♦Puerto Rico has a long history of public corruption and abuse of federal funds. Back in 2015 ten government officials in Puerto Rico were arrested for corruption, bribery, honest services wire fraud, extortion and various schemes related to giving payments to friends and family via federal contracts. [LINK] This is the typical corruption PR is known for.
♦A few weeks ago (June 28) the FBI, Public Corruption Unit, posted a notification of an ongoing corruption probe and provided a tip-line for leads related to bribery and/or corruption of public officials. [LINK] This probe is connected to the billions of dollars U.S. taxpayers have provided to Puerto Rico for recovery after hurricane Maria (2017).
So much money is poured into the island that hundreds of local and regional officials seized the opportunity to indulge their friends and family with funds from recovery accounts. This is the widespread corruption President Trump previously drew attention to. This overt and in-the-open corruption is why Nancy Pelosi took the entire Democrat caucus to Puerto Rico in January for a vacation with her favorite lobbyists. Everyone in/around PR knows this corruption is the norm, not the exception.
Today, six more people were indicted under new federal charges, including two government officials: Julia Keleher, who served as Puerto Rico’s education secretary until April; and Ángela Ávila-Marrero, who was the executive director of the Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration until late June. They are variously charged with wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy, according to the 32-count indictment.
WASHINGTON – […] The federal indictment says the former officials illegally directed federal funding to politically connected contractors. The arrests come about a month after Congress approved a controversial disaster aid bill that earmarked additional funding for Puerto Rico’s recovery from Hurricane Maria in 2017, which were tied up in part because President Trump called Puerto Rico’s officials “incompetent or corrupt.”
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the Natural Resource Committee that oversees Puerto Rico, called on Rosselló to resign amid the ongoing federal investigation.
“We’ve crossed that crucible now,” Grijalva said in interview. “The restoration of accountability is so key going forward.”
Prosecutors said Rosselló was not involved in the investigation, according to the Associated Press.
A spokesman for Rosselló did not immediately return requests for comment.
The arrests come as senior White House officials are searching for new ways to limit the amount of federal aid going to help Puerto Rico, and the island’s allies fear the arrests will give Trump greater justification for curtailing additional aid to the island.
“The governor of Puerto Rico and his administration have now given President Trump the ammunition he needed,” said San Juan Mayor Yulin Cruz, a political opponent of the governor. (read more)
President Trump was exactly right when he both informed and warned voters of what would happen with the money dumped into Puerto Rico. Here’s a reminder:
News we might have missed. Last week Catherine Engelbrecht announced a historic legal victory in her decade long battle against the IRS for targeting her group, True The Vote, as part of the Obama administration’s weaponization program against political opposition.
U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton issued a stunning ruling (full pdf below) in favor of True the Vote, and penalized the IRS. Judge Walton forced the IRS to pay maximum attorney’s fees due to discrimination against the conservative organization that stemmed from the Lois Lerner scandal. The financial award is likely to exceed $2 million.
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Ms. Engelbrecht gave Breitbart News an interview where she discussed the victory, SEE HERE.
.Ms. Engelbrecht’s case is actually connected to the political surveillance operation used against presidential candidate Donald Trump. Factually, the 2010 program to weaponize the IRS looks like the precursor to the 2012 program to weaponize the NSA database.
Political spying 1.0 was the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:
The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)
Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.
The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.
Lesson Learned – It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.
The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database. If our hunch is correct, that is what will be visible in footnote #69:
Additionally, Matt Gaetz appears to have seen “a memo held in the Congressional Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) that contained previously-undisclosed information involving the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ).” [LINK] Which sounds like the MOU in the footnote, and the memo that Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz inquired about.
Recently, the “Wall Street Journal” (WSJ) reported you granted the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) new powers to store dossiers on United States citizens, even if said citizens are not suspected of any criminal activity.
With these new powers, the NCTC would have the ability to copy entire government databases holding information on flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students, as well as other data.
The WSJ goes on to report the new rules allow the NCTC to keep data about innocent United States citizens for up to five years and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited.
If the WSJ report is accurate, these new powers represent a sweeping departure from past practices, which barred the NCTC from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or the information sought was related to an investigation.
If the WSJ report is accurate, it raises numerous concerns and questions. As elected Representatives and members of the House Judiciary Committee, we are concerned such sweeping, fundamental changes would be made to existing policy without public input and Congressional approval. Changes, which fundamentally alter the relationship between the government and the governed, should only be made with input from the people by and through their elected Representatives. (more)
Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database.
However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.
That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, are so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content. The Steele Dossier contains the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing surveillance operation.
During a rather innocuous podcast discussion panel April 12th, 2019, one of President Trump’s personal lawyers Jay Sekulow mentioned the FBI had three FISA applications denied by the FISA court in 2016. [Podcast Here – Note comment at 25:05] The denials were always suspected; however, until now no-one in/around the administration has ever confirmed.
If Sekulow is accurate, this adds additional context to the actions of the FBI in the aftermath of Admiral Mike Rogers and an increased urgency in gaining legal justification for surveillance and spy operation unlawfully taking place. A valid FISA warrant would help the FBI cover-up the surveillance. The likely targets were Manafort, Flynn and Papadopoulos…. but it appears the DOJ/FBI were rebuked.
These FISC denials would then initiate institutional panic dependent on the election outcome. An insurance policy would be needed. The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it into Carter Page. The FBI already knew Carter Page; essentially Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system {Go Deep}.
Fusion GPS was not hired to research Trump, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations.
Fusion-GPS gave them the justification they needed for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier. Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier is so important; without it, the DOJ and FBI are naked with their FISA-702 abuse.
The school resource officer, Scot Peterson, who did not respond during the shooting Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year, has been arrested on negligence, child neglect and perjury charges.
(NBC6 Miami) […] Peterson, 56, was arrested in Broward County on seven counts of neglect of a child, three counts of culpable negligence, and one count of perjury, Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials said.
The arrest comes after a 15-month investigation into the actions of law enforcement after the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting at the school that killed 17 students and staffers and left 17 others injured. Peterson was the school resource officer at MSD High School during the shooting.
“The FDLE investigation shows former Deputy Peterson did absolutely nothing to mitigate the MSD shooting that killed 17 children, teachers and staff and injured 17 others,” FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen said in a statement. “There can be no excuse for his complete inaction and no question that his inaction cost lives.” (read more)
CTH previously outlined how Broward County school police officers were primarily positioned to mitigate issues with criminal student engagement.
The Broward County diversionary school discipline program known as the “Promise Program” gained scrutiny after the Parkland shooting left 17 students dead.
The unstable shooter was identified as a prior benefactor of a county school district policy to reduced crime rates by exchanging criminal punishment for school discipline.
Many readers are aware CTH spent almost two years researching this practice in both Miami-Dade and Broward County. The downstream consequences were predictable when it first began; unfortunately, no-one wanted to accept the warnings – and the corruption is was systemic within the School and Police leadership, there’s was little hope to ever see it change.
The new U.S. Army uniform is a near replica of the World War II version. Can the Army meet its recruitment quotas of teen millennials with a throwback image from the Greatest Generation? Bill Whittle thinks the it’s brilliant. There’s a place you can go to think, and unburden your mind, and share the fellowship of liberty-lovers like you. It’s a place of reasoned thought, civil discourse, and great humor. There you find like-minded folks who put their commitment where their convictions live. If you enjoy this video, you’re going to love being part of the team that produces it at https://BillWhittle.com
Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/10/20/Victor_Davi… Conservative columnist and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson discusses several accusations regarding Barack Obama’s political career. —– Victor Davis Hanson discusses Obama, Palin, and the Culture Wars. This event was part of the Hoover Institution’s Fall Retreat 2008. Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor emeritus at California University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall courses in military history and classical culture. He was a full-time farmer before joining CSU Fresno, in 1984 to initiate a classics program. In 1991, he was awarded an American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given yearly to the country’s top undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin. Hanson has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, New York Post, National Review, Washington Times, Commentary, The New Republic, Claremont Review of Books, American Heritage, Policy Review, Wilson Quarterly, Weekly Standard, Daily Telegraph, and has been interviewed often on National Public Radio, PBS Newshour, the Hugh Hewitt Show, and C-Span’s BookTV. He serves on the editorial board of Arion, the Military History Quarterly, and City Journal. Since 2001, has written a weekly column for National Review Online, and in 2004, began his syndicated column for Tribune Media Services. In 2006, he began writing a blog for Pajamas Media, Works and Days.
With anxiety visible amid the DC crew now contemplating accountability for their failed soft-coup attempt, we enter a dangerous phase. After all, 40 federal law enforcement agents openly participated in the effort; along with more than a dozen members of the Department of Justice. What does that tell us about the fidelity of the FBI and DOJ to their oath of office? What does that tell us about their current intentions?
A security breech at Mar-a-lago. Increased threats from media and politicians hyping anxiety/anger toward President Trump. The ongoing Mueller team sedition effort. Excuses and justifications of violence against Americans wearing red ball caps. Trillions at stake from economic policies antithetical to the multinationals and Big Club lobbyists.
…And today the President’s schedule is a logistical security challenge [SEE HERE] President Trump travels to California (several stops), and Las Vegas Nevada.
“And Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever. The LORD will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.” Exodus 14:13-14
9:30AM THE PRESIDENT departs the White House en route to Joint Base Andrews
9:40AM THE PRESIDENT arrives at Joint Base Andrews
9:50AM THE PRESIDENT departs Washington, D.C., en route to El Centro, CA
11:40AM PDT THE PRESIDENT arrives at Naval Air Facility El Centro
11:50AM PDT THE PRESIDENT departs El Centro, CA, en route to Calexico, CA
12:10PM PDT THE PRESIDENT arrives at U.S. Border Patrol Calexico Station
12:15PM PDT THE PRESIDENT participates in a roundtable on immigration and border security, Calexico, CA
1:00PM PDT THE PRESIDENT departs U.S. Border Patrol Calexico Station en route to the New Border Wall, Calexico, CA
1:10PM PDT THE PRESIDENT arrives at the New Border Wall, Calexico, CA
1:15PM PDT THE PRESIDENT visits the New Border Wall, Calexico, CA
1:50PM PDT THE PRESIDENT departs Calexico, CA, en route to El Centro, CA
2:15PM PDT THE PRESIDENT arrives at Naval Air Facility El Centro, El Centro, CA
2:25PM PDT THE PRESIDENT departs El Centro, CA, en route to Los Angeles, CA
3:15PM PDT THE PRESIDENT arrives at Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, CA
3:25PM PDT THE PRESIDENT departs Los Angeles International Airport en route to the Santa Monica Airport Landing Zone, Santa Monica, CA
3:35PM PDT THE PRESIDENT arrives at Santa Monica Airport Landing Zone, Santa Monica, CA
3:45PM PDT THE PRESIDENT departs Santa Monica Airport Landing Zone en route to a private residence, Santa Monica, CA
4:00PM PDT THE PRESIDENT arrives at a private residence, Beverly Hills, CA
4:45PM PDT THE PRESIDENT participates in a round-table with supporters, Beverly Hills, CA
5:45PM PDT THE PRESIDENT delivers remarks at a joint fundraising dinner, Beverly Hills, CA
6:20PM PDT THE PRESIDENT departs the private residence en route to Santa Monica Airport Landing Zone, Beverly Hills, CA
6:35PM PDT THE PRESIDENT arrives at Santa Monica Airport Landing Zone, Santa Monica, CA
9:10PM PDT THE PRESIDENT arrives at Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, CA
9:20PM PDT THE PRESIDENT departs Los Angeles, CA, en route to Las Vegas, NV
10:25PM THE PRESIDENT arrives at McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas, NV
10:35PM THE PRESIDENT departs McCarran International Airport en route to the RON
10:50PM THE PRESIDENT arrives at the RON, Las Vegas, NV
CTH has some new readers, so against the backdrop of the UniParty in Washington DC jumping into action to criticize President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria; perhaps a little factual historic refresher is in order….
The 40-minute discussion took place on the sidelines of a United Nations General Assembly in New York. The meeting took place at the Dutch Mission to the United Nations on Sept. 22nd 2016:
[…] Kerry’s off-record conversation was apparently with two dozen ‘Syrian civilians’, all from US backed opposition-linked NGO’s in education and medical groups supposedly working in ‘rebel-held’ (aka terrorist-held) areas in Syria.
This opposition conclave also included ‘rescue workers’ which can only be ambassadors from the White Helmets, a pseudo NGO which serves as Washington and London’s primary PR front in pursuit of a “No Fly Zone’ in Syria, and it’s being bankrolled by the US, UK, EU and other coalition states to the tune of well over $100 million (so far). (link)
When you listen to the audio recording (embedded below) it becomes immediately obvious what was going on in 2014, 2015 and 2016 as an outcome of policy from the White House. In addition, you discover why this jaw-dropping 2016 leak/story was buried by the U.S. media and how it connects to the prior 4 years of perplexing U.S. mid-east policy.
This evidence within this single story would/should forever remove any credibility toward the U.S. foreign policy under President Obama. It also destroys the credibility of a large number of well known republicans, and explains how the prior action placed President Trump into a precarious position requiring a careful approach.
The key Secretary Kerry moments are at 02:00, and again at approximately 18:30 forward.
The discussion from 18:30 through to 29:00 are exceptionally revealing and should be listened to by anyone who has wondered what was going on in Syria. Kerry even makes mention of the “Responsibility to Protect, or R2P” principle:
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@18:30 Secretary John Kerry [transcript]:
[…] “Well, the problem is the Russians do not care about law, and we do. And, we don’t have a basis -our lawyers tell us- unless we have a U.N. Security Council resolution, which the Russians can veto and Chinese, OR unless we are under attack from the folks there, or unless we are invited in. Russia was invited in by the legitimate regime, well, it’s illegitimate in our mind, by the regime. And so, they were invited in and we’re not invited in.”
“We’re flying in airspace there, where they can turn on the air defense and we have a very different scene. The only reason they’re letting us fly is because we’re going after ISIS. If we were going after Assad, those air defenses, we’d have to take out all those air defenses, uh, and we don’t have a legal justification, frankly, for doing that unless we stretch it way beyond the law on a humanitarian basis, which some people argue we should – by the way.”
“Uh, but so far American legal theory has not gone into these so called “right to protect”, uh, and we don’t even have what we had in Kosovo where we had an, you know, an existing resolution and so forth. Uh, even though we went alone.”
“And so it’s complicated, it’s not easy. And we’ve been fighting. How many wars have we been fighting? We’ve been fighting in Afghanistan, we’ve been fighting in Iraq, we’ve fighting -you know- in the region for fourteen years. And a lot of Americans don’t believe that we should be fighting and sending young Americans over to die in another country. That’s the problem.”
“The congress won’t vote to do it. And you can be mad at us, but what we’re trying to do is help Syrians fight for their own country; and we’ve been spending a lot of money, a lot of effort to try and help do this. So, there’s an opposition there; the opposition is doing very well. Russia came in, and that’s a problem I know, because, uh, y’ know, uh, we don’t behave like Russians, it’s just a different standard.”
“So we are trying to see if we can test whether Russia, you see, is serious about a political solution. And if they are not serious, then we will help the opposition more. But I don’t think that’s particularly good for Syrians in the end because it will mean more fighting.”
Secretary Kerry is then questioned by an obvious sympathizer toward the extremist elements (calls pro-assad Sunni faction “Sunni Jews”) about why the U.S. fights the extremist Sunni (ISIS), but not the extremist Shia (Hezbollah). Kerry’s response:
“Well, they’re [Hezbollah] a terrorist organization, we’ve designated them a terrorist organization. The reason for [airstrikes against the Sunni Extremists] is because they have basically declared war on us; and are plotting against us, and Hezbollah is not plotting against us; Hezbollah is exclusively focused on Israel, they’re not attacking now, and on Syria where they are attacking in support of the, uh, in support of Assad.”
“So it a, uh, it’s…”
[Interrupted]
Question: “But how to make the majority of the Syrian people accept this approach, that because Hezbollah or the Iraqi or Iranian groups are not attacking the U.S. now when they are attacking against the terrorism in Syria?”
Kerry: “Well, they, they are targeted by the opposition who we are arming and training.”
What the recording reveals is substantive:
♦ First, only regime change, the removal of Bashir Assad, in Syria was the 2013, 2014, and 2015 goal for President Obama. This is admitted and outlined by Secretary John Kerry.
♦ Secondly, in order to accomplish this primary goal, the White House was willing to watch the rise of ISIS (’13, ’14, ’15) by placing their bet that ISIS’s success would force Syrian President Bashir Assad to acquiesce toward Obama’s terms and step down.
♦ Thirdly, in order to facilitate the objective, Obama and Kerry intentionally gave arms to ISIS and even, arguably, attacked a Syrian government military convoy to stop a strategic attack upon the Islamic extremists killing 80 Syrian soldiers.
Pause for a moment and consider those three points carefully. Because the audio, along with accompanying research now surfacing, not only exposes these three points as truth – but also provides the specific evidence toward them.
The problem in the Obama/Kerry’s secret strategy became clear when ISIS grew in sufficient strength to give the White House optimism for the scheme – however, instead of capitulation Assad then turned to Russia for help.
When Russia came to aid Bashir Assad the Syrian Government began being able to defeat ISIS and the Islamic Extremist elements within Syria. For the hidden plan of Obama/Kerry (and also McCain, Graham, et al), Russia defeating ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra, upended their objective.
Against the backdrop of this recording we can reconcile so many historic issues. We already know of a Second Presidential Finding Memo authorizing additional CIA covert action in 2012, this time in Syria. However, unlike the 2011 Libyan operation we do not know the operational name of the second action in 2012 Syria.
2012:WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, U.S. sources familiar with the matter said.
Obama’s order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence “finding,” broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad. (link)
Further consider how this Kerry audio tape, and the now transparent Obama policy toward Syria, absolutely confirms our earlier research as contained within the Benghazi Brief surrounding Syria. [Previous post]
President Obama, Secretary Clinton (2011, 2012) and later Secretary Kerry, together with John McCain, and the CIA tentacled team within the Republican party (2013, 2014, 2015) were willing to support extremist (under all factional names) in order to overthrow Bashir Assad…
…THIS WAS THE Obama/Kerry POLICY.
This was their 2016 admitted policy, only because they were caught.
Nothing else mattered.
President Trump took office in January 2017, and began a process to kill and remove, with extreme prejudice, the ISIS forces that President Obama, Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry armed. He began with the end in mind, and delivered the following quote:…
U.S. District in Texas, Judge Reed O’Connor (Fort Worth) has agreed with a coalition of 19 states that Obamacare is structurally unconstitutional without an enforced federal mandate that requires individual participation. (full ruling pdf below)
Absent the enforcement of the individual mandate, Judge O’Conner ruled it was impossible for the Obamacare law to remain. Texas and the 19 state coalition successfully argued they’ve been harmed by an increase in the number of people on state-funded insurance rolls.
The plaintiffs argued: when Congress repealed the tax penalty last year for the individual mandate; they eliminated the U.S. Supreme Court’s prior rationale for finding the ACA constitutional in 2012. The Texas judge agreed.
Judge O’Conner found it is clear the individual mandate is the linchpin of the law “without marching through every nook and cranny of the ACA’s 900-plus pages. The court must find the individual mandate inseverable from the ACA,” he said. “To find otherwise would be to introduce an entirely new regulatory scheme never intended by Congress or signed by the president.”
Former President Barack Obama takes credit for the domestic oil boom that came in the wake of his presidency. Stephen Green fact-checks his keister. Bill Whittle and Scott Ott drill down until they strike hubris. It doesn’t take long. Join the team that makes Right Angle at http://BillWhittle.com/subscribe
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
Centinel2012 