Why Is That People Ignore Germany Being Controlled By Russia But Tell Us About Russian Collusion?
BRUSSELS (AP) — In a combative start to his NATO visit, President Donald Trump asserted Wednesday that a pipeline project has made Germany “totally controlled” by and “captive to Russia” and blasted NATO allies’ defense spending, opening what was expected to be a fraught summit with a list of grievances involving American allies.
Trump, in a testy exchange with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, took issue with the U.S. protecting Germany when the European nation is making deals with Russia.
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President Trump: “Germany is a captive of Russia.”
Trump and NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg discuss plans for the summit before a bilateral breakfast in Brussels.
“I have to say, I think it’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia where we’re supposed to be guarding against Russia,” Trump said during a breakfast with Stoltenberg, his first event since arriving in Brussels. “We’re supposed to protect you against Russia but they’re paying billions of dollars to Russia and I think that’s very inappropriate.”
The president appeared to be referring to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would bring gas from Russia to Germany’s northeastern Baltic coast, bypassing Eastern European nations like Poland and Ukraine and doubling the amount of gas Russia can send directly to Germany. The vast undersea pipeline is opposed by the U.S. and some other EU members, who warn it could give Moscow greater leverage over Western Europe.
Trump said that, “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia” and urged NATO to look into the issue. Trump, who has been accused of being too cozy with Putin — a man accused of U.S. election meddling — was expected to see German Chancellor Angela Merkel later in the day.
Stoltenberg pushed back, stressing that NATO members have been able to work together despite their differences.
The dramatic exchange set the tone for what was already expected to be a tense day of meetings with leaders of the military alliance. Trump is expected to continue hammering jittery NATO allies about their military spending during the summit meeting, which comes amid increasingly frayed relations between the “America first” president and the United States’ closest traditional allies.
“The United States is paying far too much and other countries are not paying enough, especially some. So we’re going to have a meeting on that,” Trump said as he arrived at the breakfast, describing the situation as “disproportionate and not fair to the taxpayers of the United States and we’re going to make it fair.”
“They will spend more,” he later predicted. “I have great confidence they’ll be spending more.”
Trump has been pushing NATO members to reach their agreed-to target of spending 2 percent of their gross domestic products on national defense by 2024 and has accused those who don’t of freeloading off the U.S.
“Many countries in NATO, which we are expected to defend, are not only short of their current commitment of 2% (which is low), but are also delinquent for many years in payments that have not been made,” he tweeted Tuesday while en route to Europe, asking: “Will they reimburse the U.S.?”
That’s not how the spending words. The 2 percent represents the amount each country aims to spend on its own defense, not some kind of direct payment to NATO or the U.S.
NATO estimates that 15 members, or just over half, will meet the benchmark by 2024 based on current trends.
During his campaign, Trump called NATO “obsolete” and suggested the U.S. might not come to the defense of members if they found themselves under attack — a shift that would represent a fundamental realignment of the modern world order. He also called Brussels a “hell hole” and “a mess.” Trump has moderated his language somewhat since taking office, but has continued to dwell on the issue, even as many NATO members have agreed to up their spending.
Stoltenberg, for his part, credited Trump for spurring NATO nations to spend more on defense, noting that the Europeans and Canada are projected to spend around $266 billion more by 2024.
“We all agree that we have to do more,” he said, describing last year as marking the biggest increase in defense spending across Europe and Canada in a generation.
Trump interjecting, asking Stoltenberg why he thought that had happened.
“It’s also because of your leadership, because your clear message,” Stoltenberg responded.
Arriving for his meeting, Trump had taken credit for the spending, telling the NATO chief that “because of me they’ve raised about $40 billion over the last year. So I think the secretary general likes Trump. He may be the only one, but that’s OK with me.”
Trump was also participating in a welcome ceremony, a meeting of the North Atlantic Council and a working dinner with some of the same leaders he berated over trade during his last world leaders summit in Canada last month.
Brussels is the first stop of a week-long European tour that will include stops in London and Scotland, as well as a highly anticipated meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Trump predicted as he departed Washington that the “easiest” leg of his journey would be his scheduled sit-down Putin — a comment that did little to reassure allies fretting over his potential embrace of a Russian leader U.S. intelligence officials accuse of meddling in the 2016 elections to help Trump win.
On the eve of the NATO summit, European Council President Donald Tusk pushed back against Trump’s constant criticism of European allies and urged him to remember who his friends are when he meets with Putin in Helsinki.
“Dear America, appreciate your allies, after all you don’t have all that many,” he said.
Since the moment Justice Kennedy stepped down, an intense, mostly friendly battle has been waged in public and in private over Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Some of the claims are silly. He’s no “squish.” He’s a brilliant jurist who’s written some of the best and most influential appellate-court decisions in the United States. And whisper campaigns that call him the “low-energy Jeb Bush pick” or claim that he’d somehow be a “compromise” nominee are simply wrong.
Let’s put it this way: If Kavanaugh is some sort of deep-cover David Souter, he’s done a remarkably good job of hiding it, building a mountain of stellar originalist jurisprudence. Ed Whelan has been doing yeoman’s work over on National Review’s Bench Memos blog, righteously defending Kavanaugh’s record on religious liberty, the Second Amendment, free speech, immigration, and the administrative state. And Ed isn’t alone. Pieces from former Kavanaugh law clerks at The Federalistand at NRO have ably defended him from attacks and highlighted the best parts of his jurisprudence.
In evaluating Kavanaugh, there’s only one reasonable conclusion to draw: He’d be an excellent Supreme Court justice, and he would make the Court substantially more originalist and rigorous.
But saying that he’s an excellent pick is not the same thing as saying that he’s the best available pick. There’s a difference between a home run and a grand slam. The question — given this unique moment in which the Trump administration is listening to the best conservative legal minds, Republicans control the Senate, and the filibuster is a thing of the past — is whether Kavanaugh represents the grand slam.
I have my concerns, and those concerns are rooted in two cases that have been oft-misrepresented in the debate over Kavanaugh but are consequential nonetheless. The first is Seven-Sky v. Holder(better known as Kavanaugh’s Obamacare case). The second is Priests for Life v. HHS (an Obamacare contraception-mandate case.) In both cases, his reasoning is sharp and his legal decisions are defensible. In both cases, however, I believe he made important errors.
Let’s deal with Seven-Sky first. Judge Kavanaugh wrote an opinion dissenting from the majority’s determination that it had jurisdiction to hear the plaintiff’s challenge to Obamacare. He did not reach an opinion on the underlying merits of the case, which is to say, on the question of whether Obamacare was constitutional.
The legal details matter here. Kavanaugh held that the Anti-Injunction Act applied to bar the plaintiffs’ suit. As he explained, “Under the Anti-Injunction Act, a taxpayer seeking to challenge a tax law must first pay the disputed tax and then bring a refund suit, at which time the courts will consider the taxpayer’s legal arguments. Or a taxpayer may raise legal arguments in defending against an IRS enforcement action. But a taxpayer may not bring a pre-enforcement suit.” The challenge to Obamacare was a “pre-enforcement suit” and was thus barred:
The Anti-Injunction Act applies here because plaintiffs’ pre-enforcement suit, if successful, would prevent the IRS from assessing or collecting tax penalties from citizens who do not have health insurance. To be sure, the Affordable Care Act labels its exaction for failure to have health insurance as a tax “penalty” and not as a “tax.” But the Anti-Injunction Act still applies. That’s because the Affordable Care Act requires that the tax penalty for failure to maintain health insurance “be assessed and collected in the same manner as an assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68” of the Tax Code. 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(g)(1). And penalties under subchapter B of chapter 68 in turn must “be assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes.” 26 U.S.C. § 6671(a) (emphasis added). It follows from those two provisions, taken together, that these Affordable Care Act penalties must be assessed and collected “in the same manner as taxes.”
This is a defensible reading of the relevant Obamacare provisions. Indeed, while the majority in the most consequential Obamacare case to reach SCOTUS, NFIB v. Sebelius et al., did not apply the Anti-Injunction Act, it did hold that the penalty was a tax. That was a reasonable response to the statutory language, but it was wrong. The Obamacare penalty was a penalty, not a tax. Justices Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy made the better argument, in their stinging dissent:
In answering that question we must, if “fairly possible,” Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 62 (1932), construe the provision to be a tax rather than a mandate-with-penalty, since that would render it constitutional rather than unconstitutional (ut res magis valeat quam pereat). But we cannot rewrite the statute to be what it is not. “‘“[A]lthough this Court will often strain to construe legislation so as to save it against constitutional attack, it must not and will not carry this to the point of perverting the purpose of a statute . . .” or judicially rewriting it.’” Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833, 841 (1986) (quoting Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U. S. 500, 515 (1964), in turn quoting Scales v. United States, 367 U. S. 203, 211 (1961)). In this case, there is simply no way, “without doing violence to the fair meaning of the words used,” Grenada County Supervisors v. Brogden, 112 U. S. 261, 269 (1884), to escape what Congress enacted: a mandate that individuals maintain minimum essential coverage, enforced by a penalty.
Our cases establish a clear line between a tax and a penalty: “‘[A] tax is an enforced contribution to provide for the support of government; a penalty . . . is an exaction imposed by statute as punishment for an unlawful act.’” United States v. Reorganized CF&I Fabricators of Utah, Inc., 518 U. S. 213, 224 (1996) (quoting United States v. La Franca, 282 U. S. 568, 572 (1931)). In a few cases, this Court has held that a “tax” imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. But we have never held — never — that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax. We have never held that any exaction imposed for violation of the law is an exercise of Congress’ taxing power — even when the statute calls it a tax, much less when (as here) the statute repeatedly calls it a penalty. When an act “adopt[s] the criteria of wrongdoing” and then imposes a monetary penalty as the “principal consequence on those who transgress its standard,” it creates a regulatory penalty, not a tax. Child Labor Tax Case, 259 U. S. 20, 38 (1922).
While it is most certainly true that Judge Kavanaugh did not rule on the underlying constitutionality of what he called the “tax penalty” (and he offered a ringing critique of the government’s Commerce Clause justifications for the individual mandate), he got the fundamental question (tax or penalty?) wrong, and Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas got it right. That’s a cause for some concern.
There is also cause for concern in his reasoning in Priests for Life. His dissent reached the right result, but his reasoning was dangerously flawed in one key respect: He excessively inflated the government’s interest in facilitating access to contraceptives.
As he explained in his opinion, he had to consider three questions: Did the contraception mandate “substantially burden” Priests for Life’s “exercise of religion”? If so, were the Obama administration’s regulations justified by a “compelling” governmental interest? And, finally, if there was a compelling governmental interest, did those regulations represent the “least restrictive means” of advancing that interest? Here were Judge Kavanaugh’s conclusions:
First, under Hobby Lobby, the regulations substantially burden the religious organizations’ exercise of religion because the regulations require the organizations to take an action contrary to their sincere religious beliefs (submitting the form) or else pay significant monetary penalties.
Second, that said, Hobby Lobby strongly suggests that the Government has a compelling interest in facilitating access to contraception for the employees of these religious organizations.
Third, this case therefore comes down to the least restrictive means question.
Judge Kavanaugh held that the Obama administration had not chosen the least restrictive means to advance its allegedly “compelling” interest, and therefore would have ruled for Priests for Life.
The problem is with his second conclusion. Here’s how he explained it later in his opinion:
Justice Kennedy strongly suggested in his Hobby Lobby concurring opinion — which appears to be controlling de facto if not also de jure on this particular issue — that the Government generally has a compelling interest in facilitating access to contraception for women employees.
Is that correct? And if his summary of Justice Kennedy’s concurrence is correct, then was Judge Kavanaugh actually bound to follow it?
To understand why I believe Judge Kavanaugh’s reasoning is erroneous, it’s important to give a bit of background on Hobby Lobby. The case was a 5–4 decision, with Justice Kennedy filing a separate concurring opinion. Justice Alito’s majority opinion simply assumed (without holding) that the government’s interest in providing the “challenged contraceptive methods” was compelling within the meaning of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
But before making that assumption, Justice Alito wrote these vitally important words: RFRA, he said, “requires the Government to demonstrate that the compelling interest test is satisfied through application of the challenged law ‘to the person’ — the particular claimant whose sincere exercise of religion is being substantially burdened.”
To put it plainly, according to Alito’s reasoning, under RFRA the government would have to establish a compelling governmental interest in facilitating access to contraceptives not just for women generally but as applied to the specific plaintiffs.
Justice Kennedy, in his concurrence, says this:
It is important to confirm that a premise of the Court’s opinion is its assumption that the HHS regulation here at issue furthers a legitimate and compelling interest in the health of female employees.
It’s important to note that an “assumption” is not a holding. Moreover, this “assumption” doesn’t fully grapple with Alito’s statement that the compelling-interest analysis applies to the “particular claimant whose sincere exercise of religion is being substantially burdened” — in this case, Priests for Life.
Yet Kavanaugh glided past Alito’s language and applied the Kennedy “assumption” to the “employees of these religious organizations.” This application was not compelled by Kennedy’s concurrence, and it ultimately fails as a matter of logic and reason when applied to Priests for Life.
While the government may well deem that contraceptives provide many general benefits (and Kavanaugh outlines those benefits in his opinion), that is not the same thing as holding that those general benefits are sufficiently compelling as applied to the employees of a small religious nonprofit. After all, no one is forced to work for Priests for Life, its employees undertake their duties as part of a religious mission, and it would even be within the rights of Priests for Life to bar its employees from using contraceptives.
Where is the compelling governmental interest in facilitating access to drugs that a religious employer may prohibit as a condition of employment?
Again, I outline these concerns not because I believe Judge Kavanaugh is a “squish” or because I believe his opinions were indefensible. I simply think his reasoning was flawed — and flawed in two critically important, high-profile cases. When deciding between excellent candidates (and Trump’s short list includes only excellent candidates), it’s worth considering — as I said above — whether a nominee is a grand slam or “only” a home run. I’m simply not sure that Kavanaugh is the grand slam.
This Is What They Where Doing But No Charges. We Are A Country With No Laws.
The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office dropped all charges Friday against people awaiting trial for allegedly rioting during President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day.
The attorney’s office still had a few last words for protesters in a statement made after filing the motion to dismiss.
Don’t Worry The Taxpayers Should Pay For Things These Idiots Destroyed.
“The destruction that occurred during these criminal acts was in sharp contrast to the peaceful demonstrations and gatherings that took place over the Inauguration weekend in the District of Columbia, and created a danger for all who were nearby,” the statement said.
These are children expressing themselves I’m sure.
The attorney’s office had already dropped charges against 150 of the defendants after the first six alleged rioters were acquitted, WaPo reported. Prosecution sometimes used videos they said showed defendants smashing windows, but jurors said the videos were too fuzzy to draw conclusions.
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.
A secret memo marked “URGENT” detailed how the House Democratic Caucus’s server went “missing” soon after it became evidence in a cybersecurity probe. The secret memo also said more than “40 House offices may have been victims of IT security violations.”
In the memo, Congress’s top law enforcement official, Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving, along with Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko, wrote, “We have concluded that the employees [Democratic systems administrator Imran Awan and his family] are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems and thereby members’ capacity to serve constituents.”
The memo, addressed to the Committee on House Administration (CHA) and dated Feb. 3, 2017, was recently reviewed and transcribed by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The letter bolsters TheDCNF’s previous reporting about the missingserver and evidence of fraudon Capitol Hill.
It details how the caucus server, run by then-caucus Chairman Rep. Xavier Becerra, was secretly copied by authorities after the House Inspector General (IG) identified suspicious activity on it, but the Awans’ physical access was not blocked.
But after, the report reads, the server appears to have been secretly replaced with one that looked similar.
The memo called for firing the Pakistani-born aides, revoking all their computer accounts, and changing the locks on any door they had access to.
Rep. Louie Gohmert — a Texas Republican on the House Committee on the Judiciary who has done oversight work on the case — said the missing server contained copies of Congress members’ emails.
“They put 40 members of Congress’s data on one server … That server, with that serial number, has disappeared,” he said.
Multiple sources connected to the investigation told TheDCNF that shortly after an IG report came out identifying the House Democratic Caucus server as key evidence in a criminal probe, the evidence was stolen.
“They [the Awans] deliberately turned over a fake server” to falsify evidence, one official close to the CHA alleged. “It was a breach. The data was completely out of [members’] possession.”
The six-page letter says:
• In September of 2016 … the CHA and [IG] briefed the former Chairman of the Democratic Caucus about suspicious activity related to their server that the [IG] identified. As a result, the former Chairman of the Democratic Caucus directed the CAO to copy the data from their server and two computers.
• The CHA directed the IG to refer the matter to the US Capitol Police. The USCP initiated an investigation that continues to this day.
• In late 2016, the former Chairman of the Democratic Caucus announced his intention to resign from Congress to assume a new position. The CAO and [sergeant-at-arms] worked with the Chairman to account for his inventory, including the one server.
• While reviewing the inventory, the CAO discovered that the serial number of the server did not match that of the one imaged in September. [Investigators] also discovered that the server in question [the replacement server] was still operating under the employee’s control, contrary to the explicit instructions of the former chairman to turn over all equipment and fully cooperate with the inquiry and investigation. [A House source said the “employee” was Abid Awan.]
• The USCP interviewed relevant staff regarding the missing server.
• On January 24, 2017, the CAO acquired the [replacement] server from the control of the employees and transferred that server to the USCP.
President Donald Trump referenced the Democratic Caucus’ missing server in a tweet. But because the letter to the CHA was kept secret, many news outlets have not grasped that the House’s top cop documented a “missing server” connected to the Democratic Caucus.
The timeline laid out in the letter also shows that Becerra — now California’s Democratic attorney general — failed to ensure that the Awans didn’t have access to House computer systems during the 2016 election, which was wrought with cybersecurity scandals.
“The Caucus Chief of Staff requested one of the shared employees to not provide IT services or access their computers,” it read. “This shared employee continued.” It’s unclear why that request was not granted or why it was a request rather than an order.
A House official close to the probe said the employee was Abid, who was not on Becerra or the Caucus’s payroll. The official said Becerra Chief of Staff Sean McCluskie apparently knew Abid was accessing Caucus servers. According to payroll records, Abid’s sister-in-law, Hina Alvi, was the Caucus’ systems administrator.
Becerra has refused to comment, citing an ongoing criminal investigation.
The February 2017 memo itemizes “numerous and egregious violations of House IT security” by members of the Awan family, including using Congress members’ usernames and “the unauthorized storage of sensitive House information outside the House.”
“These employees accessed user accounts and computers for offices that did not employ them, without the knowledge and permission of the impacted Member’s office,” it said, adding, “4 of the employees accessed the Democratic Caucus computers 5,735 times.” More than 100 office computers were open to access from people not on the office’s staff, it said.
Chris Gowen — a former aide to Hillary Clinton who is now serving as Imran’s attorney — told TheDCNF, “There is no missing server and never was.”
He didn’t provide any support for his claim, which is contrary to evidence Kiko and Irving presented to Congress.
The memo said the CHA possesses voluminous evidence, including, “Interview notes with House Members’ Chiefs of Staff,” and “Logon activity and computer access logs.” Prosecutors have not brought charges.
The Awans were banned from Congress’s computer network the day the letter was sent, and Kiko held a briefing to convey the message to chiefs of staff for members who employed them.
But Democrats claim they were never told about any of the cybersecurity issues itemized in the urgent memo. Rep. Jackie Speier — a California Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who employed Imran and his wife, Hina Alvi — said she never heard of any missing server.
Joaquin Castro of Texas — another Democratic intelligence committee member who employed one of the Awans — told TheDCNF that Kiko never told him of any cybersecurity issues whatsoever and that the Awan probe was instead described as a theft issue.
Indeed, the CHA issued only one public statement on the case and titled it the “House Theft Investigation” — wording that avoids cybersecurity words while political news coverage raged about other cybersecurity issues in the 2016 election.
Yet even the alleged theft has not resulted in criminal charges — even though the letter also says House authorities have “purchase orders and vouchers” that allegedly show procurement fraud, as well as testimony from a Democratic chief of staff to Rep. Yvette Clarke, who warned of procurement fraud.
The FBI arrested Imran at the airport in July 2017 for alleged bank fraud that occurred six months prior, and Democrats have since claimed that the case is about nothing but bank fraud. Bank fraud does not explain why the Awans were kicked off the House network concurrent with the urgent memo, which did not cite bank fraud.
A Democratic IT aide who alleged that Imran solicited a bribe from him told TheDCNF he believes members of Congress are playing dumb and covering the matter up. Wendy Anderson, a former chief of staff to New York Rep. Yvette Clarke, told House investigators that she suspected that her predecessor, Shelley Davis, was working with Abid on a theft scheme, but Clarke refused to fire Abid until outside investigators got involved, TheDCNF reported.
Eighteen months after the evidence was recounted in the urgent memo, prosecution appears to have stalled for reasons not publicly explained. Imran is in court July 3 for a possible plea deal in the bank fraud case. Gohmert said the FBI has refused to accept evidence demonstrating alleged House misconduct, and some witnesses with first-hand knowledge say the bureau has not interviewed them.
Imran Awan: A Continuing DCNF Investigative Group Series
The Awans and their associates collected more than $5 million in pay from congressional offices, often drawing chief-of-staff level pay though there is reason to believe many didn’t even show up. The House’s internal probe found they logged into servers they had no affiliation with, used members’ usernames, covered their tracks, and persisted even after being fired.
The money is broken down by year, congressional office and family member paid:
Imran, Abid and Jamal Awan and Hina Alvi, Natalia Sova, Rao Abbas, Hasseb Rana, and Muhammad Awan.
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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