Published on Mar 25, 2019
President Trump Bashes ‘Illegal Takedown That Failed,’ Hints That Republicans Will Investigate The Hoaxers
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President Donald Trump was magnanimous in victory as the Robert Mueller investigation formally cleared him of Russia collusion and obstruction of justice, according to attorney general William Barr. Trump hinted that investigators will now look into “the other side,” as Rep. Devin Nunes prepares to probe the Democrats who cooked up the media hoax in an effort to divert attention from their Uranium One dealings with the Russian government.
Trump told reporters that the idea of Russia collusion is “the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” while White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said that Trump and his supporters are “vindicated” and Rudy Giuliani trolled Adam Schiff with a call for an apology.
“It’s a shame that the country had to go through this,” President Trump said.
The Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya who set up Don Trump Jr. for a meeting in Trump Tower as part of a Fusion GPS plot was operating out of the Washington offices of Cozen O’Connor, a law firm run by an anti-Trump former Obama administration official whose super PAC donated to Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential election.
Veselnitskaya’s work from the Cozen O’Connor office provides more evidence of a Democrat and establishment Republican effort to set up the Trump campaign for a future Russian collusion case. Veselnitskaya was allowed into the United States by the Obama Department of Justice while the former Obama official who runs Cozen O’Connor publicly warned then-candidate Trump that if he became president he would be investigated by the DOJ for contacts with foreign leaders. Veselnitskaya reportedly had dinner meetings with Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson the day before she met in Trump Tower and also the day after she went inside Trump Tower.
Big League Politics has confirmed that a Cozen O’Connor partner who lives in the same apartment building as James Comey’s friend Daniel Richman — who leaked classified information to the press on Comey’s behalf — spoke with Richman during the period that Comey and the Fusion GPS team were trying to obtain FISA warrants on Trump Tower.
Let’s break down the facts of an Obama administration official’s involvement in the Trump Tower plot:
Russian and U.S. citizen Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military veteran, was present at Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Don Jr. in Trump Tower after leading a lobbying push supposedly to repeal the Magnitsky Act. Akhmestshin is believed by insiders to be linked to Russian government intelligence, a fact that the Washington Post seized on when reporting that he met with Don Jr. and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower. A nonprofit group focused on promoting Akhmetshin and Veselnitskaya’s cause to lawmakers actually hired Cozen O’Connor, which the law firm confirms.
The Washington Post reported (emphasis added):
“In the spring of 2016, as the presidential race was heating up, Akhmetshin and lobbyists he hired sought meetings on Capitol Hill to make their case against the sanctions law. Akhmetshin hired former Democratic congressman Ron Dellums, along with a team of lobbyists from the law firm of Cozen O’Connor.
Steve Pruitt, a business colleague speaking on Dellums’s behalf, said his involvement was brief and ended when he determined that Congress was unlikely to change the law.
In June, after visiting Trump Tower in New York, Veselnitskaya came to Washington to lend a hand in the lobbying effort.
She attended a meeting of the team at the downtown offices of Cozen O’Connor, where she spoke at length in Russian about the issues but confused many in the room, who had not been told previously about her involvement, according to several participants.”
Washington Post passage ends
Cozen O’Connor managing partner Howard Schweitzer is listed here on a DOJ form from an investigation into the breaking of lobbying laws by Russians trying to repeal the Magnitsky Act — which was just a front to get Russians in the room with Don Jr. We know now that Natalia Veselnitskaya was actually operating out of the Cozen O’Connor offices.
Schweitzer worked as general counsel for the Export-Import Bank under George W. Bush and was chief operating officer of the TARP bailout program under both Bush and Obama from 2008-2009.
“In October 2008, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson appointed Howard as the first COO of TARP. In this position, Howard led program execution and built the TARP infrastructure. He served as a key point person regarding the financial crisis through the presidential transition and continued to serve as TARP COO under Secretary Timothy Geithner until August 2009,” reads Schweitzer’s Cozen O’Connor bio.
“He served as chief operating officer of the TARP in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations,” reads Schweitzer’s bio for a Politico piece he wrote in August 2016 headlined “7 Reasons Why Trump Would Hate Being President.”
Schweitzer’s virulently anti-Trump piece for Politico tries to make the case that Trump was “sabotaging his own bid for the White House.” Schweitzer said that if Trump became president then “He’ll be investigated to death” by Congress and the Justice Department for his business dealings and “relationships with foreign leaders.”
The narrative was being set.
The Philadelphia-based Cozen O’Connor law firm also has a political action committee that donated to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, in addition to Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Martin O’Malley. In the 2018 election cycle, the Cozen O’Connor PAC donated more money to Hillary Clinton’s dormant campaign.
Here is Veselnitskaya seated behind Obama ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul at a June 2016 congressional hearing focused on Russia.
Cozen O’Connor’s connections to the anti-Trump “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot are wide-ranging, and show up in unexpected places.
James Comey’s friend, Columbia University professor Daniel Richman, leaked classified information that Comey gave him. During this leaking period, Richman was apartment-building neighbors with a partner at the Cozen O’Connor law firm that strategized with Fusion GPS operative Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian plant who set up Don Jr. in Trump Tower.
Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS, led by Glenn Simpson, were part of John Brennan and Peter Strzok’s CIA-led “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot aimed at President Donald Trump and the Trump campaign.
“Yes, he is my neighbor,” Amy Wenzel, a partner at Cozen O’Connor, confirmed in a phone conversation with Big League Politics, confirming that they spoke. They live near each other in a Brooklyn high-rise.
The Washington Post’s release of Trump Tower documents shows the crowd surrounding non-sexual honeypot Natalia Veselnitskaya. The crowd of conspirators knew they were damaging Trump by setting up the meeting.
The Post confirms British-citizen music promoter Rob Goldstone’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which he described the conspirators’ push to get the meeting despite the fact that they knew it would create trouble for the Trump campaign.
“Rob Goldstone told the committee that his client, the Russian pop star and developer Emin Agalarov, had insisted he help set up the meeting between President Trump’s son and the lawyer during the campaign to pass along material on Clinton, overriding Goldstone’s own warnings that the meeting would be a bad idea.
“He said, ‘it doesn’t matter. You just have to get the meeting,’ ” Goldstone, a British citizen, testified.
The intensity with which Agalarov and his father, the billionaire Aras Agalarov, sought the Trump Tower meeting, which has become a key point of scrutiny for congressional inquiries and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was revealed in more than 2,500 pages of congressional testimony and exhibits released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.”
Washington Post passage ends
Natalia Veselnitskaya is also inextricably linked to the case against Paul Manafort.
The Russian attorney partner of Paul Manafort who was named as a defendant in new Robert Mueller charges is also linked to the Russian spy Natalia Vesenilskaya, who attended a meeting with Don Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower.
According to Mueller’s new charges, Manafort’s Russian partner Konstantin Kilimnik tried to intimidate or coerce witnesses in Manafort’s upcoming money laundering trial. That puts Konstantin Kilimnik at the center of the Mueller effort to find obstruction of justice in Trump-World (Mueller is giving himself until September 1 to try to find obstruction of justice, after finding no Russian collusion involving Trump).
So who is Konstantine Kilimnik? It turns out that Kilimnik is linked to Veselnitskaya, the Fusion GPS agent, according to Senate documents.
Here is how ProPublica described Kilimnik: “Konstantin Kilimnik: Manafort, who worked for the pro-Russian party in Ukraine before running Trump’s campaign, had an employee in Kiev named Konstantin Kilimnik who U.S. and Ukrainian authorities have suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence, according to Politico. Kilimnik served in the Russian army and learned English at a school that experts say often trains spies. Kilimnik denied being a spy to The Washington Post. Manafort had dinner with Kilimnik last August in New York, just before he was forced out of the Trump campaign amid growing questions about his work in the Ukraine, the Post reported.”
Documents reveal Kilimnik’s ties to Veselniskaya. Let’s take a look at United States Senate Judiciary Committee documents questioning Veselniskaya in October. Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Veselniskaya if she knew a handful of characters believed to be conspirators in the case.
Grassley and Feinstein specifically asked Veselnitskaya if she knew Konstantin Kilimnik.
Here is page 4 of the documents, naming Kilimnik:
Current Attorney General Jeff Sessions was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee as senator from Alabama.
Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Don Jr. in Trump Tower provided some of the basis for warrants to surveil Trump Tower and for other FBI surveillance measures on the Trump campaign.
The fact that Veselnitskaya, a lawyer herself, was in the meeting with Trump Jr. and Kushner opened the president’s son and son-in-law up to being qualified as “target associations” for law enforcement under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed during the Bush administration.
Veselniskaya’s link to suspected conspirator Kilimnik is now coming under scrutiny.
Facebook stored 7 years of passwords in plaintext, but it’s OK, they’re trustworthy!
Over half a billion Facebook users’ passwords sat unsecured on the company’s servers for years, the tech giant admitted, after an investigation uncovered the egregious bug – but it’s OK, only Facebook employees could access them.
Facebook acknowledged the glaring oversight after an anonymous employee blew the whistle to Krebs on Security, admitting “hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users” had been affected, then adding insult to injury with a casual admission that they’d discovered the security flaw “as part of a routine security review in January.”
The scandal-plagued social media giant hastened to assure users that “no passwords were exposed externally and we didn’t find any evidence of abuse to date,” but their post was cold comfort from the company whose CEO has explicitly called the users who trust him “dumb f***s.”
As many as 600 million users – anyone who created their password after 2012 – had their login credentials stored in a plaintext, unencrypted database where they could be searched by any one of 20,000 Facebook employees, according to the leaker.
Passwords – especially high-value passwords like Facebook’s – are normally “hashed,” or cryptographically scrambled to prevent hackers from using them even if they are able to break into a company’s servers. Storing this data in unsecured plaintext is the cyber-security equivalent of allowing guards to walk in and out of a bank vault without passing through a metal detector.
Facebook says it has fixed the bug and promised to notify all users whose passwords were stored unencrypted. The vulnerability is only the latest in a seemingly endless string of outrages. Earlier this month, it emerged that Facebook had made users’ ostensibly private phone numbers – given for security purposes only – into just another searchable attribute, with no option to opt out and the added indignity of those numbers being targeted with ads. In September, data from some 30 million accounts was stolen via compromised access tokens and, in December, seven million users learned that third-party app developers could access their private photos – even those they’d never uploaded to the platform.
While it had their attention, Facebook took the opportunity on Thursday to notify users about a cool new “physical security key” they could login with – a “small hardware device that goes in the USB drive of your computer” ideal for “high-risk users including journalists, activists, political campaigns and public figures.”
“There is nothing more important to us than protecting people’s information,” said Pedro Canahuati, vice president of engineering, security and privacy for Facebook – while presumably hiding a smirk.
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UK Denies Asylum To Christian Convert From Iran Because “Christianity Is Not Peaceful”
By Tyler Durden
The UK has denied asylum to an Iranian man because he said on his application that he converted from Islam to the “peaceful” religion of Christianity, according to The Independent.
The Home Office quoted excerpts from the bible in the man’s rejection letter – saying the book of Revelations is “filled with imagery of revenge, destruction, death and violence,” and concluded that “These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a ‘peaceful’ religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge.”
When contacted by The Independent, the Home Office essentially said “our bad” – claiming that the letter was “not in accordance” with proper policies for claims based on religious persecution, and that it was working to improve employee training.
Lawyers and campaigners said the case demonstrated a “distortion of logic” and a “reckless” approach to asylum seekers’ lives, stemming from a tendency by the department to “come up with any reason they can to refuse” cases. –The Independent
The asylum seeker’s caseworker, Nathan Stevens, tweeted “I’ve seen a lot over the years, but even I was genuinely shocked to read this unbelievably offensive diatribe being used to justify a refusal of asylum.”
According to the latest immigration statistics, there has been a marked increase in incorrect asylum refusals – with successful appeals up 5% since 2015-2016.
“You can see from the text of the letter that the writer is trying to pick holes in the asylum seeker’s account of their conversion to Christianity and using the Bible verses as a tool to do that,” said legal expert Conor James McKinney – deputy editor of the website Free Movement. McKinney said the case was a symptom of the Home Office’s reputation to “come up with any reason they can to refuse asylum.”
“The Home Office is notorious for coming up with any reason they can to refuse asylum and this looks like a particularly creative example, but not necessarily a systemic outbreak of anti-Christian sentiment in the department.” -Conor James McKinney
The case is a “particularly outrageous example of the reckless and facetious approach of the Home Office to determining life and death asylum cases,” said Sarah Teather, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in the UK. Teather added that JRS frequently encounters cases where asylum has been refused on “spurious grounds,” adding “Some of these cases require more legal knowledge to recognise than this bizarre misquoting of the Bible, but as this instance gains public attention, we need to remember it reflects a systematic problem and a deeper mindset of disbelief, and is not just an anomaly that can be explained away.”
“ALLAHU AKBAR”: NEW ZEALAND RECOGNIZES MUSLIM CALL TO PRAYER AS NEWS ANCHORS WEAR HIJABS
Mosque leader calls on governments to ban “hate speech”
MARCH 22, 2019
New Zealanders across the country stopped to recognize the Muslim call to prayer as news anchors and armed police officers wore hijabs in solidarity one week after the Christchurch mosque massacre.
The call to prayer preceded a two minutes silence. The video below appears to show the event at a shopping mall.
In other capital cities such as London, “Allahu Akbar” rung out in memory of the victims.
Meanwhile, according to one Guardian journalist, “New Zealand television journalists and anchors are wearing headscarves for their live broadcasts and using Arabic greetings.”
"New Zealand television journalists and anchors are wearing headscarves for their live broadcasts and using Arabic… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) March 22, 2019
Another image shows an armed female police officer wearing a hijab as a show of support to the Muslim community.
Al Noor mosque prayer leader Imam Gamal Fouda called for governments “around the world” to “bring an end” to hate speech by cracking down on “anti-Muslim rhetoric” by individuals and media outlets.
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HORROR! Angry Senegalese Driver Sets School Bus Full of Italian Children on Fire ‘To Avenge Deaths of African Migrants at Sea’ (VIDEO)
March 20, 2019
ITALY – A man of Senegalese origin set a school bus full of children on fire on Wednesday to avenge the death of African migrants at sea.
The angry Senegalese migrant hijacked a bus with 51 children and their chaperones on board and drove around for an hour, threatening everyone on the bus.
The children were handcuffed as the driver threatened them with a knife and said if anyone made a move he would light the bus on fire.
“[The driver] kept saying that people in Africa are dying and the fault is [deputy prime ministers Luigi] Di Maio and [Matteo] Salvini,” a young girl told ANSA.
Fox News reported:
The man, reportedly in his 40s, took the bus carrying two middle-school classes in Cremona province, about 25 miles from Milan, and drove for an hour before authorities intercepted the vehicle using three Carabinieri vehicles. Authorities were able to set up a roadblock based on information from an adult and a student who called a parent.
“While two officers kept the driver busy — he took a lighter and threatened to set fire to the vehicle with a gasoline canister on board — the others forced open the back door,” Commander Luca De Marchis told Sky24TV.
The driver started the blaze as officers broke the glass in the back door of the bus, allowing the passengers to escape before flames engulfed the entire vehicle. Video of the incident’s aftermath showed a charred metal frame.
One video shows African migrants hijacking a school bus in Italy as children flee screaming.
WATCH:
Italian firefighters put out the blaze; 14 children suffered injuries and were transported to the hospital.
Isn’t diversity just grand?
WOMEN’S MARCH FUNDRAISES OFF OF NEW ZEALAND MOSQUE ATTACK
Left-wing activist group Women’s March on Tuesday used Friday’s terrorist attack on a New Zealand mosque that killed 50 people to solicit donations from supporters
MARCH 20, 2019
Left-wing activist group Women’s March on Tuesday used Friday’s terrorist attack on a New Zealand mosque that killed 50 people to solicit donations from supporters.
Women’s March sent out a fundraising email from co-chair Linda Sarsour, who asked supporters to “give the gift of justice” by donating to the activist organization she leads.
Sarsour’s email noted Tuesday was her 39th birthday, “the age Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was when he was assassinated.”
Sarsour said “51 of my fellow Muslims were murdered in New Zealand as they prayed, killed for just being who they are,” misstating the number of dead, before going on to ask for donations to combat anti-Muslim sentiment. (RELATED: Linda Sarsour Attacks ‘White Feminist’ Nancy Pelosi)
“Will you donate $10 this month so that we can continue to stand up boldly against Islamophobia and be ready to show up for our neighbors in times of need?” Sarsour asked in the email.
“The same ideology that inspired the Christchurch shooters inspired the Pittsburgh shooter. They were inspired and radicalized by the xenophobic and hateful rhetoric of Trump and his administration,” Sarsour continued. “Trump has declined to address whether he recognizes the rise in white nationalism that is clear for the eye to see.”
“We see things differently. I want to forge a new way. We’re building a community out of fierce love for ourselves and each other and rejecting the politics of hate and divisiveness. Our children depend on it. Our country depends on it,” she said.
Sarsour then asked supporters to “give the gift of justice” by donating to Women’s March.
Women’s March did not return an email seeking comment on the fundraising email.
Female HS Student Says She ‘Felt Violated’ After Seeing Trans Student’s Penis In Locker Room
“I could tell that he was wearing women’s underwear and what was underneath it”
By
A Pennsylvania student attending Honesdale High School has filed a complaint with the United States Department of Education Office of Civil Rights after her school administrators allowed a trans woman, a biological male who feels he is a woman, to dress and undress in the female locker room.
The student said she felt violated and scared when she looked across the aisle in the locker room to discover a member of the opposite sex in his underwear. In a video released by her legal team, she says it was obvious he was biologically male, as she “could tell that he was wearing women’s underwear and what was underneath it.”
“It was the first period, and I had gym class,” said the student, “And I walked in with all my friends, and while I was putting on my pants, I heard a man’s voice, so I turned around, and he’s standing there on the opposite aisle looking at me.”
“I glanced down and I could tell that he was wearing women’s underwear, and what was beneath it.”
Latest: Pocahontas Threatens Anti-Constitutional Crusade Against ‘White Nationalists’
She added that having a man apparently gawking at her while in various stages of undress made her feel unsafe.
“When I knew that a man was looking at me, I felt very violated, and very scared,” she said. “Especially looking at me while I am getting dressed.”
Her attorney said that this should be considered a form of sexual harassment in the eyes of the law.
“Opening up restrooms and locker room facilities to members of the opposite sex is sexual harassment,” said Andrea Shaw, the high school student’s attorney, “And like many forms of sexual harassment the girls in this school have little power over their situation.”
The attorney also notes that the school’s only attempt to remedy the situation was to allow the female high school student to wait to change until the biologically male student was finished, making her chronically late to gym class.
According to local media, the school district’s superintendent claims he is not able to comment on the case, but stated that the school is following the letter of the law. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is expected to take up the case, otherwise biologically male students will continue to be allowed to dress and undress with biologically females.
WATCH
Et Tu, Ilhan? Anti-Semites, Anti-Israel Activists Attack Rep. Omar After She Comes Out In Support Of A ‘Two-State Solution’
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is learning the hard way that you can’t please everyone, and that includes anti-Semites and anti-Israel activists on social media.
Omar is, of course, well known to moderate Democrats and Republicans for her recent series of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel remarks, often accusing her Jewish colleagues of “dual loyalty” to both the United States and Israel, and implying that pro-Israel organizations like AIPAC are compromising Congress on behalf of the Israeli government.
The comments have divided her Democratic colleagues, who have waffled between censuring her for relying on anti-Semitic smears, and watering down their criticism out of fear they will alienate younger, more progressive aspects of their base.
Over the weekend, Omar penned an op-ed in the Washington Post, attempting to bridge the divide, explaining, in detail, her position on foreign policy as it applies to Israel and the Palestinians. In it, Omar unexpectedly advocated for a “two-state solution” rather than the complete destruction of the Jewish state, something her colleagues in the BDS (or “boycott-divest-sanction”) movement openly support.
The op-ed drew skepticism from moderate Democrats and most Republicans, but in a strange twist, it drew open scorn from anti-Israel activists and anti-Semites on Twitter, who had come to believe Omar was one of their own, only to be “betrayed” by her embrace of the only slightly less radical “two-state solution.”
When she tweeted out her op-ed, things got really hairy.
“When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we must fight for self-determination, security, and peace for both peoples. That’s why I support a two-state solution,” she tweeted.
Things only went downhill from there.
At least one angry supporter even declared Omar, “cancelled.”
Others accused the outspoken Muslim Congresswoman of stepping on the toes of Palestinians, who should be allowed to determine their own form of “liberation,” not be dictated to by an “imperialist.”
The replies to Omar’s Tweet are even worse.
That’s a pretty tough break for Ilhan’s supporters, but they can take comfort in knowing she probably doesn’t really mean it.
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