Published on Apr 29, 2019
Biden says Obama White House was ‘scandal-free’… Here’re some of the BIGGER ones he drew a blank on
The White House had “not one whisper of scandal” under President Barack Obama – that’s what former VP Joe Biden would have one believe as a selling point for his presidential run. Wait, is that the sound of fact-checkers typing?
“The thing I’m proudest of,” Biden said on Friday of his time at Obama’s right hand, “Not one single whisper of scandal…not one, and that’s because of Barack.”
Biden was speaking on ‘The View,’ a day after announcing his campaign for the presidency in 2020. The studio audience cheered and host Joy Behar chimed in, calling Barack Obama “amazing.” Of course, Biden is hardly going to besmirch his former partner on live television, and the view of presidents past tends to soften once they’ve left office.
But one has to wonder if the busy liberal fact-checkers would want to correct the Democrats’ favorite candidate, as his administration racked up its fair share of scandals during Obama’s eight years at the helm. Here’re three of the biggest:
Attack of the drones
The escalation of drone warfare and the targeted killings of American citizens are some of the biggest and blackest marks on the Obama administration. Although Obama was not the first US president to deploy drones on the battlefield, he was a drone enthusiast from the outset, describing the killer robots as “effective,” “indispensable,” and “the only game in town,”and personally authorizing more strikes in his first year than George W. Bush did in his entire eight years in office.
The whole world became a battlefield. Drone strikes targeted enemies and innocents alike in Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Of these strike zones, only Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria were active battlefields. At least four American citizens were killed, including a 16-year-old boy in Yemen, struck two weeks after his father.
A grand total of 563 strikes killed between 384 and 807 civilians in non-battlefield countries, according to figures from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Technically, it was all legal, of course – after the law in question was written by executive branch lawyers and hidden from Congress and the public.
Fast and Furious
This Fast and Furious had nothing to do with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. Instead, it was a ‘gunwalking’ scandal that Obama and then-Attorney General Eric Holder desperately tried to keep a lid on. In 2009, the Department of Justice came up with the amazingly bright idea of letting firearms – including .50 caliber rifles powerful enough to rip apart an engine block – fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, supposedly as a means of tracking them.
The plan backfired. Federal agents lost track of most of the 2,000 guns, which wound up being used in murders on both sides of the border, including the slaying of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010.
ALSO ON RT.COM’Fast & Furious’ cartel hitman who killed Border Patrol agent arrested in MexicoBut the Obama administration was non-apologetic. Instead, when the Republican-controlled House kicked up a stink, Holder sought to withhold documents relating to the scandal under subpoena, and Obama later withheld them under executive privilege when Holder was cited for contempt of Congress.
Years later, Mexican authorities are still finding ‘Fast and Furious’ guns at cartel crime scenes. One of the 19 weapons found at the hideout of notorious drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman in 2016 was a gun knowingly allowed into Mexico by the Justice Department.
Spy games – allied edition
As a Senator, Barack Obama condemned the Bush-era Patriot Act for violating the rights of American citizens. Once in office, he renewed the act, allowing intelligence agencies to carry out ‘roving wiretaps’ on American citizens and collect billions of phone call and text message records every year.
Much has been written about Obama’s expansion of the surveillance state, and his administration’s scattergun use of the 1917 Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers like NSA contractor Edward Snowden, but perhaps most personally embarrassing was the revelation – via WikiLeaks – that the US government spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone calls.
In an angry exchange with Obama, Merkel compared the US National Security Agency (NSA) to the dreaded East German Stasi. Suitably chastised, did Obama move to disarm the US’ surveillance apparatus before leaving office?
Nope. Days after Obama’s January 2017 farewell speech, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed an order giving the NSA additional powers to share intercepted communications with the US’s 16 other intelligence agencies. These communications include internet traffic intercepted through the NSA’s dragnet ‘PRISM’ program, and phone, email, and satellite transmissions gathered abroad.
When it comes to totting up the scandals of the Obama years, honorable mention goes to the Benghazi attack that killed ambassador Chris Stevens, Hillary Clinton’s email server scandal, arming jihadist rebels in Syria, and if Republicans are to be believed, authorizing an FBI spying operation on the Trump campaign in 2016.
But Joe Biden would have the voters believe that it is Donald Trump who “will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation.”
ALSO ON RT.COMGrope & change: Would America become one nation under Joe Biden?
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RUSH LIMBAUGH: HILLARY CLINTON ‘NEEDS TO BE INDICTED AND SHE NEEDS TO BE IN JAIL’
‘Unelected people came close to pulling off what is a coup,’ he says
APRIL 24, 2019
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh tore into Democrat presidential loser Hillary Clinton, saying she is the person who colluded with Russia, not President Trump.
“Hillary Clinton is who tried to rig a presidential election…Hillary Clinton and her pals in the Obama Department of Justice and the FBI, they are the ones who colluded with the Russians. They colluded to produce this entirely bogus Steele Dossier,” Limbaugh said Monday on Fox News.
“Talk about irony,” he continued. “For Hillary Clinton to be talking about impeaching Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton needs to be investigated, she needs to be indicted and she needs to be in jail [with] many of her co-conspirators in this whole sordid affair.”
Limbaugh went on to say that Clinton’s attempts to overthrow Trump using the debunked Steele Dossier compiled with Russian intelligence amounted to the real collusion.
“Unelected people came close to pulling off what is a coup,” said the Republican host.
“Who’s working with Russians? Steele, Hillary’s guy! They are working with the Russians…the dossier traces right back to Hillary and her campaign in the DNC.”
Limbaugh’s comments come after Clinton said that Trump would have been indicted for collusion if he wasn’t the president.
“I think there is enough there that any other person who had engaged in those acts would certainly have been indicted,” Clinton said Monday during the Time 100 conference.
MUELLER REPORT CONTAINS CLAIM RUSSIA TAPED BILL CLINTON, MONICA LEWINSKY HAVING PHONE SEX
Reference was redacted from public version of report
By Steven Nelson
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report mentions a claim that Russians recorded President Bill Clinton having phone sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky — but the reference was redacted from the version released to the public.
The redaction is likely to anger Republicans, because the allegation has been known since at least 2001 and the Mueller report’s reference to a claim that President Trump watched prostitutes urinating in a Moscow hotel room was not struck out.
Clinton allegedly was recorded by Russia in the 1990s, allowing Russia to learn of the affair before American officials. A reference to the Clinton intercept was redacted from the Mueller report to protect “personal privacy,” but sources told the Washington Examiner that the context makes clear what was blacked out.
According to the report, Center for the National Interest President Dimitri Simes sent Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner a 2016 email with recommended talking points to counter Hillary Clinton’s Russia attacks. The email referenced “a well-documented story of highly questionable connections” between Bill Clinton and Russia.
[Related: Monica Lewinsky: ‘If. f–king. only’ a four-page summary of the Starr Report was released]
At a meeting in New York, Simes told Kushner the details: Russia allegedly recorded President Clinton on the phone with Lewinsky, opening questions of foreign leverage over the ex-president-turned-potential first spouse.
“During the August 17 meeting, Simes provided Kushner the Clinton-related information that he had promised. Simes told Kushner that, [redacted],” the Mueller report says. “Simes claimed that he had received this information from former CIA and Reagan White House official Fritz Ermarth, who claimed to have learned it from U.S. intelligence sources, not from Russians.”
Ermarth, 78, a 25-year CIA veteran and chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 1988 to 1993, said he was concerned with the wording in the report. He said the report inaccurately suggests he mishandled classified information, when in fact he used public sourcing.
“The line in the Mueller report that says any of this was based on intelligence information is the product either of faulty remembering by Dimitri or a flawed inference … or a hostile fabrication by the Mueller people,” Ermarth said. “[The report wording] implies my misuse of intelligence or use of intelligence that is classified in this context. And that is completely false.”
Ermarth thinks he told Simes that the Clinton-Lewinsky phone call was intercepted while the president was traveling on Air Force One, but that detail is believed to not have been conveyed to Kushner or included in the report.
[Also read: Monica Lewinsky dishes details on infamous dress]
The former CIA officer, who was not interviewed by Mueller, said he discussed the intercept with Simes during a trip to Washington in either 2014 or 2015. The story’s omission from the Mueller report hints at a double standard for the Clintons, he said.
Mueller spokesman Peter Carr declined to comment, as did Simes. A White House spokesman and Kushner attorney Abbe Lowell did not respond to requests for comment.
The report was redacted by Justice Department leadership in cooperation with Mueller’s team. There were 855 redactions, according to the Smoking Gun. Only 7% of of those redactions were justified by “personal privacy,” according to an analysis by Vox. Most information was withheld because it involved grand jury deliberations or because it could harm an ongoing criminal case.
According to the report, Simes told investigators Kushner appeared to consider the phone-sex story “old news,” as news outlets had long ago reported that Russia had advanced knowledge about Lewinsky. Meanwhile, Kushner told Mueller’s team he did not receive information from Simes that could be “operationalized” and doubted new negative information could be unearthed on the Clintons.
Though the report was redacted to protect the former president’s privacy, it does reference an alleged sex tape featuring Trump watching prostitutes urinate in a Moscow hotel. The Mueller report says Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze texted former Trump attorney Michael Cohen that he “[s]topped flow of tapes from Russia.” Rtskhiladze told Mueller’s team that “he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen.”
CLINTON TIES: Arkansas Democrat Arrested For Distributing Child Porn Worked With Hillary, Met Bill
By Patrick Howley
Harold “H.L.” Moody, an Arkansas government youth program coordinator who was arrested for allegedly participating in child porn video chat room sessions, oversaw ticket sales for a fundraiser featuring presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in his capacity as a Democrat Party official.
The media’s virtual blackout of the Harold Moody story is disturbing, considering the ties between Clinton and Moody, who were photographed together. Moody has met both Bill and Hillary Clinton, according to documented evidence.
Harold Moody was arrested in November for distribution and possession of child pornography after he was caught repeatedly in chat rooms in which he and others were sharing child pornography, including at least one video of adults having sex with a child. Moody pleaded not guilty.
“I’ve heard of White privilege but never Perv privilege – i am not the Juke Box at Waffle House…I do not play on demand…” Moody told fellow users in the chat room in response to video requests.
Moody was spokesman for the Democratic Party of Arkansas during the 2016 election and was previously the chairman of the Pulaski County Democratic Committee.
The Clinton Foundation set up a health initiative in Pulaski County, Arkansas, where Moody worked for Pulaski County Youth Services. The Clinton Foundation also co-presented an award to the head of Pulaski County Youth Services, where Moody was working at the time of his arrest. A separate Pulaski County Youth Services employee was also arrested for allegedly raping a 14-year old.
Moody served as Pulaski County Youth Services’ special events coordinator. He was fired not only for child porn but also for smoking meth at his desk.
In November 2017, another employee of Pulaski County Youth Services was arrested for the alleged late-night rape of a 14-year old boy in a parked car.
In his capacity as state Democrat Party spokesman, Moody oversaw the selling of tickets to a Hillary Clinton fundraiser in July 2015.
The Times Record reported in 2015: “State Democratic Party spokesman H.L. Moody said the party sold all 1,600 floor seats for the $200-a-plate dinner, then began selling $15 arena seats. He estimated the audience at over 2,000 people — former state Highway Commissioner John Burkhalter said onstage that more than 2,500 were present — and said the party had raised about $450,000, enough to cover its entire annual budget. On Friday, Trump spoke to about 1,000 people in Hot Springs. He said during his speech that the Democratic Party had cut ticket prices to lure people to its event. Moody disputed that claim. “I reject the notion that we reduced ticket prices,” he said. “The floor seats sold for a higher ticket price than we’ve ever sold them before, and they also sold faster than they’ve ever sold before, and that’s why we opened the arena seats. The original plan did not call for arena seats, but we had to open them up because there was so much demand for tickets.’”
Moody praised Hillary Clinton in an interview with the Arkansas Times after Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 election and said that Bill Clinton’s presidential election in 1992 inspired him to get into politics.
“I think Secretary Clinton summed it up best when she said (at a charity gala on Nov. 16) that there were days when she wanted to curl up and never leave the house. I totally get that, but, as somebody that pays the electric bill by working in politics, I just don’t have that luxury. Also, the longer I am lying down and feeling bad, the longer they can say the DPA is dead, and that’s simply not the case,” Moody said in the interview.
“But then in 1992, when [Bill Clinton], who I had met at the duck calling contest in Stuttgart many times, was running, it suddenly became, almost in a way, personal for me. I think I was 12 or 11 at that point, so there wasn’t much I could do other than watch and learn. What I remember most is on election night, when [Clinton] won, I saw the live television footage of downtown Little Rock and the celebration and I knew I should have been there, that that was exactly where I was supposed to be. I guess since then I’ve been trying to get back to that place,” Moody said in the interview.
Clinton’s links to Pulaski County and Pulaski County Youth Services are numerous.
Pulaski County Youth Services executive director Jamie Scott was honored as a 2017 Class of Presidential Leadership Scholar by the Clinton, Bush, Bush, and LBJ Centers, according to the Clinton Foundation website. Scott also served on Governor Beebe’s task force for abused and neglected children.
Pulaski County Youth Services managed a $16,000 grant to implement an after-school cooking workshop in Arkansas schools after three University of Arkansas Clinton School students won a commitment for the program at the Clinton Global Initiative. “The Blue & You Foundation grant funds will be managed by Pulaski County Youth Services,” according to a Clinton School news item in 2010.
The former program development coordinator at Pulaski County Youth Services was also a Clinton Health Matters Initiative partner, according to LinkedIn.
“Geographically located in Central Arkansas, Pulaski County is known as the largest county and forms the core of Little Rock, North Little Rock, and Conway, one of Arkansas’ eight Metropolitan Statistical Areas it is defined by the United States Census Bureau, as a six-county area in central Arkansas, and anchored by state’s capital and largest city. With such a rich history of southern hospitality, culture, and diversity, Pulaski County has an evolving cadre of bustling economic developments, a rapid influx of diverse populations and cultures, a thriving community for the arts and sciences, and a deep appreciation for the natural state which 386,299 Pulaski County residents call home,” according to the Clinton Foundation.
“Due to Pulaski County’s central location, and the extensive network of the CHMI partners, the outcomes of the “Blueprint for Action” will be realized throughout Central Arkansas and impact communities, families, and individuals beyond the geographic boundaries of Pulaski County,” according to the Clinton Foundation.
‘They are Christians’: Obama & Clinton lambasted for calling bombed Sri Lankans ‘Easter worshipers’
Some people believe prominent Democrats deliberately avoided using the word “Christian” when condemning bombings of churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday as part of a policy to undermine Christian faith in the US.
The eight bomb attacks in Sri Lanka, which killed almost 300 people on Easter Sunday, sparked worldwide condemnation. But the way some US politicians expressed their condolences sparked a minor outcry among conservative Americans. Former President Barack Obama and the former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, were blasted for using the term “Easter worshipers” instead of “Christians” when referring to the victims of the attacks.
Three Sri Lankan Christian churches were targeted by the perpetrators, implying that the Christian minority was in the crosshairs. Some commentators in the US said Obama and Clinton were in the wrong when they failed to name the religion.
Particular ire was sparked by the fact that both US politicians didn’t hesitate to use the word “Muslim” when expressing condolences to the victims of last month’s massacre at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Notably, Obama and Clinton were not the only US figures, who used the term in remarks about the bloodshed in Sri Lanka. So did Adam Schiff, the Democrat chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
And the same goes for US Attorney Trent Shores.
The criticism is based on the perception that the Democratic Party is bent on downplaying America’s Christian roots for the sake of sensibilities of people adhering to other religions. The sentiment is probably best reflected in Fox News’ coverage of the supposed “war on Christmas” in the US.
In this particular case, however, the notion may be misplaced, one commenter pointed out. Christian churches are not exclusively Christian places of worship there, quite the contrary.
In Sri Lanka, Christianity plays a unique role of serving as a bridge between people by welcoming both the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic groups. Considering that Tamil separatism was behind a bloody 25-year-long civil war on the South Asian island, which ended just a decade ago, one can understand why this role is highly appreciated.
Rep. Nadler ‘Deeply Troubled’ White House Briefed On Mueller Report Before Release. Here’s What He Said About Starr Report In 1998.
By Ashe Schow
Politicians wouldn’t be politicians without a healthy dose of hypocrisy.
Daily Wire TV
The latest example comes from Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who tweeted Wednesday afternoon that he was “deeply troubled” that the White House was able to get a briefing on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report before it was released.
“I’m deeply troubled by reports that the WH is being briefed on the Mueller report AHEAD of its release. Now, DOJ is informing us we will not receive the report until around 11/12 tomorrow afternoon — AFTER Barr’s press conference. This is wrong,” Nadler tweeted.
So, the White House was briefed before everyone else. Maybe some people see this as a problem, but Nadler’s dismay is simply not believable because of how he responded to the release of an investigation report when the president was a Democrat. Specifically, when that Democrat was President Bill Clinton.
Way back in 1998, America was waiting for Ken Starr’s report on Clinton’s sex scandals to be released. On September 11, 1998, Nadler took to the House floor to decry the fact that Clinton was not able to see the report before it was publicly released “se he can prepare a response.”
“What is at issue here this morning is not his conduct but the fairness of the resolution before us, which is manifestly and grossly unfair,” Nadler said at the time. “It is manifestly unfair because it denies the President the privilege we have given to every other person accused, as the gentleman from Michigan stated, the ability to see the accusation before it is released publicly so he can prepare a response.”
So, Trump getting briefed on the report before its release is “deeply trouble[ing]” but allowing Clinton to see a report before it was released was the height of fairness? Got it.
The hypocrisy was pointed out on Twitter by Jay Caruso, the deputy editor of the Washington Examiner’s magazine.
“Oh, now you’re troubled? In 1998 you said it was ‘manifestly and grossly unfair’ that President Clinton didn’t get to see the Starr report before it was ‘released publicly so he can prepare a response,’” Caruso tweeted.
This is the same congressman who said in early March that he planned to investigate Trump for “obstruction” if and when Mueller found no collusion, which he didn’t.
“Tomorrow, we will be issuing document requests to over 60 different people and individuals from the White House to the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Jr., Allen Weisselberg, to begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power,” Nadler said on ABC at the time.
Mueller recommended no further indictments, and Attorney General William Barr said there was insufficient evidence to make the case for obstruction. As a side note, the claim is that Trump “obstructed” an investigation into a crime that never happened.
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