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Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
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Hillary Clinton’s Fingerprints Are All Over The FBI’s Investigation Into Trump’s Russia Ties
Her campaign is linked to at least three separate pieces of information fed to the FBI, including the dossier the FBI used as a pretext to spy on a Trump campaign associate.
By Rachel Stoltzfoos
A significant part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s basis for investigating the Trump campaign’s Russia ties is looking more and more like a political hit job carried out by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Her campaign’s fingerprints are on at least three separate pieces of information fed to the FBI, including the Christopher Steele dossier Republicans say formed the basis of a secret warrant obtained to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page.
A former State Department official confirmed on the record Thursday that Clinton associates were funneling information to Steele as he was compiling a dossier commissioned and paid for by the Clinton campaign and DNC. That’s on top of the recent revelation that a top Department of Justice official fed the
FBI information compiled by his wife, who was working for the firm Clinton and the DNC were paying to dig up dirt on Trump, Fusion GPS.
FBI information compiled by his wife, who was working for the firm Clinton and the DNC were paying to dig up dirt on Trump, Fusion GPS.
The dossier was quoted “extensively” in the FBI’s application to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, according to a memo released by Republicans on the House intelligence committee. In a January letter to the FBI made public this week, two Senate Republicans also said Steele’s information formed a “significant portion” of the warrant application.
“It is troubling enough that the Clinton Campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility,” Sens. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham wrote in the letter referring Steele to the FBI for a criminal investigation.
Taken together, here’s what we know so far about the extent of Clinton’s involvement in the FBI’s case.
1. Clinton ally Sidney Blumenthal funneled information to the FBI through a contact at the State Department.
In an account published by The Washington Post, former State Department official Jonathan Winer describes how research compiled by a Clinton ally made its way into his hands and then to the FBI. Winer was in charge of combating transnational organized crime at the State Department under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and returned under the Obama administration to work on international law enforcement. Between his two gigs, he became friends with Steele, who as a result began feeding information to the State Department, and tipped Winer off in Sept. 2016 to the Trump dossier he was compiling.
That same month, Winer met Blumenthal, who provided him with notes on Trump and Russia compiled by another Clinton insider, Cody Shearer. “What struck me was how some of the material echoed Steele’s but appeared to involve different sources,” Winer writes in The Washington Post. He decided to show the notes to Steele, who told him the information could be used to corroborate his dossier. Steele walked away with a copy of the notes, which he provided to the FBI.
Shearer and Blumenthal, known respectively as “Mr. Fixer” and “Vicious Sid” in Clinton world, are staunch allies of the Clintons. Winer notes he didn’t know whether the information Blumenthal fed him was accurate, but says he fed it to Steel anyway because he was “alarmed at Russia’s role in the 2016 election.”
Grassley and Graham express concern in their criminal referral that Steele was “vulnerable to manipulation” while compiling his dossier on Trump, as he has admitted to meeting with at least four different news outlets during that time (in violation of an agreement he had with the FBI), and indicated he received unsolicited and unverified tips on Trump and included them in his dossier. “Simply put, the more people who contemporaneously knew that Mr. Steele was compiling his dossier, the more likely it was vulnerable to manipulation,” they wrote in their letter.
Of course, the Clinton network knew to some extent about the dossier, since Hillary’s campaign and the DNC had commissioned and funded the effort through Fusion GPS. Whether Blumenthal was planting bogus information to manipulate Steele or passing along what he regarded as a legitimate tip is unclear, but it’s certainly not a good look.
Regardless, this second unverified and unsolicited dossier made its way to the FBI thanks to the Clinton camp.
2. Steele was at that same time compiling a dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
As noted, Steele was already well into work on a dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign and DNC regarding Trump’s Russia ties when Winer approached him. Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, had hired Fusion GPS to dig up opposition research on Trump prior to the election. Fusion in turn employed Steele, a former British spy, to compile the dossier. His work was entirely funded by Democrats.
The FBI was never able to verify the salacious claims in Steele’s dossier, so relied heavily on his reputation to infuse the document with credibility before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, according to the Republican memo and criminal referral. The bureau continued to vouch for him before the court in subsequent applications to renew the warrant, even after learning he was “desperate” to stop Trump from getting elected, had broken the bureau’s trust by dishing to the press in one case, and potentially lied to the bureau outright in several other instances — a criminal offense. The court learned none of this, and continued to grant the FBI permission to spy on a U.S. citizen based in part on Steele’s research.
3. A top DOJ official fed the FBI research on Trump from his wife also paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
The third piece of information provided to the FBI in connection with Clinton allies is research compiled by the wife of former senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, who worked closely with Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and her replacement, Rod Rosenstein. Ohr was also a friend of Steele.
Ohr’s wife was employed by Fusion GPS to help compile opposition research on Trump. According to the Republican memo, Ohr eventually turned over all of the information she compiled — while working ultimately for the Clinton campaign and the DNC — to the FBI. It’s unclear whether this information made it into the FISA applications, but it’s one more example of evidence received by the FBI that can be traced back to the Clinton campaign.
According to the Republican memo, the FISA court was never informed of the Ohr’s connections to Fusion GPS and Steele.
In sum: To obtain a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign associate, the FBI relied heavily on a dossier that was never substantiated, put together by a former spy “desperate” to stop Trump. That dossier was paid for by powerful Democrats on Trump’s rival campaign, who also paid for opposition research the FBI received from a powerful couple inside President Obama’s DOJ. Separately, two Clinton allies worked together to funnel a second unsubstantiated dossier to the FBI through the State Department.
Southerner Sessions: 'Slavery' alone caused the Civil War
Attorney General Jeff Sessions. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)Jeff Sessions, a son of the South and President Trump’s attorney general, celebrated former President Abraham Lincoln’s 209th birthday with a blunt and bold statement that clashes with some of his fellow Alabamians and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
Speaking Monday at the Union League of Philadelphia’s Annual Lincoln Day celebration, he said slavery alone was the cause of the Civil War.
“Though many Southerners try to say otherwise — and I love my people — slavery was the cause of the war. It was not states’ rights or tariffs or agrarian versus industrial economies. Those issues were all solvable and would have been solved. The cloud, the stain of human bondage—the buying and selling of human beings—was the unsolvable problem and was omnipresent from the beginning of the country,” said Sessions.
“And the failure, the refusal of the South to come to grips with it — really to actually change this immoral system of enslavement — led to the explosion,” added Sessions.
President Abraham Lincoln visits with Union Gen. George McClellan at his headquarters in this Oct. 4, 1862 photo. Lincoln removed McClellen from command after the Battle of Antietam for failing to pursue and destroy the Confederate Army under the command of Gen. Robert E. Lee. (AP Photo)
The surprising statement in a thoughtful speech on Lincoln was the boldest — and bluntest — statement by the administration about the Civil War, ending some confusing and conflicting past statements.
Some Trump advisors saw Sessions as the best to deliver the message, being from the South and being the attorney general.
And a few saw it as correcting Kelly, who stepped into a controversy when he cited other reasons for the war such as a failure to compromise.
In October, he appeared on the new Fox show hosted by Laura Ingraham and said “men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand,” and that “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.”
Sessions didn’t mince words.
“It is fair to say Lincoln did not start the war. He inherited it, and through extraordinary determination, eloquence, judgment, and courage, he finished it. His magnificent soldiers fighting other magnificent soldiers fought it out over four years, deciding the fate of the nation. The enslaved people of the South were emancipated and that by military victory. They venerated Father Abraham for it.
“The Union was preserved—the unwavering vision to which Lincoln was dedicated. The Constitution was preserved,” he said.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com
Trump on Kate Steinle Verdict: ‘A Complete Travesty of Justice’
Illegal immigrant with seven felony convictions roamed free in San Francisco, where he fired a gun, killing the 32-year-old
President Donald Trump reacted angrily to the not-guilty verdict for the illegal immigrant from Mexico who killed 32-year-old Kate Steinle, calling it a travesty of justice and saying the jury wasn’t told the killer had a violent past, with seven prior felony convictions.
“A disgraceful verdict in the Kate Steinle case! No wonder the people of our Country are so angry with Illegal Immigration,” he wrote on Twitter on Thursday night.
Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrumpA disgraceful verdict in the Kate Steinle case! No wonder the people of our Country are so angry with Illegal Immigration.
10:30 PM - Nov 30, 2017
Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was acquitted by a jury of first- and second-degree murder and also manslaughter. He was convicted of just one felony charge — possession of a firearm by a felon — and faces 16 months to three years in prison, though with time served counting against that.
"The Kate Steinle killer came back and back over the weakly protected Obama border, always committing crimes and being violent, and yet this info was not used in court," Trump wrote on Twitter Friday morning. "His exoneration is a complete travesty of justice. BUILD THE WALL!"
Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrumpThe Kate Steinle killer came back and back over the weakly protected Obama border, always committing crimes and being violent, and yet this info was not used in court. His exoneration is a complete travesty of justice. BUILD THE WALL!
Kate Steinle was walking with her father on Pier 14 in San Francisco on July 1, 2015, when Garcia Zarate, also on the pier, fired a bullet from a stolen Sig Sauer .40-caliber handgun. The bullet ricocheted off the concrete pier and hit Steinle in the back, piercing her aorta. "Help me, Dad," she said as she fell to the ground. Her father, Jim Steinle, said Friday that he'd cradled her head and tried to console her until EMTs arrived.
"The jury was not told the killer of Kate was a 7 time felon," Trump wrote on Twitter on Friday. "The Schumer/Pelosi Democrats are so weak on Crime that they will pay a big price in the 2018 and 2020 Elections."
Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrumpThe jury was not told the killer of Kate was a 7 time felon. The Schumer/Pelosi Democrats are so weak on Crime that they will pay a big price in the 2018 and 2020 Elections.
6:13 AM - Dec 1, 2017
Following the jury's verdict, Jim Steinle told the San Francisco Chronicle: "We're just shocked — saddened and shocked ... that's about it. There's no other way you can coin it. Justice was rendered, but it was not served.”
Kate Steinle's brother, Brad, said that he wasn't surprised overall by the verdict, considering the many failures that led to Garcia Zarate walking free on the streets of San Francisco after five deportations and seven felony convictions.
But he said he was "stunned" that the prosecution couldn't manage to get a conviction for using the weapon.
Garcia Zarate reportedly claimed that he had not pulled the trigger, but that the gun had gone off when he'd stepped on it, a claim that firearms experts scoffed at.
After his arrest, he admitted that he had gone to San Francisco because it is a sanctuary city, so he knew that local law enforcement would not hand him over to federal authorities to be deported to Mexico.
The White House released an official statement on Friday, saying Garcia Zarate and countless other criminal illegal aliens like him can't be allowed to hurt Americans.
"Yesterday's verdict in San Francisco underscores the danger to public safety when our nation fails to enforce its laws," the statement reads. "Kate Steinle was killed by an illegal immigrant and convicted felon who had been deported from the United States five times. He, and countless other criminal illegal immigrants like him, should never be allowed to threaten our citizens. It's more important now than ever for Congress to secure our borders and provide the resources, including more ICE officers, needed to deport criminal illegal aliens and to finally stop sanctuary city policies that cause needless loss of innocent life. Politicians who fail to address these needs share responsibility for preventable crimes committed against innocent Americans. Had San Francisco enforced our nation's immigration laws, the Steinle family would be celebrating this holiday with all of their loved ones."
Kate Steinle's brother, Brad, said that he wasn't surprised overall by the verdict, considering the many failures that led to Garcia Zarate walking free on the streets of San Francisco after five deportations and seven felony convictions.
But he said he was "stunned" that the prosecution couldn't manage to get a conviction for using the weapon.
Garcia Zarate reportedly claimed that he had not pulled the trigger, but that the gun had gone off when he'd stepped on it, a claim that firearms experts scoffed at.
After his arrest, he admitted that he had gone to San Francisco because it is a sanctuary city, so he knew that local law enforcement would not hand him over to federal authorities to be deported to Mexico.
The White House released an official statement on Friday, saying Garcia Zarate and countless other criminal illegal aliens like him can't be allowed to hurt Americans.
"Yesterday's verdict in San Francisco underscores the danger to public safety when our nation fails to enforce its laws," the statement reads. "Kate Steinle was killed by an illegal immigrant and convicted felon who had been deported from the United States five times. He, and countless other criminal illegal immigrants like him, should never be allowed to threaten our citizens. It's more important now than ever for Congress to secure our borders and provide the resources, including more ICE officers, needed to deport criminal illegal aliens and to finally stop sanctuary city policies that cause needless loss of innocent life. Politicians who fail to address these needs share responsibility for preventable crimes committed against innocent Americans. Had San Francisco enforced our nation's immigration laws, the Steinle family would be celebrating this holiday with all of their loved ones."
(photo credit, homepage images: Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore; photo credit, article images: Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 4.0, by Michael Vadon)
Congressional investigators are baffled by the turn of events in the Michael Flynn case. But they know they find the Flynn case troubling, from start to finish. (AP)In March 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey briefed a number of Capitol Hill lawmakers on the Trump-Russia investigation. One topic of intense interest was the case of Michael Flynn, the Trump White House national security adviser who resigned under pressure on Feb. 13 after just 24 days in the job.
There were widespread reports that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about telephone conversations that he, Flynn, had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition in late December 2016. On Jan. 24, 2017, two of Comey's FBI agents went to the White House to question Flynn, and there was a lot of speculation later that Flynn lied in that interview, which would be a serious crime.
"The Jan. 24 interview potentially puts Flynn in legal jeopardy," the Washington Post reported in February. "Lying to the FBI is a felony offense."
There was also a lot of concern in Congress, at least among Republicans, about the leak of the wiretapped Flynn-Kislyak conversation. Such intelligence is classified at the highest level of secrecy, yet someone — Republicans suspected Obama appointees in the Justice Department and intelligence community — revealed it to the press.
So in March, lawmakers wanted Comey to tell them what was up. And what they heard from the director did not match what they were hearing in the media.
According to two sources familiar with the meetings, Comey told lawmakers that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that Flynn had lied to them, or that any inaccuracies in his answers were intentional. As a result, some of those in attendance came away with the impression that Flynn would not be charged with a crime pertaining to the Jan. 24 interview.
Nine months later, with Comey gone and special counsel Robert Mueller in charge of the Trump-Russia investigation, Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to the FBI in that Jan. 24 questioning.
What happened? With Flynn awaiting sentencing — that was recently delayed until at least May — some lawmakers are trying to figure out what occurred between the time Comey told Congress the FBI did not believe Flynn lied and the time, several months later, when Flynn pleaded guilty to just that.
None of those congressional investigators has an answer; they're baffled by the turn of events. But they know they find the Flynn case troubling, from start to finish.
The questioning in that Jan. 24 interview apparently revolved around the Flynn-Kislyak phone conversations. The first thing to remember is that it appears Flynn did nothing wrong in having those talks. As the incoming national security adviser, it was entirely reasonable that he discuss policy with representatives of other governments — and Flynn was getting calls from all around the world.
So even if Flynn discussed the hot issue of U.S. sanctions against Russia with Kislyak, that was OK. "I don't have a problem with that," former Bush national security adviser Stephen Hadley said in February 2017. "I don't see what would be wrong if [Flynn] simply said, look, don't retaliate, doesn't make sense, it hurts my country, it makes it harder for us as an incoming administration to reconsider Russia policy, which is something we said we'd do. So just hold your fire and let us have a shot at this."
Indeed, it appears the FBI did not think Flynn had done anything wrong in the calls. On Jan. 23, the Washington Post reported that the FBI had reviewed the Flynn-Kislyak calls and "has not found any evidence of wrongdoing or illicit ties to the Russian government." (The calls had been intercepted by U.S. intelligence because the U.S. monitored the Russian ambassador's communications — something which Flynn, a former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, surely knew.)
Still, Flynn's conversation had the attention of the Obama Justice Department, and in particular of deputy attorney general Sally Yates, who reportedly believed Flynn might have violated the Logan Act, a 218 year-old law under which no one had ever been successfully prosecuted. (Two people were charged in the 19th century, but the cases were dropped.)
Despite the high level of classification, word of the Justice Department's concerns got to the press. On Jan. 12, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that Flynn and Kislyak had talked. "What did Flynn say, and did it undercut U.S. sanctions?" Ignatius asked. "The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about 'disputes' with the United States. Was its spirit violated?"
Three days later, on Jan. 15, Vice President-elect Mike Pence (remember, this was all happening before the Trump administration took office) denied that Flynn had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador. "They [Flynn and Kislyak] did not discuss anything having to do with the United States' decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia," Pence told CBS.
On Jan. 20, Donald Trump became president. On Jan. 22, the Wall Street Journal reported that "U.S. counterintelligence agents have investigated communications" between Flynn and Kislyak. The investigation "aimed to determine the nature of Mr. Flynn's contact with Russian officials and whether such contacts may have violated laws."
On Jan. 24, the Justice Department — the Obama holdover Yates had become the acting attorney general — sent two FBI agents to the White House to question Flynn, who talked to them without a lawyer present.
It has sometimes been asked why Flynn, a man long familiar with the ways of Washington, would talk to the FBI without a lawyer. There seems to be no clear answer. On the one hand, as national security adviser, Flynn had plenty of reasons to talk to the FBI, and he could have reasonably thought the meeting would be about a prosaic issue involved in getting the new Trump National Security Council up and running. On the other hand, the media was filled with talk about the investigation into his conversations with Kislyak, and he might just as reasonably have thought that's what the agents wanted to discuss. In any event, Flynn went ahead without an attorney present.
In addition, it appears the FBI did not tell White House officials, including the National Security Council's legal adviser or the White House counsel, that agents were coming to interview the national security adviser over a potentially criminal matter.
Two days later, on Jan. 26, Yates and a high-ranking colleague went to the White House to tell counsel Don McGahn about the Flynn situation. "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 testified in a May 2017 appearance before a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee. That was an apparent reference to the Logan Act, although Yates never specifically said so. "We took him [McGahn] through in a fair amount of detail of the underlying conduct, what Gen. Flynn had done."
Yates then explained to McGahn her theory that Flynn might be vulnerable to blackmail. The idea was that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kislyak, which of course the Russians knew. And then if Flynn lied to Pence, and Pence made a public statement based on what Flynn had told him, then the Russians might be able to blackmail Flynn because they, the Russians, knew Flynn had not told the vice president the truth.
It was a pretty far-fetched notion, but, along with the never-successfully-prosecuted Logan Act, it was apparently the basis upon which the FBI went inside the White House to do an unannounced interview of a key member of the new administration.
In their discussion, McGahn asked Yates: Even if one White House official lied to another, what's that to the Justice Department? "It was a whole lot more than one White House official lying to another," Yates testified. "First of all, it was the vice president of the United States and the vice president had then gone out and provided that information to the American people who had then been misled and the Russians knew all of this, making Mike Flynn compromised now."
Yates went to see McGahn twice, on Jan. 26 and Jan. 27. On Feb. 13, Flynn resigned. That same day, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department had pursued Flynn on the grounds of a potential Logan Act violation.
"Yates, then the deputy attorney general, considered Flynn's comments in the intercepted call to be 'highly significant' and 'potentially illegal,' according to an official familiar with her thinking," the Post reported. "Yates and other intelligence officials suspected that Flynn could be in violation of an obscure U.S. statute known as the Logan Act, which bars U.S. citizens from interfering in diplomatic disputes with another country."
On Feb. 14, the New York Times reported that, "Obama advisers grew suspicious that perhaps there had been a secret deal between the incoming [Trump] 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." (The paper added that the Obama advisers asked the FBI if Flynn and Kislyak had discussed a quid pro quo, only to learn the answer was no.)
At that point, the public still did not know that the Jan. 24 FBI interview of Flynn had taken place. That report came on Feb. 17, when the Washington Post reported the interview in a story headlined, "Flynn told FBI he did not discuss sanctions." That was the piece that noted Flynn was in legal jeopardy, and that, "Lying to the FBI is a felony offense."
Congress, in the meantime, was in the dark about what was going on. Given the intense discussion of the Flynn case in the media, there was no doubt lawmakers were going to want to know what was happening in the Flynn matter, as well as other aspects of the Trump-Russia investigation. (At that point, the FBI had never even publicly acknowledged that there was an investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.)
So Comey went to Capitol Hill in March to brief lawmakers privately. That is when he told them that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe Flynn had lied, or that any inaccuracies in Flynn's answers were intentional. And that is when some lawmakers got the impression that Flynn would not be charged with any crime pertaining to the Jan. 24 interview.
There was still the possibility Flynn could face legal trouble for something else, like failing to register his representation of Turkey. But as far as the question of a "1001 charge" — a charge of lying to investigators, known by its number in the federal code — some lawmakers took that as a sign that Flynn was out of the woods.
On the other hand, the FBI does not make prosecution decisions. (That was not true, of course, in the case of the Clinton email investigation, in which the attorney general effectively gave Comey the decision of whether or not to prosecute.) It could be that the FBI agents who did the questioning were overruled by Justice Department officials who came up with theories like Flynn's alleged violation of the Logan Act or his alleged vulnerability to blackmail.
In any event, much happened after the FBI director's March briefings of Congress. In May, the president fired Comey. The Justice Department, under Trump-appointed deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, chose Robert Mueller to be the Trump-Russia special counsel. Mueller gathered a number of prosecutors known for tough, take-no-prisoners tactics. And on Dec. 1, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Yates went on to become a heroine of the Trump resistance (and at least one of Mueller's prosecutors) after she refused to enforce the president's travel ban executive order, and Trump summarily fired her. Her legacy lives on in United States v. Michael T. Flynn.
But to outside observers, mystery still surrounds the case. To some Republicans, it appears the Justice Department used a never-enforced law and a convoluted theory as a pretext to question Flynn — and then, when FBI questioners came away believing Flynn had not lied to them, forged ahead with a false-statements prosecution anyway. The Flynn matter is at the very heart of the Trump-Russia affair, and there is still a lot to learn about it.
Mass Exodus Underway in California… Largest in Over a Decade
BY V SAXENA
At least one major California metropolitan area is currently experiencing its largest mass exodus in a decade because of its left-wing policies, constant crime and its exorbitant home prices.
“I loved it here when I first got here. I really loved it here. But it’s just not the same,” one departing San Francisco Bay Area resident, Carole Dabak, told location station KPIX.
Though Dabak spent 40 years living in San Jose, about 50 miles south of San Francisco, she reportedly plans to relocate to Tennessee because of “crowding, crime and politics,” according to KPIX.
“We don’t like it here anymore. You know, we don’t like this sanctuary state status and just the politics here,” she added.
And it isn’t just the Bay Area that’s bleeding. According to an Orange County Register report from April, 2017, “the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates show that domestic migrants continue to leave the state more rapidly than they enter it.”
Considered one of the most left-wing metropolitans in the United States, the Bay Area hosts some of the country’s most radical policies in regard to illegal immigration, taxes, crime and other top issues.
The Bay Area’s lax attitude “toward vagrancy and homelessness” have been especially detrimental, gradually transforming Bay Area Rapid Transit system into a secondary home for drug-addicted drifters, as reported by Breitbart.
But even more damaging to the quality of life in the once-beloved metropolitan has been its lawmakers’ embrace of sanctuary city laws that prioritize the well-being of illegal immigrants over the safety of the lawmakers’ own constituents.
The Bay Area’s lax attitude toward homelessness and illegal immigration likely played a role in spurring the metropolitan’s violent crime rates to “rise much faster than the national average” in 2016, as reported last year by The Mercury News.
And many suspect it’s also to blame, in part, for the killing three years ago of San Francisco resident Kate Steinle by five-time-deported illegal immigrant Jose Ines Garcia Zarate.
According to Russell Hancock, the president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, the exodus is also being driven by skyrocketing home prices.
“You can’t even contemplate getting into the housing market here,” he told KPIX. “And I don’t mean just service workers, I mean highly skilled professionals. The tech elite are having a hard time affording reasonable housing in Silicon Valley. So this is difficult, this makes it very difficult for employers trying to recruit.”
In a report published earlier this month, Mansion Global magazine revealed single-family homes in San Francisco now have a median price of $1.415 million. In contrast, the median price of a single-family home in my town of Raleigh, North Carolina, is $234,300, according to Zillow.
Question: Who would want to live in a leftist-dominated metropolitan that welcomes illegal immigrants like family, treats homeless criminals with kid gloves and prices homes out of the reach of everyday Americans?
Certainly not me. And apparently, not Dabak and many like her.
And what cities in the country are drawing the most new residents? According to the real estate services firm Redfin, the top draws in the United States are Phoenix, Arizaona, Las Vegas, Nevada, Atlanta, Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee. It’s probably no coincidence that each of those states has a Republican in the governor’s mansion.
Did I mention yet that the San Francisco Department of Public Health recently voted unanimously in favor of launching a “safe space” for drug users to get high?
“The facilities provide a safe space where people can consume previously obtained drugs, such as heroin and fentanyl, under the supervision of staff trained to respond in the event of an overdose or other medical emergency,” reported local station WXIN.
Again, who the heck would want to live in this dump!?
Mass Exodus Underway in California… Largest in Over a Decade
BY V SAXENA
At least one major California metropolitan area is currently experiencing its largest mass exodus in a decade because of its left-wing policies, constant crime and its exorbitant home prices.
“I loved it here when I first got here. I really loved it here. But it’s just not the same,” one departing San Francisco Bay Area resident, Carole Dabak, told location station KPIX.
Though Dabak spent 40 years living in San Jose, about 50 miles south of San Francisco, she reportedly plans to relocate to Tennessee because of “crowding, crime and politics,” according to KPIX.
“We don’t like it here anymore. You know, we don’t like this sanctuary state status and just the politics here,” she added.
And it isn’t just the Bay Area that’s bleeding. According to an Orange County Register report from April, 2017, “the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates show that domestic migrants continue to leave the state more rapidly than they enter it.”
Considered one of the most left-wing metropolitans in the United States, the Bay Area hosts some of the country’s most radical policies in regard to illegal immigration, taxes, crime and other top issues.
The Bay Area’s lax attitude “toward vagrancy and homelessness” have been especially detrimental, gradually transforming Bay Area Rapid Transit system into a secondary home for drug-addicted drifters, as reported by Breitbart.
But even more damaging to the quality of life in the once-beloved metropolitan has been its lawmakers’ embrace of sanctuary city laws that prioritize the well-being of illegal immigrants over the safety of the lawmakers’ own constituents.
The Bay Area’s lax attitude toward homelessness and illegal immigration likely played a role in spurring the metropolitan’s violent crime rates to “rise much faster than the national average” in 2016, as reported last year by The Mercury News.
And many suspect it’s also to blame, in part, for the killing three years ago of San Francisco resident Kate Steinle by five-time-deported illegal immigrant Jose Ines Garcia Zarate.
According to Russell Hancock, the president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, the exodus is also being driven by skyrocketing home prices.
“You can’t even contemplate getting into the housing market here,” he told KPIX. “And I don’t mean just service workers, I mean highly skilled professionals. The tech elite are having a hard time affording reasonable housing in Silicon Valley. So this is difficult, this makes it very difficult for employers trying to recruit.”
In a report published earlier this month, Mansion Global magazine revealed single-family homes in San Francisco now have a median price of $1.415 million. In contrast, the median price of a single-family home in my town of Raleigh, North Carolina, is $234,300, according to Zillow.
Question: Who would want to live in a leftist-dominated metropolitan that welcomes illegal immigrants like family, treats homeless criminals with kid gloves and prices homes out of the reach of everyday Americans?
Certainly not me. And apparently, not Dabak and many like her.
And what cities in the country are drawing the most new residents? According to the real estate services firm Redfin, the top draws in the United States are Phoenix, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada, Atlanta, Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee. It’s probably no coincidence that each of those states has a Republican in the governor’s mansion.
Did I mention yet that the San Francisco Department of Public Health recently voted unanimously in favor of launching a “safe space” for drug users to get high?
“The facilities provide a safe space where people can consume previously obtained drugs, such as heroin and fentanyl, under the supervision of staff trained to respond in the event of an overdose or other medical emergency,” reported local station WXIN.
Again, who the heck would want to live in this dump!?
Declassified Susan Rice Email: Obama Contemplated Hiding Russia Intel from Incoming Trump Administration
by IAN MASON
Pete Souza/The White House via Getty Images
Two leading Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee released a redacted top secret email Monday that Obama administration National Security Advisor Susan Rice appears to have sent herself just minutes after President Donald Trump took office.
The email contains Rice’s impressions from a January 5, 2017 meeting on “Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential election” between then-President Barack Obama, then-FBI Director James Comey, and “intelligence community leadership.”
According to Rice, President Obama and Comey had a “follow-on conversation” after the formal meeting during which Obama told Comey that “from a national security perspective” he wanted “to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.” President Obama then asked Comey to inform him of any changes that would affect how his White House should share classified information with the incoming Trump administration.
Separately, Rice claims Obama told Comey that he wanted the Russia investigation handled “by the book” and that “from a law enforcement perspective” he was not “asking about, initiating or instructing anything.”
Rice herself claims to have been present at the meeting and to have stayed for this “follow-on conversation,” along with then-Vice President Joe Biden, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who weeks later would become a darling of the left-leaning press after she was fired over her refusal to enforce President Trump’s first travel ban on certain terror-prone Muslim majority countries.
The Senate Judiciary Committee obtained the email from the National Archives as part of its investigation into potential political bias and influence in the FBI’s handling of the “Russia investigation” and the infamous Fusion GPS “dossier” that was used to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on one-time Trump associate Carter Page.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee chairman, announced their discovery of the emailMonday when they released a letter they addressed to Rice on February 8. The two senators tell Rice:
It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia investigation. In addition, despite your claim that President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed “by the book,” substantial questions have arisen about whether officials at the FBI, as well as at the Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed “by the book.”
The public version of the letter includes a redacted version of Rice’s email indicating it once held a “top secret” classification. The letter makes reference to an unredacted still-classified version of the email.
Grassley and Graham are demanding Rice provide their Committee answers about her email by a February 22 deadline. The questions included are as follows:
1. Did you send the email attached to this letter to yourself? Do you have any reason to dispute the timestamp of the email?
2. When did you first become aware of the FBI’s investigation into allegations of collusion between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia?
3. When did you become aware of any surveillance activities, including FISA applications, undertaken by the FBI in conducting that investigation? At the time you wrote this email to yourself, were you aware of either the October 2016 FISA application for surveillance of Carter Page or the January 2017 renewal?
4. Did anyone instruct, request, suggest, or imply that you should send yourself the aforementioned Inauguration Day email memorializing President Obama’s meeting with Mr. Comey about the Trump/Russia investigation? If so, who and why?
5. Is the account of the January 5, 2017 meeting presented in your email accurate? Did you omit any other portions of the conversation?
6. Other than that email, did you document the January 5, 2017 meeting in any way, such as contemporaneous notes or a formal memo? To the best of your knowledge, did anyone else at that meeting take notes or otherwise memorialize the meeting?
7. During the meeting, did Mr. Comey or Ms. Yates mention potential press coverage of the Steele dossier? If so, what did they say?
8. During the meeting, did Mr. Comey describe the status of the FBI’s relationship with Mr. Steele, or the basis for that status?
9. When and how did you first become aware of the allegations made by Christopher Steele?
10. When and how did you first become aware that the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded Mr. Steele’s efforts?
11. You wrote that President Obama stressed that he was “not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective.” Did President Obama ask about, initiate, or instruct anything from any other perspective relating to the FBI’s investigation?
12. Did President Obama have any other meetings with Mr. Comey, Ms. Yates, or other government officials about the FBI’s investigation of allegations of collusion between Trump associates and Russia? If so, when did these occur, who participated, and what was discussed?
The January 5, 2017 meeting Rice references in her email would have occurred just months after, as Rice herself has admitted, she “unmasked” certain Trump campaign members’ communications during the transition.
Rice, who in her retirement from public service has taken up a research post at American University, has remained critical of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, but has largely refrained from weighing in on the Russia investigation.
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Helen and Moe Lauzier
Helen and Moe Lauzier
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