Showing posts with label FBI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FBI. Show all posts

Saturday, July 18, 2015

[COMMENTARY] Guest commentary: FBI needs new anti-terrorist strategy

When Fox News starts to question the wisdom of current FBI strategy dealing with potential terrorists, it's time for the country to listen. Civil rights advocates, right-wing anti-government zealots and assorted leftists have long complained about FBI tactics when it comes to political dissidents. The arrest of Alexander Ciccolo on July 4 seems to have awakened Fox. Can the rest of the nation be far behind?
Ciccolo, the 23-year-old son of a longtime Boston police captain, was one of the dozen or so "terrorists" arrested in the weeks leading up to July 4. FBI Director James Comey proudly announced their arrests at the bureau's headquarters a few days later. He claimed that the action of his bureau had prevented several Independence Day attacks and had saved lives.

What Comey didn't say was that some, if not all, of this could have been prevented had his agency followed an entirely different approach to cracking down on potential terror suspects.

That, of course, is not the policy of the FBI. Instead of neutralizing would-be or suspected bombers or shooters, Comey's agents spend millions of dollars and waste countless hours carefully weaving a case that has sent dozens of misguided young Americans to long prison sentences for plotting to kill Americans or aiding designated enemies.

The Ciccolo case is typical in many respects, although it differs from the others in one significant way. Last fall the young man's police officer father informed the FBI that his mentally ill son was increasingly captivated by ISIS propaganda. Instead of picking him up for a serious talk about where that would eventually lead him, the FBI began to monitor his activities. An informant recorded Ciccolo's pro-ISIS comments for the agency. When Ciccolo bought a gun, he was arrested for violating a law that prohibits someone convicted of a drug arrest from owning one.
After his arrest, the FBI reported that Ciccolo intended to build a pressure cooker bomb and explode it at an unnamed university. The bureau is very good at developing a long list of crimes, often involving conspiracy since no actual violence occurred, and Ciccolo will probably face a much longer list of charges than that simple gun possession on which he was arrested.

One doesn't have to be a flaming liberal to realize that something is wrong with the FBI's current strategy of building an airtight case against people like Ciccolo. On July 15 Fox News commentator Neil Cavuto interviewed former CIA intelligence officer Joshua Katz regarding the Ciccolo case. Katz sounded almost like a leftist except that he politely criticized the bureau for not following another course of action against these homegrown dissenters. He suggested that the bureau could have intervened earlier so that it wouldn't have to make an arrest.

So why doesn't the bureau, and others, adopt a policy of early intervention? Why, in the Riverside case last fall, did the FBI pay a convicted drug dealer about $250,000 to infiltrate a ragtag gang of four young men? That wasted countless hours of their agents' time at a cost approaching $1 million, when they could have just as effectively ended their plan to join ISIS by intervening early on.

Arrests, trials and convictions are more exciting, newsworthy, and justification for promotions and bigger budgets than quietly warning potential terrorists that their conduct could lead to long prison terms. But that warning would have been a lot cheaper for the government and would have saved many young people, like Ciccolo, from the ruin they now face.
Ralph E. Shaffer is professor emeritus of history at Cal Poly Pomona.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

[VIDEO] 'Nightmare' in Chattanooga: 4 Marines Killed, 1 Officer Wounded in Attacks on Navy Facilities

FOX NEWS
Four Marines were killed Thursday at a Chattanooga, Tenn., Navy training center, in what authorities called a possible "act of domestic terrorism" that consisted of two attacks carried out by a lone gunman at military facilities just seven miles apart, officials said.
The unidentified gunman shot up a recruiting center before driving to the Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center and killing four Marines before he was shot, authorities said. Sources told Fox News police chased the gunman from the recruiting center to the Center, where the killings took place. The FBI and military police were investigating the attack, but authorities could not rule out the possibility of terrorism.
“We are treating this as an act of domestic terrorism,” said Bill Killian, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
The names of the Marines who were reportedly shot were not immediately released pending notification of their families. The Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center lies along a bend in the Tennessee River, northeast of downtown Chattanooga.
Despite Killian's statement, an FBI Special Agent Ed Reinhold told reporters that it may have been a criminal act. The gunman was killed, but authorities did not comment on his identity, motivation or the circumstances of his death. Authorities said the gunman did not work at either military facility.
Reinhold said all the dead were killed at the Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center Chattanooga. It sits between Amnicola Highway and a pathway that runs through Tennessee RiverPark, a popular park at a bend in the Tennessee River northeast of downtown Chattanooga. It's in a light industrial area that includes a Coca-Cola bottling plant and Binswanger Glass.
The two entrances to the fenced facility have unmanned gates and concrete barriers that require approaching cars to slow down to drive around them.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Son of Boston police captain charged in terror bomb plot

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BOSTON (AP) — Prosecutors have arrested the son of a Boston police captain in a plot to commit terrorist acts on behalf of the Islamic State group.
Alexander Ciccolo (chih-KOH’-loh) is accused in a criminal complaint unsealed Monday of receiving four guns July 4 from a person cooperating with the Western Massachusetts Joint Terrorism Task Force.
An FBI affidavit says the 23-year-old Adams resident had talked with the cooperating witness in recorded conversations about his plans to commit acts inspired by the Islamic State group, including setting off pressure-cooker bombs at an unidentified university. According to the affidavit, he said the attack would include executions of students broadcast live online.
Before his arrest, agents had observed Ciccolo buying a pressure cooker similar to those used in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Background Check Flaw Let Dylann Roof Buy Gun, F.B.I. Says

WASHINGTON — The man accused of killing nine people in an historically black South Carolina church last month should not have been able to buy a gun, the F.B.I. said Friday in what was the latest acknowledgment of flaws in the national background check system.
A loophole in the check system allowed the man, Dylann Roof, to buy the .45-caliber handgun despite his having previously admitted to drug possession, the bureau said.
“We are all sick this happened,” said the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey. “We wish we could turn back time.”
Mr. Roof now faces murder charges in a case that investigators say was racially motivated. Mr. Roof, who is white, is charged with killing nine people at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston.
The F.B.I. operates the background check system, called the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and loopholes have been discovered in it before. One allowed thousands of prohibited buyers to legally purchase firearms over the past decade — and some of those weapons were ultimately used in crimes, according to court records and government documents. That problem stemmed from the three-day period the government has to determine whether someone is eligible to buy a gun.
After a 2007 shooting in which 33 people died at Virginia Tech University, investigators discovered that the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, also should not have been able to buy a gun because a court had previously declared him to be a danger to himself. The shooting led to legislation aimed at improving the background check system.
Via: New York Times
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Wednesday, July 8, 2015

The IRS Scandal Just Got Even Worse

Former IRS official Lois Lerner
So the Obama IRS wasn’t just persecuting right-leaning nonprofits — it was out to prosecute them, too. And with the help of the Obama Department of Justice and FBI.
Via Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, the watchdog group Judicial Watch just got evidence of the plot. A “DOJ Recap” on an Oct. 8, 2010, meeting tells how officials from the three agencies discussed “several possible theories to bring criminal charges under FEC law” against groups “posing” as tax-exempt nonprofits.
As part of the project, the IRS handed the FBI 21 computer disks with 1.23 million pages of confidential IRS returns from 113,000 nonprofit 501(c)(4) groups — nearly every 501(c)(4). This, though federal law generally bans the IRS from sharing such data.
The evidence shows “that the Obama IRS scandal is also an Obama DOJ and FBI scandal,” noted Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his re-election. And this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information.”
The IRS scandal surfaced years ago — and for all the administration talk of a full investigation, this huge news is only surfacing now, and only thanks to Judicial Watch.
The news of FBI and Justice involvement in the IRS scandal makes the need for some special prosecutor to probe this mess even more obvious.
After all, as Judicial Watch’s Fitton asks: “How can the Justice Department and the FBI investigate the very scandal in which they are implicated?”

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Emails: Obama Administration Discussed Prosecuting Nonprofit Orgs

Newly released documents show Department of Justice officials, Internal Revenue Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials were discussing prosecuting nonprofit organizations for allegedly engaging in illegal political activity.
An official “DOJ Recap” document obtained by the group Judicial Watch details an Oct. 8, 2010 meeting between DOJ, IRS and FBI officials, including Lois Lerner, where the administration employees discussed “several possible theories to bring criminal charges under FEC law” against groups “posing” as tax exempt nonprofits.
“The section’s attorneys expressed concern that certain section 501(c) organizations are actually political committees ‘posing’ as if they are not subject to FEC law, and therefore may be subject to criminal liability,” reads the memo from IRS Exempt Organizations Tax Law Specialist Siri Buller to top IRS officials.
Lerner, who was forced out of the IRS in 2013 amid a scandal that the IRS was targeting conservative groups, and her top aide Judy Kindell, explained to DOJ and FBI officials that “although we do not believe that organizations which are subject to a civil audit subsequently receive any type of immunity from a criminal investigation, she will refer them to individuals from [Criminal Investigations] who can better answer that question.”
“[Lerner] explained that we are legally required to separate the civil and criminal aspects of any examination and that while we do not have EO law experts in CI, our FIU agents are experienced in coordinating with CI,” according to the memo. “The attorneys asked whether a change in the law is necessary, and whether a three-way partnership among DOJ, the FEC, and the IRS is possible to prevent prohibited activity by these organizations.”
Judicial Watch says another document shows that just prior to the October 2010 meeting the IRS began giving the FBI confidential taxpayer information on nonprofits. The document obtained by Judicial Watch says the IRS gave the FBI some 21 disks with 1.25 million pages of taxpayer records.
“These new documents show that the Obama IRS scandal is also an Obama DOJ and FBI scandal,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his reelection. And this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information. How can the Justice Department and FBI investigate the very scandal in which they are implicated?”

Saturday, July 4, 2015

Feds Get Serious Over Computer Hacking: Charges Pending In OPM Baseball Team’s Data Breach

Federal investigators are recommending charges against at least one St. Louis Cardinals employee for allegedly intruding on a rival baseball team’s database, a report says.
 
The investigation accuses one or more Cardinals employees of accessing a Houston Astros database tracking player development, according to CNN.
 
It is also probing whether senior Cardinals management was aware of the spying.

Federal investigators are recommending charges against at least one St. Louis Cardinals employee for allegedly intruding on a rival baseball team’s database, a report says.
 
The investigation accuses one or more Cardinals employees of accessing a Houston Astros database tracking player development, according to CNN.
 
It is also probing whether senior Cardinals management was aware of the spying.

CNN said one or more Cardinals front-office staffers might have violated federal law by accessing the Astros’ database, known as Ground Control.
 
The potential breach came after former Cardinals employee Jeff Luhnow left to be Houston’s general manager.
 
The investigation accuses the Cardinals of then unfairly prying into the Astros’ database amid concerns Luhnow had taken the Cardinals’ proprietary information to his new employer.
 
Luhnow has told investigators the Astros generated their own database system independently of his previous work in St. Louis.
 
Friday’s report follows the Cardinals’ announcement earlier this week that it had fired Chris Correa, the team’s director of scouting.
 
Correa was one of the investigation’s targets, CNN reported.
 
Cardinals General Manager John Mozeliak refused comment on his former employee’s release Thursday.
 
“I can confirm he was on administrative leave and was terminated yesterday,” he said Friday.
 
“I think, at this time, it’s just best to understand that it’s an open investigation and any other comments are not in anybody’s best interest,” Mozeliak added.
 
CNN said the FBI’s Houston office has completed its inquiry and is now awaiting action from the U.S. Attorney’s office.
 
The FBI’s Houston branch declined additional insight on its efforts.
 
“The FBI aggressively investigates all potential threats to public and private sector systems,” said FBI spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap.
 
“Once our investigations are complete, we pursue all appropriate avenues to hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace,” she added.


Sunday, June 28, 2015

Authorities Warn of Potential Fourth of July Terror Attacks

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says his department is encouraging law enforcement "to be vigilant and prepared" ahead of the July 4th holiday in the U.S. following attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait. 
Johnson says people should attend Independence Day events as planned but "remain vigilant" and report any suspicious activity.

He says U.S. authorities will adjust security measures, including those unseen by the public, as necessary.

On  Sunday, House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul said Americans should heed the government's warning

"It is concerning," McCaul told "Fox News Sunday." There is a great deal of chatter, a high volume," he said of terrorist network communications.

He noted that a spokesman for the Islamic State (ISIS) has called for jihad during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan — currently under way — the one-year anniversary of the establishment of the ISIS caliphate and the American Independence Day holiday.

In addition to that confluence is the "Bloody Friday" attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait, all within hours of each other, in which ISIS claimed credit.

The warning to Americans was issued jointly by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center.

"I think given these confluence of events we're being on the cautious side here to warn the public to remain vigilant," McCaul said, "to enjoy the Fourth of July parades, but remain vigilant during these celebrations."

Foiled terror plots have increased "exponentially" in the past year, McCaul said, because of Internet recruiting. 

"I'm extremely concerned about the way the Syrian ISIS recruiters can use the Internet at lightning speed to recruit followers in the United States, with thousands of followers in the United States," he said, "And then activate them to do whatever they want to do, whether it's military installations, law enforcement or, possibly, a Fourth of July event parade."


A gunman killed at least 37 people and wounded 36 in an attack on a beach resort in Tunisia Friday. In Kuwait, a suicide bomber killed at least 25 people, while a man with suspected ties to French Islamic radicals rammed a car into a gas factory in southeastern France, triggering an explosion that injured two people. The severed head of a local businessman was left hanging at the factory's entrance.

While there was no specific or credible threat of attack, one law enforcement official told USA Today that a new intelligence bulletin is alerting local colleagues to the ongoing threats posed by the group that calls itself the Islamic State [also known as ISIS or ISIL] and other homegrown extremists. The official was not authorized to comment publicly.

The bulletins are frequently issued in advance of major U.S. holidays out of an abundance of caution and concern that operatives may exploit the timing to generate greater attention.

The FBI and other agencies have worked to disrupt a number of Islamic State-inspired plots, including a planned assault earlier this month on police officers in Boston. In that case, authorities fatally shot Usaamah Rahim as he allegedly planned to attack police with military-style knives.





Sunday, June 21, 2015

FBI director says Charleston shootings not an act of terrorism

Is Dylann Roof a terrorist? The killing of 9 black Americans at an historic black church in Charleston has some elements of terrorism, but, according to FBI director James Comey, does not rise to the level of "terrorism" as the bureau defines it.

In the wake of the Charleston church shooting in South Carolina, two particular phrases have been used in the media to describe the attack — “hate crime” and “terrorist act.” Soon after the initial reports of the tragedy, the authorities threw both around when discussing the matter with reporters, sometimes letting their emotions get the better of them. That is, what Dylann Roof did was terrible, but until the official investigation is complete, the use of either descriptor won’t be completely accurate.
But that hasn’t stopped FBI Director James Comey from discounting the use of “terrorism” and “terrorist act” to describe Roof’s crimes. At a press conference in Baltimore on Saturday, Comey said that the agency was currently investigating whether or not Roof committed a hate crime, but not terrorism:
“Terrorism is act of violence done or threatens to in order to try to influence a public body or citizenry so it’s more of a political act and again based on what I know so more I don’t see it as a political act.”
The Bureau has a rather large and ever-evolving code of definitions for the various kinds of terrorism and terrorist acts. However, the basic definition is quite simple.
The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

Via: American Thinker


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Friday, June 19, 2015

Feds Charge More Than 200 People With Medicare Fraud

The West Miami drug store was called E-Z Pharmacy. A more apt name would have been “E-Z Money.”
The former owners — Eklis Almanza and husband Juan E. Diaz Gonzalez — pocketed $4.8 million from the taxpayer-funded Medicare program by submitting bogus claims for prescription drugs that none of their customers ever needed or received, according to a federal indictment.
In Little Havana, Enemisis Torres is accused of selling forged and altered prescriptions of Medicare patients at her rehabilitation clinic, Palmetto Comprehensive Healthcare, to a ring of Miami-Dade pharmacy owners. They in turn fraudulently billed the federal program $21.2 million, prosecutors say. Her clinic was raided early Thursday.
The defendants are among 73 South Florida suspects charged this week in Miami federal court with bilking Medicare, including dozens accused of defrauding the Part D prescription drug program that was implemented a decade ago during the Bush administration. The total amount of fraudulent claims in the regional sweep: $262 million.
“By stealing from Medicare ... they have robbed all of us,” U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer told reporters Thursday.
The South Florida arrests — carried out by armies of FBI and Health and Human Services agents — are part of this week’s nationwide take-down of 243 Medicare fraud offenders in states across the country, extending to Alaska. The tally of false claims in the nationwide crackdown: $712 million.
The Justice Department in Washington and U.S. attorney's office in Miami held back-to-back news conferences Thursday to spotlight the latest schemes to fleece the Medicare program, which continues to be plagued by billions of dollars in losses to fraud every year.
Ferrer called the latest healthcare fraud take-down the “largest ever” over the past decade, with Miami, the capital of Medicare fraud, accounting for one-third of all defendants charged this week. “It’s unacceptable, staggering and pretty shocking,” he said.





Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article24842470.html#storylink=cpy

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

White House, Senate rooms briefly evacuated over bomb threats

In a bizarre string of security scares, rooms at the White House and on Capitol Hill were briefly evacuated Tuesday afternoon after a pair of bomb threats. 
A threat made shortly before 2 p.m. ET specifically concerned the White House Briefing Room, officials said, leading the Secret Service to clear reporters out of the room in the middle of the daily briefing. 
Security officers subsequently let reporters back in, after giving the all-clear at the scene. 
The incident came after several floors of a Senate office building were briefly evacuated earlier in the day over another bomb threat, though investigators did not find anything hazardous. A senior security source at the Capitol told Fox News they believe the same person who called in that threat also phoned in the threat to the White House. That possible connection is currently being investigated by the Secret Service and FBI. 
Although parts of the White House have been evacuated before, including after a fence-jumper made it inside the White House last year, this was the first time that an evacuation occurred during a televised press briefing. 
Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said they moved people out as a precaution. 
Still, while reporters were evacuated, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, "At the time of the Briefing Room evacuation, the president remained in the Oval Office and was not evacuated by the Secret Service. The First Lady, Malia and Sasha were in the residence and were not evacuated.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

FBI, Boston Police Kill Terror Suspect Who Came At Them With Knife…Update: Radicalized By ISIS, May Have Planned Attack On Police

Screen Shot 2015-06-02 at 1.10.12 PM
An armed man in his 20s being surveilled by the FBI counterterrorism unit was shot and killed by an FBI agent and a Boston police officer in Roslindale this morning, according to Boston Police Commissioner William Evans.
“He was on foot, under surveillance,” Evans said. “The officers have been surveilling him and again they wanted to speak to him … and he turned and our officers gave several commands for him to drop the weapon and unfortunately he came at the officers and they did what they were trained to do and that’s never an easy decision for any officer to make.”
One FBI agent and one BPD officer fired, FBI Special Agent in Charge Vincent B. Lisi said.
Evans said the suspect was wielding a large military-style black knife that he could have “done a lot of damage” with.
“I think our officers tried their best with the FBI to try to convince him to put down the knife but he didn’t leave us a choice,” Evans said. “It’s an active investigation with the joint terrorism task force … It’s very fluid it’s ongoing, but we have one male shot and as you can see it is a very active scene.”
The suspect was declared dead at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Evans said.

Sunday, May 31, 2015

68th Terrorist Plot Calls for Major Counterterrorism Reforms

On the evening of May 3, two men armed with rifles attacked the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest in Garland, Texas. While both shooters were killed before they could get inside the exhibit, this attack is the 68th Islamist terrorist plot or attack against the U.S. since 9/11. This incident has raised significant questions about the way terrorists are being recruited in the U.S. and what the U.S. can do to stop them. With Congress set to debate portions of the Patriot Act, it should consider how it can provide intelligence and law enforcement officials with the tools they need to find and stop terrorists, while respecting individual liberty and privacy.

Attack in Texas

While the FBI has not completed its investigation of the incident, FBI Director James Comey provided details to reporters last week and the Garland police have provided updated information as well. The first shooter, Elton Simpson, had been watched by the FBI since 2006 when it appeared that he was going to travel overseas to join al-Shabaab, a terrorist group that is based in Somalia and affiliated with al-Qaeda.[1]While his travel plans were thwarted, he was only convicted of lying to federal officials and received three years probation in 2011. The FBI stopped monitoring him in 2014 but reopened their investigation in March after he expressed interest in jihad and the self-styled Islamic State (ISIS) on social media.[2]
Hours before the attack, the FBI sent a bulletin to Garland Police to notify them of Simpson, but they had no definitive information that he was headed from Phoenix to the event much less that he was set to attack it. So far, little is officially known about the other shooter. According to the Garland Police, he was Nadir Soofi, Simpson’s roommate.[3]
Arriving at the art contest in Garland, Simpson and Soofi opened fire with rifles, wounding one unarmed security officer in the leg.[4] The first officer to confront the shooters wounded both before other members of the Garland police department returned fire, killing the shooters. ISIS reportedly claimed credit following the attack and also claimed that it has “71 trained soldiers in 15 different states ready at our word to attack.”[5]
While the investigation will uncover more specifics, there is sufficient detail available to declare this a terrorist plot: Simpson had expressed interest in jihad and proceeded to attack an event that he viewed as contrary to his faith. The investigation may provide us more insight into Simpsons’ connection and communication with ISIS, how this target was chosen, and how Soofi became radicalized, but for now many of these details are unknown or unconfirmed by law enforcement.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

FBI Speaks To Bergen County High School Students About ISIS Recruitment Threat

HACKENSACK, N.J. (CBS NewYork) — The FBI has targeted Bergen County, New Jersey to stop Islamic State militants from getting a stronghold there – and agents have been going to high school with a message.
Christine Sloan was there when agents visited a Bergen County school on Tuesday. An FBI intelligence analyst who did not wish to be identified spoke at the Bergen Arts and Science Charter School in Hackensack.
He warned students about a new threat – a sophisticated recruitment video trying to lure them into joining the terrorist group ISIS.
“There’s a role for everybody. Every person can contribute to the Islamic State,” a young Canadian man tells viewers in the recruitment video. “You can even come here and rebuild.”
“”It definitely was eye-opening,” said high school senior Zoey Zibor. “You know, you learn that it’s in your own backyard. It’s Americans citizens wanting to join these terrorist groups.”
The young Canadian who appears in the recruitment video ended up dying while fighting as a member of ISIS in Syria.
“It’s definitely a bad thing,” said senior Basik Gorkem.
The Bergen County school was one of many the FBI has come to with its alarming message – regular American kids could be vulnerable to this kind 

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Sen. Ted Cruz GRILLS FBI Director on IRS investigation

Icon for Post #98622Sen. Ted Cruz went after FBI Director James Comey, who promised a year ago that the IRS investigation would be a very high priority. Yet today, as Comey sits before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he won’t answer whether a single person has been interviewed or, really, much else about the investigation, hiding behind the fact that it’s an ‘ongoing investigation’.
What I like about this clip is the passion with which Cruz questions the FBI Director.
He also hits back at Leahy, the committee chair, when he’s basically told to accept the witness’ non-answer. Cruz pretty much tells Leahy that he can accept the FBI Director’s answer if he wants, and he understand the non-answer might be good enough for them because many Democrats don’t really care about getting answers in the IRS investigation. Leahy noted that his motives had nothing to do with it, but that the non-answer given by Comey was appropriate. Cruz fired back, to make his point, that when he sought to criminalize the targeting of anyone by the IRS based on their political views, Democrats on that committee voted it down.

Friday, March 28, 2014

FBI Targets, Raids Democrats Across Country

Democrats in California, New York, and North Carolina were targeted by the FBI on Wednesday. All are targets of unrelated federal investigations.
 
featured-imgDemocratic state Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco was taken in by federal authorities on public corruption charges after a series of FBI raids Wednesday morning. Also arrested as part of the investigation was “infamous Chinatown gangster Raymond ‘Shrimp Boy’ Chow,” according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Yee was a candidate for California Secretary of State.
New York Assemblyman William Scarborough (D., Queens) had both his Queens and Albany offices raided by FBI agents on Wednesday and was met by agents at his hotel room.
The FBI is investigating per diem payments that reimburse legislators for days spent in the Capitol.
Scarborough told reporters that the FBI raid is the result of a “tabloid hit job.”
Charlotte, N.C., Democratic Mayor Patrick Cannon was arrested on public corruption charges of theft and bribery as a result of a four-year FBI sting operation.
Cannon collected cash bribes and other items of value from undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen who wanted to do business in Charlotte,according to U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina Anne Tompkins.
The month of March has been rife with Democrats on the crime blotter.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

California Sen. Ronald S. Calderon, brother charged in FBI probe

State Sen. Ronald S. Calderon
State Sen. Ronald S. Calderon (D-Montebello) faces charges of bribery, fraud, money laundering and related offenses.(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press / January 6, 2014)


  • But the appointment at the Bellagio hotel took an immediate unexpected turn for the Southern California lawmaker, according to court records. The businessmen Calderon expected to meet were actually FBI agents with an unsettling message: He was under investigation for public corruption, and he could either cooperate with authorities or face the consequences.
Calderon (D-Montebello) initially agreed to wear a wire in an effort to implicate other politicians, authorities said. That arrangement eventually fell apart, and on Friday prosecutors announced a sweeping indictment against Calderon charging him with bribery, fraud, money laundering and related offenses. Calderon's brother, Thomas, a former member of the California Assembly, is also charged with money laundering.

The charges stem from a scheme in which Ronald Calderon allegedly solicited and accepted nearly $100,000 in cash bribes, as well as gourmet meals and golf outings, in exchange for his influence as a lawmaker. His actions, prosecutors say, helped facilitate a half-billion-dollar healthcare fraud — one of the largest such scams in the state's history.

The mastermind of the healthcare fraud was Michael Drobot, who had owned Pacific Hospital in Long Beach. Drobot has admitted to bribing Calderon to use his influence to keep a state law on the books that allowed Drobot to pass on inflated expenses from spinal surgeries to workers' compensation insurers. The surgeries were performed on patients referred by doctors and chiropractors who were paid illegal kickbacks financed by the inflated billings, authorities allege.


Via: LA Times


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Monday, January 20, 2014

Obama: Some Folks Don't Like Me Because I'm Black

Obama’s Presidency is on the clock. Hard as it has been to pass legislation, the coming year is a marker, the final interval before the fight for succession becomes politically all-consuming.
On the Sunday afternoon before Thanksgiving, Barack Obama sat in the office cabin of Air Force One wearing a look of heavy-lidded annoyance. The Affordable Care Act, his signature domestic achievement and, for all its limitations, the most ambitious social legislation since the Great Society, half a century ago, was in jeopardy. His approval rating was down to forty per cent—lower than George W. Bush’s in December of 2005, when Bush admitted that the decision to invade Iraq had been based on intelligence that “turned out to be wrong.” Also, Obama said thickly, “I’ve got a fat lip.”
That morning, while playing basketball at F.B.I. headquarters, Obama went up for a rebound and came down empty-handed; he got, instead, the sort of humbling reserved for middle-aged men who stubbornly refuse the transition to the elliptical machine and Gentle Healing Yoga. This had happened before. In 2010, after taking a self-described “shellacking” in the midterm elections, Obama caught an elbow in the mouth while playing ball at Fort McNair. He wound up with a dozen stitches. The culprit then was one Reynaldo Decerega, a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. Decerega wasn’t invited to play again, though Obama sent him a photograph inscribed “For Rey, the only guy that ever hit the President and didn’t get arrested. Barack.”
This time, the injury was slighter and no assailant was named—“I think it was the ball,” Obama said—but the President needed little assistance in divining the metaphor in this latest insult to his person. The pundits were declaring 2013 the worst year of his Presidency. The Republicans had been sniping at Obamacare since its passage, nearly four years earlier, and HealthCare.gov, a Web site that was undertested and overmatched, was a gift to them. There were other beribboned boxes under the tree: Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency; the failure to get anything passed on gun control or immigration reform; the unseemly waffling over whether the Egyptian coup was a coup; the solidifying wisdom in Washington that the President was “disengaged,” allergic to the forensic and seductive arts of political persuasion. The congressional Republicans quashed nearly all legislation as a matter of principle and shut down the government for sixteen days, before relenting out of sheer tactical confusion and embarrassment—and yet it was the President’s miseries that dominated the year-end summations.
Via: New Yorker
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