WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr dismissed President Trump’s attempts to rebrand the Russia investigation as a criminal plot engineered by former president Barack Obama, saying Monday that he expected no charges against either Obama or former vice president Joe Biden as a result of an investigation into how their administration handled Russian election interference.
That's what the documents would seem to indicate, but he is going to ignore that evidence.
“As long as I’m attorney general, the criminal justice system will not be used for partisan political ends,” Barr said during a news conference announcing that the gunman in last year’s shooting at Florida military base had links to Al Qaeda.
More on the Al-CIA-Duh gunman below, but first:
“As long as I’m attorney general, the criminal justice system will not be used for partisan political ends,” Barr said during a news conference on Monday (J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press/Associated Press).
He has stood down when it comes to justice, and he has flopped as AG, with his job clearly to protect the secrets and corruption of the Deep $tate and ruling cla$$. That's why he was placed there. He even looks like a mob enforcer.
I suppose it was a fairy tale that went cold from the start. The police state is here to stay, and I have no confidence in Graham getting to the bottom of things when he has been trailing the whole way.
Barr said that John Durham, the federal prosecutor investigating how law enforcement and intelligence officials confronted Russia’s operations to meddle in the 2016 election, was examining some aspects of the case as potential crimes but that he was focused on other people, not Obama or Biden. “I don’t expect Mr. Durham’s work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man,” Barr said. “Our concern over potential criminality is focused on others.”
Yeah, protect the powerful and scapegoat the grunts -- like at Abu Ghraib.
I wish I could say I was surprised about Durham, but he is taking so long it is clear his job is obfuscation, not investigation.
Barr’s comments served as an unmistakable rebuttal to escalating efforts by Trump and his allies to reframe the Russia investigation as a plot to sabotage his presidency by Obama, Biden, and officials in their administration. Trump has targeted Obama in a way that no modern sitting president has, accusing his predecessor of unspecified crimes under a vague but politically charged catchphrase: “Obamagate,” but while Barr was unwilling to fuel speculation that the Justice Department will target Obama and Biden, he himself has done perhaps more than any other Trump administration to undermine the overall credibility of the Russia investigation.
The attorney general’s handling of the Russia inquiry has come under fire since he first emphasized its findings in a way that was more favorable to Trump than investigators had found.
Except investigators didn't find anything, and what they did find, they, the Democrats, and the pre$$ buried it regarding Kushner and his role in not only setting up Flynn....
(besides the Russian ambassador, Flynn, at the request of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, contacted several other foreign officials to urge them to delay or block a UN resolution condemning Israel over its building of settlements, says evidence from e-mails which were obtained from someone who had access to transition team communications -- meaning the Obama administration was spying on the opposition worse than Nixon ever did)
.... but facilitating Israeli interference in the during the 2016 transition:
(According to prosecutors, he discussed with Kislyak an upcoming UN Security Council vote on whether to condemn Israel’s building of settlements. At the time, the Obama administration was preparing to allow a Security Council vote on the matter. Mueller’s investigators have learned through witnesses and documents that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked the Trump transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel, according to two people briefed on the inquiry. Investigators have learned that Flynn and Kushner took the lead in those efforts. Mueller’s team has e-mails that show Flynn saying he would work to kill the vote, the people briefed on the matter said. According to the filings, Flynn consulted with multiple senior Trump officials during the transition. One adviser, described in court documents as a “very senior member” of the transition team, directed Flynn in December to reach out to Kislyak and lobby him about a United Nations resolution on Israeli settlements. People familiar with the investigation identified the adviser as Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Kushner lawyer Abbe Lowell declined to comment.)
Somehow, he floats above it all.
He has also intervened in cases involving former Trump advisers, including moving this month to withdraw the case against Michael Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. The highly unusual effort spurred accusations that Barr was further politicizing law enforcement and prompted a federal judge to appoint an outsider to oppose the department in the case.
Flynn was smeared, set-up, and removed because he knew all about the Clinton and Obama wrongdoings (why he was fired) and intended to do something about it as NSC adviser.
Barr emphasized Monday that he believes that law enforcement and intelligence officials unfairly targeted Trump as they sought in 2016 to understand links between his campaign and Russia.
“We saw two different standards of justice emerge: one that applies to President Trump and his associates, and the other that applied to everybody else,” Barr said. “We can’t allow this ever to happen again.”
Yes, the political $y$tem and $tatu$ quo must be pre$erved at all costs, and by not holding them accountable he guarantees it will happen again.
Barr has explained his undoing of the Flynn case and other moves, like intervening to recommend a more lenient sentence for the president’s longtime friend Roger Stone, as correcting overreach by other law enforcement officials. Stone was convicted of seven felonies in a bid to impede a congressional inquiry that threatened the president.
Another guy who was railroaded.
Barr called the Russia investigation and the investigation of Trump “a grave injustice” that was “unprecedented in American history.” He also spoke of a trend in recent decades of “increasing attempts to use the criminal justice system as a political weapon.”
“This is not a good development,” he said. “This is not good for our political life, and it’s not good for the criminal justice system.”
Of course, those two things are now rotten the core thanks to thugs like him.
Even so, Barr stopped short of criminally implicating Obama and Biden. “Not every abuse of power, no matter how outrageous, is necessarily a federal crime,” Barr said.
He said that voters should be able to choose between Trump and Biden, his likely general election opponent, “based on a robust debate of policy issues” rather than “efforts to drum up criminal investigations of either candidate.”
That's no choice at all.
--more--"
I hear gunfire:
"FBI finds links between Pensacola gunman and Al Qaeda" by Katie Bennerand Adam Goldman New York Times, May 18, 2020
WASHINGTON — The gunman in last year’s deadly shooting at a military base in Florida had been in touch with Al Qaeda for years and regularly spoke to the group’s operatives, including the night before the attack, the heads of the Justice Department and FBI said Monday, accusing Apple of costing them valuable time by refusing to help unlock the gunman’s phone.
Oh, they couldn't unlock the phone, huh?
Hmmmmm!
The FBI found that the gunman, Second Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a Saudi Air Force cadet training with the US military in Pensacola, had “significant ties” to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula before the attack and joined the Saudi military to carry out a “special operation,” Attorney General William Barr said at a news conference.
Oh, so it was an INSIDE JOB!
The FBI discovered that Alshamrani had communicated with Al Qaeda leaders in the months and days before the shooting in December after it recently bypassed the security features on at least one of his two iPhones. Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, said that the bureau had “effectively no help from Apple” and would not say how investigators obtained access to the phones.
I thought I heard a dogwhistle, and the paw prints of propaganda couldn't be more obvious.
The case has served as the latest skirmish in a continuing fight between the Justice Department and Apple pitting personal privacy against public safety. Both Barr and Wray castigated Apple for refusing to help bypass its encryption. Apple’s defiance allowed any possible coconspirators to fabricate and compare stories, destroy evidence, and to disappear, Wray said.
Oh, they are taking a crack at this again, and that's why they killed Steve Jobs.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has argued that data privacy is a human rights issue and that if it were to develop a way to allow the US government into its phones, hackers or foreign governments like China could exploit the same tool.
Of course, the CIA and NSA can do such things with impunity.
Officials would not say that Al Qaeda directed Alshamrani to carry out the December shooting, but they emphasized his longstanding ties and communications with top Al Qaeda leaders that proved his relationship with the group went beyond simply being inspired to act based on watching YouTube videos or reading extremist propaganda.
The evidence obtained from Alshamrani’s phone showed that the Pensacola attack was “the brutal combination of years of planning and preparation,” Wray said.
Alshamrani paused to fire at his iPhone during a firefight with security officers and he was found with a second, badly damaged phone that the Saudi destroyed, leading investigators to conclude that the devices held important data.
In January, when Barr designated the shooting an act of terrorism, Apple refused a Justice Department request to help open the iPhones, setting off fears that the government would seek a court order to force the company to comply.
The department said that it sought Apple’s help in opening the phones only after other agencies, foreign governments, and third-party technology vendors had failed, and it accused the company of slowing the investigation and allowing leads to go cold.
The night before the attack, Alshamrani had showed videos of mass shootings to guests at a dinner party, and he had posted anti-American, anti-Israeli, and jihadi social media messages.
Of course.
Look at me, look at me!
Pfffft!
He fingered himself before he was shot dead, huh?
--more--"
Of course, no one is going to investigate 9/11, and how can you?
Related:
Supreme Court says victims of al Qaeda bombings entitled to billions in punitive damages
You pay them off to keep them from asking questions.
"State Department investigator fired by Trump had examined weapons sales to Saudis and Emiratis" by Edward Wong and David E. Sanger New York Times, May 18, 2020
WASHINGTON — The State Department inspector general fired by President Trump on Friday was investigating whether the administration had unlawfully declared an “emergency” last year to allow the resumption of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their war in Yemen, according to a Democratic member of Congress who asked for the inquiry.
The chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Eliot Engel of New York, said that investigation might have been “another reason” for the firing of the inspector general, Steve Linick.
The White House announced the firing Friday night, and officials said the recommendation to remove Linick had come from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Trump confirmed Monday that he fired Linick at Pompeo’s request. “I have the absolute right as president to terminate. I said, ‘Who appointed him?’ And they say, ‘President Obama.’ I said, look, I’ll terminate him,” Trump said at the White House.
Linick’s office, which has hundreds of employees assigned to look into fraud and waste at the State Department, was also examining the potential misuse by Pompeo of a political appointee to do personal errands for him and his wife.
It remains unclear exactly what prompted the firing of Linick because the inspector general’s office conducts multiple investigations. Linick’s office was close to concluding the arms sales investigation. “We don’t have the full picture yet, but it’s troubling that Secretary Pompeo wanted Mr. Linick pushed out before this work could be completed,” Engel said.
A State Department spokeswoman said she could not comment on any open investigations by the inspector general but noted that investigations would be continued by an acting inspector general. Trump appointed Ambassador Stephen Akard for that role.
The decision to resume lethal aid to the Saudis and Emiratis was a major initiative undertaken by Pompeo and Trump, who often discussed the importance of the weapons sales with officers of Raytheon, the Massachusetts-based defense contractor that lobbied heavily to get a 2017 suspension of sales lifted.
It's a fundamental shift.
--more--"
Related:
High-rise tower catches fire in United Arab Emirates
It was a blaze that saw flames rapidly shoot up the sides of the building like other recent incidents that involved flammable cladding, and one can only wonder why it is still standing?
Also see:
"Bankers yearning to return to their high-rise offices should brace for disappointment. Headquarters built to house thousands of staff might be a “thing of the past” if social distancing means only two people can ride an elevator at a time, says Barclays CEO Jes Staley, echoing rivals’ concerns. Branches might work as alternative sites for investment bankers once staff are cleared to stop working from home, he said. As the outbreak starts to ebb in New York and pressure rises on the UK government to end London’s lockdown, the largest banks are grappling with how to adhere to social distancing rules. Wall Street lenders are among the largest tenants in the global commercial property industry, with many housed in large open-plan skyscrapers that rely heavily on elevators."
This is my floor: "The days of piling as many workers as possible into bustling open-plan bullpens — a trend that was waning even before the pandemic — are probably over. That will mean fewer people moving through lobbies, crowding once-bustling sidewalks, and buying lunch and after-work beers, but Boston Properties’ chief executive Owen Thomas predicted, it won’t mean the end of the office environment. “Everyone I speak with wants to go back to their office," he said. "They miss the efficiency of it, the camaraderie of it. I don’t think the need for office space is going to go away.”
Things will be different when they return.
"Capital One Financial Corp., potentially setting a standard for the US financial industry, plans to keep most of its employees working at home at least four more months as it waits for the coronavirus pandemic to ebb. The lender’s offices in the United States, Canada, and the UK will remain shut to all non-essential staff at least through the Labor Day holiday on Sept. 7, chief executive Richard Fairbank wrote in an internal memo. He promised employees that the McLean, Va.-based firm will give them at least six weeks’ notice once it decides to reopen those sites."
Good thing to because here come the airplanes:
"An unmarked Etihad Airways cargo plane flew aid to help the Palestinians fight the pandemic from the capital of the United Arab Emirates into Israel on Tuesday, marking the first known direct commercial flight between the two nations. The UAE, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai on the Arabian Peninsula, has no diplomatic ties to Israel over its occupation of land wanted by the Palestinians for a future state, like all Arab nations except Egypt and Jordan; yet the flight marked a moment of cooperation between Israel and the UAE after years of rumored back-channel discussions between them over the mutual enmity of Iran and other issues. Etihad, the state-owned, long-haul carrier based in Abu Dhabi, confirmed it sent a flight Tuesday to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. In the past, private and diplomatic planes often had to travel to a third country before heading onto Israel. Emirati government officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment."
China was also very much on the agenda.
"President Trump to nominate new top prosecutor for Washington" by Keith L. Alexander and Spencer S. Hsuand Matt Zapotosky Washington Post, May 18, 2020
WASHINGTON — President Trump will nominate a new US attorney to oversee the Washington, D.C., office, which handles both local and national cases, including several high-profile prosecutions of the president’s allies.
Justin Herdman, the US attorney in Cleveland, would take the position now filled by Timothy Shea, who came to the office in February.
The nomination comes as the office has been pummeled by political controversies involving the cases of Trump confidant Roger Stone and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Shea, 60, was considered by many as the District’s newest US attorney when Attorney General William Barr selected him as acting US attorney, but within weeks of taking over the office, Shea came under fire for sidelining the prosecutors in his office and aligning with Justice officials who softened sentencing recommendation for Stone in February after Stone was convicted by a federal jury of lying to Congress and tampering with a witness.
Shea was criticized again earlier this month when he aligned with Justice officials to dismiss federal charges against Flynn that he lied to the FBI to which had pleaded guilty and was awaiting sentencing. In both cases, senior prosecutors in Shea’s office resigned from the cases, leaving other federal prosecutors, both current and retired, to question if Shea had more allegiance to Barr and the White House than he did to justice.
Well, not to Barr, and shouldn't his allegiance have been to his oath and evidence?
The US attorney’s office in Washington has 300 lawyers and is the largest in the country. Unlike at other US attorney offices, federal prosecutors who work out of the office at 555 Fourth St. NW prosecute both national and local crimes from security cases and political corruption across the federal government to homicides, drug, sexual assault, trafficking, and gun crimes in the District. The office also recently took over cases handed off by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe.
Will he be testifying?
In a statement, Barr thanked Shea and praised Herdman, saying: ‘‘This nomination is a reflection his sharp intellect, sound judgment, and dedication to the mission of the Department of Justice. Justin has proven himself to be a fair prosecutor, capable litigator, and excellent manager.’’
Michael R. Sherwin, whom Barr had picked to serve as Shea’s number two, will take over the office on an acting basis May 19 and can remain through mid-December without need of Senate approval pending Herdman’s reconfirmation. Herdman could also take over on an acting basis for seven months awaiting Senate action, and the department said the timing of his arrival has yet to be set.
Barr’s decision to name Sherwin, the prosecutor who oversaw the conviction of a Chinese trespasser at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida in September — as Shea’s deputy, instead of allowing Shea to pick his deputy was viewed as unusual for the office where previous US attorneys had picked their own deputies.
Herdman’s nomination happened swiftly as the deadline for Shea’s interim appointment was scheduled to expire June 2 if he was not appointed by Washington’s federal district court. On Tuesday, US District Court judges were expected to convene to take up Shea’s status although no decisions had been made, two people involved in the meeting said.
Herdman, 44, is a former Navy and active Air Force reserve officer and judge advocate. He holds a law degree from Harvard, a bachelor’s from Ohio University, and a master’s from the University of Glasgow.
From 2006 through 2013 in Northern Ohio, Herdman prosecuted criminal cases within the office’s terrorism squad, including the prosecution of five activists who plotted to blow up the Ohio 82 bridge spanning the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in 2012.
Before Trump tapped him as US attorney in Northern Ohio, Herdman worked as a partner at Jones Day, a Cleveland law firm that also has a Washington office and was home to a former Trump White House counsel, Donald McGahn.
--more--"
Related:
"News Stories Avoid Naming Israel" by Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • May 19, 2020
There are two stories that seem to have been under-reported in the past couple of weeks. The first involves Michael Flynn’s dealings with the Russian United Nations Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. And the second describes yet another bit of espionage conducted by a foreign country directed against the United States. Both stories involve the State of Israel.
The bigger story is, of course, the dismissal by Attorney General William Barr of the criminal charges against former National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn based on malfeasance by the FBI investigators. The curious aspect of the story as it is being related by the mainstream media is that it repeatedly refers to Flynn as having unauthorized contacts with the Russian Ambassador and then having lied about it. The implication is that there was something decidedly shady about Flynn talking to the Russians and that the Russians were up to something.
In reality, the part left out of the story is that the phone call to Kislyak on December 22, 2016, was made by Flynn at the direction of Jared Kushner, who in turn had been approached by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu had learned that the Obama Administrating was going to abstain on a United Nations vote condemning the Israeli settlements policy, meaning that for the first time in years a U.N. resolution critical of Israel would pass without drawing a U.S. veto. Kushner, acting for Netanyahu, asked Flynn to contact each delegate from the various countries on the Security Council to delay or kill the resolution. Flynn agreed to do so, which included a call to the Russians. Kislyak took the call but did not agree to veto Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed unanimously on December 23rd.
In taking the phone calls from a soon-to-be senior American official who would within weeks be part of a new administration in Washington, the Russians did nothing wrong, but the media is acting like there was some kind of Kremlin conspiracy seeking to undermine U.S. democracy. It would not be inappropriate to have some conversations with an incoming government team and Kislyak also did nothing that might be regarded as particularly responsive to Team Trump overtures since he voted contrary to Flynn’s request.
The phone call made at the request of Israel was neither benign or ethical as the Barack Administration was still in power and managing the nation’s foreign policy. At the time, son-in-law Jared Kushner was Trump’s point man on the Middle East. He and his family have extensive ties both to Israel and to Netanyahu personally, to include Netanyahu’s staying at the Kushner family home in New York. The Kushner Family Foundation has funded some of Israel’s illegal settlements and also a number of conservative political groups in that country. Jared has served as a director of that foundation and it is reported that he failed to disclose the relationship when he filled out his background investigation sheet for a security clearance. All of which suggests that if you are looking for possible foreign government collusion with the incoming Trumpsters, look no further, and it should be observed that the Israelis were not exactly shy about their disapproval of Obama and their willingness to express their views to the incoming Trump. Kushner went far beyond merely disagreeing over an aspect of foreign policy as he was actively trying to clandestinely subvert and reverse a decision made by his own legally constituted government. His closeness to Netanyahu made him, in intelligence terms, a quite likely Israeli government agent of influence, even if he didn’t quite see himself that way.
Kushner’s actions, as well as those of Flynn, would most certainly have been covered by the Logan Act of 1799, which bars private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on behalf of the United States and also could be construed as a “conspiracy against the United States,” but in spite of all that the investigation went after Flynn instead of Kushner. As Kushner is Jewish and certainly could be accused of dual loyalty in extremis, that part of the story obviously makes many in the U.S. Establishment and media uncomfortable, so it was and continues to be both ignored and expunged from the record as quickly as possible.
The second story, which has basically been made to disappear, relates to spying by Israel against critics in the United States. The revelation that Israel was again using its telecommunications skills to spy on foreigners came from an Oakland California federal court lawsuit initiated by Facebook (FB) against the Israeli surveillance technology company NSO Group. FB claimed that NSO has been using servers located in the United States to infect with spyware hundreds of smartphones being used by attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, critics of Israel and even of government officials. NSO allegedly used WhatsApp, a messaging app owned by FB, to hack into the phones and install malware that would enable the company to monitor what was going on with the devices. It did so by employing networks of remote servers located in California to enter the accounts.
NSO has inevitably claimed that they do indeed provide spyware, but that it is sold to clients who themselves operate it with the “advice and technical support to assist customers in setting up” but it also promotes its products as being “used to stop terrorism, curb violent crime, and save lives.” It also asserts that its software cannot be used against U.S. phone numbers.
Facebook, which did its own extensive research into NSO activity, alleges that NSO rented a Los Angeles-based server from a U.S. company called QuadraNet that it then used to launch 720 hacks on smartphones and other devices. It further claims in the court filing that the company reverse-engineering WhatsApp, using an program that it developed to access WhatsApp’s servers and deploy “its spyware against approximately 1,400 targets” before “…covertly transmit[ting] malicious code through WhatsApp servers and inject[ing]” spyware into telephones without the knowledge of the owners.”
The filing goes on to assert that the “Defendants had no authority to access WhatsApp’s servers with an imposter program, manipulate network settings, and commandeer the servers to attack WhatsApp users. That invasion of WhatsApp’s servers and users’ devices constitutes unlawful computer hacking.”
NSO, which is largely staffed by former (sic) Israeli intelligence officers, had previously been in the news for its proprietary spyware known as Pegasus, which “can gather information about a mobile phone’s location, access its camera, microphone and internal hard drive, and covertly record emails, phone calls and text messages.” Pegasus was reportedly used in the killing of Saudi dissident journalist Adnan Kashoggi in Istanbul last year and it has more recently been suggested as a resource for tracking coronavirus distance violators. Outside experts have accused the company of selling its technology and expertise to countries that have used it to spy on dissidents, journalists and other critics.
Israel routinely exploits the access provided by its telecommunications industry to spy on the host countries where those companies operate. The companies themselves report regularly back to Mossad contacts and the technology they provide routinely has a “backdoor” for secretly accessing the information accessible through the software. In fact, Israel conducts espionage and influence operations both directly and through proxies against the United States more aggressively than any other “friendly” country, which once upon a time included being able to tap into the “secure” White House phones used by Bill Clinton to speak with Monica Lewinsky.
Last September, it was revealed that the placement of technical surveillance devices by Israel in Washington D.C. was clearly intended to target cellphone communications to and from the Trump White House. As the president frequently chats with top aides and friends on non-secure phones, the operation sought to pick up conversations involving Trump with the expectation that the security-averse president would say things off the record that might be considered top secret.
A Politico report detailed how “miniature surveillance devices” referred to as “Stingrays” were used to imitate regular cell phone towers to fool phones being used nearby into providing information on their locations and identities. According to the article, the devices are referred to by technicians as “international mobile subscriber identity-catchers or IMSI-catchers, they also can capture the contents of calls and data use.”
Over one year ago, government security agencies discovered the electronic footprints that indicated the presence of the surveillance devices near the White House. Forensic analysis involved dismantling the devices to let them “tell you a little about their history, where the parts and pieces come from, how old are they, who had access to them, and that will help get you to what the origins are.” One source observed afterwards that “It was pretty clear that the Israelis were responsible.”
So two significant stories currently making the rounds have been bowdlerized and disappeared to make the Israeli role in manipulating and spying against the United States go away. They are only two of many stories framed by a Zionist dominated media to control the narrative in a way favorable to the Jewish state. One would think that having a president of the United States who is the most pro-Israel ever, which is saying a great deal in and of itself, would be enough, but unfortunately when dealing with folks like Benjamin Netanyahu there can never be any restraint when dealing with the “useful idiots” in Washington.
They are popping the corks on the champagne after Trump's secret new watchlist lets his administration track Americans without needing a warrant and send the raw intel directly to Israel.
Related:
Zionists Preparing Project Zyphr
And you wonder why I am in distress?
Related:
Zionists Preparing Project Zyphr
And you wonder why I am in distress?
