Category Archives: Wikileaks Podesta Emails

Voters vs. Google in 2020 General Election

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Donald Trump prevailed against the Google and Eric Schmidt forces but can it happen again?

Civis Analytics is back again and you can bet that Trump’s digital campaign director, Brad Parscale is in a David and Goliath force operation.

Dive into data with jobs at these 6 Chicago companies ...

So, Free Beacon describes Google, Schmidt and Civis Analytics as this:

A data firm backed by Eric Schmidt, the former executive chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has been paid millions of dollars by Democratic committees and is currently working for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

The idea for what became Civis Analytics emerged in the wake of President Obama’s 2012 re-election when Schmidt pitched Dan Wagner, the campaign’s chief analytics officer, on creating a lasting political data and website services firm. Schmidt, who remained an executive at Google and Alphabet, went on to quietly aid Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Less than one month after the elections it was announced that he had helped round up $22 million for Civis, where he is also a partial owner and sits on the group’s board of directors. In June, Schmidt stepped away as executive chairman of Alphabet, although he now acts as a technical advisor to the company’s leadership on policy issues.

Civis has provided data and tech services for a number of Democratic committees in recent years, with its most recent payments coming from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which paid $63,400 for polling and website services during the first quarter of the 2020 cycle; the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which dished $33,900 to the firm for data analytics; Planned Parenthood Votes, which also pushed $33,900 to Civis for data analytics; and NextGen Climate Action, liberal billionaire Tom Steyer’s committee, which paid $16,000 for data and consulting services.

In addition to the committees, the presidential campaigns of Sens. Cory Booker (D., NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), and failed Senate candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke have also combined to pay tens of thousands for its services during the first three months of the year. Civis Analytics announced in late April that it will be working with Joe Biden’s presidential campaign for the 2020 election cycle, Bloomberg reported. Civis appears to be expanding its political team in Washington and New York, according to job postings on its website.

Dems Pay Millions to Firm Backed by Google's Eric Schmidt

Now remember, Google is already white-listing and black-listing search results…

Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and still an advisor surely has taken much of the same tactics with him including algorithm equations with him to the Biden and the rest of the Democrat candidates to skew results favorable to their respective political missions. While Google has a data warehouse analytics tool called BigQuery, Civis Analytics is also a select vendor for the Democrat National Committee. Other Civis Analytics customers include:

  Where is some of these social justice policy concepts coming from that were introduced at both Democrat debates? Yet another project also tied to Civis Analytics call The New Progressive Agenda Project.

The New Progressive Agenda Project gives policymakers and advocates reliable congressional district and state-level polling data that would normally be out of reach for even the best-funded campaign. In the coming weeks, we’ll be periodically releasing new data on progressive proposals that are message-tested and ready to be introduced in the 116th Congress. Using the state-of-the-art modeling techniques employed by leading campaign professionals, we are confident that these policies will remain popular in the electorate at large while also engaging the progressive base. They have been carefully vetted by veteran campaigners from Civis Analytics, which was formed by the data scientists who oversaw Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Civis’s political data science arm is one of the most reputable in the business. These numbers are the gold standard — they are actionable by candidates and campaigns.

It’s time for unabashed progressive policies that can win.

Today, we roll out our second set of policies:

Senator Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) make the case for a Medical Innovation Fund

Senator Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) and Speaker Corey Johnson (@CoreyinNYC) make the case for ending cash bail

House candidate Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) makes the case for lead paint removal.

Indivisible Co-Founders Leah Greenberg (@Leahgreenb) and Ezra Levin (@ezralevin) make the case for automatic voter registration (AVR).

Methodology

Civis Analytics fielded support for four progressive policies to determine their levels of public support. Full question wording is available below, but here it is important to note that questions included a revenue pay-for where needed, as well as both partisan cues and counterframes throughout. In other words, respondents were told that these policies were being proposed by Democrats, and were given reasons why Republicans say they should oppose them. The sample for medical innovation prizes was 12,154, for automatic voter registration (8,357), for lead removal (12,166) and for bail reform (10,851)and these surveys were fielded between July 10th 2018 through September 30th 2018. Using modern machine learning techniques, Civis generated estimates for Clinton voters, Trump voters, Independent voters, drop-off voters (who voted in 2016 but not 2014) and the overall electorate. Because our goal is to provide information that can be immediately relevant to politicians, the overall number reflects a likely 2018 voters, not national adults. Sub-national opinion is presented in terms of two-way support (that is, excluding respondents who did not register an opinion one way or the other). Please direct methodological questions to Michael Sadowsky: [email protected].

For our second round of polling, we analyzed four policies:

Medical innovation prizes: We asked respondents whether they would support having the government fund a prize fund that would reward the creation of drugs and vaccines that improve health outcomes, with medication developed through this program sold cheaply to the American public without a patent. Forty-six percent of likely 2018 voters supported this policy, with 32 percent opposed.

Automatic voter registration: We asked respondents whether they would support having voter registration records automatically update when citizens interact with the DMV and other state agencies, unless they opt out. Forty-seven percent of likely 2018 voters supported this policy, with 36 percent opposed.

Lead removal: We asked respondents whether they would support a ten year program in which taxes on high-income earners would be raised to fund lead removal in houses with dangerous levels of lead paint. Forty-six percent of likely 2018 voters supported this policy, with 36 percent opposed.

Bail reform: We asked respondents if they would support shifting from the current cash bail-only system to one that allows judges to release some defendants, under the court’s supervision, if they are not considered a threat to society. Forty-two percent of likely 2018 voters supported this policy, with 39 percent opposed.

 

 

Marc Elias, the Dubious Lawyer of Politicians

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Marc Elias is the Chair of the law firm Perkins Coie. You know that firm because that firm hired Fusion GPS, then Christopher Steele, the former British spy that eventually gave us that funky Trump dossier.

OOPS: Lawyer Linked To Trump Dossier Was Sitting Right ... Elias and Podesta

The Democrat National Committee paid Perkins Coie at least $7 million for legal work on the matter of Fusion GPS. Not to be overlook, the Obama campaign (OFA) also paid Perkins Coie almost $1 million in 2016 for ‘legal services’. Oh, and the Hillary for America paid Perkins Coie $5.1 in 2016 ad the DNC paid Perkins Coie $5.4 million in 2016.

Sidebar: (the wife of a Fusion GPS employee, Shailagh Murray, who previously worked for the Washington Post went on to work in the Obama White House as a communications adviser. Murray is married to Neil King, who formerly worked for the Wall Street Journal, the very place and time that Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS was there. And those back channels just keep open with high traffic of shady people…

During some testimony….the FBI general counsel, James Baker revealed that Michael Sussman, a former DoJ lawyer was the point person that got a thumb drive that had documents related to Russian interference of the election and hacking. Sussman..well yes works at Perkins Coie.

Famed lawyer and legal professor, Jonathan Turley had an item from October of 2017 that read in part: Here is the nut of the report:

“Podesta was asked in his September interview whether the Clinton campaign had a contractual agreement with Fusion GPS, and he said he was not aware of one, according to one of the sources. Sitting next to Podesta during the interview: his attorney Marc Elias, who worked for the law firm that hired Fusion GPS to continue research on Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC, multiple sources said. Elias was only there in his capacity as Podesta’s attorney and not as a witness.”
If this and the earlier report is true, Elias not only falsely denied any connection between the Clinton campaign and the dossier to two New York Times reporters but sat silently as Podesta gave false information to congressional investigators.

Okay now that we have that part covered, let us move on to Kamala Harris shall we? When she launched her presidential campaign, she needed a lawyer. Yup, she hired Marc Elias. He came with high recommendations from Hillary as Elias worked for her campaign and he also worked for the John Kerry presidential campaign. Elias represents the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Congressional Committee and oh yeah, the Democratic Governors Association. Pssst, he also represented Al Franken and his 2008 senate campaign.

Elias is the legal fixer.

During the two highly contested races in Florida including the senate race and the governor race….guess who Marc Elias represented? Yes, Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson, the democrats and both had to concede. Elias was again the shady lawyer that pulled all the levers for making absentee ballots, mismarked ballots and irregular ballots get counted.

He is the loud voice behind the repeated headlines that the Republicans support voter suppression of youth voters. Hence part in parcel the reason there is a new debate of lowering the voting age. If you just read his Twitter feed, you will see how he plants the seeds of new voting laws. He does have a cool dog though named Bode.

Shortly before the 2016 election, billionaire left-wing donor George Soros gave at least $5 million to Elias and his firm to challenge what left-wing activists allege to be restrictions that deter Democrats and left-wing constituencies from voting, such as photo identification requirements at polling places. In early 2017, Elias joined the board of Priorities USA as it was announced that the organization would begin focusing on similar work. Soros also contributed $5 million to the Priorities USA super PAC during the 2018 election cycle.

Elias recently had a 5 minute Q&A. Of note is the following:

What law would you change, abolish or create?
I would enact universal voter registration and otherwise modernize our voting laws.

How has the practice of representing public officials, parties and organizations evolved over the years?
The field of political law has grown dramatically in size since I started, and has changed dramatically. What was once a side-practice for a handful of lawyers is not a fully-fledged specialty. We now deal with so many more issues than just campaign finance. We need to advise on intellectual property, business law, leases, employment law, and litigation — to name a few areas. As campaigns grow in size so do their legal needs.

Who is your legal hero?
I have a deep and abiding respect for my mentor and fellow Partner at Perkins Coie, Bob Bauer, who literally invented this area of the law.

Sheesh Bob Bauer was a White House lawyer and private attorney for Barack Obama. At that time there were at least three cases of note. 1) the whole Obama/Blagojevich case 2) letters written to TV stations forbidding them from running ads that tied Obama to Bill Ayers and Weather Underground and then 3) the Tony Rezko affair.

Another sidebar: Bob Bauer’s wife is Anita Dunn, who also worked in the Obama White House. For those with a short memory, she was the one who said she admired Mao Zedong….

Ah, so now we have a major Federal investigation in Illinois….no real surprise there except this has to do with the new Governor, J.B. Pritzker. The federal criminal investigation is for a dubious residential property tax appeal that critics highlighted in last year’s gubernatorial race. Those details are here.

Oh…guess who is the lawyer of record for Pritzker? SURPRISE it is….Marc Elias. Can you imagine the case files he has on democrats and their nefarious actions?

Wikileaks, Julian Assange to be Extradited to the U.S.

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Arrested by Metropolitan Police a the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange was taken to a jail in London. He appeared before a judge for breaching his bail conditions as Ecuador has been working for months to remove him for asylum where Assange has been living since 2012. Lenin Moreno, the President of Ecuador has been working with British officials since July of 2018 to terminate his asylum.

What has transpired since Wikileaks was founded in 2006, there have been several massive troves (10 million) of documents posted for public consumption. Assange began hacking in 1987 under the name of Mendax. It is not known officially how Julian Assange and Bradley Manning became acquainted, however during the court-martial of Manning, a volume of chat logs were presented as evidence between the two and included how Assange gave Manning the ability to reverse engineer passwords.

President Obama gave Manning a pardon while the matter of Assange could be that of a co-conspirator, espionage or aiding and abetting. The indictment does give rise to the evidence beyond the protections of Assange of just being a journalist. Assange is being prosecuted for violating the ‘computer fraud and abuse act’.

Assange-Indictment-0-0

President Lenín Moreno of Ecuador, who became the country’s president in 2017, had looked for a face-saving way to get out of the arrangement. On Thursday in a Twitter post, he said that his country had decided to stop sheltering Mr. Assange after “his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols,” a decision that cleared the way for the British authorities to detain him.

The relationship between Mr. Assange and Ecuador has been rocky, even as it offered him refuge and even citizenship, and WikiLeaks said last Friday that Ecuador “already has an agreement with the U.K. for his arrest” and predicted that Mr. Assange would be expelled from the embassy “within ‘hours to days.’”

Mr. Moreno, in a video statement, said that Mr. Assange had exhausted the patience of his hosts, outlining of litany of grievances: the installation of electronic interference equipment, the blocking of security cameras, and attacks on guards.

“Finally two days ago, WikiLeaks, the organization of Mr. Assange, threatened the government of Ecuador,” Mr. Moreno said, an apparent reference to allegations from the organization that Mr. Assange had been subject to a spying operation. “My government has nothing to fear and doesn’t act under threat.”

In his video, Mr. Moreno singled out the recent release by WikiLeaks of information about the Vatican as evidence that Mr. Assange had continued to work with WikiLeaks to violate “the rule of nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states.”

Alan Duncan, the minister responsible for Europe and the Americas at Britain’s Foreign Office, said in a statement that the arrest had followed “extensive dialogue” between the two countries.

In December 2017, Ecuador gave Mr. Assange citizenship, and was preparing to appoint him to a diplomatic post in Russia, but the British government made clear that if he left the embassy, he would not have diplomatic immunity.

The Ecuadorean government said in March last year that it had cut off Mr. Assange’s internet access, saying that he had violated an agreement to stop commenting on, or trying to influence, the politics of other countries. The government also imposed other restrictions, limiting his visitors and requiring him to clean his bathroom and look after his cat.

He sued the Ecuadorean government in October, claiming that it was violating his rights. More here from the NYT’s.

Mueller’s Team Indicted More Russians

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During the open session of the dual congressional committee hearing with FBI CT expert, Peter Strzok, the democrats went off on republicans for not having hearings on Russian interference and protecting the American campaign/election process.

On the republican side, there has been a constant call to terminate the Mueller operation. I have stood rather alone as a conservative supporting the Mueller operation because we do need to punish all things Russia.

Will Rod Rosenstein serve as a check on Jeff Sessions?

Per the indictment, Russian officers are accused of hacking the DNC server, stealing login in credentials of Clinton campaign associates including John Podesta. The indictment includes such text as aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to launder money and the illegal release of stolen data/intelligence. The hackers also targets state and local officials that do administer the elections process yet, NO VOTE COUNTS OR TALLIES WERE ALTERED.

The information purloined from the hacks was funneled through the internet under the names DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, the government contends. The DAG noted that a number of Americans “corresponded with several Russians through the internet.” No allegations have been brought against those Americans at this point for knowingly communicating with Russian intelligence officers, Rosenstein said.

An important point made by Rosenstein, which leads to the growing fact that no Americans, including candidate Trump or his aides had taken part in any collusion. collaboration or conspiracy known to date.

So today, AG Rod Rosenstein announced 12 indictments of Russian operatives. As President Trump is in Europe, he was briefed on this indictment announcement. His response?

Rosenstein briefed POTUS earlier this week on today’s indictments of Russian agents. Trump said today he would be asking Putin about it during their meeting Monday.

The timing of this announcement is quite important as President Trump is meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday. Other world leaders have accused Moscow of doing the exact same thing in their respective countries, to include France, Mexico and Germany.

So, what say you democrats now?

Politico reported it this way:

Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian military officers on Friday, and accused them of hacking into the Democratic National Committee to sabotage the 2016 presidential election.

The indictments, announced by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, come just days before a scheduled Monday summit in Helsinki between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

They are the latest charges in a probe that has already netted guilty pleas from three former Trump campaign aides while the president himself remains under investigation by Mueller for potential obstruction of justice.

Rosenstein said the Russians stole and released Democratic documents after planting malicious computer codes in the network of the DNC as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

He said Russia’s GRU military intelligence service was behind online entities that disseminated and promoted the documents under the names Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks.

The indictment dramatically shifts the context for Trump’s upcoming meeting with Putin, whom U.S. intelligence services have concluded was behind the 2016 election interference scheme whose goal was to elect Trump.

 

Apparently Comey did not Lie or Leak, Apologies in Order?

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Hold on just so you know Huma Abedin holds that SGE status also…we are slowly finding out so many wild things about our government.

What is an SGE? Special Government Employee, a status for a person established by Congress in 1962 and many agencies use them. Nefarious reasons? Yes, there seems to be some of that perhaps. But read here about how ‘special’ they are.

Financial Conflicts of Interest & Impartiality

  • An SGE’s agency can use special waiver provisions to resolve financial conflicts of interest arising under 18 U.S.C. § 208 (a criminal conflict of interest statute prohibiting an employee from participating in any particular Government matter affecting personal or “imputed” financial interests).
  • An SGE who is serving on an advisory committee may rely on special exemptions from 18 U.S.C. § 208.
  • An SGE is not eligible to receive a certificate of divestiture if required to sell property to resolve a conflict of interest.

Daniel C. Richman: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know photo

Meanwhile, Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School Professor and that friend of James Comey who received the memos has top secret security clearance which apparently came from the time he also worked at the Justice Department as a former prosecutor and at U.S. Treasury. He later gained that SGE status working for the FBI and was in fact an advisor to James Comey or others at the Bureau. Richman by the way did NOT leak information from those memos to the New York Times, he merely called them and used context for a story clarification as it is told.

Huma Abedin’s mom linked to shocking anti-women book | New ... photo

Humm okay. But then there is Huma Abedin. And we must ask about Sid Blumenthal, Cody Shearer or John Podesta among others…..

Earlier this year, (2013) Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin drew scrutiny for a special arrangement that allowed her to work part time at the State Department while simultaneously maintaining a side gig working for a corporate consulting firm.

Under the arrangement, first reported by Politico, Abedin was a “special government employee,” a category created decades ago designed to allow experts to serve in government while keeping outside jobs.

So who else is a special government employee at the State Department? The department won’t say — even as eight other federal agencies readily sent us lists of their own special government employees.

A State Department spokeswoman did confirm that there are “about 100” such employees. But asked for a list, she added that, “As general policy, [the department] does not disclose employee information of this nature.”

Meanwhile, after we filed a Freedom of Information Act request in July for the same information, State responded in September that no such list actually exists: The human resources department “does not compile lists of personnel or positions in the category of ‘special government employee.’”

Creating such a list would require “extensive research” and thus the agency is not required to respond under FOIA, said a letter responding to our request.

In late September, after we told State we were going to publish a story on its refusal to provide the list, the agency said our FOIA request was being reopened. The agency said it would provide the records in a few weeks.

The State Department has since pushed back the delivery date three times and still hasn’t provided any list. It has been four months since we filed the original request.

Several other agencies, including the Energy and Commerce departments, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission, promptly responded to similar FOIA requests with lists of their own special government employees. Requests with several other agencies are still pending.

Agencies reported having anywhere from just one special government employee (SEC) to nearly 400 over the past several years (Energy Department). Many are academics, interns, or private industry professionals and they often serve on government advisory boards.

As for the State Department, two other special government employees have been identified recently, and both are former Clinton staffers. As of August ex-chief of staff Cheryl Mills was still working at the agency part time with a focus on Haiti, according to the Washington Post’s Al Kamen. Maggie Williams, who ran Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, worked at the agency’s Office of Global Women’s Issues in 2011 and 2012, according to Politico.

Abedin, for her part, was a special government employee between June 2012 when she resigned her position as deputy chief of staff, to February 2013. She also worked for Teneo, a consulting firm founded by former Bill Clinton aide Doug Band.

In a July letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, Abedin rejected the Senator’s suggestion that she had used her government contacts to provide political intelligence for Teneo’s clients.

“I was not asked, nor did I undertake, any work on Teneo’s behalf before the Department,” Abedin wrote. She said her work consisted of providing “strategic advice and consulting services to the firm’s management team.”

(The New Republic recently explored at length the web of connections between Teneo, the Clinton Foundation, and various wealthy individuals and corporations.)

Abedin said in the letter she sought the special arrangement with State because she wanted to spend the bulk of her time at home in New York following the birth of her son in December 2011.

Abedin made $135,000 working for State in 2012, and she and husband ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner made approximately $355,000 in combined additional earnings. We don’t know how much Abedin was paid by Teneo or by the Clinton Foundation, which also employed her during this period.

Following time off during Weiner’s unsuccessful New York City mayoral bid, Abedin is now working directly for Clinton, in a private capacity, as her “Transition Director.”