Draining the Swamp

[Searcher08]

It says a lot about perception management, and the tactical applications of administrations oscillating between left and right, that Obama's nomination of Gen. Flynn to head the DIA sailed smoothly on in 2012.

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Trump presidency: Third Goldman executive set to join his cabinet
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38269257

Look out for financial crisis part II: Donald Trump has just appointed a key architect of the 2008 global meltdown
The man who had to say 'sorry' to Congress in 2010 for multi-billion dollar losses is the same man being appointed to oversee economic policy in Trump's cabinet

Rachael Revesz New York @RachaelRevesz 5 hours


Gary Cohn will benefit personally from the role in government - at least $212 million, in fact
Boom and bust economic theory suggests that, however we regulate banks, we should expect another financial crisis in the near future. With Goldman Sachs president and COO as the new national economic council director under Donald Trump, that theory might materialise a lot quicker.

Besides the anti-gay, anti-women, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim men and women that are already in the cabinet of hell, Mr Trump has just appointed one of the most powerful men on Wall Street and a key architect of the 2008 financial crisis.

Pinning blame for the world’s financial crisis of 2008 on one man or one bank would not be fair, but Gary Cohn and his entourage at Goldman Sachs is a good place to start.


Goldman Sachs president expected to be economic council director
What is indisputable is the root of the crash: the systemic mis-selling of risky assets from banks to consumers. Sub-prime mortgages were handed out like free candy on Halloween. And when consumers started defaulting like a pack of lemmings throwing themselves off a cliff, banks were swirling overhead like vultures. But before long, banks crashed too, ultimately leading to global instability and the destruction of people's livelihoods.

Mr Trump said he wanted to "drain the swamp" of Washington DC.

So why did he hire someone who is second in command at one of the biggest Wall Street banks and who is known for his "abrasive" management style and his appetite for taking financial risks?

The bank that he built up lost billions of dollars during the crisis, and $1.2 billion of that was lost from the residential mortgage business alone - a section of the business he had pushed to expand before 2008.


FindTheCompany | Graphiq
"Of course, we regret that we did not do many things better: like having less exposure to leveraged loans, which caused us approximately $5 billion in losses, having less exposure to mortgages, and, it should go without saying, we wish we had seen more proactively the effects of the housing bubble," he told Congress in 2010.

The losses were, he said, proof that the bank and consumers all went down together. Yet somehow, Cohn stayed dry on board that massive, sinking ship.

The champion of trickle-down economics earned more than $60 million between 2012 and 2015 alone - not including shares and stock options etc - and he, along with every other white, middle-aged man with a Rolex, escaped imprisonment for the US government’s largest bailout in history. In goverment, he can liquidate all his shares in the bank, worth $212 million, tax free.

Donald Trump's controversial cabinet
Mr Trump also admitted that he had been rooting for the housing crisis. As a real estate developer in the wreckage of the crisis, he made a fortune from picking up bargains. Oh well, that's capitalism right?

Now just a few years after the crash, perhaps the memory of people’s suffering has dimmed in Cohn's brain, or the hunger for risk-taking is back.

Cohn has given numerous speeches to universities and has consistently lobbied Congress, arguing that although banks are safer now than pre-2008, they are not better. His logic is that banks being hampered by regulations means that consumers suffer. Has he conveniently forgotten how much we suffered without regulations less than a decade ago?

Forget the Dodd-Frank Act and large capital buffers for banks. The era of less regulation, no ring-fencing and big risk-taking will be back within a few months.

The barefaced hypocrisy of Trump’s cabinet seemingly has no limits. Thanks to an ignorant, narcissistic, self-entitled president-elect, people all over the world will face the consequences of a cabinet of yet more white, self-entitled, self-serving hypocrites who will rub their hands with glee every time they see a buying opportunity.

The golden rule in capital markets is that for every seller, there is a buyer on the other end of that trade, ready to take advantage. But Cohn and his generation forget that when he takes a risk, the world takes a risk with him.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/don ... 66566.html

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drain the swamp....fill it with oil

trump's pick for Sec of State


hey Rex we got that 500 billion back on the table now....I helped get him elected and you got the job.....well played Puty well played

[seemslikeadream]

a little more from Gen. Yellowcake Flynn

Flynn’s Twitter Account Follows Racists and Conspiracy Theorists

by Eli Clifton

National Security Adviser-designate Ret. Gen. Michael T. Flynn has come under increasing fire. His personal Twitter account and his son’s promotion of Twitter-based conspiracy theories about Comet Pizza are prompting renewed scrutiny of President-elect Trump’s pick for the top national security position in the White House.

A LobeLog review of accounts followed by Flynn reveal that the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency follows Twitter accounts with profiles promoting white supremacy, anti-Muslim conspiracies, unsubstantiated claims about President Obama’s birthplace, and conspiracies about Comet Pizza, a fake news story. The latter ultimately led to the dismissal of Flynn’s son from the Trump transition team due to his promotion of unsubstantiated claims that the Washington pizzeria was the site of a child sex slave ring.

Ret. Gen. Barry McCaffrey spoke out on Thursday, drawing close to rescinding his support of Flynn’s expected appointment as national security adviser, saying that Flynn’s activities on twitter “border on being demented” and “deserve further scrutiny.”

Flynn has spoken openly about his high regard for the news he gets off Twitter and his preference for social media based news sources over the mainstream media. At a Young America Foundation event at the Trump Hotel in Washington D.C. on November 14, Flynn said (my emphasis):

Now the media isn’t reporting this but this is being reported on social media, so I’m gonna spend a little bit of time talking about social media because there’s so much power in social media for your generation. For your generation. So it’s being reported now and it’s flying around on social media that [Trump] also won the popular vote in a big way. Probably somewhere close to, we’re looking at 70 maybe to 90 thousand overall. But it could even go higher.
Watch him:



As of the latest count, Clinton leads Trump by nearly 2.7 million votes.

But Flynn’s choice of what he follows on Twitter reveals raises serious questions about where the next national security adviser gets news about current events.

Flynn follows 2,212 other Twitter accounts, people whose Tweets, presumably, show up on his Twitter feed when he wants to catch up on social media based news and analysis.

A search of the profiles of the accounts followed by Flynn reveals:

Over a dozen accounts with profiles containing anti-Muslim statements or urging a ban on the Islamic religion.
Five accounts with profiles containing anti-Sharia statements.
Four accounts with profiles containing “#PizzaGate.”
Four accounts with profiles referencing Counter-Jihad.
Three accounts with profiles containing “rapefugees.”
Two accounts with profiles containing “#WhiteGenocide.”
Flynn also follows an account with a profile containing language suspiciously close to that used by white supremacists.

@Not2White’s profile reads:

Far Right, white vet and proud of it. I refuse to apologize for being white. Veteran. BLM is a racist terrorist group! #AllLivesMatter #BlueLivesMatter
And another account, @jackiejankwh, whose profile reads:

Barack Obama is an Islamic Terrorist. He was not born in America. He will kill many Americans in Sacramento, CA in 2017. BE VIGILANT/AWARE IN SACRAMENTO! ARM UP
Flynn follows notorious anti-Muslim advocate Pamela Geller, a prominent anti-Muslim activist and conspiracy theorist who tried to block the construction of an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan and claimed that Obama is working to “appease his Islamic overlords.” The Anti-Defamation League denounced her in a 2013 report.

“Geller routinely attacks organizations that oppose her agenda and views, often employing inappropriate Holocaust terminology and imagery to deride mainstream Jewish civil rights organizations,” ADL said. “Geller, who is herself Jewish, frequently uses the terms ‘Nazi,’ ‘Jewicidal’ and ‘neo-kapo’ to demonize these organizations.”

Flynn also follows notorious anti-Muslim advocate Frank Gaffney whose research Donald Trump cited to justify a proposal to ban immigration from Muslim countries. In 2008, Gaffney questioned whether Obama “is a natural born citizen of the United States, a prerequisite pursuant to the U.S. constitution,” asserting that “there is evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii.”

He also repeatedly promoted the theory that Hillary Clinton’s aide, Huma Abedin, was a Muslim Brotherhood operative, and, in a 2010 column for Breitbart.com, claimed that the Missile Defense Agency logo “appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent start with the Obama campaign logo.” He attributed the new logo to a “worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam.”

The Missile Defense Agency logo was, in fact not new, having been developed prior to Obama’s election to the presidency.
http://lobelog.com/flynns-twitter-accou ... theorists/

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TRANSITION ADVISER PETER THIEL COULD DIRECTLY PROFIT FROM MASS DEPORTATIONS
Spencer Woodman
December 12 2016, 12:13 p.m.
PALANTIR TECHNOLOGIES, the data mining company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition advisor Peter Thiel, will likely assist the Trump Administration in its efforts to track and collect intelligence on immigrants, according to a review of public records by The Intercept. Since 2011, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has paid Palantir tens of millions of dollars to help construct and operate a complex intelligence system called FALCON, which allows ICE to store, search, and analyze troves of data that include family relationships, employment information, immigration history, criminal records, and home and work addresses.

In a separate multi-million-dollar contract signed in 2014, Thiel’s $20 billion company is building a complex case management system for ICE’s HSI, which processes tens of thousands of civil and criminal cases each year.

Working closely with a President-elect who has pledged to dramatically expand ICE, Thiel’s varied connections to the immigration agency place him in a position to potentially benefit financially from a deportation campaign that carries highly personal stakes for millions of Americans.

CLEVELAND, OH - JULY 21: Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, delivers a speech during the evening session on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump received the number of votes needed to secure the party's nomination. An estimated 50,000 people are expected in Cleveland, including hundreds of protesters and members of the media. The four-day Republican National Convention kicked off on July 18. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) Peter Thiel delivers a speech during the evening session on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Since Thiel joined Trump’s transition team last month, Palantir’s wide-ranging contracts with federal agencies — that include the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency — have raised eyebrows of ethics watchdogs. In recent years, the federal government has reportedly paid Palantir some $340 million in contracts. Concerns over Thiel’s potential conflicts deepened last week when it was reported that he would not confirm whether or not he had signed standard paperwork barring him from participating in Trump transition matters that might conflict with his private interests.
“Given the broad scope of Palantir’s business with the federal government and Mr. Thiel’s investments, it seems to me that he should step away from a pretty broad set of transition issues,” Norman Eisen a former U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic who served as chief ethics lawyer to the Obama administration during its first two years, told The Intercept.

Eisen pointed to Palantir’s contracts with ICE as an example. “Whenever anything touching on that agency is at issue, he should step out of the room and he should not be copied on emails about it,” said Eisen. “The information he learns about that agency could be immediately useful to him in his Palantir duties.”

Aside from an assortment of federal budgeting and oversight reports, Palantir’s FALCON system has received little public scrutiny. The system is meant for use by ICE’s office of Homeland Security Investigations, which is separate from ICE’s deportation-focused division known as the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). HSI is generally tasked with pursuing more serious cross-border crimes including terrorism-related cases and human trafficking, but the office has openly acknowledged routinely sharing information about deportable noncitizens with ERO. HSI has also led some of ICE’s most high profile and controversial immigration raids — operations of the sort that some activists fear might proliferate under Trump.

In 2011, in an effort to radically overhaul its “pre-existing, non-optimal” system of data storage and analysis, ICE launched FALCON, according to a funding document. ICE turned to Palantir to implement the system, which would combine various streams of intelligence — including from law enforcement agencies outside ICE — into one tool. Palantir was even asked to design an iPhone app to allow ICE agents to query FALCON while working in the field. Public records show that in May of this year ICE signed a two-year agreement with Palantir for “operation and maintenance” of the FALCON system.

In addition to containing information on family relationships and immigration history, the records FALCON collects can also include photographs of subjects, employment information, educational background, and “geospatial data.” An analytics subset of the program, according to the Department of Homeland Security, allows HSI agents to create data visualizations “to identify trends, develop investigative leads, discover connections among investigations and targets, and enhance the overall investigative and analytic process.”

In response to a list of questions from The Intercept, ICE declined to provide the names of the other law enforcement agencies that share intelligence collected and analyzed within the FALCON system. The agency said that information stored in FALCON is considered “law enforcement sensitive and is only shared with authorized individuals with a specific need to access the data.” In a report published in October, the Department of Homeland Security makes clear that FALCON’s intelligence can be used to pursue a broad range of criminal and civil laws that ICE enforces.

Restrictions on this type of data sharing within the executive branch are often not governed by hard, legal regulations, according to Anil Kalhan, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law.

“Legislation after 9-11 authorized and encouraged information sharing within the executive branch,” said Kalhan “There is general authorization, and the scope and limits and constraints upon that authorization have not really been spelled out.”

Even if FALCON’s intelligence were to reside squarely within HSI, that office has spearheaded operations that represent one reported front in Trump’s planned deportation push.

Last month, it was reported that Trump and his advisors are drafting plans to launch a campaign of workplace raids across the country to find undocumented immigrants. With a mandate to enforce laws relating to unauthorized employment, HSI has been identified as the primary component within ICE that conducts such jobsite raids. This past October, after a lengthy investigation, HSI agents raided several Mexican restaurants in Buffalo, New York, arresting more than a dozen workers, some of whom were charged with criminal counts of “illegal re-entry,” raising an outcry from immigrant advocates. In 2013, after an HSI raid on carwashes in Phoenix, more than two-dozen immigrants were reportedly sent to Enforcement and Removal Operations officers for possible deportation.

ICE can conduct such raids even in so-called sanctuary cities that have refused to allow local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE in finding and removing undocumented immigrants.

ICE’s HSI also has also been linked to ERO in its efforts to track noncitizens believed to be affiliated with cross-border gangs in operations that draw upon gang-membership databases. Critics argue the databases have proven unreliable and run the risk of pulling innocent people into the country’s deportation proceedings. (Kalhan believes that the incoming administration’s strongest tools of mass deportation would be its leveraging of relationships with local law enforcement agencies in efforts like ICE’s Secure Communities program.)

As a part of maintaining FALCON, Palantir has helped to build ICE’s tip line, which allows the general public to report violations of law, according to a funding document. With a significant uptick in anti-immigrant sentiment across the country coinciding with Trump’s victory, the tip line could begin processing a higher volume of calls. Last week, the Texas Observer reported that anti-immigrant activists had seized upon the tip line as a tool, distributing fliers around Texas State University encouraging people to call the number to report undocumented immigrants. “We are entering an era of law and order in this country,” the flier stated, “Do your part to make such a change for the good!”

Palantir, which is backed by the CIA’s venture capital arm, did not respond to a request for comment regarding its ICE contracts and concerns over potential conflicts of interest. Peter Thiel spokesperson Jeremiah Hall declined to comment on a list of emailed queries, including a question asking whether Thiel has yet signed the Trump transition ethics agreement.

In response to questions from The Intercept, a spokesperson for ICE confirmed Palantir’s current work with the agency. “The current contract options with Palantir will run through November 2018,” agency spokesperson Danielle Bennett said in an email. Bennett however declined to comment on ICE’s work with Palantir under the Trump administration, stating: “We cannot speculate on future renewals.”

Update: December 12, 2016
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/12/tra ... ortations/

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Flynn’s Wacky Worldview

by Jim Lobe

Skepticism about Michael Flynn’s fitness for the position of national security adviser appears to be growing as more media outlets are paying closer attention to his (and his son’s) core beliefs about the world. Such scrutiny also appears to be more relevant since President-elect Trump may be relying more heavily on Flynn than on the CIA or other government intelligence agencies for his own assessment of world events. That’s a big reason why this site has been focusing so much on Flynn in recent weeks.

A major source in exploring Flynn’s thinking is, of course, the book he co-authored with veteran “false news” fabricator Michael Ledeen, The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, which was published less than six months ago. Several posts have already featured quotes from the book on a variety of subjects—from Flynn’s obvious Islamophobia (here and here) to his various misconceptions (to be charitable) about Syria’s alleged nuclear-weapons program. After reading the book, I’m persuaded that Ledeen wrote at least a major part of it. One three-page passage about the alleged connections between the grand mufti of Jerusalem and both Hitler and the Soviet Union is lifted verbatim from a 2015 Ledeen blog post. Nonetheless, Flynn no doubt approved the final product, so it’s entirely appropriate to attribute the words and thoughts and “facts” that appear on the book’s pages to him. Indeed, Flynn is the book’s only narrator. Although Ledeen is listed as a co-author, the narrator is “I,” meaning Flynn.

Given the important role Flynn is clearly playing as a key source of “intelligence” for Trump, publishing more excerpts from the book to flesh out in greater detail what “facts” he thinks are indeed true should help inform the public discussion surrounding the future of foreign policy under Trump. Just as Flynn may have Trump’s ear, Ledeen, a conspiracy-monger of the first order—in 2003, for example, he argued that France and Germany had “struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs” in order to defeat U.S. hegemony—may have Flynn’s. This is a truly terrifying thought, as is the prospect of John Bolton as deputy secretary of state. My comments are in brackets. Most of the following excerpts are taken from the third chapter, entitled “The Enemy Alliance.”

The Enemy Alliance and Iran As “Linchpin”

[Radical Islamists] are not alone, and are allied with countries and groups who, though not religious fanatics, share their hatred of the West, particularly the United States and Israel. Those allies include North Korea, Russia, China, Cuba, and Venezuela.
If, as PC apologists tell us, there is no objective basis for members of one culture to criticize another, then it is very hard to see—and forbidden to write about or say—the existence of an international alliance of evil countries and movements that is working to destroy us.
Yet, the alliance exists, and we’ve already dithered for many years.
The war is on. We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. We are under attack, not only from nation-states directly, but also from al Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS, and countless other terrorist groups. Suffice to say, the same sort of cooperation binds together jihadis, Communists, and garden-variety tyrants.
… Iran is the linchpin of the alliance, its centerpiece.
[This passage is the only time Bolivia and Nicaragua are mentioned in the entire book, so there is no elaboration as to their alleged role.]

The mullahs have already established strategic alliances in our own hemisphere with Cuba and Venezuela, and are working closely with Russia and China…
[The book provides no specific evidence of the nature of the “strategic alliances” with Cuba, Venezuela, or China.]

It is hard to imagine that there are no Hezbollah terrorist groups inside this country.
[No evidence is provided to support the speculation.]

Al Qaeda (and Iran)

Khomeini and his successors have been true to their words, seeking to export the Iranian Revolution, and attack their enemies—the Jews, the infidels, and (mostly Sunni) Muslims who do not accept their doctrine—all over the world. Shortly after the revolution Iranian-supported “pilgrims” on the Hajj in Mecca occupied the Grand Mosque, took several hundred hostages, and called for the overthrow of the ruling Saudi royal family, and the end of all ties to the West.
[By all accounts, Wahhabi extremists carried out the occupation of the Grand Mosque]

[W]e knew that al Qaeda had attacked us directly, in 1993, in the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center in New York City. Federal investigators had established working connections between al Qaeda and the commander of the operation, the “blind sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman. We also knew of close operational cooperation with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian jihadi organization that had been at the center of the assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat.
[My impression is that al-Qaeda’s alleged involvement, if any, remains unclear, but Sadat’s assassination was carried out by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a radical group that broke with the Muslim Brotherhood over the latter’s commitment to non-violence. The Brotherhood publicly denounced the assassination.]

As a matter of fact, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards [sic], which were originally created by Khomeini as his own personal praetorian guard, and subsequently used for crucial tasks of domestic repression and foreign terrorism, were trained and organized in the early 1970s by Yasser Arafat’s (Sunni) Fatah.
[Flynn repeatedly refers to the “Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution,” or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as the “Iranian Revolutionary Guards.” “Iran” or “Iranian” is nowhere mentioned in its official title. Apart from that (fairly common) misnomer, the IRGC wasn’t created until after the 1979 revolution, so it would have been very difficult, to say the least, for Fatah to have “trained,” let alone “organized” it nine years before it came into being. Some individual members of what eventually became the IRGC were trained in Lebanon, which in 1970 had become a “mecca” of sorts for armed, radical, and mostly anti-imperialist groups, from Europe as well as the Third World.]

The most dramatic example of Sunni-Shi’ite cooperation is Iran’s close relationship with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. The 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa—for which al-Qaeda took credit—were in large part Iranian operations.
[While one federal district court judge, in a case in which Iran did not take part, found that Iran, Hezbollah, and Sudan played a role in preparing al-Qaeda for the attacks, the State Department has always put the blame on al-Qaeda exclusively, while the arrest warrants put out by the FBI have included only known al-Qaeda militants.]

Obama is Very Bad

To be sure, an Iranian bomb would be an existential threat to Israel, but so is a nonnuclear Iran, which is the mainstay of the anti-Israel terrorist groups, above all, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. To focus solely on the nuclear question is a serious failure of strategic vision; the issue is the regime in Tehran and their [sic] radical version of Islam, whatever its progress may be toward atomic bombs.
Obama has done his damnedest to forge alliances with Hugo Chavez, before his death, the Castro brothers, and Ali Khamenei, but they and their cronies have all responded by redoubling their efforts to defeat us.
[“Alliances” is a very strong word to use under the circumstances, but the question that goes begging is how exactly did Chavez or Maduro or the Castro brothers “redouble their efforts to defeat us?” Or is this just rhetoric of the kind that Trump will take seriously?]

Russia-Iran

Putin himself waged a bloody battle against Radical Islamists in Chechnya, and they, too, had links to Iran.
[This assertion almost certainly derives from a 2005 article in The Telegraph by Con Coughlin, notorious for highly questionable anti-Iran stories over many years. What’s interesting in this case is that the Jamestown Foundation, on whose board sits Flynn’s deputy-to-be, KT McFarland, issued a report at the time casting doubt on the story. Regional specialists have dismissed any connection between Iran and the Chechen rebels.]

The Russians and Iranians have more in common than a shared enemy. There is also a shared contempt for democracy and an agreement—by all members of the enemy alliance—that dictatorship is a superior way to run a country, an empire, or a caliphate. There are certainly differences between the religious and secular tyrannies—the importance of Sharia law to the jihadis is perhaps the most significant—but both seek, and fight for, an all-powerful leader.
Saddam and al-Qaeda, Iran and Zarqawi

Saddam made a basic change in his foreign policy in the summer of 1986, when the Iraqi Politburo (Pan-Arab Command) decided to support foreign “religious currents.”
This led to Iraqi support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for the radical regime of Hassan al-Turabi in Sudan, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and eventually for al Qaeda.
[So Flynn buys into the theory that Saddam supported al-Qaeda.]

From our interrogations conducted during our operations, we learned that for a short period in the spring of 2003, Zarqawi was “detained” by Iran and then subsequently released. While there is little information as to why they detained him, one can only speculate that Iran likely worked with and advised Zarqawi on his future plans for taking over Iraq.
[Speculation without specific evidence is problematic for an intelligence professional.]

The Grand Mufti, Nazis, Communists, Khomeini = Totalitarianism

Thus, religious fanatics and secular tyrants work quite well together, transcending even deep ideological divides. The most dramatic example comes from the infamous case of the grand mufti of Jerusalem in the 1930s and 1940s, Amin al-Husseini, and his efforts to forge an operational relationship between Nazi Germany and his own Muslim Brotherhood.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu catalyzed the discussion of the historical origins of contemporary Islamist anti-Semitism in European Nazi and fascist regimes in the last century, which has produced some useful and thoughtful contributions, but in the process an important part of the story has gone lost. It’s the part of the story that deals with Husseini’s ties to Soviet Communism. …[I]n the case of Husseini, and indeed of jihadism more generally, any serious discussion must make room for the Communists.…
[T]he Brotherhood’s Palestinian leader learned a great deal about politics from the Kremlin, and he worked very closely with the Communists throughout his career. It wasn’t just the Nazis who inspired him; he was a true student of twentieth-century totalitarianism, and he created a toxic poison of Nazi fascism—and its concrete application—and Soviet Communism. Both elements were later central to the Ayatollah Khomeini, who similarly combined German-style anti-Semitism with Soviet methods of organizing revolution. As Husseini worked with the Palestinian Communist Party to acquire and maintain power, so Khomeini worked with the Iranian Communist Party—Tudeh—to overthrow the shah and create the Islamist tyranny we see today.
…(A)s in the case of Husseini, it is a mistake to look at Muslim tyrants as Middle Eastern versions of a specific Western dictatorship. They are attracted to, and inspired by, earlier totalitarian regimes.
Keep your eyes on that word ‘totalitarian.’ That is the key concept.
[All of the above passage is taken verbatim from a 2015 Ledeen blog post on PJ Media. Has Flynn drunk the Kool-Aid or did he just tell the Ledeen, “Whatever you say, Mike?”]

This also helps clarify the nature of the global alliance we face. The countries and movements that are trying to destroy us have worldviews that may seem to be in violent conflict with one another. But they are united by their hatred of the democratic West and their conviction that dictatorship is superior. So while it may appear that, say, there is little in common between Communist North Korea and radical Shi’ite Iran, or between the leaders of the radical Sunni Islamic State’s “caliphate” and the Iranians, in fact it is no more difficult for them to cooperate in the war against us than it was for Hitler and Stalin to cooperate in the 1930s and 1940s.
http://lobelog.com/flynns-wacky-worldview/

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Trump will have wider spying powers than anything J. Edgar Hoover ever imagined
Demonstrators protest government surveillance in Washington, D.C. in 2013
Demonstrators in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Oct. 26, 2013, protest government surveillance. (Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images)
Elizabeth Goitein
President-elect Donald Trump is about to inherit the most powerful surveillance apparatus in history. Combining unprecedented technological capabilities with a lax legal regime, his spying powers dwarf anything the notorious FBI director J. Edgar Hoover could have fathomed.

Many privacy and civil rights advocates worry Trump will seek to expand these powers further in order to spy on Muslim Americans, activists and political opponents. The truth is, he won’t have to. Because of our country’s rush to strip civil liberty protections from surveillance laws after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Trump will already have all the powers he needs and more.

How did we get here? The laws that until recently safeguarded Americans from sweeping government intrusion were established in the 1970s, after a special Senate investigation revealed widespread abuses of intelligence-gathering. Almost every president dating to Franklin D. Roosevelt had a version of Richard Nixon’s infamous “enemies list,” resulting in wiretaps of congressional staffers, executive officials, lobbyists, law firms and reporters. Between 1956 and 1971, under the program dubbed COINTELPRO (short for “counterintelligence program”), the FBI routinely spied on anti-war protesters and civil rights organizations. The bureau targeted Martin Luther King Jr. with particular ferocity, bugging his hotel rooms and using the resulting evidence of infidelity to try to induce him to commit suicide.

Warnings that future administrations might be less trustworthy went unheeded. Those warnings now seem prescient.
To stem the abuses, the government implemented laws and regulations that shared a common principle: Law enforcement and intelligence agencies could not collect information on an American unless there was reason to suspect that person of wrongdoing. In some cases, this meant showing probable cause and obtaining a warrant, but even when no warrant was required, spying without any indication of criminal activity was forbidden.

The thinking was that if officials had to cite objective indications of misconduct, they wouldn’t be able to use racial bias, political grudges or other improper motives as a reason to spy on people. This logic was borne out, as government surveillance abuses went from being routine to being the occasional scandalous exception.

Then came Sept. 11. As swiftly as the principle had been established, it was rooted out. In 2002, the FBI abolished a rule barring agents from monitoring political or religious gatherings without suspicion of criminal activity. A 2007 law allowed the National Security Agency to collect calls and emails between Americans and foreign “targets” with no warrant or demonstration of wrongdoing by the American or the foreigner. Revisions to Justice Department guidelines in 2008 created a category of FBI investigation requiring no “factual predicate” — meaning no cause for suspicion. The list of erosions goes on.

The instinct to remove any restrictions on surveillance when facing a national security threat is understandable, but misguided. Dragnet surveillance does not make us safer. The massive amount of useless data collected today only obscures the real threats buried within. Even the 9/11 Commission, which issued dozens of recommendations to improve national security, did not propose surveillance without suspicion.

When privacy advocates and civil libertarians pushed Congress to restore protections, Obama administration officials said it was unnecessary because no abuse had been shown. Despite evidence that law enforcement was monitoring the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements, lawmakers and much of the public accepted the government’s claim and continued to trust it with broad surveillance powers. Warnings that future administrations might be less trustworthy went unheeded.

Those warnings now seem prescient. Trump has specifically called for more surveillance of American Muslim communities. His pick for national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has described Islam as a “cancer,” while his nominee for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, has called the NAACP “un-American.” As a possible secretary of Homeland Security, Trump has floated Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, who compared Black Lives Matter to the Islamic State group and described peaceful protests against Trump as “temper tantrums” that should be “quelled.” Trump’s tendency to hold grudges is legendary: Referring to Republicans who did not support his candidacy, a Trump surrogate stated, “Trump has a long memory and we’re keeping a list.”


In short, there is every reason to fear that Trump and his administration will target people for surveillance based on religion, political activism and personal vendettas.

Having gutted legal protections against such abuses, are we powerless to stop them? No, but it will require vigilance and action from many quarters. Independent oversight entities, including inspectors general and congressional committees, must aggressively investigate how Trump uses his powers. The federal courts must shed their historical reluctance to hear lawsuits challenging government surveillance. All of us must fiercely defend journalists and whistleblowers who expose surveillance overreach.

Most important: When surveillance legislation comes before Congress — as it will in late 2017, when a key surveillance law is set to expire — lawmakers should shore up protections, not further erode them. They have bipartisan incentive. After all, politicians from both parties may be on Trump’s enemies list, too.

Elizabeth Goitein is co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la ... story.html

[seemslikeadream]

Trump taps former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to head Energy Department he once vowed to abolish

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... 7568642fd3

[Searcher08]

Trump taps former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to head Energy Department he once vowed to abolish

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... 7568642fd3

Never Forget... Rick Perry's coat.


Never Forget that She..... lost!

[seemslikeadream]

Trump’s national security adviser shared secrets without permission, files show

By Craig Whitlock and Greg Miller December 14 at 7:00 AM
A secret U.S. military investigation in 2010 determined that Michael T. Flynn, the retired Army general tapped to serve as national security adviser in the Trump White House, “inappropriately shared” classified information with foreign military officers in Afghanistan, newly released documents show.

Although Flynn lacked authorization to share the classified material, he was not disciplined or reprimanded after the investigation concluded that he did not act “knowingly” and that “there was no actual or potential damage to national security as a result,” according to Army records obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

[Read the military investigation into Michael Flynn in 2010]

Flynn has previously acknowledged that he was investigated while serving as the U.S. military intelligence chief in Afghanistan for sharing secrets with British and Australian allies there. But he has dismissed the case as insignificant and has given few details.

The Army documents provide the first official account of the case, but they are limited in scope because the investigation itself remains classified. Former U.S. officials familiar with the matter said that Flynn was accused of telling allies about the activities of other agencies in Afghanistan, including the CIA.

Trump's Transition: Who is Michael Flynn? Play Video1:58
President-elect Donald Trump named retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn his national security adviser on Nov. 18, but Flynn has a history of making incendiary and Islamophobic statements that have drawn criticism from his military peers. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
The Army files call into question Flynn’s prior assertion that he had permission to share the sensitive information.

During the presidential race, Flynn campaigned vigorously for Republican nominee Donald Trump and drew attention for his scalding attacks against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified material. Clinton was investigated by the FBI for allowing classified information to be transmitted on her private email server when she ran the State Department. No charges were filed against the former secretary of state, but the issue dogged her for more than a year.

At the Republican National Convention in July, Flynn called on Clinton to drop out of the race for putting “our nation’s security at extremely high risk with her careless use of a private email server.” He egged on the partisan crowd in chants of “lock her up,” adding: “If I, a guy who knows this business, if I did a tenth, a tenth of what she did, I would be in jail today.”

Flynn did not respond to requests for comment.

The office of the Army’s Judge Advocate General released a four-page summary of the investigation into Flynn in response to The Post’s Freedom of Information Act request for records of any misconduct allegations involving the retired three-star general.

The U.S. military opened the investigation into Flynn in 2010 after receiving a complaint from an unnamed Navy intelligence specialist, according to the documents. The intelligence officer charged that Flynn violated rules by “inappropriately” sharing secrets with “various foreign military officers and/or officials in Afghanistan.”

The documents do not reveal the nature of the information. But former U.S. officials familiar with the case said it centered on slides and other materials containing classified information about CIA operations in Afghanistan.

Michael Flynn leads chants of 'lock her up' at Republican Convention Play Video2:06
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn called for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the presidential race during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. (Republican National Convention)
“It was a general intelligence briefing that included stuff that shouldn’t have been on those slides,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject. The disclosures revealed “stuff the intelligence community was doing that had a much higher level of classification.”

The agency has had an extensive presence in the Afghanistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Beyond gathering intelligence on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the CIA has also assembled its own paramilitary networks in the country, paying warlords for cooperation and funding armed groups known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams.

A second former U.S. official said Flynn failed to secure permission to reveal those secrets. “This was a question of whether or not information was put through proper channels before it was shared,” the second official said.

The episode marked the second time in a year that Flynn had drawn official complaints for his handling of classified material.

Former U.S. officials said that Flynn had disclosed sensitive information to Pakistan in late 2009 or early 2010 about secret U.S. intelligence capabilities being used to monitor the Haqqani network, an insurgent group accused of repeated attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Flynn exposed the capabilities during meetings with Pakistani officials in Islamabad. The former U.S. intelligence official said a CIA officer who accompanied Flynn reported the disclosures to CIA headquarters, which then relayed the complaint to the Defense Department. Flynn was verbally reprimanded by the Pentagon’s top intelligence official at the time, James R. Clapper Jr.

Clapper subsequently became director of national intelligence and endorsed Flynn to become his successor as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In 2014, however, Clapper forced Flynn out of that job over concerns with his temperament and management.

The newly disclosed Army documents state that the 2010 investigation was ordered by the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Although the records do not say exactly when the case was opened, the commander at the time would have been Marine Gen. James Mattis.

Mattis took charge at Central Command’s headquarters in Tampa, Fla., in August 2010. One month later, Flynn was ordered back to Washington from Afghanistan. He was assigned to a temporary job at the Pentagon as the special assistant to the Army’s chief of intelligence while the investigation unfolded, records show.

Mattis was nominated this month by Trump to serve as secretary of defense. In that role, Mattis will work closely with Flynn; the retired generals are expected to be the most influential voices on national security in the Trump administration.

The Army documents that summarize the investigation into Flynn do not specify which countries he was accused of improperly sharing secrets with. In an interview with The Post in August, Flynn said he was scrutinized for giving classified information to British and Australian officials serving in Afghanistan alongside U.S. forces.

In that interview, Flynn defended his actions and said he did nothing wrong. “That was substantiated because I actually did it. But I did it with the right permissions when you dig into that investigation. I’m proud of that one. Accuse me of sharing intelligence in combat with our closest allies, please.”

The Army documents, however, state explicitly that the Central Command investigation determined that Flynn did not have permission to share the particular secrets he divulged. The Defense Department’s inspector general, which conducted an independent review of the investigation, came to the same conclusion, the documents show.

It is routine for the U.S. military to share intelligence in Afghanistan with NATO allies such as Britain, as well as other members of the broader international coalition fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda, including Australia. But there are established mechanisms and guidelines that must be followed.

Flynn was highly regarded within the Army for the key role he played in shaping U.S. counterterrorism strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pentagon officials had intended to promote Flynn in 2010 to the rank of lieutenant general and to make him assistant director of national intelligence, a job that would place him in charge of improving ties with foreign intelligence agencies.

The Central Command investigation delayed his career advancement for a full year. He received his promotion and new assignment in September 2011.

After being forced to retire from the military in 2014, Flynn became a vocal opponent of the Obama administration’s policies regarding Iran and al-Qaeda. At the same time, he gained a reputation for floating conspiracy theories on Twitter.

Some Democratic lawmakers have criticized his selection as Trump’s national security adviser. The position is not subject to Senate confirmation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... d5dba0072a

[seemslikeadream]

Democratic senators press Trump’s education pick Betsy DeVos to pay years-old $5.3 million fine
By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel December 14 at 9:40 AM

President-elect Donald Trump stands with Betsy DeVos after a meeting at his golf club in Bedminster Township, N.J., Nov. 19. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
A group of Senate Democrats is urging President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, to pay $5.3 million in fines imposed on her political action committee for campaign finance violations in Ohio eight years ago.

[School choice advocates divided over Trump and his education pick, Betsy DeVos]

“As secretary of education, Betsy DeVos would be responsible for overseeing the nation’s student loan program, including ensuring that students repay their loans, so it’s troubling that she has blatantly ignored her own PAC’s debt to the people of Ohio,” said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.). “When a student borrower defaults, it has serious ramifications that haunt that student for years — yet when DeVos’s PAC defaulted on its fine for violating the law, they just walked away.”

Udall, along with Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), sent DeVos a letter this week requesting she pay the millions of dollars in fines and late fees ahead of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Representatives for DeVos, a conservative who has pushed to expand taxpayer-funded vouchers for private and religious schools, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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The debt stems from a 2008 case the Ohio Elections Commission brought against All Children Matter, an organization DeVos headed that lobbied for school-choice legislation. Two years earlier, the PAC asked the commission whether it was allowed to contribute more than the $10,000 limit to an affiliate in Ohio. Even though the commission advised that such a move would be in violation of state law, All Children Matter proceeded to provide $870,000 to the Ohio outfit.

[Trump picks billionaire Betsy DeVos, school voucher advocate, as education secretary]

The “blatant disregard for the law,” as Democratic lawmakers call it, led the state election commission to impose $2.6 million in fines, its largest penalty to date. The PAC fought the decision, but an Ohio court upheld the fine and imposed additional late fees. All Children Matter’s PAC, however, ceased operations and walked away from the debt.

“That’s not acceptable behavior from anyone, much less a Cabinet secretary for a President-elect who promised to ‘drain the swamp’ of insiders who game the system for special treatment,” Udall said. “I hope Ms. DeVos will have the good judgment to ensure her own PAC’s fine is paid.”

Although tax filings lists DeVos as an officer in All Children Matter, she was never named in the case. The umbrella organization still exists, even though the PAC closed up shop. Yet according to 2015 tax filings it has less than $300, not nearly enough to cover the millions of dollars owed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/gra ... 79b2013e94

[seemslikeadream]

TRUMP’S PICK FOR INTERIOR SECRETARY WAS CAUGHT IN “PATTERN OF FRAUD” AT SEAL TEAM 6
Matthew Cole
December 20 2016, 11:04 a.m.
A MONTANA LAWMAKER tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be secretary of the interior committed travel fraud when he was a member of the elite Navy SEAL Team 6, according to three former unit leaders and a military consultant.

In announcing the nomination of Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, a retired Navy SEAL commander, Trump praised his military background. “As a former Navy SEAL, he has incredible leadership skills and an attitude of doing whatever it takes to win,” Trump said last week.

But when Zinke was a mid-career officer at SEAL Team 6, he was caught traveling multiple times to Montana in 1998 and 1999 to renovate his home. Zinke claimed that the travel was for official duties, according to the sources.

He submitted travel vouchers and was compensated for the travel costs.

Two SEAL officers investigated Zinke’s records and discovered a yearslong “pattern of travel fraud,” according to two of the sources. When confronted about the trips, Zinke acknowledged that he spent the time repairing and restoring a home in Whitefish, Montana, and visiting his mother, according to two retired SEAL Team 6 leaders. The future lawmaker eventually told SEAL leaders that the Montana house was where he intended to live after he retired from the Navy.

After Zinke was caught and warned, he continued to travel home and submit the expenses to the Navy. The offense would normally have been serious enough to have ended Zinke’s career, but senior officers at SEAL Team 6 did not formally punish him. Zinke could have been referred for criminal charges, or subjected to a nonjudicial proceeding that would have censured him, likely removing him from the unit. Neither of those things happened, and he was allowed to finish his assignment at the elite unit.

While he received no formal punishment, he was told he would not be allowed to return to the elite unit for future assignments, according to the sources. Zinke continued his career, and he was eventually promoted to Navy commander, the rank he retired at in 2008.

A retired SEAL Team 6 leader said that Zinke wasn’t punished because of concerns over the impact on his family if he was pushed out of the Navy or had his rank reduced.

According to a former SEAL Team 6 leader, the officer who submitted evidence documenting Zinke’s misconduct was “incensed” that he wasn’t punished. Three of the sources said the lack of formal punishment was part of a tradition at SEAL Team 6 of avoiding scandal and failing to adequately hold its officers accountable for criminal behavior and other misconduct.

Zinke was elected to Congress in 2014 as a Republican and was expected to challenge Montana’s democratic senator in 2018.

He has spoken publicly about his career, including in a book published last month about his time in the Navy SEALs. The book details his deployments to Bosnia in the late 1990s as part of SEAL Team 6, but does not mention the misconduct that led to his leaving the unit.

Neither Zinke nor the Trump transition team responded to a request for comment.

Update: Dec. 20, 2016

During his 2014 campaign for Congress, Zinke released his military records, which detail two incidents of unapproved travel to Montana. The June 14, 1999 evaluation cited “lapses in judgement” for travel. Zinke told the Missoulian newspaper that the two trips were taken to scout for possible training locations, and that he was ordered to repay $211 for a flight from Virginia to Montana. Zinke defended his travel to Montana as legitimate, but told the newspaper he was “a little aggressive for a junior officer.”

According to three sources familiar with Zinke’s record at SEAL Team 6, the training research was the excuse he used for the travel, but later admitted to senior SEAL officers that he had, in fact, gone to restore his home. Those same sources said there were more than the two occasions cited in his records, and that SEAL Team 6 officers documented multiple incidents involving fraudulent travel.

All of the sources quoted by The Intercept asked for anonymity because nearly every facet of SEAL Team 6 is classified.
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/20/tru ... al-team-6/

[seemslikeadream]

Published on
Thursday, December 29, 2016
byCommon Dreams
Climate Kids Demand Testimony From Exxon's Tillerson in Landmark Lawsuit

"As CEO of ExxonMobil, Tillerson has unique personal knowledge of the fossil fuel industry's historical relationship with the federal government."
byDeirdre Fulton, staff writer


"He has led his company and his industry to double down on an energy source that is literally poisoning the world and making it harder for humans to survive on it," said Greenpeace executive director Annie Leonard to mark Rex Tillerson's nomination for secretary of state. (Photo: AP)
The group of young people suing the federal government for failing to protect their constitutional right to a stable climate is seeking testimony in their landmark case from Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil and President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state.

Attorneys representing the 21 young people in their federal climate lawsuit served the notice of deposition (pdf) on Thursday, demanding Tillerson's testimony on January 19, 2017 in Dallas, Texas. They claim that "[a]s CEO of ExxonMobil, Tillerson has unique personal knowledge of the fossil fuel industry's historical relationship with the federal government."

What's more, they add, Tillerson and Exxon have been leaders in the American Petroleum Institute (API), National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM)—the trade associations that joined the federal climate lawsuit as defendants. "Tillerson serves on the board of API and he and other Exxon executives also serve on the board of NAM," reads a statement from Our Children's Trust, the non-profit supporting the legal action. "The youth plaintiffs seek to prove these trade associations have known about the dangers of climate change since the 1960s and have successfully worked to prevent the government from taking the necessary steps to fully address climate change."

We can't do it without you!

Exxon is at the center of a campaign that seeks to hold Big Oil accountable for suppressing evidence and funding denial of climate change. Climate groups have vowed to grill Tillerson on Exxon's climate fraud at his confirmation hearing in January.

"We believe the evidence shows both ExxonMobil and the fossil fuel industry knew about the threat to our country posed by climate change and worked to encourage the federal government to enable emissions of more greenhouse gas," declared Philip Gregory, counsel for the plaintiffs and a partner with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy in California.

"Mr. Tillerson's testimony is crucial to understanding what the fossil fuel industry did to prevent the government from fully addressing this problem," he said. "The youth of America need to know the truth on how companies such as ExxonMobil continue to use the government to cause horrific harm to our nation's most vulnerable people."

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that while Exxon appeared to "shift" on climate under Tillerson's leadership, "it still funds organizations that pursue a broader agenda of fighting measures to address climate change, including carbon taxes." Indeed, the Times wrote, "however earnest ExxonMobil might sound in its pronouncements on policy, it has done little or nothing to help put carbon taxes into effect."

Having secured a victory in November, when a federal judge ruled that the case had merit and could move forward, plaintiffs are preparing for trial in the summer or fall of 2017.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/1 ... rk-lawsuit

[seemslikeadream]

Treasury Nominee Steve Mnuchin’s Bank Accused of “Widespread Misconduct” in Leaked Memo

David Dayen
January 3 2017, 2:22 p.m.
ONEWEST BANK, WHICH Donald Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, ran from 2009 to 2015, repeatedly broke California’s foreclosure laws during that period, according to a previously undisclosed 2013 memo from top prosecutors in the state attorney general’s office.

The memo obtained by The Intercept alleges that OneWest rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.

In the memo, the leaders of the state attorney general’s Consumer Law Section said they had “uncovered evidence suggestive of widespread misconduct” in a yearlong investigation. In a detailed 22-page request, they identified over a thousand legal violations in the small subsection of OneWest loans they were able to examine, and they recommended that Attorney General Kamala Harris file a civil enforcement action against the Pasadena-based bank. They even wrote up a sample legal complaint, seeking injunctive relief and millions of dollars in penalties.

But Harris’s office, without any explanation, declined to prosecute the case.

Mnuchin, the former CEO of OneWest, was already facing challenges in his upcoming Senate confirmation hearings on account of his bank’s ruthless foreclosure practices, ranging from locking out one homeowner during a Minneapolis blizzard to foreclosing on another over a 27-cent payment shortfall.

“After years peddling the kind of dangerous mortgage-backed securities that eventually blew up the economy, Mnuchin swooped in after the crash to take a second bite out of families by aggressively — and sometimes illegally — foreclosing on their homes,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement last month. Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, warned: “Given Mr. Mnuchin’s history of profiting off the victims of predatory lending, I look forward to asking him how his Treasury Department would work for Americans who are still waiting for the economic recovery to show up in their communities.”

The consistent violations of California foreclosure processes outlined in the memo would indicate that Mnuchin’s bank didn’t merely act callously, but did so with blatant disregard for the law.

According to the memo, OneWest also obstructed the investigation by ordering third parties to refuse to comply with state subpoenas.

Whether Mnuchin directed efforts to prevent scrutiny of his bank’s practices could be a focus of the confirmation hearings.

The memo also raises questions about then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who was sworn in as a U.S. senator on Tuesday, and who will soon have to vote on Mnuchin’s appointment.

Why did her office close the case, deciding not to “conduct a full investigation of a national bank’s misconduct and provide a public accounting of what happened,” as her own investigators had urged?

State and federal law enforcement have been severely criticized for failing to hold accountable those responsible for the financial crisis and its aftermath. The OneWest case provides another example, and this time, the failure to prosecute could help the nation’s next treasury secretary get confirmed.

TO UNDERSTAND THE importance of these revelations, one needs to know a bit about California’s nonjudicial foreclosure process. If a homeowner misses mortgage payments and no resolution can be worked out, the lender files a notice of default, starting a 90-day clock where the homeowner can either repay the debt or face a sale of their property.

In the original deed of trust that establishes the mortgage, the lender designates a third-party trustee to handle the sale process in case of foreclosure. Lenders can change trustees at any time, memorializing this with a “substitution of trustee” document (SOT).

After the 90 days expire, if the homeowner is still in default, the trustee can record a notice of sale, setting a date for the auction at least 21 days thereafter. The winner of the auction gets the home, and can proceed to evict the homeowner.

Because no judge oversees this process, adherence to the rules is paramount.

“Compliance with the law gives us confidence in the outcome,” said Katherine Porter, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and an expert on foreclosures. “The whole scheme is a gift from the legislature to the mortgage industry. If the state is giving the industry benefits to take shortcuts, it’s reasonable to expect the industry to comply strictly with that process.”

And according to the state investigation, OneWest wasn’t following the rules.

OneWest already had a history of using false documents in foreclosures. A July 2009 deposition of Vice President Erica Johnson-Seck revealed that she “robo-signed” 6,000 foreclosure-related papers per week, spending just 30 seconds on each sworn affidavit that attested to the veracity of all relevant information in the case. Johnson-Seck even admitted to not reading the documents before signing them. OneWest entered into a consent order in April 2011 with the now-defunct federal Office of Thrift Supervision over related failures in the foreclosure process.

Knowing that OneWest foreclosed on thousands of California homeowners, the Consumer Law Section decided to investigate in 2012.

Because of federal pre-emption rules, state prosecutors cannot subpoena national banks for information about their core functions prior to filing a lawsuit. But the California attorney general’s office was nevertheless able to review over 204,000 publicly available foreclosure documents filed with county recording offices throughout the state, along with other documents purchased from a website called Foreclosure Radar that tracks foreclosure activity.

Working through the county records, the attorneys immediately uncovered a startling finding: 86 OneWest documents changing the designation of third-party trustees (SOTs) bore a date prior to March 19, 2009, the date OneWest opened for business. Some dated back to 2008.

“Because it would have been impossible for OneWest to sign the instruments before it became an operational bank,” four deputy attorneys general from the Consumer Law Section wrote in the memo, “we deduced that the instruments were backdated.”

Prosecutors also issued subpoenas to third parties with access to OneWest documents.

According to their memo, one subpoena went to Lender Processing Services, a company that assisted with foreclosure operations. LPS produced a random sample of 300 OneWest loan files and agreed to send more, but on February 13, 2012, Jennifer Gray, OneWest’s head of litigation, told the attorney general’s office that “the loan files belonged to OneWest and that LPS could not produce them.”

The Consumer Law Section feared OneWest would sue them to stop the investigation, as they did in January 2010, when a lawsuit shut down an inquiry into OneWest’s reverse mortgage subsidiary Financial Freedom. So prosecutors only got the 300 LPS files.

Mnuchin spokesperson Tara Bradshaw said that “state attorneys general have no jurisdiction to investigate federally chartered banks like OneWest. When OneWest pointed that out to the California attorney general’s office, they withdrew their subpoena.”

(Brian Brooks, the lead lawyer on that 2010 OneWest lawsuit, eventually became OneWest’s Vice Chairman.)

The relatively few additional files prosecutors were able to obtain revealed more evidence of backdating. The Consumer Law Section reviewed 913 documents from Quality Loan Service Corp., a trustee that worked with OneWest; 909 of them were backdated. The LPS files included backdated documents as well. Investigators determined this because the document metadata showing the dates of execution showed later dates than the ones stamped on the documents themselves.

Investigators surmised that OneWest listed trustees on notices of default before formally executing the SOTs, then backdated the SOTs to make it look like those trustees were already in place at the time the notice of default was issued.

Had OneWest put the correct date on the SOTs, they would have had to file new notices of default, restarting the 90-day clock and delaying the foreclosure.

“That’s consistent with a pattern of creating whatever documents that appear necessary at the time that they’re created to grease the wheels of the foreclosure machine,” said Mark Zanides, a former federal prosecutor who has represented homeowners in California.

The memo also alleges that OneWest occasionally acted as the loan owner on these SOTs when it was merely the servicer — and therefore did not have the authority to execute the documents. Other SOTs were recorded in county offices without being signed or without being dated. Trustees acting on OneWest’s behalf also did not honor the 90-day waiting period in dozens of instances, issuing the notice of sale prior to the deadline. In other cases, SOTs were never mailed to homeowners notifying them of the identity of the new trustees with the power to sell their homes.

Finally, investigators found irregularities with foreclosure sales. At auction, bidders must typically pay the full amount by cash or cashier’s check. But the “present beneficiary” — the current owner of the mortgage — can make a “credit bid” at the beginning of the auction if they want to keep the property themselves.

These credit bids, usually for the amount due on the loan, typically stop other bidders, who would never be able to profit from a re-sale if they paid full price for a foreclosed home. “Credit bids generally have the effect of deterring or entirely chilling a competitive bidding process,” said Katherine Porter.

The Consumer Law Section found that, as with the SOTs, the key documents assigning beneficial interest in the loan sometimes were created after the auctions. In other words, OneWest made or directed others to make credit bids despite not being the present beneficiary.

Not only did this mean the winner of the auction may have made an unlawful bid, but credit bidders were exempt from significant documentary transfer taxes imposed by cities and counties. Those taxes range from $1.10 to $16.10 for every $1,000 of purchase price. Submitting credit bids saved OneWest and its partners from paying the taxes.

In 2015, CIT Bank bought OneWest. In a statement, CIT spokesperson Matthew Klein said that “CIT complies with all applicable laws and regulations, including California’s foreclosure process and all applicable servicing guidelines, and has implemented enhancements that strengthen the overall operations and controls at OneWest Bank.”

THE JANUARY 18, 2013, document obtained by The Intercept, known as a “package memo,” was a pitch from the deputy attorneys general in the Consumer Law Section to their superiors. It laid out the evidence obtained, ran through the resources required for the case and the likelihood of success, and gave pros and cons for filing. In conjunction with the package memo, investigators directly made their case to supervisors and members of Attorney General Harris’s executive committee.

Though the state investigators could not subpoena OneWest and were obstructed from obtaining more documents, they extrapolated that a full and unencumbered inquiry would yield at least 5,600 violations of foreclosure sale auctions, and turn up instances of backdating in nearly all of the 35,000 foreclosures OneWest had completed in California from 2009 to 2012. They wrote that there would be “substantial public justice value” in such an investigation, which could only proceed through the discovery process of a civil lawsuit. That discovery could have turned up other examples of noncompliance which may have been even more harmful to homeowners.

The attorneys wrote that scrutinizing the scope of OneWest’s misconduct would provide public accountability, and enhance the deterrent to violating state foreclosure laws. They hoped to get injunctive relief, forcing OneWest to verify the accuracy of every foreclosure document they issued.

That’s on top of civil penalties, which could be up to $2,500 for each violation, and double for “protected classes” like senior citizens or the disabled. Additional restitution could proceed from any premature foreclosures executed as a result of the misconduct.

The case did not contemplate criminal indictments, even though many of the violations described were felonies; Consumer Law is a civil enforcement section.

The prosecutors made clear to their superiors that the case would be a tough one, with no guarantee of success. They said they expected litigation to chew up substantial resources and last three to five years (which would have been about now).

“We face a higher than average risk that the court may choose to award minimal amounts of restitution and/or penalties,” they wrote, explaining that they expected OneWest to argue that homeowners defaulted on their mortgages and were therefore not harmed by process violations.

Indeed, California courts have been known to accept such arguments. In a recent case against OneWest, a trial court agreed that a homeowner alleging improper documents in his mortgage case “never claimed he was not in default or that the ‘true lender’ would have refrained from foreclosing under the circumstances.” Similarly, in a 2015 case against OneWest for failing to execute an SOT before issuing the notice of default — precisely the violation at issue in the Consumer Law Section investigation — the First District Court of Appeal allowed the foreclosure to go forward.

But those were cases brought by individual homeowners, rather than by a state law enforcement apparatus charged with policing noncompliance with statutory laws.

Consumer Law planned to argue that “while it may be true that the homeowners were delinquent on their mortgage obligations, that did not change the fact that they were denied the procedural protections required by law.”

Legal experts agree that ignoring clear violations would make a joke of California’s foreclosure law. “The foreclosure statutes establish a proper way to do things that will ensure that all parties are treated fairly,” said former federal prosecutor Mark Zanides. “If you ignore that, you’ve reduced yourself to a banana republic, where courts sworn to uphold the law are precluded from doing so by being given documents that are false.”

Mnuchin spokesperson Tara Bradshaw, without commenting on the violations themselves, would only say by way of justification, “the attorney general’s office made no finding of any violation and took no action against OneWest.”

CONSUMER LAW SECTION ATTORNEYS recommended “that the attorney general authorize us to file a civil enforcement action against OneWest.” Two months later, they were told that the office would not move forward with the complaint. OneWest representatives were not even brought in for a meeting to discuss the matter.

So why didn’t Kamala Harris leap at the chance to take on a bank that her staff said was illegally rushing Californians out of their homes? Why did she reject a case that her office had already spent significant resources on during a year of line-level investigation?

Kristin Ford, communications director at the attorney general’s office, did not respond to a detailed request for comment. Without an official explanation, we can only speculate why Harris passed up the opportunity. Perhaps she judged the case too difficult, or not a high enough priority, or not having enough of a human interest. Or maybe it was something else.

Harris has been criticized for a lack of vigor in prosecuting foreclosure fraud before. She set up a Mortgage Fraud Strike Force in 2011, dedicated to “protect innocent homeowners and bring justice to those who defraud them.” But despite hundreds of complaints of loan modification fraud — a primary target identified by the office — it only prosecuted 10 cases in the first three years.

County district attorneys and even attorneys general in other states filed many more California-based cases, despite more limited resources. And some of the cases Harris did file began under her predecessor Jerry Brown or were organized by other local and federal law enforcement teams; Harris just gave her strike-force credit for them.

In fact, many of the cases Harris’s office is known for were part of multistate or prior investigations. The 2012 $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement with five large mortgage servicers (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Ally Bank) over allegations of illegal foreclosure practices, which Harris touted in campaign ads, was a 49-state and federal matter, where she was not deeply involved with negotiations and was criticized as a grandstander.

The Intercept asked Harris’s office for a breakdown of cases initiated and prosecuted by the Consumer Law Section during her tenure. They have not yet provided them.

Rigid hierarchies within Harris’s office were known to have made it difficult to get cases moving. Sign-offs to open investigations, issue subpoenas, and proceed with enforcement all traveled through a chain of command from senior assistant attorneys general running the various divisions, to a small inner circle of special assistants known as the executive committee, to Harris. And this created a bottleneck, especially if Harris was tending to other matters. She has been criticized for luxury travel spending and a relentless nationwide campaign schedule throughout her attorney general tenure.

Many special assistants came from Harris’s district attorney staff in San Francisco, and several are joining her in Washington as she enters the U.S. Senate.

The investigators who actually did the ground work in the OneWest case were not present for executive committee decision-making.

One of the supervisors involved in the OneWest case, Supervising Deputy Attorney General Benjamin Diehl, left the office in November 2013 to join Stroock Stroock & Lavan, a corporate law firm that represents Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup in cases against consumers, regulatory agencies and state attorneys general. Emails indicate that Diehl arranged private meetings with Stroock partners six months before his hiring, while he still worked for the attorney general. Stroock would not make Diehl available for comment.

Harris’s prodigious fundraising also raises questions about how attentive she is to the needs of campaign contributors. Prior to signing on with Trump, Mnuchin donated to members of both parties. He gave $2,000 to Harris’ Senate campaign in February 2016. Among the investors in OneWest Bank was major Democratic donor George Soros, who maxed out to Harris’ campaign in 2015.

“I DON’T KNOW why they didn’t move forward,” said Paulina Gonzalez of the California Reinvestment Coalition, a state housing advocacy group. “There’s some really concerning information in this document that would say to us there needs to be further investigation. … This is damning evidence of clear violations.”

Gonzalez, whose organization has been tracking OneWest for several years, also received a copy of the package memo and sample complaint in the mail. Her copy came “with Wonder Woman stamps and the return address of Planned Parenthood,” Gonzalez said. The copy sent to us had no return address.

With Mnuchin set to take over the Treasury Department, Gonzalez said the memo raises “real concerns about his ethics and potential for illegal behavior.” She said her organization would take up the matter with OneWest’s federal regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), along with Harris’ replacement as California attorney general, Xavier Becerra.

Bradshaw, the Mnuchin spokesperson, provided a report from the OCC showing relatively fewer error rates in OneWest foreclosures than other national banks. But those were reviewed under the context of harm to borrowers, not statutory noncompliance.

OneWest may also have violated a loss share agreement signed with the FDIC upon purchasing assets from the failed lender IndyMac. That agreement, which backstopped OneWest losses on foreclosures, committed OneWest to make good faith options to try to avoid them. Violations that sped up foreclosures could indicate that the bank didn’t make such an effort.

Senate Democrats have already attacked Mnuchin over OneWest’s foreclosure practices, even setting up a website inviting foreclosure victims to tell their stories. One of those victims, Teena Colebrook, voted for Donald Trump but lost her faith in that decision after the Mnuchin pick. In an interview, Colebrook alleged discrepancies on her substitution of trustee, similar to what was described in the package memo.

“It has to get out why this man should not be put in charge of Treasury,” said Colebrook. “Nobody minds a billionaire, but not one feeding off people’s misery.”

Colebrook says she sent materials to Kamala Harris years earlier, asking her to help her save her home. Harris’s response?

“She said ‘We can’t get involved in an individual case.’”
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/tre ... aked-memo/

[seemslikeadream]

Published on
Friday, January 06, 2017
byCommon Dreams
New Resource Exposes 'Corporate Chieftains' Filling Trump Cabinet
"We're facing the prospect of a government literally of the Exxons, by the Goldman Sachses, and for the Kochs"
byAndrea Germanos, staff writer


Image from Public Citizen's new resource, CorporateCabinet.org.
For those who want to keep tabs on the corporate influences President-elect Donald Trump's uber-wealthy and "horrifying" cabinet picks will be bringing with them, advocacy organization Public Citizen just unveiled a new resource.

Trump, whose own conflicts of interest continue to mount, "ran against corruption, cronyism, and insider dealmaking," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, on Friday. Yet, he "is handing control of the government over to corporate chieftains."

The new site, CorporateCabinet.org, so far profiles 14 picks including Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, Steven Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary, Betsy DeVos for Education Secretary, and well as Vice President-elect Mike Pence. It is slated to be updated as further top officials become known.

"Many of the nominees have connections with corporations whose profit-driven interests are directly at odds with the federal agencies Trump has selected them to lead," a press statement announcing the resource states.

The site shows, for example, that "austerity-favoring" former Indiana Gov. Pence has corporate connections to Koch industries, principally owned by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

David Koch, according to the site, citing research from the National Institute on Money in State Politics, "has donated $300,000 to Pence's campaigns." Further, "Pence has received more than $1.5 million from the finance sector, more than $1 million from the construction industry, $793,750 from the pharmaceutical industry, and $685,283 from the chemical industry."

Tillerson, though he just stepped down from his position as CEO of ExxonMobil, has had the oil giant running "through his veins" for years. In addition, he is a former chairman of fossil fuel industry group the American Petroleum Institute.

CorporateCabinet.org ties Mnuchin, who "was steeped in the investment banking industry long before it became a poster child for economy-wrecking, foreclosure-inducing Wall Street greed," to CIT Group, which merged with the notorious OneWest Bank. OneWest engaged in widespread misconduct under Mnuchin's leadership. He just resigned from his position as board member of CIT.

DeVos, for her part, counts on connections with Amway, a global company seen by some as a pyramid scheme. But, pointing to a corporate agenda, her "greatest personal focus has been on education, such as seeking to expand charter schools, permit parents to use public funds as vouchers toward private school tuition, and advocating related proposals to steer funding away from traditional public schools," the resource states.

"Trump's corporate Cabinet nominees have staggering conflicts of interest, and if confirmed will drive forward policies to advance the interests of Big Business, not the American people," Weissman added. "We're facing the prospect of a government literally of the Exxons, by the Goldman Sachses, and for the Kochs."

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