Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and John Kerry both hate America.
The Boston Globe reported on Friday that former Secretary of State John Kerry has been secretly working with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif to save the Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration has strongly criticized and might renegotiate or cancel within the next two weeks.
The Boston Globe describes Kerry’s activities as “shadow diplomacy” and an “aggressive yet stealthy” effort to save “one of his most significant accomplishments”:
John Kerry’s bid to save one of his most significant accomplishments as secretary of state took him to New York on a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago, where, more than a year after he left office, he engaged in some unusual shadow diplomacy with a top-ranking Iranian official.
He sat down at the United Nations with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss ways of preserving the pact limiting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It was the second time in about two months that the two had met to strategize over salvaging a deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration, according to a person briefed on the meetings.
With the Iran deal facing its gravest threat since it was signed in 2015, Kerry has been on an aggressive yet stealthy mission to preserve it, using his deep lists of contacts gleaned during his time as the top US diplomat to try to apply pressure on the Trump administration from the outside. President Trump, who has consistently criticized the pact and campaigned in 2016 on scuttling it, faces a May 12 deadline to decide whether to continue abiding by its terms.
Kerry also met last month with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and he’s been on the phone with top European Union official Federica Mogherini, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal the private meetings. Kerry has also met with French President Emmanuel Macron in both Paris and New York, conversing over the details of sanctions and regional nuclear threats in both French and English.
Boston Globe Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Matt Viser sought to capture how both sides of the partisan divide are responding to the news of Kerry’s “unusual” activities:
As John Kerry seeks to save the Iran deal, supporters see unflagging energy even amid potential failure. Critics may see something else: a former officeholder working with foreign officials to potentially undermine policy aims of a current administration.
As Seth Mandel of the New York Post pointed out, the “supporters” half of Viser’s formulation is a matter of partisan opinion, while the “critics” half is a literal description of what Kerry is actually doing. One suspects mainstream media coverage of, say, Condoleeza Rice jetting around Europe to secretly undermine Barack Obama’s foreign policy in 2010 would not have praised her “unflagging energy.” The Obama administration veterans and sympathizers quoted in the Boston Globe piece sound an awful lot like people either ignoring the results of a presidential election or seeking to nullify it.
There is also the question of whether Kerry’s activities violate the Logan Act, that highly controversial and almost completely ignored piece of 18th-century regulation that expressly forbids private citizens from undermining U.S. foreign policy. The relevant U.S. Code reads as follows:
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
The Logan Act is something of a joke among legal scholars and political analysts, who often call for it to be repealed as obsolete rubbish because no one has ever been convicted under it… but it recently was employed as the pretext for action against President Trump’s first National Security Adviser, Gen. Mike Flynn.
Flynn was not actually charged under the Logan Act, but he pled guilty to making false statements during an investigation based upon it, as CNN explained in December 2017:
In court filings, Michael Flynn acknowledged he lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about calls with foreign officials, including the Russian ambassador, to try to influence the outcome of a UN resolution in December 2016 while a member of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.
Michael Zeldin, a former prosecutor who was a special assistant to Mueller in the Justice Department, said the outreach to foreign governments by Trump’s team at the time the Obama administration was in dispute with Israel over the vote is “facially” a violation of the Logan Act.
Flynn’s contact with the Russian ambassador “seems to violate what the Logan Act intended to prevent,” Zeldin said. He added that even though the Logan Act hasn’t been used successfully “it doesn’t mean that Mueller wouldn’t consider using it to pressure defendants.”
The New York Times reported in February 2017 that Obama advisers heard about Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and “grew suspicious that perhaps there had been a secret deal between the incoming team and Moscow, which could violate the rarely enforced, two-century-old Logan Act barring private citizens from negotiating with foreign powers in disputes with the United States.”
In December 2017, the NYT ran an op-ed from Daniel Hemel and Eric Posner that took the Logan Act very seriously indeed, and warned the Trump team they should “fear” it:
The statute, which has been on the books since the early days of the republic, reflects an important principle. The president is — as the Supreme Court has said time and again — “the sole organ of the nation in its external relations.” If private citizens could hold themselves out as representatives of the United States and work at cross-purposes with the president’s own diplomatic objectives, the president’s ability to conduct foreign relations would be severely hampered.
Hemel and Posner dismissed the argument that the Logan Act could be ignored because it has never been successfully prosecuted before, arguing that both Flynn and whoever directed his actions — they suggested President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — should be jailed, and even suggested impeachment proceedings for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
“If the phrase ‘high crimes or misdemeanors’ means anything, it includes violation of a serious criminal statute that bars citizens from undermining the foreign policy actions of the sitting president,” they declared.
As Dan McLaughlin points out at National Review at the end of an argument for repealing the Logan Act, Kerry has potentially set himself up for more serious charges under the law than Flynn, who was “apparently acting for a duly-elected incoming presidential administration” when he committed his alleged transgression. Kerry can make no such claim.
Chief political correspondent Byron York makes the same case that investigating Flynn under the Logan Act but giving Kerry a free pass is illogical:
Have often argued that 1799 Logan Act, used as pretext to question Michael Flynn, is dead. So IMHO it’s dead for John Kerry, too. But if you believe Logan Act was used legitimately against Flynn, you’ve got to want a DOJ/FBI Kerry investigation…
York noted in December 2017 that the Logan Act was the reason Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama administration holdover, decided to interrogate Flynn:
Yates described the events in testimony before a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on May 8, 2017. She told lawmakers that the Logan Act was the first concern she mentioned to McGahn.
“The first thing we did was to explain to Mr. McGahn that the underlying conduct that Gen. Flynn had engaged in was problematic in and of itself,” Yates said. That seems a clear reference to the Logan Act, although no one uttered the words “Logan Act” in the hearing at which Yates testified. “We took him [McGahn] through in a fair amount of detail of the underlying conduct, what Gen. Flynn had done.”
Yates and the aide returned to the White House the next day, Jan. 27, for another talk with McGahn. McGahn asked Yates “about the applicability of certain statutes, certain criminal statutes,” Yates testified. That led Sen. Chris Coons, who had called for an investigation of the Trump team for Logan Act violations months before, to ask Yates what the applicable statutes would be.
“If I identified the statute, then that would be insight into what the conduct was,” Yates answered. “And look, I’m not trying to be hyper-technical here. I’m trying to be really careful that I observe my responsibilities to protect classified information. And so I can’t identify the statute.”
While Yates became reticent in the witness chair, the public nevertheless knows from that “official familiar with her thinking” that Yates believed Flynn might have violated the Logan Act, a suspicion she shared with other Obama administration officials.
The coda to the Mike Flynn Logan Act saga is that a House Intelligence Committee report released on Friday made it clear that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn “didn’t think he was lying.”
Trump scolded Obama for Syria and now he bombs them twice.
I don’t believe that President Trump should have went in and bombed Syria. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told the White House to wait until we had more details but The President and his people listened to France and the UK. See the stories below and check out the new video at https://commonsensenation.net/videos/ .
Check Out My Video On Why Trump Should Not Have Went Into Syria And Why He Is Being A Hypocrite.
Mattis Tries to Put Brakes on Possible Syria Strike, to ‘Keep This From Escalating’
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis sought on Thursday to slow down an imminent strike on Syria, reflecting mounting concerns at the Pentagon that a concerted bombing campaign could escalate into a wider conflict between Russia, Iran and the West.
During a closed-door White House meeting, officials said, Mr. Mattis pushed for more evidence of President Bashar al-Assad’s role in a suspected chemical attack last weekend that would assure the world that military action was necessary.
Despite the caution, two Defense Department officials predicted it would be difficult to pull back from punishing airstrikes, given President Trump’s threat on Twitter a day earlier of American missiles that “will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart.’”
Mr. Mattis publicly raised the warning on Thursday morning, telling the House Armed Services Committee that retaliation must be balanced against the threat of a wider war.
“We are trying to stop the murder of innocent people,” Mr. Mattis said. “But on a strategic level, it’s how do we keep this from escalating out of control — if you get my drift on that.”
Hours later, after Mr. Mattis detailed his concerns at the White House, the president’s top national security advisers ended an afternoon meeting without a decision to attack, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary.
Diplomatic efforts continued deep into the evening, with Mr. Trump agreeing in a phone call with Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain that “it was vital that the use of chemical weapons did not go unchallenged,” Downing Street said in a statement. The two leaders committed to “keep working closely together on the international response,” the statement said.
Mr. Trump was also expected to speak on Thursday with President Emmanuel Macron of France, the other key ally weighing military action.
Defense Department officials said Mr. Mattis urged consideration of a wider strategy. They said he sought to persuade allies to commit to immediate help after striking Mr. Assad’s government in response to Saturday’s suspected chemical weapons attack on a suburb of Damascus, the capital.
Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said that “we definitely have enough proof” of a chemical weapons attack.
“But now, we just have to be thoughtful in our action,” Ms. Haley told Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.
In the White House meeting, according to three administration officials, Mr. Mattis said the United States, Britain and France must provide convincing proof that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack the rebel-held town of Douma, where more than 40 people died and hundreds were sickened.
It was an acknowledgment of a lesson from the Iraq war about what can go wrong after a military assault without a plan, one senior Defense Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive plans. It also sought to ensure that the United States and European allies could justify the strike to the world in the face of withering criticism by Russia — Mr. Assad’s most powerful partner.
“Defense officials are right to worry about escalation,” said Kori Schake, a former national security aide to President George W. Bush and author of a book with Mr. Mattis.
“The Russians are heavily invested in sustaining Bashar Assad in power, have made their case as the essential power in the Middle East, and a U.S. or allied strike would be a reminder of how much stronger the West is than Russia,” Ms. Schake said.
Mr. Mattis also assured House lawmakers that they would be notified before any strikes against Syrian weapons facilities and airfields. The Pentagon alerted lawmakers before an April 2017 cruise missile attack on Shayrat air base after a similar chemical attack on Syrian civilians.
Before the White House meeting, Mr. Trump told reporters he would make a decision “fairly soon” about a strike. Earlier, in a tweet, he insisted that he had never telegraphed the timing of an attack on Syria, which “could be very soon or not so soon at all!”
“We’re looking very, very seriously, very closely at that whole situation and we’ll see what happens, folks, we’ll see what happens,” he told reporters at the White House.
“It’s too bad that the world puts us in a position like that,” he said. “But you know, as I said this morning, we’ve done a great job with ISIS,” Mr. Trump added. “We have just absolutely decimated ISIS. But now we have to make some further decisions. So they’ll be made fairly soon.”
In Paris, Mr. Macron cited unspecified proof that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in Douma, and said that France was working in close coordination with the Trump administration on the issue.
“We have proof that last week, 10 days ago even, chemical weapons were used — at least chlorine — and that they were used by the regime of Bashar al-Assad,” Mr. Macron said in an interview on TF1, a French television station.
But time may be of the essence in London, where Britain’s Parliament will return from its Easter vacation on Monday. Although Mrs. May is under no legal obligation to consult Parliament before ordering any military action,
This Pervert Was At A Pajamas Party With Whores So What Did You Expect.
Four-term Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold (R., Texas) resigned from Congress Friday afternoon after staffers accused him of sexual harassment and creating a negative work environment in his office.
He had already announced that he would not seek re-election in his Texas district.
In a statement, Farenthold said that he had planned to serve the rest of his term, but said he knew “in [his] heart that it’s time for [him] to move along and look for new ways to serve.”
He Looks Like A Perv. Look At How He Is Cutting His Eyes.
Politico reported that he had been considering a resignation in the face of a potential Ethics Committee investigation into his behavior.
Farenthold had settled a former aide’s sexual harassment lawsuit against him in 2014 using $84,000 in taxpayer dollars.
The former congressman denied any wrongdoing, but admitted that he “allowed a workplace culture in my office that was too permissive and decidedly unprofessional,” and that he failed to “treat people with the respect that they deserved.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee released a statement expressing hope he would pay back the $84,000.
“I thank Blake Farenthold for his service in Congress,” said NRCC Chairman Steve Stivers. “I hope Blake is true to his word and pays back the $84,000 of taxpayer money he used as a settlement. As I have said repeatedly, Congress must hold ourselves to a higher standard and regain the trust of the American people.”
“I’m confident we’ll have a Republican in this seat come November.”
Illegal Immigrants Do The Jobs Americans Will Not.
Authorities in California have a suspect in custody after an explosive device detonated inside of a Sam’s Club in California on Thursday afternoon.
Hugo Gonzalez, 49, of Fontana, was identified as the man suspected of detonating the device, the Ontario Police Department tweeted, noting it’s believed he acted alone and a motive remains unclear.
Law enforcement was dispatched to the Sam’s Club store in Ontario after it was reported around 2 p.m. that someone heard a “popping sound,” KABC reported.
“Responded to a possible fire structure at [Sam’s Club],” the Ontario Police Department tweeted earlier Thursday. “It has been determined the suspect detonated a small explosive device in the store.”
Ontario Police Dept.
✔@OntarioPD
Responded to a possible fire structure at 951 N Milliken Ave. It has been determined the suspect detonated a small explosive device in the store. Ontario PD and Ontario Fire are on scene.
A follow-up tweet stated, “There appears to be no structural damage or any injuries at this point,” and noted that “All employees and customers are accounted for.”
Ontario Police Dept.
✔@OntarioPD
Responded to a possible fire structure at 951 N Milliken Ave. It has been determined the suspect detonated a small explosive device in the store. Ontario PD and Ontario Fire are on scene.
Ontario Police Dept.
✔@OntarioPD
There appears to be no structural damage or any injuries at this point. All employees and customers are accounted for. Updates to follow.
Miles from the store, Gonzalez was pulled over and detained, police said. Within his car, investigators found “[additional] materials” that were “similar to those used in the devices” found inside Sam’s Club.
Police are now investigating an apartment in Fontana, “which is believed to be associated w/Gonzalez.”
Within the vehicle Gonzalez was driving, investigators located add’l materials similar to those used in the devices found which were found in the store. Police are currently @ an apartment in the 16500 block on Arrow Blvd. in Fontana, which is believed to be associated w/Gonzalez
Ontario Police Dept.
✔@OntarioPD
Gonzalez is currently in custody and is being interviewed by investigators. At this time, a motive for the incident is unclear. We will provide more information as it becomes available.
Put that SOB and his wife in front of a firing squad.
Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, highlighted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) financial ties to the Chinese government as an example of how politicians monetize political influence while evading financial disclosure regulations.
Schweizer joined Monday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight for an interview with co-hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak to discuss McConnell’s linkages to China, as detailed in his latest book, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) familial ties to the Chinese state via his father- and sisters-in-law are causes for concern, deduced Schweizer. James Chao, McConnell’s father-in-law, founded Foremost Group, a shipping company that has done “large volumes of business” with Chinese state-owned companies. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, is the current secretary of transportation.
“So Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, his wife Elaine Chao, who’s the transportation secretary in the Trump administration, her family has deep economic and financial ties to the Chinese government itself,” said Schweizer. “They are in the shipping business, and they own something called the Foremost Group, and really, in 1993, Mitch McConnell, as a senator, travels to China with his father-in-law, James Chao, as guests of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation.”
He continued, “The China State Shipbuilding Corporation is the largest defense contractor in China, and the projections are that by 2030, if current trends continue, they are going to surpass the U.S. Navy as far as naval capability. Basically, what happens is, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation says to the Chao family, ‘Look, we will build your ships. We will finance the purchase of some of your ships. We will provide crews for your ships. We will provide contracts for you to ship state-owned goods from state-owned companies around the Pacific. In other words, we are going to set you up in the shipping business,’ which is exactly what they do, and, in fact, James Chao — this would be Elaine Chao’s father, Mitch McConnell’s father-in-law — and Elaine’s sister, Angela Chao, actually joined the board, in 2007 and 2008, of something called China State Shipbuilding Corporation, CSSC Holdings, which is a subsidiary of the largest defense contractor in China. So you have this powerful American political family that is making U.S. policy related to China, related to trade, and other critical issues that is highly dependent upon the good graces of the Chinese government.”
Schweizer framed McConnell’s “increasingly soft” political positioning towards China as a function of his familial and financial ties to the Chinese state.
“McConnell himself has benefited because a few years ago, James Chao gave Mitch McConnell a gift between five and twenty-five million dollars that more than quadrupled his net worth overnight,” noted Schweizer. “So this is not just about Elaine Chao’s family getting wealthy. That wealth has now trickled into Mitch McConnell’s pocket, as well, and it’s a huge problem because if you chart the positions that Sen. McConnell has taken on China over the last twenty years, guess what? Shock of all shocks, he has become increasingly soft as it relates to China, and I think it is directly related to the fact that he knows his family’s financial future is tied to the good graces and good faith of the Chinese communist government.”
Schweizer described the Chinese government as “freaked out” over the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, owing to the 45th president’s decades-long view of the “rising threat of China.”
“So the election of Donald Trump, there’s no other way to say it, it completely freaked out the Chinese government because Trump has really been focused — whether one agrees with him on trade policy or not — he has focused since the 1980s on what he regards as a rising threat of China; whether it relates to trade, economics, or military power,” surmised Schweizer.
According to Schweizer, China’s decision to appoint McConnell’s sister-in-law, Angela Chao, to the Bank of China’s board of directors — ten days after 2016’s presidential election — was a response to the election of Trump to the White House.
“So when [Donald Trump] gets elected in 2016, China is in a panic. So one of the things that happens is, they appoint, really, the first American, or only the second foreigner to the Bank of China,” Schweizer said. “Now, the Bank of China is government-run, government-controlled, is sort of the backbone of the Chinese government’s economic diplomacy around the world. Ten days after Donald Trump is elected, they put Elaine Chao’s sister — Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law — on the board of directors of the fourth largest bank in the world, which is run by the Chinese communist government. It’s a shocking development, and, again, unprecedented in American history that you would have senior political leaders have immediate family members that are sitting on the board of foreign government-owned businesses.”
Sabine Duren, the mother of son killed by illegal immigrant, shares her perspective on ‘Fox & Friends First.’
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who sparked national outrage when she undermined a federal immigration raid last month, worked with illegal-immigration activists before she warned the public about the raid– a move that ICE said led to hundreds of illegals evading detention.
Schaaf took to Twitter to warn the public about the raid, and has stood by her decision despite a number of hardened criminals being caught — and ICE officials warning that potentially hundreds of other criminals escaped as a consequence of the tipoff.
“It is Oakland’s legal right to be a sanctuary city and we have not broken any laws,” Schaaf said in a statement last month. “We believe our community is safer when families stay together.”
Her move sparked anger not just from ICE officials, but also the Trump administration. The Justice Department is currently conducting a review of Schaaf’s actions.
“What happened in Oakland was a disgrace to our nation,” President Donald Trump said in California on Tuesday.
KPIX5 reports that Schaaf was in touch with Centro Legal de la Raza just hours before the announcement, giving her information on what employers should do in the case of an ICE raid.
That group, which did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News, is a nonprofit with a focus on providing legal services to those in the country illegally. It also appears to act as an advocacy group for illegal immigrants — printing an “ICE Activity Hotline” on its website.
“Centro Legal has been at the forefront of efforts to curtail unlawful collaboration between local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration authorities in order to prevent unjust deportations and keep immigrant families together,” the group’s website says. It does not appear to be affiliated with UnidosUS — formerly the National Council of La Raza.
According to KPIX5, Schaaf also spoke with a Catholic priest at St. Jarlath’s Church and Emma Paulino at Oakland Community Organizations. Paulino appeared with Schaaf at a press conference warning of the raid.
“It is important for us to understand that sometimes what ICE is doing with these tactics is to try and paralyze our communities,” she said.
Paulino told Fox News Friday that the conversations were about assessing whether or not to share the information with the community in the first place, and then how to do so in a way that did not create panic.
“It was about if we should share what we know and how to share that information in a responsible way so to not create panic in the community,” she said. “People live in fear already.”
KPIX5 reports that the emails also show that the Oakland Indie Alliance, a group of independent businesses, received a message saying, “Important Alert! Credible information ICE Raids in Oakland Sunday 2/25 and Monday 2/26” and, “This information comes directly from the Mayor.”
A spokesman for Schaaf told Fox News that she consulted “with several leaders and groups representing our immigrant community before she made her public comments.”
“She mentioned it in her initial press release and in numerous public statements after; it’s well known that she conferred with several people before making her decision,” he said.
He also said that she did not warn businesses, although added that “it appears those who she consulted with may have shared the information with business owners in an attempt to make sure the owners knew their obligations and responsibilities under state law.”
Families of victims of illegal immigrant crime have expressed their anger at Schaaf’s actions, calling for her to be prosecuted, as have groups which lobby for less migration into the U.S.
“As far as Libby Schaaf is concerned, what she did is nothing short of obstruction of justice,” said Ira Mehlman, of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
“She is not compelled to assist ICE in doing its job, but she certainly has no right to interfere with ICE carrying out its lawful duties,” he said. “In our view, the U.S. Department of Justice should look into the matter and prosecute her for obstruction if the circumstances warrant legal action.”
But amid the national controversty, Paulino told Fox News that Schaaf’s stance was getting a very positive reception in Oakland.
“People are really supportive of her because she took a stand,” she said. “She is serving the people who elected her.”
