Judicial Watch Calls For Prosecution Of Candidate Clinton For Criminal Acts

[From Judicial Watch President]

FBI Director James Comey detailed Hillary Clinton’s massive destruction of government records and grossly negligent handling of classified information. Frankly, there’s a disconnect between Comey’s devastating findings and his weak recommendation not to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Federal prosecutors, independent of politics, need to consider whether to pursue the potential violations of law confirmed by the FBI.
Judicial Watch helped break open the Clinton email scandal and, in the meantime, will independently continue its groundbreaking litigation and investigation.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-statement-decision-fbi-director-james-comey-not-recommend-indictment-hillary-clinton/

Judicial Watch Statement on Decision by FBI Director James Comey Not to Recommend Indictment of Hillary Clinton
JULY 05, 2016

State Department Releases Documents Signed By Hillary Clinton's Aides About Classified National Security Emails

Former state employee Brian Pagliano also asserted his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination before the House Benghazi committee.

[From article]
Senior Hillary Clinton aide Jake Sullivan and former tech support staffer Brian Pagliano each signed agreements with the government pledging not to disclose classified information, according to government documents released Thursday by Republicans.
Both men signed the nondisclosure statements swearing to protect 'marked or unmarked classified information, including email communications,' according to documents released by the Republican National Committee.
The document each of them signed is called a form 312, which requires federal employees to swear, under potential criminal penalty, that they won't mishandle classified information.
Sullivan is a senior campaign advisor who served as Clinton's direct (sic) of policy planning at State, and who sent more than 200 emails that weren't marked classified at the time but were later found to be classified following an agency review.
That review occurred after revelations Clinton maintained her own home email server rather than conducting business on a State.gov account.
The matter is currently under investigation by the FBI.
Pagliano was an IT staffer for Clinton's 2008 campaign, and helped to set up her server at her home in Chappaqua, New York.


Jake Sullivan, a top foreign policy advisor to Clinton at her campaign, left, with Hillary Clinton

Pagliano invoked his 5th Amendment right not to testify in a lawsuit by Judicial Watch related to the email scandal.
"Mr. Pagliano will invoke his right under the Fifth Amendment and decline to testify at the deposition" scheduled for June 6, attorneys Mark MacDougall and Connor Mullin wrote in a court filing.
The documents state that the signers have received 'security indoctrination' about proper handling of classified information.
Spreading such information could cause 'damager or irreparable injury' to the U.S. government, according to the language included in the document.
Pagliano is also seeking to prohibit an 'audiovisual recording' of his deposition, citing constitutional arguments and the risk of 'absue.'
Clinton's longtime aide Cheryl Mills recently gave a deposition and was able to prevent release of a video recording, although a transcript was released.
The RNC got the documents through a FOIA request from the State Department. They released them hours before Clinton delivered a slashing foreign policy address in San Diego where she ripped Donald Trump as 'dangerously incoherent' and said he was unequipped to be near the nation's nuclear codes.
'These documents show that the conspiracy to conceal Hillary Clinton's emails from the public involved many top aides casting aside their sworn obligations to protect classified information in the interest of her political ambition,' said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.
'Hillary Clinton endangered our national security and created a culture where top staffers went rogue, silenced career officials and hid a reckless email scheme that placed her political ambitions above all else,' he added. 'These records show that like Clinton, her closest aides did not meet their responsibilities to protect classified information regardless of whether it was marked.'
The document release was just the latest instance of the email scandal intruding on Clinton's campaign schedule. Throughout the past year, the State Department has released troves of internal documents from those Clinton handed over to the agency after she left her post in 2013.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3622803/Bad-sign-Republicans-release-signed-documents-Clinton-aides-caught-email-scandal-pledging-protect-marked-unmarked-classified-information.html

Bad sign: Republicans release signed documents from Clinton aides dragged into email scandal pledging to protect 'marked and unmarked' classified information
Campaign aide and former state official Jake Sullivan signed document pledging to protect classified info 'including email communications'
So did tech aide Brian Pagliano, whose lawyers say he plans to take the Fifth rather than answer questions in a Judicial Watch lawsuit
The papers were standard for such federal employees, but Republicans released them Thursday in what looks like a bid to undercut Hillary Clinton on the day of a major foreign policy speech where she blasted Donald Trump
Clinton is under FBI investigation in connection with the email scandal
By GEOFF EARLE, DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE.COM
PUBLISHED: 17:01 EST, 2 June 2016 | UPDATED: 18:42 EST, 2 June 2016

NYPD Scandal Continues To Grow

[From article]
Two more high-ranking NYPD officials have filed for retirement amid a sprawling corruption probe, sources told The Post on Wednesday.
Deputy Chiefs Andrew Capul and Eric Rodriguez both put in their papers on Tuesday, bringing to six the number of cops who have headed for the door since being relieved of their duties pending investigation in a suspected gifts-for-favors scheme.
One of them, Detective Michael Milici, had his retirement request denied before getting fired last month for refusing to appear at a departmental trial.
The other applications remain pending.



An NYPD official said the planned retirements wouldn’t affect the ongoing investigation and denied that the cops were being forced out — even though Police Commissioner Bill Bratton last month said some may choose to leave to avoid humiliation.
“No one was told to retire. If they’re being advised by their peers, or union, or families, that’s a personal decision,” the official said.
“These guys are making personal decisions. They’re reading the writing on the wall.”
But a rank-and-file source said the situation was “not going over well with us lower-ranking guys.”
“The feeling from the ground troops is that they all should be fired,” the source said.
“If it was us, we would be crucified. Now we’re looking at these chiefs and wondering if there’s a double standard here. Because they’re high ranking, they get to retire, they get to avoid discipline and collect their pension.”
[. . .]



Capul was formerly second-in-command of Patrol Borough Manhattan North, while Rodriguez held the same post in Patrol Borough Brooklyn South.
They had been reassigned to desk jobs at the School Safety Division in Queens and the Support Services Bureau.
Capul was questioned by the feds about a trip he took to a recent Super Bowl game, sources have said.
In 2010, he was ousted as commander of the 34th Precinct in Upper Manhattan amid a spike in crime there and his public apology to journalist Debbie Nathan over the downgrading of her attempted rape in Inwood Hills Park to a complaint of “forcible touching.”
It’s unclear what Rodriguez did to fall under suspicion, but Brooklyn South covers the 66th Precinct in Boro Park, where officials are investigating ties between the NYPD and members of the Orthodox Jewish Community.
In April, a member of the area’s Shomirim private safety patrol, Alex “Shaya” Lichtenstein, was charged with bribing cops to score pistol permits for clients he claimed paid him $18,000 a pop for the service.

http://nypost.com/2016/06/01/massive-corruption-probe-is-sparking-an-exodus-at-the-nypd/

Massive corruption probe is sparking an exodus at the NYPD
By Shawn Cohen and Bruce Golding
New York Post
June 1, 2016 | 12:04pm | Updated

Another High Ranking NYPD Officer Tries To Retire

Deputy Chief David Colon, the commanding officer of Brooklyn Housing, has been put on desk duty.

[From article]

Yet another high-ranking NYPD officer has put in his retirement papers amid the FBI’s gift-for-favors probe into the department, The Post has learned.
NYPD Deputy Chief of Housing David Colon filed for retirement at One Police Plaza on Tuesday – the day after Deputy Inspector James Grant put in his papers, police sources said.
Colon allegedly had close ties to a former Harlem restaurant owner, Hamlet Peralta, who was recently indicted by the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office on charges related to running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. Colon has been transferred to desk duty.
The head of Colon’s union said the deputy chief retired for “personal reasons.
“He has a newborn child he would like to devote all of his attention to,” Roy Richter, president of the NYPD Captains Endowment Association, said in a statement.
Five other NYPD honchos caught up in the scandal are expected to file their retirement papers in the coming days, including Deputy Housing Chief Michael Harrington, Deputy Chief Eric Rodriguez and Deputy Chief Andrew Capul, sources said.

http://nypost.com/2016/05/25/another-cop-tries-to-retire-amid-nypd-corruption-probe/

Another cop tries to retire amid NYPD corruption probe
By Larry Celona, Shawn Cohen, Jamie Schram and Tina Moore
New York Post
May 25, 2016 | 12:22pm | Updated

NYPD Detective Charged With Failure To Cooperate

NYPD Detective Michael Milici

[From article]
An NYPD community-affairs officer who is the target of a federal corruption probe was hit with departmental charges for failing to cooperate, police said Thursday.
Detective Michael Milici was placed on modified duty last month after invoking his Fifth Amendment rights before a grand jury.
Milici, a 20-year veteran who served in Brooklyn’s 66 Precinct, was either served Thursday directly or through counsel, NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis said.
[. . .]
Milici was being questioned about his relationship with two businessmen suspected of offering cash and gifts to police brass in exchange for favors, such as free NYPD security at special events and rides to and from the airport.
The Post reported exclusively that Milici and other police officials took at least one trip on a private plane with the men in 2014, and that at least some on board allegedly had sex with a hooker dressed as a flight attendant. So far, nine mostly high-ranking officers have been transferred or had their jobs modified as a result of the federal investigation.
A member of the Jewish Orthodox community was hauled into federal court on bribery charges in April as part of the probe for helping expedite gun licenses for members of his community. Shaya Lichtenstein was secretly recorded by the feds bragging that he helped obtain gun licenses through his connections in the unit.
Since then, the NYPD has suspended 37 gun licenses and 17 are pending suspension after an internal investigation, Chief of Department James O’Neill said. He said 17 more are pending suspension.
“When a license is suspended, the weapons are surrendered,” O’Neill said. “Then thorough review of the license application takes place.”

http://nypost.com/2016/05/12/detective-at-center-of-nypd-scandal-refuses-to-assist-investigation/

Detective in NYPD scandal charged with failing to cooperate
By Tina Moore and Shawn Cohen
New York Post
May 12, 2016 | 4:06pm

Hillary Clinton Email Investigation Proceeds Via Attorney General

[From article]
Interviewed by Chris Wallace of Fox News (transcript here, video embedded below), President Obama pulled down the blindfold on Lady Justice and signaled that there was no crime at all when Hillary Clinton set up an unsecured private server and left classified information vulnerable to hacking by the world’s intelligence services.  He also created a new category of classification: “top secret top secret” as opposed to mere “top secret,” which he averred to Chris Wallace might be information that could be gleaned from public sources. All in all, it was a remarkable performance, in which the president of the United States in effect told the Justice Department not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.  There was plenty of boilerplate contending that he was not doing so:
[. . .]
But the president of the United States is on record that this is piddling stuff. Loretta Lynch, head of the Justice Department, serves at his pleasure. In a blatant example of "whom are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?," he claims:
"I can guarantee ... I can guarantee that not because I give Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch a directive, that is institutionally how we have always operated," Obama said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. "I do not talk to the Attorney General about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations. We have a strict line and always have maintained it. I guarantee it."
"I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI, not just in this case but in any case --.period," he added. "Nobody gets treated differently when it comes to the Justice Department because nobody is above the law."
Nope. The fix is in. If the FBI makes a criminal referral, and Lynch declines to prosecute, we are headed for a crisis that will echo Watergate.
Side note: The left has a new tactic for minimizing misdeeds that are inconvenient for it to confront. Naming the issue once is now a way of trivializing it. Only when repeated is it real. Thus, we need to worry about only “top secret top secret” or, as Whoopi Goldberg put it, “rape rape.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/obama_tells_loretta_lynch_to_not_prosecute_hillary_on_classified_email_crimes.html

April 11, 2016
Obama tells Loretta Lynch not to prosecute Hillary on classified email crimes
By Thomas Lifson

https://youtu.be/OSvRXs6iQbc

Video of the complete interview: [about 15 minutes]

White House Continues Lawless Conduct Stalling Prosecution of Criminal Abuses

[From article]
Another attempt by the Obama administration to run out the clock on a scandal.
For more than three years, the Treasury Department has been looking into fraud committed by solar companies who received taxpayer loans from the Obama administration. But they have yet to release their findings, and Congress wants to know what the hell is going on.
Daily Caller:
Republicans senators sent a letter Monday to Treasury Inspectors General Eric Thorson and J. Russell George, asking the officials for updates regarding the agency’s investigation into solar companies that inflated the market value of their products to get more taxpayer cash.
“As you are aware, the Department recently indicated that applicants included ineligible costs or otherwise overstated the value of their solar energy investments by claiming approximately $1.3 billion in unwarranted cash grants,” Republican senators, led by Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, wrote in a letter to Treasury officials obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Treasury Department said it would publish its findings by June 2015, but that never happened. Republicans are once again hammering the agency for not releasing the results of a probe into whether taxpayers were fleeced for billions of dollars.
Republicans noted the amount of potential solar energy fraud was “more than two-and-a-half times the amount of the Solyndra default.”
Republicans wrote to the department in November asking for the status of their investigation into solar companies, and lawmakers are again asking for Treasury officials to handover the “final results of your investigations.”
[. . .]



The Obama administration has handed out $25 billion in grants made by the Treasury to solar companies since 2009 as part of the president’s effort to grow green energy markets and fight global warming.
These grants, called Section 1603 grants, were created as part of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package and paid for 30 percent of solar energy investments. The program expired in 2011 — the same year Solyndra declared bankruptcy after getting $535 million from taxpayers.
In November, Republicans specifically called out SolarCity, a company chaired by billionaire Elon Musk, for being investigated by Treasury and Justice Department officials over allegedly abusing solar subsidies. SolarCity is being investigated for “possible misrepresentations concerned the fair market value of the solar energy systems,” according to an October Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
That solar program appears to be little better than a slush fund for Democratic Party contributors. When there's $25 billion in basically free money floating around, the charlatans and crooks will have a field day. That appears to be what transpired here.
It's no mystery why Treasury is dragging its heel on the investigation. Solar power is part of the president's ever burgeoning "legacy," and to have a multi-billion-dollar scandal taint it just won't do. When government picks winners and losers, you will inevitably see those who have figured out how to game the system to cheat taxpayers while lining their pockets illegally.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/treasury_dept_sitting_on_solar_scandal_far_worse_than_solyndra.html

April 13, 2016
Treasury Dept. sitting on solar scandal far worse than Solyndra
By Rick Moran

Prostitution Scandal Threatens Washington DC Bureaucracies

Palfrey hanged herself in 2008 before she was set to be sentenced for her crimes and left the book containing details of her 815 clients behind. Even though their names have not been revealed, the list of entities whos members used the services includes the FBI, IRS, the State Department and the Department of Commerce.

[From article]
The lawyer who represented the 'DC Madam' has released the names of 174 groups whose employees allegedly called her escort service.
Montgomery Blair Sibley listed the entities that include government agencies, embassies and huge companies that he says phoned Deborah Jeane Palfrey for call girls between 2000 and 2006.
Among those named were the FBI, IRS, the State Department, the Department of Commerce, the Embassy of Japan, Lockheed Martin and PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
In an email to Daily Mail Online, Sibley said he obtained the information from cell phone numbers dug up in a subpoena conducted by Verizon.

[. . .]
They are said to be included in a black book of clients that Palfrey left in Sibley's possession before she killed herself in 2008, before she could be sentenced for prostitution and racketeering.
Despite naming the organizations, Sibley is still barred from naming any of the supposed 815 clients who are said to have hired escorts.
Sibley represented Deborah Jeane Palfrey in 2008 when she was convicted of federal racketeering and various prostitution charges.
The scandal of her arrest rocked the nation's capital as some of the city's biggest power players, including father-of-four Senator David Vitter, were outed.
Palfrey hanged herself in 2008 before she was set to be sentenced for her crimes and left the book containing details of her clients behind.
The information inside the book was sealed by a judge, but Sibley has continued to battle with the authorities to try and get the names released.
He has been trying to side-step a retraining order that means he must keep the names under wraps.
On Monday he filed another motion, which included the names of 174 organizations in Exhibit B.
He said in the email: 'Back in February I had filed a lawsuit against Former Judge Roberts and the Clerk of the District Court in D.C. Superior Court -- the "state" court for the District of Columbia. Last week, the U.S. Attorney in her infinite wisdom removed that case to U.S. District Court which left me one last federal judicial opening.

[. . .]
The attorney has hit headlines in the past. He filed a failed lawsuit claiming Barack Obama isn't a natural-born citizen and also ran for president in 2012 as a write-in candidate
News of Palfrey's death in 2008 followed reports she handed a list of telephone numbers of 15,000 clients to a U.S. television network
She had vowed to identify as many well-known figures as possible to subpoena them as defense witnesses.
Palfrey had insisted her company, Pamela Martin and Associates, was a legal enterprise that provided 'high-end' clients with nude dancing and massage, but not sex and initially considered selling her phone records in order to raise money for her defense.
When she later released her phone records for free, they ended up shedding little further light on her clientele. 

[. . .]
In what could be the biggest sex scandal in the U.S. capital for more than a decade, Ms Palfrey caused the resignation of married 65-year-old Randall Tobias, a deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The list also thrust another official, Pentagon adviser Harlan Ullman, into the heart of the scandal.
However Senator David Vitter was one of the biggest victims. He admitted to being on Palfrey's 'list' and was forced into a grovelling apology.
He suffered months of attack ads and recently addressed the scandal in a campaign video.
The 30-second commercial released in November shows Vitter sitting at a kitchen table as he talks to the camera, saying: 'Fifteen years ago, I failed my family but found forgiveness and love.'
'I learned that our falls aren't what define us but rather how we get up, accept responsibility and earn redemption,' Vitter says, as the ad next shows him eating dinner with his family.
However, Vitter never directly refers to his involvement in a prostitution ring in Washington D.C., which was discovered in 2007 - seven years after he began using the service, according to his own words.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3534959/Lawyer-represented-DC-Madam-releases-names-174-groups-including-FBI-IRS-State-Department-used-escort-service-2000-2006-t-reveal-individual-clients.html

Lawyer who represented the ‘DC Madam’ releases names of 174 groups - including the FBI, IRS and State Department - that 'used escort service between 2000 and 2006', but he still can't reveal the individual clients
Montgomery Blair Sibley listed entities that he says used Deborah Jeane Palfrey's services
Among those named were Lockheed Martin and PriceWaterhouseCoopers
He said he obtained the information from a subpoena of phone numbers
They are believed to be contained in Palfrey's black book of clients
She left the book in Sibley's possession before she killed herself in 2008
Despite naming the companies, Sibley still cannot name individuals
By WILLS ROBINSON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 17:55 EST, 11 April 2016 | UPDATED: 20:50 EST, 11 April 2016

Second Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Resigns In Porn Email Scandal

FILE - In this Dec. 21, 2015, file photo, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael Eakin arrives at the Northampton County courthouse in Easton, Pa. for a hearing about whether he should be suspended while a judicial ethics court decides if his email practices warrant discipline. 

(AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

[From article]
A second Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice quit the bench Tuesday in a widening scandal over raunchy and otherwise offensive emails that he and others exchanged with friends and lawyers.
Justice Michael Eakin's decision to retire marks the latest fallout since embattled state Attorney General Kathleen Kane began releasing hundreds of emails in 2014 to the media and ethics agencies. Kane has since been indicted on perjury and other charges that she claims were trumped up because she took on the old boys' club of Pennsylvania's judiciary and law enforcement.
Eakin's lawyer, Bill Costopoulos, said at a news conference that an ethics trial on charges related to the emails, which had been scheduled to start in two weeks, would not proceed. He said Eakin would agree to the allegations, leaving "nothing left to try."
"This is the only process I know of in America where you can be charged with sending emails to friends that were inappropriate and face the death penalty," Costopoulos said. "I just don't think that's right."
Justice Seamus McCaffery, a Democrat, abruptly retired in 2014 after being suspended by the court for his role in swapping the emails.
The board that investigates accusations of judicial misconduct has said that Eakin sent or responded to emails that included a satirical video about a busload of "sluts" crashing, a joke about a woman told to keep "her mouth shut," and a joke about Tiger Woods that referred to his African-American and Asian background.
The email scandal, centered on the attorney general's office, has already led to dozens of people being disciplined or losing their jobs.
Eakin, 67, a Republican, has been on the state Supreme Court since 2002.
During tearful testimony in December, Eakin apologized for what he said he "allowed to happen," but he accused the news media of sensationalism and argued his job performance hadn't been affected.
"Perhaps my demeanor is one of the boys," Eakin said. "But what I sent was to people who were also one of the boys. It was in the locker room. I allowed, I created something that could be released."
The state constitution says judges lose their pensions if they act in a way that "brings the judicial office into disrepute," one of the allegations against Eakin. Costopoulos said he hoped that would not occur but it was not certain.
[. . .]
When Kane, a Democrat, turned over the new trove of emails in September, it was barely a week after Eakin voted with four other justices to suspend her law license.
[. . .]
Kane's license was suspended after prosecutors in suburban Philadelphia charged her with perjury and other offenses for allegedly leaking secret grand jury material and lying about it.
[. . .]
The exchange of explicit and pornographic emails by state prosecutors was uncovered as part of Kane's internal review of how the office handled the investigation into Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach now serving a lengthy prison sentence after being convicted in 2012 of 45 counts of child sexual abuse.
[. . .]
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf issued a statement calling the case "another reminder of why we must all work with urgency to restore the public's trust in their government as well as the integrity of the judicial system."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/16/second-pennsylvania-supreme-court-justice-resigns-over-pornographic-email-scandal.html?intcmp=ob_article_sidebar_video&intcmp=obinsite

Second Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice resigns over pornographic email scandal
Published March 16, 2016

Associated Press

Eighty Million Dollar Art Scandal Arrives in Court

Pei-Shen Qian said he was “stunned” so many people were fooled by his work.

Photo: ABC News

[From article]
At $8.3 million, it was the most expensive painting that the De Soles — the chairman of Tom Ford International and his socialite wife — had ever purchased, but they were getting what one source calls “a pretty sweet deal.” Weeks before the sale closed, a work by Rothko sold for $17,368,000 at Sotheby’s. Knoedler drew up a warranty of “authenticity and good value,” and the De Soles proudly hung Rothko’s “Untitled 1956” inside their luxurious Hilton Head, SC, home.
That was in November 2004. Come 2011, Domenico De Sole had new feelings about the artwork — ones that, a friend speculates, might have prompted him to yank the painting off the wall in frustration.
The Rothko had been forged. The heir never existed. And the De Soles weren’t alone as victims of deception.
From 1994 until 2009, Knoedler & Co. admittedly — but, the claim goes, unknowingly — sold 31 other bogus paintings. Through those sales, the gallery raked in some $80 million. Luke Nikas, Freedman’s lawyer, says that she earned $10- to $12-million between 1994 and 2008. Moguls and megalevel tastemakers all thought they were buying works by such abstract expressionist blue-chippers as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning.
The scandal brought down Knoedler, which closed its doors in November 2011.
Starting Monday in US District Court, a trial will examine whether Freedman, Knoedler and the gallery’s owner, 8-31 Holdings knew that the De Soles’ Rothko was a fake.
“Art frauds, forgeries and fakes comprise most of the art-crime world, which takes in $6 billion annually,” Robert Wittman, former senior investigator with the FBI’s art crime teams, tells The Post.
[. . .]
other art-world heavies opted to keep things quiet and turn blind eyes to the deception. “If you have a collection worth $50 million,” he says, “you don’t want one painting to tarnish the authenticity of all the others.”
[. . .]
Curators from the National Gallery of Art and the Guggenheim Museum were fooled as well; in the latter case, a Rosales fraud was borrowed for an exhibition.
As the trial nears, a few facts are certain. Rosales sold fraudulent art; after pleading guilty to nine counts that include wire fraud and money laundering, she agreed to cooperate in the investigation and is awaiting sentencing. Her boyfriend Bergantiñoswas arrested in Spain and remains there. Pei-Shen, who brilliantly forged work by the most lauded artists of the 20th century, is on the loose and untouchable somewhere in China.
[. . .]
In terms of how this was able to go on for so long, Judd Grossman, an attorney who specializes in art cases, chalks it up to the industry’s dark corners. “Unlike any other market where large sums of money change hands, the art market is unregulated,” he says. “It’s easier to perpetrate a scheme that is fraudulent or barely walks the line.
“Knoedler wasn’t the first such scandal, and it won’t be the last.”

http://nypost.com/2016/01/24/inside-the-80m-scam-that-rocked-the-art-world-and-hits-courts-this-week/

Inside the $80M scam that rocked the art world and hits courts this week
By Michael Kaplan
New York Post
January 24, 2016 | 4:04pm

ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos

Clinton Lawyers Provided Access to Classified Emails, No Oversight From Government Investigators

This is what happens when lawyers with relaxed rectitude run the government. The same thing happened in 2009, when Harvard University black studies professor Henry Gates, Jr. was arrested by city police. A private attorney met with the city solicitor, not a state prosecutor, without arraignment, and dismissed the charge without having jurisdiction to do so. It is how lawyers abuse their privileges and when confronted they assert they are officers of the court. Ahem! It raises the question of how thoroughly the White House and its acolyte, Eric "White people are cowards" Holder corrupted the Department of Justice. J. Christian Adams revealed what was done in the civil rights division in his book, Injustice. Also see John Fund and Hans van Spakovsky's book, Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk. Hope that a less corrupt president is elected in  2016 and makes an attempt to clean up the mess. 

[From article]

Clinton’s private lawyer got his way when he pushed back after being asked to delete all copies of a classified email—a level of deference an expert calls ‘far from the norm.’
The State Department put up virtually no resistance when Hillary Clinton’s private lawyer requested to keep copies of her emails—even though those emails contained classified information, and even though it was unclear whether the attorney was cleared to see such secrets.Experts on the handling of classified information tell The Daily Beast that the seemingly chummy arrangement between Clinton’s lawyer and her former State Department aides was “quite unusual.”
[. . .]
Patrick F. Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, who had worked under Clinton, asked Kendall to delete all electronic copies of the message in his possession. (Copies were sent to the State Department.)
But Kendall resisted, saying he needed a full record of his own of the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton had sent, in order to respond to information requests from a House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on U.S. officials in Benghazi, Libya, and from the inspectors general of the State Department and the intelligence agencies.
“I therefore do not believe it would be prudent to delete” the email from the “master copies” that Kendall’s firm was maintaining, he wrote.
There is no indication that Kennedy, who oversees physical and information security for the State Department, protested the private lawyer’s position or tried further to persuade Kendall to delete the classified email.
[. . .]



“There are a number of attorneys around who handle clients and cases involving classified information. They are almost never allowed to retain classified material in their office, whether they have a safe or not. Sometimes they are not even allowed to review the classified information, even if they are cleared for it, because an agency will say they don’t have a ‘need to know.’ In any event, the deference shown to Mr. Kendall by the State Department was quite unusual.”
[. . .]
The arrangement with Kendall has been previously reported. But the documents reveal new details about what was happening inside the State Department as officials moved ahead with the unorthodox setup.
At one point, a State Department lawyer questioned whether Kendall or one of his associates, Katherine Turner, was qualified to receive and maintain classified information.
[. . .]



The question of whether Kendall should be allowed to keep classified email received new scrutiny in July 2015, after investigators found additional Clinton emails that they thought contained classified information.
At the time, Grassley said that at least two emails contained “top secret, sensitive compartmented information.” Investigators found that Clinton’s emails contained information from at least five intelligence agencies.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/15/how-the-state-department-caved-to-hillary-clinton-s-lawyer-on-classified-emails.html

01.15.16 12:01 AM ET
Updated 12:00 p.m. Jan. 15, 2016

How the State Department Caved to Hillary Clinton’s Lawyer on Classified Emails
WRITTEN BYShane Harris, Tim Mak

Multi Billion Dollar Scandal in Malaysia

[From article]
[Wall Street Journal]
It is a story of political intrigue, backroom politics and billions of dollars in missing money. At the center of it all is Prime Minister Najib Razak, who founded 1MDB. A Malaysian government probe found that nearly $700 million moved through banks, agencies and companies linked to 1MDB before being deposited into Mr. Najib’s alleged private bank accounts ahead of a close election. The source of the money is unclear, though in August, Malaysia’s anticorruption body said the funds were a donation from the Middle East. The donor wasn’t specified.
[. . .]
The context is important here. Malaysia has a diverse population, with Muslim ethnic Malays in a smallish majority, but with a substantial minority of infidel Chinese and Indians. The Malays insist that the country is officially Islamic, and resent strongly the economic success of the minorities, so much so that affirmative action with explicit quotas has been practiced for many years.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/10/multibilliondollar_scandal_in_malaysia_has_echoes_for_american_conservatives_.html

October 26, 2015
Multibillion-dollar scandal in Malaysia has echoes for American conservatives
By Thomas Lifson

New Book About Watergate Scandal

At the height of the Watergate scandal it was apparent to me that the war on Nixon was nearing the end of a decade plus war between two large economic and political organizations. One based in Acapulco, the other in Winchester MA. I.F. Stone's 1973 essay in The New York Review of Books, about that war provided a structure. Victor Lasky's It Didn't Start with Watergate; and Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin's Silent Coup revealed even more. It was obvious that Woodward and Bernstein were simply stenographers, as per Max Holland's Leak. I asked Bernstein at a Harvard University award ceremony why he denied he was a briefer for Alexander Haig at the JCS before he was a journalist. Woodward's reply was, "That's garbage." There's more like cooperating journalists, who covered for the lawyers and politicians as they still do today.

[From article]
Geoff Shepard has written an important book, The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot that Brought Nixon Down. It will probably go a long way to restore President Nixon's a
[. . .]
Finally, in Part V, covering Chapter 10, Shepard asks, "So What?" Why worry about Watergate today? Nixon and the others were guilty, and that's the end of it. But Nixon and his team were "guilty" only if you ignore all the counter-evidence that Shepard brings out so effectively.
Another one of the so-whats is that since Judge Sirica did not allow a fair trial, Shepard suggests that the descendants should petition the original trial court, the federal district court for the District of Columbia, for a writ of error coram nobis, "a writ for a judgment that rests on an error of fact which was not know at the time of the judgment and which, if known, would have prevented judgment" (p. 234).
In layman's terms, they should reopen the books and look into errors of fact and violations of due process, to restore Nixon's reputation and that of his team. It would be expensive, Shepard forewarns, but worth it.
Apart from any legal reopening of the case, does any court TV channel wish to take up the challenge and incorporate Shepard's new evidence of flagrant misconduct and gross and widespread denial of due process, with a bipartisan team of legal analysts?

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/revisiting_watergate_a_review_of_the_emrealem_watergate_scandal.html

September 17, 2015
Revisiting Watergate: A Review of the Real Watergate Scandal
By James Arlandson

Sex Performance At University of Buenos Aires Causes Scandal

Scandalous Sex Performance

[From article]
The hardcore sex acts were played out Wednesday night by actors in an open space at the social sciences department of the University of Buenos Aires. It was described as "post-porn" performance art.
Education officials are condemning the performance, which included sadomasochistic acts.
Lucia Romano, president of the department's student center, told local Radio Continental on Thursday that performers left behind a mess of condoms and urine.
Images and videos of the performance with actors having sex surrounded by onlookers were widely broadcast on Twitter.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_ARGENTINA_SEX_PERFORMANCE_SCANDAL_?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-07-02-16-19-35

Jul 2, 4:19 PM EDT
SEX PERFORMANCE AT UNIVERSITY CAUSES SCANDAL IN ARGENTINA
AP

Obstruction Continues Covering Up Whatever Hillary Clinton Did

Hillary's Women: Huma Abedin, right, and Cheryl Mills

[From article]
State Department BlackBerry devices issued to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin have likely been destroyed or sold off, the department said in a court filing on Wednesday.
Mills and Abedin “were each issued BlackBerry devices,” department Executive Secretary Joseph Macmanus wrote in the filing.
The department, however, “has not located any such device,” and believes that they would have been destroyed or removed from the department's control.
“Because the devices issues to Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin would have been outdated models, in accordance with standard operating procedures those devices would have been destroyed or excessed,” Macmanus added.
State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed later on Wednesday afternoon that the two former officials’ devices were returned to the department after they left office.
“They belong to the United States government, and when you leave an agency you just turn it in,” Kirby said. “So yes, they were turned in. Where they are now I couldn’t begin to tell you.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/251476-clinton-aides-blackberries-likely-destroyed

Clinton aides’ BlackBerrys likely destroyed
By Julian Hattem
08/19/15 02:05 PM EDT

O'Keefe Exposes More Sharpton Fund Raising and ACORN Abuses

Oh, wait. Is that Brian Williams identifying Al Sharpton as an FBI informant? That means The New York Reverend uses the FBI for fund raising. Is that like the Clintons using their government offices for donations? It gets confusing, what the purpose of government is.

[From article]
“We have a story we’re going to release this coming week and I’ve never thought about this before but I am afraid for my life on this one,” O’Keefe tweeted on Saturday.
Whatever its nature, the story promises to be a big one given the impact generated by O’Keefe’s previous work.
In 2007, O’Keefe posed as a donor wanting to give money to Planned Parenthood to pay for the abortion of black and other minority babies. Workers at numerous Planned Parenthood clinics agreed to accept the donation on these terms.
O’Keefe’s biggest scalp was undoubtedly his 2009 take down of ACORN, an advocacy organization for people on low income. Hidden camera footage published by O’Keefe showed ACORN employees giving advice on how to evade detection for tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. Congress voted to eliminate federal funding for ACORN as a result of the exposé.
In August 2014, O’Keefe demonstrated the porous state of the U.S. border when he crossed an unguarded footbridge in the upper Rio Grande while dressed as Osama Bin Laden.
For O’Keefe’s sake, let’s hope that he doesn’t end up like Andrew Breitbart, the conservative journalist who weeks before his untimely death on March 1, 2012 promised to release devastating video footage of President Obama.

http://www.infowars.com/james-okeefe-i-am-afraid-for-my-life/

JAMES O’KEEFE: “I AM AFRAID FOR MY LIFE”
Journalist set to release bombshell story
by PAUL JOSEPH WATSON | FEBRUARY 23, 2015

* * *

Al Sharpton is all about the Benjamins, a daughter of police chokehold victim Eric Garner claims in a bombshell videotape.
Erica Snipes tees off on the reverend as interested primarily in money during a secretly recorded conversation by controversial conservative activist James O’Keefe’s group, Project Veritas.
One of O’Keefe’s investigators poses as a Garner supporter with a hidden camera during a protest last month at the St. George Ferry Terminal on Staten Island.
“You think Al Sharpton is kind of like a crook in a sense?” the investigator is heard asking Garner’s oldest daughter.
[. . .]
In the video, Sharpton is also criticized by leaders and supporters involved in the Michael Brown-police shooting case in Ferguson, Mo., and the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida, according to the Project Veritas videotapes.
Jean Petrus, a Brooklyn businessman who attended a recent Trayvon Martin Foundation fund-raiser in Florida, is also seen criticizing Sharpton in the secretly taped video.
“He knows how to make money and get money. They’re shakedown guys to me. You know, let’s call it what it is, they’re shakedown,” he says in the video.

http://nypost.com/2015/02/24/eric-garners-daughter-on-al-sharpton-hes-all-about-the-money/

Eric Garner’s daughter on Al Sharpton: ‘He’s all about the money’
By Kevin Sheehan and Carl Campanile
New York Post
February 24, 2015 | 12:01am

Updated: Eleven Atlanta Educators Jailed For Test Cheating For Bonuses, Eight Sentenced To Prison

Posted April 2, 2015 6:22 PM ET; Last Updated April 14, 2015 9:13 PM ET


Former Deerwood Academy assistant principal Tabeeka Jordan, center, is led to a holding cell after a jury found her guilty in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial, Wednesday, April 1, 2015, in Atlanta. Jordan and 10 other former Atlanta Public Schools educators accused of participating in a test cheating conspiracy that drew nationwide attention were convicted Wednesday of racketeering charges. 

(AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kent D. Johnson, Pool)


[From article]

Eight former Atlanta public school educators were ordered on Tuesday to serve between one and seven years in prison for their convictions on racketeering charges in one of the nation's largest test-cheating scandals.
The lengthy prison sentences, unusual for educators, contrasted to the treatment of two defendants in the case also found guilty by a jury this month. Both accepted responsibility under a deal with prosecutors that spared them significant time behind bars.
[. . .]
"There were thousands of children that were harmed in this thing," Baxter said during a rancorous hearing.
"It’s like the sickest thing that's ever happened to this town," he later said of the scandal that raised national alarm about high-stakes testing.
[. . .]
Erasing wrong answers was part of the cheating by the educators under pressure to meet test targets, prosecutors said during a nearly six-month trial.
Student achievement helped the former principals, teachers and administrators to secure promotions and cash bonuses.
A Georgia grand jury in 2013 roiled the community by indicting 35 Atlanta educators, including former school Superintendent Beverly Hall, on conspiracy and other charges.
[. . .]
While cheating has been reported in 40 states and Washington, D.C., in recent years, educators do not usually serve prison time,

http://news.yahoo.com/pleas-mulled-former-atlanta-educators-test-cheating-scandal-120733406.html;_ylt=AwrBJR8ROi1VG0YAVUTQtDMD

Prison sentences for eight former Atlanta educators in test-cheating scandal
By David Beasley
April 14, 2015

* * *

[From article]
A group of former Atlanta educators convicted in a test cheating scandal were locked up in jail Thursday as they await sentences that could send them to prison for years.
In one of the nation's largest cheating scandals of its kind, the 11 defendants were convicted Wednesday of racketeering for their roles in a scheme to inflate students' scores on standardized exams.
They include teachers, a principal and other administrators, who were accused of falsifying test results to collect bonuses or keep their jobs in the 50,000-student Atlanta public school system. A 12th defendant, a teacher, was acquitted of all charges by the jury.
The racketeering charges carry up to 20 years in prison. The convicted former educators are set to be sentenced later this month.
"This is a huge story and absolutely the biggest development in American education law since forever," University of Georgia law professor Ron Carlson said. "It has to send a message to educators here and broadly across the nation. Playing with student test scores is very, very dangerous business."
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/58447a404ff34413be536de642a38a99/former-atlanta-educators-jailed-test-cheating-scandal

Former Atlanta educators jailed in test cheating scandal
By KATE BRUMBACK
Apr. 2, 2015 12:21 PM EDT

Liberal White House Lawyers More Corrupt Than During The Watergate Scandal

[From article]
Bar associations throughout the legal system adopted requirements that lawyers receive regular training in “legal ethics.” Young leftist lawyers like Lois Lerner joined – indeed, Lerner was president of – the Council on Government Ethics Laws, founded in the middle of the Watergate scandal to insure that lawyers never again would feel that they could participate in such shenanigans.
These reforms are a total failure. The villains in all the dreadful deeds of Clinton and Obama presidencies are lawyers. [. . .]
these corrupt lawyers abuse the powers of their office to persecute political enemies (ask Ted Stevens, Scooter Libby, Rick Perry, or Bob Menendez) and exonerate political friends like Lois Lerner.



If the innocent are tormented by prosecutors for the sin of offending the president, then the culpable escape the criminal justice system through a politicized Justice Department that refuses to prosecute or even seriously investigate Executive Branch miscreants like Lois Lerner and Hillary Clinton, who by their own statements have violated myriad federal laws. [. . .]
virtually every decision regarding the criminality of Obama appointees has been dismissed by other Obama appointees.
Watergate reforms were intended to end the practice of Executive Branch agencies hiding information and using spurious claims of privileged communications. New laws like the Presidential Records Act, the Ethics in Government Act, and the Sunshine Act were enacted, and the Freedom of Information Act was amended to close loopholes for rogue presidential administrations.
[. . .]
The Obama administration hides everything that may hurt it politically or uncover its wrongdoings. Every sort of spurious “privilege” is claimed, even to the point of the IRS refusing to give taxpayers information collected about the taxpayers themselves on the grounds that it would violate confidentiality rules.
[. . .]
Consider Supreme Court Justice Kagan. She refused to recuse herself from litigation regarding Obamacare though she worked in the Justice Department on that law. Even more nauseating, Kagan admitted that when Reagan won the presidency, she got drunk, noting also that “a lot of people” got drunk, too.
[. . .]



Every nasty trick, every blatant lie, every toying with the system must be exposed, and the message presented to the American people must be this: every single one of the Watergate reforms failed utterly and contemptibly.
The only reform that can work is to strip from the Executive Branch of government so much power that there will be very little power to abuse in the future. Abolish the IRS, abolish much of the Justice Department (federal laws can be enforced perfectly well by state government), abolish most or maybe all of the “independent” federal regulatory agencies, strip the president and his cabinet officers of vast amounts of power currently delegated to them by Congress, and recognize that the only cure for political corruption is to take as much power away from Washington politicians and lawyers as possible.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/04/a_scourge_of_lawyers_postwatergate.html

April 8, 2015
A Scourge of Lawyers Post-Watergate
By Bruce Walker

Cheating Scandal At Stanford University

One book about the widespread cheating in contemporary society is Cheating Culture by David Callahan.

[From article]
Among "a smattering of concerns from a number of winter courses," he said, one faculty member reported allegations that may involve as many as 20 percent of the students enrolled in one of Stanford's large introductory courses.
The allegations follow incidents of academic cheating at other top-ranked U.S. colleges.
[. . .]
Last fall, a story in the Stanford Daily reported that a professor of statistics conducted an experiment to find out how many of his students had cheated while at Stanford. The result showed that roughly 40 percent of 86 students who responded had done so.
[. . .]
Last fall, up to 64 Dartmouth College students -- including some athletes -- faced suspension or other disciplinary action for cheating in a sports ethics class.
At the same time, University of North Carolina employees were found to have participated in an 18-year cheating scandal to help 3,100 students make good grades with little work.
In 2012, Harvard University investigated 125 students in what it called "the most widespread cheating scandal" in campus history.

http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_27799963/stanford-university-reports-allegations-cheating-by-students

Stanford University looks into allegations of cheating by students
By Tracy Seipel
tseipel (at) mercurynews.com

POSTED: 03/27/2015 01:22:01 PM PDT

New Book Reveals Pelosi Hid Her Role In Housing Crisis

[From article]
In a just-released book, former FCIC member Peter Wallison says that a Democratic Congress worked with the commission's Democratic chairman to whitewash the government's central role in the mortgage debacle. The conspiracy helped protect some of the Democrats' biggest stars from scrutiny and accountability while helping justify the biggest government takeover of the financial sector since the New Deal.
Wallison's sobering, trenchantly written "Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World's Worst Financial Crisis and Why It Could Happen Again" reveals that the Democrat-led panel buried key data proving that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and other federal agencies pushed the housing market over the subprime cliff. The final FCIC report put the blame squarely on Wall Street.
In 2009, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed her California pal Phil Angelides, a long-time Democrat operative, to lead the commission. The fix seemed to be in, and Wallison's account of the inner workings of the 10-member body confirms it.
[. . .]
"The FCIC majority misused its mandate for political purposes," Wallison writes, adding that the panel made sure its findings supported Democrat demands for a "new New Deal" that would put even more of the banking industry under federal control.
Democrats passed the Dodd-Frank Act in July 2010, six months before the FCIC released its report — "a clear demonstration that the Democratic Congress knew well in advance exactly what this well-controlled commission would say." After Dodd-Frank shockingly left Fannie and Freddie untouched, the FCIC excused the glaring oversight by exonerating the toxic twins and their affordable-housing masters at HUD.
As a result, Fannie and Freddie, now under full federal control, are back making low down payment loans to low-income borrowers, and the Dodd-Frank-mandated Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is forcing banks to ignore credit risks in the name of affordable housing.
A corrupt investigation led to corrupt reforms.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/012215-735877-whistleblower-reveals-pelosi-covered-up-government-role-in-housing-crisis.htm?p=full

Whistleblower: Pelosi Covered Up Role In Crisis
06:33 PM ET
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