Clinton Corruption Update For November 12, 2017

November 13th, 2017

I keep waiting for Clinton Corruption revelations to die down enough to do a lengthy update in leisure, but the hits just keep on coming.

Part of the reason is that revelations from Donna Brazile’s Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House continue to reveal just how corrupt Hillary Clinton’s takeover of the DNC was, and just how arrogant her entire campaign apparatus was. (Something to put on the shelf next to Shattered and Clinton Cash.)

  • The other big source of Clinton corruption news? The Mueller investigation:

    Republican investigators had two big questions about the dossier. One was who paid for it, and that now seems answered. The other was: Did the FBI or other agencies use any information from the dossier as a basis for warrant requests before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court? In other words, did, say, the FBI use the dossier’s “salacious and unverified” information to make the case that the bureau should be granted the authority to conduct intercepts?

    Nunes, as well as Grassley and Senate Judiciary Committee colleague Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have been pushing for months for the FBI to answer that question.

    So far, they’ve gotten nothing.

    When the Post story broke Tuesday night, some journalists noted that Democrats involved in the story had been lying about their role. “When I tried to report this story, Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong,'” tweeted the New York Times’ Ken Vogel. “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year,” added the Times’ Maggie Haberman.

    Yes, they did. But the importance of the Democrats’ involvement in the dossier is that it could be one step on the road to a bigger story. What did the FBI do with the dossier material? Did judges make surveillance decisions in the Trump-Russia investigation based in whole or in part on the dossier? To what degree is the “salacious and unverified” dossier the source of what we think we know about allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign?

    In the end, a House subpoena squeezed the information out of key players in the who-funded-the-dossier side of the story. But so far, the FBI has been much harder to crack.

  • One reason media has such a hard time reporting on the Fusion GPS story: they’re implicated in it:

    Americans may find that this one has a third parent: Beltway journalists, who may have allowed themselves to be manipulated by a political intelligence operation in exchange for peer praise, the warmth of social media tribalism and clicks.

    This hurts the many journalists putting partisanship aside to follow stories wherever they lead.

    And it hurts the republic, which depends on credible, rigorous media oversight of the powerful, especially the imperial presidency.

    But once you lose your name and credibility, where are you?

    I hope all this worries you, no matter what political tribe you belong to, because for more than a year now, that Democratic Media Complex has been shrieking about Russia this and Trump that and collusion this and collusion that.

    The Trump-Russia collusion theme has been a chorus of barking dogs everywhere you turn, in online news hyped to feed anti-Trump appetites, on cable, where the appetites are sated, and even in happy-talk banter of radio and TV news anchors.

    The driving force has been a partisan desire to excuse Hillary Clinton for losing her 2016 election to Trump. It’s been aggressive and passive and all Russia-Trump all the time.

    Many, but not all, of the Russia stories have been debunked, and precious little, if any, evidence has come out of the congressional investigations directly linking the president to an alleged effort by the Russians to steal Clinton’s presidency.

    Will Mueller pick his teeth with the bones of creepy former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort? That seems likely. And Tony Podesta — of the Democratic Chicago Podestas — has come under scrutiny too.

    Many pro-Hillary pundits avoid the Fusion GPS explosion altogether, just as they’ve avoided examining the equally toxic Uranium One deal.

    Uranium One is the mining company controlled by the Russians. More than $140 million was donated to the Clinton Foundation by Uranium One board members and associates. And Bill got a $500K chunk for related speaking fees in Moscow, because, well, he was such thrilling speaker when his wife was favored to win the White House.

    What’s appalling is that the Obama administration quietly approved the deal handing 20 percent of American uranium reserves to the Clinton-friendly Russian mega-company, so that President Barack Obama could curry favor with Russia to win support for his Iran nuclear policy.

  • Little did we know that “Clinton secretly controlling the DNC” story had already been broken (at least for the state level) by Margot Kidder (yes, that Margot Kidder) at least a year-and-a-half ago in the left-wing Counterpunch.

    Finding deceit, dishonesty, lies, and corruption involving Hillary Clinton is like finding sand at the beach. It is everywhere the eye can see.

    The challenge faced by the Corrupt Clinton Cronies was that, even with Citizens United, political donations to presidential candidates are limited by federal law. No matter how rich the donor, nor how much she wishes to give, the law prohibits such gifts exceeding $2,700. When Democrat hypocrites, led by the Clintons, bemoan the Supreme Court’s Citizens United opinion and pledge “campaign finance reform,” know that their meaning is to reduce avenues for Republicans to raise and give money. Don’t believe for a moment that the ethics deviants who run the Democrat fund-raising machines intend to reform their own fundraising apparati. So here is what Lois Lane [Kidder, natch – LP] exposed:

    Under federal law, an individual may donate up to $10,000 annually to a “political committee established and maintained by a State committee of a political party.” 52 U.S.C. § 30116(a)(1)(D). Accordingly, thirty-three separate State Democrat Committees throughout the land agreed, one by one, to manipulate furtively with Hillary by accepting $10,000 hand-offs passed to them from outside donors — and then dutifully to shift the loot to Hillary’s campaign. For example, the Montana Democrat Committee received $64,100 in donations from people who have no connection to Montana. The Utah Democrat Party likewise received $64,100 in donations from people who have no connection to Utah. Same amount, same story with the Alaska Democrat Party. And the Mississippi one. And Oregon and South Carolina and Tennessee and Massachusetts — all $64,100 a piece. And Georgia and Idaho and Michigan and Minnesota and Missouri and Rhode Island and West Virginia and Wyoming. All the same exact $64,100. Texas — being Texas — took in an extra five grand — $69,100. Evoking images from any scary meeting with a loan shark — a few came in $100 short: North Carolina, Louisiana, and Indiana forked took in only an even 64K. Arkansas fell yet a grand shorter than that. (Proving that the correct answer to the question “What did Tenne… ssee?” may not be “The exact same that Arkan…sas.”)

    So, if the “Sixty-Four Thousand [and One Hundred] Dollar Question” is: What in the world was going on? — here is the answer, as reported in April 2016 by Lois Lane:

    Under the Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the Court divided 5-4 in holding that, while no one may contribute more than $2,700 to a candidate’s campaign, donors otherwise are not limited in the aggregate amount of political giving they may do in federal elections. Thus, if a $2,700 donor to Hillary wants to give $10,000 respectively to each of 33 separate Democrat State Committees, he or she may infuse $330,000 more into the political pot. And then — wink, wink — if each of those state committees thereupon write $10,000 checks to their Corrupt Clinton Cronies — well, where does it say that you can’t do that? And if the donor does that in both Year 2015, as the primaries start taking shape, and again in presidential election year 2016, that moves $660,000 into the pot. And if the donor sets it up that, hey, the hubby is giving $660,000 and the wifey is giving $660,000 — well, now that donor has passed $1,320,000 (One Million and Three Hundred and Twenty Thousand Dollars) to Hillary… and, oh yeah, also a $2,700 “federal maximum gift” plus one from the spouse. In this way, Hillary’s own basketful of deplorables passed along $26 million to her in 2015. And along the way, scores of critical outcome-changing Hillary Clinton “Super Delegates” were bought and paid for well in advance of the primaries, faster than Bernie Sanders could mutter that “the American people are sick and tired about hearing about your damn emails.”

    No wonder all those prostituted Democrat “Super Delegates” were wearing buttons saying “I’m with her”! She bought their state committees.

    (And yes, Kidder actually was in other movies that Superman. A few weeks ago I saw her in Brian De Palma’s Sisters, which is not great, but is a reasonably solid, creepy, low-budget thriller where she played a formerly conjoined twin.)

    (Hat tip: DirectorBlue.)

  • The Wall Street Journal thinks Mueller is too compromised and should step down. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of which, the MSM attacked WSJ for criticizing Fusion GPS while leaving out the tiny little detail that one of the sources for the attack piece was a Fusion GPS employee.
  • And remember: The FBI used the Fusion GPS Steele dossier to get a FISA warrant for Trump’s campaign. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • As reported back in April by CNN.
  • Hillary’s health problems were so bad that Brazile contemplated replacing Hillary at the top of the ticket with Joe Biden. That would have been something worth seeing her attempt. But how would most Democrats feel about having the candidate a majority of them voted for replaced by the DNC board?
  • And if her health was that bad, why did the press refuse to report on it?

    How is it possible that the leader of the Democratic Party was talking to colleagues about trying to replace its nominee during the general election because of health concerns, and none of the thousands of journalists covering the campaign got wind of it?

    It’s not possible — if the media had been playing it down the middle and holding both candidates to the same standard of scrutiny. But big media missed a big story because so much campaign “news” coverage was tilted toward defeating Donald Trump and electing Clinton.

    Anything that could possibly suggest Trump was unfit for the Oval Office — bingo, front page, top of the broadcast.

    On the other hand, anything that could hurt Clinton was downplayed or ignored. Nothing to see here, move along.

  • Hillary Clinton cronies are building a new super-PAC that looks a whole lot like a parallel organization to the DNC. Could this be the groundwork for yet another Clinton Presidential run? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Did Brazile publish her book just to forestall another Clinton run?
  • According to Brazile, Clinton’s inner circle was like a cult that she couldn’t get through to.
  • “Clinton Emails, Trump Dossier, Russian Nukes: All Point To Corruption In Obama’s Justice Department.” Including Uranium One and the unmasking scandal. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.
  • Funny how the Trump Russia probe differs radically from the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s Emailgate:

    Obama had knowingly participated in the conduct for which Clinton was under investigation — using a pseudonym in communicating with her about classified government business over an unsecure private communication system.

    Obama prejudiced the emails investigation. Long before it was formally ended, he publicly pronounced Clinton innocent. He theorized that she had not intended to harm the United States. Even if true, that fact would be irrelevant — it is not an element of the statutory offenses at issue, under which several military officials, who also had no intent to harm our country, have nevertheless been prosecuted. (It also had nothing to do with her quite intentional destruction of thousands of emails, many relating to government business — also a serious crime.)

    As night follows day, the FBI and the Justice Department relied on Obama’s errant and self-interested rationale in dropping the case against Clinton and her accomplices. What did Obama’s subordinates do after he patently interfered in the investigation? Well, then-FBI director James Comey began drafting a statement exonerating Clinton months before the investigation ended — i.e., before over a dozen key witnesses, including Clinton herself, had been interviewed. Indeed, it has now been reported that Comey’s draft initially declaimed that Clinton had been “grossly negligent” in handling classified information — an assertion that tracked the language of one of the statutes Clinton violated. Later, in the statement he made publicly on July 5, 2016, Director Comey instead used the term “extremely careless” — substantively indistinguishable from “grossly negligent,” but the semantic shift appeared less tantamount to a finding of guilt.

    In the aftermath, we extensively examined the Clinton investigation’s hyper-sensitivity to the attorney-client privilege.

    Note that the lawyer for Manafort and Gates was forced to testify against her clients based on the theory that she had participated — however unwittingly — in their scheme to cover up their lobbying efforts on behalf of a Ukrainian political party. Aggressively, Mueller’s team contended that even if the lawyer had not intended to help her clients mislead the government, their use of her services was intended to dupe the government. That, Mueller argued, brought their communications with the lawyer under the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege. Chief Judge Howell agreed. As a result, the lawyer’s communications with Manafort and Gates lost their confidentiality protection, such that Mueller could compel her to reveal them to the grand jury.

    Compare that with the Justice Department’s treatment of the lawyers representing Mrs. Clinton and her accomplices. Actually, I shouldn’t really put it that way because . . . Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers were her accomplices.

    As we’ve previously explained, the Justice Department refused to invoke the crime-fraud exception to explore what advice Clinton lawyers gave her information technology contractor before he supposedly took it on himself to delete and destroy her emails.

    Furthermore, the Justice Department and the FBI tolerated unlawful arrangements whereby subjects of the investigation were permitted to act as private lawyers in the probe regarding matters in which they had been involved as government officials. Perhaps more astonishingly, subjects of the investigation — such as Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, who participated directly in the process by which Clinton decided which emails to surrender to the State Department and which to withhold as “private” — were permitted to act as attorneys for the principal subject of the investigation, Clinton herself.

    This arrangement was not merely unethical; it would have badly compromised the case if there had been any real intention to prosecute. As the highly experienced government investigators and attorneys involved had to know, if there had been an indictment, prosecutors would have been accused both of bringing the witnesses together to get their story straight, and of undermining Clinton’s right to prepare a defense by having government witnesses participate in the formulation of her legal strategy.

    While Mueller’s prosecutors subpoenaed Manafort’s lawyer to the grand jury to testify against him, the Obama Justice Department largely shunned the grand jury while colluding with lawyers representing the Clinton emails subjects. The FBI, for example, was foreclosed from pursuing obvious lines of inquiry in an interview of Cheryl Mills.

    Even though Manafort was cooperating with congressional investigators, providing them with hundreds of pages of documents, Mueller did not request documents from him and his lawyers. Instead, his prosecutors and investigators obtained a search warrant to rifle through Manafort’s Virginia home, which they executed in a predawn raid, reportedly breaking in with guns drawn while the Manaforts were sleeping and not allowing Mrs. Manafort to get out of bed before checking her for weapons.

    In stark contrast, the Obama Justice Department would not even issue grand-jury subpoenas to compel the production of physical evidence — such as the private laptop computers used by Clinton’s subordinates to store her emails (a number of which contained classified information). Instead, investigators politely asked lawyers to turn over pertinent items, and they made extraordinary agreements to restrict the information they would be permitted to look at (such as an agreement that prevented agents from looking at information on the Mills and Samuelson computers during the time frame when attempts to obstruct congressional investigations may have occurred).

    It is worth noting that, very similarly, the Obama Justice Department and the FBI did not seize the servers of the Democratic National Committee, even though much of the collusion case hinges on the conclusion that these servers were hacked by Russian operatives. Instead, the FBI politely requested that the servers be surrendered so the Bureau’s own renowned forensic investigators could examine them. When the DNC refused, the Justice Department did not issue a subpoena or obtain a search warrant; to the contrary, the FBI and DOJ agreed to accept the findings of CrowdStrike, a private investigative firm retained by the DNC’s (and the Clinton campaign’s) attorneys.

    Manafort has been charged with multiple felonies for failure to register as a foreign agent, an offense the government almost never prosecutes — the Justice Department’s practice is to encourage foreign agents to comply with the law rather than indict them for failing to do so. By contrast, the FBI and Justice Department rationalized their failure to charge Clinton for mishandling classified information by claiming that her offense was so rarely prosecuted that it would be unfair — it would smack of invidious selective prosecution — to charge her with even a single offense. Clinton’s homebrew server system stored well over 2,000 emails that contained classified information, including over 100 that were undeniably classified at the time they were sent. Eight of those involved chains of communications classified as top secret, the classification the government assigns to information the mishandling of which could be expected to cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security (and seven of these were designated as “special access program,” meaning mishandling could be expected to expose critical intelligence programs and endanger the lives of intelligence sources).

    George Papadopoulos is a low-level subject of the collusion investigation who did not commit any crimes in his many contacts with Russia-connected sources. Yet Mueller induced him to plead guilty to a felony count of lying to investigators about the timing of his first meeting with such a source. In stark contrast, while a number of Clinton subordinates asserted their Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions on the ground that truthful answers could incriminate them, none of them was prosecuted. Instead, the Obama Justice Department gave them immunity.

    Mueller alleges that Manafort lied to the Justice Department when he finally (in late 2016 and early 2017) filed paperwork under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). Although Congress has made the making of false statements in FARA submissions a misdemeanor, Mueller charged Manafort with both this misdemeanor offense and a separate felony (under the statute that generally makes lying to government investigators a crime). Thus, he turned a single offense into two crimes and drastically inflated the potential penalty — well beyond what Congress intended for the offense.

    By contrast, several subjects of the Clinton emails investigation made blatant misrepresentations in FBI interviews but were not prosecuted at all. For example, Secretary Clinton’s former top aides, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, claimed not to have known about Clinton’s private server system when they were working for her at the State Department — even though there is an email exchange in which they discussed it (and Abedin had an email address on the system).

    For her part, Mrs. Clinton claimed not to know what the designation “[C]” means in classified documents. As a longtime consumer of classified information, Clinton obviously knew it means “confidential.” Upon becoming secretary of state, Clinton signed an acknowledgment that she had been indoctrinated in the rules and procedures governing the secure handling of classified information. In it, she represented that she had read and understood an executive order — signed by her husband when he was president — that describes the levels of classification, including confidential. Yet, Clinton ludicrously told interviewing agents she thought “[C]” might have something to do with putting information in alphabetical order.

    Clinton further claimed that she could not recall the indoctrination in the handling of classified information. Not only had she signed the acknowledgment; she had also written in her memoir, Hard Choices, about the extraordinary measures national-security officials are required to take when reviewing and storing classified information.

    In addition, Mrs. Clinton also testified under oath at a congressional hearing that she had provided the State Department with “all my work-related e-mails.” She knew she had done this, she explained, because her lawyers carefully “went through every single e-mail.” Both of these statements were patently false.

    But that’s the way it goes. Often, the Justice Department is so hell-bent on making the case, it will play an intimidating game of hardball if that’s what it takes. On rare occasions, though, it works just as hard to not make the case — to see no evil. We can all be thankful, I’m sure, that politics has nothing to do with it.

  • For all Brazile’s “not illegal” blather, there’s a good chance Hillary’s team broke campaign finance laws paying for the Fusion GPS dossier and listing the line item as “legal fees.”
  • You know what else broke the law? The Clinton campaign shoving its hand into the puppet DNC to bypass campaign contribution limits:

    Donna Brazile has confirmed Bernie Sanders’s worst suspicions. Ms. Brazile, who served as interim chairman of the Democratic National Committee during the fall 2016 campaign, says in a new book that during the primaries, the DNC was controlled by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Ms. Brazile claims the arrangement was “not illegal,” but that is far from clear.

    Ms. Brazile reports that when she arrived on the job in July 2016, Gary Gensler, the campaign’s chief financial officer, told her the DNC was fully under the control of the campaign. In September 2015, 10 months before Mrs. Clinton’s nomination, the party had moved its bank account to the same bank in New York used by the Clinton campaign and created a joint fundraising committee, the Hillary Victory Fund, whose treasurer, bank account, and control were vested in the campaign.

    Then, in an August 2015 memorandum of understanding, the DNC essentially handed over its operations to the Clinton campaign for the next 15 months.

    The purpose of joint fundraising committees is to allow more than one entity to collaborate in raising money and share in the costs. Each participant is subject to federal contribution limits. When the party itself is a participant, its committee (in this case the DNC) normally handles accounting and financial controls. Not here. The Hillary Victory Fund was controlled by the Clinton campaign, with a campaign employee as treasurer and the fund’s bank account established at the Clinton campaign’s bank. According to Federal Election Commission reports, the Hillary Victory Fund has raised more than $526 million.

    The DNC asserted its “neutrality” by also entering into a joint fundraising committee with the Sanders campaign. It raised a total of $1,000. And the Bernie Victory Committee treasurer was the DNC’s designee.

    “Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state,” Ms. Brazile writes, “but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn”—i.e., Clinton headquarters. She says state parties raised $82 million, of which they kept less than 0.5%.

    The memorandum of understanding promised the Clinton campaign, among other things, “complete and seamless access to all research work product and tools” paid for by the DNC, despite Federal Election Commission regulations that prohibit privately sharing such research with a candidate without either reporting the costs as an in-kind contribution or allocating them against the party’s coordinated spending limits for that candidate.

    The memo also tied transfers of funds raised for the DNC by the Hillary Victory Fund to operational control of the DNC’s expenditures: “The release of the Base Amounts each month are conditioned on the following: . . . hiring of DNC Communications Director . . . DNC senior staff . . . joint authority over strategic decisions . . . alerting HFA”—Hillary for America, the campaign—“in advance of . . . any direct mail communications that features a particular Democratic primary candidate or his or her signature.”

    Contributions to the DNC, even though made through the Hillary Victory Fund, were required by law to be transferred to the party and could not legally be withheld by the Clinton-designated treasurer. Nor does the law allow a single candidate to control a political party’s operations and expenditures.

    National party committees have higher contribution limits than candidates do—$334,000 a year vs. $2,700 for each election. The memorandum raises the possibility that Clinton campaign took advantage of the DNC’s higher limits, then availed itself of all the resources the DNC could buy—without having any of the attendant costs or expenditures assessed against the campaign.

    There are strict statutory limits on what a party committee can contribute to any candidate and what a party can spend in coordination with its candidates. We don’t like limits on the ability of parties to support their candidates. But campaign-finance zealots, egged on by media outlets (which are not subject to any limits), made certain that the McCain-Feingold law of 2002 stringently limited coordination between candidates and political parties. Although the Supreme Court struck down parts of McCain-Feingold in the 2010 Citizens United case, the coordination limits still apply. The FEC and the Justice Department should investigate the Clinton-DNC arrangement.

  • 7 Uranium One facts every American should know.”
  • “7 Questions the Justice Department Must Answer About Uranium One and Clinton Foundation.”
  • Former FBI Director: Hillary Clinton’s crimes 20 times worse than Watergate.”
  • “New Documents Show FBI Deputy Director McCabe Did Not Recuse Himself from the Clinton Email Scandal Investigation until Week Before Presidential Election.” Despite the fact his wife’s campaign received $700,000 from Clinton “friends.”
  • Bill Clinton’s looming reckoning as a sexual predator. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Heh: “DNC Unveils Clinton Institute For Campaign Ethics Reform In Response To Corruption Allegations.”
  • And in case you’re coming into this post directly, here are three recent posts that cover Clinton Corruption topics:

  • “Donna Brazile Admits Hillary Clinton Gutted the DNC And Wore Its Skin To Shovel More Campaign Cash Into Her Gaping Maw.”
  • Russian Lawyer Met With Fusion GPS Before and After Trump Jr. Meeting.
  • Podesta Lawyer Tries to Silence Tucker Carlson.
  • One Year After Oral Retrospective of Election Night 2016

    November 12th, 2017

    If you need a boost, you can feel the joy of Hillary Clinton not being elected President all over again.

    Some choice nuggets from random liberals:

  • “People were throwing up. People were on the floor crying.”
  • “I went into a panic attack and couldn’t breathe.”
  • “Can we stay in the U.S.?”
  • As usual, what strikes you about reactions from Hillary’s fans is the narcissistic drama queen overreaction to everything. It’s not that their preferred candidate lost an election, it’s that their world was destroyed in an existential cataclysm. Maybe if they stepped out of their cozy liberal reality bubble the real world wouldn’t keep shattering them by not conforming to their narrow little worldview.

    Of course this piece also includes some quotes from people on Trump’s team, such as Steve Bannon watching Florida come in a computer-strewn, bare concrete floored room in Trump Tower they called “the crack den.”

    Read the whole thing.

    Followup: Islamic State Defeated in Battle for Marawi City

    November 11th, 2017

    Here’s news from (mostly) a few weeks ago: Islamic State fighters have been defeated in the Philippines:

    The Philippines has declared an end to five months of fighting in southern Marawi City between the armed forces and militants loyal to Islamic State, the country’s defence minister says.

    “There are no more militants in Marawi,” Delfin Lorenzana told reporters in Clark during a meeting of regional defence ministers.

    The announcement comes as Philippine troops captured a building where pro-Islamic State militants made their final stand, and found dozens bodies of suspected gunmen inside, two security officials said.

    The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to make public the latest developments in Marawi, where government forces have begun a gradual withdrawal as the fighting eased in recent days.

    Armed forces chief General Eduardo Ano said at least 42 bodies of rebels had been found in two buildings and a mosque in the battle zone.

    Despite the battle being “over,” mop-up operations continued into this week when 11 remaining militants were killed in the harbor area of Marawi City. “More than 900 militants, 165 troops and policemen and 47 civilians were killed in the fighting in Marawi.”

    Other good news from that battle: Islamic State leaders Isnilon Hapilon and Omar Maute (AKA Omarkhayam Maute) were both killed, as was Omar’s brother Abdullah Maute a bit earlier.

    From the ABC report:

    National police chief Ronald dela Rosa told reporters that there was intelligence that a Malaysian militant, Amin Baco, survived and has assumed leadership of the militants, but military officials said they believe Baco was killed in Sunday’s fighting or in recent weeks, and that troops were searching for his body.

    “Contrary to recent pronouncements by some officials that it is now headed by a certain Amin Baco, the Armed Forces of the Philippines strongly believes that the group is now leaderless and without direction,” [Maj. Gen. Restituto] Padilla said.

    This probably means that the Maute group is effectively defunct, although Abu Sayyaf, of which Hapilon was the head, appears to still be active in Basilan, a smaller island south of Mindanao.

    (Previously.)

    LinkSwarm for November 10, 2017

    November 10th, 2017

    This week’s news: If you believe the accusations, almost everyone in Hollywood was raping everyone else in Hollywood. Remember, innocent until proven guilty, yadda yadda, but we all know a lot of these sumbags are guilty as sin.

  • Chalie Sheen allegedly sodomized 13-year old Corey Haim on a movie set. Wait, Charlie Sheen would never…sorry, there’s no way to to truthfully complete that sentence.
  • NPR management covered up multiple sexual harassment complaints. Still another reason to completely zero out NPR and PBS subsidies.
  • Crazy leftist breaks five of Rand Paul’s ribs.
  • Slimy Similarities Between Weinstein and the DNC.”

    –Attorney who is a reliable footsoldier for the Democratic Party? Check.

    –Investigative queries foreclosed by claims of “attorney-client privilege”? Check.

    –Opposition research firm populated by foreign operatives using questionable methods? Check.

    –Surveillance, deceit, intimidation, outright distortions, possible illegality? Check.

    –Media in the back pocket, guaranteed to ignore or bury the story? Check.

  • Clinton News Network gonna Clinton News Network.
  • Communism robs a nation of 80% or more of its wealth. You don’t even have to talk about the body count.”
  • Attention snowflakes: China is a lot more racist than the US.
  • Illegal alien who raped and murdered his 16-year old cousin executed. Don’t mess with Texas.
  • Boat rescue story doesn’t add up. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Frankly, we’re losing our shirts on these deals, but we’re looking for people who buy audiophile cassettes…”
  • Followup: Fat Leonard Probe Expands

    November 9th, 2017

    Hey, remember “Fat Leonard Francis” the contractor who infiltrated the U.S. Navy more thoroughly and efficiently than the Russians ever did?

    Well, the Fat Leonard probe has now expanded to more than 60 Admirals:

    The “Fat Leonard” corruption investigation has expanded to include more than 60 admirals and hundreds of other U.S. Navy officers under scrutiny for their contacts with a defense contractor in Asia who systematically bribed sailors with sex, liquor and other temptations, according to the Navy.

    Most of the admirals are suspected of attending extravagant feasts at Asia’s best restaurants paid for by Leonard Glenn Francis, a Singapore-based maritime tycoon who made an illicit fortune supplying Navy vessels in ports from Vladivostok, Russia to Brisbane, Australia. Francis also was renowned for hosting alcohol-soaked, after-dinner parties, which often featured imported prostitutes and sometimes lasted for days, according to federal court records.

    The 350-pound Francis, also known in Navy circles as “Leonard the Legend” for his wild-side lifestyle, spent decades cultivating relationships with officers, many of whom developed a blind spot to his fraudulent ways. Even while he and his firm were being targeted by Navy criminal investigators, he received VIP invitations to ceremonies in Annapolis and Pearl Harbor, where he hobnobbed with four-star admirals, according to photographs obtained by The Washington Post.

    Given the the number of Admirals in the Navy is statutorily limited to around 160 at any given time, that’s a pretty staggering number…

    Texas News Roundup for November 9, 2017

    November 9th, 2017

    Bunch of Texas news, none of which I feel like doing a separate post on. Ready? Go!

  • The state of Texas, with the assistance of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, has successfully thwarted the Obama Administration’s Bureau of Land Management land grab along the Red River. Good job for TPPF, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush successfully getting BLM to give up.
  • All Texas constitutional amendments pass.
  • U.S. Rep. Ted Poe announces retirement.
  • I also missed that Lamar Smith announced his retirement a few days ago as well. With Jeb Hensarling, that’s three incumbent Texas Republican Reps who have announced their retirement.
  • Ranger College: Want to pay higher taxes to support our corrupt community college? Brown, Erath and Comanche County: Get stuffed! Not often you see a proposition defeated 97% to 3%…
  • Russian Lawyer Met With Fusion GPS Before and After Trump Jr. Meeting

    November 8th, 2017

    Can you say “Honeypot”?

    The co-founder of Fusion GPS, the firm behind the unverified Trump dossier, met with a Russian lawyer before and after a key meeting she had last year with Trump’s son, Fox News has learned. The contacts shed new light on how closely tied the firm was to Russian interests, at a time when it was financing research to discredit then-candidate Donald Trump.

    The opposition research firm has faced renewed scrutiny after litigation revealed that the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid for that research. Congressional Republicans have since questioned whether that politically financed research contributed to the FBI’s investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign – making Fusion’s 2016 contacts with Russian interests all the more relevant.

    The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya occurred during a critical period. At that time, Fox News has learned that bank records show Fusion GPS was paid by a law firm for work on behalf of a Kremlin-linked oligarch while paying a former British spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Trump through his Russian contacts.

    But hours before the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, Fusion co-founder and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson was with Veselnitskaya in a Manhattan federal courtroom, a confidential source told Fox News. Court records reviewed by Fox News, email correspondence and published reports corroborate the pair’s presence together. The source told Fox News they also were together after the Trump Tower meeting.

    Simpson’s presence with Veselnitskaya during this critical week in June — together with revelations about Fusion’s simultaneous financial ties to the DNC, Clinton campaign and Russian interests — raise new questions about the company’s role in the 2016 election.

    Snip.

    In December 2012, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act was passed into U.S. law, freezing Russian assets and banning visas for sanctioned individuals. Fusion’s Simpson is believed to have been working with Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counter-intelligence officer turned Russian-American lobbyist, to overturn the sanctions.

    Akhmetshin also attended the June 9 Trump Tower meeting, along with about a half-dozen others including Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, publicist Rob Goldstone, Natalia’s Russian translator Anatoli Samochornov and Ike Kaveladze from a Russian-American real estate agency.

    Let’s review a few salient facts:

  • Hillary Clinton’s campaign jointly funded the fake Trump dossier contracted through Fusion GPS to Christopher Steele with the DNC.
  • The fake dossier was used by the Obama Administration as the basis to both wiretap various members of the Trump presidential campaign, and to unmask the names of those ensnared in government intelligence gathering.
  • Whose names were then illegally leaked to the press.
  • The only documented meeting between anyone on Trump’s team (in this case Donald Trump, Jr.) and Russian nationals during the campaign itself was probably arranged as a honeypot operation by Fusion GPS for the Clinton campaign, possibly in collusion with Russian interests.
  • More “hmmmmm”:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    What The Hell Is Going On In Saudi Arabia?

    November 7th, 2017

    I’m hardly the most astute of Saudi-watchers, but a tremendous amount of upheaval has wrecked Saudi Arabia in a very short period of time:

  • Dozens of the Saudi royal family have been arrested on corruption charges, presumably for opposing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who seems hellbent on dragging Saudi Arabia into at least the 15th Century. (When he starts arresting or sidelining Whabbist clerics, I’ll start believing that he’s a real reformer.) The Saudi government is sayng that these anti-corruption moves are just a start.
  • In a remarkable coincidence, roughly the same time arrests were being made, a helicopter carrying “Prince Mansour bin Muqrin, the deputy governor of Asir province,” crashed while he was returning from an inspection tour. Given that Mansour was the son of Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, a former intelligence chief who was crown prince between January and April 2015, before Mohammed bin Salman’s father King Salman pushed him aside for his own son, the chances that this was a mere coincidence would seem remote.
  • Saudi Gulf Affairs Minister Thamer al-Sabhan stated that Lebanon has “declared war” against the kingdom, which is more than a little loopy. The tiny kernel of truth here is that Hezbollah is, in fact, part of the current ruling Parliamentary majority in Lebanon, and that Hezbollah is backing Assad and Iran in the Sunni-Shia civil war that’s raging across multiple fronts. This followed the resignation of Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s Saudi-backed prime minister over the weekend.
  • The Saudis are also threatening open war (rather than the current proxy war) with Iran over the Houthi in Yemen firing long range missiles at them. Can’t say as I blame them.
  • So what’s going on? Here’s my half-assed guess:

    The Saudis are getting their asses kicked on two fronts:

    1. They’re slowly losing the proxy war against a newly emboldened Iran, which is breathing much easier thanks to the billions Obama foolishly handed them and the sanctions he lifted not so much for a handful of magic beans, but rather the vague promise that Iran might possibly send him a picture of said magic beans.
    2. Their plan to drive American oil sands frackers out of the market by ruthlessly driving down prices backfired, and now they’re hurting on the oil revenue front as well.

    Because America is the Saudi’s unipolar patron and main weapon supplier, there’s fark all they can do about Problem 2. Either they need to take the war directly Iran, or they need to buy themselves some economic breathing room and hope oil prices rise again.

    My guess is that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is about to lay a serious perestroika-style smackdown on the largely hidebound, stagnant Saudi economy, along with just enough glasnost to make the whole thing palatable to the non-royal Saudi masses. If this theory is correct, the “hey, woman can drive” thing was actually a trial balloon designed to smoke out the most fervent traditionalists out of the woodwork so he can sideline them while he puts his plan into action.

    Of course they could very well be bracing for more direction action against Iran as well. There’s a lot more they could do against Iran, including more direct support for the largely-Sunni Kurds.

    The Saudis are not our friends, just the least bad of various options in the region (just imagine theocratic Iran or a revitalized Islamic State in charge of Mecca). It will be a significant improvement if Mohammed bin Salman can merely make them a bit less loathsome.

    Reminder: Election Tomorrow for 2017 Texas Ballot Propositions

    November 6th, 2017

    Once again, an off-year election is sneaking up on us on tomorrow.

    There are a number of Texas constitutional amendments on the ballot. Here’s my quick “one-eyed man in the land of the blind” summary:

  • Proposition 1: “Authorizes tax exemption for property of partially disabled veterans received as donations.” Yes.
  • Proposition 2: “Makes changes to home equity loan provision of constitution.” This is a tricky one. Libertarian in me says “Yeah, sure, do whatever you want. Your funeral.” The other part of me thinks that, after 2008, having too stringent rules on tricky types of home equity borrowing isn’t exactly at the top of my list of problems. The fact that realtors and bankers have poured money into supporting this tip the balance to me recommending No.
  • Proposition 3: “Provides for how long an appointed officer may serve after his or her term expires.” Yes. Think of this as the “Texas Racing Commission” rule.
  • Proposition 4: “Requires a court to provide notice to the attorney general of a challenge to a statute.” Yes. Evidently a judge got chuffed in 2013 that mere legislators passed a law stating this, so now we have a constitutional amendment to do the same thing…
  • Proposition 5: “Defines professional sports team in charitable raffles.” Yes. Basically clarifies the terms of a previous constitutional amendment.
  • Proposition 6: “Authorizes property tax exemption for surviving spouses of first responders killed in line of duty.” Yes.
  • Proposition 7: “Authorizes financial institutions to offer prizes to promote savings.” Tentative No, since this is a carve-out for a particular industry.
  • Travis County also has some bond issues.

    Also, Williamson County voters will get a chance to eliminate the position of County Surveyor, and pretty much any time you can eliminate a government position, you should go for it…

    Deir Ez-Zor Falls

    November 5th, 2017

    The Syrian army just ousted the Islamic State from their last urban stronghold in Syria.

    Syrian government forces have liberated the last remaining Isis stronghold in the country as the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate continues to crumble.

    The Syrian military said it had driven extremist fighters from Deir Ezzor and regained full control of the eastern city on the west bank of the Euphrates following weeks of fighting, state media reported.

    Isis had held most of the city since 2014, except for one large pocket where Syrian army troops and 93,000 civilians were trapped for three years.

    Syrian forces and pro-government allies first broke the militant group’s siege on the city in a Russian-backed offensive in September and have been advancing against Isis positions ever since.

    The recapture of the city, the largest in eastern Syria, leaves Isis militants isolated and encircled in the region’s countryside.

    In a statement issued on Friday through state TV, army spokesman General Ali Mayhoub said the military had “completely” liberated the city and declared it had entered the “last phase” of its fight to annihilate Isis.

    Isis is estimated to have lost 90 per cent of its territory since 2014, including key urban strongholds Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in northern Syria.

    Deir Ezzor was strategically significant to the extremist group due to its location near the Iraqi border and its importance as the capital of the oil-rich province which shares its name.

    The city’s liberation all but reduces Isis’s self-proclaimed caliphate to a pair of border towns on the Iraq-Syria frontier.

    Iraqi forces and allied Shia militia are chasing remnants of the terror group inside the town of al-Qaim, on the Iraqi side of the border.

    Deir ez-Zor, rumored to be the Islamic State’s backup capital after the encirclement of Raqqa, was fully invested by the Syrian Army and Syrian Democratic Forces one month ago.

    And here’s the same territory today:

    (Pictures, as usual, from http://isis.liveuamap.com/.)

    Elsewhere in the war against the Islamic State, Iraqi forces have taken Qaim on the border between Iraq and Syria. That leaves Rawa City, a town of some 20,000 east of Quim in western Anbar province, as the last populated Islamic State stronghold in Iraq. That’s expected to fall soon as well.

    In Abu Kammal, one of the last towns in Syria held by the Islamic State, security checkpoints have been abandoned as both civilians and Islamic State fighters are fleeing the area to due to Russian Air Force bombardment.

    What remains of Islamic State territory after that is largely uninhabited.

    After the falls of Raqqa and Mosul, there may be no true “Last Stand” for the Islamic State, no Fuhrer bunker end for al-Baghdadi, just the rest of the supposed caliphate’s territory melting away as onetime fighters flee into the night and try to melt back into the civilian population. Meanwhile, expect the Islamic State to turn into just another stateless jihadist terror network like al Qaeda, blowing people up across the world but holding no territory, and thus no moral authority upon which to demand the allegiance of Muslims worldwide:

    Al‑Qaeda is ineradicable because it can survive, cockroach-like, by going underground. The Islamic State cannot. If it loses its grip on its territory in Syria and Iraq, it will cease to be a caliphate. Caliphates cannot exist as underground movements, because territorial authority is a requirement: take away its command of territory, and all those oaths of allegiance are no longer binding.

    It’s possible that the failure of the Islamic State will take wind out of the sails of Islamic fundamentalism for a generation. This wouldn’t mean an end to Islamic terrorism and attempts to Islamicize the west in general and Europe in particular, only a lessening of it.

    But the fall of the Islamic State’s last remaining territory is still a cause for celebration among the millions once enslaved by its brutal medieval death cult.