Criminalizing Political Opposition

This article is about the strange case of Paul Manafort. Yesterday The New York Post reported that President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort will be moved from a federal lockup in Pennsylvania to Rikers Island later this week. The request was made by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.’s office.

The article reports:

…a New York grand jury charged Manafort with a number of crimes, including residential mortgage fraud and falsifying business records…

Normally those crimes don’t result in a transfer to Rikers Island. In May 2013, Rikers Island ranked as one of the ten worst correctional facilities in the United States, based on reporting in Mother Jones magazine.

It gets even more strange.

In May 2018, a website called abovetopsecret reported:

So the special counsel is going after Manafort for financial crimes dating all the way back to 2005. Rosenstein issued a secret memo authorizing the special counsel to expand their jurisdiction to part B to make it appear legal.

The judge questions the jurisdiction and demands an unredacted version of the secret memo.

News coming out tonight and discussed by Judge Napolitano is not only was Manafort investigated for all of these crimes by the FBI/DOJ, and not only did the DOJ decline to prosecute, Rod Rosenstein actually was the prosecutor who not only declined prosecution, he signed off on the exoneration letter for Manafort.

Now more than a decade later Rosenstein authorizes Mueller to go after Manafort for crimes he himself already cleared him of.

In Jun 2018, a website called News Punch reported:

A Democrat judge who put Paul Manafort in jail this week previously cleared Hillary Clinton of all criminal wrongdoing over the deaths of four American servicemen in Benghazi in 2012. 

Amy Berman Jackson, a past Bill Clinton donor and federal judge, threw out a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton filed by Sean Smith’s mother Patricia Smith and Tyrone Woods’ father Charles Woods. The lawsuit claimed that Hillary Clinton revealing the location of Ambassador Stevens on her non-secure private email server prior to Stevens’ murder put their dead children in harm’s way.

Politico reported in 2017: “Jackson dismissed the wrongful death portion of the suit on technical grounds after granting the State Department’s motion to step in as the defendant on those claims. The Obama-appointed judge concluded Clinton used her email in the course of her official duties.”

Paul Manafort may or may not be the biggest sleaze in the country. However, he does not belong in Rikers Island for the crimes he may have committed. He is being sent there because he was part of President Trump’s campaign for a short period of time. The political left is hoping that he will die in prison. That is frightening.,

If this doesn’t bother you, think about the future. Do you want to live in a country where working on a political campaign that is not in line with the powers that be will put you in jail for crimes you were already cleared of? America right now is a relatively free country, but if we keep electing the type of people who use the justice system for the purpose of settling personal vendettas, we will no longer be free.

 

Those Pesky E-Mails

Fox News posted an article today about emails from Hillary Clinton that have now surfaced that have been withheld from the Congressional Committees investigating Benghazi.

The article reports:

New documents released by a federal court show President Obama called then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the night of the 2012 Benghazi attack — but the contents are being withheld by the State Department

It had previously been disclosed that Clinton and Obama spoke the night of the terror attacks. But the documents offer additional information about the timing of the call — after the initial attack on the U.S. consulate, but before the second wave where mortars hit the nearby CIA annex and killed former Navy SEALs Ty Woods and Glen Doherty. 

The contents of the call, however, are being withheld, not because the information is classified but because the administration claims they represent internal deliberations about the 2012 terror assault. 

The claim comes as Clinton also faces accusations that she withheld Benghazi-related emails from her private server in the trove of emails handed over to the State Department. 

The article points out that the email in question was discovered as the result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Judicial Watch.

The article also reports the political agenda involved in characterizing the attack at Benghazi as a result of a video:

Other emails from Judicial Watch lawsuits have, separately, shown Rhodes (Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes) played a central role in preparing former U.N. ambassador Susan Rice for her Sunday show appearances that weekend where she blamed protests over the Internet video

In that Sept. 14 email, Rhodes specifically draws attention to the video, without distinguishing whether the Benghazi attack was different from protests elsewhere in the region. 

The email lists the following two goals, among others: 

“To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” 

“To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”

Thank God for Judicial Watch. It is unfortunate that most Americans will remain totally unaware of any of this and many who are aware will not care about the integrity of a major Presidential candidate.

New Information On Benghazi

This YouTube video tells the story of one of the survivors of Benghazi:

ChicksOnTheRight Reports:

“David Ubben waited for twenty hours after he was hit on that rooftop with Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty. His leg was shredded. We know that he has been recovering for ten months at Walter Reed as Catherine has just reported. He was defending the US consulate and then no medical aircraft was apparently sent to this scene to get him out of there. How could this be?”

There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered. Hopefully those answers will be forthcoming.

 

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The Key To Benghazi

There is one very significant piece of information about the attack on Benghazi and what happened during the night of September 11, 2012, that has not yet been revealed–“Who gave the order for the Special Forces that would have come to the rescue of those at the annex in Benghazi to stand down?”

The Blaze posted a story about that command today.

The article reports:

Gregory Hicks, the deputy chief of mission for the U.S. in Libya and the highest ranking official in the country at the time of the Benghazi attacks, testified before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday that Lt. Col. Gibson was “furious” after receiving a stand down order on the night of Sept. 11, 2012.

Hicks quoted Gibson as saying, “This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than somebody in the military.”

But who exactly is Lt. Col. Gibson, and is he the key to figuring out who specifically gave the stand down order on that fateful night? That’s what a lot of people will likely want to find out in the coming days.

…Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who traveled to Benghazi after the attack to investigate, got emotional during the Wednesday hearing after Hicks explained that Special Forces were prevented from responding to the terror attack as Americans were under siege. The attack claimed the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department official Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

Why were the Special Forces told to stand down? Some spokesmen have stated that they would not have been able to get to Benghazi on time. The battle lasted for more than nine hours, how did they know that they wouldn’t get there on time?

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An Intentional Lie Or A Lack Of Knowledge ?

Fox News posted a story today about one aspect of Secretary of State Clinton’s testimony before Congress yesterday. I am sure there will be many stories about her testimony to come, but there was one aspect that was very telling.

As I listened to Secretary Clinton, it became very obvious that although she ‘accepted responsibility’ for the deaths at Benghazi, she placed part of the blame for the attack on budget cuts–indirectly blaming Republicans because Democrats only do budget cuts in the defense budget.

When you examine the State Department budget numbers for the past several years, blaming budget cuts does not hold water.

The article at Fox News points out:

Budget numbers, though, show the overall diplomatic security budget has ballooned over the past decade. While there were modest decreases in funding in recent years — and Congress has approved less than was requested — the overall security budget has more than doubled since fiscal 2004. 

For that year, the budget was $640 million.  It steadily climbed to $1.6 billion in fiscal 2010. It dipped to $1.5 billion the following year and roughly $1.35 billion in fiscal 2012. 

Slightly more has been requested for fiscal 2013. 

It’s difficult to tell how much was specifically allocated for Benghazi. Tripoli was the only post mentioned in the department’s fiscal 2013 request — funding for that location did slip, from $11.5 million in fiscal 2011 to $10.1 million the following year. Slightly more has been requested for fiscal 2013. 

Ignoring requests for increased security is not a budget issue. If the money was not available to protect our ambassador and staff at Benghazi, the ambassador and staff should have been moved elsewhere. The other part of this story that seems to be ignored is the report that Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. were asked to stand down rather than help.

I am sure there will be more questions as Secretary Clinton’s testimony is analyzed. What I am not sure of is whether the picture of what actually happened at Benghazi will become any clearer.

Curiouser and Curiouser…

This story is based on two sources–an article by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air and an article by Eli Lake at the Daily Beast.

Both articles deal with the testimony of Michael Morell, who became acting Director of Central Intelligence following the surprise resignation of David Petraeus, who will be appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee today. Director Morell is expected to testify that the CIA never requested military assistance during the attack on Benghazi.

The article at the Daily Beast reports:

The CIA, however, requested none of that assistance. Neither did the State Department. None of those teams ever arrived in Benghazi.

On the evening of the attack, the military provided two kinds of support to the CIA security officers who tried to fend off an attack at the U.S. diplomatic mission and then later stood guard at a CIA base less than a mile away, which was hit in a second wave at about 5 a.m. (A U.S. military team working for the CIA was sent that evening from Tripoli, but that team did not arrive at the CIA annex until after the U.S. diplomatic mission was overrun.)

The military support included an unarmed predator drone that recorded the dramatic rescue of U.S. personnel from the diplomatic mission to the CIA base at about midnight. (Timelines differ between the Pentagon and the CIA.) The U.S. military also provided medevac support to survivors of the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department communications specialist Sean Smith, and two retired Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty.

Ed Morrissey points out:

But Morell’s explanation, as related by Lake, doesn’t make a lot of sense.  If the consulate and the CIA annex was under heavy and deliberate attack by forces using mortars and RPGs, why wouldn’t they ask for the military assistance that they knew was on standby for just this sort of contingency?  Why just ask for an unarmed surveillance drone rather than something that could potentially offer a diversion for the extraction of personnel from the consulate?  It’s difficult to imagine that the intelligence unit under fire off an on for seven hours would never have requested military assistance to save the lives of the people in the compound — not impossible, perhaps, but certainly implausible.

My hope is that there will be enough public hearings to make sense of this mess. Right now, this seems to have become a partisan accusation match. When questioned about the statements of Susan Rice on the Sunday news shows after the attack, the reply was that Condoleezza Rice was wrong when she testified that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Answers like that will not help anyone get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi. Answers like that will also prevent steps being taken to make sure the events of September 11, 2012, are never repeated.

 

 

 

 

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What In The World Were They Thinking ?

The story of Benghazi has been in the news for more than a month now. There are many aspects of this story that are downright disturbing. The latest has to do with the military and special forces people that could have helped the Americans under fire being told to stand down. Stand down? While the higher-ups in the Obama Administration watched Americans being killed in real time? What in the world is this?

Fox News reported some of the details today. Fox reports:

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. Consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.” 

…According to sources on the ground during the attack, the special operator on the roof of the CIA annex had visual contact and a laser pointing at the Libyan mortar team that was targeting the CIA annex. The operators were calling in coordinates of where the Libyan forces were firing from. 

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that there was not a clear enough picture of what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help. 

American soldiers have a tradition of leaving no man behind. Evidently the Obama Administration was not familiar with that tradition. One of the problems Benghazi has caused is that it will reinforce the Al Qaeda attitude that America is a paper tiger. The lack of response to this attack with embolden Al Qaeda to plan and execute more attacks on American soil (an Embassy is considered American soil) without fear of retribution. This is very reminiscent of the Jimmy Carter administration–the reason the Iranian hostages were returned as soon as Ronald Reagan took office was that the Iranians feared that President Reagan would actually retaliate if the hostages were not returned. There was reason to respect the power of America. We have lost that respect and need to restore it.

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