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November 2016

Clinton’s charity confirms Qatar’s $1 million gift while she was at State Department Jonathan Allen

The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.

Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s husband, and sought to meet the former U.S. president in person the following year to present him the check, according to an email from a foundation official to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email, among thousands hacked from Podesta’s account, was published last month by WikiLeaks.

Clinton signed an ethics agreement governing her family’s globe-straddling foundation in order to become secretary of state in 2009. The agreement was designed to increase transparency to avoid appearances that U.S. foreign policy could be swayed by wealthy donors.

If a new foreign government wished to donate or if an existing foreign-government donor, such as Qatar, wanted to “increase materially” its support of ongoing programs, Clinton promised that the State Department’s ethics official would be notified and given a chance to raise any concerns.

Clinton Foundation officials last month declined to confirm the Qatar donation. In response to additional questions, a foundation spokesman, Brian Cookstra, this week said that it accepted the $1 million gift from Qatar, but this did not amount to a “material increase” in the Gulf country’s support for the charity. Cookstra declined to say whether Qatari officials received their requested meeting with Bill Clinton.

Eloquent Susan Sarandon explains why she’s not backing Hillary Clinton: ‘I don’t vote with my vagina’

She added that in her view, based on what she saw during the primaries, the DNC is “so corrupt, it’s not worthy of our votes.”Susan Sarandon explains why she’s not backing Hillary Clinton: ‘I don’t vote with my vagina’

Susan Sarandon has had a troubled relationship with Hillary Clinton, and the actress has confirmed she won’t be voting for the Democratic nominee in the presidential election.

“I don’t vote with my vagina,” Sarandon told BBC’s Evan Davis of her decision not to vote for Clinton. She has said she’s voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, after supporting Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary process.

She added that she thinks it’s important to get votes for third-party candidates above the 5% mark, and that whether Clinton or Trump is elected, “it doesn’t matter” to her.

“This is bigger than that and I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about Trump and Hillary because that’s not why I’m here. This is bigger than who wins this election,” she said.

Sarandon said she believes Clinton is “almost certainly going to win” because of support from “every neocon, all the press, all the networks, all the newspapers, everyone behind her.”

“I am worried about the wars, I am worried about Syria, I am worried about all of these things that actually exist. I’m worried about fracking,” Sarandon said. “I’m worrying about the environment. No matter who gets in they don’t address these things because money has taken over our system.”

TRUMP’S TRUE OPPONENT : CAROLINE GLICK

As these lines are being written it is Thursday morning in the US. Wikileaks announced hours ago that it is about to drop the mother lode of material it has gathered on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Previous Wikileaks document drops set the stage for FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress last Friday, when he informed lawmakers that he has ordered his agents to reopen their probe of Clinton’s private email server, which he closed last July.

One week on, the FBI probe still dominates election coverage. If Wikileaks is true to its word, and even if it isn’t, Clinton and her campaign team will be unable to shift public attention away from the ballooning allegations of criminal corruption. This will remain the story of the election when polls open Tuesday morning.

The focus on Clinton’s alleged criminality in the final weeks of the election brings the 2016 presidential race full circle. Since the contest began in the summer of 2015, it was clear that this would be an election like no other.

After eight years of Barack Obama’s White House, America is a different place than it was in 2008, when Obama ran on a platform of hope and change.

Americans today are angry, scared, divided and cynical.
The outcome of this presidential election will determine whether Obama’s fundamental transformation of America will become a done deal. If Clinton prevails, the Obama revolution will be irreversible.

If Republican nominee Donald Trump emerges the winner, America will embark on a different course.

But even support or opposition to Obama’s revolution is not what this election is about. The anger that Americans’ feel is more powerful than mere policy differences – no matter how strongly felt.
More than a referendum on Obama, Tuesday vote will be a vote about Republican nominee Donald Trump and what he has come to represent. Voters on Tuesday will have to decide what they oppose more: Trump or what he stands for.
Trump is without a doubt a morally dubious candidate.

RUTHIE BLUM: LAME DUCK OBAMA’S LAST HURRAH

U.S. President Barack Obama is rumored to be planning a lame-duck anti-Israel move after the election of his successor next Tuesday, and before the handing over of his White House keys in January. In other words, there is reason to believe that the outgoing leader-from-behind of the free world is set to recognize a Palestinian state.

Though, as the Syrian civil war proves, bolstering one party to a conflict does not always translate directly into attacking the other, in the case of Jerusalem vs. Ramallah, the dichotomy is crystal clear.

By now, only extremists refuse to acknowledge that Hamas, the terrorist organization running Gaza — while running it into the ground — is not a statehood-yearning entity willing to forfeit its aim of annihilating all infidels in its path, Israel chief among them.

But there are still many diehard two-state-solution seekers, both in Israel and abroad, who cannot relinquish the fantasy that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party — the guys ruling the West Bank — are still potential partners. Even those who blast the PA for inciting youth to violence; denying Israel’s ties to the Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem; and now launching a campaign to sue Britain for the 100-year-old Balfour Declaration — which expressed support for the Zionist enterprise, well before the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 — conclude that it is “urgent” to create a Palestinian state. And that Israeli settlements are an obstacle to that imperative.

My Say A response to a campaign question

During the last days of her campaign Hillary Clinton is making a real push…the Dems have sent a note around “What would you like to say to Hillary Clinton?
Here is the response I would love to hear:

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

Americans Have a Chance to Dethrone the House of Clinton The Clintons and their minions deserve to be driven from public life. By Deroy Murdock

‘Drain the swamp!” GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has insisted before huge crowds increasingly confident of a well-deserved, sorely needed, come-from-behind victory.

But this slogan doesn’t quite capture the urgency of the moment. This one does:

“Flush the toilet!”

Washington’s corruption under Barack Obama and the Clintons has devolved to fetid depths suggestive of the days before indoor plumbing. Step back and shudder at today’s unsanitary state of public affairs.

The Cosa Nostra–like tone that Hillary Clinton has set for herself and her associates suggests a preview for a new film: The Godmother.

As word emerged on March 2, 2015, that Hillary maintained an outlaw e-mail system in her Chappaqua mansion’s basement, WikiLeaks reports, her campaign chairman, John Podesta, e-mailed her top aide, Cheryl Mills: “We’re going to have to dump all those e-mails.” Podesta now claims that the meaning of the word “dump” is to “release, distribute, or otherwise publicize.” This might be plausible, except that Team Clinton then erased some 33,000 “private” e-mails and used BleachBit software to guarantee that Hillary’s server, at least digitally, sleeps with the fishes. Hillary’s aides demolished her 13 communications devices — not the single one that she lied about having, for “convenience” — some with hammers.

Most of this happened while these public records were under congressional subpoena. This is called obstruction of justice.

Bryan Pagliano, the computer whiz who managed Hillary’s clandestine server, initially took the Fifth Amendment while under congressional scrutiny. But he twice couldn’t be bothered to show up in September, despite being subpoenaed by the House Government Oversight Committee.

A Malignancy Grows at an International Cancer Agency The prognosis for a controversial cancer agency looks terminal. By Julie Kelly

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) now faces congressional inquiries, legal challenges, and harsh criticism from the scientific community that are shredding the agency’s credibility and threatening its future. The Lyon, France–based group is an arm of the World Health Organization and has received millions in U.S. tax dollars, funding that is now being questioned by top lawmakers on Capitol Hill including House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz. Congress is also investigating whether IARC is colluding with officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to advance a political agenda rather than sound science.

IARC’s central role is to evaluate certain risk factors and whether they can cause cancer. Each year, an IARC working group produces a report — called a monograph — classifying the level of risk for each agent. Out of the nearly 1,000 factors IARC has evaluated, only one (caprolactam) was deemed non-carcinogenic.

But one particular finding — that the agricultural chemical glyphosate is carcinogenic — led to serious questions about IARCs scientific integrity and exposed conflicts of interest among IARC participants who are trying to influence public policy here and abroad. In March 2015, IARC released its monograph on glyphosate, classifying the chemical as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” It is the only international agency to issue such a classification.

That report raised immediate suspicions for being politically motivated; glyphosate is a widely used weedkiller now targeted by environmental and anti-GMO groups around the world because it is used on several genetically engineered crops. The chemical was created by Monsanto, which also sells genetically engineered seeds, and sold under the brand name Roundup. Nearly every other scientific and governmental agency has determined that glyphosate is safe. (After the IARC report in March 2015, a separate WHO agency found that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer.) But armed with the imprimatur of a global health agency, anti-GMO activists brandish the report as proof that glyphosate is unsafe and unhealthy.

Why Is the Clinton Foundation Investigation Being Run from Brooklyn? The Justice Department is conducting its probe in a very Clinton-friendly district. By Andrew C. McCarthy

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal’s Devlin Barrett published another eye-opening report about the FBI’s Clinton Foundation investigation. It elaborates on the pitched battle between FBI agents who believe they are building a strong case and Justice Department prosecutors who have thrown cold water on it, erecting roadblocks that have made the agents’ work much more difficult.

For reasons worth pausing over, the locus of that battle is the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, which is headquartered in Brooklyn.

As I explained earlier this week, that is the office that Attorney General Loretta Lynch ran for several years after being appointed by President Obama during his first term — up until Obama appointed her U.S. attorney general. That was Ms. Lynch’s second tenure running the EDNY. She was launched into national prominence when President Bill Clinton made her the EDNY’s U.S. attorney in 1999. So the Clinton Foundation investigation is being overseen by the prosecutors’ office to which Lynch is closest — filled with prosecutors she hired, trained, and supervised.

Is it any wonder, then, that the EDNY seems to have broadened its territorial reach?

There are 93 federal districts in the United States. Some states are small enough to be single districts; others are big enough to be carved into two districts or more. The federal law of venue (i.e., the district in which a criminal case may be prosecuted) is very elastic. In theory, a case may be brought in any district where some of the criminal conduct, however minimal, took place. In practice, though, the FBI customarily runs its investigation, and the Justice Department files any indictment, in the district where most of the criminal activity occurred.

Anchoring an investigation in the district that is the epicenter of the conspiracy, or is at least the locus of significant criminal conduct in the case, is obviously practical. It also serves the Sixth Amendment mandate that criminal cases be tried in the “district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”

Hillary Deleted Email Showing She Sent Chelsea Classified Information By Debra Heine

Hillary Clinton deleted an email she sent to her daughter Chelsea in 2009, a new batch of email messages released by the State Department shows. State released 285 pages of Hillary Clinton’s emails on Friday as part of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act request.

The email chain in question contained information that was upgraded to the confidential level of classification when it was released about a year ago.

clinton-classified-email-to-chelsea

Via The Daily Caller:

The Dec. 20, 2009 email chain, entitled “Update,” started with a message from Michael Froman, who served as a deputy assistant to President Obama and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.

The email, which is redacted because it contains information classified as “Confidential,” was sent to Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s foreign policy adviser at the State Department, and several Obama aides. Sullivan sent it to Hillary Clinton who then forwarded it to Chelsea, who emailed under the pseudonym “Diane Reynolds.”

All of the text in the body portion of the classified emails is redacted because it contains foreign government information.

The State Department labeled the email a “near duplicate,” indicating that it was mostly similar to other emails that the agency has released from the trove of emails that Clinton turned over in Dec. 2014.

Chelsea Clinton shows up in latest Hillary Clinton email dump Matt Picht

The U.S. State Department has released another batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server. Among them is an email containing classified information Clinton apparently sent to her daughter, Chelsea Clinton.

In 2009, Hillary Clinton forwarded an email from a White House staffer to an account reportedly linked to Chelsea Clinton. In 2015, the State Department determined that email contained confidential information — the lowest level of classification.The initial email was released during a previous State Department email dump. It was originally sent just after Hillary Clinton attended a round of international negotiations over climate change. The message was addressed to “Diane Reynolds,” a pseudonym Chelsea Clinton has used before.

The trouble is, we don’t know whether the information in the message was classified at the time or if the State Department upgraded it to classified after the fact.

And the State Department’s not telling. Spokesman Josh Kirby said, “As to whether emails were classified at the time they were sent, the State Department … is focusing on whether information needs to be protected today.”