Hillary Clinton’s Private Emails About Israel, Breitbart, Shmuley Boteach, August 5, 2016
November will see one of the consequential elections of our lifetime. With Israel and the world enduring another cycle of terrorism, and the Jewish State’s very existence threatened by the catastrophic Iran deal, the American election has a direct bearing on Israel’s future.
I’ve written in the past about the State Department’s email dump of Hillary Clinton’s communications from her private server. The former secretary of state received a veritable trove of advice and information about Israel from her closest advisers. Curiously, it was mostly negative and hostile to Israel. It behooves Hillary to explain the emails and why they are mostly of a negative nature.
Here are some examples.
Martin Indyk was advising Clinton during her time as Secretary of State. In 2007, Indyk’s Brookings Institution, a purportedly objective non-partisan government think tank, opened up a branch in Qatar, a country that is virulently anti-Israel and which currently serves as Hamas’ main financial backer. Seven years later it was revealed that Indyk’s relationship with Qatar had progressed to the point that Qatar had given $14.8 million dollars to Indyk’s institute. This phenomenon of foreign governments purchasing political influence via think tanks in Washington has been well attested to in the past.
Keep in mind that in the background of this concealed, blatant conflict of interest, Indyk was one of the top diplomats assigned to formulating policy and negotiating a two-state solution in Israel. The bombshell revelations of the Qatari donations compromised Indyk immensely and Netanyahu’s government responded by saying that Indyk could not be trusted. Nonetheless, during Clinton’s time as Secretary of State, Indyk had her ear when it came to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Indyk’s emails to Clinton show a Qatari-inspired anti-Israel bias. He talks about the need to look, not at Netanyahu’s politics, but his “psychology.” He writes to Clinton’s advisors of Netanyahu: “[A]t heart, he seems to lack a generosity of spirit.”
Indyk attacks Netanyahu over and over as having “inflated demands” and lacking the willingness to risk Israel’s security with a West Bank that would likely become yet another Hamastan. He writes nothing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s continual incitement and his calls for the murder of Israelis or the need to outlaw terrorist groups.
Indyk also describes how world opinion can be used against Netanyahu, writing, “If Israel doesn’t make a serious move, it will further delegitimize its standing internationally.” He also describes how the US can use the fear of a potential nuclear Iran to force Israel to sign a deal with the Palestinians, because “Bibi needs President Obama in his corner to deal with the threat from Iran.”
Then there is Jake Sullivan, who currently serves as a top foreign policy advisor for Hillary’s campaign and who was Clinton’s deputy chief of staff while she was Secretary of State. Sullivan has also been revealed to harbor anti-Israel views. In one heavily redacted email to Clinton regarding talks with Netanyahu, Sullivan’s subject line reads “dealing with Netanyahu.” There is often a cavalier attitude in how many of Hillary’s subordinates refer to the Prime Minister of Israel. His name rarely comes with any titles reflecting his status as an elected leader. Rather, he’s usually just “Netanyahu.”
Then there is, of course, Sidney Blumenthal, of whom I have written much in the past, especially about his anti-Semitic son Max, who recently celebrated the death of, and defamed, Elie Wiesel, prompting Hillary Clinton to disavow him, something for which she deserves great credit.
Sidney Blumenthal sent Hillary an anti-Semitic article entitled, “The preemptive strike on Jodi Rudoren” that claims the Jewish lobby “sought to influence media coverage in a variety of sometimes heavy-handed ways” and says “the pressure from these groups is relentless.” This column was retweeted by Max Blumenthal. And Hillary found the article important enough to forward it to Sullivan and her deputy assistant Secretary of State Phillipe Reines. She writes to them, “Had you seen this?” Sullivan responds to the anti-Semitic article, “I hadn’t. Interesting.” Reines, on the other hand, seems to have been so disgusted by this intolerant article that he surprisingly shoots back to Hillary, “My people control the banks too.” It appears Reines was letting Hillary know that this article was deeply biased and on a par with other well known libels against the Jewish people.
Jake Sullivan has also shown himself to be a fan of Peter Beinart, whom I have debated several times and someone who justified terrorist attacks against Israelis and demanded that America punish Israel for electing Netanyahu. Beinart, in one of our debates, compared the world’s foremost Jewish philanthropist and the principal sponsor of Birthright, Sheldon Adelson, to the terrorist leaders of Iran.
Beinart’s writings are blatantly anti-Israel and he has become infamous in the Jewish community for his calls for a complete boycott of Judea and Samaria in the hopes of forcing Israel to withdraw and allow terrorist Hamas to fill the vacuum. The fact that Hamas or Islamic State would inevitably overthrow Abbas’s weak government, as happened in Gaza, does not weigh in Beinart’s demands that Israel be punished if it does not accede to his demands.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just Sullivan. It seems that Hillary Clinton herself is a fan of Peter Beinart.
After Sid Blumenthal sent Hillary an anti-Israel column by Beinart, Hillary forwarded it to Sullivan, writing, “Pls read so we can discuss.” In response, Sullivan writes “Fascinating.”
When Blumenthal sent Hillary an article by his son Max filled with his usual anti-Israel drivel, Clinton forwarded the article to Sullivan with the message, “Interesting reading.”
Sullivan responds, “This is really fascinating. Does Beinart get into all of this?” Hillaryresponds, “Yes.”
Sullivan’s response to another Israel-hating Max Blumenthal article is to call it “fascinating” and try and compare the ideas it contains with the writings of Israel critic Peter Beinart. Of course, it was Bill Clinton himself who wrote a wild endorsement of Beinart’s book The Crisis of Zionism, in which Beinart charges Israel with everything from racism to apartheid-like conditions.
I have every desire to treat Hillary Clinton fairly when it comes to Israel and, as I wrote above, she deserves credit for finally disavowing the demented anti-Semitism of Max Blumenthal, even though he is the son of her foremost advisor.
But it’s important to note that when former senior adviser to President Barack Obama Dennis Ross wrote his tell-all book Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama, he described a faction within the White House that saw Israel as “more of a problem” than a partner. Since Hillary describes herself as someone who was a great friend to Israel in the Obama administration, it is imperative that she publicly clarify her position on Israel vis-a-vis some of her advisors whose opinions on Israel are deeply hostile.
State Dept. Says Program to Dissuade Jihadis Failed. So They TRIPLE Its Budget, PJ Media, Robert Spencer, August 4, 2016
(How about pamphlets showing that Islamic terrorism causes global warming? And free ham sandwiches? — DM)
No matter how much money they pour into it, this program will fail on the drawing board until the State Department drops its willful ignorance about the ideology that fuels and motivates the jihad.
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Even in its final months, the Obama administration continues to pour taxpayer money into its disastrous projects designed to “counter violent extremism.” The projects have failed, and were foredoomed to fail because of the administration’s policy of denying and ignoring the enemy’s motivating ideology.
The New York Times reported Thursday:
[T]he Obama administration has revamped a program designed to lure foreign fighters away from extremist groups like the Islamic State, focusing on a series of new advertisements and social media posts that seek to appeal to emotion rather than logic.
Emotion, logic, whatever. No such approach can work as long as the administration refuses to admit what inspires Muslims to join jihad groups in the first place.
This latest bout of wishful thinking and fantasy-based policymaking comes at a high cost to the taxpayer:
Money for the program, which is managed by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, tripled this year, to $16 million, after administration officials concluded that past efforts that had attempted to scare potential militants away from the extremist groups were not working.
At least the government correctly concluded that, indeed, the programs were not working:
[M]ultiple reboots have shown how hard it has been for these programs to find traction. … [R]ecent attacks in Turkey, Iraq, France and Bangladesh seemed to show extremism has been spreading.
But this time, the Times assures us, it’s going to be different:
The new initiatives have been tailored to keep the United States government’s involvement as low-key — and in some cases, as secretive — as possible, because overt American backing for some projects had turned off the exact group of disaffected young men that the campaign is trying to reach.
So the State Department finally realized that Muslims who hate America will not be dissuaded via appeals from … America?
Baby steps! Still — not going to work. The Times reports:
“[T]hese new efforts include using Facebook videos, Instagram ads and other social media that have been designed to convince young men and women that joining the militants’ fight means breaking their mothers’ hearts, tearing apart their families and leaving their loved ones to lives of emptiness.”
So the latest plan from the Obama administration rests on this assumption: A young man who thinks he is serving Allah in a cause commanded by the supreme being — and who thinks that being killed will secure a place in Paradise for himself and (in accord with statements attributed to Muhammad) for his family — will be dissuaded by realizing his mother might miss him.
The State Department is forbidden, as a matter of policy, from studying or understanding the jihadi worldview. They instead operate under the assumption that Muslims aspiring to jihad have the same basic values and priorities of modern secular Westerners. This assumption is, at best, unproven.
This Keystone Kops myopia is longstanding. The Times writes:
[P]ast efforts from the administration had sought to frighten potential jihadists with warnings that waging war against the West would get them killed, but officials concluded that the warnings actually served the opposite purpose of glorifying militancy.
The willful blindness necessary to believe that jihadis — who repeatedly avow that they “love death” — could be dissuaded from jihad in any significant numbers by fear of death is breathtaking. It epitomizes how wrongheaded the administration’s approach has been from the beginning.
Even the Times acknowledges this about the initiative, while citing unnamed “critics”:
[The initiative] was unlikely to have done anything to dissuade young people from joining either Al Qaeda or the Islamic State.
However, while the New York Times admits that the administration’s program to dissuade jihadis has thus far been completely ineffective, it has no idea why.
In reality, all possible versions of this program are doomed to failure because they manifest no understanding whatsoever of the jihadis’ worldview, beliefs, assumptions, motives, and goals. None of this is surprising, since the Obama administration has forbidden the examination and discussion of all of that.
Take, for example, one image that the State Department published on Twitter. It says:
Women under ISIS are enslaved, battered, beaten, humiliated, flogged.
Obviously this would deter someone from becoming a jihadi only if he already thought it was terrible for women to be enslaved, battered, beaten, humiliated, and flogged.
The State Department wonks who came up with this weren’t allowed to learn from the Qur’an. So they obviously don’t know that the Qur’an mandates the enslavement of infidel women(4:3; 4:24; 23:1-6; 33:50; 70:30) and the beating of disobedient women (4:34).
A Muslim who knows that is unlikely to be troubled by the prospect of the Islamic State beating or enslaving women.
The Times adds:
On Sept. 11, 2014, for example, an Al Qaeda leader posted on Twitter that ‘on this day, in 2001, the USA’s largest economic shrine, the idol of capitalism was brought to the ground.’ The State Department quickly responded on Twitter by posting a photo of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader, wearing a Rolex watch: “Nobody’s a bigger fan of the fruits of capitalism than so-called #ISIS Caliph.”
This, too, was myopic: from an Islamic standpoint, the Rolex was not a sign of hypocrisy, since Islam does not have the reverence for asceticism that Christianity has. Rather, it was a sign that Allah had blessed the caliph, since blessings are promised to the pious in both this world and the next – and those blessings specifically include the spoils of war against non-Muslims.
The caliph could have been signaling to his followers: “Kill an infidel, take his Rolex.”
No matter how much money they pour into it, this program will fail on the drawing board until the State Department drops its willful ignorance about the ideology that fuels and motivates the jihad.
EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Completed No Security Briefings Or Courses At State Dept, Daily Caller, Richard Pollock, August 1, 2016
The admission also could play a role in the State Department’s re-opening of an internal investigation of Clinton and her aides over their handling of classified materials.
The new State Department internal probe was announced after Comey declined to call for an indictment of Clinton over her use of a private email server to conduct official State Department business. The FBI noted that 22 emails found on Clinton’s private server were “Top Secret.”
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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton completed no security briefings or courses on the proper handling of classified materials and how to conduct secure communications while at the Department of State, according to new Obama administration legal filings before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The surprise admission was released late Friday and could reignite the controversy over Clinton’s “careless” handling of classified materials as asserted by FBI Director James Comey, which has already been a central part of the presidential race.
The revelation also could renew calls for the Department of State to strip her of her security clearance. The co-founder of at least one retired military officers organization has called for a suspension of her clearance.
State Department officials previously reported they could not locate records certifying that Clinton or her top aides took the annually required security courses and briefings.
But on July 29, Obama administration officials went further, saying their failure to locate any documents meant that the “courses were not completed” by the secretary or her aides.
In comparison, State Department officials reported that Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy engaged in 12 separate security classes and briefings during Clinton’s time in office.
“If the search of these databases did not locate any such training records, then the courses were not completed,” concluded Eric Stein, the co-director of the State Department’s Office of Information Programs and Services in the July 29 filing before U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon.
Mark Toner, the State Department’s deputy spokesman, told TheDCNF in a statement that the lack of briefing records doesn’t necessarily mean they were not trained.
He said Clinton received “in person orientation” on handling classified information. “The absence of documentation from training resources they did not use does not indicate that they were not trained.”
But Department of Justice officials were clear in their filing that if Clinton had security briefings or classes, it would show up in their databases.
They reported to the court that the State Department scoured the files and databases held by four different department training divisions: the Student Management Training System; the Cyber Security Administration; the Sensitive Compartmented Information electronic training records; and the certification records at the Foreign Service Institute’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
“State searched the record systems and databases that would contain records showing that the specified individuals completed the mandatory training courses — if they in fact completed them,” stated Benjamin Mizer, the principal deputy assistant Attorney General, and Marcia Berman, the assistant director of the Federal Program Branch at the Justice Department, in their filing before Judge Leon.
The government’s lawyers explained that the Bureau of Diplomatic Security is “the primary training institution for [State]” and would possess training records for Clinton and her aides. The SCI also “has access to SCI electronic training records.”
“If its search of STMS, the Cyber Security Administration database, and SCI electronic training records did not locate training certifications, then such courses were not completed,” both DOJ officials concluded.
Stein said that the same is true concerning the Bureau of Diplomatic Security records.“If DS’s search of the SCI training records did not locate any training records for an individual, then the training was not completed,” he stated in his affidavit before the court.
The government’s unexpected admissions were filed in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
TheDCNF is seeking records that confirmed Clinton and her top aides completed mandatory security briefings on the handling of classified materials and on the proper way to engage in secure communications.
When the State Department released only a few documents to TheDCNF earlier this year, the news organization asked the department to search the private hard drives of the computers operated by Clinton and her aides.
State was not obligated “to conduct an additional search of individual-specific or shared drives for copies of the requested training certifications, because such certifications, if they existed, would be retained in the databases and records systems previously searched,” the Justice Department filed before the court.
“The State Department, under penalty of perjury, effectively just threw a former Secretary of State and her aides under the bus for failing to do what all State Department officials are required to do,” said Bradley Moss, a national security attorney who handled TheDCNF case.
DOJ lawyers also explained that the Cybersecurity Administration database further “contains records of all online training activity specifically related to the Department’s Cyber Security Awareness course.”
“There is no real wiggle room in the affidavit submitted by the State Department. If the training records are not there, then Secretary Clinton and her aides never did the training. Period,” he said.
All government officials within the national security establishment must take annual reviews of the handling of classified materials.
Some of the reviews are conducted in face-to-face briefings and others are in online sessions.
“You have to complete paperwork. You have to have face-to-face briefings,” recalled retired Col. James Williamson, a former Special Operations Forces officer and co-founder of OPSEC, a nonpartisan organization of Special Operations and intelligence officers.
“There’s an electronic record,” Williamson recalled in an interview with TheDCNF. “I would get a nastygram if I didn’t complete my online course. I have to make sure every year my employees would take the online course.”
He called the latest information about Clinton “just mind-boggling.”
State Department records released to TheDCNF show that Cheryl Mills and Jacob Sullivan, two top Clinton aides, took cybersecurity awareness courses once, but not for all four years.
The records show Clinton and aide Huma Abedin never took any cybersecurity awareness training.
Last March retired Lt. General Michael T. Flynn, President Barack Obama’s former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told TheDCNF that the State Department should suspend her security clearance. He said the former secretary of state should be denied “any access to any classified or sensitive information.”
This was echoed by Williamson. Her security clearance “absolutely should be pulled. There is no way this woman should be trusted with classified documents, period,” he told TheDCNF.
Mark Zaid, the lead attorney for TheDCNF, said the latest filing shows the State Department is in “disarray” over its security requirements.
“The recent admission portray a State Department in disarray when it comes to upholding security requirements of senior officials with the greatest access to classified information,” he said.
The admission also could play a role in the State Department’s re-opening of an internal investigation of Clinton and her aides over their handling of classified materials.
The new State Department internal probe was announced after Comey declined to call for an indictment of Clinton over her use of a private email server to conduct official State Department business. The FBI noted that 22 emails found on Clinton’s private server were “Top Secret.”
Toner refused to respond to the effect of the revelations on their internal investigation. “As we have previously stated, in order to protect the integrity of our internal review we are not going to comment on its scope.”
Clinton Cash: Khizr Khan’s Deep Legal, Financial Connections to Saudi Arabia, Hillary’s Clinton Foundation Tie Terror, Immigration, Email Scandals Together, Breitbart, Matthew Boyle, August 1, 2016
Khizr Khan, father of fallen US Army Capt. Humayun S. M. Khan waves as he stands near the podium before speaking during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia , Thursday, July 28, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that the mainstream media and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been using to criticize Donald J. Trump, has deep ties to the government of Saudi Arabia—and to international Islamist investors through his own law firm. In addition to those ties to the wealthy Islamist nation, Khan also has ties to controversial immigration programs that wealthy foreigners can use to essentially buy their way into the United States—and has deep ties to the “Clinton Cash” narrative through the Clinton Foundation.
Khan and his wife Ghazala Khan both appeared on stage at the Democratic National Convention to attack, on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s behalf, Donald Trump—the Republican nominee for president. Their son, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, was killed in Iraq in 2004. Khizr Khan, in his speech to the DNC, lambasted Donald Trump for wanting to temporarily halt Islamic migration to America from countries with a proven history of exporting terrorists.
Since then, Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos—who served as a senior adviser to the president in Bill Clinton’s White House and is a Clinton Foundation donor as well as a host on the ABC network—pushed Trump on the matter in an interview. Trump’s comments in that interview have sparked the same mini-rebellion inside his party, in the media and across the aisle that has happened many times before. The usual suspects inside the GOP, from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to House Speaker Paul Ryan to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, have condemned Trump in one way or another. The media condemnation has been swift and Democrats, as well their friends throughout media, are driving the train as fast as they can.
But until now, it looked like the Khans were just Gold Star parents who the big bad Donald Trump attacked. It turns out, however, in addition to being Gold Star parents, the Khans are financially and legally tied deeply to the industry of Muslim migration–and to the government of Saudi Arabia and to the Clintons themselves.
Khan, according to Intelius as also reported by Walid Shoebat, used to work at the law firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, a major D.C. law firm that has been on retainer as the law firm representing the government of Saudi Arabia in the United States for years. Citing federal government disclosure forms, the Washington Free Beacon reported the connection between Saudi Arabia and Hogan Lovells a couple weeks ago.
“Hogan Lovells LLP, another U.S. firm hired by the Saudis, is registered to work for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia through 2016, disclosures show,” Joe Schoffstall of the Free Beacon reported.
The federal form filed with the Department of Justice is a requirement under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which makes lobbyists and lawyers working on behalf of foreign governments and other agents from abroad with interests in the United States register with the federal government.
The government of Saudi Arabia, of course, has donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has given between $10 and $25 million to the foundation while Friends of Saudi Arabia has contributed between $1 and $5 million,” Schoffstall wrote.
Trump, of course, has called on Hillary Clinton to have the Clinton Foundation return the money.
“Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays,” Trump wrote in a Facebook post back in June, according to Politico. “Hillary must return all money from such countries!”
“Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate,” Trump posted in a separate Facebook posting at the time. “I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”
Of course, to this day, Hillary Clinton and her Clinton Foundation has kept the money from the Saudi Arabian government.
Schoffstall’s piece in the Washington Free Beacon also notes how Hogan Lovells lobbyist Robert Kyle, per Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, has bundled more than $50,000 in donations for Clinton’s campaign this year.
Khan’s connections with the Hogan Lovells firm run deep, according to a report from Law.com written by Katelyn Polantz.
“Many lawyers at Hogan Lovells remember the week in 2004 when U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan lost his life to a suicide bomber,” Polantz wrote. “Then-Hogan & Hartson attorneys mourned the death because the soldier’s father, Khizr Khan, a Muslim American immigrant, was among their beloved colleagues.”
Polantz wrote that Khan worked at the mega-D.C. law firm for years.
“Khan spent seven years, from 2000 to 2007, in the Washington, D.C., office of then-Hogan & Hartson,” Polantz wrote. “He served as the firm’s manager of litigation technology. Although he did not practice law while at Hogan, Khan was well versed in understanding the American courts system. On Thursday night, he described his late son dreaming of becoming a military lawyer.”
But representing the Clinton Foundation backing Saudi Arabian government and having one of its lobbyists bundle $50,000-plus for Clinton’s campaign are hardly the only places where the Khan-connected Hogan Lovells D.C. mega-firm brush elbows with Clinton Cash.
The firm also handles Hillary Clinton’s taxes and is deeply connected with the email scandal whereby when she was Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton set up a home-brew email server system that jeopardized classified information handling and was “extremely careless” according to FBI director James Comey.
“A lawyer at Hogan & Hartson [Howard Topaz] has been Bill and Hillary Clinton’s go-to guy for tax advice since 2004, according to documents released Friday by Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” The American Lawyer’s Nate Raymond wrote in 2008, as Hillary Clinton ran for president that year. “The Clintons’ tax returns for 2000-07 show combined earnings of $109 million, on which they paid $33 million in taxes. New York-based tax partner Howard Topaz has a broad tax practice, and also regularly advises corporations on M&A and executive compensation.”
Breitbart News’ Patrick Howley, in a deep investigative piece on Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, late last year uncovered how Topaz’s firm—which employed Khan while Topaz did Hillary Clinton’s taxes—is also connected to the email scandal.
“Topaz was a partner at Hogan & Hartson, which later merged to become known as Hogan Lovells, where Topaz continues to practice. The firm’s lawyers were major donors to Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign,” Howley wrote.
For her private email system, Clinton used a spam filtering program MX Logic.
“Hogan & Hartson handled the patent for MX Logic’s email-filtering program, which McAfee bought the small company for $140 million in 2009 in order to acquire,” Howley wrote. “The MX Logic company’s application for a trademark for its SPAMTRAQ program was filed in 2004 on Hogan & Hartson stationery and signed by a Hogan & Hartson attorney. Hogan & Hartson has been responsible for MX Logic annual reports. The email company’s Clinton links present more evidence that Clinton’s political and legal establishment was monitoring her private email use.”
If that all isn’t enough, that same Hogan & Hartson law firm—now Hogan Lovells—employed Loretta Lynch, the current Attorney General of the United States. Lynch infamously just a few weeks ago met with Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband and the former president, on her private jet in Phoenix just before clearing Hillary Clinton of any wrongdoing when it came to her illicit private email server system.
Khan’s own website for his own personal law firm KM Khan Law Office shows he represents clients in the business of buying visas to enter the United States. One of his specific areas of practice, according to the website, is “E2 Treaty Investors, EB5 Investments & Related Immigration Services.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee, has detailed how the EB5 immigration program is “riddled with flaws and corruption.”
“Maybe it is only here on Capitol Hill—on this island surrounded by reality—that we can choose to plug our ears and refuse to listen to commonly accepted facts,” Grassley said in a statement earlier this year. “The Government Accountability Office, the media, industry experts, members of congress, and federal agency officials, have concurred that the program is a serious problem with serious vulnerabilities. Allow me to mention a few of the flaws.”
From there, Sen. Grassley listed out several of the “flaws” with the EB5 immigration program that Khan works in:
– Investments can be spent before business plans are approved.
– Regional Center operators can charge exorbitant fees of foreign nationals in addition to their required investments.
– Jobs created are not “direct” or verifiable jobs but rather are “indirect” and based on estimates and economic modeling.
– Jobs created by U.S. investors are counted by the foreign national when obtaining a green card, even if EB-5 money is only a fraction of the total invested.
– Investment funds are not adequately vetted.
– Gifts and loans are acceptable sources of funds from foreign nationals.
– The investment level has been stagnant for nearly 25 years.
– There’s no prohibition against foreign governments owning or operating regional centers or projects.
– Regional centers can be rented or sold without government oversight or approval.
– Regional centers don’t have to certify that they comply with securities laws.
– There’s no oversight of promoters who work overseas for the regional centers.
– There’s no set of sanctions for violations, no recourse for bad actors.
– There are no required background checks on anyone associated with a regional center.
– Regional centers draw Targeted Employment Area boundaries around poor areas in order to come in at a lower investment level, yet the jobs created are not actually created in those areas.
– Every Targeted Employment Area designation is rubberstamped by the agency.
– Adjudicators are pressured to get to a yes, especially for those politically connected.
– Visas are not properly scrutinized.
– Visas are pushed through despite security warnings.
– Files and applications lack basic and necessary information to monitor compliance.
– The agency does not do site visits for each and every project.
– There’s no transparency on how funds are spent, who is paid, and what investors are told about the projects they invest in.
That’s not to mention the fact that, according to Sen. Grassley, there have been serious national security violations in connection with the EB5 program that Khan works in and around already. In fact, the program—according to Grassley—was used by Middle Eastern operatives from Iran to attempt to illicitly enter the United States.
“There are also classified reports that detail the national security, fraud and abuse. Our committee has received numerous briefings and classified documents to show this side of the story,” Grassley said in the early February 2016 statement. “The enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security wrote an internal memo that raises significant concerns about the program. One section of the memo outlines concerns that it could be used by Iranian operatives to infiltrate the United States. The memo identifies seven main areas of program vulnerability, including the export of sensitive technology, economic espionage, use by foreign government agents and terrorists, investment fraud, illicit finance and money laundering.”
Maybe all of this is why–as Breitbart News has previously noted–the Democratic National Convention made absolutely no mention of the Clinton Foundation or Clinton Global Initiative. Hillary Clinton’s coronation ceremony spent exactly zero minutes of the four nights of official DNC programming talking about anything to do with perhaps one of the biggest parts of her biography.
Hillary ‘Really Proud’ of Clinton Foundation — but Hid It Completely from DNC, Breitbart, Ezra Dulis, July 31, 2016
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that she is “really proud” of her family’s charity the Clinton Foundation — after spending the past week hiding its existence from viewers of the Democratic National Convention.
The glaring contradiction prompted a video comparison, which you can watch above.
Wallace, in an exclusive sit-down interview, asked Clinton about allegations first made in Clinton Cash, the book and now film/graphic novel, that Clinton used the multi-billion-dollar charity for international “pay-to-play” deals while she served as Secretary of State. Author and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer says that Clinton Foundation donors were on the receiving end of corrupt deals approved by Hillary’s State Department — including the sale of U.S. uranium to Russia and a rare, lucrative mining permit in Haiti.
Clinton retorted that she is “really proud of the Clinton Foundation,” yet not a single speaker at the DNC last week — not even Bill or Chelsea Clinton — mentioned the Foundation or its spinoffs such as the Clinton Global Initiative. A dramatic documentary clip on Hillary’s record of service, narrated by acclaimed actor Morgan Freeman, failed to mention the Clinton Foundation or its work around the world. The omission left the clip feeling oddly scant, as only two non-politicians appeared on camera with stories to praise Clinton’s record from over 40 years in political life.
This week, news broke that the IRS is investigating the Clinton Foundation. Earlier this month, FBI Director James Comey would not confirm or deny whether the bureau is investigating the Foundation during congressional testimony. Just days later, The Globe and Mail reported that “The Canadian affiliate of the Clinton Foundation is spending an astounding 78 percent of the money it raises on administrative costs.”
Read the transcript of Wallace and Clinton’s exchange:
WALLACE: Let’s talk about the Clinton Foundation and allegations of pay-to-play, the argument, the allegation that foreign companies and foreign countries either donated big money to the foundation, or paid your husband for big money for speeches in order to influence your work as secretary of state. In the first 12 years after he left the White House, President Clinton made 13 speeches for which he got $500,000 or more. Eleven of those 13 were while you were secretary of state, and they were all paid for by foreign interests.
Are we to believe that’s just a coincidence?
CLINTON: Well, there’s no truth to any of these allegations.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: Well, I mean, it is true that they gave — that they did make these speeches. They are all (ph) by foreign interests, and he was getting much bigger speaking fees.
CLINTON: He got — he gave speeches as soon as he left the White House all the way up until the last year, and he spoke all over the world, as well as throughout America, to all kinds of groups.
But let’s get to the nut of your question. I’m really proud of the Clinton Foundation. I am proud of the work that it does. Thanks to the Clinton Foundation, 9 million more people in our world have access to HIV/AIDS drugs because they negotiated contracts that made them affordable.
And there is absolutely no connection between anything that I did as secretary of state and the Clinton Foundation. So, people can say that, but I’m proud of our philanthropic work, our personal/family philanthropic work, the work of the Clinton Foundation.
I’d like to see Donald Trump’s tax returns to find out how much philanthropy he’s ever done.
Hillary Obstructed Boko Haram’s Terror Designation as Her Donors Cashed In, PJ Media, Patrick Poole, July 28, 2016
(But hashtags should have worked.
— DM)
In January 2015, I was one of the first to report on a massive massacre by Nigerian terror group Boko Haram in Borno State in northwest Nigeria, with reportedly thousands killed. Witnesses on the ground reported that bodies littered the landscape for miles as towns and villages had been burned to the ground, their populations murdered or fled.
By that time, Boko Haram had already become the most lethal terrorist organization in the world, now responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Just yesterday, the United Nations accused Boko Haram of “almost unimaginable” levels of violence and brutality.
And yet, as Boko Haram began to ramp up its terror campaign in 2011 and 2012, Hillary Clinton obstructed the official terror designation of the group over the objections of Congress, the FBI, the CIA and the Justice Department.
Why did Hillary Clinton’s State Department drag its feet on the terror designation in the face of near unanimous opposition from the rest of the U.S. government?
A recent series of reports exposes that a close Clinton family confidante — and Hillary campaign bundler — who profited from Nigeria’s lucrative oil fields. He engaged in multiple illegal deals throughout Africa.
Also, other donors to the Clinton Global Initiative are deeply involved in Nigeria’s corrupt oil industry.
Were they the motivation behind Hillary’s inexplicable position on Boko Haram?
As PJ Media’s Bridget Johnson has previously asked, is Boko Haram Hillary Clinton’s biggest scandal? Hillary Clinton is set to accept the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States. Why is no one in the media talking about Hillary and Boko Haram?
It is worth nothing that Congress had to drag a reluctant State Department kicking and screaming to get Boko Haram designated in November 2013, after Hillary Clinton had left office.
Hillary Clinton’s willful obstruction in the matter is easy to document:
An important two-part investigative series by WORLD Magazine reporters Mindy Belz and J.C. Derrick provides some insight:
Part 1 of our series on Clinton State Dept & Boko Haram@WORLD_mag https://world.wng.org/2016/05/troubling_ties … and Part 2https://world.wng.org/2016/06/fatal_connections … #Nigeria
Belz and Derrick discovered that Hillary Clinton’s obstruction of the Boko Haram designation, and the continuing chaos in northern Nigeria — Africa’s largest economy and the 10th largest oil producer in the world — directly benefited Clinton Global Initiative donors and a close Clinton confidante who bundled campaign cash for Hillary.
From Belz’s and Derrick’s second article:
Perhaps the most prominent Nigerian with ties to the Clintons is Houston-based Kase Lawal. The founder of CAMAC Energy, an oil exploration and energy consortium, Lawal had a long history with Bill Clinton before becoming a “bundler” for Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid, amassing $100,000 in contributions and hosting a fundraiser in his Houston home — a 14-room, 15,264-square-foot mansion. Lawal maxed out donations to Hillary’s 2016 primary campaign, and his wife Eileen donated $50,000 — the most allowed — to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural committee.Lawal describes himself as a devout Muslim who began memorizing the Quran at age 3 while attending an Islamic school. “Religion played a very important role in our lives,” he told a reporter in 2006. “Every time you finish a chapter they kill a chicken, and if you finish the whole thing, a goat.”
Today the Houston oil exec — who retired in May as CEO but continues as chairman of the board of CAMAC, now called Erin Energy — tops the list of wealthiest Nigerians living in North America. His firm reports about $2.5 billion in annual revenue, making it one of the top private companies in the United States.
In Africa, Lawal has been at the center of multiple criminal proceedings, even operating as a fugitive. Over the last decade, he faced charges in South Africa over an illegal oil scheme along with charges in Nigeria of illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lawal arranged a 2011 plot to purchase 4 tons of gold from a rebel warlord, Bosco Ntaganda, linked to massacres and mass rapes. Ntaganda was on a U.S. sanctions list, meaning anyone doing business with him could face up to 20 years in prison. Lawal contacted Clinton’s State Department, and authorities in Congo released his plane and associates in the plot.
He never faced charges in the United States, and he remains a commissioner for the Port Authority of Houston.
Lawal’s energy firm holds lucrative offshore oil licenses in Nigeria, as well as exploration and production licenses in Gambia, Ghana, and Kenya, where he operates in a conflict-ridden area largely controlled by Somalia’s al-Shabaab militants.
The firm also has held contracts in Nigeria for crude oil lifting, or transferring oil from its collection point to refineries. Until last year, when newly elected President Muhammadu Buhari began an effort to reform the process, contracting for lifting has been awash in kickbacks, bribes, and illegal activity.
Overland lifting contracts often involve partnership with the North’s past and present governors, including those who serve as quasi-warlords with ties to Boko Haram and other militants.
Lawal’s enterprises have long been rumored to be involved in such deals, as have indigenous oil concerns like Petro Energy and Oando, Nigeria’s largest private oil and gas company, based in Lagos and headed by Adewale Tinubu, another controversial Clinton donor.
In 2014, Oando pledged 1.5 percent of that year’s pre-tax profits and 1 percent of future profits to a Clinton Global Initiative education program. This year, Adewale gained notoriety when the Panama Papers revealed he holds at least 12 shell companies, leading to suspicion of money laundering, tax evasion, and other corruption.
In 2013 Bill Clinton stood alongside Adewale’s uncle, Bola Tinubu, while attending the dedication of a massive, controversial reclamation project called Eko Atlantic. Critics call Bola Tinubu, leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress party, Nigeria’s “looter in chief.” A Nigerian documentary says that when the billionaire landowner was governor of Lagos State (1999-2007), he funneled huge amounts of state funds — up to 15 percent of annual tax revenues — to a private consulting firm in which he had controlling interest.
In the United States, where he studied and worked in the 1970s and ’80s, Tinubu is still a suspect in connection with a Chicago heroin ring he allegedly operated with his wife and three other family members. In 1993 Tinubu forfeited $460,000 to American authorities, who believe he trafficked drugs and laundered the proceeds.
But wait, there’s more:
Beneath the surface, literally, Boko Haram was making it possible for illicit operators to lay claim to the area for their own purposes, and to pump oil from Nigeria’s underground reserves to Chad. Using 3-D drilling, Chad operators can extract Nigerian oil — without violating Nigerian property rights — to sell on open markets. One benefactor of the arrangement is Ali Modu Sheriff, a leading politician in the North, Borno State governor until 2011, and an alleged sponsor of Boko Haram, who is close friends with longtime Chad President Idriss Déby.The very terrorism that seems to be deterring oil exploration in reality can help illicit extraction, forcing residents to flee and giving cover to under-the-table oil traders. In 2015, a year when overall oil prices dipped 6 percent, Lawal’s Erin Energy stock value skyrocketed 295 percent—the best-performing oil and gas stock in the United States.
Every word of Belz’s and Derrick’s two-part investigative series is worth reading.
Of course, Hillary’s defenders will claim all of this — Clinton obstructing the terrorist designation of what is now the most lethal terrorist organization in the world on behalf of Clinton Foundation donors and close Clinton family confidantes — is crazy conspiracy talk.
But they also said that about Hillary’s role in the fast-tracking approval of Russia’s acquisition of a large chunk of America’s uranium supply — while the Clinton Foundation was taking money from those profiting from the deal.
Hillary Clinton’s obstruction of the Boko Haram terror designation in the face of FBI, CIA, DOJ, and Congressional urging to do so is a documented fact. But the reason for Hillary’s obstruction, which the establishment media has never pressed Clinton for, remains unanswered.
Don’t expect any of the talking heads on tonight’s coverage of Hillary’s DNC convention acceptance speech to press the matter, either.
‘Clinton Cash’ Global Premiere Scores 170,000 Views in 3 Hours – Bernie Sanders Supporters Promote, Breitbart, Jerome Hudson, July 24, 2016
(The full video is also available at Warsclerotic. The Breitbart article includes lots of social media posts, some of which are not about Clinton Cash. However, I have deleted most of the advertisements.– DM)
In just three hours, more than 170,000 viewers tuned in to watch the global premiere of Clinton Cash, the motion picture adaptation of the New York Times best-selling book Clinton Cash, authored by Government Accountability Institute President and Breitbart Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer.
The film, directed by M.A. Taylor and produced by Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon, was promoted — and praised — by both sides of the political stratum. Veterans for Bernie Sanders, a group with over 50,000 likes, took to its Facebook page to encouraged its followers to watch and share the film.
Reaction to the Clinton Cash movie poured in swiftly. Viewers from multiple social media platforms praised the film and urged their followers to watch it.
Many Facebook users expressed a mixture of fury and disbelief at the facts laid out in the 105-minute film.
Here’s what committed Sanders supporters had to say:
“Clinton Cash feature documentary” was trending on Facebook at the time of publication as reaction to the film continued to accelerate on the platform on Saturday.
One commenter said Clinton Cash “shows the cesspool of corruption that the Clinton Foundation is.”
Another commenter fumed, “Dear God. I thought I was done being shocked by the Clinton darkness. Thank you. Keep speaking out. Please.”
After its global premiere, reaction to Clinton Cash had skyrocketed on Twitter.
Gotta say #DNCLeaks are nothing compared with the#ClintonCash movie, now published in full on @YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LYRUOd_QoM … #DNCLeak
140 characters is not enough to describe the emotions I felt watching this movie. It’s going to haunt me for a long time#ClintonCash
Clinton Cash movie on youtube lays out theft by Clintons, who we trusted to act for America. Now we need to make it right. Put em away.#MAGA
#clintoncash movie,if 10% is true,is utterly shocking and heartbreaking our leaders could be so morally bankrupt #DNCleak#berniemustdisavow
State Department Objects to Jewish Homes in Jerusalem, PJ Media, P. David Hornik, July 8, 2016
Israel has announced that it will be building 800 new housing units. Of these, 560 will be in Maale Adumim, a town of 40,000 located four miles east of Jerusalem, and 240 will be in three Jerusalem neighborhoods.
State Department spokesman John Kirby reacted with unusually strong language:
If it’s true, this … would be the latest step in what seems to be the systematic process of land seizures, settlement expansions, and legalization of outposts that is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution. We oppose steps like these which we believe are counterproductive.
Kirby added that Washington was “deeply concerned”:
This action risks entrenching a one-state reality and raises serious questions about Israel’s intentions.
It should be added that Maale Adumim and the three “East Jerusalem” (actually eastern, northern, and southern Jerusalem) neighborhoods are located on land that was illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, and that Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War after Jordan attacked Israel.
It should not, though, have to be added.
The notion that Israel, by building homes in such places, jeopardizes chances of resolving the Palestinian issue is fundamentally flawed, and the State Department — if it were not wedded to that notion — would be able to find out why by doing a little fact-checking.
As Evelyn Gordon illuminates, since Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister in 2009 (he has been reelected twice), Israel has not been engaging in a “systematic process of land seizures” or anything of the kind. Actually, construction in “settlements” — a term now used even for Jerusalem neighborhoods — has slowed to a crawl:
As data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics unambiguously shows, since taking office … Netanyahu has built far fewer units in the settlements than any of his predecessors. True, he periodically announces grandiose building plans, as he did this week. But most are quietly frozen again immediately afterward; very few ever get built.
Gordon also reports on an investigation by Shaul Arieli — a leftist Israel who opposes Israeli construction in land previously occupied by Jordan — that finds:
In 2015, as in the preceding five years, almost 90 percent [of population increase in the “settlements” was] a result of natural population growth.
In other words — scandalous as some may find it — Israelis living in these communities have babies.
Arieli wrote further:
Last year, as in all the preceding 40 years, 75 percent of the population growth occurred in settlement blocs.
Gordon notes:
In short, almost all the increase, from both births and migration, is happening in a handful of settlements near the Green Line that every peace plan ever proposed has agreed will remain Israeli. Thus it hasn’t affected the prospects of a two-state solution at all.
Such “settlements” emphatically include, of course, Maale Adumim and the three Jerusalem neighborhoods in question.
So much for the facts. But beyond that level, Kirby’s castigation of Israel harbors “smelly little orthodoxies,” as George Orwell once called them, that are worth unpacking and exposing.
One of these is that the “two-state solution” is desirable.
In the imploding Middle East, amid severe violence and the disintegration of states like Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya, would it be wise to create another Arab state? One rubbing up against Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and constricting Israel to a nine-mile width in its most populated region? Would it be in America’s interest?
That assumption is disputable, to say the least. It also implies that there is no other possible solution to the Palestinian issue, when in actuality other possible, eventual solutions are proposed and discussed all the time.
The solutions include, for instance, a one-state solution in which West Bank Palestinians would be offered full Israeli citizenship; or an arrangement with Jordan that would offer them full Jordanian citizenship.
Also implicit, even more problematically, in Kirby’s words is the notion that no further construction for Jews of any kind should occur in any of the land that Israel won in 1967.
If even construction in Maale Adumim and “East Jerusalem” neighborhoods “raises serious questions about Israel’s intentions” and warrants a sharp rebuke from Washington, then the inference is that the land is solely Palestinian. That Israel’s only role is to hold it, keeping Jews out of it, until the Palestinians deign to receive it and set up their state in it.
That notion is, of course, morally problematic on several grounds. It erases Jews’ profound historical and religious attachment to the land. It sentences existing Jewish communities in the proscribed places to slow strangulation. It permanently confines Israel to the tiny 1949-1967 domain that is too small for its rapidly growing population. And it ignores the fact that without at least parts of the West Bank, Israel is militarily indefensible.
Israel and the United States are allies. How long will the robotic State Department denunciations continue?
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