The White House under Trump

submitted by LeRoy C


On Friday, the Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel.  It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees.

The report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary; instead he donated it to an amazing cause! See below.
 
The report also showed that President Trump is far better at saving money than Obama was. The total annual White House salaries under Trump are 35.8 million vs. $40.9 million under Obama, a savings of $5.1 million.  Here are some other key findings:
 
There are 110 fewer employees on White House staff under Trump than under Obama at this point in their respective presidencies.
 
Nineteen fewer staffers are also dedicated to The First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS).  Currently, there are only two staffers dedicated to Melania Trump vs. 22 staffers who served Michelle Obama (FY2009).
 
However, it's what the report said Trump did with this salary that has everyone talking.
 
Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!  AMAZING! It's so great to have a President who loves our brave military men and women so much!
 
Oh, and where's the media coverage of this? That's right, they don't cover anything decent that the President does...

The Real “Fake News” from Government Media

By Scott Lazarowitz



Image credit: Pixabay

Facebook has announced its campaign against “fake news.” But, according to some workers’ own admission, conservatives are being censored.

And Google also wants to censor “fake news.” But Google also was shown to treat conservative websites, but not liberal ones, as “fake news.”

The same thing seems to be going on with Twitter. And again, conservatives are complaining.

But who is to decide what is “fake news”? Who will be Facebook and Google’s sources for real news?

In 2013 the U.S. Senate considered a new shield law to protect journalists. In the lawmakers’ attempts to narrow the definition of a journalist, some Senators including Sen. Dianne Feinstein only wanted to include reporters with “professional qualifications.”

“Professional” publications such as the New York Times, the “Paper of Record,” would apparently be protected.

So one can conclude that the New York Times can be a source of “real” news for Facebook or Google, despite all the Timeserrors, screw-ups, and corrections, right?  According to one NYT former reporter, the Times has been a “propaganda megaphone” for war. Also a partner with the CIA to promote Obama’s reelection bid.

Or CNN, “The Most Trusted Name in News” which wins its own “fake news” awards with its errors, screw-ups and corrections.  During the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign, there were collusion s between then-CNN contributor and DNC operative Donna Brazile, who was outed by WikiLeaks in her giving candidate Hillary Clinton questions in advance for a CNN Town Hall.

Other emails that were leaked to WikiLeaks informed us that reporters obediently followed instructions from the Hillary Clinton campaign on how to cover the campaign. These include reporters from the New York Times such as Maggie Haberman who said the campaign would “tee up stories for us,” and Mark Leibovich, who would email Clinton flunky Jennifer Palmieri for editing recommendations.

And Politico reporter Glenn Thrush asked Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta for approval of stories on Clinton. Thrush was then hired by the New York Times. After Thrush was then suspended from NYT over allegations of sexual misconduct, the Times ended the suspension, stating that while Thrush had “acted offensively,” he would be trained to behave himself. Hmm.

But all this from the 2016 campaign reminded me of the “JournoLists,” the group of news journalists who participated in a private forum online from 2007-2010. The forum was to enable news reporters to discuss news reporting and political issues in private and with candor, but also, it was revealed, to discuss ways to suppress negative news on then-2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama.

For instance, according to the Daily Caller, some members of the group discussed their criticism of a 2008 debate in which Obama was questioned on his association with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Nation‘s Richard Kim wrote that George Stephanopoulos was “being a disgusting little rat snake.” The Guardian‘s Michael Tomasky wrote that “we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy.”

Spencer Ackerman, then with the Washington Independent and now of the Daily Beast, wrote, “If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.

The Nation‘s Chris Hayes wrote, “Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians — men, women, children, the infirmed — on its hands. You’ll forgive me if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama’s pastor.”(But has Hayes criticized Obama’s assassination program, or Obama’s bombings or the blood on Obama’s hands? Just askin’)

In an open letter, according to the Daily Caller, several of the JournoList members called the ABC debate a “revolting descent into tabloid journalism,” because of the moderators’ legitimate questions on Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

So, in today’s Bizarro World, objectively questioning a candidate on a controversial issue is now “tabloid journalism,” but making things up like “Trump-Russia collusion” and repeating the propaganda over and over – that’s not “tabloid journalism.”

The JournoLists also included reporters from Time, the Baltimore Sun, the New Republic, Politico, and Huffington Post.

Now, are those the sources of “real news” that Facebook, Google and Twitter want to rely upon to combat “fake news”?

And who exactly were the “JournoLists” promoting? Obama?

Regarding Obama’s own crackdown on actual journalism, Fox News reporter James Rosen was accused by the feds of being a “co-conspirator” with State Department leaker Stephen Jin-Woo Kim in violating the Espionage Act.  Rosen’s correspondences with Kim were seized by Obama’s FBI, along with Rosen’s personal email and phone records. The FBI also used records to track Rosen’s visits to the State Department.

Apparently, then-attorney general Eric Holder went “judge-shopping” to find a judge who would approve subpoenaing Rosen’s private records, after two judges rejected the request.

Commenting on James Rosen and the FBI’s abuse of powers, Judge Andrew Napolitano observed that “this is the first time that the federal government has moved to this level of taking ordinary, reasonable, traditional, lawful reporter skills and claiming they constitute criminal behavior.”

And there was the Obama administration’s going after then-CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, possibly for her reporting on Benghazi and Fast and Furious. Attkisson finally resigned from CBS news out of frustration with the company’s alleged pro-Obama bias and with CBS’s apparently not airing her subsequent reports.

In 2013 CBS News confirmed that Attkisson’s computers had been “accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions.” In 2015 Attkisson sued the Obama administration, claiming to have evidence which proves the computer intrusions were connected to the Obama DOJ.

In Attkisson’s latest lawsuit update, after her computer was returned to her following the DOJ Inspector General’s investigation, her forensics team now believes her computer’s hard drive was replaced by a different one.

Now back to “fake news.”

After Donald Trump locked up the Republican Presidential nomination in May, 2016, there were significant events in the next two months. Fusion GPS and former British spy Christopher Steele colluded to get opposition research on behalf of Hillary Clinton, the FBI applied for FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign associates, and Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner had a possibly set-up meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower.

Also within that same period, the DNC claimed that its computers were hacked but the DNC wouldn’t let FBI investigate. The Washington Post published an article claiming, with no evidence presented, that “Russian government hackers” took DNC opposition research on Trump.

It was very shortly after the November, 2016 Presidential election that the Washington Post published an article on a “Russian propaganda effort to spread ‘fake news’ during the election.” To escalate the media’s censorship campaign perhaps?

The campaign against “fake news” coincided with Obama minions at FBI, DOJ and CIA apparently panicking over a possible Trump presidency and allegedly abusing their powers to attempt to take down Trump.

So the news media seem to be on a crusade to fabricate “Trump-Russia collusion” and repeat it over and over, and to vilify, ignore and squash actual investigative research and reporting on what exactly the FBI and DOJ bureaucrats have been doing. Call such real investigative reporting “fake news,” “conspiracy theory,” and so forth.

In the end, Facebook, Twitter and Google might want to reconsider relying on the mainstream news media led by the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN, and instead include citizen journalists and non-government-sycophant media to provide news and information.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has noted that the Founders generally viewed the freedom of the Press to apply to every citizen to print, publish or express accounts of events. We really need to highlight that kind of old-fashioned, honest journalism.

Scott Lazarowitz is a libertarian writer and commentator. Please visit his blog.





Scott Lazarowitz is a libertarian writer and commentator. Please visit his blog. The article is republished under a 2018 Creative Commons License. 









Corrupt: McCabe Used Strzok’s Mistress To Keep Unauthorized Tabs on Clinton Probe

by Luke Rosiak


Then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe tasked the mistress of lead agent Peter Strzok to stay apprised of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private server — a decision that other bureau officials took issue with at the time, according to the Department of Justice Inspector General’s bombshell report.

McCabe was supposed to be insulated from the probe by two levels of management: Strzok worked for counterintelligence head Bill Priestap, who worked for national security head Michael Steinbach, who reported up to McCabe. However, Strzok communicated about the probe with his mistress, Lisa Page, who worked directly for McCabe and acted as a liaison for the Clinton investigation for the deputy director.

The report says:

Lisa Page, who was Special Counsel to McCabe, became involved in the Midyear investigation after McCabe became the Deputy Director in February 2016. Page told the OIG that part of her function was to serve as a liaison between the Midyear team and McCabe.

Page acknowledged that her role upset senior FBI officials, but told the OIG that McCabe relied on her to ensure that he had the information he needed to make decisions, without it being filtered through multiple layers of management.

Several witnesses told the OIG that Page circumvented the official chain of command, and that Strzok communicated important Midyear case information to her, and thus to McCabe, without Priestap’s or Steinbach’s knowledge. McCabe said that he was aware of complaints about Page, and that he valued her ability to “spot issues” and bring them to his attention when others did not.


McCabe has been the subject of concerns about political bias in the FBI’s handling of the case because of his family’s ties to the Clintons.  Around the time of the investigation, McCabe’s wife received $700,000 from Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of the Clintons who ran Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. The money was for McCabe’s wife to run for state senate, an unusual amount of money for that office.
The IG report makes clear that McCabe intentionally essentially used Page as a mole to bypass multiple subordinates to feed him information about the probe.

It also contains an organizational chart detailing the chain of command on the Clinton emails investigation, annotated by The Daily Caller News Foundation here to highlight the way in which Page’s role was to be McCabe’s eyes and ears instead of relying on the normal channels.

Much of the most blatant anti-Trump rhetoric from FBI agents involved in the case has come from the text messages of Strzok and Page. Page made no secret where her allegiances lie, writing: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

Strzok replied: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

The two exchanged tens of thousands of texts about the matter.


Politics

Corrupt: McCabe Used Strzok’s Mistress To Keep Unauthorized Tabs on Clinton Probe

By Luke Rosiak
June 17, 2018 at 3:43pm

Then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe tasked the mistress of lead agent Peter Strzok to stay apprised of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private server — a decision that other bureau officials took issue with at the time, according to the Department of Justice Inspector General’s bombshell report.

McCabe was supposed to be insulated from the probe by two levels of management: Strzok worked for counterintelligence head Bill Priestap, who worked for national security head Michael Steinbach, who reported up to McCabe. However, Strzok communicated about the probe with his mistress, Lisa Page, who worked directly for McCabe and acted as a liaison for the Clinton investigation for the deputy director.

The report says:

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Lisa Page, who was Special Counsel to McCabe, became involved in the Midyear investigation after McCabe became the Deputy Director in February 2016. Page told the OIG that part of her function was to serve as a liaison between the Midyear team and McCabe.

Page acknowledged that her role upset senior FBI officials, but told the OIG that McCabe relied on her to ensure that he had the information he needed to make decisions, without it being filtered through multiple layers of management.

TRENDING: Trump: I’m Cutting All Aid to Countries Abusing America’s Immigration System [Video]

Several witnesses told the OIG that Page circumvented the official chain of command, and that Strzok communicated important Midyear case information to her, and thus to McCabe, without Priestap’s or Steinbach’s knowledge. McCabe said that he was aware of complaints about Page, and that he valued her ability to “spot issues” and bring them to his attention when others did not.

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McCabe has been the subject of concerns about political bias in the FBI’s handling of the case because of his family’s ties to the Clintons. Around the time of the investigation, McCabe’s wife received $700,000 from Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of the Clintons who ran Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. The money was for McCabe’s wife to run for state senate, an unusual amount of money for that office.

The IG report makes clear that McCabe intentionally essentially used Page as a mole to bypass multiple subordinates to feed him information about the probe.

It also contains an organizational chart detailing the chain of command on the Clinton emails investigation, annotated by The Daily Caller News Foundation here to highlight the way in which Page’s role was to be McCabe’s eyes and ears instead of relying on the normal channels.

Much of the most blatant anti-Trump rhetoric from FBI agents involved in the case has come from the text messages of Strzok and Page. Page made no secret where her allegiances lie, writing: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

Strzok replied: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

The two exchanged tens of thousands of texts about the matter.

Texts show that Page was conflicted about taking the job with McCabe, because she is a lawyer and he wanted her to be his “special assistant.”“ The Deputy Director picked ME to work for him,” Page wrote on Feb. 3. But “I’m a lawyer, it’s my identity.”

RELATED: Peter Strzok Loses Security Clearance as Conspiracy To Harm Trump Unravels

Strzok said it would be tough to get McCabe to call her his “special counsel.” But ultimately — with Page considering turning down the job if she could not get the title — that’s what happened. “Let [McCabe] take the lead on role and expectations.”

It is unclear why it was so important to McCabe that information about the Clinton probe not be “filtered through multiple layers of management,” the IG report said, but officials may have believed that it would be inappropriate or abnormal to share certain information with him.

The IG report said numerous people in the FBI were telling McCabe to recuse himself from the Clinton probe due to the appearance of conflict. McCabe resisted recusal and got into an “argument” and tense conversations with FBI officials.

FBI General Counsel James Baker “had a series of conversations with McCabe culminating in a ‘very intense’ conversation in which Baker told McCabe that he believed he needed to recuse himself and that it was better that he do it ‘than have the boss order him to do it.’ He said McCabe ‘was not happy about it’ and ‘had lots of questions’ and they had a ‘good argument back and forth,’” the report said.

Then-FBI Director James Comey said in the report that he would have taken McCabe off the investigation sooner had he known about the donations to McCabe’s wife.

McCabe has not addressed whether he knew that Page and Strzok were having an affair and whether that is why Page had such a knack to “spot issues” in the Clinton probe.

McCabe was fired in March 2018 for displayed what the IG called a “lack of candor” during interviews about his authorization of an FBI official to speak with The Wall Street Journal in October 2016 about the Clinton email investigation and is currently suing the government.


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Irony: FBI Leaker McCabe Outraged After DOJ Leakers Finger Him for Criminal Referral

by Benjamin Arie


Call it cosmic payback or reaping what you sow — either way, life has a way of swinging back like a boomerang and hitting people with a strong dose of reality.

That’s what former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe just found out, but he seems oblivious to the irony. The bureau figure who was fired for leaking to the press is now complaining about how unfair it is that there are leaks from the FBI, at the same time as he’s demanding immunity in exchange for his testimony to the Senate committee investigating the bureau’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

McCabe is one of the figures in the middle of several political bias scandals at the FBI, including the discredited “Trump dossier” and apparent spying by the FBI against Donald Trump’s presidential  campaign.

Back in March, the second-in-command at the FBI was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The reason was simple: McCabe repeatedly leaked sensitive information to the media and then lied about it.

A report from the Department of Justice’s inspector general explained that McCabe was funneling details about a Clinton Foundation investigation to The Wall Street Journal, and was then dishonest about where the leak had come from… namely, himself.

“The report states that McCabe authorized another FBI agent to leak information about an ongoing investigation into (the) Clinton Foundation to The Wall Street Journal, not in the interest of the public, but for his own personal gain,” summarized The Federalist.

That official report goes on to explain in detail how McCabe “lacked candor” — bureaucrat-speak for “lied” — about leaks at least three times, including under oath.

Now, showing just how tone-deaf the former bureau official truly is, McCabe is complaining about leaks from the FBI… yes, the same organization where he was fired for leaking like a sieve.

In a letter sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee by McCabe’s attorney on his behalf, the disgraced former FBI deputy director essentially whined to lawmakers and declared that he was “outraged” that leaks about a criminal investigation of his alleged wrongdoings were taking place.

“(A)s the result of a stream of leaks from the Department of Justice, it is now well-known that the (Office of Inspector General) has made a criminal referral to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia,” the former deputy complained through his attorney.

“As you know, the grounds for such a referral is the very low standard of ‘reasonable grounds to believe there has been a violation of Federal criminal law,'” the letter continued, bizarrely implying that reasonable suspicion of a federal crime was a bad reason to investigate someone.

“Even so […]  these leaks have forced us to acknowledge the criminal referral,” the letter admitted.

The complaining and finger-pointing over the same type of leaking that McCabe was fired for doing didn’t stop there.

“And, unfortunately, the stream of leaks has continued: As recently as last Thursday, additional leaks led to the reporting of specific investigative steps allegedly taken by the United States Attorney’s Office in response to the referral,” the document stated.

“We are outraged by these leaks and last Friday requested an investigation by the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility into the source(s) of the leaks,” McCabe’s attorney explained.

That’s right: Apparently, leaking information to the media and then lying about it is completely fine when it can damage Donald Trump, but McCabe is suddenly “outraged” when similar leaks start actually hurting him.

Maybe he’s just upset that he’s not the only snitch in town.

Incredibly, the former deputy director then demanded immunity from prosecution in order to testify to Congress about matters related to the crimes — leaking and lying — that he’s accused of committing.

“Mr. McCabe is willing to testify, but because of the criminal referral, he must be afforded suitable legal protection,” the letter declared. “Accordingly, we hereby request that the Judiciary Committee authorize a grant of use immunity to Mr. McCabe,” it stated.

If there was still any doubt about why cronies like James Comey and Andrew McCabe needed to go, this should clear it up.

They see themselves as special and above the law, and can’t seem to even comprehend that their own actions — and the culture of leaking that they created — have consequences.


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