The Terrorist Watchlist, Explained

From: The Daily Signal

by - David Inserra / June 14, 2016


In the aftermath of the Orlando terrorist attack, the fact that Omar Mateen was twice investigated by the FBI has many wondering why he was allowed to purchase firearms and why the FBI wasn’t aware of his plans for terror. Here are the key details about the U.S. terror watch lists and what they do.

What is the Terrorist Watch List? 

The Terrorism Screening Database is the official name for “Terrorist Watch List” and is maintained by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center. The Terrorism Screening Database is the U.S.’s central repository of foreign and domestic known and suspected terrorists.

It receives names of suspected international terrorists from the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, which is maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center in connection with the U.S. intelligence community and security agencies that have information on terrorists. It also receives data on domestic terrorists from the FBI.

The Terrorism Screening Database only includes information used to identify terrorists. The database itself does not include classified information on terrorists regarding what they have done and how we have been tracking them. This classified information is maintained in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment for foreign terrorists and the FBI for domestic terrorists.

How Is the Terrorism Screening Database Used?

From the Terrorism Screening Database, more specific lists are created for different purposes. For example, the No Fly and Selectee lists are used to prevent individuals from travelling or to subject them to greater scrutiny. For an individual to be included on the No Fly or Selectee List, additional evidence of his threat to aviation security and clear identifying information is needed above and beyond the reasonable suspicion standard.

Another list extracted from the Terrorism Screening Database is the Known and Appropriately Suspected, or KST file. To be included on the KST file, clear identifying information is needed. The KST is queried by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System that is used to check firearm purchases. Inclusion on the file does not itself prevent a gun purchase, but flags the purchase for further review. The individual is allowed to purchase a firearm so long as he is not a felon, adjudicated to be mentally ill, a fugitive from justice, an illegal immigrant, or prohibited from making gun purchases for another statutory reason.

What Is the Standard of Proof Needed to Be Put on the Terrorism Screening Database?

To get on the Terrorism Screening Database, U.S. officials nominate an individual whom they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe is engaged in or aiding terrorist activities. There must also be a sufficient level of identifying information to include an individual on the list. There have been, and continue to be, legal battles over whether proper avenues for redress exist to get off the No Fly list.

So How Did Omar Mateen Get His Guns?

Omar Mateen was subject to two FBI investigations in 2013 and 2014 and was added to the Terrorism Screening Database. Following the conclusion of the investigations, Mateen was removed from the Terrorism Screening Database. As a result, when he went to purchase the firearms used in the attack, he was not in the KST file and was not flagged by the FBI. Even if he had been on the list, he would likely not have been prevented from purchasing a weapon. The FBI would have been alerted, however, and could have responded and investigated further.

Did the FBI Make a Mistake?

In the coming days, the FBI’s decision to close its investigations will be reviewed. FBI Director James Comey has said that it appears the bureau followed the correct procedures but the steps the agents took are being examined to see if something fell through the cracks. Until we know more about how the FBI investigated Mateen, it is too early to assume the FBI did something wrong. It does, however, point to the critical role the FBI plays in investigating and preventing terrorism and why our intelligence and law enforcement agencies need the right resources and tools, as well as the right coordination with state and local law enforcement, to stop terrorists before they strike.


God bless,
JohnnyD

How Donald Trump Can Take Down Both Hillary...and Obama

From: Town Hall

by - Wayne Allyn Root - |Jun 14, 2016


Hillary was President Obama’s secretary of state. They must have communicated often. Right?

Didn't Hillary ever talk to Obama over email or cell phone about classified or "Top Secret" business of the United States? They must have discussed national security issues, right?

I'm betting yes. If so, the mainstream media isn’t discussing this but…Obama and Hillary are sinking in the same boat.

The FBI should not have a problem releasing the names of who sent and received emails from Hillary, while keeping the contents under wraps. I would guess Obama is on that list. Since Obama was president and Hillary was his secretary of state, they had to have spoken about matters of national security. How exactly did they do that? 

Did Obama ever send Hillary an email? If so, didn't he know it was going to a private server? Did he ever text or talk to Hillary over her nonsecure private cell phone?

This is a job for Donald Trump. 

Donald knows how to get the media's attention. He knows how to get the public’s attention too. Donald should ask LOUDLY in the media about how President Obama communicated with Madam Clinton. Because we all now know Hillary was receiving all her emails over the public Internet. Right?

But there’s a big problem with that. That means the president could not communicate with her over the White House classified system. Classified IT systems are not connected to the public Internet. So Obama would have had to have an unsecured computer or cell phone to communicate with Secretary of State Clinton over the public Internet. Right?

And if he used an unsecured computer or cell phone to send classified communications to his secretary of state, then the president also broke the law. 

If Hillary sent him classified emails over the public Internet, that means he received them on his personal unsecured computer or cell phone. Right? That would be breaking the law too. 

Either way a crime was committed.

At the very least, Obama was certainly aware that his secretary of state was sending or receiving classified communications on a personal account. That makes the president an accessory to the crime.

Remember the law states it doesn't matter if this was intentional, or a simple mistake, or ignorance. Either way…it's a crime.

That brings up another issue. Is Attorney General Loretta Lynch aware of this breach of national security by the president? She must have seen the email trail by now, right? Her office has to decide whether to prosecute Hillary. So she would know if Obama was sending or receiving top secret communications to Hillary's private server.

The thing is…

This would be an impeachable offense for Obama. If Lynch knows and has not disclosed, wouldn’t it be “Obstruction of Justice” by the attorney general? 

Security violations are required to be reported immediately to a security officer, so responsive action can be taken. Failure to report a security violation is also a violation. Did the attorney general report this violation? Will Attorney General Lynch investigate herself?

Think about this one for a minute. Who else knew?

Anyone getting emails from Hillary knew. Certainly Vice President Biden was in on the national security email chain. Key national security officials were also all on that chain. So they knew. It was their responsibility to report this security breach by Hillary. If they didn’t, they are all liable for “Obstruction of Justice.”

Here’s one more very real scenario. Could Hillary be blackmailing President Obama? Could she be threatening him that if she goes down, she’ll bring him down too? If Obama approved of Hillary using her own private email and server, he’s a co-conspirator.

Hillary seems awfully confident she’ll never be indicted. Why is she so cocky? Does Hillary think she’s “bullet proof” and the DOJ will never indict her because she’s blackmailing Obama?

Hillary didn't just break the law. She's got everyone involved in a sticky wicket (as the British say). Her crime could bring down the entire Obama administration. 

It's time for Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump to start asking questions...LOUDLY...in public...in the media...from the highest mountaintops.

It’s time for the FBI to recommend indictments. The only real question is…

Will it be Hillary recommended for indictment?

Or Hillary, Obama and half the Obama administration? 

Let's all pray for President Donald Trump. This could get fun.


God bless,
JohnnyD

Florida: America's Jihad Playground

From: Town Hall

by -Michelle Malkin - Jun 15, 2016


The home of the "Happiest Place on Earth" has been breeding killer jihadists and Muslim zealots for years. 

Omar Mateen, the cold-blooded mass murderer who gunned down 49 people at an Orlando gay nightclub and wounded 53 more before police took him out late Sunday, may have worked alone. But he operated in the larger context of a teeming, terror-coddling paradise.

While tourists from around the world soak up sunshine and dreams at Disney World, Islamic extremism festers around them.

Schools: The Muslim Students Association, founded by the radical Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood whose stated purpose is to wage "grand jihad" on America, is active at the publicly funded University of Central Florida in Orlando. The group defiantly brought un-indicted terror co-conspirator Siraj Wahhaj to campus. He's the black Muslim convert and inflammatory imam tied by federal prosecutors to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and New York City landmarks bombing plots. 

Wahhaj served as a character witness for convicted terror mastermind Omar Abdel Rahman (the Blind Sheik), called for replacement of America's "constitutional government with a caliphate" and roots for our nation to "crumble" so Muslims can take over. UCF funded a Muslims "da'wa" (conversion) seminar and with an endowment by the Saudi-supported International Institute of Islamic Thought sought to create an Islamic Studies chair to "help the Ummah regain its intellectual and cultural identity and re-affirm its presence as a dynamic civilization."

The IIIT, also a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, donated at least $50,000 to a "think tank" run by Sami al-Arian that served as a front group for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. While al-Arian, a Muslim Brotherhood member dating back to the 1980s, served as a computer science professor at Tampa's University of South Florida, he toured the country raising money for terrorism overseas. Investigative reporters and the feds caught al-Arian on tape inciting his attendees against, America, Israel "and their allies until death." The left-wing academic pleaded guilty to a terror-fundraising conspiracy charge in 2006. 

Al-Arian brought Palestinian-born Ramadan Shalah to teach at USF and head his "think tank" for a spell. Shalah left the school in 1995 and resurfaced as head of Syria's Islamic Jihad. He remains one of the FBI's most wanted indicted terrorist fugitives. 

Apologist officials at USF, first exposed by counter-jihad researcher Steve Emerson as America's "Jihad U," turned a blind eye to the terror helpers among them.

Mosques: Mateen's homicidal hatred for gays didn't exist in a vacuum. Mateen's neighborhood mosque in nearby Fort Pierce, Florida, was also the house of worship of Moner Abu-Salha, an American jihad recruiter and suicide bomber who blew himself up in Syria last year. The Palm Beach Post reported this week that Abu-Salha had posted videos of an imam's death-to-gays rant on Facebook.

Marcus Dwayne Robertson (a.k.a. Abu Taubah), a former U.S. Marine turned career criminal and bodyguard to the Blind Sheik, headed another mosque, Masjid Al-Ihsaam, in Orlando. He also founded the Orlando-based Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary in 2008 and railed against gays and non-Muslims. Mateen was enrolled in Taubah's course.

Just weeks before the Pulse nightclub massacre, another Orlando mosque, the Husseini Islamic Center, hosted a guest imam who had preached that "gays must die" and that Muslims should not "be embarrassed about this ... let's get rid of them now."

Also in Orlando, the al-Rahman mosque led by Imam Muhammad Musri made headlines in 2010 after holding a fundraiser for the terrorist group Hamas. 

In Tampa, Sami al-Arian founded the al-Qassam mosque named after an infamous Syrian terrorist. Last fall, the mosque -- owned by the North American Islamic Trust, an un-indicted terror co-conspiracy organization -- invited an exiled Muslim Brotherhood instigator and Hamas cheerleader to speak.

In South Florida, the Darul Uloom Institute mosque in Pembroke Pines counted al-Qaida jihad pilot Adnan el-Shukrijumah (allegedly killed in a raid in Waziristan by the Pakistan military in 2014) and convicted jihadist Imran Mandhai -- who plotted with fellow mosque attendees Hakki Aksoy and Shueyb Jokhan to blow up power stations, synagogues and a National Guard armory -- among its worshipers. 

Shukrijumah's brother still lives in Broward County near the Darul Uloom mosque and has posted social media videos condemning "moderate" Muslims, blaming 9/11 on Jews and promoting the caliphate. Darul Uloom's imam is a gay-bashing, Christian-bashing, Jew-bashing bigot who has publicly stated that at least one of the 9/11 hijackers prayed at his mosque.

Jails: Florida's prisons and penitentiaries are unfettered cesspools for jihad radicalization and recruitment. Convicted al-Qaida dirty bomb plotter Jose Padilla (a.k.a. Abdullah al Mujahir) was introduced to Islam while serving time for an armed road rage incident in Sunrise, Florida. The above-named Abu Taubah radicalized nearly 40 fellow inmates while behind bars on a weapons conviction. He was freed last summer by U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell after time served despite prosecutors' pleas to add 10 years to his sentence based on enhanced terror charges.

Gun-grabbers and bleeding hearts, wake up and stop playing Mickey Mouse politics. The problem isn't weapons. It's the weaponized Muslim hate-mongers and jihad enablers operating openly in our midst.


God bless,
JohnnyD

Hillary Clinton: The Unpopular, Corrupt, Shameless Habitual Liar Democrats Deserve

From: Town Hall

by -Guy Benson - Jun 08, 2016


And lo, it came to pass: As of last night, Hillary Clinton is officially the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for President of the United States. Setting aside her party's elite "super delegate" insurance policy, Clinton has now secured a majority of pledged delegates, which reflect the will of primary voters. And despite falling to Bernie Sanders in a startling 23 nominating contests, the former Secretary of State has attracted roughly 3.7 million more votes than the Vermont Senator nationwide.  Having lost the election by every metric, the disheveled Soviet Union honeymooner says he'll fight on to the party's Philadelphia convention anyway, marking just the latest instance of a Socialist ignoring simple math that complicates his untenable fantasies.

The fact that Clinton failed to clear this hurdle until the very last day of balloting underscores her profound weakness as a candidate.  She enters the general election stage of the campaign as one of the most disliked and distrusted political figures in America, and one of the least popular presidential nominees of all time.  Despite his even uglier public image and endless parade of divisiveness and insults, the Republican nominee-in-waiting only trails her by an average of two percentage points at this stage of the race, inside the margin of error.  Several weeks ago, a Democratic operative basked in the afterglow of Donald Trump's effective nomination victory, crowing on Fox News that the GOP had selected "exactly the candidate they deserve."  Ironically, both Trump's strong backers and detractors on the right would likely agree with this statement, albeit for different reasons.  This week, the same formulation applies to the Democrats.  They've chosen the corrupt, opaque, power hungry, self-serving, aloof, greedy, politically soulless, congenital liar they so richly deserve.

In case it wasn't sufficiently beaten into your psyche with a rhetorical two-by-four last night, Hillary Clinton has made history.  Indeed.  She has become the first presidential candidate of either gender to clinch a major party's nomination while under active FBI investigation.  That criminal probe -- not a "security review" as she and her campaign have wrongly claimed -- continues to produce serious new developments.  Based on her deliberate, national security-endangering conduct, as well as a string of clues and actions by federal investigators, it is entirely possible that a recommendation for criminal prosecution will be handed down in the coming weeks.  As America's top diplomat, Mrs. Clinton ordered the implementation of an improper email scheme that predictably culminated in the compromising of thousands of classified documents, including top secret and 'beyond top secret' material.  She ignored specific, personal warnings from State Department security officials about her reckless arrangement in 2009 and 2011, using her shockingly unsecure system throughout her four-year tenure as a means of thwarting public records requests and wielding total control over her correspondence.  When the existence of her private server was revealed, Clinton and her attorneys unilaterally deleted tens of thousands of messages, falsely stating that none of them were work-related.  She has verifiably and flagrantly lied about virtually every aspect of this scandal from the very beginning.

In her victory speech before cheering supporters Tuesday night, Clinton also promised voters that as president, "I will always have your back."  One wonders how those words struck the family members of four Americans murdered in Benghazi by Islamist terrorists on September 11, 2012.  Under Clinton's watch, the State Department disregarded and rejected repeated requests for increased security measures at the compound that was ultimately overrun and sacked.  The facility was operating below the US government's minimum security standards for diplomatic posts anywhere in the world -- let alone a city known to be crawling with jihadists, from which other Western nations had already withdrawn over acute safety concerns.  Despite two previous attempted bombings, the makeshift consulate remained woefully under-protected on that fateful night, which rested on an obviously symbolic date.  After the carnage was over, Mrs. Clinton provably and intentionally lied to the American people about the nature of the attacks.  She repeated her falsehoods to the faces of the victims' grieving families several days later, knowing full well that she wasn't telling them the truth.  And when four separate relatives from three of the families independently confirmed that she'd lied to them, she suggested they were the liars, in spite of contemporaneous evidence backing their account.  The important lesson in all of this, she's said over and over again, is to ensure that nothing like the Benghazi massacre ever happens again.  Several months after her departure from the State Department, a blistering internal report revealed that 15 US diplomatic missions in "high risk" locations still failed to meet security standards.  This past March, Clinton told a televised audience that the United States "didn't lose a single person in Libya." 

Mrs. Clinton also used her triumphal remarks in Brooklyn to inveigh against the influence of money and "power brokers" in America's political system. In light of her history, these comments should have been accompanied by a laugh track.  The words "shameless" and "hypocritical" don't quite cut it here.  Clinton's family foundation -- deemed a "slush fund" by a charity watchdog and described as "all bankable" by a former employee -- has been awash in tens of millions of dollars in undisclosed foreign donations.  The foundation has accepted gifts from individuals and entities seeking to curry favor with the Clintons, including many groups with active business before Hillary's State Department.  This gravy train resulted in dodgy transactions with real national security implications, as well as the re-filing of five years' worth of tax returns, the original versions of which failed to list eight-figures in income from foreign governments -- including regimes that systemically repress women.  Clinton's clear-cut pledges on transparency in order to avoid conflicts of interest were routinely violated.

She and her husband have also pocketed well over $100,000,000.00 in speaking fees since leaving the White House in 2001.  The former president raked in record levels of honoraria while his wife was running the country's foreign policy, and his wife later made a killing from groups that opened their wallets wide to bankroll her addresses as they coincidentally sought to secure government contracts and grants. Meanwhile, she obstinately refuses to release the transcripts of her high-dollar speeches to Wall Street firms, which she implausibly claims were forums to speak truth to power. And as she panders to Sanders supporters on the scourge of income inequality, she's delivered remarks in $12,000 jackets and issued demands about the size of the luxury private jets in which she'd deign to travel.  Hillary Clinton is the very definition of an DC insider and power broker.  She operates at the lucrative and ethically dubious intersection of big money and vast power, and has for decades.

Pivoting to the fall competition, Clinton drew roars from last evening's crowd by asserting that Donald Trump is "temperamentally unfit to be President and Commander in Chief."  Whether one agrees with that indictment or not -- and regardless of how one feels about her myopic cravenness on gay rights, her callousness in the face of governmental abuse of veterans, her pitiful demagoguery on religious liberties, or her radicalism on abortion, immigration, and gun rights -- Hillary Rodham Clinton has serially revealed herself to be ethically unfit to be President and Commander-in-Chief.


God bless,
JohnnyD

Michelle O's inexplicable, vile bitterness

Exclusive: Joseph Farah reminds first lady of her 'privilege from birth,' life of a 'queen'

From: World Net Daily

by - Joseph Farah - June 5, 2016

This was the administration that was going to bring America together – the one headed by America’s first black president.

Instead, it has been the administration that has polarized America more than any since the Civil War.
And it has not just been Barack Obama responsible.

His wife has been even more vitriolic in her vicious, unwarranted attacks on her country.

Remember, it was Michelle O. who told us during the campaign in 2008: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country … not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.”

First time?

Amazing.

She’s been a piece of work ever since.

She topped that last weekend during a commencement address at City College in New York when she launched what was perceived by many in the media as an attack on Donald Trump and America’s intolerance of “diversity.”

She’s said: “It’s the story that I witness every single day when I wake up in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful black young women, head off to school, waving goodbye to their father, the president of the United States, the son of a man from Kenya, who came here to America for the same reasons as many of you, to get an education and improve his prospects in life.”

Thanks for reminding us, Michelle.

We all needed to be reminded of America’s history with slavery one more time.

That’s just what we needed.

Was she correct?

Yes, slaves from Virginia and Maryland, two solidly Democratic states at the time (Maryland remains so), I might add, were used to complete the building of the White House, when paid laborers were in short supply.

America was short on labor in 1792. There was an effort to import European laborers to complete the project, but that effort fell short. So slaves were used.

I might note there was no Republican Party at the time.

Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president some 68 years later. He ran on an anti-slavery platform and won. It was Republicans who freed the slaves.

For another 100 years, however, it was the Democratic Party – Barack and Michelle Obama’s party – that fought integration and civil-rights legislation. The Republican Party championed it.

The Ku Klux Klan was the armed militia of the Democratic Party – lynching almost as many white Republicans as they did innocent blacks after the War Between the States, in which more Americans died than any other war in which Americans (white and black) have fought.

Do we really need another slavery lecture from Michelle Obama – a woman raised in privilege from birth and who has lived like a queen for the last eight years at the expense of white and black Americans?

Isn’t it time for her to stop playing the victim card?

Isn’t it time to explain why she is so bitter toward her country?

Isn’t it time for her to grow up and be thankful for the sacrifice working Americans have made on her behalf?

Isn’t it time for to say “thank you” – just once to her country?

Isn’t it time for her to stop acting like an oppressed minority?

Isn’t it time for her to get off her high horse and say something nice about America?

How does a woman who grew up in privilege from the day she was born have the nerve to condescend to the rest of America the way she does?

How many tens of millions have we spent on her royal vacations over the last eight years?

Gos bless,

JohnnyD

Clinton for-profit education scandal dwarfs Trump U

Bill and Hillary made millions while students racked up debt

From: World Net Daily

by - Jerome R. Corsi - June 3, 2016

NEW YORK – Bill and Hillary Clinton’s attack on Donald Trump over Trump University could invite increased scrutiny of the Clintons’ involvement in a for-profit education scandal in which a company that runs shell colleges paid Bill Clinton $16.5 million to be its pitchman.

While the Clintons were collecting millions, Hillary Clinton’s State Department funneled at least $55 million to a group run by the college company, Laureate Education Inc., according to Peter Schweizer’s book “Clinton Cash” as Breitbart reported.

Clinton abruptly resigned from his post as “honorary chancellor” in April 2015 when the disclosure was publicized.

Documents uncovered by Washington-based watchdog Judicial Watch show Laureate Education paid the former president through a “shell corporation” pass-through account that evidently passed State Department scrutiny while Hillary was secretary of state.

Further, in a story showing how for-profit colleges encourage huge student debt, Forbes found the biggest borrower on the for-profit college list is Laureate Education’s Walden University, whose grad students borrowed $756 million in 2014.

Bill Clinton’s hiring in 2004 as “honorary chancellor” sent the former president scurrying around the globe to make promotional appearances at Laureate campuses in countries such as Malaysia, Peru and Spain.

The company, created in 2004 on the base of the tutoring chain Sylvan Learning Centers, already owned 75 schools in 30 countries and was poised for a massive expansion as Bill Clinton’s name drew top-name, left leaning investors, including George Soros, Henry Kravis of Wall Street investment banking firm KKR and Paul Allen of Microsoft fame.

For-profit college built on student debt

The Washington Post in a 2014 story described the boiler room telemarketing techniques used to entice students into enrolling.

“Inside a building on a narrow Rio de Janeiro street, nine telemarketers sit in small cubicles, talking frenetically into headsets as scripts scroll across their computer screens,” wrote reporters Mina Kimes and Michael Smith for the newspaper.

“On an October morning, these salespeople are urging high school seniors to attend Centro Universitário IBMR, a for-profit university. Their supervisor, Rafael Morine, strains to be heard above the clatter of an air conditioner,” the article continued.

The Washington Post reported that before the day was over, the telemarketers would make almost 1,300 calls, induced by bonuses to salespeople capable of persuading at least 250 students to take the entrance exam for IMBR. They offer what the university’s owner, Douglas Becker, promises in his Baltimore office 5,000 miles away will be an opportunity of a lifetime: “Be part of Laureate Network, the biggest university network in the world.”

The newspaper further noted that by the time Laureate Education was taken private in 2007, in a $3.8 billion management leveraged buy-out, the company with $4 billion in annual revenue and 800,000 students could lay claim to being the largest U.S. for-profit college then in operation.

But, as Forbes pointed out in its July 12, 2015, story, Laureate Education’s Walden University was built by inducing prospective students to incur massive tuition debt to attend a school with no academic reputation and virtually no standards for admission other than ability to pay.

“Don’t confuse Walden University with Walden College, the fictional school made famous in the Doonesbury comic strip. Garry Trudeau did poke fun at Walden U. once, in his August 2012 strip,” Forbes warned. “In that strip, the president of Walden College laments that the graduation rate is so low that “it’s like we’re a for-profit school!”

Citing data from the leftist Center for American Progress, Forbes pointed out that Laureate Education’s Walden University led the list among all U.S. for-profit colleges by amassing student debt of $756 million in 2013-2014.

The Miami Herald reported that since 2010, Bill Clinton has been paid more than $16 million to serve as “honorary chancellor” of Laureate Education.

“The firm is being sued by several online graduate students for allegedly dishonest practices, and a 2012 U.S Senate report found that more than half of Laureate’s online Walden University revenue went to marketing and profit,” the Miami Herald noted. Bill Clinton’s “shell corporation” pass-through account

In October 2015, Judicial Watch released 789 pages of State Department ethics review documents concerning Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that included a copy of Bill Clinton’s May 1, 2010, draft consulting agreement dated with Laureate Education, which had been submitted for ethics review by the State Department.

The document revealed Bill Clinton was being paid through a “shell corporation” pass-through account, WJC LLC, designed to keep consulting fees paid Clinton off the books of the Clinton Foundation.

It allowed Clinton to avoid disclosing the existence of the shell company even to the IRS, as long as compensation payments to him were withdrawn as soon as they were deposited, ensuring the account always showed a zero balance.

Stephen Braun of the Associated Press broke the news of Bill Clinton’s shell company on May 26, 2015. Braun reported Doug Band at Teneo made ready use to the WJC LLC bank account to pay Bill Clinton on the side for lucrative business dealings the Clintons wanted to keep out of audited financial statements and IRS Form 990s prepared for the Clinton Foundation.

Braun reported that in February 2009, Band asked State Department ethics officials to clear Bill Clinton’s consulting work for three companies owned by influential Democratic Party donors.

The AP report noted Band’s memos proposed that Bill Clinton would provide “consulting services regarding geopolitical, economic and social trends affecting the entity and philanthropic opportunities” through the WJC, LLC entity.

Clinton legitimates Becker

Laureate’s founder and CEO, Douglas L. Becker, claims he was accepted at Harvard but declined, preferring to continue working in a local computer store over getting a degree at the prestigious Ivy League university.

The New York Times noted in 1985 that Becker had also declined to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where supposedly he had been accepted as a premedical undergraduate student.

In 2014, while the Clintons were still trying to keep secret how much Bill Clinton was being paid by Laureate Education, Eric Owens, education editor at the Daily Caller, took Clinton to task for the assignment with Becker.

Noting that Laureate was “ensnarled in controversy all over the globe,” Owens speculated the secret sum Becker was paying Bill Clinton had to be considerable to get him “to hawk” the company worldwide.

Owens further noted that Hillary Clinton “helped legitimize Laureate in the eyes of the world by making the for-profit education behemoth part of her State Department Global Partnership.”

Clinton Foundation gets into the act

A Laureate Educational press release in 2013 announced that its schools were scheduled to begin live broadcasts of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting, with more than 45,000 Laureate students scheduled to hear presentations by President Obama, rock star Bono and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

“Four Laureate students from Brazil, Malaysia and Mexico will be granted private, one-on-one interviews with several CGI attendees,” the press release noted.

”The students are scheduled to interview such CGI attendees as Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer and author of The New York Times best-selling book ‘Lean In,’ as well as Chelsea Clinton, a member of the Clinton Foundation’s board of directors. The conversations will be broadcast in English, Spanish and Portuguese,” the press release continued. This is the second consecutive year Laureate has broadcast CGI’s annual meeting.”

In 2012, when Bill Clinton was in his fifth year running his own CGI University, “CGI U,” Becker’s Laureate Education was a sponsor.

Bloomberg Politics reported in 2015that Bill Clinton decided to leave his five-year position as Laureate Education’s “honorary chancellor,” but not before he had visited 19 of Laureate’s 88 campuses around the world and spoke to tens of thousands of its students.

Epstein noted Clinton’s departure was precipitated by his wife’s unfolding 2016 presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton joined Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren in blasting the federal government “for currently subsidizing a for-profit industry that is ripping off young people.”

Epstein noted these concerns evidently had not surfaced in 2008 when Hillary Clinton accepted a contribution of $4,600 to her presidential campaign from Becker. He also gave her $2,000 for her 2000 Senate campaign.


God bless,
JohnnyD

Sorry Friends, If You Are #NeverTrump Then You Are #4Hillary

From: Conservative HQ

by - Richard A. Viguerie, CHQ Chairman | 6/3/2016


On December 9, 2015 when I endorsed Ted Cruz for President I said, “conservatives and Republicans are often not the same. However, they definitely have one thing in common: They desperately want to win the White House in 2016. For Democrats this election is important, but for Republicans and conservatives 2016 is not just crucial to the survival of this country and constitutional liberty – it is the ball game.” 

In the seven months since I made that statement the picture has gotten bleaker than it was back then. I still think Ted Cruz is the best candidate conservatives had in the race, but he is unfortunately not the candidate who won a majority of the delegates – that distinction goes to Donald Trump – and it is to Trump that right-of-center voters will have to look if our country and constitutional liberty are to survive. 

And make no mistake, this election is about the survival of the country that Donald Trump has promised to make great again. Obama, Hillary Clinton and their far-left allies have increased the tempo of their assaults on constitutional liberty and the external threats to our national security and domestic tranquility have grown ever greater. 

Why then, in the face of the indisputable threats facing our country, would mature men and women who purport to be leaders of the Republican Party and the conservative movement do anything that strengthens Hillary Clinton, that gives her even one more vote? 

I find it very strange that many of the same individuals who decry Donald Trump’s deviations from conservative orthodoxy were quick to try to explain away the Romney family’s support for Planned Parenthood and other decidedly anti-conservative organizations and institutions. 

And I find it stranger still that many of the Republicans and alleged conservatives who huddle over their smartphones tweeting outrage over Trump’s kneecapping of his various primary opponents were on strict radio silence when Romney did much the same thing to Newt Gingrich. 

If you are angry and think Trump can’t be trusted or that he won’t fulfill his promises I say grow up and get in the real world – no politician, including Ronald Reagan the greatest president of my life time, fulfills 100% of their campaign promises.  

The question is not will Trump bat 1000? It is will Trump try to undo the damage eight years of Obama and a feckless GOP Congress have inflicted upon America? And the undoubted answer to that is YES. 

And in this dangerous environment I can think of nothing that is more disrespectful of the dire situation facing our country than the idea lately propounded by Bill Kristol that some obscure writer for National Review has a legitimate claim to enter the presidential contest because Donald Trump is not a conservative – this is nothing more than a fraternity house prank, and a demeaning one at that. 

For those who say they are #NeverTrump because “Donald Trump is not a conservative” on this and that issue I’m curious as to what version of conservatism they subscribe to – the George W. Bush version that says Islam is a religion of peace and led us into an apparently endless and inconclusive war in the Middle East, or the Donald Trump version that says defeat radical Islam wherever we find it? 

Or maybe it is the Paul Ryan version of conservatism that says we should fund Obama’s extra-constitutional amnesty for illegal aliens, the Planned Parenthood Industry of Death and a grotesque list of crony government raids on the taxpayers for things like “green energy” and bailouts of Puerto Rico? 

The fact of the matter is that when one examines the views of many of the Republican and allegedly conservative #NeverTrump holdouts they are a lot closer to Hillary Clinton and the rest of the DC elite than they are to the views of the millions of country class citizens who turned-out to support Donald Trump. 

Many #NeverTrump adherents seem to reject even a conversation about the threat of radical Islam. They are all about the econometric model of open borders that is supported by both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and far-left racial interest groups, and they have no interest in cutting spending or limited government, because government power is how they enforce their elitist views on the rest of us. 

If this is standing for conservative principles I must have missed a turn in the road between the day in 1961 when I was hired as Executive Secretary of Young Americans for Freedom and today’s debate over whether or not the congressional Republican leaders who presided over an 80%+ increase in a national debt that now stands at over $18 trillion should get their hands dirty by endorsing Donald Trump. 

The news media and DC’s elite pundits like to dance around the facts with euphemisms like “spoiler,” but it is time for those Republicans and conservatives who say they are #NeverTrump to come clean and to look in the mirror and repeat this list:

I’m OK with Hillary Clinton appointing three or four Supreme Court Justices. 

I’m OK with Hillary Clinton appointing hundreds of Federal Court Judges. 

I’m OK with Hillary Clinton stripping me of my Second Amendment rights. 

I’m OK with Hillary Clinton using the power of the IRS and other federal agencies to terminate my First Amendment rights and the First Amendment rights of other Conservatives. 

I’m OK with Hillary Clinton expanding Obama’s open borders and unlimited immigration policies. 

And, I’m OK with the Hillary Clinton deciding the outer limits of my freedom of conscience and whether or not I can worship God and raise my children as my conscience dictates. 

I say to anyone who claims to be a #NeverTrump conservative, look in the mirror and read that list, and if this is you, then be honest and admit that you prefer Hillary Clinton in the White House and why. Then drop the charade and have the guts to defend your choice to advance Hillary Clinton’s campaign and take ownership of the destruction of liberty and constitutional government that her election will surely bring.

God bless,

JohnnyD