We now know the FBI has been stonewalling various Congressional committees seeking documents regarding the Uranium One matter as well as their own possible involvement in The Trump Dossier and the further possibility, after Trump was elected, they sought more dirt from Russian sources and might possibly have even paid for them.
When a Federal Agency is engaged in stonewalling a legitimate Congressional Oversight committee's request, the head of the agency should be notified of same, given one week to comply and if nothing happens those responsible, including the agency head/chief, should be fired.
The lying head of the corrupt IRS is still running the agency. What nonsense. What feckless nonsense.
It is about time government bureaucrats start working for tax payers and not engage in protecting their behinds against legitimate and legally authorized Congressional inquiries and/or Court orders.
The government is powerful, all powerful,. It can expend whatever it takes against those who have limited resources. There has to be severe penalties, not just talk and threats, to force timely and complete responses.
As a tax payer, I am fed up watching an impotent Congress wrestle with those paid to do their job and who believe they can engage in thwarting legitimate inquiry. The FBI is not a foreign government and its agents are not foreign citizens. (See 1 and 1a below)
Just as I thought, the mass media and Democrats, like Rep.Schiff, are talking about Republican disarray and/or are downplaying Hillary's activities so they do not have to confront Hillary/Obama etc. lies, collusion and payoffs etc..
A friend of mine suggested Democrats are cleaning house in preparation for the 2018 election and this is why Harvey Weinstein and The Trump Dossier are coming out now so they won;t break during election time.
Perhaps he is right but I doubt all of this will be over by mid next year because there is so much scalawag activity and resistance so it should last for quite a while.
As of now, I believe Democrat election prospects are bleak, despite the alleged Republican schism .
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Israel has no choice but to destroy Iran because Iran could easily destroy Israel and continues threatening to do so. This is no idle threat on Israel's part.(See 2 below.)
Israel also faces growing concerns from trends of the rise of the political right and, because of Muslim flooding, Israel must build selective relationships and establish selective alliances with the right wing. (See 2a below.)
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Sanctuary City debate. Why is there even a debate if the rule of law still obtains?(See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)
We Need an Investigation of the Entire Justice Department Now By Roger L Simon
Posted By Ruth King
Bravo, Charles Grassley! The Iowa senator has turned into something of an aging Mr. Smith taking on corruption in the Obama administration (and its Justice Department) and calling for a special investigator for the metastasizing Uranium One Scandal. But is it enough?
As has been reported, this 2010 deal was made despite a hitherto unknown FBI investigation that exposed bribery, kickbacks, etc. on the part of the Russian company involved. The pact resulted in 20% of U.S. uranium in Putin’s hands (some of which, in lethal yellow cake form, has already disappeared into the ether) and millions of dollars in the Clinton Foundation’s coffers, basically at the same time.
Or should we now call this the Podesta, Podesta & Manafort Scandal, because an ongoing and related report on Tucker Carlson’s cable show is unmasking a series of connections that make the most paranoid conspiracy theorist seem rational?
A thus-far-reliable source who used to be involved with Clinton allies John and Tony Podesta told Tucker Carlson that press reports appearing to implicate President Trump in Russian collusion are exaggerated.
The source, who Carlson said he would not yet name, said he worked for the brothers’ Podesta Group and was privy to some information from Robert Mueller’s special investigation.
While media reports describe former “Black, Manafort & Stone” principal Paul Manafort as Trump’s main tie to the investigation, the source said it is Manafort’s role as a liaison between Russia and the Podesta Group that is drawing the scrutiny….
Manafort was, at the time, representing Russian business and political interests during the Obama era.The source said the Podesta Group was in regular contact with Manafort while Hillary Clinton was America’s chief diplomat….According to Carlson, “Manafort was clear that Russia wanted to cultivate ties to Hillary” because she appeared to be the presumptive 45th president.
In other words, as the French say, it’s the world upside down. Russia? Trump? Oh, sorry, no, it’s the Brothers Podesta and, through them, Hillary. Meanwhile, over at the also related (phony) Trump Dossier Scandal:
In the midst of a court case that threatened to reveal the dossier’s funding, it emerged Tuesday night that political consulting firm Fusion GPS was retained last year by Marc E. Elias, an attorney representing the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. The firm then hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to write the dossier that contained unverified and lurid allegations about Trump and his team’s ties to Moscow.
In the latest news, it appears Elias’ firm was being used as a cut-out to avoid campaign disclosure laws in the promulgation of Fusion’s garbage. Possible criminal liability looms. It’s “unclear” whether Mrs. Clinton herself knew about this utterly disgusting behavior in her name, though loyalist Brian Fallon hinted as much on cable news Wednesday.
More disturbingly, indications are that the FBI itself relied on this execrable pack of nauseating lies to jump-start the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. They may even have made additional payments to Fusion GPS themselves. [bold decidedly mine]
Holy Toledo! Has the FBI turned into CNN? Or are they just dumber than the proverbial stones?
Speaking of which, we also have the unanswered questions about Deborah Wasserman Schultz and her Pakistani computer expert who had access to the data of dozens of congressional Democrats, not to mention the unsolved mystery of the murder of Seth Rich and the hacking of the DNC server. The FBI and the DOJ have told us next to nothing about either. In general, we learn more from Julian Assange, like him or not.
1a) Democrats, Russians and the FBI
Did the bureau use disinformation to trigger its Trump probe?
By
It turns out that Russia has sown distrust in the U.S. political system—aided and abetted by the Democratic Party, and perhaps the FBI. This is an about-face from the dominant media narrative of the last year, and it requires a full investigation.
The Washington Post revealed Tuesday that the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee jointly paid for that infamous “dossier” full of Russian disinformation against Donald Trump. They filtered the payments through a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie), which hired the opposition-research hit men at Fusion GPS. Fusion in turn tapped a former British spook, Christopher Steele, to compile the allegations, which are based largely on anonymous, Kremlin-connected sources.
Strip out the middlemen, and it appears that Democrats paid for Russians to compile wild allegations about a U.S. presidential candidate. Did someone say “collusion”?
This news is all the more explosive because the DNC and Clinton campaign hid their role, even amid the media furor after BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier in January. Reporters are now saying that Clinton campaign officials lied to them about their role in the dossier. Current DNC Chair Tom Perez and former Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz deny knowing about the dossier arrangement, but someone must have known.
Perhaps this explains why Congressional Democrats have been keen to protect Fusion from answering dossier questions—disrupting hearings, protesting subpoenas and deriding Republican investigators. Two of Fusion’s cofounders invoked their Fifth Amendment rights last week rather than answer House Intelligence Committee questions, and Fusion filed a federal lawsuit on Friday to block committee subpoenas of its bank records.
The more troubling question is whether the FBI played a role, even if inadvertently, in assisting a Russian disinformation campaign. We know the agency possessed the dossier in 2016, and according to media reports it debated paying Mr. Steele to continue his work in the runup to the election. This occurred while former FBI Director James Comey was ramping up his probe into supposed ties between the Trump campaign and Russians.
Two pertinent questions: Did the dossier trigger the FBI probe of the Trump campaign, and did Mr. Comey or his agents use it as evidence to seek wiretapping approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Trump campaign aides?
Congressional investigators need to focus on the FBI’s role, and House Speaker Paul Ryan was correct Wednesday to insist that the bureau comply with Congress’s document demands “immediately.” Mr. Sessions has recused himself from the Justice Department’s Russia probe, but he and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein can still insist on transparency. Mr. Ryan should also reinstall Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes as lead on the Russia investigation, since it appears the Democratic accusations against him were aimed in part at throwing him off the Fusion trail.
All of this also raises questions about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The Fusion news means the FBI’s role in Russia’s election interference must now be investigated—even as the FBI and Justice insist that Mr. Mueller’s probe prevents them from cooperating with Congressional investigators.
Mr. Mueller is a former FBI director, and for years he worked closely with Mr. Comey. It is no slur against Mr. Mueller’s integrity to say that he lacks the critical distance to conduct a credible probe of the bureau he ran for a dozen years. He could best serve the country by resigning to prevent further political turmoil over that conflict of interest.
The American public deserves a full accounting of the scope and nature of Russian meddling in American democracy, and that means following the trail of the Steele dossier as much as it does the meetings of Trump campaign officials.
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Intelligence Minister Israel Katz says the Jewish state is ready to act alone if international efforts don't produce results
TOKYO - Israel is willing to resort to military action to ensure Iran never acquires nuclear weapons, the intelligence minister said on Thursday in Japan where he is seeking backing for US President Donald Trump's tougher line on Tehran.
Trump said on Oct. 13 he would not certify Iran is complying with an agreement on curtailing its nuclear program, signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama, opening a 60-day window for Congress to act to reimpose sanctions.
"If international efforts led these days by US President Trump don’t help stop Iran attaining nuclear capabilities, Israel will act militarily by itself," Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said in an interview in Tokyo. "There are changes that can be made (to the agreement) to ensure that they will never have the ability to have a nuclear weapon."
Israel has taken unilateral action in the past without the consent of its major ally, the United States, including air strikes on a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and in Iraq in 1981. A strike against Iran, however, would be a risky venture with the potential to provoke a counter strike and roil financial markets.
An Israeli threat of military strikes could, nonetheless, galvanize support in the United States for toughening up the nuclear agreement but it could also backfire by encouraging hardliners in Iran and widening a rift between Washington and European allies.
So far, none of the other signatories to the deal - Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, Iran and the European Union - has cited serious concerns, leaving the United States isolated.
Japan relies on the US military to help defend it against threats from North Korea and elsewhere. Tokyo's diplomatic strategy in the Middle East, where it buys almost all its oil, is to maintain friendly relations with all countries, including Iran.
"I asked the Japanese government to support steps led by President Trump to change the nuclear agreement," said Katz, who is a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party. "The question of whether Japanese companies will begin to work in Iran or not is a very important question."
Katz's visit to Tokyo comes ahead of a planned trip by Trump from Nov. 5 for a summit with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Officials at Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs were not immediately available to comment.
Israel, Katz said, wants the nuclear agreement to be revised to remove an expiration date, and to impose tighter conditions to stop Tehran from developing new centrifuges used to make weapons-grade nuclear material.
He also urged sanctions to stop Iran from establishing Syria as a military base to launch attacks on Israel and action to put a halt to Tehran's development of ballistic missiles.
“We will not allow Iran to transform Syria into forward base sea harbors, air bases and Shia militias," he said. "We will act together with the United States and other countries in the world until they stop the ballistic missiles that threaten Israel." The US House of Representatives on Wednesday backed new sanctions on Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.
2a)The enemy of my enemy
By Isi Leibler
The dramatic swing to the right in the recent Austrian elections is likely to have widespread repercussions throughout Europe. It will also oblige Israel to reconsider its current approach to far right-wing groups.
While many readers may strongly disagree with my views, I feel that the time has come to face reality. Israel is stronger today than at any time since it was founded. But the fact remains that despite a currently friendly U.S. administration, most of the world continues to discriminate and apply double standards toward Israel. No other nation is confronted by adversaries of fanatical cultures that extol evil and death and repeatedly and publicly bay for the destruction of their neighbor – to the indifference of most of the “civilized” world, which merely watches and at best remains silent.
In this environment, it is time for us to overcome inhibitions and intensify efforts to actively seek out alliances, with nondemocratic states or even those whose viewpoints on various issues we strongly oppose.
Some would condemn such an approach as hypocritical and amoral realpolitik.
Yet almost all Israelis are encouraged that our leaders have forged a positive relationship with an authoritarian Russia ruled by Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent who currently displays philo-Semitic sympathies.
In general, Israelis are optimistic – and with good reason – about our relationship with Egypt headed by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Yet, anti-Semitism still dominates much of the state-controlled media as Egyptian society has been conditioned over the years to hate Israel and the Jews. This may change in time but the reason for the current rapprochement is primarily because we face common enemies.
The covert, albeit somewhat schizophrenic, new relationship with Saudi Arabia is even more bizarre. Fanatical Saudi Wahhabism is the fountainhead of Islamic terrorism and continues to promote it throughout the world. Its hatred of Israel and the Jews knows no bounds and is an integral component of the current Saudi educational curriculum and textbooks and its mullahs are notorious for calling on the faithful to murder Jews, “the descendants of apes and pigs.” Yet the emerging Iranian threat to impose regional hegemony induced the Saudi leaders to covertly cooperate with Israel. Confronting an aggressive common enemy also created this alliance.
Israel has likewise been cultivating relations with India and China as well as other Asia, African, and Latin American states, many of which are not even remotely democratic.
By and large, despite some of the problematic attitudes shared by these new allies, the clear majority of Israelis – across the political spectrum – consider these developments positively.
However, the one region in which we seem to have made scant progress is Europe. The EU has in fact been pouring huge sums of money into NGOs that have actively undermined the Israeli government and shamelessly apply bias and double standards in all their dealings with Israel. For example, at a recent seminar in the European Parliament, a political group uniting leftists invited as one of its keynote speakers, Leila Khaled, the notorious Palestinian terrorist who hijacked two civilian aircraft.
Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, some of the Baltic states and now the Czech Republic, are pro-Israel and distance themselves from the EU policies. Yet these are mainly right-wing nationalist governments bitterly opposed to the flood of Muslim immigrants that Germany and the EU seek to impose upon them. Accusations have been leveled that they are supported by neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers and, in some cases, that is probably true.
Likewise, in Western Europe, we are now also confronted with a host of right-wing populist opposition groups that are emerging in protest to the immigration. These populists are likely to grow stronger, gain influence and may alter the entire political spectrum in Europe.
Needless to say, no responsible Jew could contemplate any association or alliance with neo-Nazis or Holocaust deniers. But the fact that a percentage of such undesirable scum support a particular party should not disqualify that party any more so than the U.S. Republican Party, which is supported by some fringe racists, or the Democratic Party, which is the political home of some vicious anti-Israel and anti-Semitic elements.
Israel cannot simply distance itself from all of these right-wing groups and must review and weigh each case individually. It is clear that if leaders of governments include apologists for Nazis or outright Holocaust deniers, we can have no truck with them. However, the reality is that despite extremists and even anti-Semites supporting the emerging right-wing parties, many of these groups are overall less hostile to us than leftist governments that support the Islamists and are also becoming increasingly overtly anti-Semitic.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Front achieved 34% of the vote in the recent presidential runoff; in Italy, the Northern League has 19 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 12 in the Senate; Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom became the second largest party in the Dutch Parliament; and Alternative for Germany created an upheaval by emerging as the third-largest party following the September federal election. The latest shock was in Austria where the hard-right Freedom Party became the third-largest party and will become a coalition partner to the winning conservative Austrian People's Party.
All these parties, except for the Dutch, at one time had fascist elements actively supporting them. Although there are problematic components in the German and Austrian parties, by and large most continue to purge anti-Semites from their ranks, certainly more so than the British Labor Party under Jeremy Corbyn. Significantly, Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the Austrian Freedom Party, has been an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, as have most populist parties.
There are of course boundaries and sometimes this is a gray area but the Holocaust is too deeply ingrained in our psyche to even contemplate an alliance with pro-Nazi politicians.
This is not a simple issue but as long as anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers are condemned and expelled, Israel must consider each case on individual merits, applying equal standards to the Right and the Left. There are very few left-wing political parties that do not incorporate substantial anti-Semitic and rabidly anti-Israel elements. For example, unpalatable though it may be for some, it is questionable whether the Austrian Freedom Party, whose former leader Jörg Haider in 1999 was considered a Nazi sympathizer, is more dangerous to us than the British Labor Party under its current leadership.
We live in a world where we should seek out allies from all sectors but draw the line with those that harbor outright anti-Semites, irrespective of which side of the political spectrum they are situated.
Diaspora Jewish leaders should not become involved in these issues as Jews unless the parties concerned are anti-Semitic. This applies to Hungary’s Jobbik Party, the Golden Dawn Party of Greece,
Croatianapologists of the genocidal Nazi Ustasha regime and Ukrainian nationalists who today sanctify pogromists or pro-Nazi collaborators.
The Israeli government and especially the Foreign Ministry should analyze the situation carefully and avoid the double-standard mentality that calls for boycotting extremists on the Right but buries its head in the sand when leftist anti-Semitism emerges.
When in doubt, we should consider our relationship with Saudi Arabia, which I support despite the knowledge that its society remains riddled with hatred against the Jewish people. There are occasions when it is acceptable to collaborate on specific issues with nations or political groups that do not share our outlook and in some cases even despise us, in order to overcome common enemies.
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3)
Thanks to the difficulties of running as a Republican in a blue state in the age of Trump and the toxic legacy left her by Chris Christie, it’s unlikely New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno will succeed him. But the Democrats’ attempt to label her position on “sanctuary cities” as extreme and divisive misses the point.
The question at stake here isn’t, as Bill Clinton said while stumping this week for Guadagno’s opponent, Phil Murphy, “scaring” voters. If Murphy intends, as he said, to turn New Jersey into a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants, then it’s worth asking what’s left of the rule of law in Trenton.
It’s not a debate between those who sympathize with the plight of illegal immigrants and those issuing heartless demands to break up families. There’s plenty of room for discussion about how to enforce immigration laws, especially with regard to those who’ve long been productive members of society and so-called Dreamers, who were brought here as children and have lived up to the promise America has always offered immigrants.
But when local governments lay down rules that prohibit law enforcement from cooperating with federal authorities, it’s more than a symbolic political statement signaling Democrats’ solidarity with Hispanics.
We’re particularly reminded of that this week because of the start of the trial of Jose Garcia Zarate, the illegal immigrant accused of murdering 32-year-old Kate Steinle in San Francisco in July 2015. Zarate, an illegal immigrant, had previously been deported five times and had just been released from prison without San Francisco authorities informing the feds, because of their sanctuary-city rules. That meant he was free to roam the streets and gun down an innocent person instead of being locked up before being sent back over the border.
This case inspired an effort to pass “Kate’s Law,” which would increase penalties on those who commit felonies after entering the country illegally as well as creating consequences for municipalities whose sanctuary policies effectively declare federal law null and void. But as the Guadagno campaign has pointed out, Kate Steinle is far from the only innocent to suffer because of criminals afforded sanctuary by those determined to resist the enforcement of immigration laws.
Liberals have denounced the focus on Steinle’s murder and the New Jersey cases of illegal immigrants committing violent crimes as fearmongering and an attempt to stir up hatred. President Trump’s statements about immigrants during the 2016 campaign lent some credibility to that point, but you don’t have to be one of his fans to understand that sanctuary cities present a clear and present danger to the rule of law.
Reasonable people can disagree about what to do about illegal immigration. Mass deportation is as unlikely as it would be costly and distressing. But the sanctuary movement mandates that those who broke the law by entering the United States without permission should be able to do so with impunity.
That’s a position that not only treats immigration laws as essentially invalid but dismisses the entire concept of borders, national sovereignty and border security as a mindless impediment to welcoming all comers.
Worse than that, the practice of forcing police to ignore the immigration status of someone already in custody can give a get-out-of-jail-free card to any illegal immigrant who commits a crime. Most immigrants — legal or illegal — just want to work and do their best to stay out of trouble. But a rule that grants impunity to criminals needlessly puts all of society at risk.
If we are to come up with a solution to the dilemma of the illegal immigrants already here, it must start with an agreement on the importance of border security and the need to deport those who have committed crimes. Like every other state, New Jersey should respect the federal government’s authority to enforce immigration laws and thereby help keep its people safe.
If Phil Murphy thinks he can pick and choose which laws he will enforce based on his political interests, how can Garden State voters trust him to respect the rule of law on any issue?
Jonathan S. Tobin is opinion editor of JNS.org and a contributing writer for National Review.
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