zaterdag 5 oktober 2019

Paul Craig Roberts 361

Compelling Proof of the Coup Plot Against Trump


Proof that Rod Rosenstein, former Deputy Attorney General, was an Organizer of the Treasonous Plot to Unseat President Trump
Judicial Watch Uncovers Rosenstein Email to Mueller: ‘The Boss’ Doesn’t Know We’re Talking 
Rod Rosenstein, who was once a deputy attorney general, is a key figure in enabling, at a minimum, the Deep State’s seditious attacks on President Trump.

More proof is in new documents uncovered by a Judicial Watch lawsuit. Specifically, we forced the release of 145 pages of Rosenstein’s communications that include a one-line email from Rosenstein to Mueller stating, “The boss and his staff do not know about our discussions.” They also include “off the record” emails with major media outlets around the date of Mueller’s appointment.

We filed a lawsuit to get these documents after the Department of Justice failed to respond to our September 21, 2018, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-00481)). We were seeking:

Any and all e-mails, text messages, or other records of communication addressed to or received by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein between May 8, 2017, and May 22, 2017.

The time period referred to in this suit is critical. On May 9, 2017, Rosenstein wrote a  memo  to President Trump recommending that FBI Director James Comey be fired. That day, President Trump fired Comey. Just three days later, on May 12, Rosenstein sent an email assuring Robert Mueller that, “The boss and his staff do not know about our discussions.” (It is not clear if the “boss” is then-AG Sessions or President Trump.)

In a May 16, 2017, email, sent the day before Mueller’s appointment, Rosenstein emailed former Bush administration Deputy Attorney General and current Kirkland & Ellis Partner Mark Filip stating, “I am with Mueller. He shares my views. Duty Calls. Sometimes the moment chooses us.”

The next day, May 17, Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

During the same period, between May 8 and May 17, Rosenstein met with then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and other senior Justice Department FBI officials to discuss wearing a wire and invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump.

The documents also show that, again during the same time period, Rod Rosenstein was in direct communication with reporters from 60 Minutes, The New York Times and The Washington Post. In an email exchange dated May 2017, Rosenstein communicated with New York Times reporter Rebecca Ruiz to provide background for this article about himself. Ruiz emailed Rosenstein a draft of the article, and he responded with off-the-record comments and clarifications.
•In an email exchange on May 17, 2017, the day of Mueller’s appointment, Rosenstein exchanged emails with 60 Minutes producer Katherine Davis in which he answered off-the-record questions about Mueller’s scope of authority and chain of command:
Rosenstein: “Off the record: This special counsel is a DOJ employee. His status is similar to a US Attorney.”

Davis: “Good call on Mueller. Although I obviously thought you’d be great at leading the investigation too.”
•On May 17, 2017, in an email exchange with Washington Post journalist Sari Horwitz with the subject line “Special Counsel,” Rosenstein and Horwitz exchanged:
Rosenstein “At some point, I owe you a long story. But this is not the right time for me to talk to anybody.”

Horwitz: “Now, I see why you couldn’t talk today! Obviously, we’re writing a big story about this Is there any chance I could talk to you on background about your decision?”

These astonishing emails further confirm the corruption behind Rosenstein’s appointment of Robert Mueller. They also show a shockingly cozy relationship between Mr. Rosenstein and anti-Trump media reporters.

Here’s some more background on the incredible finds from this one Judicial Watch lawsuit.

On September 11, we released 14 pages of records from the Department of Justice showing officials’ efforts in responding to media inquiries about DOJ/FBI talks allegedly invoking the 25th Amendment to “remove” President Donald Trump from office and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offering to wear a “wire” to record his conversations with the president.

On September 23, we released a two-page memo, dated May 16, 2017, by then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe detailing how then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire into the Oval Office “to collect additional evidence on the president’s true intentions.” McCabe writes that Rosenstein said he thought it was possible because “he was not searched when he entered the White House.”

As the “coup” targeting President Trump continues through the House impeachment abuse, it is important to remember that its origins are in the Deep State agencies – especially the FBI and DOJ.

Court Forces State Dept To Release Smoking Gun Clinton Email 

The Clinton email scandal is far from over. A federal court ordered discovery in a major Judicial Watch lawsuit that will ultimately result in nearly 20 witnesses having to testify under oath to our attorneys. And, and thanks to the court’s orders, we’re also getting new documents proving the Clinton email cover-up. Specifically, the State Department released a previously hidden email showing that top State Department officials used and were aware of Hillary Clinton’s email account.

On December 24, 2010, Daniel Baer, an Obama State Department deputy assistant secretary of state, writes to Michael Posner, a then-assistant secretary of state about Clinton’s private email address:

Baer: “Be careful, you just gave the secretary’s personal email address to a bunch of folks …”

Posner answers: “Should I say don’t forward? Did not notice”

Baer responds: “Yeah-I just know that she guards it pretty closely”

Posner had forwarded Clinton’s email address, which was contained in an email sent to State Department senior leadership, about WikiLeaks.

It appears that the State Department produced this email in 2016 in redacted form, blacking out Clinton’s personal email address and the discussion about Clinton’s wanting to keep her email address closely guarded.

We sought the email after a former top Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) State Department official testified to us about reviewing it between late 2013 and early 2014.

The testimony and the email production come in discovery granted to us on the Clinton email issue in a FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). Clinton also faces potential questioning under oath in this lawsuit.

Despite a recent court order requiring production of the email, the DOJ and State Departments only produced it 10 days ago after we threatened to seek a court order to compel its production.

In other words, we just caught the State Department and DOJ red-handed in another email cover-up. They all knew about the Clinton email account but covered up the smoking-gun email showing this guilty knowledge for years.

The scope of court-ordered discovery that produced this email find includes: whether Secretary Clinton used private email in an effort to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); whether the State Department’s attempt to settle this FOIA case in 2014 and 2015 amounted to bad faith; and whether the State Department has adequately searched for records responsive to our FOIA request.

During a recent hearing, Judge Lamberth specifically raised concerns about a Clinton email cachecarterheavyindustries@gmail.com, discussed in a letter to Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) and wants Judicial Watch to “shake this tree” on this issue.

Judge Lamberth also criticized the State Department’s handling and production of Clinton’s emails in this case stating, “There is no FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] exemption for political expedience, nor is there one for bureaucratic incompetence.”

The court rejected DOJ and State efforts to derail further Judicial Watch discovery. Judge Lamberth called their arguments “preposterous” and cited a prior Judicial Watch FOIA case in which he ordered U.S. Marshals to seize records from a Clinton administration official.

Judge Lamberth detailed how the State Department “spent three months from November 2014 trying to make this case disappear,” and that after discovering the State Department’s actions and omissions, “Now we know more, but we have even more questions than answers. So I won’t hold it against Judicial Watch for expanding their initial discovery request now.”

Judge Lamberth stated his goal was to restore the public’s faith in their government, which may have been damaged because of the Clinton email investigation.

The court granted us seven additional depositions, three interrogatories and four document requests related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Hillary Clinton and her former top aide and current lawyer Cheryl Mills were given 30 days to oppose our depositions of them.

On December 6, 2018, Judge Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers and Clinton aides to be deposed or answer written questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”

Our FOIA lawsuit led directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015.

Our discovery over the last several months found many more details about the scope of the Clinton email scandal and cover-up:
•John Hackett, former Director of Information Programs and Services (IPS), testified under oath that he had raised concerns that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff may have “culled out 30,000” of the secretary’s “personal” emails without following strict National Archives standards. He also revealed that he believed there was interference with the formal FOIA review process related to the classification of Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails.
•Heather Samuelson, Clinton’s White House liaison at the State Department, and later Clinton’s personal lawyer, admitted under oath that she was granted immunity by the Department of Justice in June 2016.
•Justin Cooper, former aide to President Bill Clinton and Clinton Foundation employee who registered the domain name of the unsecure clintonemail.com server that Clinton used while serving as Secretary of State, testified he worked with Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, to create the non-government email system.
•In the interrogatory responses of E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, he stated that the agency found Clinton email records in the Obama White House, specifically the Executive Office of the President.
•Jacob “Jake” Sullivan, Clinton’s senior advisor and deputy chief of staff when she was secretary of state, testified that both he and Clinton used her unsecure non-government email system to conduct official State Department business.
•Eric Boswell, former assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, testified that Clinton was warned twice against using unsecure BlackBerry’s and personal emails to transmit classified material.
The court will next decide will whether Judicial Watch attorneys can question Mrs. Clinton directly under oath – so stay tuned….


A Judicial Watch Election Law Victory in California

We thwarted Leftist Californians’ efforts to keep President Trump off the 2020 ballot.

A federal judge enjoined a California law requiring presidential candidates to publicly disclose their tax returns. The injunction was requested by Judicial Watch, President Trump, and other challengers to the law.

California’s Presidential Tax Transparency and Accountability Act (“SB 27”) requires presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns for the past five years for public posting on the internet. Candidates who refuse to do so are barred from having their names printed on California’s March 2020 primary ballot.

Judicial Watch’s lawsuit challenged the law on behalf of four California voters, including two Republicans, a Democrat, and an Independent. The lawsuit alleged that SB 27 imposes candidate qualifications beyond those allowed by the U.S. Constitution’s Presidential Qualifications Clause and that it violates voters  First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to associate with like-minded voters and to express their preferences by means of their votes (Jerry Griffin et al. v. Alex Padilla (No. 2:19-cv-01477)). President Trump, the Republican National Committee, and other candidates and private litigants also filed legal challenges.

In his decision, Judge Morrison C. England of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California observed that “there has never been a legal requirement that any candidate for federal office disclose their tax returns.” While he noted that SB 27 “was primarily intended to force President Trump to disclose his tax returns,” Judge England agreed with Judicial Watch that the law particularly harmed California voters by diminishing their ability “to cast an effective vote” and to select the “presidential candidate of their choice.”

Judge England ruled that Judicial Watch was likely to succeed on every one of its claims. He stated that California’s scheme “tramples the Framers’ vision of having uniform standards” for candidate qualifications. He also found that the public had an “extraordinary” interest in “ensuring that individual voters may associate for the advancement of political beliefs and cast a vote for their preferred candidate for President.” And he agreed with President Trump that SB 27 was preempted by the federal Ethics in Government Act.

As Judge England noted, nonpartisan counsel for the California legislature had issued a written opinion stating that a prior version of SB 27 was unconstitutional. Then-Governor Jerry Brown had vetoed that prior version, also citing constitutional concerns.

Leftist California politicians, in their zeal to attack President Trump, passed a law that also unconstitutionally victimizes California voters and the U.S. Constitution. The court found this anti-Trump scheme to game the 2020 elections to be obviously unconstitutional.

Outrageously, California’s political leadership will continue to abuse and waste taxpayer money by trying to appeal this sensible decision. They should give up and stop trying to prevent voters from being able to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice next year.

Zionist Terrorism. Western Politicians Remain Silent

10 year-old boy shot in the head remains 

immobile, family waits for answers from 

Israel

News 
 on  
It’s been almost three months since 10-year-old Abdul Rahman Shteiwi was shot in the head by Israeli forces in his village of Kafr Qaddum in the northern occupied West Bank.
What was a typical day of Friday protests on July 12 turned bloody when Israeli snipers shot the boy as he was standing at the entrance of his friend’s house in the village.
Since that day, Shteiwi has remained in the Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv, unable to speak or move his body.
“The doctors still aren’t sure exactly how much of his brain function has been permanently damaged,” Murad Shteiwi, a relative of the family and local activist in Kafr Qaddum told Mondoweiss.
“He can’t move his hands or legs, he can’t speak. He’s awake, but he can’t do anything,” he said, adding that much of the nearly 100 pieces of shrapnel initially found in the boy’s head are still lodged in his brain today.
Despite accounts from eyewitnesses, activists, and the doctors who treated him all saying that Shteiwi was shot with live ammunition, Israeli forces have maintained that they did not use live fire during protests on July 12th.
“There are several reports done by international organizations that proved Abdul Rahman was shot with a live bullet,” Shteiwi told Mondoweiss. “The Israelis won’t admit it, but there is enough documentation to prove that they shot live ammunition.”
The last reported statement from the Israeli military on Shteiwi’s case was in an August report from the Times of Israel that quoted an anonymous source, saying “the army was investigating, but insisted no live fire was used that day and the boy was not targeted.”
Last month, at London-based research agency Forensic Architecture came out with a detailed report using videos, photos, and eyewitness testimony from the day Shteiwi was shot to piece together a timeline of events leading up to the shooting.
“Contrary to the repeated claims of Israeli officials, the available medical and image evidence, as well as witness testimony, strongly suggests that Abd el-Rahman’s injuries were caused by live ammunition,” the Forensic Architecture report states.
The group’s lengthy report provides evidence of 5.56mm bullets that were shot into a water tank near the clashes, in addition to other bullet casings found in the village.
Discounting claims by the military that Shteiwi was hit with a rubber-coated steel bullet, the group cited forensic experts who said “the level of fragmentation is consistent with fragmentation seen in 5.56 mm rounds. It is inconsistent with the level of fragmentation one would expect to see with a steel-core rubber bullet.”
Notably, Forensic Architecture compared a video of a soldier firing at a protester on July 12 in Kafr Qaddum with a separate video taken at a different location that shows “what the process of firing and reloading rubber-coated metal bullets looks like.”
In the latter video, soldiers can be seen loading rounds into an attachment designed specifically for rubber-coated bullets, whereas in the video taken in Kafr Qaddum, the same actions are “clearly not performed by the soldiers.”
While the Israeli military continues to deny wrongdoing in the case of Abdul Rahman, the young boy remains bedridden while his family struggles to make ends meet.
“His family is in a really tough spot,” Murad Shteiwi told Mondoweiss, adding “they were never well-off to begin with, economically, but things have gotten a lot worse.”
“Abdul Rahman’s father was working in construction before this, but has since had to quit work to stay by his son’s side in the hospital,” he said, adding that the boy’s mother has suffered from multiple heart attacks, one on the day of the shooting, rendering her unable to stay with her son or work to support the family.
For now, Abdul Rahman’s oldest brother is supporting his entire family of seven. “The Palestinian Ministry of Health has offered to pay off all of Abdul Rahman’s medical bills, but the family’s basic income has been affected a lot,” Shteiwi said.
According to Shteiwi, the family has begun the process of filing a suit against the military in court.
“We know the Israeli ‘justice’ system, through our experience, is broken,” he told Mondoweiss, saying “even if the case is clear, and we prove to the court the soldiers were in the wrong, the soldiers will be let off the hook, maybe with a slap on the wrist, if we’re lucky.”
“But if we cannot find justice in the Israeli courts, we will go to the international courts. We must hold these soldiers accountable so that, God willing, Abdul Rahman will be the last Palestinian child to suffer this fate.”

Anti-Palestinian MP's in Labour Party

Local parties move against two Labour Friends of Israel MPs

Local Labour activists are calling for two prominent Labour Friends of Israel activists to step down from their seats in the UK’s Parliament.
Maraget Hodge has been “triggered” by her local Labour constituency in Barking, East London. This means she could face a selection contest to remain in place as Labour’s candidate for the next general election, should other Labour candidates stand.
A general election is expected within months.
Meanwhile in Liverpool, Louise Ellman could soon face a “no confidence” vote in her local constituency party.
Ellman is the chairperson Labour Friends of Israel and a former chairperson of the Jewish Labour Movement, two lobby groups with intimate ties to the Israeli embassy.
Both Ellman and Hodge have attacked left-wing party leader Jeremy Corbyn in the most outspoken terms. Last year Hodge personally slandered Corbyn as “a fucking anti-Semite and a racist.”
More recently she clarified that she would not give up making such attacks “until Jeremy Corbyn ceases to be leader of the Labour Party.”
Ellman openly opposes her own party’s leader becoming prime minister, saying recently that British Jews are so afraid of Corbyn “that they would seriously consider leaving the country if he entered Downing Street.”
Her comments were made in front of the Israeli ambassador at Labour Friends of Israel’s annual conference reception last month. She also used her speech there to condemn Labour members for passing a motion at conference in favour of the boycott of Israel.

Coup attempts

Hodge, a former Labour government minister under Tony Blair, is a parliamentary supporter of Labour Friends of Israel.
In June 2016, she formally triggered the coup attempt against Corbyn by proposing a motion of no confidence in him to Labour MPs. The coup had been in the works for months.
Labour MPs overwhelmingly voted against Corbyn. But their coup was defeated by Labour’s new mass membership, now reported to be more than 500,000 strong. Corbyn was re-elected as leader with an increased share of the vote.
The local moves against the pair do not seem to be primarily motivated by their support for Israel.
A left wing member of Hodge’s local Barking Labour Party, who voted for her “triggering” in their branch, told The Electronic Intifada that members had argued for her replacement as a candidate due to her “disloyalty” and attacks on Corbyn.
One member in the branch argued she made baseless allegations of anti-Semitism against the party.
Labour spokespeople have denied this, telling the BBC that her potential deselection has nothing to do with anti-Semitism allegations.
An article by another local activist on the LabourList news site claimed that the initiative to deselect Hodge came from her own right wing of the party: those that “share her political views but had expected her to retire and wanted an MP who lives in the constituency.”
But John Pawson, the author of the article, did write that they “find it deeply frustrating that my MP dedicates so much time to attacking our party and our leader.”

No confidence

Hodge being subjected to this process does not necessarily mean she will be replaced as Labour candidate for the next election. An alternative candidate would have to stand and win the votes of a majority of local members.
In Liverpool, left wing activists have been more vocally opposed to Ellman and her anti-Palestinian agenda.
An emergency motion proposed at her Liverpool Riverside Constituency Labour Party (CLP) last week cited the MP’s “attacks on her local and national party … with total disregard for natural justice.”
You can read the motion in full below.
A Liverpool Riverside source told The Electronic Intifada that the motion was ruled out of order at the CLP’s 27 September meeting on technical grounds. Instead the motion will now follow its path through local branches of the CLP.
An even stronger motion directly calling on her to “resign” as an MP has been tabled for debate at the St Michael’s branch of the CLP for Tuesday evening, a St Michael’s activist source told The Electronic Intifada.
But a vote on the motion has now been delayed a week. You can view this motion below.
“No confidence” motions, when passed by local activists, have no power to force Labour MPs to step down. But they can increase the political pressure on them, and the pressure on the national party to allow a democratic selection process to allow local Labour activists to choose their own candidate for MP.
Former Labour Friends of Israel chairperson Joan Ryan announced last month she would not stand in the next general election. This was the result of more than a year’s campaigning against her by local Labour activists – starting with a narrowly successful “no confidence” motion.

Corbyn capitulates again

The Electronic Intifada understands the week-long delay came about after pressure from Jeremy Corbyn’s office on the proposer of the motion to prevent a democratic vote, by withdrawing the resignation motion altogether.
So far the proposer of the motion is refusing to withdraw, despite additional pressure from trade union Unite.
A Labour spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.
Liverpool voters as a whole ensure the city is a left-wing bastion. Ellman’s seat is one of the safest Labour seats in the country, with 84.5 percent voting Labour in the 2017 election.
Ellman appeared earlier this year in the now widely discredited BBC documentary, “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?”
Her claims to have been fighting endemic anti-Semitism in her local party have been hotly disputed by local Labour members.
recent investigative piece published by left-wing group Jewish Voice for Labour accuses Ellman of a systematic campaign “to disempower and drive out members who back the socialist, internationalist politics of the Labour leadership.”
Correction: This article originally stated that pressure from the Labour leader’s office to withdraw the motion was asserted on the chair of the local branch. Our source clarifies that this pressure was asserted on the proposer of the motion. This has been corrected in the text.




Bernie Sanders Corporate Media Ignores

Published on 
by

'Gave Me Goosebumps': Praise for Independent Video That Captures Side of Bernie Sanders Corporate Media Ignores

"This video lifts up so many marginalized voices that are consistently downplayed and discounted by the corporate media. Bernie Sanders hears you."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) greets people as he walks with reporters through the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa on August 11, 2019. (Photo: Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty Images)
A video created by independent producer Matt Orfalea in support of Sen. Bernie Sanders went viral Friday as progressives praised the five-minute ad for offering a powerful counter to the corporate media's consistently negative portrayal of Sanders and his 2020 presidential campaign.
"Legit gave me goosebumps," wrote one Twitter user, a sentiment that was echoed across social media in response to the video.
The video juxtaposes the media caricature of Sanders as an unsmiling, loud, and angry curmudgeon with clips showing the friendly and compassionate senator many supporters experience in person at rallies and town halls across the country.
"No candidate has endured more unfounded hateful attacks than Bernie Sanders. But he fights on!" tweeted Orfalea, who posted the video to YouTube Thursday.
Watch the clip:
Shaun King, columnist for The Intercept and Sanders supporter, called Orfalea's video "the single best, most insightful, most inspirational" ad of the 2020 presidential election thus far.
"Thank you to @0rf for not only showing the world how kind and compassionate Bernie Sanders is," King tweeted, "but showing just how far off base coverage about him can be."
Actress and Sanders backer Susan Sarandon praised the video for elevating perspectives that the media often ignores in its coverage of the Vermont senator.
"This video lifts up so many marginalized voices that are consistently downplayed and discounted by the corporate media," said Sarandon. "People of color, women, young people, working people, poor people, and the list goes on. Bernie Sanders hears you."