Obama's Corruption Chronicles:

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U.S. Gives 680,000 Green Cards to Migrants from Muslim Nations
APRIL 14, 2016

With Islamic terrorism on the rise in the United States and Western Europe, it’s worth mentioning that the Obama administration issued around 680,000 green cards to foreigners from Muslim countries during a five-year period, according to data published by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The stats, the latest made available by DHS, also show that the U.S. government admits more than double the number of immigrants from Muslim nations than from the European Union.

This disturbing information was circulated by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration, which assesses that if there’s no change in the current policy, the U.S. will likely grant another 680,000 migrants—possibly more—from Muslim-majority countries green cards in the next five years. According to the DHS figures cited by the panel, Uncle Sam issued approximately 680,000 green cards to immigrants from 49 Muslim nations from fiscal year 2009 through fiscal year 2013. Over the same period, the U.S. issued only 270,000 green cards to migrants from the European Union, according to a committee announcement that reminds us “a green card entitles recipients to access federal benefits, lifetime residency, work authorization, and a direct route to becoming a U.S. citizen.” Some of the recipients are admitted to the U.S. as refugees so they immediately qualify for federal welfare benefits like food stamps and Medicaid.

The DHS stats include a breakdown of the countries where the migrants came from. Pakistan and Iraq sent over the most with 83,000 apiece and Bangladesh had 75,000. Seventy-three thousand came from Iran, 45,000 from Egypt, 31,000 from Somalia, 24,000 from Uzbekistan, Turkey and Morocco had 22,000 each, Jordan and Albania 20,000 each and Lebanon and Yemen each had 16,000. Rounding out the five-digit club is Indonesia (15,000), Syria (14,000), Sudan (13,000), Afghanistan (11,000) and Sierra Leone (10,000). The rest, including Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kosovo and Libya, only sent over a few thousand during the five-year period covered by the DHS data. By contrast, only 65,000 green cards were granted to migrants from the European Union country (United Kingdom) with the highest number during this period. The Senate committee reveals that DHS has not yet published statistics covering fiscal year 2014 and fiscal year 2015 so we’ll be on the lookout for that.

National security has never appeared to be a priority for the Obama administration, but this is downright alarming as the U.S. encounters burgeoning threats from radical Islamists. The president’s ongoing effort to befriend and protect Muslims in the U.S. hasn’t put a dent in these eminent threats. Over the years Judicial Watch has reported on a number of initiatives, including programs at key federal agencies, launched by the administration to reach out to or protect Muslims. DHS even met covertly with a group of extremist Arab, Muslim and Sikh organizations to discuss national security matters and the State Department sent a controversial, anti-America Imam (Feisal Abdul Rauf) to the Middle East to foster greater understanding and outreach among Muslim majority communities. The president also hired a special Homeland Security advisor (Mohamed Elibiary) who openly supports a radical Islamist theologian and renowned jihadist ideologue and a special Islam envoy that condemns U.S. prosecutions of terrorists as “politically motivated persecutions” and has close ties to radical extremist groups.

As if this weren’t bad enough, the administration caved into a terrorist front organization’s demands to purge FBI anti-terrorism material determined to be offensive to Muslims. The group, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists and JW obtained hundreds of pages of FBI documents with details of the outrageous deal. Read all about it in this special report. More recently, the administration followed the orders of Islamic activists in suspending an FBI internet program aimed at preventing the radicalization of youth because Muslim and Arab rights groups determined that it discriminates against Muslims and will lead to bullying. After the San Bernardino terrorist attacks the administration issued a warning regarding workplace discrimination “against individuals who are, or perceived to be, Muslim or Middle Eastern.” The directive orders American businesses to accommodate the religious needs of Muslims and assure they aren’t being harassed or intimidated.

 

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Obama IRS Corruption Update
APRIL 15, 2016

Defending the First Amendment against the Obama IRS

It seems these days that our core freedoms, protected under the U.S. Constitution, are under attack from every direction. We have been particularly concerned for some time about the IRS’ intentions toward freedom of expression in churches.

This week we joined with our client the Alliance Defending Freedom in moving to compel a federal court to require the IRS to reveal how it determines when to initiate “church investigations” (Alliance Defending Freedom v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:15-cv-00525) Case No. 1:15-cv-00525-EGS)). Alliance Defending Freedom is a wonderful alliance-building legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.

We believe the agency has been stonewalling efforts to open its procedures to public scrutiny.

Back in 2014 the IRS reached a legal settlement with an atheist organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which said the IRS had “resolved the signature authority issue necessary to initiate church examinations.”

We know that the IRS has procedures for reviewing, evaluating, and determining whether to initiate church investigations, but nobody knows what those procedures are.

“The IRS is not above the law, and Americans deserve to know the truth about the agency’s secret deals with activists,” ADF Legal Counsel Christina Holcomb said. “The IRS has a legal obligation to explain why it is hiding things or else produce documents. Its ongoing refusal to follow the law is absurd, particularly since much of [what] we are asking for is information that the IRS has already provided voluntarily to the Freedom From Religion Foundation.”

In July 2015, months after we sued the agency for failing to comply with our Freedom of Information Act request, the IRS began producing documents. However, it withheld more than 10,000 of the 16,000 requested. Thousands were completely redacted.

Obama’s IRS first ignored the FOIA request and is now stonewalling in federal court. The public has a right to know about any new IRS guidelines for investigating the practice of our basic First Amendment freedoms.

In its 2014 lawsuit, the atheist group demanded that the IRS enforce the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt organizations from making political endorsements for elected office. It authorizes the IRS to regulate sermons and other speech to ensure churches comply with the provisions of their designations.

In July 2014, the IRS announced that, according to the terms of an agreement reached with the atheist, it had been monitoring churches and other houses of worship for electioneering and other political activity. According to June 27, 2014, IRS letter to the Justice Department, the IRS has targeted 99 churches it said merited “high priority examination” for allegedly illegal electioneering activities. This church-targeting was determined by an IRS “Political Activities Referral Committee.”

Doesn’t the idea of this IRS “Committee” send a chill down your spine ?

That’s why it is important we prevail in federal court, so our client and the American people can find out the truth about what the out-of-control Obama IRS is up to.

Stay tuned.

 

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Judicial Watch & Allied Educational Foundation to Supreme Court: Protect the Laws that Keep Public Officials Honest

With a notorious Democrat in the White House, it bears repeating that there are corrupt politicians in both the Republican and Democrat parties. The “corruption caucus” in the political world is both bipartisan and growing.

True to our non-partisan educational mission, we joined with the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) last week to file an amici curiae brief with the United States Supreme Court in support of a federal court of appeals decision upholding the conviction of a corrupt Republican politician – former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who was found guilty by a jury of 11 counts of corruption and fraud.

(AEF, a JW frequent partner on amici briefs, is a charitable and educational foundation dedicated to empowering America through education and legal action.)

Here’s the story:

In September 2014, McDonnell was convicted for granting political favors to a Richmond businessman in exchange for golf outings, lavish vacations and $120,000 in loans. In July 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously rejected McDonnell’s appeal. In January 2016, the Supreme Court agreed to review the lower court’s decision. McDonnell alleges that the federal statues penalizing bribery and extortion are impermissibly vague under the U.S. Constitution.
In our amici brief in support of the Court of Appeals decision, we and AEF argue that the two laws at issue are straightforward tools for policing public corruption:
Public officials have a duty to act in the best interest of the people who elect them. When they make decisions based on personal interest, they are defrauding the public. The honest services statute criminalizes government corruption by punishing those who execute a scheme to deprive another of the right to “honest services.” The Hobbs Act prohibits extortion “under color of official right.”

Petitioner was convicted of violating these statutes when he accepted more than $175,000 in personal benefits (loans and luxury items) in exchange for agreeing to use the power of his office on behalf of his benefactor. In considering whether the actions taken by petitioner constituted “official acts,” amici urge the Court to adopt as broad as possible interpretation.

The honest services statute and the Hobbs Act have served as critical tools in prosecuting public corruption. The Court should adopt a broad interpretation of what constitutes an “official act” as not to deprive prosecutors of these critical tools.”

The amici brief suggests that curtailing or scrapping these statutes would guarantee that more corrupt politicians and bureaucrats would escape prosecution and that public corruption prosecutions already have dropped dramatically under the Obama administration:

A long-term decline in federal prosecutions for public corruption has continued and reached a 20-year low. Data from the Justice Department show that 505 individuals were prosecuted for corruption offenses during FY 2015, a decline of 3.6 percent from FY 2014 and down more than 30 percent from five years ago. For the first four months of FY 2016, there have been just 140 new official corruption prosecutions. This is the lowest level reported for such prosecutions in the last 20 years.

Moreover, the Obama administration has pursued 16 percent fewer public corruption charges against federal employees than the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, according to a 2014 DOJ report to Congress on public integrity … The Obama administration has filed an annual average of 390 such prosecutions compared to Clinton (1995-2000) average of 468 federal employees and Bush (2001-2009) average of 467).

Our brief highlights how hundreds of public officials have been successfully prosecuted for depriving the public of “honest services” and violating the Hobbs Act. You can see the astonishing list here.

It is no surprise that criminal politicians don’t like federal corruption laws, but that doesn’t make those laws unconstitutional. Under the Obama administration, there’s been a remarkable drop in government corruption prosecutions. Eviscerating anti-corruption laws is the last thing this nation needs – as public corruption is already out of control.​

 

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Let's not forget Hilary...

State Department Belatedly Releases New Clinton Benghazi Documents
APRIL 14, 2016

Document Release Raises New Questions about State’s FOIA Responses, Court Statements ...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it has obtained new documents from the Department of State containing the telephone transcripts from the evening of September 11, 2012, in which then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informs then-Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil that the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi “had nothing to do with the film.” The documents include previously unreleased telephone transcripts with world leaders about the Benghazi attack.

Clinton’s admission to Kandil was first produced to the Select Committee on Benghazi on October 13, 2015 and publicized on the day of Mrs. Clinton’s testimony, October 22, but court filings in Judicial Watch litigation show that the record was only produced after two federal court judges ordered the State Department to produce more Benghazi-related records to Judicial Watch. Similarly, Judicial Watch litigation also forced the release of the September 11, 2012 email in which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informed her daughter by email that the attack had been staged by an “Al Qaeda-like group,” rather than as the result of “inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” as Mrs. Clinton had claimed in her official public statement one hour earlier.

The State Department previously told a federal court that the Kandil document wasn’t responsive to Judicial Watch’s request and resulting lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01511)) seeking:

Any and all records concerning, regarding, or related to notes, updates, or reports created in response to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. This request includes, but is not limited to, notes taken by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or employees of the Office of the Secretary of State during the attack and its immediate aftermath.

But the State Department then produced this information last month to Judicial Watch. The records, the State Department told the Court, were found among thousands of new Clinton State Department records supposedly only discovered in December, 2015 – again, two months after the key Kandil document was first produced to the Benghazi Committee.

Under court order, the State Department released 11 documents responsive to the Judicial Watch request with large blocks of information redacted. The documents also include phone conservations between Clinton and other foreign dignitaries and heads of state during the period of the deadly terrorist attack on the Benghazi consulate.

At 10:08 p.m. on September 11, Mrs. Clinton issued an official State Department press statement, approved by the White House, placing the blame for the attack on an Internet video:

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.

Yet the next day, in her 7:49 PM September 12 conversation with Kandil, Clinton said, “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack – not a protest.” Kandil responded, “You’re not kidding. Based on the information we saw today we believe that group that claimed responsibility for this is affiliated with al-Qaeda.”

On September 15, in a telephone call with then-Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr, Clinton emphatically portrayed the “stupid, very offensive film” as the root cause of the Benghazi violence. Clinton told Amr, “I have repeatedly, as has the President and other officials in our government, deplored not only the content of this stupid, very offensive film… But we have to exercise more self-discipline… otherwise we’ll be in a vicious downward circle against everyone who has ever felt offended, particularly on the internet….”

Clinton’s telephone call with Amr also contained a curious reference to what the former secretary referred to as a “very successful investment visit led by my deputy Tom Nides, and on the very day they left this series of incidents began to unfold.” According to the Washington Post, Nides, who was deputy secretary for management and resources at the State Department, was at the same time responsible for “communications with donors” to the Clinton Foundation. Nides was also involved in the scandal involving Clinton’s efforts to provide special access to State Department officials for hedge fund clients of her son-in-law, Marc Mezinsky.

In a September 12 call with the Afghan President Hamid Kharzi, Clinton says at some point they need to talk about “about religious feelings and insults and defamation.” Islamists seeks to criminalize criticism (“defamation”) of Islam. The Obama administration worked closely with advocates for restrictions on free speech as part of their Benghazi video pr campaign.

The documents also show that Clinton referenced the “actions of a mob” to Tunisian Prime Minister Jebali on September 14. Jebali responded that he condemned “these terrorist actions.”

“There are two scandals here. The first is Hillary Clinton was telling different stories to different foreign leaders about the Benghazi attack – including an admission that it was a terrorist attack,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The second is the State Department’s cover-up of these documents. The State Department is forcing Judicial Watch to play ‘whack-a-mole’ with Clinton and Benghazi documents. It is no wonder that two frustrated federal court judges granted Judicial Watch discovery into the Clinton FOIA issues.”​

 

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Obama Allots $19 Million to Register Immigrant Voters
APRIL 18, 2016

A year after President Obama launched his Task Force on New Americans the administration is injecting it with a $19 million infusion so it can achieve its key initiative of registering new voters that will likely support Democrats in the upcoming election. Officially, this is being described as enhancing pathways to naturalization by offering immigrants free citizenship instruction, English, U.S. history and civics courses. The cash is being distributed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Homeland Security agency that oversees lawful immigration, and the obvious goal is to register more immigrant voters because they tend to be Democrat.

Otherwise a Democrat commander-in-chief and his open-borders Domestic Policy Director wouldn’t be operating such a costly project. Judicial Watch wrote about the new task force last April, reporting that its chair is none other than Cecilia Muñoz, the former vice president of the powerful open borders group National Council of La Raza (NCLR). Obama recruited Muñoz to be White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs then promoted her to the more powerful and prestigious post of Domestic Policy Director. That gives her tremendous influence as the president’s top adviser on domestic issues as well as the White House official in charge of coordinating and supervising the execution of domestic policy. As head of the Task Force on New Americans Muñoz recruited like-minded leaders from various agencies—including the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, State, Education, Transportation and Health—to brainstorm about ways to empower immigrants.

Executing this mission will cost American taxpayers a chunk of change to provide immigrants and refugees with free “citizenship preparation” programs the administration claims will “strengthen civic, economic and linguistic integration” and “build strong and welcoming communities.”

The allocation was announced this month by USCIS, which has dedicated large sums over the years to similar causes. The money usually goes to various leftist groups that help lawful permanent residents prepare for naturalization. In fiscal year 2016, however, the agency is recruiting new groups by offering them a piece of the multi-million-dollar pie. “We intend to award about $1 million to first-time recipients in the Citizenship and Integration Grant Program for fiscal year 2016,” the agency’s grant announcement states. “If you represent one of these organizations, or know of an interested organization, we strongly encourage that organization to consider applying. Additionally, another $9 million will fund programs that provide both citizenship instruction and instruction and naturalization application services.”

The administration brags about spending millions in recent years to support the quality work of organizations that play a vital role in helping residents prepare for naturalization, but seems to acknowledge this year is special and therefore more money will be dedicated to the cause. Read between the lines; presidential election. The extra cash “will help nonprofits establish new citizenship instruction programs or expand the quality and reach of existing ones,” the agency writes. “Examples of eligible organizations include private, nonprofit organizations such as civic, community and faith-based organizations; adult education organizations; and volunteer and literacy organizations. A separate funding opportunity will award approximately $9 million to public or nonprofit organizations that prepare permanent residents for citizenship by offering both citizenship instruction and naturalization application services.”

This is only a small part of the new task force’s mission. Practically every federal agency will participate in this effort by contributing resources and creating programs to help immigrants. For example the Department of Labor (DOL) will implement “new workforce programs” for the “new Americans” and the Department of Education will promote “funding opportunities” to assure that the immigrants “are provided the tools they need to succeed.” The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will collaborate with other agencies to release a career and credentialing toolkit on “immigrant-focused career-pathways programs.” The Department of Justice (DOJ) and USCIS will make sure the new Americans have worker rights and protections, the task force says, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will launch a two-year pilot to assure that non English speakers have “meaningful access to housing programs” subsidized by American taxpayers.

 

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Media Uses Obama’s Hillary Defense in Order to Unseal “Classified” Court Files
APRIL 20, 2016

President Obama recently downplayed the importance of Hillary Clinton’s classified emails floating around in her private server and now a journalist is seizing the moment in an effort to unseal the secret court documents of an Al Qaeda leader involved in the 9/11 attacks. The operative’s name is Abu Zubaydah and he lives at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba along with a few dozen of the world’s most dangerous terrorists.

In 2008 Zubaydah, a Saudi national, legally challenged his detention in federal court and all documents associated with the case—such as motions and court orders—have been sealed by the Obama administration. All these years later the motions filed by his “human rights” attorney haven’t even been ruled on and pretty much anything to do with the case has been kept from public view. “The systematic, open-ended denial of access to the court records in this proceeding plainly violates the public’s First Amendment right of access,” according to a lengthy motion filed this week in federal court on behalf of the journalist, who works at a mainstream newspaper. It adds that the government has failed to demonstrate that a proper basis exists to keep the records from going public.

Indeed, the government is simply asserting that all the information is “classified” as it often does when it refuses to make inconvenient material public. Just days ago President Obama seemed to admit that sometimes information is classified when it shouldn’t be. The commander-in-chief was downplaying the fact that his own secretary of state jeopardized national security by exclusively using a private, unprotected server to exchange classified information. “What I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that there are — there’s classified, and then there’s classified,” Obama said during a nationally televised interview. “There’s stuff that is really top-secret, top-secret, and there’s stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state, that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open-source.”

In the motion the reporter’s lawyer refers to Obama’s statement, writing that it amounts to a concession that some data is improperly classified. The court document also points out that “instances of classification made in excess of authority to conceal unlawful behavior or prevent embarrassment are well documented.” Zubaydah’s case in particular involves allegations that the government engaged in illegal actions and therefore has a motive to misuse classification to prevent embarrassment, the motion states. “Because preventing embarrassment and concealing violations of law are invalid reasons for classification, this Court should scrutinize the Government’s claims of the need for secrecy in this proceeding with extreme care, and release all records for which the Government has not met its constitutional burden,” the motion says.

Judicial Watch has uncovered government documents—once marked “Top Secret”—that reveal the U.S. obtained valuable intelligence after Zubaydah was subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. In fact, Zubaydah identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) as the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans. Before Zubaydah identified KSM, also incarcerated at Gitmo, the 9/11 mastermind didn’t even appear in the intelligence community’s file of key Al Qaeda operatives or associates. KSM, in turn, provided valuable intel about another Al Qaeda jihadist, Majid Khan, who, in turn, identified a terrorist named Zubair who was subsequently captured. Zubair later provided information that led to the arrest of Al Qaeda’s South Asia leader.

 

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CDC Official Warned Staff of Health, Safety Risks During Influx of Illegal Alien Minors:
APRIL 21, 2016

“Plan on Many of the Kids Having TB,”... “Be Wary of Personal Safety.”

A government official warned employees deploying for the influx of illegal immigrant minors about health and safety risks because the new arrivals would have tuberculosis and some were young adults—not children—like the Obama administration proclaimed, according to records obtained by Judicial Watch. “We might as well plan on many of the kids having TB,” states a June 26, 2014 guidance e-mail from a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) environmental health scientist, Alaric C. Denton, as the agency prepared to handle the crisis. “Most of these kids are not immunized, so we need to make sure all our staff are immunized.” Denton, who is stationed at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, predicts in the directive that the agency will be overwhelmed pretty quickly and that screening requirements will be hard to keep up with.

Judicial Watch had to sue the CDC’s umbrella agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, (HHS) for the records. Though chunks have been redacted, the documents contradict the Obama administration’s public statements dismissing possible health and safety risks created by the tens of thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) fleeing violence in Central America. The CDC official reveals in the documents obtained by JW as a result of the lawsuit that “some of these kids are not really kids they are young adults, and we should be wary of personal safety.” JW reported this early on, when the first group of UACs arrived through the Mexican border in the summer of 2014. Homeland Security sources directly involved with the mess told JW that holding centers were jam-packed, rampant with diseases and sexually active teenagers. A veteran Border Patrol officer who heads the agency’s Tucson sector quickly established that many of the UACs were not little kids but rather 17-year-olds with possible ties to gang members in the U.S.

Weeks later JW reported that the nation’s most violent street gangs—including Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13—were actively recruiting new members at U.S. shelters housing illegal immigrant minors. A high-level Homeland Security source told JW the gangs used Red Cross phones at the shelters to communicate with the new recruits. Last fall the Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed that the MS-13 has been fortified and able to remain a top tier gang thanks to the influx of illegal alien gang members that recently crossed into the state. The MS-13 is a feared street gang of mostly Central American illegal immigrants that’s spread throughout the U.S. and is renowned for drug distribution, murder, rape, robbery, home invasions, kidnappings, vandalism and other violent crimes. The Justice Department’s National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC) says criminal street gangs like the MS-13 are responsible for the majority of violent crimes in the U.S. and are the primary distributors of most illicit drugs.

This new batch of government records, part of an ongoing JW investigation into the UAC disaster, indicate the administration was well aware of the danger in allowing hordes of illegal immigrant youths to enter and stay in the U.S. At the very least it flies in the face of the administration’s false narrative involving the key issues of health and safety surrounding the new arrivals which have been relocated throughout the nation. Denton, the CDC environmental health scientist who warned colleagues prior to deployment, works at the agency’s Environmental, Safety and Health Compliance Office (ESHCO). Officials from other federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), were also involved in the exchanges. JW will continue receiving records from the government involving this issue as part of an agreement, supervised by a federal judge, stemming from our lawsuit.

 

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Speaking of Hillary and the Democratic Plan to try to keep the White House...

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) tells GOP to 'quit complaining' about felons voting:

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) on Sunday slammed Republicans who have complained about an executive order he signed extending the right to vote in his state to convicted felons who have served their sentences.

"Well, I would tell the Republicans, 'Quit complaining and go out and earn these folks' right to vote for you. Go out and talk to them,' " he said in response to a question about people saying his order was an election-year ploy to help Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

"I think some of the language that has come out of the Republicans, I would tell them to be very careful at how they frame this, very careful of their rhetoric."

McAuliffe is a longtime ally of Clinton and served as a chairman of her campaign in 2008.

"I told folks when I ran for governor, I will be a brick wall to protect your rights for women. I will protect the rights of LGBT members, and I'll do everything I can to get disenfranchised voters entrenched," he said.

"So I've done that. It's exactly what I talked about. Our economy is booming. I just announced a 4 percent unemployment, biggest budget surplus in Virginia history. We put $1 billion in education. It works when you welcome people back into society and make them feel good about themselves."

Clinton last week praised the Virginia governor for signing an executive order to extend voting rights to more than 200,000 convicted felons.

The order allows felons who have served their prison time and finished parole to register to vote. It reverses a Civil War-era provision in Virginia's Constitution.

 

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New Clinton Benghazi Documents
APRIL 22, 2016

State Department Belatedly Releases New Hillary Clinton Benghazi Documents

Another piece of the scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton and Benghazi fell into place this week when the State Department released to us new documents containing telephone transcripts from the evening of September 12, 2012.

The documents reveal that the then-Secretary of State informed then-Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil that the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. compound the day before “had nothing to do with the film.”

You will recall that on the evening of September 11, Mrs. Clinton issued an official State Department press statement, approved by the White House, placing the blame for the attack on an Internet video:

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.

Yet the next day, September 12, in her conversation with Kandil, Clinton said, “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack – not a protest.” Kandil responded, “You’re not kidding. Based on the information we saw today we believe that group that claimed responsibility for this is affiliated with al-Qaeda.”

Nevertheless, two days later, at the ceremony when the bodies of the four Americans who were killed arrived in the United States, Clinton again left the implication that it was all due to the video:

“This has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.”

This became an administration theme. On September 16, then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice, appearing on all the Sunday morning political talk shows, invoked the video. For example, she told Jake Tapper of ABC:

“But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated.”

There are actually two scandals here. The first is Hillary Clinton telling different stories to different foreign leaders about the Benghazi attack – including an admission that it was a terrorist attack.

The second is the State Department’s cover-up of these documents. The department has forced Judicial Watch to play ‘whack-a-mole’ with Clinton and Benghazi documents. It is no wonder that two frustrated federal court judges granted Judicial Watch discovery into the Clinton FOIA issues.

Here’s the story on that.

Clinton’s admission to Kandil was first revealed to the Select Committee on Benghazi on October 13, 2015 and publicized on the day of Mrs. Clinton’s testimony, October 22. However, court filings in Judicial Watch litigation show that the record was only produced after two federal court judges ordered the State Department to produce more Benghazi-related records to us.

Similarly, our litigation also forced the release of the September 11, 2012, email in which Clinton informed her daughter that the attack had been staged by an “Al Qaeda-like group,” rather than as the result of “inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” as Mrs. Clinton had claimed in her official public statement one hour earlier. (So, the two big reveals of the Benghazi Select Committee during Clinton’s testimony only came about because of your Judicial Watch – and despite the incompetence of Congress.)

The State Department had previously told a federal court that the Kandil document wasn’t responsive to Judicial Watch’s request and resulting lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01511)) seeking:

Any and all records concerning, regarding, or related to notes, updates, or reports created in response to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. This request includes, but is not limited to, notes taken by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or employees of the Office of the Secretary of State during the attack and its immediate aftermath.

But the State Department then delivered this information last month to us. The records, the State Department told the Court, were found among thousands of new Clinton State Department records supposedly only discovered in December, 2015 – again, two months after the key Kandil document was first produced to the Benghazi Committee.​

 

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Cartels Help Terrorists in Mexico Get to U.S. to Explore Targets; ISIS Militant Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir Among Them
APRIL 26, 2016

Mexican drug traffickers help Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the United States to explore targets for future attacks, according to information forwarded to Judicial Watch by a high-ranking Homeland Security official in a border state. Among the jihadists that travel back and forth through the porous southern border is a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso, Texas. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen and has lived in Mexico for more than a year, according to information provided by JW’s government source.

Now Khabir trains thousands of men—mostly Syrians and Yemenis—to fight in an ISIS base situated in the Mexico-U.S. border region near Ciudad Juárez, the intelligence gathered by JW’s source reveals. Staking out U.S. targets is not difficult and Khabir actually brags in an Italian newspaper article published last week that the border region is so open that he “could get in with a handful of men, and kill thousands of people in Texas or in Arizona in the space of a few hours.” Foreign Affairs Secretary Claudia Ruiz, Mexico’s top diplomat, says in the article that she doesn’t understand why the Obama administration and the U.S. media are “culpably neglecting this phenomenon,” adding that “this new wave of fundamentalism could have nasty surprises in store for the United States.”

This disturbing development appears on the Open Source Enterprise, the government database that collects and analyzes valuable material from worldwide print, broadcast and online media sources for the U.S. intelligence community. Only registered federal, state and local government employees can view information and analysis in the vast database and unauthorized access can lead to criminal charges. Updated data gathered on Khabir reveals he’s 52 years old and was ordered to leave Kuwait about a decade ago over his extremist positions. Khabir is currently on ISIS’s (also known as ISIL) payroll and operates a cell in an area of Mexico known as Anapra, according to the recently obtained information.

A year ago Judicial Watch reported on an ISIS camp in this exact area, just a few miles from El Paso. JW’s April 14, 2015 report identified Anapra as the location of the ISIS base, details that were provided to JW by sources that include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector. Anapra is situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. At the time JW reported that another ISIS cell was established to the west of Ciudad Juárez, in Puerto Palomas to target the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming. Sources told JW that, during the course of a joint operation, Mexican Army and federal law enforcement officials discovered documents in Arabic and Urdu, as well as “plans” of Fort Bliss – the sprawling military installation that houses the US Army’s 1st Armored Division. Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents during the operation.

A few months later JW reported that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling Middle Eastern terrorists into a small Texas rural town near El Paso and that they’re using remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude the Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers. The foreigners are classified by the U.S. government as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) and they are transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs wait for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20. At the time JW’s government sources revealed that terrorists have long entered the U.S. through Mexico and in fact, an internal Texas Department of Public Safety report leaked by the media documents that several members of known Islamist terrorist organizations have been apprehended crossing the southern border in recent years.

Earlier this year, as part of an ongoing investigation into national security risks in the porous southern border, JW obtained evidence that proves the U.S. government has known for more than a decade about the partnership between terrorists and Mexican drug cartels. State Department documents made public by JW in January say that for at least ten years “Arab extremists” have entered the country through Mexico with the assistance of smuggling network “cells.” Among them was a top Al Qaeda operative wanted by the FBI. Some Mexican smuggling networks actually specialize in providing logistical support for Arab individuals attempting to enter the United States, the government documents say. The top Al Qaeda leader in Mexico was identified in the September 2004 cable from the American consulate in Ciudad Juárez as Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah. The cable was released to Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

 

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Speaking of corruption...

Email Info Could Have Exposed Clinton Server in 2014

(Washington, DC) – The Obama State Department last week admitted it withheld a key Benghazi email of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from Judicial Watch since at least September 2014. If the State Department disclosed the email when first supposedly found, Clinton’s email server and her hidden emails would have been disclosed nearly two years ago, before Clinton authorized the alleged deletion of tens of thousands of emails.

The developments come in a July 2014 Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records related to the drafting and use of the Benghazi talking points (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). The lawsuit, which forced the disclosure of the Clinton email records, seeks records specifically from Clinton and her top State Department staff:

Copies of any updates and/or talking points given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency concerning, regarding, or related to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Any and all records or communications concerning, regarding, or relating to talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency.

Contradicting an earlier statement to the court, an April 18, 2016, State Department letter admits that it found the email at issue in 2014 but was held back in its entirety:

Also, upon further review, the Department has determined that one document previously withheld in full in our letter dated November 12, 2014 may now be released in part.

The referenced November 12, 2014, letter does not reference any withheld emails. A search declaration suggests the hidden email was found in September 2014 as a result of a search in response to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit.

The September 29, 2012, email to Clinton from then-Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan concerns talking points for Clinton calls with senators about the Benghazi attack. The email contains Clinton’s non-state.gov address.

It is in this litigation that U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted “limited discovery” to Judicial Watch into Clinton’s and her aides’ email practices. Judge Lamberth ruled that “where there is evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith, as here, limited discovery is appropriate, even though it is exceedingly rare in FOIA cases.” (U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan also granted Judicial Watch discovery into the Clinton email matter. The discovery plan, agreed to by the State Department, is awaiting Judge Sullivan’s approval.)

Last week’s document production also includes material from a records cache of thousands of new Clinton State Department records supposedly only discovered in December 2015. The new material shows the State Department compiled extensive Libya/Benghazi-related dossiers on Republican and Democrat senators.

“Now we know the Obama administration consciously refused to give up key information about Hillary Clinton’s email in 2014. It covered up this email both from the court and Judicial Watch,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Judge Lamberth was right when he suggested that Obama’s State Department acted in bad faith. This cover-up provided Hillary Clinton enough time to hide potentially thousands of government records. One aim of our court-order discovery will be to get to the bottom of this cover-up.”​

 

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Media Uses Obama’s Hillary Defense in Order to Unseal “Classified” Court Files

President Obama recently downplayed the importance of Hillary Clinton’s classified emails floating around in her private server and now a journalist is seizing the moment in an effort to unseal the secret court documents of an Al Qaeda leader involved in the 9/11 attacks. The operative’s name is Abu Zubaydah and he lives at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba along with a few dozen of the world’s most dangerous terrorists.

In 2008 Zubaydah, a Saudi national, legally challenged his detention in federal court and all documents associated with the case—such as motions and court orders—have been sealed by the Obama administration. All these years later the motions filed by his “human rights” attorney haven’t even been ruled on and pretty much anything to do with the case has been kept from public view. “The systematic, open-ended denial of access to the court records in this proceeding plainly violates the public’s First Amendment right of access,” according to a lengthy motion filed this week in federal court on behalf of the journalist, who works at a mainstream newspaper. It adds that the government has failed to demonstrate that a proper basis exists to keep the records from going public.

Indeed, the government is simply asserting that all the information is “classified” as it often does when it refuses to make inconvenient material public. Just days ago President Obama seemed to admit that sometimes information is classified when it shouldn’t be. The commander-in-chief was downplaying the fact that his own secretary of state jeopardized national security by exclusively using a private, unprotected server to exchange classified information. “What I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that there are — there’s classified, and then there’s classified,” Obama said during a nationally televised interview. “There’s stuff that is really top-secret, top-secret, and there’s stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state, that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open-source.”

In the motion the reporter’s lawyer refers to Obama’s statement, writing that it amounts to a concession that some data is improperly classified. The court document also points out that “instances of classification made in excess of authority to conceal unlawful behavior or prevent embarrassment are well documented.” Zubaydah’s case in particular involves allegations that the government engaged in illegal actions and therefore has a motive to misuse classification to prevent embarrassment, the motion states. “Because preventing embarrassment and concealing violations of law are invalid reasons for classification, this Court should scrutinize the Government’s claims of the need for secrecy in this proceeding with extreme care, and release all records for which the Government has not met its constitutional burden,” the motion says.

Judicial Watch has uncovered government documents—once marked “Top Secret”—that reveal the U.S. obtained valuable intelligence after Zubaydah was subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. In fact, Zubaydah identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) as the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans. Before Zubaydah identified KSM, also incarcerated at Gitmo, the 9/11 mastermind didn’t even appear in the intelligence community’s file of key Al Qaeda operatives or associates. KSM, in turn, provided valuable intel about another Al Qaeda jihadist, Majid Khan, who, in turn, identified a terrorist named Zubair who was subsequently captured. Zubair later provided information that led to the arrest of Al Qaeda’s South Asia leader.

 

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And the list goes on...

U.S. to Meet Felons’ “Criminogenic Needs” in Jail; Education, Work, Life Skills Training
APRIL 28, 2016

First the Obama administration managed to reduce prison sentences as a way of ending racial discrimination and now comes an aggressive plan to meet the “criminogenic needs” of felons by providing them with a series of perks the moment they’re incarcerated. This includes an education, employment and life skills training, substance abuse and mental health plans, building family relationships behind bars and a number of other programs to maximize their likelihood of success upon release.

It’s called the Roadmap to Reentry and it’s part of a Department of Justice (DOJ) initiative to reduce recidivism among ex-cons. Work started around five years ago when the administration created a Federal Interagency Reentry Council to reduce recidivism and improve employment, education, housing and health outcomes of ex-cons. The Roadmap to Reentry is being heavily promoted this week because Attorney General Loretta Lynch has determined that this is National Reentry week. The celebration comes on the heels of the nation’s largest mass release of federal prisoners, freed early by the administration as part of the new relaxed drug-crime sentences. The commander-in-chief and his cohorts claimed the old sentences were too harsh and discriminated against poor and minority offenders. Sentencing reform bills are also pending in Congress and are expected to become law sometime this year.

As he’s done with so many other issues, the president took matters into his own hands back in 2010, enacting a measure that for the first time in decades relaxed drug-crime sentences. This severely weakened a decades-old law enacted during the infamous crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged urban communities nationwide in the 1980s. The U.S. Sentencing Commission lowered maximum sentences for drug offenders and made it retroactive so the feds started discharging the first wave of drug felons last fall who were eligible for early release under the softer rules. In all, around 50,000 prisoners are expected to benefit from the new measure, which has outraged federal prosecutors who warn that drug trafficking is inherently violent and therefore the phrase “non-violent drug offenders” is a misnomer. The nation’s prosecutors also caution that reducing prison sentences for drug offenders will weaken their ability to bring dangerous drug traffickers to justice.

To accommodate the ex-cons, the Obama administration has poured huge sums of taxpayer dollars into job and housing programs that can help them stay out of jail since recidivism is quite common. In fact, Judicial Watch reported last month on a crack dealer freed early as part of the mass release of federal inmates who got indicated for fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend and her two kids in Ohio. Perhaps if this violent criminal had the accommodations provided by the new Roadmap to Reentry he would have stayed out of jail. The new plan takes the administration’s recidivism intervention initiative a step further by starting the process the second a criminal is incarcerated. “Supporting successful reentry is an essential part of the Justice Department’s mission to promote public safety — because by helping individuals return to productive, law-abiding lives, we can reduce crime across the country and make our neighborhoods better places to live,” Lynch states on the agency’s special reentry webpage.

Here’s how it will work; upon incarceration every inmate will be provided with an individualized reentry plan tailored to his or her risk of recidivism and programmatic needs, according to the Reentry Roadmap plan. This means meeting the “criminogenic needs” of every convict in U.S. custody. “While incarcerated, each inmate should be provided education, employment training, life skills, substance abuse, mental health, and other programs that target their criminogenic needs and maximize their likelihood of success upon release.” Each inmate will also be “provided the resources and opportunity to build and maintain family relationships, strengthening the support system available to them upon release.” Lynch has notified governors nationwide to allow cons returning to their communities to exchange their Bureau of Prisons inmate identification card for a state ID. This is critical to a successful “reintegration” because without ID it’s tough to get a job, housing or open a bank account, according to the plan.

 

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U.S.-Funded Study: Mass Immigration from Mexico Ended, Border Enforcement Has Backfired
MAY 02, 2016

WHAT'S THIS LIBERAL BEEN SMOKIN'...!?

Mass immigration from Mexico has ended, an escalation of border enforcement has backfired and the greatest need now is a path to legal status for the 11 million illegal immigrants who are already in the United States, according to a new study funded by the governments of both countries. The findings, in the midst of a border migration crisis that includes Islamic terrorists, could lead some to wonder what the taxpayer-funded researchers were smoking when they compiled this one.

It’s no joke, though. Not only has mass immigration from Mexico ended, it won’t be coming back, according to the college professor in charge of this affair. His name is Douglas S. Massey, an Ivy League sociology and public affairs teacher who co-directs the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), which is partially funded by Uncle Sam through the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). With a headquarters in Guadalajara, Mexico MMP strives to further understand the complex process of Mexican migration to the United States. Massey attributes what he has determined to be the end of mass immigration from Mexico to the “decline of Mexican fertility from 6.5 children per woman in the 1960s to around 2.2 children today.” It’s time to shift from a policy of immigration suppression to one of immigration management, according to Massey and his fellow academics.

Their recent study is titled “Why Border Enforcement Backfired,” a collaborative effort between American researchers and their Mexican counterparts at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, a publicly-funded education center specializing in social science. Besides the government cash that regularly flows to the MMP, the study itself got an infusion of taxpayer dollars from the NICHD which operates under the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s medical research agency which annually doles out tens of billions of dollars to hundreds of thousands of researchers at universities and institutions around the globe. Established in 1962 under President John F. Kennedy, NICHD has a monstrous budget of its own ($1.3 billion in 2015) and distributes quite a bit of money to causes that seem to follow leftist protocol.

In this instant the research found that “border militarization” has actually resulted in higher numbers of illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. from Mexico. That’s because border enforcement has “affected the behavior of unauthorized migrants and border outcomes to transform undocumented Mexican migration from a circular flow of male workers going to three states into an 11 million person population of settled families living in 50 states,” this esteemed group of academics claim. They argue that border enforcement emerged in response to “moral panic” about the perceived threat of Latino immigration to this country. “The end result was a self-perpetuating cycle of rising enforcement and increased apprehensions that resulted in the militarization of the border in a way that was disconnected from the actual size of the undocumented flow,” researchers found.

It gets better. In a promotional announcement released by his university, Massey, the lead researcher, says this: “Rather than stopping undocumented Mexicans from coming to the U.S., greater enforcement stopped them from going home.” Here is his attempt to explain that absurd theory: “Greater enforcement raised the costs of undocumented border crossing, which required undocumented migrants to stay longer in the U.S. to make a trip profitable,” Massey said. “Greater enforcement also increased the risk of death and injury during border crossing. As the costs and risks rose, migrants naturally minimized border crossing — not by remaining in Mexico but by staying in the United States.” Are we supposed to take this guy seriously? It’s bad enough our tax dollars fund his work! One of his Ivy League pals, who also studies immigration, urges policymakers to pay attention to this earth-shattering research. Her name is Mary Waters, also a sociology professor, and she says this study shows that “throwing money at militarizing the border led to the growth of undocumented immigration and if we had just done nothing, undocumented immigration would be much lower.”

In the meantime, the porous southern border has created a huge national security risk and the region is a cesspool of violent criminal activity perpetuated by heavily armed Mexican drug cartels that have joined forces with Islamic terrorists to enter the U.S. Judicial Watch has reported on this for years and in fact, back in 2011 cited a Texas Department of Agriculture report confirming that Mexican drug cartels have transformed parts of the state into a war zone where shootings, beheadings, kidnappings and murders are common. More recently JW published an investigative series about Islamic terrorists operating camps in Mexico, just a few miles from the U.S. border and slipping into the country with the help of narco-traffickers. Just last week a high-ranking Homeland Security official forwarded information to JW involving an ISIS operative, Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, stationed in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso, Texas, that crosses into the U.S. with the help of Mexican drug traffickers to explore targets for future attacks.

 

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Obama Orders Fed Agencies to Stop Asking Job Applicants about Criminal History
MAY 03, 2016

THIS SOB HAS GOTTA GO...

To make public-sector jobs more accessible to convicts, President Obama has issued a new order prohibiting federal agencies from asking candidates about criminal history when applying for positions. It’s part of the commander-in-chief’s mission to reduce barriers to reentry and employment for incarcerated individuals once they leave jail. The new measure, announced in a Friday media dump, will affect tens of thousands of federal government positions funded with taxpayer dollars.

Government often tries to escape fallout by burying controversial or bad news right before the weekend, but it’s difficult to keep this outrageous development below the radar. At the president’s order the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is publishing a proposed rule that would prohibit federal agencies from asking those applying for competitive service and career senior executive service positions about criminal and credit history. People with criminal records are already eligible to compete for the vast majority of federal jobs, a White House announcement states, and the proposed rule ensures that hiring managers are making selection decisions based solely on qualifications. “Early inquiries into an applicant’s criminal history may discourage motivated, well-qualified individuals who have served their time from applying for a federal job,” the announcement says, adding that “early inquiries could also lead to the disqualification of otherwise eligible candidates.”

The administration refers to criminal background checks as “barriers to employment” that “unnecessarily narrow the pool of eligible and qualified candidates for federal employment while also limiting opportunities for those with criminal histories to obtain the means to support themselves and their families.” If a candidate’s criminal record becomes known, they’re not be eliminated but rather evaluated via a “suitability determination” that considers character and conduct as well as the following factors; “relevance of any past criminal conduct to the job; the nature, seriousness, recency, and circumstances of any criminal conduct; the age of the individual at the time of the conduct; contributing societal conditions; and whether any efforts have been made toward rehabilitation.” This can easily be interpreted as a mandate to look the other way when evidence of a criminal record surfaces in the federal workforce.

The new directive is part of a broader effort by the administration to slash recidivism among ex-cons by providing them with tools to maximize their likelihood of success after prison. It’s called the Roadmap to Reentry and the president is pushing it hard in the aftermath of his sentencing reduction plan that resulted in the early release of tens of thousands of federal inmates, mostly serving time for drug-related crimes. To prepare criminals for life after prison Uncle Sam will provide a series of perks, including education, employment and life skills training in jail as well as substance abuse and mental health plans and programs to build family relationships behind bars. Once the cons are released, the government will help them find jobs and housing and provide a number of other programs to facilitate the reintegration process under Obama’s Roadmap to Reentry.

Years ago the administration tried slamming the private sector with a ban on job applicant background checks by claiming that they discriminate against minority candidates. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency that enforces the nation’s workplace discrimination laws, wasted taxpayer dollars suing companies for checking criminal histories asserting that it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The apparent intent was to discourage other businesses from checking criminal histories out of fear of getting sued by the government, but it didn’t quite work out that way. A federal judge eventually blasted the EEOC’s claims, calling them laughable, distorted, cherry-picked, worthless and an egregious example of scientific dishonesty. Of interesting note is that the EEOC conducts criminal background checks as a condition of employment.

 

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Waste, Violations in $25 Mil Program to Fight Climate Change in Guatemala
MAY 05, 2016

A $25 million project to help Guatemala combat the ills of climate change is rife with problems that include data errors and discrepancies, no sustainability plan as required by the government and security and funding violations. Though it constitutes an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars, this is par for the course with virtually all of the Obama administration’s “green” ventures, which have largely failed after getting hundreds of millions in federal funds. Among them is a fly-by-night solar panel company (Solyndra) that went under after getting $535 million from the feds and an electric car company (Fisker) that also folded after the government gave it $200 million.

This one is officially known as Climate Nature and Communities in Guatemala (CNCG) and it’s a tiny slice of the president’s broad and costly initiative to conquer global warming in developing nations. The goal is to conserve Guatemala’s wealth of natural resources and support the country’s efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Since the U.S. launched CNCG in 2013, nearly half of the money allocated has been disbursed to a New York-based nonprofit called Rainforest Alliance that oversees a consortium of environmental, academic and business institutions. This group gets a lot of money from Uncle Sam for its various biodiversity conservation causes and, not surprisingly, there’s lots of waste and mismanagement.

In the Guatemala program the issues are documented in a federal audit that blasts Rainforest Alliance for violating government funding rules by, among other things, failing to contribute its share of costs under this contract. Under the arrangement, the U.S. gives the nonprofit $25 million and it agrees to contribute $3.75 as “cost sharing.” The group’s portion must come from in-kind contributions or other sources but can’t come from the government. The audit reveals that Rainforest Alliance claimed it met its cost sharing obligations in the Guatemala program with cash it received from the government under a different deal for firefighting. “Including the firefighting funds as part of cost sharing has resulted in overstating the actual cost share amount by $26,708,” the audit says. “Lack of monitoring by the implementer and the mission can lead to reporting inaccurate information and prevent them from complying with the agreement.”

Additionally, the data compiled in the first two years of the Guatemala project contain a number of errors or discrepancies and auditors determined that much of the information is “inaccurate or lacked sufficient support.” The environmentalists also failed to develop a sustainability plan as required by the government to carry on program efforts after the five-year federal funding period expired. “Two years into implementation, no plan existed,” auditors write in the report, further pointing out that “without a sustainability plan, the funds used to help the Guatemalan Government and other partners manage the country’s natural resources to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change could be wasted.” As if all this weren’t bad enough participants didn’t undergo required background checks, a violation of government rules put in place to ensure that no criminals receive training funded with federal money.

This is just a snippet of the pervasive fraud and corruption in the vast majority of the administration’s green initiatives. Besides failed domestic programs like the ones mentioned earlier, the U.S. has spent billions to fight global warming in poor countries, mainly through a program known as Global Climate Change Initiative. The cash keeps flowing into its coffers because the administration claims that climate change is one of the century’s greatest challenges that can compound pre-existing social stresses, including poverty, hunger, conflict, migration and the spread of disease. The U.S. also contributes to climate change causes via a multi-billion-dollar World Bank initiative to combat its effects in poor and African and Asian countries that stand to suffer most. The U.S. is the World Bank’s largest contributor so Americans are getting stuck with a huge chunk of that tab.

 

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Earthquake Amnesty in Works for Illegal Aliens from Ecuador, DHS Quietly Grants “Migratory Relief” in Spanish
MAY 06, 2016

Word of a special earthquake amnesty for Ecuadorean nationals living in the United States illegally is spreading like wildfire in Spanish media reports published throughout Latin America recently. A catastrophic, magnitude 7.8 temblor struck the ailing South American nation’s pacific coast on April 16, killing hundreds and injuring thousands. Undoubtedly, it’s been devastating and worthy of the tremendous humanitarian aid being provided by the U.S. government as well as a multitude of charities.

However, the Ecuadorean nationals who stand to benefit from yet another one of President Obama’s disaster amnesty initiatives already lived in the U.S. illegally when the earthquake hit. Offering this perk is like rewarding bad—in this case illegal—behavior. We’ve already seen this occur many times in the last few years and Judicial Watch has documented it in a number of reports. Obama has granted Ebola amnesty for illegal aliens from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, earthquake amnesty for Haitians, hurricane amnesty for Hondurans and Nicaraguans and “ongoing armed conflict” amnesty for nationals of Yemen, an Islamic Middle Eastern country well known as an Al Qaeda breeding ground. Earlier this year the administration rewarded illegal aliens in the Southern and Midwestern United States “severe weather” amnesty due to the flooding that battered the region and forced rivers from Texas to Illinois to surge out of control.

Considering this record, it’s not unreasonable to assume that the administration will eventually issue an earthquake amnesty for illegal aliens from Ecuador. Officially this is known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a humanitarian measure designed to temporarily shield illegal immigrants from deportation during emergencies. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is consulting with “appropriate agencies” as it evaluates the earthquake’s impact and Ecuador’s recovery efforts to determine if a TPS order is necessary, according to a newspaper report in El Salvador that quotes a DHS spokesperson. The agency is already helping Ecuadoreans in the U.S. by granting work permits and waving visa fees if candidates show that their financial situation has been hurt by the earthquake, according to a document posted in Spanish on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website. It states that USCIS offers “migratory relief measures” for those affected by natural disasters such as the recent severe earthquakes in Ecuador, Japan and Burma. This is clearly targeted at Ecuadoreans since Japanese and Burmese don’t usually speak or read Spanish.

The earthquake reprieve idea gained steam after an Illinois congressman well known for his open borders agenda, wrote a letter to Obama calling for TPS for Ecuadorians living in the U.S. “The United States Congress created TPS for exactly these types of dire circumstances in foreign countries, when those citizens cannot safely return to their country and are already living in the U.S.,” the congressman writes to the commander-in-chief. “Given the magnitude of the destruction, Ecuadorians cannot safely return home. Extending TPS is the compassionate response that would provide the many Ecuadorians throughout our country with much-needed security and stability in this time of personal, familial, and national crisis.” The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the Washington D.C. think tank dedicated to researching legal and illegal immigration into the U.S., points out that almost every natural disaster in the third world is followed by calls for amnesty for illegal aliens from the afflicted country. More information on this phenomenon is offered in a recent CIS piece titled “The Earthquake Lottery for Illegal Aliens, Ecuador Edition.”

 

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Another $37.3 Mil to Combat Housing Discrimination
MAY 11, 2016

In a final push to end prejudice against minorities throughout the U.S., the Obama administration is spending another $37.3 million to combat housing discrimination and, as usual, the money is flowing straight into the coffers of leftist groups that share the president’s ideology. Throughout his two terms Obama has allocated colossal sums of taxpayer dollars to combat what he believes is an epidemic of discrimination against minorities in everything from the criminal justice system to education, housing and the workforce.

This has been a government wide effort in which a number of federal agencies have doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to fund a multitude of controversial initiatives. Among the biggest spenders has been the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Judicial Watch has reported on this waste over the years, including the results of a probe that revealed HUD violated a ban on federal funding for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) by giving the famously corrupt group tens of thousands of dollars in grants to “combat housing and lending discrimination.” Congress passed a law in 2009 to stop the huge flow of taxpayer money that annually went to ACORN after a series of exposés about the leftwing group’s illegal activities yet the Obama administration has continued giving it cash, mainly to fight housing discrimination.

This is a cause dear to the president’s heart so HUD has funded it generously, increasing the amount each year even when the nation suffered through a financial crisis. In 2011, for instance, JW reported that HUD awarded 108 “fair housing organizations” north of $40 million to educate the public and combat discrimination. The allocation represented a $13.2 million increase over the previous year to end housing discrimination against minorities. In 2012 HUD gave leftwing groups $42 million to provide minorities with “housing counseling.” Among the biggest recipients was the open borders nonprofit National Council of La Raza (NCLR), which has seen its federal funding skyrocket since one of its top officials got a job in the Obama White House. In one HUD allocation, NCLR got nearly $2 million to help combat predatory lending, train poor Latinos about financial literacy and help them become homeowners.

It appears that the administration plans to keep the cash giveaway alive until the very end. This latest $37.3 million allocation will go to groups that “fight housing discrimination under HUD’s 2016 Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP),” according to an agency announcement. FHIP gives money to organizations that assist people who believe they have been victims of housing discrimination and directs them to government agencies to handle their complaints. The groups investigate claims and deploy minority and white “testers” with equal financial qualifications to determine if housing providers treat them differently based on race. FHIP also conducts outreach, education and enforcement initiatives that promote fair housing laws and equal housing opportunity awareness. It’s all in the name of leveling the playing field.

To accomplish this task in other areas the administration utilizes different agencies. For example in the workforce the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is the president’s discrimination police. Last year JW reported that the agency earned accolades and shattered performance records by getting more than $525 million in settlements for reported victims of discrimination in both private and public sector jobs. The breakdown includes $356.6 million for “victims” of employment discrimination in private, state and local government jobs and $105.7 million for federal employees and applicants who never got hired, presumably because they encountered discrimination. Of important note is that the EEOC received 89,385 charges alleging employment discrimination during the fiscal year yet resolved 92,641. The extra 3,256 cases evidently were dug up by the agency’s “front-line staff,” which produced $60 million in monetary benefits over fiscal year 2014, demonstrating “high productivity of the EEOC workforce,” according to the agency’s fiscal year 2015 report.

 

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Obama Food-Stamp Free-for-All: Feds Bust Largest Fraud Operation in U.S. History
MAY 13, 2016

President Obama’s expanded food-stamp program certifying flea market retailers as vendors to provide low-income neighborhoods with fresh produce has ripped open a Pandora’s Box of fraud and corruption. This week federal authorities in south Florida busted the largest food-stamp fraud operation in U.S. history. Twenty-two defendants in the largely black and Hispanic areas of Miami-Dade County known as OpaLocka and Hialeah swindled the government out of $13 million by fraudulently trading food stamps for cash.

The crooked vendors operated food and produce stands at a local flea market as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s initiative to eradicate “food deserts,” common in poor, minority communities where fresh, healthy food is tough to find or often unavailable. The feds say the business owners and their employees let food-stamp recipients use their welfare benefit to get cash in exchange for a cut of the money. They swiped the recipient’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) card (the government created the name to avoid stigma) for an inflated amount, doled out cash and kept a percentage. In most instances the recipient didn’t actually get food, according to federal authorities. “These flea market retailers are charged with having taken advantage of a provision in the SNAP program designed to provide locally sourced fresh produce and meat to low income families who otherwise would likely have no option for such food items,” said a special agent with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Inspector General in an announcement. The USDA funds food stamps, which are then distributed by states.

Thousands of food-stamp recipients are believed to have exchanged their benefit for cash in this flea market scheme that “defrauded the American taxpayer” and “denied healthy foods to needy children and their families,” according to the USDA OIG agent, Karen Citizen-Wilcox. In a press conference attended by Judicial Watch in the Justice Department’s Miami headquarters this week, federal prosecutors coined the case “Operation Stampede.” The defendants, all authorized by the government to accept food stamps as part of the administration’s new initiative, face up to 20 years in prison. Authorities didn’t touch on consequences that the food-stamp recipients should face for also breaking the law. They also committed fraud by knowingly taking cash—instead of food—which is illegal under program rules.

This has been going for some time and in fact, JW reported in 2012 on a federal audit that found food-stamp recipients were using their welfare benefit to buy drugs, weapons and other contraband from unscrupulous vendors. The same investigation also determined that some trade food stamps for reduced amounts of cash like in this latest Florida flea market case. Two years later JW reported that SNAP benefits were being sold online using social media such as Facebook, Twitter and ecommerce websites like Craigslist and eBay.

This hasn’t stopped the administration from expanding the food stamp rolls—in the name of reducing “food insecurity”—which are currently at more than 45 million, according to the latest USDA figures. This translates into tens of billions of dollars for a bloated program that saw its annual spending more than double in just five years. Besides the free groceries, the administration has also dedicated tens of millions more to provide food-stamp recipients with free fruits and veggies as part of the First Lady’s effort to revolutionize the inner-city diet. Among them is a $31.5 million effort to create projects that increase the purchase of fruits and vegetables among low-income consumers that already get food stamps and a $1.9 million research center that will find ways to help recipients make healthier and wiser food choices. This is no joke. The new compound will be known as the Center for Behavioral Economics and Healthy Food Choice.

 

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Charity with $600k-a-Year President Gets Millions from U.S. to Train “Vulnerable Afghans”
MAY 17, 2016

Among the federal agencies that have disbursed huge sums to famously corrupt Afghanistan reconstruction causes is the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), which has spent more than $11 million with the single biggest chunk of money going to a leftist charity whose president earns a stunning $600,000 a year. It’s a tiny snippet of the $113 billion Uncle Sam has blown on wasteful projects presented to American taxpayers as necessary to rebuild the Islamic country renowned as a hotbed of terrorism.

In the DOL’s case, the cash is supposed to fund programs that provide Afghans with an education, work and life skills as well as well as job training. The biggest single portion of the DOL investment has gone to the New York-based International Rescue Committee (IRC) to provide “vocational training for vulnerable Afghans” and programs that increase wages and self-employment. The IRC claims that it responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster.

Last year a British newspaper reported that the head of IRC, former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, earns “a staggering $600,000 per year” at the nonprofit. That’s nearly four times the salary of the nation’s prime minister, the newspaper pointed out, and several hundred thousand more than the president of the United States.

Americans have given the IRC $3.4 million, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and the watchdog wants to know how the money is being spent and if program goals have been met. In a report issued this month SIGAR notes that, besides IRC, several other groups received lots of money without revealing how it was spent.

UNICEF got $3 million to demobilize child soldiers and provide them with reintegration, psycho-social and medical support. The rest of the DOL money supposedly funded activities that included training Afghan women to produce school uniforms for Afghan girls, assisting the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled to improve protection of workers’ rights and reforming labor laws and regulations in the country. Raising awareness of child labor is another popular cause that got generous funding.

While the U.S. keeps the flood of cash flowing, there’s no follow up to determine if the huge investment has been effective. As of the end of 2015, the U.S. has appropriated about $113 billion for relief and reconstruction in Afghanistan, the watchdog writes in its latest DOL report. The largest portion—$96 billion—has been managed by the Department of Defense (DOD), the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Judicial Watch has reported extensively on this in the last few years and the fact that there’s virtually no oversight once the money has been doled out. The government does a pathetic job tracking programs’ successes of failures and SIGAR has faced huge obstacles in the course of its probes even though it’s supposed to be an independent watchdog with unlimited access to information necessary to expose government fraud or wrongdoing. When the watchdog launched an investigation into how Afghanistan reconstruction money is being spent agencies “provided disparate information,” the report states, which required “additional follow-up.”

An example is a case JW wrote about last year involving a $65 million allocation to help Afghan women escape repression. Details of how the money was spent and the effectiveness of the costly experiments were never made available, according a federal audit that found the government doesn’t have effective mechanisms for tracking the funds. In 2014 JW reported that the State Department spent $18.5 million to renovate a prison in Afghanistan that remains unfinished and unused years after the U.S.-funded work began. It turns out the State Department officer overseeing the multi-million-dollar boondoggle was corrupt and convicted for accepting bribes from an agency contractor. The U.S. also keeps sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the Afghan Ministry of Public Health despite multiple warnings of fraud and corruption inside the scandal-plagued agency.