Amid Security Failures DHS Spends $20.3 Mil on Conferences

CORRUPTION CHRONICLES

While it let Islamic terrorists enter the country, wasted huge sums on faulty equipment and failed miserably to remove criminal illegal aliens, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was busy blowing $20.3 million to host 1,883 conferences last year.

It’s the inconceivable tale of the colossal agency—with practically unlimited funds—created after 9/11 to prevent another terrorist attack. The agency’s various components include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the scandal-plagued Secret Service and the famously inept Transportation Security Administration (TSA), to name a few. In 2015, DHS asked Congress for an astounding $38.2 billion to continue its “commitment to the security of our homeland and the American public,” according to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.

The agency must be agile and vigilant in continually adapting to evolving threats and hazards, Johnson writes in the budget request, adding that “we must stay one step ahead of the next attack, the next cyberattack, and the next natural disaster.” Preventing terrorism, securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws are among the agency’s “basic missions,” Johnson states, even though we all know DHS has fallen short in all these areas. The failures involving the southern border have been especially well documented. In fact, just last month Judicial Watch reported that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling Islamic terrorists into the U.S. through the rural Texas border region.

While this is going on DHS and its various components polish up on a variety of skills at conferences that cost American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, afederal audit reveals. This includes a dozen events that each exceeded $100,000. For those wondering what publicly-financed, extracurricular event could possibly merit such a large sum, here are a few examples: DHS paid $196,308 for a San Francisco forum aimed at preventing terrorism as well as “securing and managing our borders” and an additional $130,941 for a separate San Francisco shindig so 39 senior agency officials could engage with “key influencers and decision makers” in the cybersecurity industry.

The agency responsible for protecting the nation from terrorist threats also blew $179,053 on the International Oil Spill Conference in Savannah, Georgia, which focused on environmental impacts of oil spills and $125,348 on a Washington D.C. event aimed at “maximizing the benefits of gender diversity.” The idea behind that conference was to promote gender equity through a group known as Women in Federal Law Enforcement (WIFLE), a nonprofit created by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Treasury to address why women remain underrepresented in federal law enforcement.

A $110,993 “outreach” summit in Washington D.C. brought Customs and Border Patrol senior managers, transportation executives and foreign government partners together to discuss “securing and managing our borders” and a $108,617 Ft. Worth Texas conference provided a “platform for conveying information regarding relevant issues in immigration enforcement.” DHS also doled out $131,868 on the Afghanistan Pakistan Illicit Procurement Network Symposium in Tampa, Florida where discussions focused on preventing hostile nations and illicit procurement networks from illegally obtaining U.S. military products or sensitive technology that could be used against the U.S.

While all this costly nonsense is going on at taxpayer expense, the southern border remains dangerously porous, airport security is a huge joke and DHS gets exposed for spending $360 million on drones that have failed miserably after nearly a decade. The agency promised Congress that the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAC) would help effectively guard the Mexican border and, even after the experiment failed repeatedly, DHS asked Congress for another $443 million to keep it alive.

Via: Judicial Watch

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U.S. House and Senate Each Said They Had Only 45 Employees--Then Signed Up 12,359 for Insurance on Obamacare 'Small-Business' Exchange

 (CNSNews.com) – Both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives certified that they had only 45 employees each in order to sign up for the District of Columbia’s Small Business Exchange. But 12,359 - or 86 percent of the exchange's enrollees - are members of Congress, congressional staff members, and their spouses and dependents, according to an appeal filed with the D.C. Court of Appeals by Judicial Watch.

The public interest law firm announced Monday that it is appealing the February dismissal of its lawsuit challenging congressional participation in the Obamacare exchange even though the D.C. Exchange Act limits enrollment to small companies with 50 or fewer employees.

“Congress obviously has far more than 50 employees,” Judicial Watch attorney Michael Bekesha pointed out in his opening brief. “It has thousands of employees.”

Congress enrolled in the small business exchange when its previous coverage under the Federal Employee Health Benefits plan was terminated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and congressional employees stood to lose thousands of dollars in “employer contributions” if they enrolled in the District’s individual exchange.

According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives both certified that they “employ 50 or fewer full time equivalent employees.”

In October 2013, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a final rule that provides an “employer contribution” covering about three-quarters of the premiums of congressional employees enrolled in the small business exchange starting Jan. 1, 2014.

The OPM rule “allowed at least 12,359 congressional employees and their spouses and dependents to obtain health insurance through the Small Business Exchange…These 12,359 participants represent an astonishing 86% of the Small Business Exchange’s total enrollment,” the appeal states.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit last October on behalf of Kirby Vining, a D.C. resident since 1986, who objected to the expenditure of municipal funds to insure congressional employees in an exchange that was established specifically for small employers in the District.

“Congress authored the law [ACA], and is going to rather questionable lengths to avoid compliance with the law it drafted,” Vining said.

D.C. resident Kirby Vining. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

Although the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange Authority conceded that D.C. law limits participation in the exchange to small employers, it argued in court that “the local statute must yield to the extent the federal statute or regulation applies.”

In its motion to dismiss the case, the authority also stated that the exchange “has been funded exclusively by federal grants awarded to the District to establish its Exchange, and more recently, an assessment imposed on health carriers doing business in the District.”

In dismissing the lawsuit, D.C. Superior Court Judge Herbert Dixon ruled that Vining had no standing to challenge the OPM rule because he “has not demonstrated a reasonable inference that municipal taxpayer funds have been appropriated to defendant exchange authority to establish a cognizable injury to maintain standing to bring his underlying complaint.”

However, in a budget report submitted to Congress, the Exchange Authority’s actual budget for Fiscal Year 2013 ($10.9 million) and FY 2014 ($66.1 million) was identified as " ‘municipal monies’ as originating from the District’s General Fund. No monies are identified as Federal Funds, Private Revenue, or Intra-District Funds,” according to the appeal.

“In Fiscal Year 2015, the Exchange Authority’s budget was reclassified from the General Fund to a newly created fund, separate and distinct from ‘Federal Funds’,” it continued.

Dixon also ruled that the OPM rule preempts the D.C. Exchange Act, noting that “allowing members of Congress and their staff to participate in the District’s small business health options program is authorized by federal regulations.”

But Judicial Watch argues in its appeal that the D.C. law cannot be preempted because it is “completely consistent and entirely compatible” with the federal law and in fact its “sole purpose is to implement various provisions of ACA.”

“In reality, the court ruled that a determination by a federal bureaucrat – in this instance, the director of OPM – trumps the 50-employee limit of the Exchange Act, at least with respect to Congress,” the group’s appeal brief stated. “No lawful regulation – much less a regulation that purports to delegate such authority to an agency head – can do that, and the Court cites no legal authority whatsoever for their astonishing conclusion that it can.”

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said that allowing Congress to enroll in an exchange meant for small businesses is both “unlawful and unethical.”

“It is an abuse of District taxpayers to use D.C. funds to subsidize illegal health insurance for Congress,” Fitton said in a statement.  “It is unlawful and unethical for District officials to use local dollars to participate in Congress’s Obamacare fraud. 

“The highest court in the District of Columbia must affirm the right of District taxpayers to protect their monies from being misappropriated by corrupt District officials.”

Via: CNS News

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Cheryl Mills to erase Hillary emails

The attorney for a top aide to Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state has informed a federal judge presiding over FOIA requests from Judicial Watch related to Huma Abedin's employment status, that she will destroy electronic communications not already handed over.

“Ms. Mills does not believe that she has paper copies of potential records in her possession. Following our production on August 10, 2015 [of the defense counsel’s version of the electronic records], we have instructed her to delete any and all electronic records in her possession,” said the attorney. 

Breathtaking arrogance.

Judicial Watch:

Judicial Watch announced that the State Department today provided a status report as required by a July 31 federal court order requiring the State Department to request that Hillary Clinton and her top State Department aides Human Abedin and Cheryl Mills confirm, under penalty of perjury, that they have produced all government records in their possession, return any other government records immediately, and describe their use of Hillary Clinton’s email server to conduct government business.  The State Department filing shows that the agency sent the former officials the request and a copy of Judge Sullivan’s order but that both Mills and Abedin, who responded through their attorneys, ignored Judge Sullivan’s request to submit information under penalty of perjury.  The State Department reports that Mrs. Clinton has yet to respond.  Contrary to both Judge Sullivan’s order and the State Department’s request, Ms. Mills’ attorney said that she told Ms. Mills to destroy federal records in her possession on Monday, August 10. Tonight, Judicial Watch filed an urgent response informing Judge Sullivan of this plan to destroy federal records. 

The State Department produced the August 5 letter it sent to Mrs. Clinton, which included a copy of Judge Sullivan’s order. 

The developments come in a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that seeks records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, the former Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). The lawsuit was reopened last month because of revelations about Hillary Clinton’s email records. 

Letters produced yesterday show that, on July 31, the State Department, for the first time, demanded that Mills and Abedin “return all copies of potential federal records in your possession.”  The State Department did not provide correspondence demanding Mrs. Clinton return all copies of potential federal records.  Despite the court’s July 31 order for immediate disclosure, the State Department and its Justice Department attorneys took six days to disclose the 13 letters, which total 19 pages. 

Prior to August 5 court-ordered letters, the State Department had asked no questions of Clinton, Mills, and Abedin about Mrs. Clinton’s separate email system or classified material.

Via: American Thinker

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Federal Judge Threatens To Hold IRS Commissioner, DOJ Lawyers in Contempt of Court over Lerner

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced that U.S District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan today threatened to hold the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court after the IRS failed to produce status reports and newly recovered emails of Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS, as he had ordered on July 1, 2015.

During the a status hearing today, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow his order was serious and the IRS and Justice Department’s excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.”  He asked the IRS’ Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas, “Why didn’t the IRS comply” with his court order and “why shouldn’t the Court hold the Commissioner of the IRS in contempt.”  Judge Sullivan referenced his contempt findings against Justice Department prosecutors in the prosecution of late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and reminded the Justice Department attorney he had the ability to detain him for contempt.  Warning he would tolerate no further disregard of his orders, Judge Sullivan said, “I will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt.”

After the hearing, Judge Sullivan issued the following “minute order”:

At the July 29, 2015 status hearing, the Government agreed that the Court’s July 1, 2015 oral order from the bench was clear and enforceable.  Nonetheless, the Government reasoned it inappropriate to file a motion for reconsideration until a written order was issued.  As expressed at the hearing, the Government’s reasoning is nonsensical.  Officers of the Court who fail to comply with Court orders will be held in contempt.  Also, in the event of non-compliance with future Court orders, the Commissioner of the IRS and others shall be directed to show cause as to why they should not be held in contempt of Court.  The Court’s July 1, 2015 ruling from the bench stands: (1) the Government shall produce relevant documents every Monday; (2) the Government’s document production shall be accompanied by a status report that indicates (a) whether TIGTA has turned over any new documents to the IRS, (b) if so, the number of documents, and (c) a timeframe for the IRSs production of those documents. Signed by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on July 29, 2015.

At a July 1, 2015, status conference, Sullivan ordered the IRS to begin producing, every week, the nearly 1,800 newly recovered Lerner emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.  Despite the court order, the IRS did not produce any Lerner emails until July 15.  The IRS also failed to provide Judicial Watch a status report of the Lerner email production issues, as also ordered by Sullivan.  Last week, Judge Sullivan ordered sua sponte the parties to appear for a status hearing today after Judicial Watch raised concerns about the IRS’ failure to comply with his orders to release the newly discovered Lerner emails and status updates on its production of previously “missing” documents.

The developments come in Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuit seeking documents about the Obama IRS’ targeting and harassment of Tea Party and conservative opponents of President Obama (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559)).  Judicial Watch’s litigation forced the IRS first to admit that Lerner’s emails were supposedly missing and, then, that the emails were on IRS’ back-up systems.

Yesterday, Judicial Watch released the first batch believed to be newly recovered emails of Lerner. The new documents show that Lerner and other top officials in the IRS, including soon-to-be Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, closely monitored and approved the controversial handling of tax-exempt applications by Tea Party organizations.  The documents also show that at least one group received an inquiry from the IRS in order to buy time and keep the organization from contacting Congress.

“In a dramatic court hearing today, Judge Sullivan made it clear he would personally hold accountable the IRS Commissioner Koskinen and Justice Department attorneys for any further contempt of his court orders in Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “The missing and-then-not missing Lois Lerner saga is a stark example of the Obama administration’s contempt for a federal court and the rule of law.  That Obama administration officials would risk jail rather than disclose these Lerner documents shows that the IRS scandal has just gotten a whole lot worse.”

Via: Judicial Watch

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HUD Staffer Fraudulently Charges $12k on Govt. Credit Card

During the government shutdown a couple of years ago, an employee at a cabinet-level agency long embroiled in scandal fraudulently charged thousands of dollars in personal items on his work-issued credit card.

Enraging as it may seem, it’s not all that surprising considering it involves the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a famously corrupt agency well known for a multitude of transgressions over the years. In this particular case a HUD staffer racked up nearly $12,000 on his agency credit card by charging personal items such as groceries, lodging, television cable, transportation and even prescription medications.

This occurred in the midst of the 2013 government shutdown caused by Congress’s failure to pass a spending bill. That paralyzed most functions of government, accounting for the second longest shutdown since 1980. The standstill caused a huge economic disruption and billions in lost output, according to a report published by the White House. Although federal employees were eventually compensated for the period of the shutdown, hundreds of thousands did not receive their full paychecks during that time. “The burden of delayed paychecks on federal workers and their families was significant and harmful,” the White House report states.

The HUD employee who went on a spending spree with his government credit card got busted but the agency didn’t bother to take action, according to the federal audit that exposed the scandal this month. The fraudulent purchases—$11,938 in total—were made during a relatively short period from August through October of 2013 so it was difficult for the agency not to notice. By January 2014 the fraud was confirmed but HUD failed to even reprimand the employee or report the wrongdoing. “This occurred because HUD’s existing purchase card policies did not include specific procedures to evaluate violations for purchase card program weaknesses and criteria to report violations,” the inspector general writes.

So, this bloated and notoriously corrupt agency gives its employees credit cards and has no measures to assess violations, which occur regularly throughout government. In this case the HUD staffer charged an astounding $7,357 in groceries, which raises red flags all on its own. He also charged $1,280 in drug stores and pharmacies and $488 on cable television for his home. The rest was spent on commuter transportation, hotels, restaurants and telecommunications equipment, according to the breakdown offered in the audit.

HUD’s scandals have been well documented throughout various administrations—both Republican and Democrat—and Judicial Watch has covered many of them. In fact, earlier this year JW reported that a HUD director who simultaneously ran a leftwing nonprofit changed agency policies to benefit her group. Her name is Debra Gross and for years she headed a crucial HUD policy office while she served as deputy director of a leftist organization called Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) that claims to work to “preserve and improve public and affordable housing through advocacy, research, policy analysis and public education.”

In 2011 a JW investigation found that the Obama administration violated the ban on federal funding for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) by giving the famously corrupt group tens of thousands of dollars in grants to “combat housing and lending discrimination.” The money, $79,819, flowed through HUD and clearly violated a law (Defund ACORN Act) passed by Congress in 2009 to stop the huge flow of taxpayer money that annually went to ACORN after a series of exposés about the leftwing group’s illegal activities.

Problems at the agency go way back. President George W. Bush’s HUD secretary, Alphonso Jackson, was ousted after the feds launched an investigation into his plots to enrich himself and his friends by giving them lucrative government contracts and Bill Clinton’s housing secretary, Henry Cisneros, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about payments to his former mistress. An influence-peddling scandal under Ronald Reagan led to the conviction of 16 people, including top aides to then HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce.

Via: Judicial Watch

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Newly Recovered Lois Lerner Email Shows IRS Tried To Cover Up Tea Party Targeting

The IRS sent one of its intrusive scrutiny letters to a nonprofit group in order to throw up a smokescreen and prevent the group from complaining to Congress about poor treatment, according to one of Lois G. Lerner’s apparently lost emails, which were recovered by auditors and released by an interest group Tuesday.

Judicial Watch, which sued to force the production of the Lerner emails, said the emails confirm that Ms. Lerner, the central figure in the targeting probe, and her colleagues were aware of the sensitive nature of the cases but appeared to hide details of the massive backlog they were amassing as they held up hundreds of tea party and conservative group applications for nonprofit status.

The IRS turned over 906 pages of emails July 15 to Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm, ahead of a Wednesday court hearing. Judicial Watch concluded that the emails were part of the messages Ms. Lerner lost in a computer malfunction, and released them Tuesday.

“This material shows that the IRS‘ cover-up began years ago,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “We now have smoking-gun proof that top officials in the Obama IRS unlawfully harassed taxpayers just to keep them from complaining to Congress about IRS‘ targeting and abuse. No wonder the Obama IRS has had such little interest in preserving or finding Lois Lerner’s emails.”

The Lerner emails have become almost as big a scandal as the initial targeting. Ms. Lerner, who was head of the division that scrutinized the tea party applications until she retired while under investigation in 2013, suffered a computer hard drive crash that cost potentially thousands of emails that should have been part of the record.

The IRS took routine steps to try to recover the emails but reported that it was unable to do so.

But the agency’s independent inspector general said it was able to find the messages easily on backup tapes stored at remote locations — and that the IRS never bothered to look for those tapes, even as it was tellingCongress that all possible routes for message recovery had been exhausted.

According to the new emails, Ms. Lerner and her colleagues were aware of the growing outcry among nonprofit groups that they were being delayed.

In one Nov. 3, 2011, exchange between Ms. Lerner and Cindy Thomas, a program manager in the Cincinnati office that was handling the cases and was involved in a back-and-forth with Washington, the IRS admitted to having hundreds of cases stacked up and awaiting action.

Afraid of congressional pressure, Ms. Thomas ordered one of the inquiry letters to be sent, just to prevent one of the organizations being held up from complaining.

“Just today, I instructed one of my managers to get an additional information letter out to one of these organizations — if nothing else to buy time so he didn’t contact his Congressional Office,” she wrote in the email released by Judicial Watch.

Ms. Thomas said she feared a judge would get involved soon and order the IRS to move the applications more quickly.

That email exchange did confirm that IRS employees in Washington were deeply involved in making decisions about the nonprofit groups’ cases.

The IRS initially blamed the Cincinnati office for the glitch.

President Obama last week blamed the targeting scandal not on poor management but on “crummy” legislation he said Congress passed that gave his employees confusing instructions, and on funding cuts. He said the IRS wasn’t able to do its best work as a result.

Via: Washington Times

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Judicial Watch: Federal Judge Declares State Department Will “Answer For” Any Destruction of Clinton Emails

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that a federal judge warned the State Department that it will “have to answer for” any destruction of Hillary Clinton email records.  U. S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras made the statement at a July 9, 2015 status conference concerning a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for records about the State Department vetting of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s potential conflicts of interest (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00688)).  The transcript of the July 9 court hearing is available here.

At the hearing, attorney Chris Fedeli pressed Judicial Watch’s concerns about the preservation of records, especially email records that were not part of the 55,000 pages of records turned over by Mrs. Clinton to the State Department late last year.

In response, Judge Contreras said he was also “concerned” about the preservation of these records:

If documents are destroyed between now and August 17, the government will have to answer for that, and, you know, if they don’t want to do anything out of the ordinary to preserve between now and then, they can make that choice. I will allow them to make that choice, but they will answer for it, if something happens.

After a Justice Department lawyer attempted to assure him that the administration was asking for government records from former State Department employees, Judge Contreras questioned the State Department’s position that it had no legal obligation to take additional steps to obtain other government records in the custody of Mrs. Clinton and other former officials who used her special email system:

[I]t is to state the obvious that this is not an ordinary case, and everyone should be working to make sure that whatever documents exist today remain in existence.

Judge Contreras also voiced concerns regarding the State Department’s refusal to provide any information about the Clinton email issue:

But I am a little bit mystified that the government is not more forthcoming in just answering questions that will help this case proceed on a systematic basis, and on a basis that will allow everyone to get the answers that will eventually help resolve these cases…

The Court also seemed to reject the Obama administration’s contention that responding to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit in a timely way would derail its compliance with Judge Contreras’s order in another lawsuit (Leopold v. U.S. Department of State, (15-00123)) requiring that the 55,000 pages of Clinton email records be searched and produced under FOIA by January, 2016:

My order in Leopold was based on numbers and percentages. To the extent that documents from that universe are produced in this case, they qualify for the numbers in Leopold, don’t they? So that they’re not mutually exclusive from a resource standpoint, are they?

The Court then said his “inclination is to have a search done of the Clinton e-mail database that’s digitized and searchable for this relatively narrow, in my view, relatively narrow request.”

Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request on March 17, 2015, and subsequently a lawsuit on May 6, 2015, seeking:

• Any and all records that identify the policies and/or procedures in place to ensure that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s personal or charitable financial relationships with foreign leaders, foreign governments, and business entities posed no conflict of interest to her role as Secretary of State; and

• Any and all records concerning, regarding, or related to State Department review of donations to the Clinton Foundation for potential conflicts of interest with former Secretary Clinton’s role as Secretary of State.

  Judicial Watch has also announced that it has reached an agreement with the State Department regarding production of documents in another Clinton-related lawsuit (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00690)).
  Documents sought by the lawsuit include:

  Any and all records that identify the number and names of all current and former officials, officers, or employees of the U.S. Department of State from January 20, 2009 to the present who used email addresses other than their assigned “state.gov” email addresses to conduct official State Department business.

  In a joint status report filed June 29, 2015, Judicial Watch and the State Department reported to the Court that:

  The parties have met and conferred, and submit their joint proposed briefing schedule below:

  • Defendant will complete all searches and produce to Plaintiff all responsive, non-privileged, and non-exempt records within its possession, custody, or control no later than August 14, 2015.

  • The Parties will meet and confer and file a status report by August 28, 2015 indicating whether additional briefing is necessary.

  “This one court hearing shows that Hillary Clinton and her co-conspirators in the State Department will have to account for each and every email on Hillary Clinton’s notorious email system,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
  A separate and ongoing Judicial Watch lawsuit, one of nearly 20 active Judicial Watch lawsuits at which the Clinton email system is at issue, forced the disclosure last year of documents that provided a road map for over 200 conflict-of-interest rulings that led to $48 million for the Clinton Foundation and other Clinton-connected entities during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. Previously disclosed documents in this lawsuit, for example, raise questions about funds Clinton accepted from entities linked to Saudi Arabia, China and Iran, among others.  Judicial Watch and The Washington Examiner partnered in thefirst story to break the Clinton conflicts scandal: “State Department approved 215 Bill Clinton speeches, controversial consulting deal, worth $48m; Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff copied on all decisions.”

Via: Judicial Watch

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The True Cost of Immigration

Democrats, along with a number of equally feckless Republicans, are extolling the virtues of “comprehensive immigration reform.” Such jargon obscures their real agenda, which is the abandonment of the rule of law in favor of a political expediency that benefits the ruling class and its campaign contributors. A ruling class and campaign contributors who seek to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” into a nation where progressive power is permanent, and cheap labor is plentiful. Hence, while those virtues are put front and center before the public, the vices associated with illegal immigration are relegated to the back of the proverbial bus. Here’s a look at some of those vices.

We begin with crime. There are a number of statistical measurements. One is a 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) reportrevealing that the number SCAAP criminal alien incarcerations in state prison systems and local jails in FY2009 (the most recent data available) was about 296,000. As American Thinker’s Randall Hoven explains, “SCAAP is the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program and in this context means ‘illegal aliens’ ‚Äì a GAO term meaning ‘Noncitizens whom ICE verified were [or whom states and local jurisdictions believe to be] illegally in the United States at the time of incarceration.’”

Another is a report by the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) obtained by Breitbart News. It shows that while illegal aliens comprise 3.5 percent of the nation’s population, they comprised a whopping 36.7 percent of federal sentences following criminal convictions in FY 2014. The actual number of crimes for which these illegals received sentences was 27,505. The primary categories include drug trafficking, kidnapping/hostage taking, drug possession, money laundering and murder convictions.

This data comprise actual convictions of federal offenders subject to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (SRA). Omitted from the list are state and death penalty cases, as well as “cases initiated but for which no convictions were obtained, offenders convicted for whom no sentences were yet issued, and offenders sentenced but for whom no sentencing documents were submitted to the Commission.” And while the data do include immigration violations, which makes up the lion’s share of convictions, eliminating that category entirely would still have illegals comprising 13.6 percent of all sentenced offenders, a number that far exceeds the aforementioned 3.5 percent of the total U.S. population they represent.

More germane is data revealed by Judicial Watch (JW). They note that “as of April 26, 2014, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had released 165,900 convicted criminal aliens throughout the United States, including many convicted of such violent crimes as homicide, sexual assault, kidnapping, and aggravated assault.” These illegals, along with 706,950 non-criminal illegals, were ordered to leave the country, “but have not done so and remain free,” JW reveals. JW also explains the documents reveal the difficulty ICE has with local policies that interfere with federal enforcement of immigration law. Those would be “sanctuary city” policies and JW cites a case in Montgomery County, MD where officials prevented ICE from gaining access to an illegal charged with rape.

Via: Canada Free Press

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CDC Official Calls Obama Worst President, Amateur, Marxist After Influx of Illegal Alien Minors

Following the influx of illegal immigrant minors from Central America, an official at the federal agency charged with protecting public health describes Barack Obama as “the worst pres we have ever had,” an “amateur” and “Marxist,” according to internal emails obtained by Judicial Watch.

JW got the records as part of an investigation into the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) activation of anEmergency Operations Center (EOC) to deal with the barrage of illegal alien minors last summer. Tens of thousands of Central Americans came into the United States through the Mexican border and contagious diseases—many considered to be eradicated in the U.S.—became a tremendous concern. The CDC, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), responded by opening an emergency facility designed to monitor and coordinate response activities to eminent public health threats.

This special emergency division was created after the 2001 terrorist attacks and has responded to more than 50 public health threats, including hurricanes, food borne disease outbreaks, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the Haiti cholera outbreak. Scientists from across the CDC are brought together to analyze, validate, and efficiently exchange information during a public health emergency and connect with response partners. The EOC also coordinates the deployment of CDC staff and the procurement and management of all equipment and supplies that agency responders may need during their deployment.

It’s a major and costly operation that can stick American taxpayers with a huge tab. That’s why JW launched a probe when the Obama administration took in the illegal immigrants, initially coined Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), with open arms last summer. JW has sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for planning records involving the border crisis as well as information relating to the solicitation of “on-demand escort services” for the 65,000 UACs that remain in the U.S. Last year JW also reported that the illegal immigrant minors have brought in serious diseases, including swine flu, dengue fever, possibly Ebola virus and tuberculosis.

The CDC records obtained by JW this week include email exchanges between agency officials directly involved in the activation of the EOC to handle the health threats created by the influx of illegal alien minors last summer. In an email dated June 9, 2014, CDC Logistics Management Specialist George Roark wrote to CDC Public Health Advisor William Adams that “no country in the world would allow” the influx. Adams replies that “in ten years or less, they’ll all be voting…Commander’s intent…” Roark fires back by describing Obama as “the worst pres we have ever had…he truly is ‘the amateur’ but a Marxist too.”

Via: Judicial Watch

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