Bernards Township sued for prohibiting use of words ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslims’

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ANN ARBOR, MI – In a settlement agreement, which reads more like an instrument of surrender, Bernards Township (“Township”), New Jersey officials agreed that, in addition to a $3.5 million payment to Islamic Society of Basking Ridge (“ISBR”), residents and citizens of the Township are prohibited from commenting on “Islam” or “Muslims” at the upcoming public hearing to approve the settlement.  Astonishingly, a federal judge approved the prohibition as a fully enforceable Order of the Court.

As a result of this suppression of speech, the Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, yesterday, filed a lawsuit in the New Jersey Federal District Court on behalf of Christopher and Loretta Quick.   The lawsuit was filed by TMLC affiliated New Jersey attorney, Michael Hrycak. Mr. Hrycak was assisted by TMLC staff attorney, Tyler Brooks. The TMLC is representing the Quicks without charge.

TMLC’s lawsuit alleges that Bernards Township’s settlement agreement constitutes a prior restraint on speech based on content, as well as, a violation of the Establishment Clause because it prefers Islam over other religions.  The lawsuit asks the court to: declare that the settlement agreement is unconstitutional; and to enter a preliminary and permanent injunction against its enforcement.

Read TMLC’s entire Federal Complaint here.

The Quicks reside within 200 feet of the proposed mosque construction in a zoned residential area.  Yet, the settlement agreement prohibits them from describing the many unique features of Islamic worship which will impact design of the building, traffic density, water and sewage, traffic control problems, road construction, and parking arrangements.   According to the settlement agreement, ISBR is permitted to make statements concerning Christians and Jews and their places of worship, but in contrast, the Agreement prohibits commentary relating to Islam or Muslims. In fact, ISBR has previously discussed the Christian and Jewish religions and their places of worship.   

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented: “As we have previously documented, ISBR has taken the extraordinary step of concealing significant links on their website to a radical group named by the federal government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in America history, the Islamic Society of North America (“ISNA”).  ISNA is claimed by the Muslim Brotherhood as one of “our organizations.” According to internal documents seized by the FBI, the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy is to engage in a “grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within . . .”

Thompson continued, “While claiming that the Township had a religious animus against Muslims, ISBR hid from the public view its animus toward Christians and Jews, by not only hiding anti-Christian and anti-Semitic verses published on its website, but also hiding its significant ties to ISNA. Instead of standing up to defend its citizens against ISBR’s hate-filled anti-Semitic and anti-Christian bias, the Township colluded with ISBR’s “Civilization Jihad” by capitulating to payment of millions of dollars to ISBR, allowing the construction of the new mosque and Islamic center in violation of zoning codes, and now even suppressing speech concerning Islam or Muslims at a public meeting.”

In March 2016, ISBR filed a lawsuit in the New Jersey Federal District Court alleging that Bernards Township had discriminated against the Islamic Society when it declined to approve the construction of a large mosque on a lot that was far too small to handle the contemplated structure.  And in November 2016, the United States represented by the U. S. Justice Department filed a second lawsuit against the Township on similar grounds. The settlement agreement covers both lawsuits.

Read the entire Settlement Agreement and Court Order here.

Draining the IRS Swamp or Sewer, if you prefer.

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Kimberly Strassel has a follow up commentary in today’s Wall Street Journal to our post on the WSJ by Jerome Marcus, Esq. on the lack of justice for the languishing Z Street case against the IRS over its patent anti-Israel viewpoint discrimination.

Strassel points out that other cases arising from Tea Party 501.(c)(3) and (c)(4) application have also been stymied by opposition from Department of Justice lawyers leftover from the Obama Administration.

Time for the IRS Swamp to be drained and justice to be achieved.

We had sent the Z Street matter to someone close to President Trump for action to cleanse the IRS of partisan opponents of free speech under our First Amendment . Especially concerning in the Z Street matter was the federal courts up through the appellate levels had ordered the IRS to correct the injustice.

Whether it be pro-Israel Z Street, as a founding board member or many of the Tea Party groups similarly sidelined for adverse and discriminatory treatment, the Trump White House needs to expedite action with the cooperation of the Department of Justice despite their contretemps with Attorney General Sessions over non related matters.

Read what Ms. Strassel has written in her WSJ commentary and share this widely.

Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp, and here’s a seven-month progress report: The Washington bog is still as wide and fetid as ever. Consider that Mr. Trump’s Justice Department has inexplicably continued to defend the IRS’s misdeeds under President Obama.

Voters put a Republican in the White House in part to impose some belated accountability on the scandal-laden Obama administration. And the supreme scandal was the IRS’s assault on tea-party groups—a campaign inspired by congressional Democrats, perpetrated by partisan bureaucrats like Lois Lerner, and covered up by Mr. Obama’s political appointees. This abuse stripped the right to political speech from thousands of Americans over two election cycles. To this day, no one has answered for it.

The groups targeted are still doggedly trying to obtain justice through lawsuits that have dragged on for years. They believed Mr. Trump’s election would bring an end to the government obstruction. It hasn’t. “The posture of the DOJ and the IRS under the Trump administration is identical to the posture under the Obama administration,” Mark Meckler, president of Citizens for Sound Governance, tells me. “Nothing has changed.”

Mr. Meckler was one of the founders of Tea Party Patriots. His current organization is funding a class-action suit in Ohio federal court on behalf of groups targeted by the IRS. So far the effort has cost $3 million.

That money is now going to fight Mr. Trump’s administration. In recent months the Justice Department has continued refusing to hand over documents or make witnesses available for depositions. The plaintiffs finally managed to depose Ms. Lerner and another key IRS player, Holly Paz, earlier this summer. But their counsels successfully demanded that the transcripts be kept secret from the public. As former federal employees, Ms. Lerner and Ms. Paz are presumably getting backup from government lawyers.

The suit has slowly ground through discovery and is teed up for trial early next year. Yet in its latest stunt, the Justice Department has asked for summary judgment—arguing that the facts are so far beyond dispute that the judge should dispense with the trial and simply rule now. This is laughable. The judge is unlikely to even consider it, meaning the motion is nothing more than a way to waste further time and sap the plaintiffs’ resources.

To this day, conservative nonprofits are being toyed with by the IRS. The Texas Patriots Tea Party has waited five years for tax-exempt status and has continued to receive round after round of intrusive agency questions, long after the scandal was exposed and the IRS promised reform.

Other litigants are experiencing the same treatment. The IRS is fighting Judicial Watch in a suit over document requests. Government lawyers are hamstringing a suit against the IRS brought by Z Street, a pro-Israel nonprofit—as described last month in an op-ed on these pages.

The problem is that the same old Obama-era lawyers have been left to run these cases in the same old hostile ways. Who are these people? Laura Beckerman, one of the lead lawyers defending the IRS in the Ohio class action, left government only this month. Her LinkedIn profile says she is now pro bono coordinating counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. CREW is among the most liberal outfits in the capital, fanatically devoted to taking down conservatives. That’s the type still calling the shots in Mr. Trump’s bureaucracy.

The Justice Department’s job is to defend the government, but it is also supposed to pursue justice. And there is no question the IRS did wrong. It has been documented by the Treasury Department’s inspector general and admitted by the IRS itself. It’d be one thing if the plaintiffs were demanding a billion-dollar payout, but they aren’t. Their main request is that the IRS come clean on what happened, and the government is resisting with all its power. The real question is why the Justice Department is even fighting this suit, when it ought to be leading a renewed investigation into what happened and how it got covered up.

This stonewalling cannot be laid solely at the feet of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, another Obama appointee who bizarrely remains in his post. The IRS, as the client, no doubt is calling many of the legal shots. But the Justice Department has the authority in important cases to make the ultimate judgment call on how the government will handle the litigation.

It’s time for some judgment. Senior leaders in the Justice Department may be wary of replacing or redirecting attorneys on the IRS cases, fearing it might provoke another round of media caterwauling. The White House may be wary of canning Mr. Koskinen, thinking it would be cast as another high-profile firing. But Mr. Trump was hired to impose exactly that sort of accountability. If he’s going to get rapped for dramatic moves, it might as well be for doing something that serves justice.

Write to kim@wsj.com.

Trump’s IRS Swamp

Obama-era lawyers are still obstructing lawsuits to hold the agency accountable.

WSJ.COM

Federal Court Orders State Department to Conduct a Search of Benghazi Emails of Hillary’s Closest Advisors

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(Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch announced that on August 8, 2017, D.C. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ordered the State Department “to search the state.gov e-mail accounts of Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, and Jacob Sullivan,” former aides of Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State. The State Department is ordered to search in those accounts “for records responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] March 4, 2015, FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request.” (A separate Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit first broke open the Clinton email scandal.)

Judge Mehta described Judicial Watch’s Clinton Benghazi FOIA lawsuit as “a far cry from a typical FOIA case. Secretary Clinton used a private e-mail server, located in her home, to transmit and receive work-related communications during her tenure as Secretary of State.” Further:

[I]f an e-mail did not involve any state.gov user, the message would have passed through only the Secretary’s private server and, therefore, would be beyond the immediate reach of State. Because of this circumstance, unlike the ordinary case, State could not look solely to its own records systems to adequately respond to [Judicial Watch’s] demand.

[ … ]

[The State Department] has not, however, searched the one records system over which it has always had control and that is almost certain to contain some responsive records: the state.gov e-mail server. If Secretary Clinton sent an e-mail about Benghazi to Abedin, Mills, or Sullivan at his or her state.gov e-mail address, or if one of them sent an e-mail to Secretary Clinton using his or her state.gov account, then State’s server presumably would have captured and stored such an e-mail. Therefore, State has an obligation to search its own server for responsive records.

[ … ]

State has offered no assurance that the three record compilations it received [from Secretary Clinton and her aides], taken together, constitute the entirety of Secretary Clinton’s e-mails during the time period relevant to Plaintiff’s FOIA Request. Absent such assurance, the court is unconvinced “beyond material doubt” that a search of the state.gov accounts of Abedin, Mills and Sullivan is “unlikely to produce any marginal return.”

[ … ]

Accordingly, the court finds that State has not met its burden of establishing it performed an adequate search in response to Plaintiff’s FOIA Request and orders State to conduct a supplemental search of the state.gov e-mail accounts of Abedin, Mills, and Sullivan.

“This major court ruling may finally result in more answers about the Benghazi scandal – and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in it – as we approach the attack’s fifth anniversary,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is remarkable that we had to battle both the Obama and Trump administrations to break through the State Department’s Benghazi stonewall. Why are Secretary Tillerson and Attorney General Sessions wasting taxpayer dollars protecting Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration?”

Judicial Watch asked a federal court to compel the Trump State Department to undertake a thorough search of all emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding the terrorist attack on Benghazi, including those of Clinton’s closest advisors. Judicial Watch also specifically asked the court to compel the agency to produce all records of communications between Clinton and top aide Jake Sullivan relating to Ambassador Susan Rice’s appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” the Sunday following the 2012 Benghazi massacre.

The State Department has until September 22, 2017, to update the court on the status of the supplemental search and production of additional emails to Judicial Watch.

On May 6, 2015, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit when the State Department failed to respond to a March 4, 2015, FOIA request (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00692)), seeking:

  • All emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton relating to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
  • The time frame for this request is September 11, 2012 to January 31, 2013.

Are Miami-Dade Schools a Hunting Ground and Refuge for Sexual Predators?

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As Florida’s public school students are heading back to school, parents should be aware that Miami-Dade County Public Schools have been plagued by numerous sexual assault cases by teachers and administrators over the past five years, the most recent being the “Jason’s Girls” episode.

According to a legal complaint filed in federal court in Miami, Jason Meyers had molested numerous girls since 2004. When his principal at the time was told of a particular offense in 2008, the complaint alleges, he was transferred to another school. The complaint reads in part:

This action concerns the repeated sexual abuse and harassment of Plaintiff by her English and Creative Writing teacher, Jason Edward Meyers (“Meyers”), during Plaintiff’s junior and senior years at Miami Palmetto Senior High School (“Palmetto High School”), while she was 16 and 17 years old. Plaintiff is one of many underage female students that Meyers recruited, groomed, and exploited in a systematic fashion during his near decade-long tenure as a known sexual predator employed by Defendant. [Emphasis added]

A look at other recent related incidents is alarming:

  • Juan Cecchinelli, a school police officer at Miami Jackson Senior High School, resigned after sexually harassing a 15-year-old girl in early 2013; he was never charged. The victim sued Miami-Dade County Public Schools and a local news station for allegedly releasing internal documents that led to her identity being known.
  • Javier Cuenca, a former basketball coach at Hialeah Gardens Senior High School, was arrested in November 2014 on multiple sexual abuse charges; the article details offenses on school grounds.
  • Bresnniel Jansen Mones, a former teacher at South Dade Senior High School, was arrested for sexual battery, statutory rape and other related charges in January 2014. Per the article, Mones took the student’s virginity on his desk in his classroom. A resulting civil suit alleged that M-DCPS knew of a similar incident five years prior at the same school but took no action.
  • Don Clippenger, an assistant principal at Fienberg-Fisher K-8 Center in Miami Beach, was arrested in late January for downloading child pornography.
  • Bernardo Osorio, a teacher at Cutler Bay Senior High School, was arrested last February for engaging in sexual acts with a teenage boy between November 2015 through April 2016. Two of the offenses took place at school, the other in his car.
  • Napoleon Joseph, a former teacher and head football coach at Miami Edison High School, was arrested in March for having inappropriate relations with a 17-year-old girl. Per the article, the girl performed oral sex on him during two different occasions in his classroom in late 2016.
  • Darryl Ward, a security guard and athletic coach at Coral Reef Senior High School, and Alex Osuna, a marine science teacher and athletic coach at Palmetto Senior High School, were both fired in May for inappropriate relationships with students. As the students were legal adults, no criminal charges were filed.
  • Claudia Leary, who had been working with Miami-Dade County Public Schools for 23 years as an Education Support Specialist, attempted suicide in a vehicle with her ex-husband Dale Leary; she lived, he died. It is not clear what her role was. Dale Leary’s second wife, Marta San Jose, was an exchange student from Spain that both Dale and Claudia Leary sponsored when she was 16; upon becoming 18, Mr. Leary divorced Claudia and married Marta San Jose. The couple were charged with various sex offenses pertaining to San Jose’s 14-year-old sister- also a foreign exchange student.

Similar stories have happened across the country such as a case The New York Post reported on of “teacher of the year” Jared Anderson, a former Texas high school teacher, who hosted sex parties for teenage boys, including a “bros night” that featured a front-door sign urging them to get naked. Anderson has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

But there appears to be an unusual concentration in South Florida, particularly Miami-Dade County. Is this a by-product of an underlying culture within Miami-Dade County Public Schools?

Three years ago, I published a story about Christine Kirchner who was a language arts teacher and union steward at Coral Reef Senior High School, the same school that Darryl Ward worked at.  To note, though her actions were disturbing, they were not criminal as were those of the aforementioned people.

According to the April 4, 2014, Education Practices Commission of the State of Florida report:

  1. During the 2012-2013 school year, Respondent [Kirchner] discussed inappropriate topics, such as sex, virginity and masturbation, with her language arts class. The conversations made several students feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.
  2. During the 2012-2013 school year, during a lesson with her language arts class, Respondent [Kirchner] simulated having an orgasm. The simulation made several students feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.
  3. During the 2012-2013 school year, Respondent [Kirchner] gave massages to students of her language arts class. The massages made several students feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.

Kirchner was found guilty of “gross immorality or an act involving moral turpitude” and that she violated “the Principles of Professional Conduct for the Education Profession.” Kirchner was found to have violated Florida State Statute 1012.795, paragraphs (1)(d) and (1)(j), respectively.

What was the punishment given Kirchner?

The Florida Department of Education accepted a “Settlement Agreement”. The settlement agreement consisted of a letter of reprimand and placed Kirchner on two years’ probation. Kirchner accepted the Settlement Agreement.

Kirchner was returned to her classroom at Coral Reef Senior High School and retained her position on the Executive Board of the UTD.

What is Miami-Dade County Public Schools and the Florida Department of Education doing to prevent these incidents and to keep students safe?

Will it be business as usual at M-DCPS or will there be real change, such as foster working conditions and providing adequate compensation to attract high quality teachers as opposed to bad working conditions with low morale among teachers that attract sexual deviants?

When schools reward evil behaviors it only encourages others to commit evil acts against the most innocent, our public school children.

Which begs the question: Why are Florida’s public schools a hunting ground and refuge for sexual predators?

5-Year-Old Fined $200 for Selling Lemonade by Jon Miltimore

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On summer evenings when I drive home from work, I often see small children selling lemonade in my neighborhood. Most of the time I honk my horn and wave, but occasionally I’ll pull up and purchase a cup, usually for 25 cents.

I happen to like lemonade, but that’s usually not my primary motivation for stopping to purchase a glass. Rather, it’s to offer a bit of encouragement to the budding entrepreneurs who’ve put in the work and taken the time to set up shop in the hopes of making a small profit for themselves (and to just have some fun).

Industry, free exchange, and entrepreneurship seem like virtues an aspiring society would wish to foster in their young. Alas, this is often not the case.

Shaking Down a 5-Year-Old

In a Thursday article for The Telegraph, a man named Andre Spicer wrote about the experience of his five-year-old daughter who tried to open a small lemonade stand in the family’s East London neighborhood.

After about 30 minutes, four local council enforcement officers stormed up to her little table,” he wrote. “‘Excuse me,’ one officer said as he switched on a portable camera attached to his vest. He then read a lengthy legal statement – the gist of which was that because my daughter didn’t have a trading permit, she would be fined [$195]. ‘But don’t worry, it is only [$117] if it’s paid quickly,’ the officer added.”

Spicer later wrote: “My daughter burst into tears, repeating again and again ‘have I done a bad thing’?”

I can’t imagine a worse introduction to entrepreneurship than that experienced by Andre Spicer’s little girl, in which four uniformed men arrive, shut you down, and fine you an amount of money larger than you can comprehend.

Before one becomes tempted to think such things only happen in Europe, I’ll point out that this sort of thing also happens routinely in the U.S.

Mowing the lawn for a neighbor, watching a friend’s pet, helping a deaf person communicate, and many other simple tasks can result in sharp fines in many states if one accepts monetary compensation without the appropriate permit (which is often quite expensive).

Who Are These Laws For?

These consumer protection laws usually help special interest groups and governments much more than consumers. As Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations,

The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers.”

Worse yet, such regulations impede entrepreneurship and teach the wrong lessons to people seeking to make their way in life.

Ronald Reagan once observed that, “Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.”

Considering that the U.S. economy has not eclipsed 3 percent annual growth since 2005, might it be time to consider creating a climate that fosters entrepreneurship and free exchange instead of stifling it?

Reprinted from Intellectual Takeout.

Jon Miltimore

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is a senior editor at Intellectual Takeout.

RELATED ARTICLE: Think a Charlie Gard Situation Can’t Happen in the US? Think Again

Help Terminate The Special Counsel: Send This Petition (SCRAP) to Congress

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Special Counsel Recall And Accountability Petition (SCRAP)

We, citizens of America, herewith exercise our right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, to wit:

Whereas, the Code of Federal Regulations, 28 CFR 600.1 – Grounds for appointing a Special Counsel, states that the Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted. And

Whereas, a Special Counsel was appointed by the Acting Attorney General without identifying a person who had committed a crime or a criminal matter that warranted investigation; instead, the appointment was made to investigate a non-criminal national security matter. And

Whereas, the appointment of a Special Counsel, under the above circumstances, creates an unconstitutional perversion of our criminal justice system, in that, any and all Americans who have committed no crime can be investigated by a Special Counsel and presumed “guilty” until proven “innocent” and, thereby, rendered vulnerable to search and seizures of our persons, houses, paper and effects without probable cause—a violation of our rights granted by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. And

Whereas, the Code of Federal Regulations, 28 CFR 45.2, states that a Justice Department employee cannot participate in a “criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship with …Any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution.” And

Whereas, in violation of 28 CFR 45.2, the Special Counsel appointed by the Acting Attorney General has both a personal and political relationship with a key witness, as well as has hired lawyers to assist with the investigation who have made financial contributions to and performed legal services for the individual deemed to have been harmed by the non-criminal national security matter being investigated by the Special Counsel. And

Whereas, in light of the aforementioned, we, American citizens, assert that the Special Counsel appointment by the Acting Attorney General justifies this registration of our grievances with our Government, in that this appointment, in summary:

Establishes the precedent that a Special Counsel can be appointed to investigate any and all Americans who have committed no crime, and

Renders asunder one of the most sacred principles in the American criminal justice system that a citizen is innocent until proven guilty, and

Even more egregious, makes all Americans vulnerable to search and seizures of our persons, houses, paper and effects without probable cause—a violation of our rights granted by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

Now, therefore, we demand that the United States House of Representatives Oversight Committee call for the immediate termination of the Special Counsel whose existence violates Code of Federal Regulations sections 28 CFR 600.1 and 28 CFR 45.2 and puts in jeopardy our Fourth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution.

EDITORS NOTE: This petition originally appeared on The Black Republican blog. The featured image of Robert S. Mueller, III is by Charles Dharapak from the Associated Press.

UPDATE: Lynch-Clinton Tarmac Meeting, Abedin Emails and California’s Dirty Voting Rolls

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Justice Department Blacks Out Talking Points on Lynch-Clinton Tarmac Meeting

We have begun to see how the Trump administration responds over time to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) queries, especially our requests regarding shady dealings in the Obama administration.  We aren’t encouraged.  One must wonder if Obama holdovers at the Department of Justice (DOJ) are still calling the shots, or whether President Trump’s appointees simply don’t care about battling government corruption and enforcing the rule law.

Here are the particulars.

The DOJ has refused to disclose the talking points developed by the Obama Justice Department to respond to press inquiries about the controversial June 27, 2016, tarmac meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

The DOJ heavily redacted the documents under FOIA Exemption b (5), which allows agencies to withhold draft or deliberative process material. The blacked-out material centers on talking points drafted and used by Justice. The agency produced 417 pages of documents in response to our FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-00421) for:

  • All records and/or transcripts of a meeting held between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton in June 2016.
  • All records of communication sent to or from officials in the Office of the Attorney General regarding the meeting held between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton in June 2016.
  • All records of communication sent to or from officials in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General regarding the meeting held between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton in June 2016.
  • All references to the meeting held between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton contained in day planners, calendars and schedules in the Office of the Attorney General.

One email exchange shows that Former Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik was brought in to assist with public relations issues on June 28, 2016, the day after the tarmac meeting. (Kadzik is a longtime friend of John Podesta and a Hillary Clinton donor, who was criticized as being conflicted when he was assigned as the Justice Department attorney to oversee the probe of Hillary Clinton’s and her aide Huma Abedin’s emails found on Anthony Wiener’s computer.)

Melanie Newman, director of the Justice Department Public Affairs Office, sent an email to Richard P. Quinn, former national security assistant special agent, and Michael P. Kortan, who is currently the assistant director for Public Affairs for the FBI, advising them she wanted to “flag a story” about “a casual, unscheduled meeting between former President Bill Clinton and the AG.” And she provides the AG’s talking points.

Lynch met privately with former President Bill Clinton on board a parked plane in Phoenix. The meeting occurred during the then-ongoing investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s email server, and only a few days before she was interviewed by the FBI. Lynch later admitted that the meeting with Bill Clinton “cast a cloud” over the Justice Department/FBI investigation.

A week after the tarmac meeting, FBI Director James Comey called Hillary Clinton’s actions “extremely careless” but did not recommend charges, and Attorney General Lynch ended the criminal investigation.

It is jaw-dropping that the Trump administration is blacking out key information about how the Obama Justice Department tried to spin Loretta Lynch’s scandalous meeting with Bill Clinton. President Trump should order the full and immediate release of these materials.  In the meantime, our lawyers will work overtime to consider the option of persuading the courts to order the release of the information about this scandal.

Abedin Emails Contained Classified Information and Reveal Pay-to-Play

Can you think of a secretary of state of either party who flagrantly sold influence in the manner of Hillary Clinton?

When will those we rely upon in Washington to enforce the rule of law hold her to account?

In the meantime, thanks to your Judicial Watch, the evidence steadily accumulates and has long reached a critical mass requiring law enforcement action.

In fact, we just released 1,606 pages of documents from the U.S. Department of State revealing repeated use of unsecured communications for classified information and numerous examples of Clinton Foundation donors receiving special favors from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff.

The documents, containing emails from the unsecure, non-government account of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s then-deputy chief of staff, also show Clinton or her staff expressing interest in visiting Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and North Korean dictator Kim Jung II.

The documents included 91 Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to at least 530 emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department, and further contradicting a statement by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails had been turned over to the State Department.

The documents were obtained in response to a court order from our May 5, 2015, lawsuit against the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)) after it failed to respond to our March 18, 2015, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for: “All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-‘state.gov’ email address.”

Several emails contain classified information:

  • On March 12, 2009, Sid Blumenthal, former aide to Bill Clinton and confidant of Hillary Clinton, sent Mrs. Clinton a memo about Northern Ireland that is classified CONFIDENTIAL, and the details were withheld from release under FOIA Exemption 4 (D) (dealing with foreign relations or foreign activities).
  • On February 27, 2009, Ambassador Melanne Verveer sent Clinton a briefing memo/email on discussions she held with Congolese officials, which was classified as CONFIDENTIAL and withheld under FOIA exemption B1.4(D).
  • On January 22, 2010, Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan sent an email about a call to Chinese Foreign Minister Yang to several State Department officials. It contained information classified as CONFIDENTIAL by State and exempted under FOIA Exemption B1.4(D). It was forwarded to Abedin’s unsecure email account. The email had an attached memorandum of the Clinton-Yang call. State Department official Courtney Beale subsequently tells Assistant Secretary Todd Stern that she had sent that memo previously to him on the “high side” [i.e., via secure email channels].
  • On August 20, 2010, State Department official Laura Lucas sent to Abedin’s unclassified email account a call sheet for Clinton with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos, which contained classified CONFIDENTIAL information that was withheld based on B1.4(D).

A number of emails show the free flow of information and requests for favors between Clinton’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation and major Clinton donors:

  • For example, Howard Buffett, Jr., grandson of Warren Buffet, sought a meeting for his father, Howard Sr., with Hillary Clinton to discuss “food security.” The Buffett family, including Warren, his son Peter, and his late wife, Susan, through the Susan Buffett Foundation, all donated heavily to the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation. On behalf of Howard Buffett Jr., Bill Clinton aide Ben Schwerin asked Abedin to get Howard Buffett Sr. a meeting with Clinton. He says, “Any chance of a brief meeting?” Abedin replies, “we will take care of this.”
  • In another example, on April 12, 2009, Miguel Lausell, a Puerto Rican telecom executive who reportedly donated $1 million to the Clinton Presidential Library and was a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, made a request of Abedin through Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band to push for the appointment of someone to become US ambassador to the Dominican Republic. Lausell concludes: “I will be in DC from the 7th to the 9th and would like if possible to say hello to hillary Please let me know.It would be just a short visit and not to ask anything from her.Just hello.” [Errors in original]
The next day, April 13, Clinton aide Nora Toiv passed Lausell’s message to Clinton special assistant Lauren Jiloty and Rob [last name unknown] to “make sure there is a response.”
  • On April 3, 2009, Kelly Craighead, who at the time was Managing Director of Democracy Alliance, a controversial left-wing fundraising organization, emailed Abedin and Capricia Marshall, former Executive Director of HillPAC and Friends of Hillary, asking them to “reach out” to someone who was an “extremely loyal supporter” and was waiting to hear about a senior position at the State Department. Marshall responds to Craighead, saying the person was “on everyone’s list/grid” and directed her aides to follow up.

A year later, in April 2010, Craighead contacted Abedin again, asking for assistance in landing a job for someone at State: “It would mean a lot to me if you could help or advise on a personnel situation for a dear friend.” Abedin replies, “We love [Redacted]. Looking into this asap.”   The Washington Free Beacon described Craighead’s Democracy Alliance as “a clearinghouse that connects liberal billionaires to a select group of endorsed organizations, such as the Center for American Progress and the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA, without threat of disclosure.” The Beacon also noted Craighead was implicated in a federal investigation of Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign fundraising scandal.

  • On March 15, 2010, event planner Bryan Rafanelli, who was a 2016 Hillblazerand, according to Politico, had a company that was paying $1,200 a month rent for unused office space to Hillary Clinton’s defunct presidential campaign in 2010, got a private White House tour for friends arranged by Abedin.

Other emails show a lax attitude toward the security of communications:

  • At least one senior State Department official refused to send a classified documentto Abedin’s account. Joseph E. MacManus, then-executive assistant to the secretary, told Abedin that a draft outline paper of Richard Holbrooke’s goals for a Pakistan trip “is classified so it cannot go by blackberry email.” As a result, MacManus sent the document through classified channels.
  • Clinton signed the document and gave it to her communications people to transmit. But the communications team, wanting to send it by secure channels, waited till the following day to send it. That delay caused Cheryl Mills to inquire about the delay, which produced an abject apology by State Department official Daniel Smith to Mills: “I’m very sorry about what happened and that we all let the Secretary down.”
  • On April 16, 2009, Clinton aide Lona Valmoro asked Abedin if Clinton wanted to skip a meeting on “cyber security” in favor of a meeting on “Global Philanthropy.” Valmoro adds: “Jen said that Rice [presumably Condoleezza] rarely went to these, FYI.”
  • On April 23, 2010, Abedin tried to set up a secure call for Clinton with Dennis [last name unknown], but it didn’t connect, and Clinton said, “We’ve now tried twice to go secure and lost both calls.” After Abedin tells her she had tested the secure line, Clinton says “We finally gave up and talked in code nonsecure.”
  • Billionaire J.B. Pritzker emailed Band on March 21, 2009, asking him to forward the email to Clinton “via a non-govt email account.” The email, addressed to Abedin, references President Obama’s treatment of Netanyahu and Clinton’s speech the next day at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference and warns that there is “lots of deep concern at Obama (even all the Dems here) … I know it seems obvious, but during the presentationtomorrow I suggest focusing on Iran, Iran, and Iran.” Pritzker attaches an article by Lloyd Grove entitled “Jewish Anger: Will There Be Historic Break from the Dems?” Band forwards the email to Abedin without comment.

The same night Abedin emailed Clinton, saying, “pir [Philippe Reines] mentioned that if you plan to call potus tonite or tomorrow, he wants to leak it.”

  • On February 12, 2010, Abedin emailed Cooper, who helped administer Clinton’s non-government email server, about a fax she sent for Clinton with information about upcoming foreign dignitary calls. Cooper replies, “ I can just print it.” Abedin responds, “Cool. Thank you.” Cooper then says, “Still waitin on secure.” Further on in the exchange, Abedin says, “Sending now.” It appears that Cooper, who was not a State Department employee and did not possess a security clearance, according to the Washington Examiner, was helping troubleshoot a secure fax machine used to transmit government documents to the Secretary of State.

In a follow up email, Abedin tells Cooper “I HATE SECURE FAXES.” Cooper responds, “Its coming in. I cld redesign system in 5 min prob.” Abedin replies, “Uh yeah. You have no idea.”

  • On April 16, 2009, State Department staffer Jennifer Davis sent a documentprepared for Clinton by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon to Clinton’s and Abedin’s BlackBerries.

Abedin was unable to read the PDF file on her BlackBerry due to the fine print so diplomat Lewis Lukens asked Davis to send the document to two other State Department officials, Paul and Courtney. Davis replies, “Already sent to Paul (on low-side) [unsecure] … Will send to plane now (on highside) for Paul and Courtney.”

  • In a March 20, 2009, advisory email to Clinton, retired General Jack Keane advised her that to conquer the Afghan insurgency, the then-commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, was “not the leader to get us there.” He concluded his message with “Please keep these scribblings for your eyes only.”

On a number of occasions Hillary Clinton’s daily schedule was shared with the Clinton Foundation:

  • On February 9, 2010, Valmoro forwarded Clinton’s sensitive daily schedulefor February 10, 2010, to Clinton Foundation officials. On Feb. 22, 2010, Valmoro forwarded Hillary Clinton’s daily schedule for February 23, 2010, to foundation officials, including Band, Cooper, and Terry Krinvic. On April 4, 2010, Valmoro forwarded the daily schedule for April 5 to foundation officials. And on May 18, 2010, Valmoro again forwarded the schedule for May 19, 2010, to foundation employees.

Two emails show Secretary Clinton or her staff expressing an interest in visiting two brutal dictators.

  • On April 18, 2009, Abedin told Senior Advisor Philippe Reines that Clinton had “an encounter” with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who “complimented wjc [Bill Clinton], said he hoped she would come to venezuela, she said she hoped so too.” Reines expressed concern, saying “Was the encounter on camera or widely seen?” Abedin responds: “Seen by a dozen people. A photog came in and took a photo at the end.” Reines replies, “Who went up to whom?”
  • Veteran diplomat Wendy Sherman sent a message to State officials on February 6, 2009, advising them to send a message to North Korean dictator Kim Jung Il that Hillary Clinton “looks forward to the day when enough progress is made that she can come to NKas well.”

The emails reveal more instances of Tony Rodham seeking to leverage his influence as Clinton’s brother:

  • On January 29, 2010, Confidential Assistant Monica Hanley forwarded to Abedin a request from Tony Rodham, on three issues. One involved help on a “green card renewal.” Another involved a visit by someone of which Abedin said they “wanted to regret.” A third involved a job for someone whose CV Rodham forwarded to State. It appears that Tony Rodham was seeking to help someone caught up in a criminal case involving Micheil Saakashvili, the then president of the Republic of Georgia. The Rodham friend was having difficulty getting a green card due to his arrest, which he said was political retribution by Saakashvili. Abedin told Hanley to tell him the request “has been passed to DHS.”
  • On March 18, 2010, Rodham sent Hanley the resume of someone looking for a job. Monica passed to Abedin, asking: “Do you want me to call [Redacted] or pass along to WHL [White House Liaison]?” Abedin replies: “Call and find out interests.”

Other emails detail the inner workings of Clinton’s State Department:

  • On Apr. 17, 2009, Abedin tells colleagues Valmoro, Andrew Shapiro, Philippe Reines, Mills and Jake Sullivan in an email with the subject line “Aipac” that, “Calls from our friends in the jewish community are now getting ugly. I don’t understand who’s taking charge here.” The reference is likely to a book that had just been released called The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earththat disclosed that the NSA had intercepted former Rep. Jane Harman on the phone about her efforts to intervene with the Bush Administration on behalf of two AIPAC officials being investigated for espionage.
  • On September 11, 2010, Blumenthal forwarded an article/audio clip from Think Progress about a Republican congressman arguing that they should force a government shutdown if necessary to cut the “gangrene” out of government. Blumenthal advised Clinton that the White House “should use this on all the Sunday shows” and “Name Boehner. Force Boehner out.”
  • On February 26, 2010, noting the absence of Mills and Bill Burns, Clinton tells Abedin that “the whole point” of a photo shoot that day “is to show a team that is diverse in every way. That won’t happen and I am worried about that.”
  • On November 14, 2011, Abedin tells Clinton she’s going to have to stay at a “horrible Sheraton,” where President Obama would be staying, and asks if she’s open to another hotel. Clinton responds that “it would be hard not to be in same hotel as POTUS so try to get best option there.”
  • On November 30, 2011, Abedin tells Clinton she’ll have to stay at a “second tier hotel” in Burma because “the nice hotel owner was problematic.” The “second tier hotel” room is a suite with “a room nearby large enough to accommodate more people.”

This may seem like a lot of material but the State Department is far from finished producing emails, so there will be more to come.

But there’s plenty already for prosecutors.

Pay-to-play, classified information mishandling, influence peddling, cover ups – these new emails show why the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s conduct must be resumed. The Trump Justice Department and FBI need to reassure the American people they have finally stopped providing political protection to Hillary Clinton.

Judicial Watch Warns California on Dirty Voting Rolls

We’ve uncovered an election integrity crisis in California.

Judicial Watch lays it all out in a notice-of-violation letter to the state and 11 of its counties threatening to sue in federal court if they do not clean voter registration lists as mandated by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).  Both the NVRA and the federal Help America Vote Act require states to take reasonable steps to maintain accurate voting rolls. Our August 1 letter was sent on behalf of several JW California supporters and the Election Integrity Project California Inc.

In the letter, we noted that public records obtained on the Election Assistance Commission’s 2016 Election Administration Voting Survey and through verbal accounts from various county agencies show that 11 California counties have more registered voters than voting-age citizens: Imperial (102%), Lassen (102%), Los Angeles (112%), Monterey (104%), San Diego (138%), San Francisco (114%), San Mateo (111%), Santa Cruz (109%), Solano (111%), Stanislaus (102%), and Yolo (110%).

We also note that Los Angeles County officials “informed us that the total number of registered voters now stands at a number that is a whopping 144% of the total number of resident citizens of voting age.”

Federal law is clear.  Under Section 8 of the NVRA, states are required to make a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from official lists due to “the death of the registrant” or “a change in the residence of the registrant,” and requires states to ensure noncitizens are not registered to vote.

In what perhaps is an understatement, our warning letter suggests there is “strong circumstantial evidence that California municipalities are not conducting reasonable voter registration list maintenance as mandated under the NVRA.”

We referred California officials to a settlement agreement we reached with the State of Ohio in which Ohio agreed to update and maintain its voter registration lists and to keep a current voter registration list online and available for public access.

California’s voting rolls are an absolute mess that undermines the very idea of clean elections. It is urgent that California take reasonable steps to clean up its rolls. We will sue if state officials fail to act.

California is hardly unique. In April we sent notice-of-violation letters threatening to sue 11 states having counties in which the number of registered voters exceeds the number of voting-age citizens.  The states are: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Tennessee.

On July 18 we filed a lawsuit against Montgomery County and the Maryland State Boards of Elections under the NVRA. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Baltimore Division (Judicial Watch vs. Linda H. Lamone, et al. (No. 1:17-cv-02006)).

Election Integrity Project California Inc. is a registered nonprofit corporation that seeks to preserve a government of, by, and for the people. To that end, Election Integrity Project California empowers citizen volunteers through education and training to protect the integrity of the electoral process in California.

The director of Judicial Watch’s own Election Integrity Project is senior attorney Robert Popper, who was formerly deputy chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

We will be sure to keep you updated on our efforts to promote clean and secure elections.

Organization of Islamic Cooperation strategizing to silence free speech

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The OIC is the Organization of Islamic Cooperation which represents 57 Muslim countries world wide and they know that to advance Islam (and Shariah law) worldwide they have to silence any criticism of Islam in the media.  To that end they held a conference two weeks ago in (no surprise) London to strategize on how to silence anyone standing in their way.

When I read this story by Leo Hohmann at WND, the french novel ‘Submission’ came immediately to mind.  It is a dark, disgusting book, but probably worth reading because its title tells us exactly how Islam/Shariah could triumph—instead of a cataclysmic battle of titans (a possible physical battle), we simply get worn down and give up.

Beating people up over speech would be an important element in bringing us to submission.

From Hohmann:

A group of international Islamist organizations led by the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC, recently held a two-day conference on countering “Islamophobia” in which it recommends imposing Islamic blasphemy laws on the media worldwide.

Monks in Burma fighting against Islamic blasphemy laws.

Under Islamic law, it is considered a serious offense to criticize Allah, Muhammad or Islam. In countries like Pakistan, a Muslim can take a non-Muslim to court and claim he was “offended” by something that was said, resulting in a trial and jail time, even death, for the non-Muslim.

Christians in Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Sudan and other Muslim-dominated countries with significant Christian minorities have been the targets of brutal persecution, with the blasphemy laws often serving as the catalyst for their incarceration. Christians have been jailed, stoned, beheaded, and even had acid thrown in their faces for violating the blasphemy laws.

But the OIC, which consists of 57 Muslim-majority countries and boasts the largest voting bloc at the United Nations, is not satisfied with its own people living under threat of arrest for offending Islam by something that is said, written or posted on the Internet.

The July 15-16 symposium, held at London’s Central Mosque Trust and Islamic Cultural Center, was attended by lawyers, media leaders, politicians, academics from European universities and diplomats from various embassies. It was titled: “Mechanisms to challenge Islamophobia legally and through the media.”

Continue reading here.

Is the SPLC carrying the water for the OIC, here. You betcha!

RELATED ARTICLES:

Even Kushner Knows Negotiation Can’t Solve the Palestinian Conflict

“Palestinian” Muslim Who Slaughtered Israeli Family to Receive $3,120 Per Month Reward From Palestinian Authority

Rep. Steve King Calls for Investigations of Obama, Clinton, Comey, Soros, Lynch, Abedin, and Anthony Weiner

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Congressman Steve King (R- Iowa District 4) speaks on July 26th, 2017 in support of legislation that requires the Attorney General to turn over documents about former F.B.I. director James Comey’s involvement in several controversial cases. The legislation passed 16-13. King voted in favor of it.

RELATED ARTICLE:  Comey’s FBI Lied About Lynch-Clinton Meeting

RELEASED: GAO Study on Refugee Screening and Fraud Risks

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No time to read it, but thought you should know this new General Accountability Office (GAO) study came out yesterday in Washington.  Let me know if you see anything useful!

My experience with past GAO studies on the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) is that, other than media like RRW which could use their findings to confirm a point we have made, they result in not much change in the actual operation of the the program.

Maybe I will be surprised this time.

Click here to read the GAO Study on Refugees. There will be a place to click for the full report.

Click on image to read the GAO Study.

By the way, if you have never looked at it, I have a whole category entitled: ‘where to find information.’ This post is archived there.

Mayoral candidate proposes disarming cops after Muslim cop kills unarmed woman

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Better yet, how about just disarm the cops who, like Mohamed Noor, are only on the force to demonstrate Minneapolis’ commitment to “diversity,” rather than because they’re competent to be police officers?

Even better still, how about hire and fire cops based on merit, rather than for their value as trophy Muslims or Somalis on the force?

Nah — that would be “Islamophobic.”

“Minneapolis mayoral candidate Raymond Dehn proposes disarming cops in wake of Damond shooting,” News.com.au, July 29, 2017:

A CANDIDATE in the race for Minneapolis mayor has proposed disarming police officers in the wake of Justine Damond’s shooting.

The Australian woman was shot dead by police officer Mohamed Noor after calling 911 to report a suspected sexual assault.

“Officers don’t need to carry a gun on their person all the time,” said Raymond Dehn, one of the frontrunners in the mayoral race and who currently serves in the Minnesota House of Representatives.

“Currently, officers carry all sorts of assault weapons in their cars. So why can’t one of those weapons be the side arm (such as a baton that sits on a holster)? It’s important that we begin to have a conversation, and I would say that all things are on the table.”

“We live in a culture where guns are pervasive. Cops carrying guns is part of a larger conversation about guns in our society,” he said, according to the Star Tribune….

RELATED ARTICLES:

Kansas: Muslim gets 30 years for jihad mass murder plot at Fort Riley

Legal loophole means Muslim cop who killed unarmed woman may never face criminal charges

VIDEO: Background of the Clinton email scandal — it all started with Benghazi

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In the first installment of “Inside Judicial Watch”, JW Director of Communications Carter Clews sits down with JW Senior Attorney Ramona Cotca to discuss the background of the Clinton email scandal from Judicial Watch’s perspective.

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VIDEO: Democrat Mayor’s rhetoric leads to Philadelphia’s Anti-Cop Graffiti?

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Philadelphia police are offering a $5,000 reward for information about the anti-cop graffiti discovered in South Philadelphia this week. Democrat Mayor Jim Kenney condemned the graffiti and said officials will “pursue all possible criminal charges against [the vandals].”

In July 2016 Mayor Kenney spoke out strongly in defense of Black Lives Matter movement, stating:

“The issue of Black Lives Matter is that they do because they haven’t mattered in our country over the history of law enforcement and in the criminal courts, and in the way people have been treated from the 1600s up until now.”

Since Mayor Kenney took office in January 2016, some activists have maligned him for seemingly modifying his views on the practice of stop-and-frisk policing in black communities.

Here’s the full interview with Democrat Mayor of Philadelphia Kenney’s remarks on Morning Joe.

The Washington Post’s Sean Higgins reported:

Former Chicago Superintendent of Police Garry McCarthy said Sunday that the Black Lives Matter movement was ultimately responsible for rising crimes rates in his city and nationally because it was making it harder for police to do their jobs.

McCarthy said that the movement was responsible for a rise in “noncompliance” — people refusing to cooperate or surrender to police.

“What is happening is — and this is ironic — that a movement with the goal of saving black lives is at this point is getting black lives taken because 80 percent of our murder victims here in Chicago are male blacks,” McCarthy told New York radio talk show host John Catsimatidis.

FBI seized smashed hard drives from Wasserman Schultz’s Muslim IT aide’s home

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Five Pakistani-born Muslim Congressional IT aides are now under criminal investigation, and the establishment media is resolutely looking the other way.

Imran Awan (right)

Questions abound. “Collectively, the Awan group has been paid $4 million since 2009.” That’s a tremendous amount of money for IT work. And what is on these hard drives that led Imran Awan to work so resolutely to recover and destroy them? A genuine journalist would be working hard to find out what Imran Awan and his brothers, and the House Democrats, have to hide. But the establishment media is a propaganda arm for the Democrats, and so it has no interest in this affair.

“EXCLUSIVE: FBI Seized Smashed Hard Drives From Wasserman Schultz IT Aide’s Home,” by Luke Rosiak, Daily Caller News Foundation, July 23, 2017:

FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s information technology (IT) administrator, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation.

Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back, an individual whom FBI investigators interviewed in the case told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.

An additional source in Congress with direct knowledge of the case, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, confirmed that the FBI has joined what Politico previously described as a Capitol Police criminal probe into “serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network” by Imran and three of his relatives, who had access to the emails and files of the more than two dozen House Democrats who employed them on a part-time basis.

Capitol Police have also seized computer equipment tied to the Florida lawmaker.

Awan’s younger brothers, Abid and Jamal, his wife, Hina Alvi, and Rao Abbas, Imran’s best friend, are also under investigation. There have been no arrests in the case.

There is also evidence of financial schemes that extend beyond the Capitol Police’s purview and may expand to Pakistan, where Imran spends significant portions of the year….

Soon after Imran began working for Wasserman Schultz in 2005, his two brothers and two of their wives — plus Abbas and another friend — began appearing as IT staffers on the payrolls of other House Democrats. Collectively, the Awan group has been paid $4 million since 2009.

Fellow IT staffers TheDCNF interviewed said the Awans were often absent from weekly meetings and email exchanges. One of the fellow staffers said some of the computers the Awans managed were being used to transfer data to an off-site server.

Shortly after the criminal probe was revealed in February, Imran abruptly moved out of his longtime home on Hawkshead Drive in Lorton, Va., and listed it for rent on a website that connects landlords with military families.

One of the new tenants — a Marine Corps veteran married to a female Navy Officer — said he found “wireless routers, hard drives that look like they tried to destroy, laptops, [and] a lot of brand new expensive toner.”

The tenants called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and, not long after, FBI agents arrived together with the Capitol Police to interview them and confiscate the equipment. The Marine spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns for his wife’s naval career, saying she doesn’t want to be associated with a national security incident.

“It was in the garage. They recycled cabinets and lined them along the walls. They left in a huge hurry,” the Marine said. “It looks like government-issued equipment. We turned that stuff over.”…

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COURTING DISASTER: Supreme Court Decides Against Homeland Security

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Court guts presidential authority to prevent the entry of terrorists.

Within days of taking office President Trump issued an Executive Order that would, among other actions temporarily, suspend the entry into the United States, of citizens of seven countries that are associated with terrorism and/or are unwilling or unable to verify the identities and backgrounds of their citizens.

Those countries were: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

In this dangerous era it is difficult to prevent the entry of foreign terrorists from many countries. However, when it is impossible ascertain the true identities or previous affiliations with criminal or terrorist organizations for aliens seeking entry, our government is forced to “fly blind” in a storm.

Trump’s Executive Order was issued to provide the U.S. government with an opportunity to attempt to develop a means of properly vetting aliens from these countries and was entirely consistent with long-standing immigration laws, specifically with Section (f) of 8 U.S. Code § 1182 – Inadmissible aliens).

This statute has been used by previous presidents to prevent the entry of aliens whose presence would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Terrorists certainly fall into that category.

Here is the relevant paragraph:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Subsequently, the Trump administration eliminated Iraq from the list of countries and “tweaked” his executive order that has been largely described in the media as a “Travel Ban” for the citizens of “Six Muslim Majority Countries.”  The media, out of an apparent desire to obfuscate the purpose of this Executive Order, has assiduously ignored the actual title of the Executive Order, Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States which concisely articulates the purpose of that Executive Order, a purpose that is now blithely being ignored by the media and some federal judges.

Nevertheless, on June 26, 2017 the Supreme Court decision inexplicably exempted aliens from the Executive Order who had “bona fide relationships” with close family members or entities in the United States. Here are two relevant paragraphs from the Supreme Court decision:

For individuals, a close familial relationship is required. A foreign national who wishes to enter the United States to live with or visit a family member, like Doe’s wife or Dr. Elshikh’s mother-in-law, clearly has such a relationship. As for entities, the relationship must be formal, documented, and formed in the ordinary course, rather than for the purpose of evading EO-2. The students from the designated countries who have been admitted to the University of Hawaii have such a relationship with an American entity. So too would a worker who accepted an offer of employment from an American company or a lecturer invited to address an American audience.

An American individual or entity that has a bona fide relationship with a particular person seeking to enter the country as a refugee can legitimately claim concrete hardship if that person is excluded. As to these individuals and entities, we do not disturb the injunction. But when it comes to refugees who lack any such connection to the United States, for the reasons we have set out, the balance tips in favor of the Government’s compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security.

Begrudgingly the Supreme Court noted “the balance tips in favor of the Government’s compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security” when aliens have no connection to the U.S.

Does that mean terrorists who have relationships in the U.S. are welcome to enter?

“…the Government’s compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security” is not a suggestion or an option but an absolute mandate.

The legal attack Presidential authority to safeguard national security did not end there.

Hawaii Federal Judge Derrick Watson decided that the notion of “familial relationships” should be expanded, as was reported on July 14th by NBC News: Federal Judge Loosens ‘Travel Ban’ Restrictions to Exempt Grandparents, Others.  Here is the relevant excerpt from that report:

U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson wrote in a ruling that the government’s interpretation of those qualifying for an exemption to the travel restrictions is too narrow.

“The Government’s definition represents the antithesis of common sense,” Watson said in his ruling. “Common sense, for instance, dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents.”

Watson ruled the government cannot use a main provision of the travel ban to exclude “grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins of persons in the United States.”

Unbelievably, the Supreme Court, in a five to three decision, agreed with Judge Derrick Watson to expand the familial relationships with persons already in the United States.

Here are the true issues ignored by the media and some judges:

  • First and foremost, by focusing on the issue of “bona fide relationships” with persons and entities, an irrelevant issue, the true issue, national security, the sole purpose behind the Executive Order, is purposefully and blatantly ignored.
  • Most terrorists have relatives. Brothers have convinced their siblings to engage in terror attacks. Consider the infamous Tsarnaev brothers who carried out the deadly terror attack at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
  • Sometimes entire families have close relationships with terrorist organizations.

On April 28, 2016 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) issued a press release about the San Bernardino terror attack, “3 people tied to shooter in San Bernardino terrorist attack arrested on federal conspiracy, marriage fraud and false statement charges.”

The terminology “Persons already in the United States” would apparently not limit this exemption to claimed family members of America  citizens but to aliens who managed to enter the Untied States previously.

Without a reliable means of vetting these aliens to determine their true identities, there would be no reliable way to know if they truly have relatives in the United States.

Even DNA testing would be worthless when dealing with in-laws and purported members of the extended family members.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court ruling that provided exclusions for aliens with “bona fide relationships” with entities that include schools and employers ignores that a significant number of terrorists have attended school in the United States and/or had jobs that enabled them to effectively embed themselves as they went about their deadly preparations.

The day before a terrorist participates in an attack he/she is likely to hide in plain sight by going to his job or by attending classes.

This paragraph is found on page 98 under the title “Immigration Benefits” of the official report 9/11 and  Terrorist Travel – Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States:

Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.

On March 19, 2002, I testified at a Congressional hearing on the topic, “INS’S March 2002 Notification Of Approval Of Change Of Status For Pilot Training For Terrorist Hijackers Mohammed Atta And Marwan Al-Shehhi.”  Back then members of Congress, from both parties, demanded our immigration laws be enforced to prevent future attacks.

That was then, this is now:

The July 13, 2017 Breitbart article, Indian Student Pleads Guilty to Federal Judge Murder Plot, included these paragraphs:

Yahya Farooq Mohammad, 39, came to the U.S. originally on a student visa. Mohammad was attending Ohio State University when he and three other Muslim men, all of which are foreign nationals, were charged with attempting to send money to a leader of the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda, Breitbart News previously reported.

While in prison and awaiting trial, Mohammad told another inmate of his plans to murder U.S. Federal Judge James Knepp, the man overseeing his court case, according to the Associated Press.

“Family reunification” has been one of the emotional arguments exploited by the open-borders immigration anarchists and now it is being exploited by federal judges and even the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is time to contemplate the suffering of American families who will never be re-united with their loved ones – the families ripped apart by the deaths of their loved ones at the hands of international terrorists and transnational criminals whose presence in the United States ultimately cost their family members their lives.

These families will never be “reunited.”

The famed playwright, George Bernard Shaw’s lamented, “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”

Our government must, for once and for all, learn the lessons of the past to prevent tragedies, atrocities and carnage in the future.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.