Tag Archives: Inspector General

Curiouser And Curiouser

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On Thursday, The Epoch Times posted an article about the person who attempted to assassinate President Trump. We have a whole lot more questions about that attempt than we do answers.

The article reports:

The man who fired shots at former President Donald Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania had encrypted accounts in multiple countries, according to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives task force investigating the attempted assassination.

“We haven’t learned much about those overseas accounts,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) said at a press conference in Chicago on Aug. 21. “We do know they were in … Belgium, New Zealand, and Germany.”

Waltz is on the “Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump.”

…“Why does a 19-year-old kid who is a health care aide need encrypted platforms, not even based in the United States, but based abroad, where most terrorist organizations know it is harder for our law enforcement to get into?” Waltz said.

He said that the question had not yet been answered.

The article concludes:

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. told Congress in July that discipline may follow once the agency finishes its internal probe into the situation.

“That roof should have had better coverage, and we will get to the bottom of if there were any policy violations,” he said at one point.

Rowe added later that he would not provide real-time updates on disciplinary measures but would “at a high level provide at least some type of statement that people are being held accountable.”

Kimberly Cheatle, who was the Secret Service’s director before stepping down after Trump was nearly assassinated, said on July 22 that the Secret Service’s initial report about rally security would be ready in 60 days.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is also conducting an investigation.

I don’t care if there were any policy violations–a President was almost killed while supposedly under Secret Service protections. Heads need to roll.

The Possible Consequences Of This Are Heartbreaking

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On August 19th, The Office of Inspector General U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a report about America’s inability to keep track of unaccompanied children who cross our southern border.

The report states:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could not monitor the location and status of all unaccompanied migrant children (UCs) or initiate removal proceedings as needed. During our ongoing audit to assess ICE’s ability to monitor the location and status of UCs who were released or transferred from the custody of the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), we learned ICE transferred more than 448,000 UCs to HHS from fiscal years 2019 to 2023. However, ICE was not able to account for the location of all UCs who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court. ICE reported more than 32,000 UCs failed to appear for their immigration court hearings from FYs 2019 to 2023.

Additionally, even though HHS is responsible for the care and custody of UCs, ICE did not always inform HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) when UCs failed to appear in immigration court after release from HHS’ custody. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers at only one of the eight field offices we visited stated they attempted to locate the UCs. ICE also did not serve a Notice to Appear (NTA) on all UCs, after release from HHS custody, who warranted placement in removal proceedings under 8 U.S. Code Section 1229(a). As of May 2024, ICE had not served NTAs on more than 291,000 UCs who therefore do not yet have an immigration court date.

These issues occurred, in part, because ICE does not have an automated process for sharing information internally between the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) and ERO, and externally with stakeholders, such as HHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ), regarding UCs who do not appear in immigration court. Additionally, ICE ERO has not developed a formal policy or process to follow up on UCs who did not appear in court, has limited oversight for monitoring UCs, and faced resource limitations.

This is one of many reasons we need to control immigration at our southern border.

Is Anyone Looking Out For National Security?

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On Saturday, The Gateway Pundit reported that according to a report issued by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), between 7 to 9 million visa holders in the United States have not undergone proper vetting procedures.

The article reports:

The report, “Management Alert: CBP Has Limited Information to Assess Interview-Waived Non-Immigrant Visa Holders,” details how the customary vetting process for foreign nationals seeking entry into the U.S. has been largely disregarded under the current administration.

Traditionally, applicants must complete an in-person interview at a U.S. consulate or embassy in their home country, undergo fingerprinting, and pass local background checks.

These measures are designed to identify potential criminals or terrorists before they set foot on American soil. However, it appears that these critical safeguards have been waived, leaving millions of individuals unvetted and potentially dangerous.

The Inspector General’s Report states:

“According to Dos, from calendar years 2020 through 2023, it granted nonimmigrant visas to approximately 7.1 million individuals without conducting in-person consular interviews. Dos also did not collect fingerprints for an unknown number of visas during the same period. In December 2023, Dos and OHS agreed to expand the categories of visas and applicants whose consular interviews could be waived beginning on January 1, 2024.

The fingerprint waiver program ended in December 2023. During our ongoing audit of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP} Screening of Visa Holders That Received Waivers from Department of State (24-011-AU D-CBP), we found that CBP Office of Field Operations (OFO) port directors at some U.S. ports of entry had not been aware of the interview and fingerprint waiver program.”

I would like to think that everyone who is currently coming to America (legally or illegally) wants a better life and wants to contribute to the well being of the country in the process of seeking that better life. However, recent events have convinced me that is not always the case. We need to vet all immigrants carefully and keep the number of immigrants at a level where the new Americans can be assimilated into the American culture. The Biden administration does not seem to be interested in doing this.

 

Is Anyone Paying Attention?

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Every day on Facebook I see people posting about how we are not taxing the ‘rich’ enough and billionaires should pay their fair share. No one has yet explained to me what business it is of mine how much anyone makes or is worth or how much tax they pay. What we should all be more concerned about is where our tax money is going and what we can do the help the government spend less of it.

On July 30, Judicial Watch posted the following:

Less than a year after Judicial Watch reported that the Taliban has established fake nonprofits to steal millions of dollars in U.S. aid to Afghanistan, a new investigation reveals that the terrorist group has also received hundreds of millions in development assistance from Uncle Sam because the State Department fails to properly vet award recipients. At least $239 million have likely filled the coffers of the extremists running the Islamic republic since the 2021 U.S. military withdraw, according to a report published this month by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). The money was disbursed by State Department divisions known as Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) to implement development projects intended to help achieve American foreign policy and national security goals in Afghanistan.

Investigators found that the State Department failed to comply with its own counterterrorism partner vetting requirements in Afghanistan before awarding at least 29 grants to various local entities. The agency has a system to identify whether prospective awardees have a record of ethical business practices and is supposed to conduct a risk assessment to determine if programming funds may benefit terrorists or terrorist-affiliates before distributing American taxpayer dollars. In the more than two dozen cases examined, the agency did not bother and failed to keep proper records. “Because DRL and INL could not demonstrate their compliance with State’s partner vetting requirements, there is an increased risk that terrorist and terrorist affiliated individuals and entities may have illegally benefited from State spending in Afghanistan,” the SIGAR report says. “As State continues to spend U.S. taxpayer funds on programs intended to benefit the Afghan people, it is critical that State knows who is actually benefitting from this assistance in order to prevent the aid from being diverted to the Taliban or other sanctioned parties, and to enable policymakers and other oversight authorities to better scrutinize the risks posed by State’s spending.”

The watchdog found issues with 29 awards distributed by DRL and INL. For instance, DRL failed to properly screen the recipients of seven awards totaling about $12 million, investigators found. INL did not provide any supporting documentation for 19 of its 22 awards totaling about $295 million so there is no way to determine if they complied with the vetting requirements. The State Department acknowledged that not all its bureaus have complied with document retention requirements, which makes it conveniently impossible to fully assess the magnitude of its transgressions. The explanation offered for INL not retaining records is “employee turnover and the dissolution of the Afghanistan-Pakistan office,” according to the report. SIGAR points out that, given the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, it is critical that U.S. government activities adhere to the laws, regulations, and policies intended to prevent certain transactions with terrorists.

Do you think we could lower the deficit by giving less money to terrorists?

 

The Fifth Column

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As we approach this week’s presidential debate, we need to remember something that happened in the 2020 presidential debate. That was the debate where candidate Biden stated that a letter signed by 51 ‘intelligence experts’ claiming Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation was proof that the laptop was not Hunter’s. Of course the moderators agreed with him. We now know that the laptop was Hunter Biden’s, that there is allegedly child pornography on the laptop, and that the laptop contains information about financial transactions within the Biden family that would be damning if the media bothered to report on them. Well, on Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about that letter and the authors of it.

The article reports:

Some of the 51 “Spies Who Lie” were active CIA contractors when they claimed files from first son Hunter Biden’s laptop had “the classic earmarks” of Russian disinformation ahead of the 2020 election — a fact that was uneasily noted inside the agency, records acquired by The Post show.

Former CIA acting director Michael Morell, who previously told Congress he organized the Oct. 19, 2020, letter to give former Vice President Joe Biden a “talking point” ahead of a debate against President Donald Trump, was under contract with the CIA at the time, the agency told Congress.

Ex-agency inspector general David Buckley also was a contractor at the time of the letter, according to an interim report from two House committees investigating the matter, and records suggest that at least two other letter-signers may also have had active contracts at the time.

Even if you are not willing to go down the path of computer interference in the 2020 election, this is certainly another form of election interference. I hope that many of the people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 are now realizing that they were tricked. Even if the 2024 candidate is not Joe Biden, the Joe Biden voters need to remember the mendacity of the Democrat party. Is that something you want to support?

The article concludes:

A May 13, 2017, email from the laptop said the “big guy” would get 10% of the CEFC deal, and former Biden family associate Rob Walker testified to Congress that Joe Biden met with the company’s chairman, Ye Jianming, before cash began to flow earlier that year.

The CIA issued a statement Tuesday night that did not elaborate on the agency contracts with “former” officeholders who signed the letter.

The agency focused primarily on defending the pre-publication review process that inspected the statement for classified information and found that there was none — allowing for its public release.

“CIA officers, as a condition of their employment, are required to sign a secrecy agreement that includes a lifelong obligation to submit any and all intelligence-related materials to CIA’s Pre-Publication Review Board (PCRB) before they are published. That process was followed in this case,” a CIA spokeswoman said.

“The PCRB reviews material to determine if they contain any classified information. The PCRB’s confirmation that information is unclassified is never an endorsement of the reviewed content or its veracity. These former officers were not speaking for CIA.”

Please follow the link to read the entire article.

If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough, It Will Be Accepted As Truth

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The Biden campaign is at it again. They must assume that the majority of voters are low-information voters, because they keep repeating lies that are easily debunked. One of the latest lies has to do with the events of June 2020 in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C.

On June 2nd, Breitbart reported:

CLAIM: The Biden campaign is repeating a lie that former President Donald Trump tear-gassed peaceful protesters gathered outside of the White House in Lafayette Square for a photo-op.

VERDICT: FALSE. This has been debunked countless times and has been proven false. The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Interior released a report in June 2021 that exonerated Trump from claims that he had tear-gassed peaceful protesters gathered in Lafayette Square in June 2020 to walk through the park to have a photo-op at St. John’s Episcopal Church.

The Biden campaign posted a video in a post on X on Saturday night, claiming that “four years ago,” on that date, “Trump tear gassed peaceful protesters outside the White House.”

The article notes:

The inspector general’s report confirmed Trump’s and former Attorney General William Barr’s version of what had happened that day.

Protests began in and around Lafayette Park on May 29, 2020. On May 30, the USPP [U.S. Park Police] and U.S. Secret Service established a unified command to coordinate the law enforcement response to the protests. From May 30 to 31, at least 49 USPP officers were injured while policing the protests, and Federal and private property was vandalized.

On the morning of June 1, the Secret Service procured antiscale fencing to establish a more secure perimeter around Lafayette Park that was to be delivered and installed that same day. The USPP, in coordination with the Secret Service, determined that it was necessary to clear protesters from the area in and around the park to enable the contractor’s employees to safely install the fence. The USPP planned to implement the operation as soon as the fencing materials and sufficient law enforcement officers arrived at the park. Six other law enforcement agencies assisted the USPP and the Secret Service in the operation to clear and secure areas near the park.

The operation began at 6:23 p.m. and was completed by 6:50 p.m. Shorty thereafter, at 7:01 p.m., President Trump walked from the White House through Lafayette Park to St. John’s Church. At 7:30 p.m., the contractor began assembling and installing the antiscale fence and completed the work by approximately 12:30 a.m. on June 2.

“We did not obtain evidence suggesting that the USPP cleared Lafayette Park so the President could visit St. John’s Church,” the report continues.

This lie has been used before:

In July 2020, Biden, the then-presumptive Democrat presidential candidate, had falsely claimed Trump had held the Bible upside down.

The Democratic National Convention claimed in August 2020 that Trump had used tear gas on peaceful protesters “across from the White House.” Bowser, who was being introduced as the speaker, repeated this false claim and failed to mention that St. John’s Episcopal Church had been burned and damaged from a fire the night before.

During a debate in September 2020, Biden claimed that Trump had cleared “peaceful protesters” gathered in Lafayette Square to walk through for a photo-op.

Most recently, Biden questioned what Trump “would have done if black Americans had stormed the Capitol” on January 6, 2021.

Biden then referenced the debunked tear-gas claim, telling the audience that “this is the same guy who wanted to tear gas you as you peacefully protested George Floyd’s murder.”

I really wish that we had a mainstream media that had some respect for the truth and would call out the continuing lies of the Biden campaign.

What Does Secretary Austin’s Being AWOL Tell Us?

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On Friday, The Association of Mature American Citizens posted an article on its website about the mysterious disappearance Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. To say that the fact that the Secretary of Defense was in the hospital for cancer treatment and no one in the chain of command knew about it is unusual is an understatement. The situation is very concerning for many reasons.

The article reports:

As of this column, he remains in the hospital and is reported to be in “good condition.” That’s good news, but in the process, some very serious issues regarding our government and the Biden administration have been revealed.

Now, the inspector general of the Department of Defense has announced an investigation into exactly what happened that allowed Austin’s hospitalization and incapacitation to be hidden from the White House, the president, the NSA, and even his own second in command, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. She had been handling the duties of the secretary of defense for at least two days from her vacation spot in Puerto Rico. Reports are that even she was kept in the dark about why she had been delegated the responsibility. This new DoD watchdog investigation joins congressional investigations already underway.

The statement from the DoD watchdog, however, gives us a hint about how this dangerous turn of everts will be minimized. In a memo announcing the investigation, they write: “The objective of the review is to examine the roles, processes, procedures, responsibilities, and actions related to the Secretary of Defense’s hospitalization in December 2023 – January 2024, and assess whether the DoD’s policies and procedures are sufficient to ensure timely and appropriate notifications and the effective transition of authorities as may be warranted due to health-based or other unavailability of senior leadership…” 

“Policies and procedures.” Got it. For this to be discussed as some sort of problem involving regulations and rulebooks is absurd.

How could America attack the Houthis and provide military aid to Israel without anyone being in touch with the Secretary of Defense? Who is making the decisions? What is the purpose of having a cabinet if you don’t discuss things with them (or even know where they are)? Who is running America right now?

Sometimes Congress Actually Does Something When It Directly Impacts Them!

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On Tuesday, The Daily Wire posted an article about the Department of Justice’s spying on members of Congress.

The article reports:

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) announced on Tuesday that he subpoenaed Attorney General Merrick Garland for information on alleged efforts to surveil members of Congress and congressional staff — including during the Russiagate controversy that rocked former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and administration.

In a cover letter to Garland, which noted potential legislative reforms could follow, Jordan said his panel “must resort to compulsory process” because of the “inadequate response to date” by the Department of Justice (DOJ) following his request for details about the apparent use of subpoenas to obtain private communications of Legislative Branch employees.

The DOJ previously informed the committee that the legal process it used related to an investigation into the “unauthorized disclosure of classified information in a national media publication,” the letter said. Jordan cited news reporting that indicated the inquiry pertained to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance of one-time Trump campaign associate Carter Page, reliant on an effort to get FISA warrants that the DOJ inspector general heavily criticized and the DOJ itself later conceded had relied on “insufficient predication” to last as long as it did.

The article concludes:

The Executive Branch appears to have used its “immense law-enforcement authority to gather and search the private communications of multiple Legislative Branch employees who were conducting Constitutional oversight of the Department’s investigative actions — actions that were later found to be unlawful,” Jordan wrote.

“Because the Department has not complied in full with our requests, we cannot independently determine whether the Department sought to alleviate the heightened separation-of-powers sensitivities involved or whether the Department first sought the information through other means before resorting to legal process,” Jordan added. “The Committee also has concerns that aspects of the Department’s investigation may have been a pretext to justify piercing the Legislative Branch’s deliberative process and improperly access data from Members and staff involved in conducting oversight of the Department.”

After watching the Department of Justice in recent years, I have concluded that the upper management of the Department has very little respect for the rule of law. They need to be replaced.

The Police State In Action

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On Wednesday, Breitbart posted the following headline:

Exclusive — ‘We Caught Them Red-Handed’: DOJ Spied on GOP Staffers Probing the Origins of the Russia Collusion Hoax

Is anyone surprised?

The article reports:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) obtained private communications and other personal records of multiple Republican House and Senate staffers who were investigating the department’s role in the origins of the Russia collusion hoax, according to former senior Trump administration official Kash Patel.

A recently-revealed subpoena shows that the DOJ sought the records for not only Patel when he was an investigator for then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), but also those of Jason Foster, who was at the time chief investigative counsel to then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (I-IA) and was also looking into the DOJ’s role in the hoax.

According to multiple subpoenas revealed so far, the DOJ had subpoenaed Google, Apple, and other companies to obtain private records in what Patel believes was an unlawful attempt to dig up dirt on them in retaliation for investigating the Democrat-pushed hoax that Donald Trump’s campaign had colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.

It is time to fire every supervisor and leader in the Department of Justice and replace them with people who are willing to respect the U.S. Constitution that they took an oath to uphold and protect.

The article concludes:

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is looking into the DOJ’s use of subpoenas “and other legal authorities” to obtain the private communications records of lawmakers, staff, and journalists, according to the DOJ Office of Inspector General website:

The DOJ OIG is reviewing the DOJ’s use of subpoenas and other legal authorities to obtain communication records of Members of Congress and affiliated persons, and the news media in connection with recent investigations of alleged unauthorized disclosures of information to the media by government officials.

The review will examine the Department’s compliance with applicable DOJ policies and procedures, and whether any such uses, or the investigations, were based upon improper considerations.

“Whether you hated us back then [because of] the Nunes memo — well, every report since then has said the same thing we did,” Patel said. “We were the first out of the gate. The IG, John Durham, said there was no lawful basis to ever investigate Trump or his campaign and that FBI people lied to a federal court and the slew of other violations that they came up with.”

“They got caught. We asked them to help expose it and instead they doubled down and used the system of justice and FBI investigatory powers to try to take us out and silence us,” he said.

“I’m going to put Chris Wray, Rod Rosenstein … and other people in the hot seat under oath, and I’m going to depose them, and demand they answer these questions, and we’re going to watch them lie to the world,” Patel said, adding that Rosenstein currently works at Wray’s old law firm.

“None of this is a coincidence. These people cover up for each other and Chris Wray is still covering up for them as a director of the FBI and I’m going to expose it all,” he said.

It’s time to either abolish the DOJ and the FBI or simply fire the executives and appoint new ones.

Where Did The Money Go?

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On Sunday, Just the News posted an article about as much as $400 billion in COVID-19 unemployment relief that was probably lost due to fraud.

The article reports:

Reports indicate as much as $400 billion in COVID-19 unemployment relief were likely lost to waste and fraudsters. Lawmakers want answers.

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Labor demanding documents and information related to the unemployment fraud.

“Since the Summer of 2020, repeated alerts from federal law enforcement agencies warned of targeted efforts involving organized cybercrime, foreign actors, and international crime rings using stolen identities of American citizens to obtain fraudulent unemployment benefits,” the letter said. “Fraud estimates range from $80 billion to as much as $400 billion, which is nearly half of all the COVID-19 unemployment aid.”

The Department of Labor’s Inspector General released a report in October showing that fraud varied by state but was significant nationwide.

“We found ETA and states did not ensure pandemic-related UI funds were paid only to eligible individuals promptly. Of the 4 states we tested, from March 28, 2020, through September 30, 2020, we estimated $30.4 billion of the $71.7 billion in PUA and FPUC benefits were paid improperly (42.4 percent),” the report said. “We estimated $9.9 billion of that was paid to likely fraudsters (13.8 percent). Notably, in the 4 states, 1 in 5 dollars initially paid in PUA benefits went to likely fraudsters.”

The article concludes:

The IG did lay out some reasons this waste and fraud occurred.

“ETA and states made significant efforts; however, they did not protect pandemic-related UI funds from historic levels of improper payments,” the report said. “We attribute this to four causes: states did not perform eligibility testing, ETA’s oversight was not timely enough, PUA initially allowed claimants to self-certify their eligibility, and ETA suspended 1 of their primary oversight tools for the first 3 months of the CARES Act. Furthermore, ETA’s interpretation of its regulations hindered the OIG’s timely and complete access to state UI claims data to assist in detecting and deterring fraud.”

There is no excuse for this.

Giving Away Important Technology

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On Wednesday, The Daily Wire reported that the Department of Energy’s Inspector General is investigating why the Biden administration gave promising green energy technology to China instead of creating manufacturing jobs in America.

The article reports:

The Department of Energy’s Inspector General is reviewing why the Joe Biden administration gave promising battery technology, developed by taxpayer dollars, to a Chinese company instead of making the batteries in the U.S.

China is now reportedly building one of the largest battery grids in the world using the technology, which could store huge amounts of solar energy without degrading over time or requiring lithium, mitigating a major environmental impact of current green technology that ends up in landfills.

The article continues:

In 2021, there was an “illicit Department of Energy (DOE) transfer of a fifteen million dollar, taxpayer-funded advanced battery technology to China,” Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) wrote in a letter to the DOE’s internal watchdog.

The company that received the license “plainly stated on their official website that they planned to manufacture the batteries in China,” even though the license included “a requirement that the batteries be ‘substantially manufactured’ in the U.S. As these stipulations were continuously violated, DOE never raised any concern,” they wrote.

“We are concerned that this is an overt dereliction of duty by DOE, and that this case may be emblematic of a department that routinely and flippantly permits government-funded technology to be transferred to China,” the senators concluded.

The article explains exactly what happened:

In 2017, Yang (Gary Yang, one of the scientists who helped develop the technology, so that he could commercialize it) — an American citizen who was born in China — obtained a sublicense from the DOE to allow a Chinese firm to make the batteries. In 2021, he transferred the license outright to a Dutch company called Vanadis Power, which said it would make the batteries in China but eventually move production to Europe to comply with European rules.

America had those rules too, but seemed less strict about enforcing them. On July 7, 2021, UniEnergy emailed a government manager at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to request approval to transfer the license to Vanadis, and within 90 minutes, the government granted approval, even though Vanadis’ website said it would make the batteries in China.

Unnamed DOE officials told NPR they often rely on “good faith disclosures” — in other words, the honor system.

I would love to see a list of Americans who are in some way involved in the finances of the Chinese company involved.

The Left’s Destruction Machine Goes Into Action

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On Wednesday, Fox News posted the following headline:

Treasury Department inspector general to audit DeSantis migrant flight spending

The article reports:

The Treasury Department inspector general confirmed in a letter to Democratic lawmakers that the agency is planning to audit whether spending by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on migrant flights was improper.

The lawmakers asked the Treasury Department to look into whether Florida improperly used American Rescue Plan funds for the migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, which drew widespread media attention.

Florida lawmakers authorized a $12 million migrant program funded with interest earnings from the federal Coronavirus State Fiscal Recovery Fund, according to documents.

The article concludes:

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., celebrated the announcement Wednesday, taking credit for spurring the Treasury Department into action.

“@USTreasury responded to my letter, confirming that it will investigate [Gov. DeSantis’] use of Covid relief funds to cruelly transport immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard under false pretenses and without any consideration for their personal dignity or basic needs,” Markey boasted.

Fox News Digital has reached out to DeSantis’ office for comment.

Who is paying for the federal government to move illegal immigrants around the country in the dead of night (article here)? Note that the investigation is being done at the request of a liberal Democrat. I am sure that is simply an incredible coincidence.

This is another example of the use of a federal agency to intimidate anyone who challenges the misdeeds of the Biden administration. I suspect there are many more relevant things that the Inspector General should be looking at.

A New Level Of Chutzpah

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about some recent rather questionable activities by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). There has been some criticism that the FBI has been politicized under the Biden administration. There recent actions do nothing to dispel that idea.

The article reports:

Even as the Department of Justice Inspector General released a report this week criticizing the politicization of the department, the FBI on Tuesday raided the homes of a Republican election official and several of her associates in Mesa County, Colo., in connection with a dispute about efforts to preserve 2020 election files.

In collaboration with state and county law enforcement, the FBI raided the homes of Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters, Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s former campaign manager Sherronna Bishop, and two others.

The FBI operations targeting skeptics of the 2020 election results follow the bureau’s raids earlier this month on the homes of conservative guerrilla journalist James O’Keefe and several of his associates with Project Veritas.

Numerous elected officials, reporters, and the American Civil Liberties Union have voiced their concerns about potential infringement of press freedom by the FBI and Justice Department in the O’Keefe raid. These fears were exacerbated when information collected in the raid was published in the New York Times, which has been defending itself against a lawsuit filed by Project Veritas.

The DOJ’s inspector general released a report this week rebuking the department for straying from its own policies on avoiding the appearance of political bias.

The article concludes:

The secretary of state alleges that Peters lied about having the unauthorized person involved in the voting system update as she attempted to expose alleged election irregularities.

Peters said in August at a news conference, “The Mesa County Clerk and Recorder’s office directed her staff to turn off the video surveillance of the voting equipment,” CBS 4 Denver reported.

Peters explained that she had copied files on the voting machines for security before the update was made.

“I was concerned they were going to delete important election files, I did a backup image before and after they did that,” Peters told the news outlet.

She alleges that the images showed numerous voter files were removed during the update and her job was to supervise the files.

In October, Peters was prohibited by a Mesa County judge from overseeing the county’s election in a ruling on a lawsuit filed by Griswold, according to Colorado Politics.

If you don’t see a pattern by now, you probably never will. It seems that ordinary Americans who are trying to do their jobs conscientiously and who happen to support President Trump are being investigated, and intimidated while having their civil rights ignored by the current Justice Department. I have no idea how we clean this mess up, but it definitely needs to be scrubbed thoroughly.

Your Tax Dollars Are Paying Dead People Social Security

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On Saturday, Just the News posted an article about a final audit report of the Social Security Agency by the agency’s Office of Inspector General.

The article reports:

This week’s Golden Horseshoe goes to the Social Security Administration, which paid an estimated $79 million to the deceased in just three states over a 10-year period, according to a final audit report by the agency’s Office of Inspector General. 

“We estimate SSA issued approximately $79 million in payments after death to 1,127 beneficiaries and four representative payees who died in Alabama, Georgia, or Illinois between January 1978 and December 2018,” the report found.

The watchdog identified an additional 53,486 deceased non-beneficiaries in those states whose death information was not in the SSA’s Numerical Identification System.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes examples of payments made to people who have been dead for years.

The article notes:

“In October and November of 2020, we referred to SSA all identified beneficiaries and representative payees who may have received improper payments after death,” the IG reported. “Identifying and correcting these discrepancies will prevent approximately $14 million in additional improper payments after death over a 12-month period.”

The audit was conducted from April to November 2020. As of April 2021, the SSA terminated payments to 832 deceased beneficiaries and four deceased representative payees. 

The agency has initiated the recovery of $35 million in improper payments it sent out, the IG reported.

The SSA established the Electronic Death Registration for states to electronically submit death reports to the agency to prevent payments after death. Once states submit through the EDR, if the deceased data matches the agency’s records, then SSA posts the information to its Numident file and terminates payments. SSA also receives death information from other sources aside from EDR, including family members and funeral directors.

It is time for the government to stop wasting taxpayers’ money. If the people who work for the government cannot do a better job of keeping track of who is receiving payments, they should either get a new computer system or new employees. No private company would tolerate that kind of wasteful spending.

The Dog Ate My Cell Phone

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On Thursday Just the News reported that a number of high-ranking members of Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian collusion wiped their phones before handing them over to the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General.

The article reports:

The documents, obtained via lawsuit by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, show that more than two dozen phones were apparently purged of information before being handed over to the inspector general, some having been allegedly mistakenly wiped and others having been “reassigned” prior to the inspector general’s review.

Numerous phones were “accidentally” wiped of data because the phone’s owner allegedly tried to enter the wrong password multiple times, the documents indicate. Many consumer phones manufactured today include features in which too many incorrect password attempts result in a wholesale data wipe. 

The article notes:

At least one phone — that belonging to FBI lawyer Lisa Page — had simply been “restored to factory settings” upon receipt by the inspector general.

Among the special counsel members whose phones were wiped was Andrew Weissmann, one of the probe’s chief investigators. Weissmann “entered [the phone’s] password too many times and wiped the phone,” the documents state.

The contents of those two phones might have been very interesting to the inspector general.

This story and others like it illustrate the importance of another term for President Trump. There are no guarantees that if President Trump is elected, the people who used our government for political purposes will be brought to justice. However, I can guarantee that if Joe Biden is elected, all of the abuses of intelligence agencies we saw during the Obama administration will be hidden from sight never to be seen again and the same tactics will be used against the next Republican candidate for President.

The Details Of The Soft Coup Against President Trump Are Slowing Emerging

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article connecting a lot of the dots in the soft coup attempt against President Trump. It is a long article with a lot of screen shots to support the claims it is making. I suggest that you follow the link to the article as it would be impossible to summarize it here. However, there are a few noteworthy points I would like to share.

The article reports:

Former HPSCI Chairman, and current HPSCI ranking member, Devin Nunes appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss several matters of importance.  One of the critical topics touched is the ongoing investigations of Obama era intelligence and political surveillance via the DOJ-NSD FBI, CIA, DNI and State Dept.

Representative Nunes hits the key point when he highlights current redactions and current decisions to classify ongoing investigative documents.  It is critically important to accept this reality. There are current intelligence officers and career officials in place hiding material by labeling evidence as classified.  A recent example was the December 9, 2019, inspector general report about the manipulation of FISA.

There is a video embedded in the article that gives an example of the actions being taken to prevent the truth from coming out.

The article concludes:

Politico, The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC and The Washington Post are all implicated in the James Wolfe leak to Ali Watkins. They had the FISA information since March 2017, yet those media outlets were disingenuously falsifying their reporting on the actual content of the FISA application despite their actual knowledge.

Remember all of the media denials about what Devin Nunes wrote in the “Nunes memo”? Remember the media proclaiming the Steele Dossier was not part of the FISA application?

How was the media fifteen months later (July 2018) going to report on the Wolfe leak to Watkins without admitting they had been manufacturing stories about its content for the past year-and-a-half?

It was in the media’s interest NOT to cover, or dig into, the Wolfe story.

Additionally, from both the DOJ and Media perspective, coverage of the Wolfe leak would prove the senate intel committee (SSCI) was, at a minimum, a participating entity in the coup effort. That same SSCI is responsible for oversight over the CIA, FBI, DOJ-NSD, ODNI, DNI, and all intelligence agencies.

Worse yet, all officers within those agencies require confirmation from the SSCI (including Chair and Vice-Chair); and any discussion of the Wolfe leak would highlight the motive for ongoing corruption within the SSCI in blocking those nominations (see John Ratcliffe).

Stunning ramifications.

There was a clear fork in the road and the DOJ took the path toward a cover-up; which, considering what the DOJ was simultaneously doing with Mueller and the EDVA regarding Assange, is not entirely surprising.

Was that decision wrong? Oh hell yes, it was corrupt as heck. .

Were the decisions done with forethought to coverup gross abuses of government? Yes.

Where the DOJ is today is directly connected to the decisions the DOJ made in 2017 and 2018 to protect themselves and internally corrupt actors from discovery.

It is often said: “the coverup is always worse than the crime.” This is never more true than with these examples, because where we are today… now miles down the path of consequence from those corrupt decisions… is seemingly disconnected from the ability of any institutional recovery. That’s now the issue for Bill Barr.

If Bill Barr wanted to deal with the issue he would not be telling President Trump to stop talking about the corruption; instead he would be holding a large press conference to explain to the American people about that fork in the road.

That type of honest sunlight delivery means taking people back into the background of the larger story and explaining what decisions were made; with brutal honesty and without trepidation for the consequences, regardless of their severity and regardless of the friends of Bill Barr compromised by the truth.

Here’s a big reason why Bill Barr should take that approach: We Know.

We know; the DOJ trying to hide it doesn’t change our level of information.

Regardless of whether Bill Barr actually admits what surrounds him, there are people who know…

We know….

You know….

AG Bill Barr shouting at President Trump ‘don’t tweet‘ like the Wizard of Oz doesn’t change the fact the curtain has been removed.

Turn around Bill, it’s time to come clean.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. There are many in the government who are still working hard to cover up the truth.

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s Report Has Been Released

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Yesterday Charles Hurt posted an opinion piece at The Washington Times about the report of Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz concerning abuses at the highest levels of the Department of Justice.

The piece reports:

We now know that FBI agents — operating at the behest of powerful appointees of the Obama administration — deliberately doctored foreign intelligence to obtain secret warrants to spy on an active political campaign for president. In the United States of America.

This is no longer opinion or speculation. This is fact, backed up by exhaustive investigation and extensive evidence. The fact that these massive abuses are getting short-shrift in the media today only reveals the extent to which the media has been a co-conspirator in this travesty of justice.

They have become outright defenders of a police state, where spying on innocent Americans seeking political office is now perfectly acceptable to them.

Meanwhile, in Congress, the most powerful Democrats in the land knew what was going on and encouraged it. All for sick partisan gain.

To cover their tracks, they lied and accused their political opponents of doing exactly what they themselves did: Using foreign disinformation straight out of Moscow to sow discord and win an election here in the United States.

Again, this is not some hot-headed opinion from a crazy conspiracy theorist. Or, at least, it’s not just that. It also happens to be the stone-cold truth.

As the information is revealed, it is easy to understand why the people involved fought so hard to keep it from becoming public. There are many of our elected officials who have fought to keep the truth from coming out. The voters are the only way that those not directly involved who worked to keep the truth away from the public will be held accountable. It is now becoming obvious that the entire impeachment fiasco had nothing to do with President Trump, but instead was to distract Americans from the truth that many of our elected officials were attempting to keep buried.

How To Navigate The Media Spin

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The Epoch Times posted an article yesterday about the report of the Justice Department Inspector General. The report found that the FBI failed to document facts correctly in 29 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications that were reviewed. A rational person would take that as an indication that all was not well at the FBI and that Americans were being unlawfully surveilled. However, the mainstream media did not necessarily see it that way.

Eli Lake posted the following comments at Bloomberg News:

In the twisted politics of the Trump Era, some of bureau’s defenders might actually view this report as good news: It shows that the investigation of the Trump campaign was not necessarily politically motivated. The bureau made the same kinds of mistakes with suspects who were not connected to the Trump campaign.

That’s hardly reassuring — and the malpractice that the report uncovers is a much larger problem than the FBI and its defenders may wish to admit. So far, the response to Horowitz’s December report has been a series of administrative reforms, such as a requirement that FBI field offices preserve their “Woods files” and a mandate for new FISA training for FBI lawyers and agents. That’s all well and good. But one need not go back to the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover to see that the bureau has been careless in its monitoring of U.S. citizens.

The Woods procedures were issued in 2001 after Congress obtained a memo from the FBI’s counterterrorism division detailing surveillance abuse in the late 1990s. One target’s cell phone remained tapped after he gave it up and the number was reassigned to a different person. Another FBI field office videotaped a meeting, despite a clear prohibition on that technique in its FISA warrant. In 2003, an interim report from the Senate Judiciary Committee concluded that the 2001 memo showed “the FBI was experiencing more systemic problems related to the implementation of FISA orders” than a problem with the surveillance law itself.

Very little has changed in the intervening 17 years. That’s why it’s foolish to expect new and better procedures will work this time. A better approach would be an aggressive policy to prosecute FBI agents and lawyers who submit falsehoods to the surveillance court. The best way to prevent future violations is to severely punish those who commit them in the present.

Scott Johnson posted an article today at Power Line Blog that included the following quote (follow the link to the article for the audio of the answer to the question):

The New York Times is illustrative of “the twisted politics of the Trump era.” Daniel Chaitin covers the Times angle in his Examiner article “‘Biased and out of control’: Devin Nunes rips New York Times reporting on FISA memo.” Chaitin reports on Rep. Devin Nunes’s interview with Larry O’Connor:

Radio host Larry O’Connor read a passage from the [Times’s] report [on the Horowitz memo] to Nunes during the Examining Politics podcast on Tuesday. It said DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report “helps the FBI politically because it undercuts the narrative among President Trump and his supporters that the bureau cut corners to surveil the adviser, Carter Page, as part of a politically motivated conspiracy.”

“So, the good news for the FBI is that they trampled on people’s rights all over the place, not just people who worked with Donald Trump’s campaign,” O’Connor said. “Is that the takeaway we should have here congressman?”

I agree with Eli Lake–severe punishment for those guilty of illegal spying on American citizens is the only way to prevent future abuse by the FBI.

 

Further Proof That The Russians Did Not Hack The DNC’s Computers

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Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article with the following headline, “BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Joe Biden’s Former IT Director, Warren Flood, Implicated in ‘Russia Hacked the DNC Email’ Narrative.” Periodically I post an article that I do not technically understand. This is one of those articles, so if you are a computer person, please forgive my feeble attempts at explaining this.

The article reports:

On June 16, 2019, we presented arguments against the Mueller gang’s assertion that the DNC was hacked by Russians. Cyber expert Yaacov Apelbaum posted an incredible report with information basically proving that the DNC was not hacked by the Russians.

Today we have support implicating an IT Direct0r, Warren Flood, connected to Joe Biden.  Flood is linked to the ‘Russia hacked the DNC hoax’.

Last year we reported a series of arguments proving that there is no proof that Russians hacked the DNC. These arguments came from cyber expert Yaacov Apelbaum whose first argument was this –

According to the WaPo (using CrowdStrike, DOJ, and their other usual hush-hush government sources in the know), the attack was perpetrated by a Russian unit lead by Lieutenant Captain Nikolay Kozachek who allegedly crafted a malware called X-Agent and used it to get into the network and install keystroke loggers on several PCs. This allowed them to see what the employees were typing and take screenshots of the employees’ computer.

This is pretty detailed information, but if this was the case, then how did the DOJ learn all of these ‘details’ and use them in the indictments without the FBI ever forensically evaluating the DNC/HRC computers? And since when does the DOJ, an organization that only speaks the language of indictments use hearsay and 3rd parties like the British national Matt Tait (a former GCHQ collector and a connoisseur of all things related to Russian collusion), CrowdStrike, or any other evidence lacking chain of custody certification as a primary source for prosecution?

A second point by Apelbaum was –

… that three of the Russian GRU officers on the DOJ wanted list were allegedly working concurrently on multiple non-related projects like interfering with the 2016 United States elections (both HRC and DNC) while at the same time they were also allegedly hacking anti-doping agencies.

Those are the basic questions that need to be asked, but there is more.

There is the issue of the speed of the transfer of information:

Esteemed NSA whistleblower Bill Binney reported in June 2019 that there was no way Russians hacked the DNC based on the speed of the transfer of the data that was hacked. But according to Apelbaum the transfer speeds is a minor issue here. It’s just an indicator that it would have been difficult for Guccifer 2 who was sitting in Romania to access the DNC system remotely.

The article contains a screenshot that also raises suspicions about what really happened along with further information about the hack:

But of course the Mueller gang never interviewed WikiLeaks in an effort to determine how they received the Clinton emails. Of course the Mueller team could not risk WikiLeaks saying the emails were not received from Russia which would destroy their Russia hacked the DNC fairy tale.

Today we identify Warren Flood, a Biden protege who appears to have helped create the ‘Russia Hacked the DNC’ narrative:

Apelbaum obtained a parts of the Word and PDF versions of the purported DNC Opposition research document showing the original English template and the pasted version into a Russian template and resulting subsequent broken hyperlink error messages in Russian

The article then explains the significance of the screenshot:

In the image above, on the left it shows the Word doc properties of the document created at 1:38 PM on June 15, 2016. The Company name is given as GSA. This appears to be the General Services Administration (US gov agency), which shows as the Company for MS Office documents created via GSA-contracted copies of MS Word.

(Note that the DNC server wasn’t supposed to be using a GSA-contracted MS Office suite. A number of Democratic politicians and aides (e.g,, many members of the US House of Representatives) had DNC email accounts, but the DNC is a private entity and should not have hosted GSA-contracted software.)

The supposed author of this document is Warren Flood as is noted at the bottom left of the diagram above.  He was Vice President Joe Biden’s IT Director at the White House (which does use GSA registered software).

The article concludes:

Based on the document metadata there is little doubt that either Warren Flood (who BTW, speaks Russian), or someone using his GSA licensed MS Word software created the Russian fingerprint. Also, it’s important to note that several other documents also show this type of manipulation, but they were created by users named “Blake” and “jbs836”.

In terms of the big picture, it is possible that whoever added the Russian fingerprint did this as part of laying the ground work or for future unmasking. We know that in June 2016 the Obama administration (via people like Susan Rice, John Brennan, and Samantha Power) started unmasking Trump campaign officials on the pretext of ‘Russian interference’.  This June 2016 activity overlaps with dates of the Guccifer 2.0 saga.

So, it is possible that Guccifer 2.0 and MSM outlets like the NYTimes who promoted him were part of a larger campaign to affirm Russian interference with the DNC hacks.

If this is indeed the case, then it means that the DNC email leak could implicate Obama administration officials who were doing all this document manipulation on government time and on GSA registered computers all in an effort to tie Russia to the DNC email heist.

Based on information available today, there is no way Russians hacked the DNC. This was made up from the start.  Now we know that the Obama White House, and specifically Warren Flood, is involved in the Russian hoax.

Hopefully. someone in the Inspector General’s office is honest enough and smart enough to investigate this.

No Scandals In The Obama Administration?

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Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about Charles K. Edwards, President Obama’s Acting Homeland Security Inspector General.

The article reports:

Obama’s Acting Homeland Security Inspector General and his subordinate were indicted on 16 counts of theft and fraud, the Justice Department announced on Friday.

“The indictment charges Charles K. Edwards, 59, of Sandy Spring, Maryland, and Murali Yamazula Venkata, 54, of Aldie, Virginia, with conspiracy to commit theft of government property and to defraud the United States, theft of government property, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The indictment also charges Venkata with destruction of records.”

The charges allege that in addition to stealing government software and databases, Venkata helped Edwards by reconfiguring his laptop so that he could upload the stolen software.

“The indictment further alleges that, in addition to stealing DHS-OIG’s software and the sensitive government databases, Venkata and others also assisted Edwards by reconfiguring his laptop so that he could properly upload the stolen software and databases, provided troubleshooting support whenever Edwards required it, and helped him build a testing server at his residence with the stolen software and databases,” the Department of Justice said in a press release announcing the indictments. “As further part of the alleged scheme, Edwards retained software developers in India for the purpose of developing his commercial alternative of DHS-OIG’s software.”

Although Edwards left the DHS in 2013, according to the indictment he leveraged his relationship with Venkata to carry out the scheme which began in October of 2014 and continued to April of 2017.

Edwards was President Obama’s Acting Homeland Security Inspector General. It is a reflection on the Obama administration that an obviously dishonest person was put in that position. It is my hope that this is simply another step in draining the swamp and the people who have happily existed in the swamp.

A Small Step Toward Justice

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is reporting today that there have been some small steps taken by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court to insure that the civil rights of Americans will not be violated as they were in the case of Carter Page.

The article reports:

Substantively, it might not seem like much, but symbolically, this order will sting the FBI and Department of Justice. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court effectively barred any agents involved in the Carter Page FISA warrants from taking part in its proceedings as a consequence of the misconduct that took place in Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Also, the court will now require agents and attorneys to swear under oath explicitly that they have included all potentially exculpatory evidence in their presentations:

A secretive federal court on Wednesday effectively barred F.B.I. officials involved in the wiretapping of a former Trump campaign adviser from appearing before it in other cases at least temporarily, the latest fallout from an internal inquiry into the bureau’s surveillance of the aide.

A 19-page opinion and order by James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, also largely accepted changes the F.B.I. has said it will make to its process for seeking national-security wiretaps following a damning inspector general report about errors and omissions in applications to monitor the adviser, Carter Page.

But Judge Boasberg ordered law enforcement officials to specifically swear in future cases that the applications to the court contain “all information that might reasonably call into question the accuracy of the information or the reasonableness of any F.B.I. assessment in the application, or otherwise raise doubts about the requested findings.”

…The banishment of Crossfire Hurricane figures is almost certainly meant to be embarrassing, but that’s about as much teeth as FISC has in this situation. As the New York Times’ Charlie Savage points out, the court has limited authority to deal with FBI misconduct. It has no oversight over the Department of Justice at all, which is an executive-branch agency. Presumably the court’s rotating judges had already adopted a more skeptical approach to more recent surveillance warrant applications after reading the Michael Horowitz report, but unless Congress changes the FISA law, courts are still required to follow it.

Speaking of which, the law is due to expire, and Donald Trump has already declared he won’t sign an extension without significant changes. Given what happened in Crossfire Hurricane, few would be surprised to know that, of course:

Unless it it renewed, FISA sunsets on March 15th. There are recommendations on the table to reform the law. President Trump has stated that he will not sign an extension of the law without reforms. Considering how the law was illegally used against him and his campaign, I think that is a very reasonable approach.

Still Not Playing By The Rules Of Evidence

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One of the aspects of justice in America is the idea that the evidence against the defendant has to be revealed to the defense so that they can prepare their case. That is part of the fairness that has been injected into the American justice system. Every American is entitled to have access to the evidence against him before he is tried for a crime. Unfortunately the Democrats have chosen not to honor this principle.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about the latest attempt by Congressional Democrats to deny basic civil rights to President Trump. Keep in mind that if the President can be denied his civil rights, any American can also be denied those rights.

The article reports:

Rep. Adam B. Schiff and his fellow colleagues on the House impeachment management team spent nearly 24 hours last week repeatedly hyping the testimony from 17 witnesses interviewed during the House’s impeachment inquiry.

But they seem to have forgotten all about the testimony from an 18th witness.

Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, delivered 179-pages worth of testimony before House investigators. Atkinson, it turns out, has direct knowledge of the origins of a complaint from a whistleblower that kicked off the whole impeachment probe.

While Schiff and his colleagues talk openly about the testimony of the 17 witnesses, members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who interviewed Atkinson are not permitted to talk about the IG’s testimony.

But Republicans on that committee say his testimony should see the light of day.

“The reason it hasn’t been released is it’s not helpful to Adam Schiff. It is not helpful to the whistleblower,” said Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX). And Ratcliffe knows: he is among the lawmakers who attended the October interview of Atkinson. “It raises credibility issues about both of them.”

Schiff, Ratcliffe said, “is trying to bury that transcript.”

Because Atkinson’s testimony has been deemed classified, only members of the House intelligence committee have seen it, and President Trump’s legal team has not been allowed to view the transcript.

It is denied a copy.

Atkinson’s interview before House lawmakers covered the origins of the whistleblower complaint that led to the two articles of impeachment, the Washington Times reported. “Mr. Trump’s supporters charge that the whistleblower was part of a scheme to take down the president and that the complaint was coordinated by Mr. Schiff, chairman of the intelligence committee and the lead House impeachment manager prosecuting the case.”

In a perfect world, the impeachment of President Trump would be tossed out because the President’s civil rights have been violated repeatedly. It will be interesting to see if the lack of this piece of evidence is mentioned by the President’s defense team this week.

Do Liars Ever Apologize?

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Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog posted an article today about what we now know about conflicting memos by Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff regarding FISA warrants.

The article reports:

When then House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes released his memo asserting that the FBI had improperly taken out FISA warrants on Carter Page, Ranking Member Adam Schiff responded with a memo of his own disputing it. The Nunes memo is accessible here and elsewhere; the Schiff memo is accessible here and elsewhere.

Both Nunes and Schiff had access to the same classified information for their memos, but Nunes was interested in disseminating the truth while Schiff sought to lie about it in the service of the Russia hoax. As has become all too clear, Schiff lies with the sangfroid of a pathological liar.

After the Department of Justice Inspector General report on FISA abuse that was released last week, we now know to a certainty that Nunes was right and Schiff was wrong. We know that Schiff was lying.

Schiff is lying now about about his lying then. It’s a postmodern world after all. In an interview with Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday (beginning at about 5:30 below), Schiff allowed that there were indeed “serious abuses of FISA” — “serious abuses that I was unaware of.” He explained: “Had I known of them, Chris, yes, I would’ve called out the FBI at the same time,” Schiff said. “But I think it’s only fair to judge what we knew at the time.”

The article includes the memos. Scott Johnson reminds us that both men had the same access to the same information. Adam Schiff’s claim that he was unaware of the abuses is simply false. He is lying. And he continues to lie.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is discouraging to see a Representative who lies so easily and so frequently.

Slowly Getting To The Truth

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Fox News posted an article today about a recent comment by James Comey. In an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, James Comey stated that the recently released Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the launch of the FBI’s Russia investigation and their use of the surveillance process showed that he was “overconfident” when he defended his former agency’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). I don’t mean to be difficult, but I think you could fertilize your garden with that statement. Remember, it was James Comey who leaked information to his friend to leak to The New York Times in order to promote the idea that a Special Prosecutor was needed. It was James Comey who listed all the crimes committed by Hillary Clinton and then said they weren’t really crimes because she didn’t mean to commit them. It was James Comey who briefed the President on the Steele Dossier so that it could be leaked to the press. It was James Comey who paved the way for the entire phony Russia investigation that cost taxpayers millions and prevented Congress from actually accomplishing anything for the good of the country. Keep that in mind as he proclaims he had no idea what was going on.

The article notes:

“He’s right, I was wrong,” Comey said about how the FBI used the FISA process, adding, “I was overconfident as director in our procedures,” and that what happened “was not acceptable.”

Horowitz did make it clear that he believes the FBI’s investigation of Russian election interference and possible connections with the Trump campaign was properly initiated, but he did note that this is based on a “low threshold.” He also concluded that there was no testimonial or documentary evidence to show that the investigation started due to any political bias, but said the issue of bias “gets murkier” when it comes to the various issues with the FISA process.

That process included the reliance on information gathered by former British spy Christopher Steele as part of opposition research conducted by Fusion GPS for the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign. Horowitz’s report stated that government attorneys were hesitant to approve a FISA warrant application until they relied on unverified information from Steele. That information also was used in subsequent renewals for the FISA warrant.

Comey downplayed the role of Steele’s information in obtaining the FISA warrant against Page, claiming Sunday that it was “not a huge part of the presentation to the court,” just part of the information included in the warrant application.

It will be interesting to see if James Comey is included when indictments are handed out. My bet is that he will be. He should at least be held accountable for leaking information.

About That Oft Repeated Concern For The Constitution…

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Yesterday PJMedia posted an article about constitutional violations under President Obama. Somehow I don’t remember the Democrats being very upset about those violations.

The article lists the violations:

5. Illegally firing an inspector general

In 2009, Barack Obama illegally fired Gerald Walpin, the inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service,  without notice or providing the legally mandated explanation for the firing to Congress. Obama did this to protect Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, an ally of his, whom Walpin had been investigating for misusing federal funds Walpin had discovered a cover-up of sexual assault allegations by minors against Johnson.

4. Giving “green energy” loans to donor companies

If you want to talk about an abuse of power, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were both personally involved in the decision-making process to determine who got $80 billion for clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits for green energy companies, in a highly politicized process that favored companies that supported the Obama-Biden campaign over those that didn’t. It was no coincidence that the companies that got all the cash were donors to their campaign. In fact, DOE officials expressed concerned that Obama and Biden’s involvement was putting taxpayer dollars at risk. Not only did they give all this money to green energy companies that donated to their campaign, but the Obama administration also stole proprietary technology from companies that didn’t get the loans to the Obama cronies who got them. This scandal was much bigger than Solyndra, but the calls for Obama’s impeachment weren’t there.

3. Unconstitutional recess appointments

When Obama made a number of controversial picks for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), he was unable to get them through the Senate. So, in January 2012, he declared his nominees appointed to the Senate via recess appointments. Except the Senate wasn’t even in recess at the time. Obama’s actions were such a blatant abuse of power that experts on both sides of the aisle blasted Obama for what he did and a federal appeals court overturned the appointments a few days after his second inauguration, declaring, “Allowing the president to define the scope of his own appointments power would eviscerate the Constitution’s separation of powers.” The United States Supreme Court ultimately took up the case, and unanimously agreed Obama abused his power.

2. Illegally reinterpreting Title IX

When Title IX was written, the goal was to protect people from discrimination based on sex in education. The notion of “gender identity” or “gender expression” wasn’t even a thing back in 1972 when it was passed. Nevertheless, Obama unilaterally decided that “sex” meant “gender identity” and threatened to enforce this bizarre idea. This was a huge violation of the rights and privacy of women and girls nationwide without so much as a national debate in Congress, where this issue needed to be worked out. Instead of going to Congress, Obama simply threatened educational institutions at all levels with the loss of Title IX funding if they didn’t comply and allow boys to share bathrooms, locker rooms, and dorm rooms with girls, as well as allow boys to play on girls sports teams. Obama’s going around Congress on this issue was a huge violation of power.

1. Changing immigration law via executive order

The truth is, Obama spent most of his presidency with a divided Congress or a GOP-controlled Congress. His radical left-wing agenda was mostly DOA because rather than work toward compromise legislation, his default position was to act on his own, assuming the executive authority to change laws via executive fiat. Anyone who’s familiar with the Constitution knows he had no such authority.

Still, when the DREAM Act failed to pass, Obama issued an executive order creating DACA, an executive-branch version of the DREAM Act. Obama literally bypassed Congress, changing U.S. immigration law via executive pen to appease his pro-open-borders base.

There seems to be something of a double standard here. The Democrats are not able to name one instance where President Trump abused his power or violated the Constitution, yet there was not a peep out of them when President Obama openly violated the Constitution.