Newly available records do not fully comply with congressional House subpoenas, and barring new developments Friday, recent documents from the FBI and Justice Department do not meet deadlines set by a House resolution, according to a source close to the discussions.
Three House Republican committee chairmen, Trey Gowdy on Oversight, Devin Nunes on Intelligence and Bob Goodlatte on Judiciary, requested the records, with one subpoena issued as long ago as August of last year.
The source said House staffers — who reviewed records Thursday at the Justice Department (DOJ) because lawmakers were out of town for the holiday recess — concluded that Justice and the FBI have still not provided information and records about FBI activities before the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections officially opened on July 31 of that year.
“The House Judiciary Committee has been in contact daily with the Justice Department to ensure they produce all the documents subpoenaed by the committee earlier this year,” a Republican House Judiciary Committee aide said. “The Justice Department has produced more documents over the past weeks and has requested more time to produce additional documents. This request seems to be reasonable, and we expect the department to comply with the terms of the subpoena.”
An Intelligence Committee spokesperson told Fox News, “The DOJ gave the committee some, but not all, of the outstanding documents, so they are not in compliance.”
A Justice Department official emphasized last weekend that the DOJ and FBI had told both chambers’ intelligence committees that records, previously limited to congressional leadership known as Gang of Eight, were now available to lawmakers and cleared staff. The records were widely reported to include documents about the FBI’s alleged use of confidential sources to contact Trump campaign aides during the 2016 campaign.
In April, a subpoena was issued for a key set of records, focused on FBI activities before the bureau’s Russia case officially opened.
“What put this in motion? And of course, was what put this into motion, was something that is politically motivated, or was it based on legit law enforcement evidence?” said Thomas Dupree, former deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush. “Based on [last week’s congressional] hearing and the back-and-forth we have seen over the last few months, we are in an extremely unusual, and in my view disturbing, situation, where there has been a complete breakdown and a fracture of trust.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were on Capitol Hill last week, and faced new pressure to comply after the passage, along party lines, of a nonbinding House resolution calling on Rosenstein to provide withheld documents. The resolution had the effect of putting all House members on the record.
Those who have worked with Rosenstein emphasize he is in a difficult position because, they say, it is not routine to provide records from ongoing investigations.
“I know Rod and I think he’s an honorable person and I think anybody in that position would take it personally if they’re going to say, ‘You personally have been obstructing Congress or holding things back,’’’ said Robert Driscoll, former assistant attorney general. “He views himself as a point of a spear in a process and the one who has to interact with Congress.”
Separately on Thursday, Nunes referred 15 names for public testimony to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees. The majority are directly linked to the infamous Steele Dossier, as well as the firm Fusion GPS that was paid by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign to compile the research.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to answer Fox’s questions, adding that Justice would respond to the House committees directly.
Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.
His Name Is So Damn Fitting Because He Is Truly A Dick
ICE is a “group of incompetents” and should focus on drug interdiction, not immigration enforcement, says the second-ranking Democratic Senator, Sen. Dick Durbin.
“Look at ICE — what a group of incompetents,” he told CNN on Saturday, adding:
At this point, they are focused more on toddlers than terrorists. They want, instead of deporting felons, they want to deport families that are being persecuted by criminal gangs … instead of focussing on stopping bad drugs coming in and stopping dirty drug money from going out, they’re focussed on separating kids from their families.
Durbin sought to capture progressives’ anger at President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy for illegal immigration, saying:
Be part of this election, don’t stay home and curse the television … Come on out, use your citizens’ right to vote. That is the most important thing … I think the American people are going to speak loudly.
CNN
✔@CNN
“Look at ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), what a group of incompetents. At this point they’re focused more on toddlers than terrorists,” says Sen. Dick Durbin at rally in Chicago https://cnn.it/2Kkgl2x
With the worst drug crisis in our nation’s history, ICE and DHS should spend their resources on keeping drugs out and stopping drug money from being exported to gangs and cartels south of the border.
Senator Dick Durbin
✔@SenatorDurbin
It’s clear that ICE is unprepared and seemingly unwilling to reunite the infants and kids they forcibly removed at the border. We need a different solution to this humanitarian crisis.
ICE now has more than 20,000 employees in more than 400 offices in the United States and 46 foreign countries. The agency has an annual budget of approximately $6 billion, primarily devoted to three operational directorates – Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA). A fourth directorate – Management and Administration – supports the three operational branches to advance the ICE mission.
ICE’s efforts are focused on enforcing popular immigration laws, such as the laws requiring the removal of illegal migrants:
In FY2017, ICE ERO conducted 143,470 overall administrative arrests, which is the highest number of administrative arrests over the past three fiscal years. Of these arrests, 92 percent had a criminal conviction, a pending criminal charge, were an ICE fugitive or were processed with a reinstated final order. In FY2017, ICE conducted 226,119 removals. While this is a slight overall decrease from the prior fiscal year, the proportion of removals resulting from ICE arrests increased from 65,332, or 27 percent of total removals in FY2016 to 81,603, or 36 percent of total removals, in FY2017. These results clearly demonstrate profound, positive impact of the EO.
Without ICE, companies would be able to hire low-wage illegals instead of Americans, foreign children would crowd Americans’ kids from a good education, and real-estate costs would spike as foreigners rush to live in the peaceful, high-trust society built by Americans.
Durbin’s call for ICE to end enforcement was echoed by a statement from House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi. She “believes that ICE has been on the wrong end of far too many inhumane and unconstitutional practices to be allowed to continue without an immediate and fundamental overhaul,” said spokesman Drew Hammill, according to a report in the Washington Post.
“We do not think that protecting our border means putting children in cages,” Pelosi said June 28.
Durbin’s advocacy for mass-migration and for younger ‘dreamer’ illegals has caused the Democrats much political pain. He pushed forthe abortive budget-shutdown in January 2018, and for the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill in 2013 which helped the Democrats lose nine seats in 2014.
The Democrats’ top leader in the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer, is keeping his distance from the “Abolish ICE” campaign, even as the unpopular demand has been embraced by several Democratic Senators who may run for President in 2020.
He is instead using his Twitter account to tout Democrats’ promises on healthcare, guns, gay status, and claims that President Donald Trump is tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On the Abolish ICE campaign, Schumer is instead calling for a “czar” to focus media attention on “reunifying families.” That topic polls better for Democrats than ending immigration enforcement.
Chuck Schumer
✔@SenSchumer
The president has the power to appoint a czar to marshal & organize the agencies in charge of reunifying families. He should exercise that power, listen to all those marching today & clean up the mess he made w/ his slapdash family separation policy. #FamiliesBelongTogetherMarch
Democratic activists say the “Abolish ICE” campaign is not intended to open the borderswhich are guarded by the Customs and Border Protection agency. Instead, the activists say they hope to block ICE from deporting the economic migrants or refugees who get across the border, and who are seeking jobs and apartments as well as schools for their children.
But that no-deportations policy would allow many companies to hire illegals instead of Americans. That subsequent rush of millions of migrants would force down wages for Americans and for legal immigrants, spike stock values on Wall Street, force up rents and housing prices, and also overcrowd public K-12 schools.
I bet he loves Bernie Sanders, Obama, And Hillary Clinton. Liberals Blame Trump for this BS.
A gunman has opened fire at a local newspaper office in Maryland, killing five people and injuring others in what police said was a “targeted attack”.
Staff at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis said the attacker, armed with a shotgun and smoke grenades, shot through a glass door into the newsroom.
US media have named a suspect held by police as Jarrod Ramos. He is reported to have unsuccessfully sued the newspaper group in 2012 for defamation.
Police have not confirmed a motive.
They said a white male suspect in his late 30s was taken into custody at the scene of the shooting and was being questioned.
Investigators were said to be looking into “violent” threats that had been made against the Capital Gazette via social media.
“This was a targeted attack on the Capital Gazette,” said William Krampf, deputy chief of Anne Arundel County Police. He added that the gunman “entered the building with a shotgun and looked for his victims as he walked through the lower level”.
County executive Steve Schuh told CNN that the suspect was hiding under a desk in the building when police officers arrived “within 60 seconds” of receiving news of the incident. He said there was “no exchange of fire”.
The Capital Gazette publishes several local newspapers, including a daily called The Capital, which has a history dating back to 1884. It is owned by the Baltimore Sun Media Group.
Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionArmed officers escorted more than 170 people from the building in Annapolis
The victims have been identified by police. They are:
Wendi Winters, 65, reporter
Rebecca Smith, 34, sales assistant
Robert Hiaasen, 59, editor
Gerald Fischman, 61, editorial writer
John McNamara, 56, reporter and editor
Author and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen paid tribute to his brother, who was killed in the shooting, calling him “one of the most gentle and funny people I’ve ever known”.
Speaking to reporters, Mr Krampf said an item “we believed to be an explosive device” had been found at the premises and destroyed. He said it turned out to be a smoke bomb.
He added that more than 170 people had been escorted safely from the building, which houses other businesses.
‘War zone’
Staff at the Capital Gazette’s titles were left reeling from the shooting, but vowed to put out an edition on Friday.
“There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload,” tweeted reporter Phil Davis.
Mr Davis described the shooting at the newspaper’s office in Annapolis, just east of Washington DC, as being “like a war zone”.
He said that people were still hiding under their desks when the gunman stopped shooting. “I don’t know why. I don’t know why he stopped,” he told the Baltimore Sun.
Chase Cook, a reporter, tweeted: “I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow.”
Image copyrightAFPImage captionCapital Gazette reporters were pictured working on the next day’s newspaper from the car park
President Donald Trump was briefed on the attack. He tweeted that his “thoughts and prayers” were with the victims and their families.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders later condemned the attack on “innocent journalists doing their job”.
Strongly condemn the evil act of senseless violence in Annapolis, MD. A violent attack on innocent journalists doing their job is an attack on every American. Our prayers are with the victims and their friends and families.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said it had deployed counterterrorism teams to media organisations in and around New York City as a precaution.
Media captionHow US mass shootings are getting worse
Another staff member at the Capital Gazette, Selene San Felice, told CNN that her first reaction to the shooting was to lie down under her desk, adding that she attempted to exit through a rear door but it was locked.
Reporter Danielle Ohl said the newsroom was quite small, with “about 20 news staffers” and several advertising staff. “We are close. We are family. I am devastated,” she said.
Jimmy DeButts, the editor at the Capital Gazette, tweeted that he was “heartbroken” following the incident.
Devastated & heartbroken. Numb. Please stop asking for information/interviews. I’m in no position to speak, just know @capgaznews reporters & editors give all they have every day. There are no 40 hour weeks, no big paydays – just a passion for telling stories from our communty.
Phil, I can’t imagine what you and the entire Capital Gazette team are going through right now. Journalists shouldn’t have to fend off bullets in the newsroom while doing their jobs—this is not normal. Stay strong.
Phil Davis@PhilDavis_CG
There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload
The inspector general’s report on the FBI’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state has already documented just how riddled the bureau was with bias against Donald Trump when he was the Republican candidate for president.
Now, one conservative commentator is suggesting the report holds proof that the corruption went all the way to the top of the Justice Department.
In a Twitter post last week, Paul Sperry, who has written extensively about the FBI in columns published by the New York Post, hinted that Inspector General Michael Horowitz could have solid grounds to show “obstruction” in the Clinton email case – by none other than former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Sperry wrote that Horowitz testified on Capitol Hill about parts of his report that remain classified, and Sperry had a guess as to some of what it contained.
BREAKING: IG Horowitz testifies material implicating Lynch in possible obstruction of Hillary email case is contained in classified section of his report and that he will work with Congress to declassify it. Here is the possible smoking gun:
“BREAKING: IG Horowitz testifies material implicating Lynch in possible obstruction of Hillary email case is contained in classified section of his report and that he will work with Congress to declassify it,” Sperry wrote. “Here is the smoking gun …”
Sperry linked to one of his own columns in the Post from July 2017 that described a document indicating that Lynch had assured Clinton’s presidential campaign that she would make sure the FBI did not “go too far” in its investigation of the email case.
From even public information about the case, it’s pretty clear that Lynch kept a tight rein on it.
Did Loretta Lynch rein in the FBI’s Hillary Clinton investigation?
Former FBI Director James Comey has publicly testified that Lynch wanted him to refer to the Clinton probe as a “matter” rather than an “investigation.” (Comey pretended he was “confused” and “concerned” by the semantic choice. Can a man who made it to the top of the FBI be that obtuse? The answer is “no.”)
But if the IG report really does contain proof that Lynch put a limit on the FBI’s investigation to benefit the woman most of the political world expected to be elected president of the United States in November 2016, it puts things in a different light.
Lynch’s now infamous meeting with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Arizona on June 27, 2016, has never been adequately explained. The then-attorney general’s story that the two had crossed paths by accident never passed the laugh test.
On Sunday, The Washington Times reported that Clinton himself told investigators he only went to see Lynch on her Justice Department airplane because he did not want to be rude when he found out the two were parked at the same facility.
That doesn’t seem likely, to put it mildly.
What seems very possible, though, is that Lynch was keenly interested in keeping her job as the attorney general. And that Bill Clinton was interested in sounding her out about how much control she was exercising over the investigation into Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton might have been in a position to guarantee Lynch would stay on as attorney general if Hillary won the election — or remind Lynch of a guarantee already made.
Does the still-classified section of the IG report hold proof that Lynch was willing to keep the FBI from going “too far” in investigating Hillary?
Democrats and the liberal media have been claiming – ludicrously – that Horowitz’s damning report actually cleared the FBI. It actually exposed the agency as filled with bias, staffed by agents who thought nothing of using the bureau’s awesome powers to try to rig a presidential election.
That was bad enough. But the biggest shoe might still be waiting to drop.
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The Department of Homeland Security is warning employees of an increased level of threat to their safety with a series of violent acts taken against them and their children due to the current debate over immigration policy.
In a letter sent to employees, the department said there is a “heightened threat against DHS employees,” according to ABC Radio.
“This assessment is based on specific and credible threats that have been levied against certain DHS employees and a sharp increase in the overall number of general threats against DHS employees,” Claire Grady, acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, said in the letter.
Threats seem to have advanced well beyond mere talk. The department reported that one official living in Washington, D.C., found a decapitated and burnt animal carcass on his porch.
The threats come as some elected Democrat officials have engaged in extreme rhetoric against those with whom they disagree politically.
California Democrat Maxine Waters, for instance, urged followers to attack Trump administration officials and their children at their homes and public places like restaurants.
Democrat acolytes seem to have taken such suggestions to heart and have stepped up pressure on Republicans in a multitude of venues, including in private life. In the last few days, Trump Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was refused service in a Virginia restaurant, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was chased out of a D.C. Mexican restaurant, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was harassed in a Movie theater.
Last year a Democrat operative who had worked for Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders went on a shooting rampage at a Virginia baseball park in an effort to kill Republican members of Congress. Several were wounded, including House Majority Whip, Republican Steve Scalise, who has been seriously and permanently crippled by the wounds.
He said that God told him Ted Cruz would be president. Now either God made a mistake or Glenn Beck is a liar.
The conservative mogul’s business woes continue via another round of layoffs and the death of a sale to the billionaires backing fellow right-wing media giant Ben Shapiro.
Conservative media firebrand Glenn Beck’s multimedia empire TheBlaze appears to be on its last legs after another round of layoffs and after a prospective high-profile buyer lost interest.
The right-wing cable and digital media company—founded by Beck shortly before he exited Fox News in 2011—fired another round of staffers this week, shrinking a workforce that has already been reduced to less than 50 employees, according to two sources who spoke with The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity. The two sources also confirmed that more than a dozen employees had been laid off over the past several days.
Making matters worse, the company’s hopes for a bailout from a fellow right-wing titan did not go as planned.
Glenn Beck sided with liberals like Samantha Bee over Trump.
A potential lifeboat in the form of a proposed sale to the billionaire owners of conservative commentator Ben Shapiro’s website The Daily Wire now appears unlikely. A source familiar with the negotiations told The Daily Beast that talks between the two parties broke down and the sale is now effectively dead.
TheBlaze once generated a reported $90 million in revenue annually, but has been in a slow motion implosion over the past several years. Top-level managerial shakeups, seemingly ceaseless layoffs, and office closures have depleted morale, tanked the site’s web traffic, and caused cable distributors to jump ship.
Following a major round of layoffs last year, which accounted for one-third of the website’s staff, the remaining skeleton crew grew further discouraged as basic requests went unanswered or took months to accomplish.
Beck’s flair for conspiratorial, right-wing rants were largely seen as a precursor to the Trumpism that has overtaken conservatism in recent years. But as his empire began to crumble, right around the time Trump was elected to office, Beck—who likened Trump to Hitler—began to team up with mainstream media and liberal celebrities, rebranding himself as a born-again champion of civility.
That seemingly failed, however, as his business continued to struggle. Ultimately, he flip-flopped on that conciliatory reinvention, donning Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” hat in May and declaring on-air: “I will vote for him in 2020! Gladly!”
The Beck empire’s downfall came into the national spotlight when millennial right-wing provocateur Tomi Lahren departed from TheBlaze in a dramatic and highly public fight that underscored the outlet’s internal tumult.
Company managers took months to remove Lahren’s image from web apps associated with TheBlaze and, according to one insider source, a website redesign that was supposed to be completed months ago still remains a work-in-progress.
Beck is also purging himself of many of his more expensive possessions, leading some employees to suspect that the conservative talk show host may be looking to close up shop at TheBlaze’s headquarters in Dallas and relocate to Los Angeles, where the company still maintains a smaller office.
The conservative firebrand acknowledged on his show on Thursday that he was looking to sell his house in the Dallas suburbs—a decision people close to Beck attribute to his fear that the economy is in the midst of another housing bubble.
“I am putting my home up for sale because I fear this economy as we are headed for trouble and I don’t want to be sitting with a big huge house,” Beck said on the radio earlier this week.
Earlier this year, Beck’s radio company Mercury Radio Arts put the 1966 DC-9 private jet on the market. A source familiar with Beck’s thinking said the radio host was unhappy that the aging plane could not travel long distances without needing to refuel.
One source familiar told The Daily Beast that the former Fox News host has also been selling and giving away some of the trinkets he keeps in TheBlaze’s office, including statues and costumes that the host had collected over the years.
