Carter Page files a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee over the Russian dossier
Last week it was reported that the Department of Justice admitted two of the FISA warrants used to spy on Trump aide Carter Page were invalid and never should have been issued because there was no probable cause to continue spying on him.
Now it looks as if Carter Page is going to start fighting back, it is being reported here that he has filed a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee and others entities which funded the discredited Russian dossier which was used as justification for the FISA warrants. Here is more:
Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court against the Democratic National Committee, law firm Perkins Coie and its partners tied to the funding of the unverified dossier that served as the basis for highly controversial surveillance warrants against him.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois’ Eastern Division Thursday morning, and was described by his attorneys as the “first of multiple actions in the wake of historic” Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse.
“This is a first step to ensure that the full extent of the FISA abuse that has occurred during the last few years is exposed and remedied,” attorney John Pierce said Thursday. “Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will not succeed in making America a surveillance state.”
He added: “This is only the first salvo. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how high. … The rule of law will prevail.”
Hillary Clinton also helped to fund the dossier but there is no mention of her in the article linked above, one has to believe Carter Page is too smart to include her in the lawsuit…if you know what I mean.
Despite James Comey and others in the FBI claiming the IG report vindicated the agency and the individuals involved we now know this is certainly not the case and it is good to see somebody is going to start fighting back.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Moderate Democrats may vote to acquit Donald Trump
Unless something unforeseen happens–and the left had hoped the John Bolton leak would be it but that does not seem to be the case–the verdict in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is not in doubt. The President will be acquitted and the only remaining question will be the final tally. We had expected this to go along party lines but it is beginning to look like some Democrats might be wavering.
Here is more:
A trio of moderate Senate Democrats is wrestling with whether to vote to convict Donald Trump in his impeachment trial — or give the president the bipartisan acquittal he’s eagerly seeking.
Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Doug Jones of Alabama are undecided on whether to vote to remove the president from office and are “struggling” over where to land, said Manchin.
All three senators remain undecided after hearing arguments from the impeachment managers and Trump’s defense team. But they could end up with a creative solution.
One or more senators may end up splitting their votes, borrowing a move from Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who voted for the abuse of power charge but against the one on obstruction of Congress.
And Dianne Feinstein has said she could possibly vote to acquit the President. This is not going to change the outcome of the trial, we already know how it is going to turn out, but what it will do is this: the Democrats want to make the claim during the election cycle that corrupt Republicans protected the criminal in the White House by covering up his actions during the impeachment trial, they want to claim the fix was in and use this to arouse their base, however if enough Democrats cross over and vote for acquittal it will end being a bipartisan acquittal and will lend the legitimacy to the trial that will not allow the Democrats to make that claim.
On another note, don’t you find it funny that for the most part we already know what the final vote tally will be and the trial has not even begun? In the interest of pretending to hear the evidence, or lack thereof, you would think all Senators would state on the record they cannot make a decision before the trial, but what do I know?
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Elizabeth Warren’s daughter cashed in on her mother’s position
Of course we already know how Hunter Biden was able to bankroll his father’s position into millions of dollars, as did Nancy Pelosi’s daughter and others, and now we are learning that Elizabeth Warren’s daughter was also getting in on the act. Here is more:
Amelia Warren Tyagi, daughter of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), piggybacked off her mother to cash in on corporate clients for her new company during the presidential hopeful’s time chairing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) oversight committee
Warren’s daughter, Amelia, demonstratively benefited from her mother’s position of power, using Warren’s influence to grow the company she co-founded in 2007.
BTG did not have a smooth start. As Profiles in Corruption points out, temp businesses are “largely about corporate connections” — connections which exploded after Warren landed her job as the chair of the TARP oversight committee, which “played a central role in the federal government’s bailout of financial firms”:
At the same time that Elizabeth Warren was meeting and talking with major Wall Street investment firms, her daughter’s firm BTG was adding high-profile advisors with connections to the same companies who would benefit and face possible scrutiny from TARP.
BTG went from a $4 million in revenue, with 200 people in its talent pool in 2009, to over $11 million in revenue and roughly 1,800 in its web over a three-year span.
Warren moved to establish “direct lines of communication with the executives of the most powerful financial firms in the country.” While she attempted to project a hardline, no-nonsense attitude against Wall Street giants, she struck a friendly tone behind closed doors
All of that, Schweizer noted, “occurred while her daughter Amelia was building BTG.”
This is just a sample, there is much more information if you follow the link, but suffice it to say that while Elizabeth Warren was cutting her political teeth by going after big corporations, behind the scenes she was building connections and these connections happened to benefit her daughter.
Amelia Warren Tyagi, you didn’t build that…
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
The Supreme Court rules in favor of Donald Trump’s ‘public charge’ immigration policy
Last August the Trump administration issued new rules which expanded the definition of immigrants who are considered in the “public charge.” Immigrants who are considered a public charge can be denied residency and deported so this new expansion of the rules was met with condemnation and naturally lawsuits were filed and a stay was ordered pending the outcome of the litigation.
But according to this story the Supreme Court has reversed the stay and the Trump administration is free to implement the new rules. Here is more:
A divided Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to begin implementing rules that make it easier for the government to deny limited-income immigrants residency or admission to the U.S. because they use public-assistance programs or might use them in the future.
The court, in a written order Monday, granted the administration’s emergency request to start enforcing the rules for now, a move that nullifies an order by a federal appeals court that blocked the immigration restrictions while litigation was ongoing.
The court’s action came on a 5-to-4 vote, splitting the justices along ideological lines, with conservatives in the majority.
Announced last August by the Department of Homeland Security, the rules effectively expand the pool of people considered likely to become a “public charge” under U.S. immigration law. The government can use the designation to deny an immigrant a green card for permanent U.S. residency, and to determine which noncitizens can be removed or barred from the U.S.
Using benefits like Medicaid, housing assistance or food stamps could render a person inadmissible.
Foreigners seeking immigration status in the U.S. generally have to show they have enough financial resources to keep them from relying on government programs that assist poor Americans. The denial of immigration visas on “public charge” grounds has increased during the Trump administration, even before the new rules.
It will not take the left long, if they have not started already, to start screaming about how Donald Trump is turning away asylum seekers and political refugees who have nowhere else to turn with no concern for what might happen to them if they are returned to their home country but that is a conflation of the issues.
This policy does not affect asylum seekers or political refugees but the left never lets the facts get in the way of a good story line.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Sunday, January 26th open thread: ‘Girl Like You’
“This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24 KJV)
Here is this week’s open thread. Please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.
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Here is Edwyn Collins performing “Girl Like you” live in 1995:
Barack Obama to publicly rebuke Bernie Sanders?
There have been rumors out there for a few months claiming that Barack Obama is very worried about the rise of Bernie Sanders because he believes the socialist from Vermont is too radical to win the Presidency. While he has remained mostly silent in the race to this point, the former President has already issued a warning to the candidates telling them to tone down the rhetoric and if this story is true he could be set to publicly go after Bernie Sanders as unfit to take on Donald Trump.
Former President Barack Obama has remained mostly silent through the early stages of the Democratic race to unseat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election but that may soon change, friends and associates tell FOX Business, as avowed socialist Bernie Sanders gains in national polls and seems poised to obtain front-runner status.
The people who spoke on the condition of anonymity say Obama’s preference had always been to lay low through the primaries aside from making some broad comments as he did in November of last year when, according to a report in The New York Times, the former two-term president, best known for expanding the size of government and his eponymous health care mandate, appeared genuinely worried about some of the increasingly leftist proposals being touted on the campaign trail from Sanders, the US senator from Vermont, and to some extent, Elizabeth Warren, the US senator from Massachusetts.
he has recently grown even more wary of Sanders as the Vermont senator appears to be gaining momentum in polls and the Democratic primaries begin to heat up with the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary both in February.
Obama has told people in private that Sanders is both temperamentally and politically unfit to beat Trump in the 2020 general election, these people say. Among his concerns are Sanders’ strident form of politics and confrontational manners where he was known not to seek compromise during his long years in the US senate. Meanwhile, Obama is said to worry that Sanders’ far-left policies, which include massive tax increases, free college tuition and massive student debt forgiveness, would alienate even traditional Democratic voters. And may alienate them enough to re-elect Trump
With that, Obama is weighing a more forceful rebuke of Sanders as the candidate to lead the Democrats in 2020
This story is only hearsay, and there is an undeniable bias in the article, but we do know that the insiders in the Democratic party do not like Bernie Sanders. We heard it earlier this week from Hillary Clinton when she admitted nobody liked him, and of course we know how the Democratic party rigged the 2016 primary to ensure he had no chance of winning the nomination.
It looks like the Democrats are up to it again this time around because it has been speculated that Nancy Pelosi delayed transmitting the articles of impeachment to the Senate so the trial would coincide with the Iowa caucus in order to hurt the Senator from Vermont. If Barack Obama comes out against Bernie Sanders it could be the final nail in the coffin.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
When the Inspector General report into the FISA abuses was released James Comey and others declared the report vindicated themselves and the agency despite the fact the report found dozens of mistakes which were committed. This was laughable on its face and then Michael Horowitz rebuked James Comey, claiming nobody was vindicated.
Eventually James Comey had to admit he was wrong about the FISA process and then to top it off a judge on the always silent, secret, unconstitutional FISA court took the unusual step of rebuking the FBI.
Now the Justice Department is admitting that two of the FISA warrants taken out to spy on Carter Page were not valid, here is more:
The Justice Department now believes it should have discontinued its secret surveillance of one-time Trump campaign adviser Carter Page far earlier than it did, according to a new court filing unsealed Thursday.
The Justice Department made that determination in a December letter to the secret court that oversees surveillance of suspected foreign spies, acknowledging it may have lacked probable cause to continue wiretapping in the last two of the four surveillance applications it sought against Mr. Page.
The last two applications were submitted in April and June of 2017. It now has concluded there was “insufficient predication to establish probable cause” in the last two renewals, which authorized about six months of surveillance on the former adviser.
Probable cause is the legal standard to obtain a secret warrant against suspected agents of a foreign power from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret judicial panel that approves such warrants.
The question which begs to be asked is this, if the Justice Department did not have probably cause to continue spying on Carter Page how is it that the department was able to get the warrants? The only possible way I see is simple, unless the FISA court was in on it the Justice Department fabricated evidence and lied to the FISA court.
And having said that we are led to one last obvious question, what is going to be done about the blatant abuse of power? (Isn’t one of the charges against Donald Trump in his impeachment trial abuse of power?)
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
FEC violation complaint filed against Bernie Sanders
For a man who is supposedly so concerned about the integrity of our elections I find it interesting that Bernie Sanders is allegedly violating campaign finance laws by setting up a dark money group to fund his campaign.
Here is more about the new allegations:
A dark money group founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders is violating federal campaign finance law, according to a Federal Election Commission complaint filed Wednesday.
The political nonprofit group Our Revolution, which Sanders founded in 2016, has been violating the federal “soft money” ban by boosting his presidential campaign since its launch in February 2019, the complaint from the watchdog group Common Cause states.
Campaign finance laws state that groups “directly or indirectly established” by federal officeholders such as Sanders can’t “solicit, receive, direct, transfer, or spend funds” for federal electoral activity that exceeds the limitations of the law, which in Our Revolution’s case would be $5,000 per election.
“Because Sanders set up Our Revolution and they have raised and spent money in candidate elections, Our Revolution is required to comply with contribution limits, register with the FEC and discloses its donors — but it hasn’t,” Common Cause attorney Paul S. Ryan told The Associated Press. “It’s his establishment of the group that triggers these laws. That means a $5,000 limit, full donor disclosure and no contributions from prohibited sources.”
“The facts surrounding Our Revolution, including its founding by Sen. Sanders, its receipt of six-figure contributions, its failure to disclose donors to the FEC, and its political spending in Iowa and elsewhere, point to a clear violation of the federal soft money ban,” Ryan added in a separate statement Wednesday.
If I am not mistaken all of the Democratic candidates have vowed to fight against dark money and big donors in politics buying the election and yet once again, if this is true, we find a candidate not quite living up to his promises.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Adam Schiff may have ‘mischaracterized’ Parnas evidence
A man named Lev Parnas has been in the news quite a bit over the last couple of weeks because of some text messages. If I am not mistaken this is supposedly new evidence against the President that was not included during the impeachment hearing. This is supposed to be pretty damning evidence and the left has jumped all over it.
But now, according to this report from the left-leaning Politico, Adam Schiff might have “mischaracterized” this evidence. Here is more:
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff appears to have mischaracterized a text message exchange between two players in the Ukraine saga, according to documents obtained by POLITICO — a possible error the GOP will likely criticize as another example of the Democrats’ rushed effort to impeach President Donald Trump.
Don’t you just love the way the article says the Republicans will use this new report to attack the Democrats rather than admitting this does call into question some of the truthfulness of the evidence which is being used in an attempt to remove the President from office? But anyway, here is more:
The issue arose when Schiff (D-Calif.) sent a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) last week summarizing a trove of evidence from Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. In one section of the letter, Schiff claims that Parnas “continued to try to arrange a meeting with President Zelensky,” citing a specific text message exchange where Parnas tells Giuliani: “trying to get us mr Z.” The remainder of the exchange — which was attached to Schiff’s letter — was redacted.
But an unredacted version of the exchange shows that several days later, Parnas sent Giuliani a word document that appears to show notes from an interview with Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma, followed by a text message to Giuliani that states: “mr Z answers my brother.” That suggests Parnas was referring to Zlochevsky not Zelensky.
The word document contains a series of questions and answers, but doesn’t identify who is doing the asking or answering. Yet the questions center on the hiring practices at Burisma, while the responses include statements such as “we wanted to build Burisma as [an] international company” and “we also thought it would help in Ukraine to have strong international board figures,” which seems to point to Zlochevsky — not the Ukrainian president — as the respondent.
So let me see if I have this right: Adam Schiff sent a letter to Jerry Nadler about some evidence, some of which was redacted, claiming to summarize the evidence. But when the texts were then unredacted it turns out they were not about the same person Adam Schiff claimed they were about. This does not sound like a “micharacterization” to me, it sounds like an outright and intentional lie.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
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