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One of Washington's most powerful lobbying firms did not disclose the wide extent of its lucrative political work for a Ukrainian group tied to both onetime Trump adviser Paul Manafort and to pro-Russian politicians, new records show. The firm, the Podesta Group, said nothing in a 2012 lobbying report to Congress about at least 32 meetings, emails and other communications it had with the State Department, at a time when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was scrutinizing Ukraine's upcoming election, records show. The new disclosures shed light on the web of contacts between Russian-leaning Ukrainians, Washington lobbyists and U.S. policymakers...

"HSBC case blows lid off Clintons' offshore empire Panama Papers suggest ties to massive money-laundering scheme" The arrest of the head of global foreign exchange cash trading at HSBC bank may shed new light on suspicions the Clinton Foundation has been involved in illegal offshore money-laundering operations on a massive scale. The investigation into HSBC currency trader Mark Johnson and associate Stuart Scott for their alleged role in a “conspiracy to rig currency benchmarks” by front-running customer orders has escalated to the point where the Department of Justice is threatening to tear up a 2012 agreement to fine HSBC a...

he FBI's investigation of Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, includes a keen focus on a series of suspicious wire transfers in which offshore companies linked to Manafort moved more than $3 million all over the globe between 2012 and 2013. Much of the money came into the United States. These transactions — which have not been previously reported — drew the attention of federal law enforcement officials as far back as 2012, when they began to examine wire transfers to determine if Manafort hid money from tax authorities or helped the Ukrainian regime close to Russian President Vladimir...

With the number of women in Hollywood coming forward and exposing Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual harassment and rape, another case has been gripping the Middle East after prominent Islamist thinker Tariq Ramadan was accussed of raping Salafist-turned secular liberal activist Henda Ayari.Ayari has accused Swiss-Muslim thinker Ramadan, the grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood founder, of raping and sexually assaulting her in a Paris hotel room in 2012. Ramadan’s lawyer said that his client denies the allegations and intends to file a complaint for slander.But who exactly is Henda Ayari? The Tunisian-Algerian author currently leads Libératrices, a charity that supports...

Xi Jinping is poised to become the most potent Chinese leader since Mao Zedong — and to guide his country’s continued emergence as a fascist global superpower for at least the next decade. The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is scheduled to start on October 18, when it will appoint leaders and establish the country’s course for the next five years. Xi undoubtedly will be re-appointed head of the CCP, followed by re-selection as China’s president and head of state early next year. But he appears also to have overturned the collegial, limited term system of leadership...

(AFP) He is the brother of jihadist Mohamed Merah, who four years ago killed three soldiers and four Jews, but in his extremist, anti-Semitic family it is Abdelghani who is seen as the black sheep. Abdelghani Merah has light brown eyes, a shaven head and a surname immediately associated with terror in France, but after losing everything because of his brother's acts he has found a calling: de-radicalizing youngsters drawn to jihad. In an interview with AFP, he says he will never forget the morning in March 2012 when he turned on the television and recognized the street where his...

"What does Russia have on Trump?", asks Nancy Pelosi. The better question is, what did Putin and Rouhani have on obama? It's June of 2001. George W. Bush is President. Bush has a meeting with Vladimir Putin and later said"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. "I was able to get a sense of his soul. "He's a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that's the beginning...

Four years ago, one of China’s largest agricultural importers sent representatives to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., hoping that meetings with elite party officials might yield business opportunities. The company, the Dandong Port Group, was particularly focused on the governors in attendance, according to an interview with Dandong’s general counsel broadcast by Chinese state television. But now, the company’s widening influence is coming under scrutiny by federal prosecutors, who are examining the relationship between Dandong’s wealthy and connected chairman, Wang Wenliang, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a Democrat who was elected in 2013. A federal law enforcement...

His West Point speech and his policy of retreat are characterized by smallness. It is fitting that the day before President Obama gives his grand West Point address defending the wisdom and prudence of his foreign policy, his government should be urging Americans to evacuate Libya. Libya, of course, was once the model Obama intervention — the exquisitely calibrated military engagement wrapped in the rhetorical extravagance of a nationally televised address proclaiming his newest foreign-policy doctrine (they change to fit the latest ad hoc decision): the responsibility to protect, or R2P. (snip) For the same reason, perhaps, that the Afghan...

Scandal: The person who leaked the confidential data of a conservative group to its political foes has been identified by investigators. But he's protected by the very law he broke and an attorney general who doesn't care. In March 2012, someone at the Internal Revenue Service released the confidential donor lists of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which supports traditional marriage, to its political opponent, the liberal Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a supporter of gay marriage. At that time, Joe Solmonese, a left-wing activist and Huffington Post contributor, was the president of the HRC. Solmonese also became a 2012...

I have heard it said that Trump supposedly pledged $1 million dollars to Hurricane Sandy victims back in '12. Does anyone here know about it?

It’s like a bad spy movie involving a third-world government. Or perhaps a slap stick comedy. The Secretary of State of the United States reading, sending, receiving sensitive emails with national security secrets, threats and classified or top secret intelligence over Google’s public Gmail. We expect this from chatting soccer moms but not from the top diplomat of the United States and her aides. But it gets even worse. The FBI either never discovered this blatant and clandestine violation of federal laws or did and simply covered it up. Following the Benghazi consulate attack in 2012, then Secretary of State...

Khawam not only tapped her military connections in her custody battle but also invoked broader contacts as she sought greater access to her son. In emails with her ex-husband, Khawam wrote that Senator Kerry asked about the son and whether he would be coming to Martha's Vineyard in the summer of 2012. She also wrote that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island invited the son to a summer clambake in the state, and that the son "would greatly appreciate attending this family clambake." Included in the court file is what appears to be a handwritten note from Whitehouse, writing, "I...

Hillary Clinton exchanged nearly two-dozen top secret emails from her unsecured, private server with three senior aides, the State Department revealed in documents released to VICE News late Friday. The 22 emails were sent and received by Clinton in 2011 and 2012. Clinton discussed classified information with her deputy chief of staff, Jacob Sullivan, her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and Deputy Secretary of State William Burns. A majority of the top secret emails are email chains between Sullivan and Clinton. This is the first time the State Department has revealed the identities of the officials who exchanged classified information...

War in the White House: attorney general Eric Holder and top Obama adviser David Axelrod 'had to be separated' Eric Holder, Barack Obama's attorney general and David Axelrod, his top political adviser had to be separated after squaring up during a furious row over attempts to impose White House operatives in the justice department. By Jon Swaine, Washington 6:22PM BST 03 Jun 2012 Eric Holder, who heads Mr Obama's justice department, is said to have become "incensed" after being accused by David Axelrod of complaining publicly about political interference in his office. "That's bull****," Mr Holder said in a confrontation...

The Fusion GPS news-for-hire scandal has not only led to the public identification of the source of the “Trump Dossier”—a for-profit company that provides opposition research to whoever could write big checks, which is staffed by four former Wall Street Journal reporters led by Glenn Simpson. The scandal has also lifted the lid off a sewer of corporate information warfare and opposition research that the flailing institutions of the mainstream press now regularly re-package as news, without ever saying where it came from—or who paid for it. While the idea that the products of paid opposition research are being main-lined...

A commercial made by the Knights of Columbus which was run earlier today on Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN)   ===>   Link for "Presidents' Day 2012" (Knights of Columbus commercial on youtube)

Democrats don’t want you to find out—and that ought to be a scandal of its own. ___ Yet Democrats now have meekly and noiselessly retreated, agreeing to let both men speak to the committee in private. Why would they so suddenly be willing to let go of this moment of political opportunity? Fusion GPS. That’s the oppo-research outfit behind the infamous and discredited “Trump dossier,” ginned up by a former British spook. Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson also was supposed to testify at the Grassley hearing, where he might have been asked in public to reveal who hired him to put...

Evidence shows that John Roberts, chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, was “hacked” by a Deep State surveillance operation overseen by Obama administration CIA director John Brennan and Obama director of national intelligence James Clapper. Roberts, the Bush appointee who made the decisive vote to uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare before the 2012 election, was allegedly the victim of the same Deep State surveillance program that spied on President Donald Trump. Tapes released by Federal Judge G. Murray Snow — preserved on a Whistleblower Soundcloud page — show real estate billionaire Timothy Blixseth explaining Brennan and Clapper’s surveillance...

The New York Post has an explosive report on the infamous “dossier” that tried to smear Donald Trump in order to swing the presidential election to Hillary Clinton. The source of the dossier is a Democratic Party opposition research firm called Fusion GPS: The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month threatened to subpoena the firm, Fusion GPS, after it refused to answer questions and provide records to the panel identifying who financed the error-ridden dossier, which was circulated during the election and has sparked much of the Russia scandal now engulfing the White House. *** Fusion GPS was on the...