Senator Lindsey Graham traveled to the U.S-Mexico border region on Friday with Vice-President Mike Pence. Graham appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss that visit and the politics of congressional inaction to stop the border crisis.
CTH has tracked this issue so closely through the years it often feels futile for another reminder. However, with the insufferable political games in the headlines over the issue of illegal immigrants and children, perhaps it is worth another visit.
There is no greater disconnect from ordinary Americans on any singular issue than the policy positions of Democrats and Republicans in Washington DC surrounding illegal immigration. President Donald Trump is confronting their unified interests.
Massive illegal immigration is supported by both sides of the professional political machine. There are few issues more unifying for the K-Street purchased voices of DC politicians than keeping the U.S. borders open and the influx of illegal aliens as high as possible. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce pays politicians to keep this system in place.
All Democrats and most Republicans support mass immigration. Almost no DC politicians want to take action on any policy or legislation that stops the influx. There are billions at stake. None of the GOP leadership want to actually stop illegal immigration; it’s a lucrative business. Almost all of the CONservative groups and politicians lie about it.
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Former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is involved in two heavily connected legal cases that came from the special counsel appointment of Robert Mueller. One direct case is in DC District Court, Judge Emmet Sullivan; and one indirect case in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA), Judge Anthony Trenga.
The DC case is the direct case against Michael Flynn where Flynn took a plea deal and has been in a rather tentacled sentencing phase since November 2017. The EDVA case is the FARA case against Flynn’s former business associate Bijan Rafiekian where Flynn was going to be a witness (now cancelled).
While the larger issues connecting both cases are somewhat complex, some details released last week reveal a concerning bigger picture that originated long before Robert Mueller became special counsel in May 2017. [Back story HERE and HERE and HERE]
I’m going to make the assumption the reader is familiar with the backstory noted above; and additionally, in full disclosure for the reader, this is openly written for the research benefit of the Flynn defense team – with whom I’ve had no contact.
Of particular interest to me was the revelation that DOJ National Security Division head David Laufman engaged with Flynn in January 2017, and was the lead point of contact within the DOJ-NSD when Flynn was filing FARA compliance documents, as part of the transition into the Trump administration.
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Former Acting ICE Director Tom Homan appeared on capitol hill today to deliver testimony to congress. As Democrat lawmakers attempted to place blame for the border crisis on Mr. Homan he was firing back.
The DOJ made a move today after a failed attempt to label Michael Flynn a co-conspirator in the case against his former business partner Bijan Rafiekian. [Backstory Here]
In today’s development [h/t Techno Fog] the DOJ is calling Michael Flynn Jr as a witness to replace the witness testimony of his father, Lt. Gen Gen Michael Flynn.
Given what we know about how the DOJ pressured Michael Flynn Sr. to take the plea deal based on threats against his son Flynn Jr; and against the backdrop of the DOJ losing with Judge Anthony Trenga in EDVA; the DOJ now appears to be re-leveraging the original plea to compel cooperation from Jr.
This explains why the DOJ said yesterday they would await the DC sentencing (against Flynn Sr.) pending the outcome of the EDVA case against Bijan Rafiekian.
The DOJ in DC said they anticipated Flynn Sr might be a witness for Rafiekian’s defense; so they’ve moved to put Flynn Jr. in opposition to any potentially supportive testimony from Flynn Sr. in EDVA by revisiting (re-leveraging) the threat against Flynn Jr.
If Flynn Jr. didn’t agree to testify in the Rafiekian case, the DOJ would likely have cancelled his father’s plea agreement in DC and re-initiated cases -with new charges- against both Flynns’.
This also explains why corrupt U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu added new lawyers in the DC case. Sneaky bastards. In essence, Jessie Liu is anticipating a change in plea from Flynn, per new Flynn lawyer Sidney Powell, and proactively positioning the DC case to reignite against both the father and the son if: (a) the Rafiekian case goes sideways; or, (b) Flynn Sr. changes his plea agreement.
The benefits for purposefully charging in two distinct courts now surfaces.
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♦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.”
Alan Dershowitz appears with two panel members of the ‘Tick-Tock-Boom club’ to discuss the potential of Robert Mueller’s testimony.
Byron York has put down the crustless triangle sandwich and white wine spritzer long enough to finally discover the October 20th, 2017, scope memo written by Rod Rosenstein that authorized Weissman and Mueller to target Michael Flynn Jr.
[…] The Justice Department has recently allowed members of some congressional committees to view the scope memos, and out of that has come the news that there was a third scope memo to Mueller. Dated Oct. 20, 2017, its contents remain a secret. But its very existence suggests something was going on behind the scenes in the relationship of Mueller and his supervisors at the Justice Department. (read more)
York continues… “At the moment, the third scope memo, like most of the second scope memo, remains a secret.“… Good grief, seriously? Funny how AG Barr is now letting congress look at the scope memos, meanwhile -despite the authorization to release provided by President Trump- the public is blocked from them. I digress.
The October 20th, 2017, Rosenstein scope memo was specifically so that Weissmann and Mueller could target specific people for maximum political damage; including the targeting of Michael Flynn Jr. to generate leverage so that Flynn Sr. would have to accept a plea or see his family crushed under the weight of the weaponized special counsel.
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The foundation for the Russian election interference narrative is built on the claim of Russians hacking the servers of the Democrat National Committee (DNC), and subsequently releasing damaging emails that showed the DNC worked to help Hillary Clinton and eliminate Bernie Sanders.
Despite the Russian ‘hacking’ claim the DOJ previously admitted the DNC would not let FBI investigators review the DNC server. Instead the DNC provided the FBI with analysis of a technical review done through a cyber-security contract with Crowdstrike.
The narrative around the DNC hack claim was always sketchy; many people believe the DNC email data was downloaded onto a flash drive and leaked. In a court filing (full pdf below) the scale of sketchy has increased exponentially.
Suspecting they could prove the Russian hacking claim was false, lawyers representing Roger Stone requested the full Crowdstrike report on the DNC hack. When the DOJ responded to the Stone motion they made a rather significant admission. Not only did the FBI not review the DNC server, the FBI/DOJ never even saw the Crowdstrike report.
Yes, that is correct. The FBI and DOJ were only allowed to see a “draft” report prepared by Crowdstrike, and that report was redacted… and that redacted draft is the “last version of the report produced”; meaning, there are no unredacted & final versions.
Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot!
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Earlier today President Trump hit back against a ridiculous media and political narrative that in a series of tweets:
The example of Mark Warner is particularly poignant. In 2017 Senator Mark Warner was texting with lawyer/lobbyist Adam Waldman about setting up a covert meeting with British intelligence operative and dossier author Chris Steele. Waldman is a lobbyist/lawyer with a $40,000 monthly retainer to represent the U.S. interests of Russian billionaire Oleg V. Deripaska.
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