Tag: OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

Washington told Ukraine to end probe into George Soros-funded group during 2016 US election – report

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An NGO co-funded by George Soros was spared prosecution in 2016 after the US urged Ukraine to drop a corruption probe targeting the group, the Hill reported, pointing to potential shenanigans during the US presidential election.

Bankrolled by the Obama administration and Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) was under investigation as part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into the misallocation of $4.4 million in US funds to fight corruption in the eastern European country.

As the 2016 presidential race heated up back in the United States, the US Embassy in Kiev gave Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko “a list of people whom we should not prosecute” as part of the probe, the Hill reported. Ultimately, no action was taken against AntAC.

Lutsenko told the paper that he believes the embassy wanted the probe nixed because it could have exposed the Democrats to a potential scandal during the 2016 election.

A State Department official who spoke with the Hill said that while the request to nix the probe was unusual, Washington feared that AntAC was being targeted as retribution for the group’s advocacy for anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine.

AntAC wasn’t just the benefactor of well-connected patrons – at the time it was also collaborating with FBI agents to uncover then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s business dealings in Ukraine. Manafort later became a high-profile target of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged Russian collusion, and was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for tax fraud and other financial crimes.

Lutsenko divulged in an interview with the Hill last week that he has opened an investigation into whether Ukrainian officials leaked financial records during the 2016 US presidential campaign in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.

While AntAC may have failed to help the FBI find the Russia collusion smoking gun, the group’s activities constitute yet another link between the anti-climactic Russiagate probe and Soros, a Democrat mega-donor who bet big on Hillary Clinton taking the White House in 2016.

In 2017, the billionaire philanthropist siphoned money into a new group, the Democracy Integrity Project, which later partnered with Fusion GPS to create the now-infamous Steele dossier.

Spokespersons for AntAC and the Soros umbrella group Open Society Foundations declined to comment on the Hill’s scoop.

Ironically, the prosecutor general who had preceded Lutsenko, Viktor Shokin, resigned under pressure from Washington – which accused Shokin of corruption.

Virtuous US officials continue to make similar demands of Ukraine’s justice system. Earlier this month, Washington urged the Ukrainian government to fire its special anti-corruption prosecutor, again over accusations of administrative abuse.

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TRUMP STOPS TAXPAYER-BACKED MORTGAGES FOR ILLEGALS

Trump Stops Taxpayer-Backed Mortgages for Illegals

Democrats taking economy hostage to protect illegal aliens

Frontpage Mag – MARCH 26, 2019

When Barack Obama implemented his unilateral amnesty for illegal aliens who claimed to have entered this country before the age of sixteen, the illegally amnestied illegals qualified for many benefits.

One of these were FHA loans.

FHA loans are government-backed mortgages meant for poorer Americans unable to qualify for normal mortgages. Democrat abuse of the FHA helped lead to the Great Recession and in the years afterward, FHA insured loans hit losses of $70 billion. By 2012, the FHA was $16 billion in the hole and had to be bailed out. The delinquency rate for FHA loans is still more than three times higher than normal loans, and depending on the period, have hovered between 8% and 14%. Time to bring in the illegal aliens.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism

When Barack Obama implemented his unilateral amnesty for illegal aliens who claimed to have entered this country before the age of sixteen, the illegally amnestied illegals qualified for many benefits.

One of these were FHA loans.

FHA loans are government-backed mortgages meant for poorer Americans unable to qualify for normal mortgages. Democrat abuse of the FHA helped lead to the Great Recession and in the years afterward, FHA insured loans hit losses of $70 billion. By 2012, the FHA was $16 billion in the hole and had to be bailed out. The delinquency rate for FHA loans is still more than three times higher than normal loans, and depending on the period, have hovered between 8% and 14%. Time to bring in the illegal aliens.

When Obama illegally implemented DACA, a program exempting certain illegal aliens from government action, they were also allowed to apply for FHA loans. How many illegal aliens obtained FHA loans?

In December, a letter from three Senate Democrats claimed that HUD barred “approximately 800,000 individuals approved for DACA from FHA-insured mortgage loans”. This refers to the total number of DACA illegal aliens and it’s unknown how many of them have obtained FHA loans in past years.

Ellie Mae’s millennial tracker estimated that the average size of an FHA loan to millennials is $186,454. Potential exposure to illegal alien mortgages could then climb as improbably high as $150 billion.

It’s unknown how many illegal aliens have taken out FHA loans, but some media stories have cited loan officers for whom illegal alien FHA loans represent a significant percentage of their business.

The Trump administration has applied the brakes to this avalanche of taxpayer-insured mortgages to illegal aliens. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had begun notifying lenders that the FHA was no longer in the illegal alien mortgage business. The reasons were common sense. DACA illegal aliens, or in media spin, DREAMERs, were not legal residents and weren’t being legalized.

Under Obama, FHA rules had been bent so far backward that people who were not only non-citizens, not only non-permanent residents, but weren’t even legally here, were having taxpayers guarantee their mortgages. Not only hadn’t the Democrats learned anything from the Great Recession, they were determined to make the irresponsible behavior of the FHA a decade ago seem sober and sensible.

And they aren’t giving up.

The December letter by Senator Menendez, who had recently been on trial for corruption charges, Senator Booker, on whose watch the $100 million poured into Newark public schools dissipated, and Senator Cortez-Mastro, who had been accused of taking dirty money, claimed to be, “appalled that the Trump Administration would exploit a federal government program to deny Dreamers an opportunity of owning their own home.” But it was the Democrats who had exploited a federal government program meant for poor Americans to benefit not only foreigners, but illegal aliens with no right to be here.

The letter by the three Senator Democrats falsely claimed that President Trump was targeting a “portion of the American public”, when in fact illegal aliens are not part of the American public. They demanded, “sound and unambiguous legal reasoning” for the move. The sound and unambiguous reasoning would be that illegal aliens are not legally resident in the United States and therefore do not qualify for loans.

Much of the furor over FHA loans for illegal aliens was stirred up by Dani Hernandez, an underwriter for NewCastle Home Loans. NewCastle in Chicago markets aggressively to DACA illegal aliens, declaring, “Don’t let the political climate worry you. DACA recipients are eligible to buy a home.” It also assures the illegal aliens that they can qualify for FHA loans and it “specializes in working with DACA recipients.”

Prospective FHA borrowers are also informed that they can get a loan with a credit score as low as 500 and a 50% debt-to-income ratio.

The illegal alien mortgage business, built on the backs of American taxpayers, is obviously profitable. But it’s also a silent nuclear weapon threatening mass destruction of the economy in case of deportations.

The more illegal aliens end up with FHA loans, and as those FHA loans are turned into Ginnie Mae Mortgage Backed Securities, deporting DACA illegal aliens would risk mass defaults on FHA loans which are backed by American taxpayers. Quite a few Ginnie Mae bonds are being held by Japan and China.

That’s why HUD’s move of stopping the flow of FHA loans to illegal aliens is so vital and important.

Not only do FHA loans endanger our economic security, they also endanger our national security. Their very existence serves as political leverage to prevent the government from enforcing the law. Every illegal alien mortgage not only robs American taxpayers, but puts them at risk of even worse losses.

And considering the role of mortgage backed securities in the Great Recession, the threat is real.

However, HUD has carefully avoided taking a clear position to prevent the inevitable lawsuits and overrides by Obama and Clinton judges embedded in the federal judiciary. Instead HUD officials have successfully warned off many lenders by creating ambiguity about the status of DACA FHA loans.

The riskier illegal alien FHA loans appear, the more irresponsible taking them on will seem. And lenders will be aware of the shadow of the “False Claims Act” hanging overhead if they bite on illegal loans.

This is far from an ideal solution. But it’s an understandable response by a crippled executive branch that has had its legal powers stripped from it by Democrat activists operating under the guise of judges.

But taxpayer-backed mortgages for illegal aliens are only the tip of the tottering FHA iceberg that President Trump needs to begin shutting down to avoid another recession caused by bad loans.

FHA loans to non-citizens are also extended to non-permanent residents and even to “refugees”. The Office of Refugee Resettlement had even been promoting Freddie Mac’s Islamic Sharia-compliant mortgages for Muslim “refugees”. Foreigners here under Temporary Protected Status, a category that the Trump administration has begun winding down, are also potentially eligible for FHA loans.

The FHA is deeply dangerous and troubled. It is in desperate need of reform.

American taxpayers have long been exploited by the FHA as a piggy bank to pay off Democrat voters. But DACA FHA loans have taken this a step further by taking the economy hostage for illegal aliens.

The FHA loan was created to serve Americans. If it is to continue to exist, it should only serve Americans.

There has never been any reason given why the United States government should be extending its credit on behalf of foreigners, whether they are residents, temporary workers or, let alone, illegal aliens.

The risk of such loans has been rolled into the overall risk for Americans. And the buck was passed.

The artificial stimulation of the housing market isn’t reason enough for the government to be putting the economy at risk and taxpayers on the hook for the illegal aliens whom Democrats hope to turn into voters. DACA was an illegal policy. FHA loans for DACA recipients piles illegality on illegality.

American taxpayers should be let off the hook for illegal alien mortgages before the cost grows too high.

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19 Politicians, Hollywood Stars, Media Elites Who Fantasized for Years About Mueller Indicting Trump Repeatedly Claimed Mueller ‘Closing In’

By Alana Mastrangelo

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Politicians, Hollywood stars, and media elites spent roughly two years echoing the words “Mueller is closing in” as they fantasized about President Donald Trump and his family being indicted over so-called Russian collusion during the 2016 presidential election. But on Sunday, the Department of Justice announced that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation did not find evidence that the president’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with the Russian government, “despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.”

“To my fellow Trump critics: Do not despair. Do not give up. Do not reduce your outrage,” tweeted actor Tony Schwartz reacting to the president’s 2017 tax bill, “Tax cuts are a fake victory that will come back to haunt him & Republicans. Mueller is closing in on Trump, I promise!”

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“If true, the Buzzfeed story is a political earthquake. Caution: we really know little; Mueller knows much. Time to be steady, let facts lead us to truth — The walls do appear to be closing in.” tweeted journalist Dan Rather in reference to an anti-Trump BuzzFeed report from January, which turned out to be fake news.

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Check out a few more of the politicians, Hollywood stars, and media elites who fantasized about “Mueller closing in” on the president and his family over the Russia collusion hoax.

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First son Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement on Sunday that Attorney General William Barr’s letter to Congress on the Mueller report has finally proven “what those of us with sane minds have known all along.”

As for everybody else, their focus appears to be shifting onto the Attorney General and even the Special Counsel, as House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) calls on William Barr to testify before Congress, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) floats the idea of subpoenaing Robert Mueller.

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SHAME OF THE NATION: 533,074 articles have been published about Russia and Trump… Networks Gave Whopping 2,284 Minutes to Probe… CNN STILL sitting outside Mueller’s office…

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By Rich Noyes | March 25, 2019

The amount of time and energy that the media elite — cable news, big newspapers, etc. — have spent talking and writing about the notion that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia is incalculable, but here’s one calculable slice: From January 20, 2017 (Inauguration Day) through March 21, 2019 (the last night before special counsel Robert Mueller sent his report to the Attorney General), the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts produced a combined 2,284 minutes of “collusion” coverage, most of it (1,909 minutes) following Mueller’s appointment on May 17, 2017.

That’s an average of roughly three minutes a night, every night, for an astonishing 791 days — a level of coverage normally associated only with a major war or a presidential election. In fact, TV reporters devoted more airtime to the Russia investigation than any of the Trump administration’s policy initiatives — immigration, tax reform, trade, North Korea, ISIS, the economy, veterans’ affairs, the opioid epidemic, to name but a few. Since his presidency began, nearly one-fifth (18.8%) of all of Trump’s evening news coverage has been about this one investigation.

The networks’ fixation on scandal over substance is one reason their coverage of the President has been so preposterously lopsided. From January 1 through March 21 of this year, the spin of Trump coverage on the evening newscasts has been 92% negative vs. just eight percent positive — even worse than the 90% negative coverage we calculated in 2017 and 2018.

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[To determine the spin of news coverage, our analysts tallied all explicitly evaluative statements about the President or his administration from either reporters, anchors or non-partisan sources such as experts or voters. Evaluations from partisan sources, as well as neutral statements, were not included.]

For those who spend all of their time on their phones or glued to 24-hour cable news, note that these shows still matter: despite today’s fractured media environment, the Big Three evening newscasts still have a larger audience than either their morning show counterparts or even the biggest cable news shows — a combined 24 million people, according to ratings compiled the week of February 25.

Back on March 10, two weeks before the Mueller report was delivered, ABC’s Terry Moran publicly warned that there would be “a reckoning for the media” if there report failed to deliver evidence to validate journalists’ years-long suspicion that the “current President of the United States assist[ed] the Kremlin in an attack on our democracy.” According to the summary delivered Sunday afternoon, “the Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

Even before that conclusion was made public, anti-Trump journalist Matt Taibbi argued that the “news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.”

As much as any of their hyperbolic spin, the massive onslaught of coverage during the past two years starkly reveals the media’s mindset. Now that the investigation they relentlessly touted has ended with an outcome favorable to the President they despise, it does seem a good time for that “reckoning.”

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MAXINE MELTDOWN: ‘THIS IS NOT THE END OF ANYTHING!’

MAXINE MELTDOWN: ‘This is not the end of anything!’

“This is the— well, it’s the end of the report and the investigation by Mueller. But those of us who chair these committees have a responsibility to continue with our oversight.”

Maxine Waters still believes the “Kremlin Klan” won the White House for President Trump, despite the evidence indicating otherwise.

But no one can convince her that just because Special Counsel Robert Mueller found there was no collusion with Russia, that it’s over.

“This is not the end of anything!” Waters told MSNBC’s Joy Reid as they realized the report was a giant nothing burger for Democrats.

“This is the— well, it’s the end of the report and the investigation by Mueller. But those of us who chair these committees have a responsibility to continue with our oversight,” Waters said.

“There’s so much that, uh, needs to be, you know, taken a look at at this point,” she claimed,” and so it’s not the end of everything.”

Reuters reports:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election did not find that any U.S. or Trump campaign officials knowingly conspired with Russia, according to details released on Sunday.

Attorney General William Barr sent a summary of conclusions from the report to congressional leaders and the media on Sunday afternoon. Mueller concluded his investigation on Friday after nearly two years, turning in a report to the top U.S. law enforcement officer.

Barr wrote to congressional leaders that “the investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president,” according to the Daily Mail.

Democrats aren’t giving up.

House Intel Committee chairman Adam Schiff insisted on “This Week” that there is “significant evidence of collusion”.

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SCHIFF WILL ‘HAUL PEOPLE BEFORE CONGRESS’ IF NECESSARY; WON’T RULE OUT IMPEACHMENT

Schiff Will ‘Haul People Before Congress’ If Necessary; Won’t Rule Out Impeachment

“There’s a difference between compelling evidence of collusion and whether the special counsel concludes that he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt the criminal charge of conspiracy.”

By Susan Jones | March 25, 2019

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the head of the House intelligence committee, said on Sunday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller may not have had enough evidence to prosecute President Trump, “but that doesn’t mean, of course, that there isn’t compelling and incriminating evidence that should be shared with the American people.”

And he intends to “haul people before the Congress” to get answers.

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Schiff, a leading congressional critic of President Trump, told ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos that “there’s a difference between compelling evidence of collusion and whether the special counsel concludes that he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt the criminal charge of conspiracy.

“And as I’ve said before, George, I leave that decision to Bob Mueller, and I have full confidence in him. And I think, frankly, the country owes Bob Mueller a debt of gratitude for conducting the investigation as professionally as he has.

“So I — I have trust his prosecutorial judgment but that doesn’t mean, of course, that there isn’t compelling and incriminating evidence that should be shared with the American people.”

Schiff said that six people “close to the president” have been indicted: “That hardly looks like vindication to me. But again, let’s see what the report has to say. If they’re so confident that the report is going to exonerate them, they should fight to make that report and the underlying evidence public and available to Congress.

“But I suspect that we’ll find those words of transparency to prove hollow, that in fact they will fight to make sure that Congress doesn’t get this underlying evidence,” Schiff said.

“But we are going to take it as far as necessary to make sure that we do. We have an independent obligation to share the facts with the American people. We in the intelligence committee have a particular obligation to determine whether there is evidence, whether the president may be compromised in any way, whether that is criminal or not, and of course there are indications he was pursuing money in Russia through Trump Tower and other potential real estate that could be deeply compromising.”

Schiff said his committee will ask administration officials — presumably Attorney General William Barr and others– to appear before his committee. “If the request is denied, subpoena,” he said. “If subpoenas are denied, we will haul people before the Congress. And yes, we will prosecute in court as necessary to get this information.”

Schiff said it was a “mistake” to allow President Trump to respond in writing to the special counsel. “If you really do want the truth, you need to put people under oath. And that should is have been done, but the special counsel may have made the decision that, as he could not indict a sitting president on the obstruction issue, as it would draw out his investigation, that that didn’t make sense.”

(Notably, the FBI did not put Hillary Clinton under oath when agents questioned her about her “extremely careless” handling of emails, as former FBI Director James Comey put it.)

Schiff refused to rule out impeaching Trump, despite the fact that the Mueller report contained no bombshells, such as additional indictments.

He again pointed to the Justice Department opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted: “That’s their policy,” Schiff said.

“And therefore, there could be overwhelming evidence on the obstruction issue. And I don’t know that that’s the case, but if this were overwhelming evidence of criminality on the president’s part, then the Congress would need to consider that remedy (impeachment) if indictment is foreclosed.

“So, it’s really too early to make those judgments. We need to see the report. And then I think we’ll all have a factual basis to discuss what does this mean for the American people? What risks are we running with this president? What steps does Congress need to take to protect the country, but in the absence of those facts, those judgments are impossible to make.”

Schiff also said Congress’s responsibility is different from that of Robert Mueller:

“It’s our responsibility to tell the American people, these are the facts. This is what your president has done, this is what his key campaign and appointees have done, these are the issues that we need to take action on, this is potential compromise.

“There is evidence, for example, quite in the public realm, that the president sought to make money from the Russians, sought the Kremlin’s help to make money during the presidential campaign while denying business ties with the Russians.

“That is obviously deeply compromising,” Schiff said. “And if it’s this president’s view that he still wants to build that tower when he is out of office, that may further compromise his policy towards Putin, towards Russia and other things. It’s our duty to expose that and take corrective action.”

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Liberals Turn On Mueller, Accuse Him Of Being Too Stupid To Find Trump Guilty Of Everything

By Joseph Curl

Special Counsel Robert Mueller was the darling of the liberal intelligentsia for the past two years, but as soon as he released his long-awaited report that ended up clearing President Trump of all charges that he colluded with Russia to sway the 2016 election, liberals turned on him. Hard.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who has made a career of appearing on liberal cable stations alleging all kinds of criminal activity by Trump and his campaign team, quickly said Mueller was wrong.

“It was a mistake to rely on written responses by the president,” Schiff said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “That’s generally more what the lawyer has to say than what the individual has to say.” Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said Mueller should have interviewed Trump under oath.

MSNBC host Chris Matthews, the guy who always got a thrill up his leg whenever he saw former president Barack Obama, also thought Mueller must be kinda dumb.

“Maybe he missed the boat here,” Matthews said of Mueller. “Why was there never an interrogation of this president? We were told for weeks by experts, ‘You cannot deal with an obstruction-of-justice charge or investigation without getting the motive.’ … How could they let Trump off the hook?”

Well, Chris, a few days ago you were singing the praises of the special counsel, now he’s “missing boats”?

Uber liberal Cenk Uygur, host of online news show The Young Turks, wasn’t going to let some stinkin’ report color his world. “Let me be clear, I CONCEDE NOTHING!” he wrote on Twitter. “If #MuellerReport didn’t look into Trump’s business ties with the Russians before the elections and didn’t look into his secret meetings with them after the election, then this is an epic debacle that looked into the exact wrong things.”

HBO talk show host Bill Maher agreed. “Did the Democrats put too much trust in the Mueller report? Because I don’t need the Mueller report to know he’s a traitor. I have a TV,” Maher told his panel of guests on his show — apparently referring to Trump (although by now, liberals are beginning to consider Mueller a traitor to their cause).

“Comedian” Chelsea Handler said: “I will admit my feelings for Mueller are conflicted now and my sexual attraction to him is in peril, but I still believe there is a lot more to come, and we must all march in the streets if we don’t see that report.”

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The Washington Post detailed the back-biting in a piece headlined, “For Democrats, the Mueller report turns their politics upside down.”

Democrats put their faith in Mueller. Now they are questioning how and why he did what he did. Should he have forced the president to answer questions in person, rather than in writing? Why didn’t he make a judgment on obstruction, rather than turning it over to the attorney general to make perhaps the most important call of the investigation? Did he interpret his mandate too narrowly? The second-guessing, still at a low level, reflects the frustration among Democrats and opponents of the president who already had connected dots that Mueller found not conclusive.

Soon, the charges will emerge that Mueller, who was once appointed head of the FBI by (gasp) George W. Bush, was in the bag for Trump all along. And of course, after the Mueller report was released, exonerating Trump of all those collusion allegations, Democrats simply moved on, joining together to collectively demand the full release of the report and all evidence gathered.

Which is what made the tweet by former FBI director James Comey‘s tweet so fantastic.

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Uh, Jimbo, you gotta back up a bit. A little more. There, don’t you see it? It’s not just trees, it’s a forest!

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