Former U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration “derailed” a DEA operation targeting Hezbollah’s multi-million-dollar drug trafficking activities in Latin America to secure approval of the controversial Iran nuclear deal, reports Politico.
Iran’s narco-terrorist proxy Hezbollah is involved in a plethora of criminal activities in Latin America, ranging from money laundering to massive drug trafficking.
“This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” David Asher, a veteran Pentagon illicit finance expert deployed to combat the alleged Hezbollah criminal enterprise, told Politico, referring to the DEA operation, dubbed Project Cassandra. “They [Obama administration] serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”
For years, the U.S. military has been sounding the alarm on the threat against the United States posed by the presence of Iran and Hezbollah in America’s backyard — Latin America.
However, the Obama administration argued that Iran’s influence in the Western Hemisphere was “waning,” reported the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’ watchdog arm, in late September 2014, months before world powers and Iran approved the nuclear deal in July 2015.
In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.
The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.
Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC), the chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, chastised the Obama administration for undermining the DEA operation.
In a statement, Pittenger, the vice chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Task Force to Investigate Terrorism Financing, declared:
The nexus between terrorists organizations, including Hezbollah, and Latin American drug cartels is a subversive alliance which provides hundreds of millions of dollars to global jihad. “The witnesses providing account of the Obama administration derailing and stonewalling the prosecution of this illicit funding investigation has resulted in the most serious consequences of the misguided and injudicious actions of President Obama and his team.”
In June 2016, Michael Braun, a former DEA agent, told lawmakers that Hezbollah is generating hundreds of millions from a “cocaine money laundering scheme” in Latin America that “provides a never-ending source of funding” for its terrorist operations in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Iran has deployed thousands of Hezbollah militants to fight on behalf of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a move that has allowed the ruthless leader to remain in power.
Both the U.S. military and State Department have warned against the menace that Hezbollah and Iran’s presence in Latin America represents.
Politico reveals:
As Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.
The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.
Soon after U.S.-led world powers and Iran approved the nuclear pact, Obama predicted that Iran would use sanction relief funds to boost its terrorist proxies, namely Hezbollah, saying in August 2015:
Let’s stipulate that some of that money will flow to activities that we object to … Iran supports terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. It supports proxy groups that threaten our interests and the interests of our allies — including proxy groups who killed our troops in Iraq.
A day after the deal’s approval, Obama also said:
Do we think that with the sanctions coming down, that Iran will have some additional resources for its military and for some of the activities in the region that are a threat to us and a threat to our allies? I think that is a likelihood that they’ve got some additional resources. Do I think it’s a game-changer for them? No.
They are currently supporting Hezbollah, and there is a ceiling — a pace at which they could support Hezbollah even more, particularly in the chaos that’s taking place in Syria. So can they potentially try to get more assistance there? Yes.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Iran has dramatically increased its financial support to Hezbollah from $200 million to $800 million per year, two years after the nuclear deal was signed by Iran and world powers.
In 2010, John Brennan, Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and then CIA director, confirmed that former president’s administration was trying to build up “moderate elements” within Iran’s terror proxy Hezbollah.
“Hezbollah is a very interesting organization,” Brennan told a Washington conference, saying it had evolved from “purely a terrorist organization” to a militia and, ultimately, a prominent Shiite political party in Lebanon, reported Reuters.
A lawyer for the Trump presidential transition team is accusing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office of inappropriately obtaining transition documents as part of its Russia probe, including confidential attorney-client communications, privileged communications and thousands of emails without their knowledge.
In a letter obtained by Fox News and sent to House and Senate committees on Saturday, the transition team’s attorney alleges “unlawful conduct” by the career staff at the General Services Administration in handing over transition documents to the special counsel’s office.
The transition legal team argues the GSA “did not own or control the records in question” and the release of documents could be a violation of the 4th Amendment – which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Kory Langhofer, the counsel to Trump for America, wrote in Saturday’s letter that the GSA handed over “tens of thousands of emails” to Mueller’s probe without “any notice” to the transition.
The attorney said they discovered the “unauthorized disclosures” by the GSA on December 12th and 13th and raised concerns with the special counsel’s office.
“We understand that the special counsel’s office has subsequently made extensive use of the materials it obtained from the GSA, including materials that are susceptible to privilege claims,” Langhofer writes.
The transition attorney said the special counsel’s office also received laptops, cell phones and at least one iPad from the GSA.
Trump for America is the nonprofit organization that facilitated the transition between former President Barack Obama to President Trump.
The GSA, an agency of the United States government, provided the transition team with office space and hosted its email servers.
“We continue to cooperate fully with the special counsel and expect this process to wrap up soon,” Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Saturday.
The special counsel’s office declined to comment Saturday.
Langhofer wrote that some of the records obtained by the special counsel’s office from the GSA “have been leaked to the press by unknown persons.”
The transition lawyer also argued the actions “impair the ability of future presidential transition teams to candidly discuss policy and internal matters that benefit the country as a whole.”
Langhofer requests in the letter that Congress “act immediately to protect future presidential transitions from having their private records misappropriated by government agencies, particularly in the context of sensitive investigations intersecting with political motives.”
The letter was sent to the Senate Homeland Security and House Oversight Committees.
The committees did not immediately return a request for comment.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/16/trump-lawyer-mueller-improperly-obtained-transition-documents-in-russia-probe.html
Birmingham, ALABAMA — An organization partnered with a George Soros-financed group and led by a radical leftist who is the half-brother of the infamous controversial Rev. Al Sharpton has been diligently working over the past few weeks to register convicted felons across Alabama.
The aim of the effort has been to get as many felons as possible on the roster before last Monday, the deadline to register in order to vote in Alabama’s Dec. 12 senate special election that pits Republican Roy Moore against Democratic challenger Doug Jones. The man spearheading the campaign has stated outright that his effort is meant to ensure a Democratic victory in Alabama.
The thousands of felons reportedly newly registered over the past few weeks were most likely not included in any recent polling on the Alabama senate race put out by major firms.
Jones himself is tied to some of the specific organizations associated with the drive to register felons here. Indeed, as Breitbart News first reported, Jones spearheaded a project for a massively Soros-financed legal activist group demanding full voting rights be given to felons released from prison, including those convicted of murder, rape and other violent crimes.
AL.com reported that Pastor Kenneth Glasgow has been at the forefront of the statewide effort, which has successfully registered thousands of felons across Alabama in recent weeks. Glasgow has been aided in his efforts here by other Soros-financed groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The Village Voice previously described Glasgow, Sharpton’s half-brother, as an “ex-con and recovering crackhead turned street preacher.”
Glasgow is currently president of a group he founded in 1999 calling itself The Ordinary People Society (TOPS). And he is a former leader of another organization, the radical Free Alabama Movement (FAM), which has for years been making inroads into Alabama’s prison population.
Glasgow told AL.com that in the last month alone “I think we registered at least five- to ten-thousand people all over the state” – referring to his efforts here in Alabama.
“I’ve got people all over the state registering people with my TOPS branches in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, Montgomery, Enterprise, Dothan, Abbeville, Geneva, Gordon, Bessemer, we have a lot,” he added.
Speaking on his radio program, Glasgow charged that “swarming the polls” with newly registered convicts could swing the vote, pointing as a template to the Virginia governor’s race. In that state, Gov. Terry McAuliffe used his executive power in April to restore voting rights for over 200,000 felons.
“We have the chance to do the same thing they did in Virginia,” Glasgow stated. “We can turn it blue. Well not blue, but we can add some color. Make it pink or purple.”
Glasgow has been taking advantage of a change made last May, when Alabama’s Gov. Kay Ivey signed a law that defined a clause in the State constitution denying the right to vote to anyone who has committed a crime that demonstrates “moral turpitude.”
The new law generated a list of about 50 crimes that fit under the “moral turpitude” banner, including murder, kidnapping and sexual abuse. Glasgow was involved in the activism promoting the law.
This means that Glasgow is free to register felons whose crimes do not fit under the state’s definition of a “moral turpitude” conviction.
Glasgow’s activism is intended to fill the void left by Alabama’s legal refusal to actively notify potentially tens of thousands of former felons that they regained their voting rights. A federal judge in July sided with Alabama, affirming that the state does not need to make such notifications after Ivey signed the law restoring rights to some felons.
A Soros-funded group called the Campaign Legal Center filed the lawsuit against Alabama last year calling for a public educational campaign to inform felons of their regained right to vote. The litigation is still ongoing.
“This is not a Democratic or Republican issue; it’s a democracy issue with a lower case d,” Danielle Lang, a Campaign Legal Center lawyer, stated after spending a week earlier this month in Alabama holding educational clinics on the matter.
Besides funding from Soros, the Campaign Legal Center documents that it receives financing from the Soros-funded Tides Foundation and from the Soros-funded Brennan Center for Justice.
Doug Jones himself has spearheaded numerous Brennan projects, including one seeking full voting rights nationwide be given to all felons released from prison regardless of their crimes.
The Brennan Center has been the recipient of numerous grants from Soros’s Open Society Foundations totaling over $7,466,000 from 2000 to 2010 alone.
The Soros-funded ACLU of Alabama also filed a lawsuit seeking to force the state of Alabama to inform convicted felons that they can vote.
The ACLU has also worked with Glasgow’s TOPS to register felons. The groups co-hosted a Voter Rights Restoration training session in Selma, Alabama in July, after the law was first changed. The ACLU dedicated a special section of its website to getting supporters to register for the Alabama senate race. The organization has used its Twitter account in recent days to promote the voter registration drive in Alabama.
The Soros-funded Campaign Legal Center has released an Alabama Voting Rights Restoration Toolkit aiding felons in registering to vote. Soros’s Open Society is listed as a donor to the group.
The League of Women Voters of Alabama has also been advocating for voter turnout. Soros’s Open Society has donated to the League of Women Voters Education Fund.
The Soros-financed MoveOn.org, which advocates for voting restoration to felons, has been heavily active in Alabama, where they claim they have 43,000 members.
In October, Glasgow dismissed a lawsuit against Alabama state officials after they agreed to sign documents indicating they should not have prevented him from entering prisons for the purpose of registering felons. His lawsuit was facilitated by the NAACP, which is financed by Soros.
Earlier this week, Think Progress, a project of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, suggested that “tens of thousands of newly registered felons could swing (the) Alabama Senate election.”
Glasgow’s TOPS, which has been registering the Alabama felons, is financed by the Open Philanthropy Project, a non-profit financed by Cari Tuna and her husband, Dustin Moskovitz, co-founders of Facebook and Asana.
TOPS is openly partnered with the Soros-financed Drug Policy Alliance, which seeks to decriminalize drug offenses. The Alliance’s main aim, according to its website, is to create a world in which people “are no longer punished for what they put into their own bodies but only for crimes committed against others.”
Soros’s Open Society Foundations gave a whopping $50 million to the Alliance to aid its decriminalization efforts.
Breitbart News previously reported that Jones pushed reduced sentencing for drug offenders in an effort he spearheaded for the Soros-funded Brennan Center. Jones’s project sought to fundamentally transform the role of U.S. Attorneys from one of prosecuting criminals to activists that enact a so-called progressive criminal justice agenda.
Glasgow, meanwhile, has been petitioning for voting rights for felons in Alabama for over a decade, including in 2008 when he used TOPS to push for changes in law. “There would be a lot of difference in our legislators, our elected officials and our presidents that we’ve had,” he said at the time, referring to the possibility of felons voting. “It would definitely change the political spectrum of Alabama.”
Glasgow has been cited by the news media as the spokesperson for the Free Alabama Movement (FAM), a radical network that has been leading activism, including prison strikes, within Alabama’s prison population for years. FAM itself calls Glasgow its “outside” spokesman.
GAM has been advocating for the repeal of Alabama’s three strikes law. The group also demands a re-write of Alabama’s “drive-by-shooting law” to apply only to gang-related activity.
Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun, a founder of the FAM, has peddled conspiracy theories about the 13th amendment, which allows for “involuntary servitude” as “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Ra-Sun claimed the U.S. uses the 13th amendment “to maintain control” of “black people as tools or machines of production.” Glasgow has also repeatedly preached against the 13th amendment.
Last year, CNN reported on a national inmate strike that began in September 2016 organized by Glasgow’s FAM. Glasgow claimed to the news network that an inmate who had previously gone on a hunger strike was being denied water because of his activism, a charge refuted by the Alabama Department of Corrections. Glasgow told CNN the case drew the attention of activist lawyer Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative.
The Equal Justice Initiative is financed by Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Breitbart News previously reported that the Initiative is listed with five other groups on Doug Jones’s personal website as among organizations that Jones advocates for supporters to “get involved” with on “matters of justice and equality.”
Glasgow’s FAM has worked with the radical Industrial Workers of the World, as well as a slew of other far-left groups such as the Anarchist Black Cross Federation, the Black Autonomy Federation, the Black Militia Nation and the National Lawyers Guild.
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is famous for defending protesters from extremist groups who get arrested during disruption campaigns. A notable former member of the National Lawyers Guild is Bernardine Dohrn, the NLG’s first national student organizer. Dohrn was a leader of the Weather Underground anti-American domestic terrorist group along with her husband, former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.
Doug Jones is currently listed on the Democracy Restoration Act (DRA) information page of the Soros-financed Brennan Center’s website as among the “Groups and Individuals who support the DRA,” which calls for voting to be restored to convicted felons. Listed alongside Jones is the National Lawyers Guild.
Glasgow has been involved with his half-brother Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN). Glasgow keynoted a Montgomery, Alabama NAN anti-police demonstration in April 2013 over the Trayvon Martin case. The event was co-sponsored by TOPS.
In 2014, Sharpton opened a NAN office in Birmingham. “We will, out of this office, coordinate our work throughout the South against those new measures that have been designed to suppress the vote,” Sharpton said. “Make no mistake about it, these are designed to suppress the vote and we are here to fight against voter suppression.”
Sharpton’s national group boasts that it is involved in efforts to “support” voter registration while “fighting voter suppression” in numerous states, including Alabama.
Netanyahu tells Saban Forum in D.C. that half of Middle East believes that their respective countries could benefit from Israel ties
WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised concerns over the threat posed against Israel by Iran while addressing the Saban Forum taking place in Washington, D.C. via satellite from his office in Jerusalem.
To really understand Israel and the Middle East – subscribe to Haaretz
Iran has “ruthless commitment to terror” and “ruthless commitment to kill Jews,” much like Nazi Germany during World War II, the premier stressed while addressing the forum.
As the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu said he did not “have the luxury of discounting” threats to destroy the Jewish people, and for this reason he continues to speak about Iran.
skip – Netanyahu at Saban Forum
Netanyahu further echoed his statements from over the weekend, vowing to stop Iran from entrenching itself in Syria. On Friday, Israel allegedly struck an Iranian military base in Syria.
Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter
Email*Sign up
He called for the policy community in Washington D.C. to take the opportunity set up by U.S. President Donald Trump to “erase the great flaws” of the Iran nuclear deal, as its current status allows Tehran to build up a nuclear arsenal.
Netanyahu added that Israel will be the first to restore relations with Iran once its current regime falls, and that in the future, Israel will be “embraced openly by its Arab neighbors, rather than in secret as it’s done today.”
He further added that “half of the public in the Middle Eastern countries that were surveyed appreciate Israel’s strengths and assets” and that “they believe that their country could benefit from having ties with Israel.”
Excerpts of his speech were published on Saturday night, in which he vowed to stop Iran from entrenching itself in Syria.
The Saban Forum is an annual conference on U.S. policy in the Middle East organized by the Brookings Institution.
>>Israeli attempts to kick Iran out of Syria could escalate into war | Analysis
Other Israeli speakers at the event this year included former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and the new leader of the Labor Party, Avi Gabbay. Topics discussed included the Iran deal and Saudi Arabia’s role in the Middle East.
Later on Sunday, Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will speak publicly for the first time about the Trump administration’s attempts to facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Kushner will talk about the administration’s peace efforts together with Haim Saban, the Israeli-born business mogul who funds the annual event.
ABC News announced Saturday that Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross would be suspended for four weeks without pay over a botched “exclusive” about former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
During a live “special report” Friday morning, Ross reported that Flynn would testify that Donald Trump had ordered him to make contact with Russians about foreign policy while he was still a candidate. The report raised the specter of Trump’s impeachment and sent the stock market plummeting.
Later in the day, ABC issued a “clarification” to Ross’s report, saying that Trump’s alleged directive came after he’d been elected president. Ross himself appeared on “World News Tonight,” several hours after the initial report, to clarify his error.
In a statement, ABC News said Ross’ report “had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process.”
“It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience,” ABC’s statement added. “These are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday.”
