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The Rohrabacher-Assange meeting

August 21, 2017

The Rohrabacher-Assange meeting, Washington Times, David Keene, August 20, 2017

Smoking Gun Flash Drive Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

The piece resulted in turmoil within the left-wing publication [the Nation] itself with many writers and contributors bitterly suggesting it should never have been printed because the publication has some sort of obligation to only publish material that strengthens rather than weakens the case against the president they despise.

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ANALYSIS/OPINION:

California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s recent three-hour meeting with WikiLeaks head Julian Assange as reported earlier this week by The Hill may prove interesting in light of the allegations of several former high-ranking U.S. intelligence analysts that the Democratic National Committee was not hacked by the Russians or anyone else prior to last fall’s presidential election.

Mr. Rohrabacher said little after the meeting other than that Mr. Assange repeated his denial that the materials he obtained and made public did not come from the Russians, but claimed he had more information about what actually happened that he intended to share with President Trump.

The “common wisdom” in Washington circles is that the Russians were responsible for illegally hacking into the DNC computers during the campaign and leaked the emails thus obtained through WikiLeaks, but recent revelations suggest that there is at least a possibility that the “common wisdom” is dead flat wrong. If it is wrong and can be proven, the charges of “collusion” so dear to Mr. Trump’s opponents could collapse.

The Nation magazine earlier this month published a lengthy report on the conclusions of a number of intelligence analysts who have looked at the available evidence and concluded that it would have been physically impossible for the Russians to have done what Mr. Trump’s critics allege.

They maintain that the information that made its way into the public sphere wasn’t hacked at all, but leaked by someone within the DNC itself.

The Nation piece, by Patrick Lawrence titled “A New Report Raises Big Questions about Last Year’s DNC Hack,” claimed that for technical reasons, the data that was supposedly downloaded to a hacker could not have been downloaded in the manner alleged because the underlying data they analyzed showed it was downloaded far faster than would have been possible given the technology available to the supposed hacker at the time.

The only way they believe the data could have been downloaded in the time it was in fact downloaded was if the job was done internally to something like a thumb drive that was later turned over to WikiLeaks.

The piece resulted in turmoil within the left-wing publication itself with many writers and contributors bitterly suggesting it should never have been printed because the publication has some sort of obligation to only publish material that strengthens rather than weakens the case against the president they despise.

Many were particularly upset that the piece was picked up and praised by a number of conservative publications and commentators.

In response to the attacks, Katrina vanden Heuvel, the Nation’s editor and publisher has launched what she is calling a “post publication review” of the article.

It is certainly true that the allegations in the article are both controversial and contested, but it is at least possible that whether the Nation decides to trash its own writer and disavow the conclusions of his article, the analysts quoted in it are right.

The Obama administration, Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump’s enemies take it as fact that the Russians were behind the “hacks” and that they constituted an attempt by Vladimir Putin’s regime to “affect” the outcome of the election and hint openly that it was all done in collusion with the Trump campaign. That, after all, is what Special Counsel Robert Mueller is trying to prove.

They almost as one dismiss evidence to the contrary, relying on the “consensus” view of “seventeen” US intelligence agencies that it was indeed the Russians who did it. The “consensus” view as former Obama Director of Intelligence James Clapper has since admitted was put together by “hand-picked” analysts from three agencies and never underwent the rigorous review one might have expected.

This is, of course, the same James Clapper who had earlier been caught lying to Congress.

When the Nation article first appeared, the Democratic National Committee responded in writing “U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the Russian government hacked the DNC in an attempt to interfere in the election. Any suggestion otherwise is false and is just another conspiracy theory like those pushed by Trump and his administration.”

When The Hill article reporting on the Rohrabacher/Assange meeting appeared, the DNC was at it again, “We’ll take the word of the U.S. intelligence community over Julian Assange and Putin’s favorite Congressman,” said DNC Deputy Communications Director Adrienne Watson,

There are conspiracies and then there are conspiracies. Julian Assange may have the proof as to who is right and who is fantasizing and if he provided that proof to Mr. Rohrabacher things could get very interesting for all involved and especially for Mr. Clapper and those who have relied on his “consensus view.”

Categories: "Russian hacking of DNC server", 2016 elections and Russia, Collusion, Democrat National Committee, DNC and "hacked" e-mails, DNC leaks, Great Trump - Russia conspiracy, Intelligence community, Julian Assange, Media and Russian hacking, Media and Trump, Trump and Russia, WikiLeaks
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Does the CIA Vault 7 Leak Make America Less Safe?

March 8, 2017

Does the CIA Vault 7 Leak Make America Less Safe? The Daily Bell, Joe Jarvis, March 8, 2017

(President Obama “owned” the CIA and other segments of the intelligence community for eight years. Their apparent focus away from Islamic terror and toward interfering in the politics of other countries — as well, perhaps, as America —  is far from surprising. Whether “we” are better or worse off not knowing depends on the meaning of the word “we.” — DM)

Basically, this confirms what were already the highly suspected capabilities of the CIA. It is really not surprising that they had these cyber weapons, and not a shock that they were less interested in using them to stop terrorists than to influence elections.

The media’s response is typical; pretend that the leak will hurt the United States, and make us more vulnerable to terrorists. This, despite the fact that the CIA was clearly not focused on terrorism.

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Has U.S. intelligence been irreparably damaged by the release of Vault 7, to the point where it puts America and it’s operations at risk?

Well, to a certain extent, yes. But that’s only a problem if you think the CIA was targeting and manipulating the right people and entities.

You have probably heard by now of the Wikileaks release of Vault 7, a CIA arsenal of cyber weapons including viruses and malware. The capabilities the CIA has been utilizing include taking over smart TV’s and smartphones to use their microphones, and control their operations. The CIA can also get around popular encrypted messaging services like Whatsapp and Signal if they are used on an infected phone.

Among the list of possible targets of the collection are ‘Asset’, ‘Liason Asset’, ‘System Administrator’, ‘Foreign Information Operations’, ‘Foreign Intelligence Agencies’ and ‘Foreign Government Entities’. Notably absent is any reference to extremists or transnational criminals.

Emphasis added. Basically, this release confirmed everything we had already assumed was being done by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The interesting part, is how the CIA used these espionage tools.

As Wikileaks noted, the CIA did not seem especially interested in ISIS, or drug cartels.

But the French Election did interest the CIA. We know they monitored the candidates to intercept communications. The CIA was especially interested in the prospects of French economic growth, specifically which candidates would follow “the German model of export-led growth.”

What does that say about the faltering French economy under Francois Hollande?

Exports have been shaky at best, with large differences month to month. Unemployment is up over 10%, and economic growth has failed to meet expectations.

So in addition to spying on the candidates, did the CIA use their cyber weapons to influence the election?

What is the Media Spinning About Vault 7?

The breach could undermine the CIA’s ability to carry out key parts of its mission, from targeting the Islamic State and other terrorist networks to penetrating the computer defenses of sophisticated cyber-adversaries including Russia, China and Iran, former officials and tech specialists said.

“Any exposure of these tools is going to cause grave if not irreparable damage to the ability of our intelligence agencies to conduct our mission,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. -Washington Post

But we just got a glimpse into that mission. The CIA mission seems to be controlling the world economy and choosing who will win elections of foreign governments. Where is the focus on Isis, China, and Iran coming from? The leaked documents specifically mention 10,000 targets from North America, Europe, and South America.

So really the leak will do damage to the CIA’s mission, but the media is pretending the CIA has a different mission. The media is still pretending the CIA first and foremost keeps America safe, when in reality it is clearly more interested in exerting influence around the globe.

Other outlets like The Guardian sought to assuage fears that any one of us has been targeted. They say the CIA was saving their technology for high stakes investigation, lest it be discovered and the technology updated to stop such hacks. They won’t hack little guys like us!

Matt Blaze suggested a way to steer clear of the hacking tools, “Don’t become a CIA target.”

And I think that says a lot. The fact is, the CIA can target whoever they want for whatever reason they want. How much–or how little–does it take to become a CIA target?

Do those exercising the right to free speech or freedom of the press run the risk of becoming targets… or have they already?

The Take-Away

Basically, this confirms what were already the highly suspected capabilities of the CIA. It is really not surprising that they had these cyber weapons, and not a shock that they were less interested in using them to stop terrorists than to influence elections.

The media’s response is typical; pretend that the leak will hurt the United States, and make us more vulnerable to terrorists. This, despite the fact that the CIA was clearly not focused on terrorism.

In reality it is the CIA creating and disseminating these weapons in a disorganized insecure way that makes us all more vulnerable to whoever’s hands the cyber weapons have fallen into. We have been less safe since the CIA built the hacking arsenal.

The information coming to public light might make the CIA less effective in their goals, which does not necessarily make us less safe–depending on who you are, it could make you safer.

That is a big part of this story, that advanced hacking tools are now widely available for basically any organization in the world to use. So it isn’t just the CIA that might be listening into your phone’s microphone, or watching you through the camera.

It is beneficial to get confirmation of the tactics employed by the CIA, and open up a public discussion on the issue. Now at least when we talk about these things it isn’t some “conspiracy theory” but confirmed hacking and spying practices of the U.S. government.

Which also brings up more questions about sketchy incidents like the death of investigative reporter Michael Hastings.

Vault 7 confirmed the CIA’s interest in taking over and controlling vehicles. Michael Hastings died in a strange and mysterious car accident.

He was preparing a report on then CIA Director Brennan’s involvement in sanitizing Obama’s passport records. Hastings died when his car hit a tree and exploded, just three months after Brennan became head of the CIA.

Categories: CIA, CIA and politics, WikiLeaks
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WikiLeaks’ CIA Download Confirms Everybody’s Tapped, Including Trump

March 8, 2017

WikiLeaks’ CIA Download Confirms Everybody’s Tapped, Including Trump, PJ Media, Roger L. Simon, March 7, 2017

(Please see also, Retired NSA Official: Every Phone Call You Make Is Recorded And Stored | Hannity Fox News. And we were concerned about the privacy implications of “transgender” use of little girls’ bathrooms. — DM)

Remember the old joke about the definition of a paranoid — someone who knows all the facts?

Well, we’re all paranoids now because — since Tuesday’s, unprecedented in size and scope, Wikileaks document dump of massive cyber spying by the CIA — everything we ever thought in our wildest imaginations is true… and then some.

To channel the late Preston Sturges, privacy is not only dead, it’s decomposed.  The CIA’s Remote Devices Branch, known as UMBRAGE, is capable of — or is — watching you everywhere you go, even when you think they’re not or such surveillance would seem impossible.

The question about whether President Trump was tapped has been reduced to a joke.  The real questions are how often and from how many places.  The answer would probably shock us, if we were ever to learn the truth.  (And did President Obama know what they were doing?  Either that or the CIA, FBI or NSA wasn’t telling him. You decide.)

The Wikileaks documents (everyone believes their downloads now) show how the CIA, via their eerily named “Weeping Angel” program, has devised a method of listening to us through our smart TVs.  Even when we think they’re off, they are able to keep them on — and recording — through a “fake-off” program.

Just how many smart TVs does Donald Trump — a known television addict — watch in a day?  Who is he talking to at the time?  A foreign leader perhaps?  And what is he saying in supposed confidence?

These days it’s hard to buy a television that isn’t a smart TV.  The Wikileaks documents show only the popular Samsung has been hacked, but since the agency assiduously hacks both Apple and Android cellphones, one can assume all major brands are covered.  (They’re not stupid.  We are.)

And that’s far from their only way of listening in.  Tyler Durden — considerably more tech savvy than I — expresses the amazement of that community that the CIA was able to bypass the purportedly powerful cellphone data security apps (Signal, Telegram) so many business executives, politicians and journalists rely upon, even to using our own anti-virus programs (McAfee, etc.) to spy on us.  They also, apparently, can control our cars through the latest automobile computers.  (NOTE TO SELF: Skip the Apple CarPlay upgrade.)

Further, Durden quotes Twitter star Kimdotcom’s instant observation that the DNC/Russian hacking connection is also now a joke (at least highly suspect) since the CIA also has a program, via UMBRAGE again, to imitate Russian hacking techniques and leave the Russkies’ “fingerprints”  on their own handiwork. Could the CIA have hacked the DNC and then blamed it on the Russians for some purpose?  It seems unlikely, but anything’s possible in this crazy and increasingly bizarre and alienating world.  If it is true, don’t look now, but our country just exploded.

Our hope, for now, is in the congressional investigations, but it’s hard to have much confidence in them.  The media, of course, is ludicrous.  They have clearly become the witting/unwitting lackeys of all manner of leakers from any number of intelligence agencies. It’s become dizzying as the internal contradictions mount up daily.  (Who told you there was a FISA order again? Oh, wait…)  The New York Times and the Washington Post, among others, have reached self-parody in their cock-eyed denials of what they asserted only weeks ago, while the CIA grows progressively more partisan and ominously totalitarian in its values and methods.

Pretty soon every citizen is going to need a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility) of his or her own.

Whatever the case, we all have to do some serious thinking — way beyond the general superficiality and contrived drama of congressional hearings or indeed the quick in-and-out of an op-ed.  What is being revealed here is a sea change in the human condition that is almost evolutionary in its implications. What are our lives like without the presumption of privacy?  What kind of creatures will we become in this brave new world that appears already to have arrived?   It’s not fun to contemplate. Even the medieval peasantry had moments of escape from their feudal lords.

While initially critical of the Snowdens, Assanges or, for that matter,  the mystery man behind this latest literally Earth-shattering dump, I now have somewhere between mixed and positive feelings towards them. (Well, maybe not Snowden.) With all the problems we have, having visited the Soviet Union, the Russian Republic and Communist China (when they were still in Mao suits), I know those countries are mostly little more than giant prisons and we are still (again for now) the good guys.  Nevertheless, I am increasingly concerned we are creating our own “digital prison” that will make Darkness at Noon seem like child’s play.  At least in Arthur Koestler’s novel of the Stalinist purge trials the inmates could communicate by tapping on the walls.  What do we do?

Categories: CIA, Governmental spying on everybody, WikiLeaks
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WikiLeaks publishes thousands of documents, claims they come from CIA cyber center

March 7, 2017

WikiLeaks publishes thousands of documents, claims they come from CIA cyber center, Washington Examiner, Kyle Feldscher, March 7, 2017

WikiLeaks on Tuesday began releasing information it says is the largest ever publication of documents from the CIA, starting with more than 8,700 documents from the agency’s high-security network.

In a press release, WikiLeaks said the CIA “lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized ‘zero day’ exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation.”

That loss of control allowed much of the CIA’s hacking capability to become public and was given to WikiLeaks.

According to the statement, Tuesday’s release shows the “scope and direction” of the CIA’s global hacking program. That program is meant to target American and European products such as the Apple iPhone, Android phones, the Microsoft Windows computer software system and Samsung TVs, which can be turned into microphones.

WikiLeaks says its source “details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.

“There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber ‘weapons,’ ” said Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks. “Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such ‘weapons,’ which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade.

“But the significance of ‘Year Zero’ [the first part of the release] goes well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective.”

Categories: CIA, Cyber attacks, Cyber security, WikiLeaks
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For Obama Administration, Time to Put Up or Shut Up on ‘Russian Hacking’

December 29, 2016

For Obama Administration, Time to Put Up or Shut Up on ‘Russian Hacking’, PJ Media, Michael Walsh, December 29, 2016

(Please see also, Obama administration announces measures to punish Russia for 2016 election interference. Obama just did it, with no recitation of evidence, credible or otherwise. — DM)

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Barack Hussein Obama, in the waning days of his administration, is clearly preparing to do maximum damage to his country and its allies on his way out the door to a very comfy — and no doubt ungratefully activist — retirement. First, there was the stab in the back to Israel at the UN the other day; now, he’s threatening to “retaliate” against the Russians for “hacking” the American election:

The Obama administration is under intense pressure to release evidence confirming Russian interference in the presidential election before leaving office. The administration up until now has provided little documentation to back up its official October assessment that the Russian government was attempting to interfere in the U.S. election.

Nor has it corroborated subsequent leaks from anonymous officials contending that the CIA believes the campaign was an attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to ensure Donald Trump’s victory.

President Obama has ordered the intelligence community to produce a complete review of its findings before Trump takes office on Jan. 20. The White House has said it will make as much of the report public as it can. But officials have warned that the document will contain “highly sensitive and classified information” and it is unclear how much concrete evidence it will be able to release.

Yeah, right. This is simply another shot across the incoming president’s bow — part of the “resistance” deracinated Democrats have promised in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s surprising (to them) — but thoroughly satisfying defeat in November.

Releasing any documentation of Russian interference would be a slap in the face to Trump, who has rejected assertions that the Kremlin was involved in the hacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) andHillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The president-elect and his team have treated any suggestion of Russian involvement as an attack on the legitimacy of his election, and Republican leaders in Congress have treaded carefully on the issue.

The firestorm ignited by the CIA’s assessment has spurred calls from both parties for the administration to provide proof of Russian meddling. In late November, seven Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the White House to declassify “additional information concerning the Russian Government and the U.S. election.”

As of last week, they had not yet received a response.

“If the CIA Director [John] Brennan and others at the top are serious about turning over evidence … they should do that,” Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said earlier this month. “They should not be leaking to the media. If there’s evidence, let’s see it.”

How about that? What this episode shows is the near-complete untrustworthiness of the CIA under career hack John Brennan, and its politicization by Obama. It also reveals the extent to which mainstream newspapers — the Washington Post and the New York Times — are so addled by partisanship that they have willingly abrogated their ethics in order to smear the new administration. As I wrote in the New York Post on Dec. 13:

In the wake of their shocking loss, Democrats and their fellow travelers in the media have mounted a frantic, and increasingly deracinated, campaign to deny Trump the fruits of his victory in the Electoral College and thus overturn the election by any means necessary, fair or foul.

The recounts failed, so now it’s on to the Russians. Unsourced speculation from “sources” inside the CIA says Russian agents hacked John Podesta’s emails from the Democratic National Committee, according to “bombshell” reports in the Washington Post and New York Times.

Except that was the same “bombshell” that Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, and James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said on the record in October. The same “bombshell” that had Joe Biden acting like John Wayne, saying the US was going to retaliate. “We’re sending a message. We have the capacity to do it. And the message — he’ll know it,” Biden said about Vladimir Putin on “Meet the Press.”

No proof was offered then, or now, that Russia was involved. But it’s not as though voters weren’t aware of the speculation before the election, as some Democrats and columnists claim.

So what’s changed? Now Democrats and their media allies are in panic mode, looking for something, anything, to try to change the results.

As I’ve been saying on Twitter since the election: don’t believe a word you read in the MSM until Jan. 20, because every single “news” story will be a naked attempt at propaganda. After the inauguration, of course, the same warning will apply; it’s just that, having failed to stop Trump from taking office, the media will be on to something else in order to sabotage him and his voters.

Categories: 2016 elections, Clinton campaign, Democrat National Committee, Democrat Party, Democrats, Obama and fake news, Obama and Russian hacking, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton, WikiLeaks
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Even if the Russians Did Hack the Emails, So What?

December 21, 2016

Even if the Russians Did Hack the Emails, So What? American Thinker, Selwyn Duke, December 21, 2016

What was actually revealed by Wikileaks and what effect it had are being conflated with the matter of who revealed it, as if the messenger somehow changes the message.

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“The Russians hacked the election!” say Democrats trying to discredit Donald Trump’s presidency. Of course, their statement is deceptive, referring only to the theory that the Russians provided Wikileaks with the campaign season’s revelatory Democrat emails.

Not surprisingly, the Fake (establishment) Media has embraced the theory, which is probably the best argument for its falsity. In addition, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange denies Russian involvement. So does Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who said “I’ve met the person who leaked them [the emails]” and that the individual is an “insider” representing Democrats angry over “the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Senator Bernie Sanders.” Moreover, both FBI director James Comey and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, said there’s “no credible evidence” Russia influenced Nov. 8’s outcome, according to reporter Ed Klein. Yet whatever the truth, the more important matter is that the issue is being used as a distraction and a tool for disruption.

What was actually revealed by Wikileaks and what effect it had are being conflated with the matter of who revealed it, as if the messenger somehow changes the message. Consider an analogy: Imagine it came to light that a Capitol Hill restaurant’s kitchen was filthy and vermin-infested. Would the health department’s course of action be dictated by whether the information came from a disgruntled employee or an investigative reporter who illegally gained access to the kitchen? If the latter, would Washington Democrats still eat there?

As a reminder, the Wikileaks emails contained damning information showing direct collusion between the mainstream media and the Hillary Clinton campaign, including evidence that a CNN figure gave Clinton debate questions ahead of time, thus disadvantaging primary-season opponent Sanders. They contained other dirt on the Democrats as well. Is anyone but Clinton and her apologists upset these truths came to light?

Of course, our systems must be made safe from intrusion by foreign actors, but this gets at an important point: it will reflect better on the Democrats if the Wikileaks source is a leaker. After all, whose systems were supposedly hacked and under whose watch would it have occurred?

Answers: the Democrats’ systems and the Obama administration.

The New York Times recently ran a painfully long article about how “how Russian cyberpower invaded the U.S.,” calling it “The Perfect weapon.” But the piece mainly illustrates how Democrat and administration entities exhibited the perfect storm of incompetence. The Times writes of how its examination “based on interviews with dozens of players targeted in the attack, intelligence officials who investigated it and Obama administration officials who deliberated over the best response — reveals a series of missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of the cyberattack.”

In contrast, there reportedly was also a hacking attempt by Russia on the Republicans. It apparently didn’t work, however, because they actually secured their systems.

So here’s the Democrat complaint, translated: “We were too incompetent to secure our systems — or react promptly to a perceived threat by a hostile foreign actor — and as a result damning truths about us were revealed. We’re such victims!”

Taking the above together with Hillary Clinton’s use of a “home brew” server to send classified emails, and that the FBI stated there appeared to be hacking attempts on it, a question is raised:

Were these people ever qualified to be at the nation’s helm, in charge of national security?

In the 1997 film Liar Liar, Jim Carrey plays a shyster lawyer who, after a birthday wish made by his son comes true, is suddenly incapable of telling a lie. Objecting to the opposing counsel’s argument in court but robbed of his verbal legerdemain, he responds to the judge’s question as to why he objected by saying, with the only argument he could honestly muster, “Because it’s devastating to my case!”

 


That is essentially the Democrats’ gripe regarding the quite true Wikileaks revelations. Objection overruled.

Categories: 2016 elections, Democrat National Committee, Democrats, DNC and cyber security, Media and DNC, Russian hacking, WikiLeaks
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Russian Hacking Conspiracy Theory Implodes

December 16, 2016

Russian Hacking Conspiracy Theory Implodes, Front Page Magazine, Matthew Vadum, December 16, 2016

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The Left’s crusade against Republican presidential electors is kicking into high gear even as the CIA-attributed story that Russian hackers won the White House for Donald Trump is going up in flames.

There is still no evidence –at least none that has been made publicly available– that the Russian government or Russian-backed cyber militias hacked anything to help Trump win the election but that’s not halting the Left’s efforts to delegitimize his presidency before it even begins.

Against this backdrop, members of the Electoral College are preparing to gather this Monday in the 50 states and the District of Columbia to fulfill their constitutional duty. Adding to the drama, some electors are demanding intelligence briefings on the alleged hacking before they vote.

But sometimes not everyone on the Left gets the memo.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch yesterday undermined the Left’s post-election jihad against Trump by rejecting the proposition that the Russian government (or anyone) hacked into voting machines used in the recent election.

“We didn’t see any sort of technical interference that people had concerns about, in terms of voting machines and the like,” she said at an event hosted by Politico.

While community organizers across America whip their followers into a state of frenzy, stories are still being planted in the media by the Central Intelligence Agency or sources claiming to speak for the spy agency. Yet the CIA refuses to be held to account.

When federal lawmakers did their job this week and demanded proof of the Russian hacking allegations, intelligence agencies refused to show up to provide congressional testimony.

Most reasonable people would infer from this appallingly arrogant behavior by the CIA, which has long been home to left-wing Democrats and squishy moderate Republicans, that all this damning evidence we keep hearing about does not actually exist.

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) blasted “Intelligence Community directors” for their “intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress [which] can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes.”

Intelligence overseer Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) is hopping mad over the CIA’s obstructionism. It is “absolutely disgraceful,” he said, that the intelligence community is refusing to brief lawmakers about the alleged Russian hacking program while false information is being surreptitiously funneled to the media to discredit Donald Trump.

“There is no consensus opinion, and yet we find it in the New York Times and the Washington Post and yet the House Committee on Intelligence was told nothing about this,” King said.

“This violates all protocols and it’s almost as if people in the intelligence community are carrying out a disinformation campaign against the president-elect of the United States,” King said. He acknowledged it is possible that someone in Congress could also be leaking false information.

Obama White House press secretary Josh Earnest escalated the time-limited administration’s war of words against the incoming president.

Referring to Trump’s fabled July 27 press conference at which the media falsely reported the then-GOP candidate had invited Russia to hack Hillary Clinton, Earnest said matter-of-factly Wednesday that Trump asked Russia to use cyberwarfare against Clinton.

“There’s ample evidence that was known long before the election and in most cases long before October about the Trump campaign and Russia — everything from the Republican nominee himself calling on Russia to hack his opponent,” Earnest said.

“It might be an indication that he was obviously aware and concluded, based on whatever facts or sources he had available to him, that Russia was involved and their involvement was having a negative impact on his opponent’s campaign.”

“That’s why he was encouraging them to keep doing it,” Earnest said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose site released thousands of purported emails from senior Democrats during the recent election campaign, threw cold water on the Russian hacking conspiracy theory.

Assange told Sean Hannity yesterday, “Our source is not the Russian government.” He also said the information WikiLeaks received “has not come from a state party.”

What Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the House Intelligence Committee on Nov. 17 suggests Assange may be right.

“As far as the WikiLeaks connection [to Russian hackers is concerned] the evidence there is not as strong and we don’t have good insight into the sequencing of the releases or when the data may have been provided,” Clapper said. “We don’t have as good insight into that.”

Assange told Hannity WikiLeaks received almost nothing on Republicans. “We received about three pages of information to do with the RNC and Trump but it was already public somewhere else.”

Interestingly, Assange, who has been built up in the media to be some kind of radical anarchist, stood by America’s constitutionally prescribed system for choosing a president.

He said:

There’s a deliberate attempt this week to conflate a whole lot of different issues together. It seems to be as a desire, an extremely dangerous and foolish desire, to flip members of the U.S. Electoral College around into getting up John Kasich or Hillary Clinton on the 19th. It’s foolish because it won’t happen. It’s dangerous because the argument that it should happen can be used in four years’ time or eight years’ time for a sitting government that doesn’t want to hand over power and that’s a very dangerous thing. There’s [Hillary] Clinton-aligned PACs putting out ads with lots of celebrities trying to push these electors to do it.

Who’s doing all this conflating? President Obama, Assange suggested.

Hannity asked Assange if the president knows Russia isn’t behind the Democrat electronic document dump and is “purposefully” pushing a false narrative to delegitimize Trump. Assange replied, “yes … there is a deliberate effort to conflate” underway.

Hannity piled on the CIA, noting that “for over 10 years WikiLeaks has never been proven wrong, not one single time.”

The radio talk show host said the CIA pushed the lie that the coordinated military-style attack on U.S. assets in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012 arose out of a mere protest.

“The CIA advanced that false story that it was a spontaneous demonstration when we now know it was a terrorist attack. And they advanced it through the CIA in Langley,” Hannity said. “There were some people there that were playing politics at the CIA, advancing a false narrative, a story that we know is false.”

But facts are malleable things and reality is never an obstacle to the plans of the Left.

The fact that Trump never asked Russia to hack Hillary and the CIA apparently has nothing to back up its wild allegations is no reason for those who wish to overturn the recent verdict of the American people to back off.

Something called Electors Trust is claiming that somewhere between 20 and 30 Republican electors are considering not voting for Trump on Monday, the John Podesta-founded Center for American Progress Action Fund’s propaganda site ThinkProgress reports. Co-founded by radical Harvard law professor Larry Lessig, Electors Trust claims to provide “free and strictly confidential legal support to any elector who wishes to vote their conscience.”

In a dramatic come-from-behind victory, Trump won 306 of the 538 available elector slots on Nov. 8. Left-wingers want to peel off enough GOP electors to deprive Trump of the magic number 270 he needs to formally secure the presidency in the official Electoral College vote this Monday.

There is almost no chance this coup will succeed but even if the Electoral College were to reach a stalemate Trump would still be on track to become president. With each state’s delegation casting a single vote, the current Republican-dominated House of Representatives would elect a president. The current GOP-dominated Senate would elect a vice president with each senator casting a single vote.

Trump-haters could still try and throw a wrench in the works when the new Congress convenes in January. When Congress begins to officially count the electoral votes, they could apply pressure to lawmakers to contest those votes. But it’s a very hard slog. A written objection has to be made to the president of the Senate, that is, Vice President Joe Biden, and it has to be signed by at least one senator and one House member.

Both chambers then debate the objection separately. Debate is limited to two hours. Afterwards, both the Senate and the House of Representatives rejoin and both must agree to reject the electoral votes for them not to count.

Making matters more difficult for the Trump-blockers, Lessig’s estimate of having as many as 30 sympathetic Republican electors in his pocket is almost certainly a hallucination on his part that helps to create the false impression that his anti-democratic campaign is succeeding.

More responsible whip counts place the number of likely faithless electors in the single digits – enough for an interesting historical footnote but not enough to keep Trump out of the Oval Office.

In an email Lessig cited “three groups that I know of working with/supporting electors,” and said that his faithless electors’ estimate is “based on my confidence in the reports from these three groups.”

Lessig told Chuck Todd on MSNBC Tuesday that he shares the goal of groups like Hamilton Electors to convince at least 40 Republican electors to say they’re contemplating dumping Trump.

Lessig is just one of many mass hysteria-afflicted leftists trying to stop Trump from becoming president.

Some officeholders are demanding a congressional investigation of the supposed hacking saga. Others liken the cyber-conspiracy they fantasize to 9/11 and are demanding an independent blue-ribbon commission be created. Maybe Jesse Jackson Sr. will invite the United Nations to participate.

Up to 55 electors –54 of whom are Democrats– have reportedly called upon Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to authorize intelligence briefings on the alleged Russian cyberattacks before the Electoral College votes. California elector Christine Pelosi, daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is spearheading the effort.

Democrat activist Daniel Brezenoff is paying for full-page ads in newspapers across the country such as the Washington Post and Atlanta Journal-Constitution asking electors to “vote their conscience” and reject Trump, Politico reports.

Then there are the left-wingers who have been doxxing Republican electors.

“Liberal groups, including a new one called Make Democracy Matter, have disseminated the names and contact information of the electors and encouraged people to contact Republican electors and ask them to change their vote,” hippy rag Mother Jones reports. “And those messages are arriving to electors’ inboxes, voicemails, and homes by the thousands.”

So now at least we know where all the death threats Republican electors are receiving are coming from.

Left-wing activists call this kind of in-your-face harassment “accountability,” an Orwellian euphemism to be sure. Accountability actions focus on harassing and intimidating political enemies, disrupting their activities, and forcing them to waste resources dealing with activists’ provocations. It is a tactic of radical community organizers, open borders fanatics, and union goons. Taking a cue from Marxist theorist Herbert Marcuse, they want to shut down, humiliate, and silence those who fail to genuflect before their policy agenda, or in this case, ignore the votes of the 63 million Americans in 3,084 of the nation’s 3,141 counties or county equivalents who chose Donald Trump for president.

Make Democracy Matter, by the way, shrieks on its homepage that “We can stop Trump from imposing his racist agenda on America … we can build systems and structures that protect people from harm and dismantle white supremacy.”

MoveOn plans to run a 30-second ad on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today featuring faithless Republican elector Christopher Suprun from the 30th congressional district in Texas.

“The CIA report is frightening,” Suprun says in the video even though as far as anyone knows he’s never seen the elusive report.

No doubt the Van Jones-founded Megaphone Strategies, a self-described “social justice media strategy firm” hired by parties unknown to turn Suprun into 2016’s Cindy Sheehan has helped put him in the media spotlight.

In a sanctimonious New York Times op-ed earlier this month, Suprun denounced Trump, saying, “He does not encourage civil discourse, but chooses to stoke fear and create outrage. This is unacceptable.”

After writing that “Mr. Trump lacks the foreign policy experience and demeanor needed to be commander in chief,” he repeats the proven lie that during the campaign Trump said “Russia should hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.” He adds, “This encouragement of an illegal act has troubled many members of Congress and troubles me.”

Suprun, by the way, is quite a piece of work. GotNews discovered he “joined and paid for cheating website Ashley Madison in 2012, using the same address registered to his 9/11 charity, while bankrupt, likely unemployed, and married with three young kids, after he and his working wife owed over $200,000 to multiple creditors.”

More than 35,000 people have signed a Change.org petition demanding Suprun “be removed” as an elector.

And then there are the famous college dropouts from Hollywood.

Something called Americans Take Action, apparently doing business as Unite for America, put together a celebrity-larded public service announcement to urge Republican electors to vote for somebody, anybody, other than Donald Trump on Dec. 19.

In the video we learn that idiot actors Martin Sheen, Debra Messing, Bob Odenkirk, James Cromwell, Noah Wyle, and singer Moby have suddenly become champions of the government-limiting U.S. Constitution.

“Our Founding Fathers built the Electoral College to safeguard the American people from the dangers of a demagogue, and to ensure that the presidency only goes to someone who is, ‘to an eminent degree, endowed with the requisite qualifications,’ ” Sheen solemnly intones in the video.

A somber Messing repeats Sheen’s words, “to an eminent degree.”

You get the picture.

It’s also been fascinating watching left-wingers embrace Founding Father Alexander Hamilton solely because he wrote Federalist No. 68 which explains the Electoral College and the qualifications of a president.

Because the Left’s narrative paints Trump as a rabid Russophile, these people who otherwise would use the Constitution as toilet paper are heeding Hamilton’s warning that foreign powers might seek to raise “a creature of their own” to the presidency.

And they scream bloody murder about Holy Mother Russia, a country they were only too happy to serve in the days of the Soviet Union when Russian President Vladimir Putin was a colonel in the KGB.

KGB collaborator Ted Kennedy must be rolling in his grave.

Categories: 2016 elections, CIA, Contesting elections, Democrats, Electoral College, Leftists, Obama and intelligence, Obama and Russian hacking, Obama's hypocrisy, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton, Protesting Trump, Russia and Trump, Russian hacking, Trump and Russia, U.S. Congress, U.S. Constitution, WikiLeaks
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The Incestuous Left and Those Who Provide Cover for them

October 23, 2016

The Incestuous Left and Those Who Provide Cover for them, American Thinker, Clarice Feldman, October 23, 2016

As the election nears, the media hype, designed to affect the results, demoralize and demonize Trump and his supporters and confirm the bias of its elite coastal consumers, continues. Saturday’s opinion-posing-as-news lead in the Washington Post says the end is near for Trump — the polls have him down everywhere and he was booed for crass attacks at the Al Smith dinner in New York. What do you expect from media whose reporters are literally in bed with the administration?

Not only are reporters feeding debate questions to the Clinton campaign, we have a video of one of them, Andrea Mitchell, seemingly being fed what to ask by Hillary’s traveling press secretary.

Extensive evidence from Wikileaks, FOIA responses, and “human sources” of the incestuous and improper coordination between the media and the Democrats have been detailed by Sharyl Attkisson. She concludes:

It can be argued that some individual accounts can be rationalized and are not serious breaches of ethics. But taken as a whole, it’s easy to see how we as journalists have done a poor job protecting ourselves from being co-opted by organized interests, often ones that are paid and politically-motivated. Whether we realize it or not, they’ve figured out how to exploit the media and use us to publish their propaganda. It implies a broad and growing trend that has seriously undermined the credibility of the news industry.

Opinion reporters and those who work for obviously ideological news groups are entitled to publish party propaganda. It’s one matter to provide viewpoint journalism. But it’s quite another for us to act as a tool of any interest, publishing narratives or talking points upon suggestion or demand, without disclosing we’ve done just that.

Wikileaks promises to unleash even more insider accounts of the Clinton campaign and DNC shenanigans this coming week and has said it has even more current information — material respecting serious wrongdoing by the DNC head Donna Brazile and Clinton’s vice-presidential running mate Timothy Kaine coming up next. James O’Keefe of Project Veritas says that on Monday he is releasing a video of Robert Creamer, shown as a vote fixer in previous videos, coordinating with Clinton and Brazile. “Anything happens to me, there’s a deadman’s switch on Part III, which will be released Monday. @HillaryClinton and @donnabrazile implicated.”

The media has hardly reported these disclosures and when it has it has downplayed them, but it is no longer a gatekeeper deciding what we are allowed to know, although it tries hard to hide Hillary’s obvious physical disabilities from the public eye.

As for the polls, Democrat pollster Pat Caddell says we may be in for a shock election night:

“All of the tracking polls keep holding at Trump being ahead,” he continued. “And then all of these other polls that are one-off polls, or whatever… I don’t know how they’re doing some of these university polls. You just put the name of some university and apparently it becomes credible, whether they know what they’re doing, or not.

Caddell was pointing out the discrepancy between the different types of polls. “But in any event, polling is all over the place…. Something isn’t adding up,” said Caddell.

“Something is going to happen here, I just sense it,” he concluded. Either “Hillary will glide into the White House, or we’re headed for one of the greatest shocks in American politics. I think it’s a very close call. I think the shock potential is enormous.”

Our own Jared E. Peterson fleshes out Caddell‘s point:

Here are some of the numbers available Friday, October 21, 2016:

Goebbels/Pravda: (with NBC and CBS as reported by RCP on the afternoon of Friday, October 21, 2016):

ABC/Washington Post: 47-43, Clinton

NBC: 51-43, Clinton

CBS:  51-40, Clinton

Non-Propaganda Machine-affiliated: (as reported on the afternoon of Friday October 21, 2016):

IBT/TIPP: 41-40, Trump

LA Times/USC Tracking: 44.5-43.8, Trump

Rasmussen: 43-41, Trump

To say there’s a huge difference between the current state of the race as depicted by Goebbels/Pravda versus that shown by major independent polling organizations, would be risible understatement.

The propaganda arm of the Democratic Party is showing a runaway race, while the independents present an extremely tight one, with Trump frequently leading by a nose.

We know that at least one — the NBC/WSJ poll which early showed Clinton with an improbable 11-point lead — was a barely disguised effort intended to manipulate public opinion using a small pool of voters, improbably weighted and produced by a firm with extensive ties to the Clinton camp.

As for the media account of the Al Smith dinner, it seems like the fake accounts of Trump encouraging violence at his rallies, it’s not a true account. Joe Concha reports that you weren’t being told that Hillary got just as mean and personal as Trump did and also received some boos even from such an elite Democrat supporting party — and Concha who quotes from their remarks is joined in this assessment by Piers Morgan.

It’s hard to disagree with Concha’s conclusion:

“Who would think the 2016 Al Smith Dinner would encapsulate the prism our media sees this campaign in so perfectly?

A prism where only one candidate exists.

Because as we’re seeing on television and in print today, it just somehow did.”

The dinner itself reflects how even the Catholic Archdiocese, which sponsors this dinner for the benefit of Catholic Charities, has been coopted by the left and vast sums of federal money. It looks as if it has lost its way. Catholic Charities receives hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal treasury as a refugee resettlement contractor. They accept thousands of unvetted Syrian Moslems and place them in communities already struggling to provide basic services, get them signed up for welfare benefits for which taxpayers then have to foot the bill and then lobby Congress for more funds to repeat this operation.

Catholic Charities/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: These nominally Catholic organizations are the largest VOLAGs [voluntary organizations], with hundreds of offices spread throughout the country. They are prominent members of the open borders/amnesty movement. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) is “the domestic anti-poverty program of the U.S. Catholic Bishops” and a grant-making vehicle of the USCCB. It was founded in Chicago in 1969 with the help of radical organizer Saul Alinsky, specifically to fund Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. CCHD has been a radical leftist funding vehicle ever since, giving millions to ACORN, the radical training school Midwest Academy, and others. The Industrial Areas Foundation, where a young Barack Obama was trained in “community organizing” with financial support from the Chicago Archdiocese, receives the largest percentage of CCHD grants of any CCHD grantee.

President Obama had this to say about CCHD:

I got my start as a community organizer working with mostly Catholic parishes on the Southside of Chicago that were struggling because the steel plants had closed. The Campaign for Human Development helped fund the project and so, very early on, my career was intertwined with the belief in social justice that is so strong in the Church.

USCCB founded the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., a $7 million subsidiary which assists illegal aliens based on “the Gospel value of welcoming the stranger.” It aggressively promotes amnesty, believing that “all goods of the earth belong to all people. When persons cannot find employment in their country of origin to support themselves and their families, they have a right to find work elsewhere in order to survive. Sovereign nations should provide ways to accommodate this right.” USCCB has 270 field offices in 47 states. Board members include Donald D. Taylor, president of the extreme-left union UNITE HERE!

Catholics are not alone in this three-card Monte game — there are nine other such nominally faith-based organization receiving vast sums to bring refugees here, pushing for amnesty and more money for their operations which are disrupting American communities and transforming them.

Most if not all started out as private charitable institutions providing financial and other aid out of their own funds for this work. Iowahawk describes the transformation of so many of our once fine institutions as these:

“Take a respected institution.

Kill it.

Gut it.

Wear its carcass as a skin suit.

And demand respect.”

I don’t recall Catholic Charities or any of the voluntary resettlement contractors lobbying on the hill for better vetting of refugees or for a change in the UN processing of them abroad to include truly persecuted groups like Christian refugees. (They may have; I just haven’t seen it.) It’s a scandal — your money funds these nominally Christian and Jewish groups to bring in ever more inassimilable, low educated, unskilled, and sometimes very ill and dangerous hordes to transform us from a Christian-Judeo nation which believes in religious tolerance into one in which a growing minority of immigrants which a supremacist fantasy encourages demands for special privileges and the right to live off our bounty as they undermine what has created it.

The more refugee cases a volag is assigned, the more money the federal government hands over to the private agency. In some ways, the model resembles those charities that spend inordinately on fund raising and administration instead of on actually helping needy people.

Clearly, refugee resettlement policy and programs, from top to bottom, are overdue for congressional scrutiny and reform. Those organizations, including religious ones, receiving federal monies deserve close assessment. It is morally incumbent on religious refugee bureaus to examine their own hearts. As Christ said, it is impossible to serve both God and money (Luke 16:13). Their efforts would be a lot more honest and effective and a lot less harmful to their fellow countrymen and communities if they returned to reliance on private funding alone.

Hundreds of Catholic institutions are involved, including Catholic Charities of NY. The $177.2 million in federal grants to Catholic charities in 2015 are from a single charity organization. — the Catholic Charities of Chicago. So it’s fair to assume that the NY branch (for whom the Al Smith dinner is the beneficiary) itself garnered at least that much that year.

But the Al Smith dinner reflects more than its being a cover for leftist money-grubbing at our expense — it reveals a shocking disregard for Catholic sensibilities to curry favor with New York’s leftist elites and Hillary.

Recent history reveals the shift. Writing in the NC Register, Thomas Mcardle questions whether this dinner for the glitterati has passed its expiration date.

The overall message the Al Smith Dinner now sends to Americans, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, is that Catholic teachings on human life and marriage can’t be allowed to muss relations between the Church and an increasingly anti-Catholic state. But in both 1996 and 2004, the abortion-friendly position of first Bill Clinton and then Catholic Democrat nominee John Kerry led to both parties’ candidates not being invited by the Archdiocese of New York.

The decision to invite Hillary is even more inexplicable when the Archbishop had the same week demanded an apology from Hillary for the anti-Catholic material within her campaign disclosed by Wikileaks, and hasn’t received one.

Emails released last week by WikiLeaks showed Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta and Director of Communications Jennifer Palmieri, both Catholics, in conversations with activists from two left-wing organizations. In the emails, Catholics were debased, with their beliefs being called “severely backwards.” Conservative Catholics also were accused of “an amazing bastardization of the faith,” and Rupert Murdoch was mocked for baptizing his children as Catholics in the River Jordan.

The U.S. Church’s bishops were slammed in the emails as well, referred to as “a middle ages dictatorship.”

Palmieri said in one of the emails she thought conservatives that had come to Catholicism did so because “they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion,” and that “their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”

Podesta admitted to helping launch a “progressive” infiltration of the Church in another email, and he took an active role in attempting to incite a liberal Catholic revolt against the U.S. bishops.

“We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this,” Podesta wrote. “But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up.”

The “Catholic Spring” Podesta referred to had been broached in the email by Center for Progress president Sandy Newman, who had pondered how one would “plant the seeds of the revolution,” or “who would plant them.”

With even more damaging Wikileaks and Project Veritas disclosures coming, the Clinton camp is now trying to question their credibility, source, and organizer. So far, the claims seem unpersuasive. Donna Brazile whose head seems to be moving next under the Wikileakd guillotine has suggested the emails were tampered with.  (You might remember that in 1988 she was fired from the DNC and Dukakis apologized for her conduct when she spread a lie that George H.W. Bush had a mistress.) Cryptographers debunk that.

Hillary has claimed that U.S. Security agencies told her the hacks were Russian, suggesting Putin is trying to influence our election. Like everything else she says, this, too, is false.  Rumors smearing Assange as a pedophile have been spread — doubtless by the trolls within the Clinton network.  Reddit sleuths trace them to the address of an intelligence agency that seems to share an address with an outfit on whose board sit Larry Summers and Neera Tanden, both major players in the Clinton shadow government Center for American Progress.

Whether this will pan out on further investigation, remains to be seen, but given what we know of how the Clintons operate I’d consider it a distinct possibility.

Former UK foreign minister Craig Murray hints the Wikileaks come from inside the Clinton camp itself.

“I can tell you with 100% certainty that it is not any Russian state actor or proxy that gave the Democratic National Committee and Podesta material to WikiLeaks. The claim is nonsense. Journalists are also publishing that these were obtained by “hacking” with no evidence that this was the method used to obtain them. [snip]

But the key point is that WikiLeaks is a publisher. It is a vehicle for publishing leaks, and is much more of a vehicle for whistleblowers than for hackers. It does not originate the material. I have often seen comments such as “Why has WikiLeaks not published material on Israel/Putin/Trump?” The answer is that they have not been given any. They publish good, verifiable material that they are given by whistleblowers.”

It would warm my cold heart to think there is an honest person or two somewhere on the vast Clinton payroll.

 

Categories: 2016 elections, Al Smith Dinner, Charitable organizations, Clinton character, Clinton cover ups, Clinton e-mails, Distractions, Hillary Clinton and immigration, Illegal immigration, Islamic refugees, Media and Donald Trump, Media and Hillary Clinton, Opinion polls, Project Veritas, Roman Catholic Church, Russia, Trump Hater's Club, WikiLeaks
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Wikileaks: Top Clinton Aides Details “Expensive Gifts” and Unethical Deals By Clintons Through Their Foundation

October 21, 2016

Wikileaks: Top Clinton Aides Details “Expensive Gifts” and Unethical Deals By Clintons Through Their Foundation, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley,October 21, 2016

hillary_clinton_testimony_to_house_select_committee_on_benghazi-e1477072056301
bill_clinton_by_gage_skidmore-e1477072101940

Wikileaks has issued new and troubling emails from its hacking of Democratic accounts. Top Clinton aide Doug Band sent emails that raised objections to the use of the Foundation by Bill Clinton that raised troubling conflicts of interest. He specifically mentions the giving of “expensive gifts” and other conduct from sponsors. At the same time, top Hillary Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, is found complaining about a “mess” created by Hillary Clinton in securing a massive contribution from the King of Morocco of $12 million in exchange for a meeting with her as part of an event for the Clinton Global Initiative May 2015.


The Bond disclosure concerns the Clinton Global Initiative and a new business started by top Clinton aide Doug Band called Teneo Holdings. Both Band and Clinton’s held dual positions with Teneo and CGI. Bond wrote a November 17th email to John Podesta, Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and long-time Clinton confidant. He objected to Pedestal that “I signed a conflict of interest policy as a board member of cgi . . . Oddly, [Bill Clinton] does not have to sign such a document even though he is personally paid by 3 cgi sponsors, gets many expensive gifts from them, some that are at home etc. . . I could add 500 different examples of things like this.” Bond was on the Clinton Foundation payroll through 2011, but, in June 2011, he and co-founder Declan Kelly, a former economic envoy for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, started Teneo in June 2011. They then made Bill Clinton a paid adviser. Chelsea Clinton was then appointed to the CGI board. Teneo then accepted money from groups like MF Global, a controversial brokerage firm that reportedly lost $600 million of investors’ money and had business deals that could be benefited by an association with the Secretary of State.

At the time of the emails, the Clinton staff were worried that there were questions being asked between CGI and Teneo. Band comes across as defensive and accusatory. He indicated that he knew of far worse conflicts by Bill Clinton and demanded “How then do we go through an exercise like this and [Bill Clinton] doesn’t as he is far more conflicted every single day in what he does?” Band later raised a Hillary Clinton with even worse “issues.”

In the meantime, Abedin (who is generally viewed as Hillary Clinton’s closest aide) authored a startling email that suggested a type of quid pro quo by Hillary Clinton in a foundation trade-off with Morocco for $12 million commitment to meet with the King of Morocco. The critical memo came in January 2015 with two top advisers Podesta and Robby Mook. It appeared that after cutting the deal for the money, Clinton had gotten cold feet due to the election. Abedin wrote that “this was HRC’s idea” and “she created this mess and she knows it.” It was decided that Hillary Clinton who go to campaign in Nevada and California while they had Bill and Chelsea meet with the Moroccans. Morocco at the time was under great pressure for what the U.S. government denounced as “arbitrary arrests and corruption.”

The last presidential debate with moderator Chris Wallace was the first to seriously probe allegations of a “pay to play” scheme associated with the Foundation. Clinton did not respond directly to the allegations but these emails are likely to magnify the concerns in the final weeks of the campaign.

Categories: Bill Clinton, Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, King of Morocco, WikiLeaks
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Hillary Clinton Really Didn’t Want to Apologize for Her Email Use

October 21, 2016

Hillary Clinton Really Didn’t Want to Apologize for Her Email Use, Washington Free Beacon, , October 21, 2016

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., makes a campaign stop at Hemisfair Park, at the Arch, in San Antonio,Texas, Friday, Feb. 29, 2008. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton,  (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Hillary Clinton’s campaign struggled to get the candidate to apologize for using a private email server as secretary of state, recently hacked emails reveal.

Clinton’s team tried for weeks to convince her before she finally sat down with ABC News anchor David Muir to say “I’m sorry.” Campaign chairman John Podesta described the apology as very painful for Clinton.

On September 8, 2015, the night the interview aired, Podesta emailed Neera Tanden, a Clinton adviser and the president of the Center for American Progress.

“She ate her spinach,” Podesta said. “Shouldn’t have been this hard, but thanks for weighing in.”

“I was physically sick on the prep call this morning feeling her pain (of course, I was inflicting most of it.)” Podesta said. “I have to say Mandy [Grunwald] was pretty stand up on pushing her too.”

Podesta added that he wished viewers could only see the end of the interview, where Hillary talked about the movie A League of Their Own.

“The ending of this is just so great,” he said. “Can we ever imagine a strategy to just get the last two minutes out without people having to watch 10 minutes of email answers first?”

Clinton said it was a mistake to have a private email server, while still claiming it was “allowed.” The State Department’s inspector general said using a private server was not allowed because of “significant security risks.”

“I do think I could have and should have done a better job answering questions earlier. I really didn’t perhaps appreciate the need to do that,” Clinton told Muir.

“What I had done was allowed, it was above board. But in retrospect, as I look back at it now, even though it was allowed, I should have used two accounts. One for personal, one for work-related emails. That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility.”

Weeks before the interview, Clinton’s team wrestled with how to get their candidate to apologize because the scandal was causing a “character problem.”

“I know this email thing isn’t on the level,” Tanden wrote to Podesta on August 22. “I’m fully aware of that. But her inability to just do a national interview and communicate genuine feelings of remorse and regret is now, I fear, becoming a character problem (more so than honesty).”

“People hate her arrogant, like her down,” Tanden said. “It’s a sexist context, but I think it’s the truth. I see no downside in her actually just saying, look, I’m sorry. I think it will take so much air out of this.”

Tanden said it is not in Clinton’s nature to be transparent.

“She always sees herself bending to ‘their’ will when she hands over information, etc.,” she said. “But the way she has to bend here is in the remorse. Not the ‘if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t do it.’ A real feeling of – this decision I made created a mess and I’m sorry I did that.”

Podesta agreed, and said he and Jen Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, were “in the same place.”

“Trying to figure out how to get [Hillary] there and best way to execute,” he said.

The emails were hacked from Podesta’s account and posted by Wikileaks. The U.S. director of national intelligence and the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security have accused “Russia’s senior-most officials” of hacking and leaking emails posted to Wikileaks and other sites in order to influence the 2016 election.

Categories: 2016 elections, Clinton advisers, Clinton character, Clinton e-mails, Clinton unsecured server, WikiLeaks
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