set the ground rules of what questions could be posed to them during the interrogatories? It seems too that the plan set forth was to declare attorney/client privilege on certain questions. So there is the game…legal warfare.

from National Law Journal

Clinton aide leaves interview briefly when the FBI broaches an off-limits topic

WaPo: Near the beginning of a recent interview, an FBI investigator broached a topic with longtime Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills that her lawyer and the Justice Department had agreed would be off limits, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Mills and her lawyer left the room — though both returned a short time later — and prosecutors were somewhat taken aback that their FBI colleague had ventured beyond what was anticipated, the people said.

Investigators consider Mills — who served as chief of staff while Clinton was secretary of state — to be a cooperative witness. But the episode demonstrates some of the tension surrounding the criminal probe into possible mishandling of classified information involving the leading Democratic presidential candidate. In the coming weeks, prosecutors and FBI agents hope to be able to interview Clinton herself as they work to bring the case to a close.

The incident was described to The Washington Post by several people, including U.S. law enforcement officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing and those involved could face professional consequences for discussing it publicly.

It is not completely uncommon for FBI agents and prosecutors to diverge on interview tactics and approach, and the people familiar with the matter said Mills answered investigators’ questions. Mills and her lawyer, Beth Wilkinson, also asked for breaks more than once to confer, the people said.

The questions that were considered off limits had to do with the procedure used to produce emails to the State Department so they could possibly be released publicly, the people said. Mills, an attorney herself, was not supposed to be asked questions about that — and ultimately never was in the recent interview — because it was considered confidential as an example of attorney-client privilege, the people said.

So far, investigators have found scant evidence tying Clinton to criminal wrongdoing, though they are still probing the case aggressively. Charges have not been ruled out. In recent weeks, they have been interviewing Mills and other aides. One former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, Bryan Pagliano, was granted immunity so he would cooperate as part of the probe.

There is no indication a grand jury has been convened in the case.

In response to this story, Wilkinson said, “Ms. Mills has cooperated with the government.” The Clinton campaign also did not provide a response, but spokesman Brian Fallon has said repeatedly that Clinton is willing to answer investigators questions, and he added in a recent statement that “we hope and expect that anyone else who is asked would do the same.”

Clinton herself said on CBS’s “Face The Nation” Sunday that she has “made it clear I’m more than ready to talk to anybody, anytime” and that she looked forward to the inquiry being “wrapped up.”

In an interview with The Washington Post last year, Mills agreed of Clinton’s email “if you could do it again, you’d just do it again differently,” but Mills said she did not recall the topic “being a major area of conversation or engagement.”

“I wish there had been a lot more thought and deliberation around it, but I can’t tell you that I can offer you that insight that there was,” she said. “I think it was just a continuation of a process that she had been engaged in, in terms of using her own account, and it was consistent with what the Department had seen in the past.”

Mills said in the interview that she did not recall having conversations about security vulnerabilities. She would not say then whether she had spoken to the FBI but offered the general assurance that “we’ve obviously sought to be, to cooperate with the FBI and to provide them whatever information they’ve needed to be able to conduct the inquiry that they’re doing.”

Her attorney, Wilkinson, is a seasoned lawyer who handled many high-profile cases when she worked at the Justice Department as an assistant U.S. Attorney. She received the department’s highest award for the prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombers.

Spokesmen for the FBI, the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia declined to comment.

**** More on Cheryl Mills from Politico:

Here are some words often associated with Cheryl Mills: Clintons, gatekeeper, loyal, Benghazi.

Here are words you most likely haven’t heard as frequently: military brat, mother of twins, unmarried in solidarity with the gay community, point person at the State Department on rebuilding Haiti.

Her middle name? No one knows what the “D” in Cheryl D. Mills stands for. Her partner, David, is the son of former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.).

Having worked for the Clintons in some capacity for more than two decades, including her recent stint as chief of staff to the former secretary of state, Mills is a member of the family’s small inner circle. She has remained a key part of Hillary Clinton’s transition team and is likely to factor strongly in a presidential campaign, should there be one, in 2016.

Her dedication and reputation for providing unvarnished advice have earned praise from Obama administration top brass who worked with her.

“I have known Cheryl for nearly two decades. There is no one who cares more about the people she works with and who is more dedicated to public service,” said Treasury Secretary and former Obama White House chief of staff Jack Lew.

Bill Burns, deputy secretary of state, was effusive about the role she played at Foggy Bottom during the Clinton era.

“Cheryl was one of the smartest, most dedicated, and most decent colleagues I’ve had in over 30 years in government service,” Burns said in a statement to POLITICO. “She was just as effective and caring an advocate for the people she served with — the men and women of the Department of State — as she was for the foreign policy goals we pursued. That’s a really admirable combination.”

Mills, 48, spent her childhood living on bases throughout Europe because of her father’s career in the Army. She developed an appreciation for government service work.

The Stanford Law School graduate first came into the Clinton orbit as part of Bill Clinton’s transition team after his 1992 campaign. Seven years later, she was a deputy White House counsel during the House impeachment trial against Clinton.

Mills’s pushback against the House managers’ case gained her trust within Clintonworld — particularly Hillary Clinton, who was impressed with her loyalty. It was around this time, according to a 1999 profile in The Washington Post, that Mills befriended Domenici, while both were involved in a mentoring and tutoring project called D.C. Works, which helped underprivileged kids.

Hillary Clinton made Mills general counsel of her 2008 presidential campaign and then her chief of staff at State.

In between various roles for the Clintons, she has worked at Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen Media and at New York University as a senior vice president.

At State, she had a major role in expanding benefits for the agency’s LGBT personnel, officials said, and was actively involved in helping Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng. And she ran the agency’s policy on Haiti, work that current Secretary of State John Kerry has asked Mills to continue to play a part in.

Mills, who has twin 8-year-olds (a boy and a girl), was known for working grueling hours — from a 3:50 a.m. wake-up until her departure from Foggy Bottom at 6:15 p.m., then back at work at 8:30 p.m. after the kids were in bed.

In a thank-you note from Barack Obama to Mills, which Lew read aloud before a gathering of State Department officials at the end of Clinton’s tenure, the president wrote: “Hillary and I have enjoyed watching you and Denis [McDonough] grow from a team of rivals to an unrivaled team.”

A Yemeni Gitmo ‘Forever Prisoner’, Approved for Release

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

So much for the ‘forever prisoner’ as this will likely apply to the rest of the forever prisoners.

Parole board OKs Yemeni’s release from Guantánamo on fifth review

MiamiHerald: The Guantánamo parole board has approved the release of a Yemeni “forever prisoner” on his fifth review, the latest sign that showing up at a Periodic Review Board hearing actually helps a captive win release from the downsizing war-on-terror prison in Cuba.

The decision, released by the Pentagon Monday, means 27 of the 80 captives currently held at the U.S. detention center in Cuba can leave to a transfer deal that satisfies Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.

Salem bin Kanad, about 40, got to Camp X-Ray in the second week of its existence and was profiled as a veteran jihadist who left his homeland for Afghanistan a year ahead of the 9/11 attacks.

He was initially captured by the Northern Alliance in late 2001 and held at a prison fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif where captives staged an uprising in which CIA agent Johnny Spann was killed, according to a leaked 2008 prison profile. Fellow revolt survivor John Walker Lindh at one point cast Kanad as a commander of their Taliban-linked force, the profile said.

But subsequent U.S. intelligence assessments recast him as having a “low-level leadership role” in a Taliban front-line unit. It cast him alternately as “mostly compliant” with his guards and having “an extremist mindset” that “has continued to praise terrorist groups and activities.”

The Periodic Review Board first considered Kanad’s case in January 2014 and concluded that his release could present a “significant threat to the security of the Untied States.” He didn’t go to his hearing and neither did he offer information about his family or a plan for employment after Guantánamo. The board reviewed his file three times in 2015 and upheld that opinion.

Then he went before the board April 5 but it is not known what he told them. At Kanad’s request, according to the Pentagon, the transcript of his hearing was withheld from the public.

But, according to his file, a military officer assigned to his case provided the board with information about his family, their commitment to help him reintegrate into an Arabic-speaking society and his agreement to participate in a rehabilitation program — an argument that apparently won the favor of the board. He has a father and siblings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and would like to join them, study English and computer science and launch a career in sales to support them there.

“The board encourages the detainee to continue regularly attending classes” at Guantánamo, it wrote in its May 5 decision to approve his transfer, “and continue engaging with family members to prepare himself for transfer.”

The decision comes at a busy time — as the board is hearing from an unprecedented nine captives in a single month, May. It follows the Pentagon’s April 16 transfer of nine Yemenis with similar close family in the Saudi Kingdom to a rehabilitation program there.

****

JTF-GTMO Assessment:

(S) Recommendation: JTF-GTMO recommends this detainee for Continued Detention

Under DoD Control (CD). JTF-GTMO previously recommended detainee for Continued

Detention Under DoD Control (CD) on 1 January 2007.

(S//NF) Executive Summary: Detainee is a member of al-Qaida. Detainee served as a

sub-commander in Usama Bin Laden’s (UBL) 55th Arab Brigade during hostilities against

US and coalition forces.1 Detainee is assessed to have commanded the Tameem Center on

the Khwaja Ghar front lines and received basic and advanced training, including tactics and

artillery, at probably the al-Qaida al-Faruq Training Camp in Afghanistan. Detainee

acknowledged traveling to Afghanistan expressly for jihad in 2000, and his name was found

on al-Qaida affiliated documents. Detainee’s passport was used to attempt entry into Iraq by

suspected al-Qaida operatives and his true identity is in question. JTF-GTMO determined

this detainee to be:

A HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.Prior History: Detainee belongs to the Bin Kinad tribe. Detainee finished high
school and then worked on a small farm for approximately six months before leaving for

Afghanistan. Detainee was issued a passport on 31 July 2000 in Aden, YM and departed

Yemen for Afghanistan in approximately October 2000. For his full summary file, go here.

DoJ and North Carolina Trading Lawsuits Over Bathrooms

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

Really? How did we get here after all these years? Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney General made her official statement today and one key word she used was ‘privacy’….exactly whose privacy is protected? This is so twisted.

The Justice Department had alleged the North Carolina law violated Title IX, the federal law that bars sex discrimination in education. But the lawsuit is silent about Title IX, likely because of a recent decision by the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. This could place North Carolina in jeopardy of billions of dollars of federal aid…..nothing about violating the 10th Amendment…..

North Carolina Turns to Prominent Conservative Lawyer to Defend ‘Bathroom’ Law

Provided by the National Law Journal:

Judge assigned to the case is a Reagan appointee whose nomination to the Fourth Circuit stalled amid Democratic opposition.

The 10 page lawsuit is found here.

A go-to lawyer for Republican governors facing scandal and controversy will represent North Carolina Gov. Patrick McCrory as he defends a state law that requires transgender state employees to use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender on their birth certificates.

Karl “Butch” Bowers Jr. of Bowers Law Office in Columbia, South Carolina, is part of the legal team that sued the U.S. Department of Justice on McCrory’s behalf on Monday. Last week, the Justice Department threatened legal action over the law, known as HB2.

Bowers is a lead attorney in one of three lawsuits filed on Monday related to the contested North Carolina law, known as HB2. Several hours after McCrory filed suit, two state legislators sued the Justice Department in defense of the law. Then the Justice Department sued McCrory, several days after threatening legal action.

A former special counsel for voting matters in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush, Bowers is also representing McCrory in separate litigation over the state’s voter identification law in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Gupta last week called HB2 discriminatory and in violation of the federal Civil Rights Act. She asked McCrory to respond by Monday with a pledge not to enforce the law. McCrory struck back with Monday’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The complaint seeks a ruling that HB2 is lawful.

Bowers did not immediately return a request for comment, nor did his co-counsel, Robert Stevens, general counsel in the governor’s office, and William Stewart Jr. of Millberg Gordon Stewart in Raleigh.

The case is before U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. A former legislative aide to former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, Boyle repeatedly faced Democratic opposition when two presidents—the elder Bush and the younger Bush—unsuccessfully tried to nominate him to the Fourth Circuit.

Boyle was nominated to the Fourth Circuit in 1991, and then six more times between 2001 and 2006, according to judiciary records. The Senate never voted on his nomination. Legal Times reported in 2007 that Democratic opposition to Boyle was in part political payback for Helms’ blocking of judicial nominees during the Clinton administration.

Governors’ go-to lawyer

McCrory is the latest in a line of Republican governors to seek Bowers’ help.

Bowers represented South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in ethics proceedings in the state Legislature about whether she illegally lobbied for private companies while she was a member of the House. The ethics committee cleared her of wrongdoing in 2012.

Bowers counseled former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who faced impeachment after he disappeared for several days in 2009 on what was later revealed to be a trip to Argentina to visit his mistress. Sanford also faced an ethics investigation into his use of state resources for personal travel. South Carolina Republicans ultimately censured Sanford but did not vote to impeach him.

In 2007, Bowers took a one-year leave from private practice to serve as special counsel for voting matters in the Justice Department. The following year, he served as a lawyer to the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, in Florida.

In 2012, Bowers joined a team of lawyers representing South Carolina in litigation over the state’s voter identification law. A special three-judge panel in Washington found that the law was not discriminatory, although the judges blocked it from taking effect for the November 2012 election.

Less than a year later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key section of the federal Voting Rights Act that in effect eliminated the requirement that states such as South Carolina seek court approval before making changes to election processes.

There are now four lawsuits pending over HB2.

Updated at 4:05 p.m.

In March, the American Civil Liberties Union, joined by Jenner & Block and Lambda Legal, filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina arguing that the law is unconstitutional.

The two North Carolina legislators who filed suit on Monday in the Eastern District of North Carolina—Phil Berger, president pro tempore of the state Senate, and Tim Moore, speaker of the House of Representatives—are represented by Gene Schaerr and S. Kyle Duncan of Schaerr | Duncan in Washington.

Schaerr in 2014 left a partnership at Winston & Strawn to defend Utah’s same-sex marriage ban. Kyle is the former general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

In remarks on Monday announcing the Justice Department’s lawsuit, Lynch said that discriminatory measures against transgender individuals that followed the Supreme Court’s ruling last year legalizing same-sex marriage was akin to the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation and the backlash to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

Addressing the transgender community, Lynch said that the Justice Department and the Obama administration “want you to know that we see you, we stand with you, and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward.”

Updated with information on additional lawsuits filed on Monday. North Carolina’s lawsuit is posted below.

Twitter Cutting off Intel Agencies

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

Perhaps we must be reminded that Twitter is the platform of choice for Islamic State. Through Twitter, connections and conversation can be cultivated and used to glean activity, locations, photos, videos, names and organizations. Perhaps it would be important to remember that during the bin Ladin raid in Abbottabad, a local used Twitter to describe what was happening real time. Journalists in areas of hostilities also use Twitter to report live action and terror movement.

Twitter with this decision will also likely affect the work of the FBI when it comes to solving other worldwide criminal activity such as child-trafficking, slavery and exploitation. Shameful. There is a volunteer team that searches Twitter daily for terror accounts and removes them since Twitter refuses to cooperate. There are an estimated 40,000 ISIS Twitter accounts daily. What about hostages and beheadings like James Foley?

Knowing the importance and success of Islamic State on Twitter, the U.S. State Department even launched their own Twitter strategy, now this decision by Twitter is aiding the enemy.

Twitter cuts intel agencies off from analysis service: report

Washington (AFP) – Twitter has barred US intelligence agencies from accessing a service that sorts through posts on the social media platform in real time and has proved useful in the fight against terrorism, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The newspaper, in its report Sunday evening, cited a senior US intelligence official as saying that Twitter seemed worried about appearing too cozy with intelligence services.

Twitter owns about a five percent stake in Dataminr, which uses algorithms and location tools to reveal patterns among tweets. It is a powerful tool for gleaning useful information from the unending stream of chatter on Twitter.

Dataminr is the only company that Twitter authorizes to access its entire real-time stream of public tweets and sell it to clients, the Wall Street Journal said.

The move was not publicly announced and the newspaper cited the intelligence official and people familiar with the matter.

Dataminr executives recently told intelligence agencies that Twitter did not want the company to continue providing services to them, the report said.

Dataminr information alerted US authorities to the November attacks in Paris shortly after the assault began, the Wall Street Journal said.

It has also been useful for real-time information about Islamic State group attacks, Brazil’s political crisis and other fast-changing events.

Twitter told the newspaper in a statement that its “data is largely public and the US government may review public accounts on its own, like any user could.”

The development comes as high-profile tech companies in the US face off against the government on how information should be shared in the fight against terrorism.

Earlier this year, the FBI paid more than $1 million (880,000 euros) to a third party to break into an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a killing spree in San Bernardino, California, after Apple refused to help authorities crack the device.

The tech giant cited concerns over digital security and privacy.