This Keeps Getting Uglier

The Hill is not known to be a conservative news outlet, but lately their investigative reporting has certainly not been slanted left.

Yesterday The Hill reported that California lawyer Lisa Bloom, a well-known women’s rights lawyer, was paying women to accuse President Trump of sexual impropriety. First of all, I would like to mention to all the Trump-haters breathlessly awaiting his impeachment or resignation that a President cannot be impeached for things he did before he took office. I would also like to point out that the voters understood that Trump was not a saint. They also understood that the was not part of the corruption of the last administration.

The article reports:

California lawyer Lisa Bloom’s efforts included offering to sell alleged victims’ stories to TV outlets in return for a commission for herself, arranging a donor to pay off one Trump accuser’s mortgage and attempting to secure a six-figure payment for another woman who ultimately declined to come forward after being offered as much as $750,000, the clients told The Hill.

The women’s accounts were chronicled in contemporaneous contractual documents, emails and text messages reviewed by The Hill, including an exchange of texts between one woman and Bloom that suggested political action committees supporting Hillary Clinton were contacted during the effort.

The story concludes:

“If you are interested I would recommend Inside Edition or Dr. Phil as they are much bigger. Dr. Phil is doing a show on Trump accusers next Tuesday in LA and would fly you here and put you up in a nice hotel, and pay for your meals as well, with your daughter if you like,” Bloom’s text added. “Media moves very quickly so you need to decide and then once confirmed, you need to stick to it.”

Representatives of “Inside Edition” and “Dr. Phil” said they did not pay any Trump accusers for appearances last year.

Bloom’s firm sent the woman a “media-related services” contract to represent her for “speaking out against Donald Trump” that laid out business terms for selling a story in the most direct terms.

“You will compensate the Firm thirty-three percent (33%) of the total fee that you collect, whether the media deal or licensing fees is for print, Internet, radio, television, film or any other medium,” Bloom’s proposed contract, dated Oct. 10, 2016, read. The woman said she signed the contract.

When Bloom found out in early November that the woman and the friend had discussions with CBS News about doing an interview on their own, the lawyer texted back: “CBS does not pay for stories.”

A little later Bloom sent another text suggesting the arrangements she was making could be impacted by the unauthorized media contacts. “You and your friends should not be shopping the story it will come back to bite you,” Bloom texted. “And this whole thing we have worked so hard to make happen will go away.”

Yuck. Just yuck.

The Key To Understanding Recent Sexual Scandals And How They Have Been Handled

It seems like almost every public person in American life has now been accused of sexual harassment, inappropriate behavior or some other horrible crime. I don’t mean to make light of these accusations, but there is a wide range of things that can be considered inappropriate behavior. Telling someone they look nice can be misconstrued. Also, I am aware of a case where two people who worked for the same company lived together for a number of years and had children together. The relationship ended, and the women sued the man for sexual harassment. That seems like a stretch to me. However, the obvious problem in this discussion is the discrepancy in the way in which these charges are reported and handled.

The Washington Examiner posted an article today that explains it all in one sentence:

Maxine Waters to women: John Conyers ‘has impeccable integrity on our issues’

Note that she did not say that he had impeccable integrity–she said he had impeccable integrity on our issues! That is the key. It doesn’t matter how badly Democratic lawmakers behave on their own time as long as they are consistent on ‘our issues.’ Think Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Chris Dodd, etc. That is the key to understanding how the media is treating the various stories involving sexual scandals of public figures.

The article further quotes Ms. Waters:

“He is quiet, he is confident, he is powerful, but he has impeccable integrity on all of our issues. Give John Conyers a big round of applause.” C-SPAN captured her comments and those of others who spoke at the event.

In her address she rallied women. “We are reclaiming our time,” said the outspoken Trump critic.

“We’re speaking to women who are single mothers, women who work two and three jobs making minimum wage or less, women who have been exploited, harassed, or taken advantage of in their personal and professional lives,” said Waters, adding:

“I just want to take time to focus on something that I think we need to focus on right now. It is very fortuitous that we are gathered here this afternoon in Detroit as we continue to recognize a record number of women who are boldly coming forward to reveal disturbing and grotesque acts of sexual harassment, assault and rape, often times at the hands of men who believed they were too rich and too powerful to ever be confronted or held accountable.”

It must hurt your head to engage in the kind of reasoning it takes to justify the behavior of some of these men.

An Investigation Of These Russian Ties Is Needed

The Hill posted a very disturbing article today about a deal with Russia that was made during the Obama Administration. Evidently the Department of Justice slow walked an investigation that had been done by the FBI and did not brief Congress on the investigation in a timely manner.

The article reports:

Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.

They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.

The racketeering scheme was conducted “with the consent of higher level officials” in Russia who “shared the proceeds” from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.

Rather than bring immediate charges in 2010, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued investigating the matter for nearly four more years, essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefiting Putin’s commercial nuclear ambitions.

The first decision occurred in October 2010, when the State Department and government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, giving Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America’s uranium supply.

It pays to donate to the Clinton Foundation. Or at least it did.

It gets worse:

The Obama administration and the Clintons defended their actions at the time, insisting there was no evidence that any Russians or donors engaged in wrongdoing and there was no national security reason for any member of the committee to oppose the Uranium One deal.

But FBI, Energy Department and court documents reviewed by The Hill show the FBI in fact had gathered substantial evidence well before the committee’s decision that Vadim Mikerin — the main Russian overseeing Putin’s nuclear expansion inside the United States — was engaged in wrongdoing starting in 2009.

Then-Attorney General Eric Holder was among the Obama administration officials joining Hillary Clinton on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States at the time the Uranium One deal was approved. Multiple current and former government officials told The Hill they did not know whether the FBI or DOJ ever alerted committee members to the criminal activity they uncovered.

This is the swamp that needs to be cleaned out. Anyone involved in this investigation and the fact that it was kept secret from Congress needs to be unemployed immediately. Please follow the link to the article and read the entire story and review the documents involved. This story is an example of government corruption and that corruption needs to have consequences for those involved.

The Hazards Of Lying

No one will ever accuse the Clinton Family of being entirely honest, but sometimes they just seem to go over the top. Hillary Clinton is currently making her ‘put the blame on everyone else’ book tour. In a CBS interview, Mrs. Clinton claims that she made the ‘deplorables’ remark in response to the leaking of the Hollywood access tape showing President Trump engaging in locker room talk. Well, she should have fact checked her lie before she lied.

Yesterday The Daily Caller reported some of her comments:

“I thought Trump was behaving in a deplorable manner. I thought a lot of his appeals to voters were deplorable. I thought his behavior, as we saw on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape was deplorable. And there were a large number of people who didn’t care. It did not matter to them,” Clinton said.

But there’s a gaping hole in that defense: Clinton attacked Trump’s “deplorable” supporters on September 9 — almost a full month before the Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” tape on October 7.

In other words, Trump’s “behavior” on the “Access Hollywood” tape couldn’t have been the reason Clinton associated the word “deplorable” with Trump supporters.

She is commenting on what Donald Trump said. Has she ever commented on what her husband has done?

 

Is The Justice Department Honest?


Evidently under President Obama, the Justice Department was more interested in political issues than honesty. According to an article posted yesterday by John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has finally finally gotten a response from the Justice Department to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding documents related to the meeting in Phoenix between former President Clinton and Loretta Lynch.

The ACLJ website reports:

We have just obtained hundreds of pages in our ongoing investigation and federal lawsuit on former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton while the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI had an ongoing criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. The results are shocking.

First, the Comey FBI lied to us. Last July, we sent FOIA requests to both the Comey FBI and the Lynch DOJ asking for any documents related to the Clinton Lynch plane meeting. The FBI, under the then directorship of James Comey, replied that “No records responsive to your request were located.”

The documents we received today from the Department of Justice include several emails from the FBI to DOJ officials concerning the meeting.  One with the subject line “FLAG” was correspondence between FBI officials (Richard Quinn, FBI Media/Investigative Publicity, and Michael Kortan) and DOJ officials concerning “flag[ing] a story . . . about a casual, unscheduled meeting between former president Bill Clinton and the AG.” The DOJ official instructs the FBI to “let me know if you get any questions about this” and provides “[o]ur talkers [DOJ talking points] on this”. The talking points, however are redacted.

Another email to the FBI contains the subject line “security details coordinate between Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton?”

On July 1, 2016 – just days before our FOIA request – a DOJ email chain under the subject line, “FBI just called,” indicates that the “FBI . . . is looking for guidance” in responding to media inquiries about news reports that the FBI had prevented the press from taking pictures of the Clinton Lynch meeting. The discussion then went off email to several phone calls (of which we are not able to obtain records). An hour later, Carolyn Pokomy of the Office of the Attorney General stated, “I will let Rybicki know.” Jim Rybicki was the Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor to FBI Director Jim Comey. The information that was to be provided to Rybicki is redacted.

Also of note several of the documents contain redactions that are requested “per FBI.”

It is time to ask Robert Mueller to investigate the actions of his friend James Comey when James Comey was the FBI Director. Please follow the link above to read the entire post at the ACLJ, it is disturbing that the media and the government worked together to squelch information that might have had a negative impact on the Hillary Clinton campaign for president.

 

The Web That Keeps On Growing

Yesterday Ari Lieberman posted an article at Front Page Magazine about the latest developments in the case of Hillary Clinton’s emails. It is becoming very obvious that there were many reasons why Mrs. Clinton preferred to keep these emails from seeing the light of day.

The article reports:

But perhaps most damning for Clinton was her email scandal which dogged her campaign like a bad rash that wouldn’t go away. Clinton believed that her troubles were behind her when Comey announced in July 2016 that “no charges are appropriate in this case.” But her hopes were soon dashed when her emails once again popped up, this time on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Clinton’s emails now had the stench of Anthony Weiner all over them. She was furious but there was nothing she could do. This was a problem of her own making. 

The emails were transferred by Clinton aide and confidant, Huma Abedin to her husband’s laptop. They were inadvertently uncovered by FBI agents during their probe of Weiner for sending sexually explicit emails to a minor. The timing of the revelation could not have been worse for Clinton – just 11 days prior to the election.  

If you thought that Clinton’s loss in the general elections put her email scandal to rest, you thought wrong. Clinton’s emails continue to ricochet like exploding shrapnel, tarnishing the Democratic Party and hampering its objectives.

The two latest peripheral victims of the email scandal are Loretta Lynch and current acting FBI director, Andrew McCabe.  In open testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Comey testified that Loretta Lynch asked him to refer to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server as a ‘matter’, echoing the term used by the Clinton presidential campaign. In private testimony, Comey admitted confronting Loretta Lynch with a document implicating Loretta Lynch in a plan to derail the FBI investigation. There is also the matter of the meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton on the tarmac at Phoenix Airport. It doesn’t take a giant leap of faith to assume that Loretta Lynch had been assured of a place in the Clinton Administration if she could tamp down the investigation into Hillary Clinton and her emails.

Andrew McCabe has also been caught up in this web.

The article explains his connection to the scandal:

McCabe has revealed himself to be a deeply problematic figure who is currently the subject of at least three separate investigations which include massive conflicts of interest and possible violations of the Hatch act.

One of those investigations centers on his deep involvement in the Clinton email probe. According to the Wall Street Journal, McCabe “was part of the executive leadership team overseeing the Clinton email investigation.” While McCabe was ostensibly investigating Clinton, his wife Jill was accepting $500,000 for her state senate campaign from long-time Clinton ally, Terry McAuliffe. McCabe failed to disclose this critical piece of information. Insiders believe that it is likely that McCabe will be relieved of his duties in the not too distant future. 

The swamp in Washington has become so deep and so entangled that if you pull out something by the roots, you will find other things attached to those roots. The connections and cronyism run deep. Hopefully the Trump Administration can at least begin to undo some of the mess that is there.

Term Limits Might Help In Draining The Swamp

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the McCain Institute for International Leadership. Before I go any further, I need to say that I respect John McCain as a war hero–not because he was shot down, but because he chose to stay with his men when he had the opportunity to leave North Vietnam. However, some of his actions in the last twenty years or so are questionable at best. He has consistently aligned himself with those who oppose conservative values, and has made some really poor choices in recent years. The Daily Caller may have uncovered the reason for some of his recent behavior.

The article reports:

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain in 2012 turned over nearly $9 million in unspent funds from his failed 2008 presidential campaign to a new foundation bearing his name, the McCain Institute for International Leadership.

The institute is intended to serve as a “legacy” for McCain and “is dedicated to advancing human rights, dignity, democracy and freedom.” It is a tax-exempt non-profit foundation with assets valued at $8.1 million and associated with Arizona State University.

…Critics worry that the institute’s donors and McCain’s personal leadership in the organization’s exclusive “Sedona Forum” bear an uncanny resemblance to the glitzy Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) that annually co-mingled special interests and powerful political players in alleged pay-to-play schemes.

The institute has accepted contributions of as much as $100,000 from billionaire liberal activist-funder George Soros and from Teneo, a for-profit company co-founded by Doug Band, former President Bill Clinton’s “bag man.” Teneo has long helped enrich Clinton through lucrative speaking and business deals.

And Bloomberg reported in 2016 on a $1 million Saudi Arabian donation to the institute, a contribution the McCain group has refused to explain publicly.

The article goes on to remind us of some of the history of John McCain:

McCain and Soros reportedly became friends after the senator was exposed as a member of the “Keating Five” during the savings and loan (S&L) industry scandal during former President George H.W. Bush’s administration. As the S&L bank chairman, Charles Keating paid $1.3 million to bribe five members of Congress to interfere with government regulators on behalf of the savings bank.

The experience so scarred McCain that he became a vigorous advocate of campaign finance reform and in the process reportedly became friends with Soros.

McCain recently claimed no involvement with the institute, saying “I’m proud that the institute is named after me, but I have nothing to do with it.”

For whatever reason, many of the people the voters send to Washington to represent them forget why they are there. Many of our so-called representatives get entangled in the Washington political culture and forget the values they espoused during their campaign. Many of our representatives arrive in Washington as members of the middle class and leave thirty or forty years later as millionaires. That is simply not what our founding fathers intended. Representatives and Senators were supposed to serve one or two terms and go back and live under the laws they passed. Congress will never support term limits, but the voters should begin to vote out of office anyone who has been there too long and no longer represents the people who sent him there.

When Did Grandchildren Become A National Security Issue?

The Gateway Pundit is reporting today that the NSA now says it will not release details of the meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch due to the “national security” risk. I’m confused–I thought they talked about golf and grandchildren. Also, if this was a social meeting, why does the NSA have details about it? Why are there tapes of this conversation?  Also note that the meeting was between a person in public office and a person not in public office. Why would any security issues be shared with someone who holds no public office?

The article quotes a website called Freedom Outpost:

A citizen researcher from Florida is attempting to have the recording of the infamous Bill Clinton/Loretta Lynch tarmac tape released to the public, but apparently, the National Security Agency claims they won’t release it due to “national security.”

The man researching and seeking to have the tape released is Florida orthodontist Larry Kawa.  You may remember him because of Judicial Watch’s filing of a lawsuit on his behalf to obtain a week’s worth of Hillary Clinton’s emails regarding Benghazi.

It’s being reported now that the NSA has declared the recording of the conversation that took place between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch in Phoenix, Arizona on June 27, 2016.

This is one of the comments from a person who read The Gateway Pundit story:

So, the grandkids are deep cover spies? Master code-crackers? Toddler assassins?

That makes about as much sense as any other explanation!

 

Is The Government Really Trying To Keep Us Safe?

Judicial Watch was founded in 1994 by Larry Klayman. They are a non-partisan group the essentially files Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in an attempt to foster transparency in government. They have been pretty much equally disliked by the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama Administrations. However, they have a pretty good track record of getting what they want.

They posted an article on their website on Tuesday about some recent security briefings given to Somalis.

The article reports:

Judicial Watch today released 31 pages of records from U.S. Customs and Border Protection revealing that the Department of Homeland Security has given Somalis “community engagement tours,” including security briefings, in secured areas at least three major U.S. airports – Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Columbus, Ohio.

The records came in response to a May 2016 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which sought records, documents and communications regarding a “Community Engagement Tour” in Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport on February 18, 2016.

The briefings provided to the Somali groups were so sensitive that in 14 instances the agency redacted portions of the records under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption (B)(7)(e), the law-enforcement “risk circumvention” exemption, which reads:

Exemption 7(E) of the Freedom of Information Act affords protection to all law enforcement information that would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law.

In another instance, Customs and Border Protection exempted under (B)(7)(e) a portion of a February 16, 2016, “Minute by Minute Agenda” provided during a tour/briefing of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP). The material that was withheld from Judicial Watch as too law-enforcement sensitive – but provided in full to the Somali group – included a section entitled: “TSA Overview — Processing [Redacted].”  The invitees were provided briefings of the Global Entry system, APC [Automated Passport Control] system, secondary screening procedures, baggage-screening procedures and given tours of the holding cells/interview rooms.

Notes from the February Minneapolis St. Paul Airport tour include: “Current CBP and TSA job vacancies were discussed. Attendees responded with requests for DHS outreach efforts during Somali community events to further advertise these positions to interested individuals.”

Minneapolis has historically had a problem with members of the Somali community going overseas to train as terrorists and then return home. I seriously question the wisdom of showing them our security measures at airports or recruiting them for the TSA.

The article concludes:

Eight senior ranking Homeland Security and Customs officials were tasked with accompanying and briefing the Somalis on the February 18, 2016, Minneapolis Airport tour, including the Minneapolis Area Port Director, the Assistant Port Director, the Watch Commander, a Homeland Security Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Senior Policy Advisor (flown in from Washington), the TSA Federal Security Director and TSA Deputy Federal Security Director.

The documents show Customs officials reporting that one of the invited individuals had given “CBP Chicago a hard time” following the last tour and noted three of the invitees had had investigations against them, which had since been closed.  Another invitee had an active investigation pending.

“Logically, information that is too sensitive to provide to Judicial Watch and the public should not have been given to a ‘community engagement tour,’” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “The U.S. government has been aware for years that Minnesota is a hotbed of Somali terrorist-cell activity. The behind-the-scenes tours and security briefings of the Minneapolis airport very well could have created a threat to public safety.”

In August 2016, the Judicial Watch blog, Corruption Chronicles, reported on the Muslim airport tour story: “The Obama administration gave Somali Muslims behind-the-scenes tours at a major U.S. airport after the group complained to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about feeling harassed and profiled, government records obtained by Judicial Watch reveal. The special security tours not offered to any other group occurred at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after Department of Homeland Security roundtable meetings with local Somali leaders to obtain feedback for ‘modifications to practices that would allow for operations to be more culturally sensitive.’”

I don’t think we need to be more culturally sensitive–I think we need to be more safe!

Deal With Karma Carefully

The Washington Examiner reminds us today of some not-so-recent history.

An article posted today takes us back to 1992:

…24 years ago, as former President George H.W. Bush was surging back against challenger Bill Clinton, a special prosecutor raised new charges against Bush in the Iran-Contra probe, prompting Clinton to claim he was running against a “culture of corruption.”

…When it came, Clinton seized on it, saying for example, “Secretary Weinberger‘s note clearly shows that President Bush has not been telling the truth when he says he was out of the loop.” Clinton added, “It demonstrates that President Bush knew and approved of President Reagan‘s secret deal to swap arms for hostages.”

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line has stated:

Shortly after the election, a federal judge threw out the new indictment because it violated the five-year statute of limitations and improperly broadened the original charges. President Bush then pardoned Weinberger.

What goes around comes around.

The thing to remember here is that the media loved Bill Clinton and made the most of the charges against Casper Weinberger. The media today is supporting Hillary Clinton and will play down the new information as much as possible.

 

The Naive Party vs. The Sleazy Party

The Washington Post has a story today about Donald Trumps insulting Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe. Just for kicks, I used the search engine at the Washington Post to see if they had ever posted a story about Juanita Broderick. I got one recent story that recounted a discussion between Donald Trump and Sean Hannity on the issue. In case you have forgotten, Juanita Broderick was a Clinton campaign worker who charged Bill Clinton with rape many years ago. There is corroborating evidence that the charges are true and that Hillary Clinton was involved in the efforts following the charges to make sure Ms. Broderick was discredited. So the Washington Post is more concerned about mean things Donald Trump said than Hillary Clinton’s veiled threats and attempts to ruin someone’s reputation. (And that’s not to mention what Bill Clinton did). Seems a little one-sided.

But the story about Miss Universe did not suddenly arise. The Clinton campaign has been planning this–it was a set-up.

The article at the Washington Post reports:

— Operatives in Brooklyn had been working with Machado since the summer. They had a video featuring her story ready to go. Cosmopolitan had a photo spread of her draped in an American flag – to go with a profile – in the can. Machado had also conducted an interview with The Guardian that was “apparently embargoed for post-debate release,” according to Vox. And the Clinton super PAC Priorities USA turned a digital ad to highlight the insults by early afternoon.

The Clinton press shop then set up a conference call for Machado to respond to what Trump said on “Fox and Friends.” Speaking with reporters, Machado recounted how Trump “always treated me like a lesser thing, like garbage” and that his new words are like “a bad dream.” She said in a mix of Spanish and halting English that she watched the debate with her mother and daughter and cried as Clinton recounted her story, Ed O’Keefe reports.

To be honest, I have very little respect for the Clintons to begin with. I don’t have a tremendous amount of respect for Donald Trump, but I do respect what he has accomplished in the world of business. At least he is not corrupt to the core. He has a lot of room for improvement in some of the things he has said, but I can honestly say that he will at least try to do what is best for the country–his fortune is at stake! The Clintons exploited the office of President the last time they occupied the White House–there is a GAO report on items taken or damaged when they left. Donald Trump does not need to loot the White House–he has accumulated enough on his own. This story disgusts me for two reasons–first of all, it shows that the Clinton campaign is willing to walk through any gutter to win–even old gutters, and second, it shows that the Trump campaign needs to be ready for all manner of dirty politics from the Clintons. That is not a happy place to be as an American voter.

Does This Bother Anyone?

Fox News is reporting today that emails obtained by Citizens United as part of its ongoing Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department show collusion between Hillary Clinton and the Democrats of the Senate Committee that was investigating Benghazi.

This is a screen shot of the emails (taken from the Fox News article):

emailsBenghaziHearingSo Senator Menendez was not interested in finding out what actually happened at Behghazi–he was interested in advancing Hillary’s political ambitions. I know there were people on that committee that cared about the truth, but they were blocked by committee members that were playing politics.

The article reports:

The emails were obtained by the group Citizens United as part of its ongoing Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department for emails from Chelsea Clinton and Hillary Clinton’s closest aides.  

“This email chain provides a rare behind the scenes look at which Benghazi-related issues the Clinton camp had concerns about going into Secretary Clinton’s January 2013 testimony on Capitol Hill, and what they had apparently plotted out beforehand with a Democrat committee member to deal with those concerns,” Citizens United said in a statement. “Citizens United will continue to release all new Benghazi emails we receive through our FOIA lawsuits as they come in — the American people have a right to know the full picture.”

Fox News asked the Clinton campaign as well as Menendez’s office if they coordinated before the 2013 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing; what was meant by the term “wired;” and how the email exchange was consistent with the principle of independent congressional oversight. There was no immediate response from either.

In 2013, the New Jersey senator — who is now facing federal public corruption charges — at the time of the hearing was about to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, replacing John Kerry who was in line to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Menendez has denied any wrongdoing.

Washington no longer represents the interests of Americans. It is time to clean house.

My, How Times Have Changed…

This is a clip from President Clinton‘s State of the Union address in 1995. No one called him a racist, an extremist or anything of that nature. It was understood that open borders posed a problem. The media applauded his speech. The media would have applauded anything he said. How does the media react when Donald Trump makes almost identical comments? That is something to think about.

 

No Wonder She Deleted Them

As more deleted emails drip out of Hillary Clinton’s email account, the information on them gets more interesting. It is becoming somewhat obvious why some of them were deleted. Judicial Watch has been busy making sure that the public gets a look at the deleted emails that are not marked classified (since Mrs. Clinton claims there were no classified emails on her server, there should be a lot of emails to look at).

Yesterday Counter Jihad posted a story about an interesting coincidence revealed in one of the emails that was deleted, recovered, and recently released.

The story reports:

Yesterday Judicial Watch released emails showing that a Crown Prince of Bahrain was able to secure a meeting with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton through the Clinton Foundationafter being rejected by official State Department channels.  Today, the International Business Times follows up on that report by revealing that the timing of this meeting lined up with a sudden, and large, increase in arms sales to Bahrain.  Furthermore, this increase came in spite of Bahrain being engaged in massive human rights abuses and suppression of peaceful civilian protests.  Finally, Hillary Clinton’s lawyers destroyed the emails documenting this meeting without turning them over to the State Department.  These were among the emails destroyed as allegedly “personal.”

Now, Bahrain is an important regional ally of the United States.  The US 5th Fleet, also called NAVCENT as it is the fleet permanently assigned to US Central Command, is based out of Bahrain’s harbors.  Bahrain would thus ordinarily enjoy some US military arms sales, as well as occasional access to high level State Department officials.  However, in this case the State Department had already turned down the request for a meeting when it came through official channels.  So, Crown Prince Salman contacted the Clinton Foundation to ask them to get him a meeting anyway.

And they did.

I really wouldn’t consider this email personal, but I guess Hillary did. The article goes on to explain that after the discussion of a meeting, the United States dramatically increased the amount of weaponry sold to Behrain (at a time when the government of Bahrain was moving against pro-democracy protests).

The article includes the following statement:

During those Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 — when Bahrain was accused of using tear gas on its own people — the Clinton-led State Department approved more than $70,000 worth of arms sales classified as “toxicological agents.”

The arms deal also included armored vehicles, missiles and ammunition. The sale of these items to Bahrain faced opposition in Congress, but the sale was approved.

The article concludes:

But the Crown Prince wanted his meeting, and he wanted his arms, and he got both because he was a good friend of the Clinton Foundation.

Not that the public would have known this, but for the FBI investigation.  Clinton’s lawyers deleted these emails without turning them over to the State Department, though it turns out that they are clearly public records that explain just how a momentous decision was made on a major arms deal.

In spite of that, the FBI recommended no prosecution.

I guess pay-for-play is not illegal in Washington. Now we know how the Clintons went from dead broke when they left the White House (as Hillary Clinton has stated) to a net worth in 2015 of $32,015,000 (Breitbart.com). I suppose she and Bill should be congratulated on their entrepreneurial spirit.

Whoops!

The Hillary Clinton email story is getting old. It is getting old because the Clintons have handled it the way they usually handle scandals–stall, obfuscate, and claim a right-wing conspiracy until people get tired of hearing about it, and then refer to the scandal as old news. Well, there’s old news and there’s old news. One of the problems with the ‘old news’ in the email scandal is that new facts keep coming up–creating new news. There are two new stories that have come out recently that are relevant to the scandal.

The Washington Times is reporting today that the FBI has found nearly 15,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton did not turn over to the government after she left office.

The article reports:

Some of the new documents will contain information that is deemed private under open-records laws, but Judicial Watch, the group that forced Monday’s hearing, said many of the documents will have information that should have been public all along.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the State Department must keep politics out of the process as it works on the messages, and said speed is important. He said the department has had the 14,900 messages for a month and hasn’t produced any of them yet.

“That’s simply not acceptable,” he said.

The 14,900 emails are on one computer disk. All told, the FBI turned over seven disks. It’s not entirely clear what documents are on the others.

The FBI said the 14,900 emails on disk one were either sent or received by Mrs. Clinton and are not duplicative of the approximately 30,000 emails she turned over and that the State Department already released, under a judge’s order.

Meanwhile, People Magazine posted an article on its website yesterday which includes the following quote from Colin Powell:

“Her people have been trying to pin it on me,” Powell, 79, told PEOPLE Saturday night at the Apollo in the Hamptons 2016 Night of Legends fête in East Hampton, New York.

“The truth is, she was using [the private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did,” Powell added.

The article in People Magazine also reminds us:

The reported conversation was first brought to light in journalist Joe Conason‘s upcoming Bill Clinton biography, Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton, in which the writer details a dinner party held by Clinton and attended by Powell, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger and Condoleeza Rice.

“Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Albright asked all of the former secretaries to offer one salient bit of counsel to the nation’s next top diplomat,” Conason wrote. “Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer … [Powell] confirmed a decision she had made months earlier – to keep her personal account and use it for most messages.”

Powell’s office later released a statement to NBC News, saying he “has no recollection of the dinner conversation.” However, “He did write former Secretary Clinton an email memo describing his use of his personal AOL email account for unclassified messages and how it vastly improved communications within the State Department.”

(The italics are mine.)

No one has argued that the use of a personal email for personal, unclassified communications is a problem. The problem occurs when a private, unsecured server is set up outside of the State Department and used for classified communication. A private server simply does not have the security a server within the State Department would have. A private server is an invitation to hacking by any foreign service worth its salt. It is interesting that in his comments, Colin Powell made clear that he was not willing to take responsibility for Mrs. Clinton’s actions. She is going to have to find someone else to throw under the bus.

 

The Company You Keep

One of the names that has surfaced in the leak of Hillary Clinton’s emails (many of which were deleted from her computer because she said they were not work related, but have come to light through Judicial Watch) is Gilbert Chagoury. Breitbart posted a story about this man today. The mainstream media has been somewhat quiet about him. Yesterday, Fox News posted a story about some of the links between emails regarding the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s role as Secretary of State.

Fox News reports:

In one email exchange released by Judicial Watch, Doug Band, an executive at the Clinton Foundation, tried to put billionaire donor Gilbert Chagoury — a convicted money launderer — in touch with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon because of the donor’s interests there.

…Chagoury is a close friend of former President Bill Clinton and has appeared on the Clinton Foundation donor list as a $1 million to $5 million contributor. He’s also pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative. Chagoury was convicted in 2000 in Switzerland for money laundering. He cut a deal and agreed to repay $66 million to the Nigerian government.

Breitbart has a list of some of the questionable activities of Mr. Chagoury. The list includes:

In 1996, Gilbert Chagoury donated $460,000 to a controversial Miami-based Democratic voter-registration group called Vote Now 96. As a foreign citizen, Chagoury is barred from donating directly to elected officials or political parties. But his three contributions of $200,000, $10,000, and $250,000, made in September and October 1996, were completely legal because Vote Now 96 was a nonprofit organization.

Just two months after making his six-figure donations, Chagoury was among the 250 guests who attended the Clintons’ White House Christmas party.

…In 2000, Switzerland convicted Chagoury of money-laundering and “aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the [Sani] Abacha years” of military dictatorship, according to a PBS Frontline report.

And finally, the icing on the cake. Breitbart reports:

It is also worth noting that Chagoury’s company, the Chagoury Group, pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2009, the same year the Clinton Global Initiative awarded the Chagoury Group its annual prize for “sustainable development.” The money pledged was at the heart of Sen. David Vitter’s (R) probe into whether Chagoury’s cozy relationship with the Clintons played a roll in Clinton’s State Department’s delay of a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation on Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram; an FTO classification would have severely hampered Chagoury’s business endeavors in Nigeria.

We really do not need Hillary Clinton to bring this sort of corruption into the White House.

Anatomy Of A Scandal

Bloomberg.com posted a story yesterday about more private Clinton emails that we won’t get to see until after the election. However, some of the emails of Mrs. Clinton’s staff have made their way into the public eye, and they are very revealing.

Bloomberg reports:

Newly released e-mails from a top aide to Hillary Clinton show evidence of contacts between Clinton’s State Department and donors to her family foundation and political campaigns.

The e-mails released Tuesday by the conservative group Judicial Watch included a 2009 exchange in which Doug Band, a senior staff member at the Clinton Foundation, told a top Clinton aide at the State Department that it was “important to take care of” an individual, whose name was redacted.

Huma Abedin, the State Department aide, replied that “personnel has been sending him options.”

…In another 2009 exchange released Tuesday, Band asked Abedin and Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, to put Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury in touch with a State Department “substance person” on Lebanon. The Chagoury Group co-founder has given between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to a list of donors posted online.

…Judicial Watch said it has now found 171 messages that weren’t included in the 30,000 e-mails Clinton turned over to the State Department. FBI Director James Comey has said that his agency found “several thousand” work-related e-mails that weren’t turned over by Clinton’s lawyers. Clinton has told the State Department she believes she submitted all work-related e-mails she had in her possession, the department’s Trudeau said in a statement.

Under President Obama (and under President Clinton, if she is elected) there is one set of rules for the politically connected and another set of rules for the rest of us. This story should disturb all of us, regardless of our political inclinations. It is no wonder that the rest of Mrs. Clinton’s emails will not be released until after the election. At that point, “What difference does it make?”

 

The History Behind The Decision Not To Charge Hillary Clinton With Mishandling Classified Information

We are at a critical point in America–we have lost the concept of equal justice under the law. However, we did not get here overnight, and the characters involved are simply acting in ways they have acted in the past. It is time to clean house in Washington and see if we can replace the current elites with people who love America more than they love their own personal advancement.

World Net Daily posted an article yesterday that gives an amazing amount of insight into how Washington works and the characters involved in the latest Clinton scandal. I would strongly suggest that you follow the link and read the entire article, but I will try to summarize the article below.

The article reports:

In 2004, Comey (James Comey, FBI Director), then serving as a deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, apparently limited the scope of the criminal investigation of Sandy Berger, which left out former Clinton administration officials who may have coordinated with Berger in his removal and destruction of classified records from the National Archives. The documents were relevant to accusations that the Clinton administration was negligent in the build-up to the 9/11 terrorist attack.
…Curiously, Berger, Lynch and Cheryl Mills all worked as partners in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson, which prepared tax returns for the Clintons and did patent work for a software firm that played a role in the private email server Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state.

…After Attorney General John Aschroft recused himself in the Valerie Plame affair in 2004, Comey appointed as special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who ended up convicting “Scooter” Libby, a top aide to then Vice President Dick Cheney, of perjury and obstruction of justice. The charge was based on the accusations of Plame and her former ambassador husband, Joe Wilson – both partisan supporters of Bill and Hillary Clinton – that Libby outed her as a CIA agent.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s 2015 memoir strongly suggests Fitzgerald improperly manipulated testimony and withheld crucial evidence in obtaining a conviction against Libby in his 2007 trial.

…When Dukakis was defeated, Berger returned to Hogan & Hartson until he became foreign policy adviser for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992.

On March 28, WND reported Lynch was a litigation partner for eight years at Hogan & Hartson, from March 2002 through April 2010.

Mills also worked at Hogan & Hartson, for two years, starting in 1990, before she joined then President-elect Bill Clinton’s transition team, on her way to securing a position as White House deputy counsel in the Clinton administration.

According to documents Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign made public in 2008, Hogan & Hartson’s New York-based partner Howard Topaz was the tax lawyer who filed income tax returns for Bill and Hillary Clinton beginning in 2004.

In addition, Hogan & Hartson in Virginia filed a patent trademark request on May 19, 2004, for Denver-based MX Logic Inc., the computer software firm that developed the email encryption system used to manage Clinton’s private email server beginning in July 2013. A tech expert has observed that employees of MX Logic could have had access to all the emails that went through her account.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton nominated Lynch for the first of her two terms as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position she held until she joined Hogan & Hartson in March 2002 to become a partner in the firm’s Litigation Practice Group.

I’m sure you get the picture. Washington needs a major housecleaning. Our justice system is seriously compromised and needs to be cleaned up and staffed with people who believe in equal justice under the law. I suspect our Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves.

 

 

Sometimes The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

After the airport meeting between former President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, a lot of Americans have concluded that Hillary Clinton now has a ‘get out of jail free card.’ That may or may not have been the intention of the meeting, but at any rate, a wrench has been thrown into the works.

The Hill is reporting today that WikiLeaks has published more than 1,000 emails from Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State. These emails relate to the war in Iraq.

The Hill reports:

The website tweeted a link to 1,258 emails that Clinton, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee sent and received. They stem from a trove of emails released by State Department in February.

WikiLeaks combed through the emails to find all the messages that reference the Iraq War.

The development comes after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said last month the website had gathered “enough evidence” for the FBI to indict Clinton.

“We could proceed to an indictment, but if Loretta Lynch is the head of the [Department of Justice] in the United States, she’s not going to indict Hillary Clinton,” Assange told London-based ITV. “That’s not possible that could happen.”

First of all, the article does not make this clear, but according to another source, these emails were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request–the server was not hacked to obtain them. The server may have been hacked, but we don’t know that for sure. Second of all, the emails I would be looking at if I were going to build a criminal case would be the emails regarding the Clinton Foundation. There were many foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. These are the emails the government says they will not release until two and a half years. Much of the money was funneled through a charity in Canada so that the money would not be directly traceable. Recently, Charles Krauthammer explained this on Bill O’Reilly’s show:

1. You create a separate foreign “charity.” In this case, the Clintons set it up in Canada.

2. Foreign oligarchs and governments, then donate to this Canadian charity. In this case, over 1,000 did – contributing mega millions. I’m sure they did this out of the goodness of their hearts, and expected nothing in return. (Imagine Putin’s buddies waking up one morning and just deciding to send untold millions to a Canadian charity)

3. The Canadian charity then bundles these separate donations and makes a massive donation to the Clinton Foundation.

4. The Clinton Foundation and the cooperating Canadian charity claim Canadian law prohibits the identification of individual donors.

5. The Clinton Foundation then “spends” some of this money for legitimate good works programs. Unfortunately, experts believe this is on the order of 10%. Much of the balance goes to enrich the Clintons , pay salaries to untold numbers of hangers on, and fund lavish travel, etc. Again, virtually tax free, which means you and I are subsidizing it.

6. The Clinton Foundation, with access to the world’s best accountants, somehow fails to report much of this on their tax filings. They discover these “clerical errors” and begin the process of re-filing 5 years of tax returns.

7. Net result – foreign money goes into the Clinton’s pockets tax free and untraceable back to the original donor. This is the textbook definition of money laundering. Oh, by the way, the Canadian “charity” includes as a principal one Frank Giustra. Google him. He is the guy who was central to the formation of Uranium One, the Canadian company that somehow acquired massive U.S. Uranium interests and then sold them to an organization controlled by Russia . This transaction required U.S. State Department approval, and guess who was Secretary of State when the
approval was granted.

Get out the popcorn, the show has begun.

Move Along, Nothing To See Here

Hot Air posted an article today about the airplane meeting of former President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The article reports:

Reporter Christopher Sign of ABC 15 in Phoenix, AZ appeared on The O’Reilly Factor Thursday night to talk about his scoop involving that secret meeting between former President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Watch the entire interview below. Sign lays out how the story developed and then he leaves this little nugget:

“The former president steps into her plane. They then speak for 30 minutes privately. The FBI there on the tarmac instructing everybody around ‘no photos, no pictures, no cell phones.’”

Seems as if they might have been trying to keep this meeting under the radar.

The article further reports:

Finally, let’s stop focusing on the fact that this meeting was inappropriate because Clinton’s wife is under investigation by Lynch’s Justice Department. I mean, that’s bad, but it’s actually letting Lynch and Clinton off the hook a bit. By focusing on the appearance of conflict because Hillary Clinton is being investigated, we are willfully overlooking the very real conflict in the fact that Clinton himself is under investigation, as the Grand Poo-bah at the Clinton Foundation. (Fox News)

The day after the meeting the Justice Department announced that it was going to delay the release of correspondence between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s four top aides and officials with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a closely allied public relations firm that Bill Clinton helped launch. The delay is 27 months–well into a Hillary Clinton presidency if she is elected.

Nothing to see here, move along.

How This Presidential Campaign Will Be Unique

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal posted a commentary on the role that President Obama is not playing in the current presidential campaign. The commentary is titled, “How Obama Gets Away With It.” The commentary notes that normally in a presidential campaign, the record of the sitting President is part of the campaign. In 2016 that does not seem to be the case.

The commentary observes:

Yet at the same time we were seeing those nice photos, videos and articles, a lot of other important stuff was going on where Mr. Obama was hardly mentioned, seen or questioned. For example, the U.S. economy grew at a meager 0.5% in the first quarter of 2016; Russian military planes lately have been buzzing U.S. Navy ships; and China is building its military forces and expanding their reach in the South China Sea. Early in May, a Navy SEAL was killed in Iraq (the president has assured the American public that U.S. troops there, increasing in numbers, are not in combat roles). Islamic State terrorist attacks in Baghdad in recent weeks have killed scores of civilians. The Taliban are on the march in Afghanistan. The vicious war in Syria continues. The Middle East refugee crisis shows no sign of diminishing. Military provocations by Iran and North Korea keep coming.

President Obama’s media handlers try to keep the president as far away from these crises as possible, leaving others in his administration such as Press Secretary Josh Earnest, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Joseph Dunford to be their public face. That way the problems don’t appear to be Mr. Obama’s problem, and he is free to bask in the good news.

The mainstream media has worked very hard to avoid painting the true picture of the negative impact of President Obama’s foreign policy and his domestic policies. Most Americans may not even realize there is a problem until it directly impacts them.

The article concludes:

One of the news media’s main jobs is to hold public officials accountable, from the president on down. But Mr. Obama is the beneficiary of news-media managers and reporters who mostly like his style and agree with his policies, from his reluctance to make strong military commitments to his advocacy for LGBT rights, fighting climate change and supporting tougher gun-control laws. Case in point: The administration’s easy orchestration of the media story line about the Iranian nuclear deal, recently revealed by Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, only scratches the surface of the White House’s skill at managing a media happy to be managed.

Given such a congruence of opinion, Mr. Obama’s policies don’t receive the scrutiny and analysis they should. Reporters who criticize or dig too deep are cast by the administration as spoilsports or, worse, cut off from sources.

With Donald Trump now the media obsession—and most in the media don’t like him—it is easy to see why Mr. Obama’s performance over the past seven-plus years is still not a major issue in the 2016 campaign. And that’s the way he likes it.

As the presidential campaign progresses, expect to see a focus on any mistakes Donald Trump has made since the age of three. Expect to see the misdeeds and lies of the Clinton’s swept under the rug as if they did not exist. As more information is discovered about the rather twisted finances of the Clinton Foundation, expect to find that information only in alternative media sources. Unfortunately, that is where we are at the present moment.

 

The Numbers Tell The Story

According to Wikipedia:

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552, is a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. The Act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure procedures and grants nine exemptions to the statute.[1][2] This amendment was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, despite his misgivings,[3][4] on July 4, 1966, and went into effect the following year.[5]

The Freedom of Information Act works well as long as the people in power respect it. Sometimes getting information is a bit of a challenge.

Hot Air posted the following today:

Speaking of Hillary and her top aides, one guess which agency within the Obama administration had the very worst record when it came to responding to FOIA requests. If you guessed the State Department under Hillary Clinton, you are correct. A report published in January by the State Department Inspector General found that out of 240 FOIA requests for information connected to Secretary Clinton, 177 were still outstanding more than a year after she left office. Here’s a chart from the report showing that:

State FOIA responseIf Clinton wins the 2016 election, the Obama administration will look like the most transparent administration in history by comparison.

The article reports that the Obama Administration has broken the record for not being able to find documents requested in FOIA requests. Miraculously, when a court order is involved, the documents mysteriously appear. As I said in the beginning of this article, when people on both sides of the request respect FOIA requests, the system works. If an administration or member of an administration thinks they are above the law, FOIA requests do not always get honored.

This Could Present A Problem In The Democratic Party Primary Elections

The Washington Examiner is reporting today that last fall the Clinton Foundation received a subpoena for documents related to projects that required State Department approval as well as records related to Huma Abedin, a top aide of Secretary Clinton and currently vice chairman of Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The article reports:

The State Department inspector general probe is entirely separate from an FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private server to shield her official communications.

An inspector general cannot charge anyone with a crime.

But the independent government watchdogs can make referrals to the Justice Department and recommendations to the agencies they oversee.

A referral from the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence community sparked the FBI probe of Clinton’s server use, for example.

The Post (The Washington Post) report noted the “full scope” of the inspector general inquiry into the Clinton Foundation and Abedin’s role there was “unclear.”

As I reported here in December:

Bill and Hillary Clinton have amassed a tremendous amount of money since leaving the White House. A lot of that money has been channeled through the Clinton Foundation, which the Charity Navigator refused to rate because its “atypical business model . . . doesn’t meet our criteria.” The Federalist posted an article in April pointing out that the Clinton Foundation actually spends approximately 10 percent of its donations on charity.

It is somewhat amazing how many of our career politicians whose jobs pay $100,000 a year (more or less) seem to become millionaires. That is something that needs to change. While the New Hampshire primary election proves that you cannot buy elections (Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush spent the most money in the New Hampshire primary.), it seems that once you get elected, you can pretty much buy anything you want to. The voters are the only people who can change the current system. As a voter, you have two choices–vote for someone who is outside ‘the system’ and does not seem to want to play inside ‘the system’ or vote for someone who is already rich and really does not need to make any  money by using his political office as a personal fund raiser.

It will be interesting to see if this new inquiry into the financial dealings of the Clintons has any impact on the primary. Polls in New Hampshire already indicated that voters did not see Secretary Clinton as honest–91% to 5%. How much worse can it get?

More Questions Than Answers

The Wall Street Journal posted an editorial this morning about Hillary Clinton’s charges that Donald Trump is sexist. Excuse me for being cynical, but I suspect that if you questioned or listened to most men long enough, you could eventually find something to refer to as sexist. I wouldn’t use the word sexist to describe Donald Trump. I would be more inclined to use the words rude, crude, and blunt, and frankly, based on the persona he shows to the media, he is not someone I would be interested in hanging around with. However, that in itself does not disqualify him as a presidential candidate.

The Wall Street Journal points out that Hillary needs to be careful when charging people with sexism and conducting a ‘war on women.’ Her closet does not lack skeletons in this area due to the escapades of her husband, Bill.

The Wall Street Journal editorial reminds us:

Yet no one in American politics better personifies a war on women than Mrs. Clinton’s husband. For readers too young to recall the 1990s, we aren’t merely referring to Trumpian gibes about female looks or “Mad Men” condescension. Mr. Clinton was a genuine sexual harasser in the classic definition of exploiting his power as a workplace superior, and the Clinton entourage worked hard to smear and discredit his many women accusers.

Start with “bimbo eruptions,” the phrase that Mr. Clinton’s Arkansas fixer Betsey Wright used to describe the women who had affairs with Bill. Gennifer Flowers almost derailed his primary campaign in 1992, until Hillary stood by her man on CBS ’s “60 Minutes” and the media portrayed Ms. Flowers as a golddigger.

The article also quotes James Carville‘s statement about Paula Jones, “If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.” Hardly an affirming statement. There were also the charges that Monica Lewinski was a stalker.

There have been various reports on the internet about Hillary Clinton being fired from the Watergate investigation for unethical behavior. When I checked out these stories, I found contradictory information. However, World Net Daily posted a story in 2008 that seems to verify that there were some problems with Mrs. Clinton’s conduct during the investigation. I have no idea if the story is true, but it is telling that Mrs. Clinton’s actions often seem right on the edge of honesty and ethics.