OpenCDA

February 13, 2018

Appoint a Presidential Commission

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , , — Bill @ 1:52 pm

Warren Commission Composite NYTWith  American citizens finally becoming more aware of  the scope and gravity of the institutional corruption involved in and around the 2016 election, members of Congress are receiving increasing demands to appoint another Special Counsel.

As I opined in my OpenCdA post on January 12, 2018, entitled So It Never Happens Again …,  merely appointing yet another Special Counsel to look into the allegations of apparent criminal wrongdoing associated with the 2016 national general election would be an incomplete approach.

I don’t dispute there are grounds for such a Special Counsel.  However, I believe the job of rehabilitating corrupted and crippled agencies whose missions are critically important to the national security is too much for a Special Counsel.

Before you conclude I’m overstating the scope of work required for rehabilitation, consider this:

Credible evidence released by diligent House and Senate committees has provided solid reasons to believe that the following government bodies have some involvement either as alleged violators or as victims in the numerous and various statutory and administrative rule violations:

  • Central Intelligence Agency (alleged violator)
  • Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) (victim)
  • Department of Justice (alleged violator)
    • Federal Bureau of Investigation (alleged violator)
  • Department of State (alleged violator)
  • Federal Election Commission (victim)
  • Former President Obama and his Executive Office of the President (alleged violator)
  • Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (victim)
  • Internal Revenue Service (alleged violator)
  • National Security Agency (alleged violator)
  • US Congress (victim)

Very arguably the most important objective of  rehabilitation has to be to restore the public’s confidence in our federal agencies to perform their duties honestly and diligently.  (Lest we forget, the honest and diligent employees of all the alleged violator agencies are ‘the public,’ too.)  Thus far, the Mueller Special Counsel effort has produced  little or nothing to accomplish that objective.

There is another objective that no Special Counsel will have the courage to touch:  An open and frank discussion of the miserable failure of our First Amendment-protected news media to provide timely, accurate, and complete reporting of verified information (not opinion) to We, the People.

That discussion must include but not start with the performance of reporters or editors or news directors.  It must start with media owners’ lack of understanding the importance of timely, accurate, complete news reporting.  Then these owners must be questioned about their lack of commitment to that same reporting.

In part the failures of federal agencies have apparently been aided and abetted by the First Amendment-protected news media’s decisions to ignore or under-report those failures.   The media owe We, the People, some answers for their seemingly aiding and abetting alleged crimes that have been committed against all the people of the United States.

If the public’s confidence in the integrity of some critical agencies and their employees is to be restored, we need a Presidential Commission with far more horsepower, moral courage, and integrity than we are likely to ever see from another Special Counsel like Robert Mueller.

February 9, 2018

It’s Called ‘Sanitizing’

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , — Bill @ 8:23 pm

United_States_House_Permanent_Select_Committee_on_IntelligenceToday the President determined that the Democrat response to the Republican HPSCI memo could not be properly declassified and released to the public as written.

The letter from White House Counsel Don McGahn to the HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes was released today.   The unclassified letter offered the Executive Branch’s assistance to the HPSCI Minority in making revisions which would allow public release of the minority’s memo.

The process of rewording classified information to permit the information to be released to the public is called “sanitizing.”

Sanitizing is a very common practice,  and when done honestly and diligently by knowledgeable, skillful writers, their desired message can be conveyed without revealing sensitive national security information.

Congress Getting Very, Very Warm …

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , — Bill @ 12:30 pm

FISC SealThe House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and its Chairman Devin Nunes are getting very, very warm when it comes to ‘unmasking’ the apparent corruption and exploitation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) by some Mahogany Row players in the Obama Justice Department (DoJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

On February 7, 2018, Chairman Nunes sent a formal written request, a letter to the Presiding Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, requesting, “… transcripts of any relevant FISC hearings associated with the initial FISA application or subsequent renewals related to electronic surveillance of Carter Page.”

Clearly, Chairman Nunes and the HPSCI need to see all of the material submitted to the FISC to determine the extent of the representations, if any,  made to the Court in obtaining a FISA warrant and its three renewals to use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct an unlawful electronic surveillance on US citizen Carter Page.

Beyond that, it is very possible the HPSCI’s examination of these materials may reveal a pattern of deception practiced by officials in both the DoJ and FBI in seeking or securing other FISA warrants against US citizens unlawfully “unmasked” after incidental contact with persons lawfully the targets of FISA interceptions.

(P.S.:  It appears that even Sulzburger’s Slimes at the New York Times can no longer continue to ignore the post mortem stench of the Obama administration.  On February 6, 2018, the New York Times Company submitted a motion to the FISA Court requesting that the Court “… order publicatiion of all of its orders authorizing surveillance of Carter Page, a United States citizen, together with the application materials and renewal application mateerials upon which those orders were issued.”)

February 6, 2018

Update: Prior Redactions to Important Senate Judiciary Committee Memo Revealed

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , — Bill @ 8:18 pm

Senate SealOn Feburary 5, 2018, our OpenCdA post entitled Senate Judiciary Committee Memo Released relating to the Christopher Steele “dossier” contained a link to the highly-redacted Committee memo concerning the “dossier” and its importance to the FBI and DoJ in security a FISA warrant to surveil a US citizen, Carter Page.

Late today, the Department of Justice (DoJ) responded positively to a request from Senators Grassley and Graham to further declassify some of the material redacted in that material.

Here is the further redacted memo released just a few hours ago.

If factually accurate, the current memo’s representations suggest it was the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, not Donald J. Trump, who were conspiring with a foreign agent to violate several campaign finance laws to prevent the lawful election of Donald J. Trump.

The memo in conjunction with other evidence strongly suggests that some FBI and DoJ headquarters executives were severely and possibly criminally derelict in performing their official duties pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court’s authorization to surveil Carter Page, a US citizen.

Please read the further redacted memo and decide for yourselves.

To date, Fox News has been the only major news medium to doggedly resist falling in line with the journalism group think/Clinton love fest so sickeningly broadcast by the formerly important news networks NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN, and formerly reliable and diligent newspapers including but not limited to the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Whether they knew it or not, these and other news media have promoted the effort to first defeat Donald Trump’s candidacy and then, failing to engineer his election defeat,  to use whatever means necessary to prevent him from performing his official duties and then to remove him from office.

By failing to diligently pursue the facts objectively, it appears to me the national skews media have collectively participated in deception by omission.  Sadly, both the FBI and the Department of Justice have been complicit in the effort to manage the information the public receives.

It is likely that much more information will be revealed by the Congressional investigations.

December 13, 2017

Swamp Rats (Cont.)

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , — Bill @ 3:57 pm

Danger - Swamp RatIt is indisputable that there are people in the United States who are using an organized, very well-funded strategy as well as very aggressive tactics to remove President Donald J. Trump from office.

That by itself is not illegal.

Neither is it illegal for employees of the federal government, including employees of the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to express their personal views about the competence and qualifications of public officials.

However, a federal employee’s expression of personal views goes beyond what is permitted or prohibited by the Hatch Act when that employee uses his or her official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.

Hatch Act violations are serious.  However, they are not as serious as interfering in federal criminal investigations involving the alleged violation of national security laws including:

  • 2 U.S.C. § 192 (Contempt of Congress Related to National Security)
  • 18 U.S.C. § 219 et seq. (Officers and Employees of the United States Acting as Foreign Agents)
  • 18 U.S.C. § 791 et seq. (Espionage; Unauthorized Disclosure of Classified Information)
  • 18 U.S.C. § 9S1 et seq. (Neutrality  Laws)
  • 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(1) (Computer  Espionage)
  • 18 U.S.C. § 1S42 et seq. (Passport Violations Related to National Security)
  • 18 U.S.C. § 1924 (Unauthorized Removal and Retention of Classified Documents or Material)
  • 18 U.S.C. § 2381et seq. (Treason, Sedition and Subversive Activities)
  • 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (Wire Fraud, including wire fraud or hacking by or on behalf of a foreign government in which 18 U.S.C. § 1831 or 18 U.S.C.§ 1030(a)(1) are not specifically included as charges)
  • 22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq. (Foreign Agents Registration)
  • 42 U.S.C. § 2274 to 2278, 2284, and other Atomic Energy Violations that Affect National Security (Atomic Energy Act)
  • 50 U.S.C. § 3121 (Intelligence Identities Protection Act)
  • 50 U.S.C. § 782 et seq. (Communication  of Classified Information by Government Officer or Employee)
  • 50 U.S.C. § 8S1et seq. (Registration of Person Who Has Knowledge Concerning Espionage Activities)
  • 50 U.S.C. § 2401et seq. (Export Administration Act)
  • 50 U.S.C. App. § 5(b) (Trading With the Enemy Act)

These laws are not supposed to be waived simply because an alleged violator is a former President, a former Secretary of State and a now-former presidential candidate,  or a high-level employee of the DoJ or FBI.

Similarly, it seems to OpenCdA writing from Upper Trashcanistan, Idaho, that for federal employees to conspire (notice we didn’t say “collude”) to interfere with or prevent the initiation of a criminal investigation into alleged violations of any of these laws might qualify as separate violations under 18 U.S.C. § 371 (Conspiracy) and 18 U.S.C. § 1510 (Obstruction of Criminal Investigations).  (more…)

November 15, 2017

Don’t Get Your Hopes Up …

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , — Bill @ 11:58 am

DANGER UNREASONABLEMany people are hoping that the US Department of Justice will appoint yet another special counsel, this time to look into the various crimes allegedly committed or criminally aided and abetted by former President Bill Clinton, former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, unnamed co-conspirators associated with the Clinton Foundation, former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey, former Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, and former Democratic National Committee Chairwarmer Debbie Schultz.

Their hopes for that special counsel are pinned on President Trump’s promise to drain the swamp which is Washington, DC.  The hopeful people are citing substantiated facts of far greater weight and veracity than the allegations Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein itemized in deciding to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel to look into the skews media-ballyhooed ‘collusion’ between the Trump campaign and Russia.

If you’re among the people anticipating a special counsel with resulting indictments and convictions of one or more Clintonistas, don’t get your hopes up.  Here’s why:

(1) The Clintons have acquired substantial dirt on some of the Fools on the Hill.  The decades-old very thin allegations of sexual misconduct against senatorial candidate Roy Moore would pale in comparison to what some Fools on the Hill have reportedly engaged in much more recently.   The Clintons and their cronies know who’s vulnerable.  See M.I.C.E.  The Clintons know where the corpses are buried, and most of The Swamp would prefer to do whatever it takes to keep them buried.

(2) In anticipation of a Hillary Clinton presidency, many Fools on the Hill and their obsequious propaganda arm, the national skews media (formerly known as the ‘free press’), hitched their teams of donkeys and elephants to the manure-bearing Clinton wagon.  This particular gaggle of Fools would rather their constituents not connect them with the Clinton wagon smell, but another special counsel would certainly make just that connection.  Keeping the odor of that connection from reaching the public nostril would fall on CNN, NBC, ABC,  CBS, and the AP.

(3) Some of the Clinton’s traitorous crimes involve compromises of national security.  Anyone who thinks Slick Willy and Slimy Hillary would hesitate to use graymail to keep their own sorry asses out of court, not to mention federal prison, needs to be drug tested.

(4)  It appears that in anticipation of a Slimy Hillary presidency, some of the mahogany row tenants at Main Justice seem to have skewed the concept of prosecutorial discretion.  Prosecutorial discretion allows cowardly prosecutors to decline to prosecute or choose to undercharge criminals for almost any reason at all as long as the reason is plausible and defensible or as long as it’s a certainty the alleged offender is going to be inaugurated as the President of the United States.  Until the holdover loyalists to the Clintons and Obama are swept out of their mahogany row offices, there is little chance of prosecutions of anyone other than the lowest of the low-hanging fruit (think:  Paul Manafort, Imran Awan, etc.).

(5)  Closely related to the Main Justice Mahogany Row slimeballs are a few FBI Mahogany Row slimeballs.  In the world of Fantasyland-on-the-Potomac politics, their job is to ensure that the results of otherwise competent, complete, and thorough investigations done by subordinate employees (e.g., brick agents) do not interfere with the political aspirations of certain elected and appointed officials.

(6)   President Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, occupied a US Senate seat for the twenty years immediately prior to his being sworn in as the 84th Attorney General of the United States on February 9, 2017.   He is a distinguished alumnus of the Fools on the Hill Club.

OpenCdA is skeptical that a special counsel will be appointed, adequately funded, and given the necessary authority to investigate the offenses allegedly committed by the people identified in our opening paragraph.

We recall very vividly the pardon President Gerald Ford granted to former President Nixon on September 8, 1974, for Nixon’s complicity in Watergate.   Ford’s reasoning for circumventing the criminal justice system was that subjecting Nixon to the criminal justice process would be too long and involved and would be too painful for the people of the country.   In effect, Ford was telling us with condescension, You can’t handle seeing the former President of the United States subjected to the same standards of criminal justice to which you would be subjected.

Ford was wrong in 1974.

Maybe if Ford had done the right thing rather than the politically expedient thing in 1974, maybe if he had allowed Richard M. Nixon to be subjected to the prescribed processes and procedures of criminal justice that supposedly guarantees equal protection under the law for all citizens, then maybe in 2017 it wouldn’t have been necessary for AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to concoct some plausible justifications for not indicting and prosecuting former officials for espionage, bribery, conspiracy, and money laundering.

We won’t get our hopes up.

July 29, 2017

Debbie Does Dulles

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , , , , — Bill @ 8:05 am

DWSchultzOn Monday, July 24, 2017, Special Agents of the US Capitol Police (USCP) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Capitol Hill IT contractor Imran Awan as he tried to board an airplane at Dulles International Airport and fly to his homeland of Pakistan via Qatar.   The FBI affidavit supporting his arrest alleges Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, filed a fraudulent mortgage loan application.

Hina Alvi had already pulled their children out of school, stuffed over $12,000 in cash and some household goods in cardboard boxes, and left the United States (some might say “fled the United States”) for Pakistan.

Before July 24th, few readers could probably recall hearing anything about Imran Awan.   They might have heard something about some damaged computer equipment belonging to some members of Congress being found at a home rented by Awan and his wife.   They might have read deep into the already sketchy skews stories that one of the computers found belonged to Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  In fact, good ol’ Debbie threatened the USCP in public if it dared process the purloined computer for evidence.

Otherwise, because the AWAN storyline did not involve pimping unsubstantiated gossip about President Trump’s “collusion” with Russia, the national skews media weren’t especially interested.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.  Move along.

Except there was and is something to see.

It seems that Representative Schultz had arranged for Industrious Imran to be the go-to IT contractor for several Democrat members of the House of Representatives, some of them on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.  In fact, Industrious Imran and his partners had each been raking in an unusually high amount of money from these contracts for several years.

OpenCdA urges our handful of readers to take the time and read the series of articles by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

There are quite a few reasonable and interesting questions likely to be asked by the USCP and the FBI to determine if the computers and the emails on them contained any personal or national security information that could be used to manipulate and control the members of Congress on behalf of any foreign intelligence service.

November 14, 2016

FBI Director Comey’s Letters

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , , , — Bill @ 7:20 pm

hillaryloserfsbPredictably, Hillary Clinton blames FBI Director James Comey for her loss in the 2016 presidential election.  She asserts that Comey’s July and October comments and letters to certain Congressional oversight committee chairmen and minority ranking members caused some of her supporters to vote for Trump or at least not vote for her.

Assume she’s correct about the influence Comey’s letters may have had on some voters.

The real question, then, is whether Comey acted with malice or favoritism toward either nominee.  Did he intend to influence the outcome of the election?

OpenCdA doesn’t think he did.  An equally strong and even more plausible argument is that Comey was performing the duties required and expected of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Hillary Clinton’s illegal storage and retention of national security information on her unsecured private email server and her illegally allowing unauthorized persons (e.g., her housekeeper) to handle and view that information elevated the severity of her actions.  More than just violating statutes and administrative orders, Clinton maliciously jeopardized the national security.  As Secretary of State,  Clinton was required to know and understand the various national security regulations and laws to not only conform her own conduct but also to ensure her employees complied with those regulations and laws as well.    By virtue of her position, she knew using the private email server to traffic in national security information was wrong.  She cannot claim ignorance as a defense.

As we’ve pointed out in several preceding OpenCdA posts, the FBI has multiple responsibilities.   Not all of them will or should end in an arrest, prosecution, and trial.  Protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage is frequently at the top of that list.

Whether the Clintons  want to admit it or not, their knowingly allowing her server to be used to exchange national security information seriously jeopardized the national security.  Using BleachBit overwrite software, Clinton intentionally tried to hide evidence of her culpability from the Intelligence Community.    The effect was that she obstructed the Intelligence Community’s effort to assess the damage done to national security.  She made it difficult and maybe impossible to conclusively itemize what national security information was actually compromised and by whom.

If the Clinton private email server had not been used to traffic in national security information, it would likely not have been of even passing interest to Congress.   But once the FBI determined the server had been used to unlawfully store national security information, it had a duty to investigate and keep Congress informed about the threat to national security.  To do otherwise is to make it difficult or impossible for Congress to exercise its responsibility to oversee Executive Branch departments and agencies.

FBI Director James Comey was between the dog and the fire hydrant, but it was Hillary Clinton who pumped the dog full of diuretics when she created her illegal email server and used it to illegally traffic in national security information.

FBI Director James Comey did not conceive, build, and use the backchannel unsecured email system.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did.

October 27, 2016

… And Now We Know Who and Why

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , , — Bill @ 12:59 pm

hillaryfsb78FBI Director James Comey’s July 5th announcement surprised many people, but it completely stunned the over 100 FBI investigators and 6 DoJ National Security Division attorneys who had worked on the Clinton private email server investigation.   The investigative team had nearly unanimously recommended charging Democrat Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton with numerous very serious violations of national security laws.

But thanks to recent FBI releases of more of her emails which Clinton thought she had not only deleted but overwritten as well, the world now knows that President Barack Hussein Obama had directed his sycophant Attorney General Loretta Lynch that under no circumstances was Clinton to be charged with any crimes.

Many people would assume Obama’s order to Lynch was to protect Clinton’s candidacy.  But again thanks to the FBI releases of the emails, even liberal propaganda mills the New York Times and Politico were forced to report that Obama was more likely trying to prevent one of his own very serious lies to the American public from being revealed.

On March 15, 2015, Obama gave a highly-publicized interview in which he told the world he had learned about Clinton’s private email server the same way as everyone else — from the news.  The Clinton email dump reveals that Obama was lying, and Hillary Clinton, her lawyer Cheryl Mills, and her campaign advisor John Podesta knew it.   A March 7, 2015, email from Mills to Podesta told Podesta about emails from Obama (using a pseudonym) to Clinton on her private server that long predated his March 15, 2015, interview.   Here are the Politico story and the New York Times story.

And now we know why FBI Director James Comey said what he said on July 5.

Comey almost certainly had been told by Lynch that she really didn’t care what evidence the FBI and DoJ investigators found.  She had already made an agreement with Barack Hussein Obama to decline prosecuting Clinton.  Why?  Because any prosecution of Clinton would most certainly have revealed the President’s own bald-faced lie to the people.

Infinitely more worrisome than Obama’s lie to the public, a Clinton criminal trial could and probably would reveal that Obama was aware the server was illegally being used to store classified information.  Even the very bribable Democrats and lily-livered Republicans in Congress would be forced to deliberate impeachment, not of Obama (who will presumably be gone on January 20, 2017) but of President Hillary Clinton.

Loretta Lynch’s loyalty may at some point in her legal career have been to the principle of rule of law and the US Constitution.  No longer.  Loretta Lynch’s loyalty is to Barack Hussein Obama.   The public will rightly wonder what tangible gratuity Lynch will receive in return from the Clintons or their Foundation.

It’s highly doubtful that Lynch has either the personal or professional integrity and dignity to follow in the steps of Nixon’s Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus.  They resigned rather than follow Nixon’s politically-motivated orders to fire the special prosecutor.  Lynch didn’t even have the courage to refuse to meet privately on her government airplane with the disgraced former President William Jefferson Clinton even though her Justice Department was investigating Clinton’s wife for her crimes which gravely imperil the national security.

The American public should be very, very concerned that Obama’s US Department of Justice, particularly but not exclusively Mahogany Row at Main Justice, has become so politicized.

One of the often-heard arguments against Hillary Clinton’s presidency is that she will likely be able to appoint at least three US Supreme Court justices.  Voters need to recognize that it is worse than that.

The ideological contamination will not be limited to appellate decisions by the US Supreme Court.

The next President will appoint not only Supreme Court justices.  The next President will also appoint some new or additional federal judges and appoint or reappoint some or all of the 94 US Attorneys.  For citizens who need to seek the remedy and justice of the federal courts, the thought that any or all of those appointees could be like Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch or Janet Reno or John Mitchell or Ed Meese or Alberto Gonzales is terrifying.

June 21, 2016

Corrupt Congressman Uses Non-Profits and Charities to Launder Money

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: — Bill @ 4:36 pm

Chaka_Fattah_official_House_photo2Corrupt Pennsylvania Congressman Chaka Fattah, Sr. is likely going to be headed to a federal prison after being convicted of participating in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, mail fraud, money laundering conspiracy, money laundering, bank fraud, false statements to a financial institution, six counts of mail fraud, and five counts of falsification of records.

The scheme Fattah and his co-conspirators cooked up is well-described in the June 21, 2016, press release issued by Zane David Memeger, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

To make it easier to follow, OpenCdA is going to reduce the essence of the press release to several easily-digestible bullet points.  (more…)

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