The Patriots

by Randy DeSoto

Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein reportedly personally approved the Monday morning FBI raids on President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen’s home and offices.

The New York Times reported that the FBI seized emails, tax documents and records, some of which are related to Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the days before the November 2016 presidential election.

According to The Times, a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller proceeded Rosenstein’s decision to green light the raid.

The Justice Department obtained a search warrant from a federal judge in New York, which would have required prosecutors to argue the FBI would likely find evidence of criminal activity.  A source told The Times that the documents identified in the warrant date back years.  Trump took the DOJ to task on Monday night during a meeting at the White House with his national security team.  He noted that Rosenstein approved a renewal of a FISA warrant, which authorized the FBI to continue surveil Trump campaign associate Carter Page during the early months of the new administration in 2017.

Asked by a reporter if Rosenstein would keep his job, Trump did not respond.  However, the president did voice his frustration with Sessions and Mueller. “(Sessions) should have certainly let us know if he was going to recuse himself, and we would have put a different attorney general in,” Trump said. “So he made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country, but you’ll figure that out.”

Sessions’ recusal led to Rosenstein taking over Russia investigation, which resulted in his appointment of Mueller as special counsel.  The president said the Mueller investigation is “an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for” and called Mueller’s actions against Cohen “a disgrace.”

RELATED: Former Board Member Dershowitz Hammers ACLU for Support of Trump Attorney Raid

Attorney–client privilege is dead!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10, 2018

Asked whether he will fire Mueller, the president replied, “We’ll see what happens,” and, “Many people have said you should fire him.”

by Chuck Ross


Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office is investigating a $150,000 donation a Ukrainian businessman made to President Donald Trump’s charity in 2015, according to a new report.  The donation, from steel magnate Victor Pinchuk, pales in comparison to contributions he gave to the charity established by Bill and Hillary Clinton.  The billionaire has contributed $13 million to the Clinton Foundation since 2006 and had access to Hillary Clinton while she served as secretary of state.

But Mueller is not investigating the Clintons. Instead, he is conducting a broad investigation of Trump, including the flow of foreign money into various Trump-controlled entities. Mueller began investigating the Pinchuk donation after receiving documents in response to a subpoena issued to the Trump Organization — the real estate company Trump ran before entering politics.

In September 2015, Trump appeared via video link at a conference Pinchuk hosted in Kiev. Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, negotiated details of the event with Douglas Schoen, a former consultant for Bill Clinton, according to The New York Times.

Trump did not initially request payment for the appearance, but Cohen contacted Schoen at one point to request a $150,000 honorarium, The Times reported.

In a seemingly unrelated matter, the FBI raided Cohen’s Manhattan office and residence on Monday. The search was reportedly conducted for records related to Cohen’s payments to Stormy Daniels, a porn star claiming to have had an affair with Trump in 2006.

The Victor Pinchuk Foundation issued a statement to The Times, downplaying the donation to Trump. The charity reached out to Trump and other world leaders in order to “promote strengthened and enduring ties between Ukraine and the West,” it said.  Contact with Trump was made at a time when “it was by no means assured that Mr. Trump would be the Republican nominee in 2016,” the foundation pointed out.  Pinchuk appears to have had a much closer relationship to the Clintons.

In June 2012, the billionaire attended a dinner at the Clintons’ residence. And through Schoen, Pinchuk lobbied the State Department in 2011 and 2013.  Documents filed with the Justice Department show Schoen and Pinchuk met on several occasions in 2012 with Melanne Verveer, a close Clinton associate who then served as an ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues.

RELATED: Dershowitz: Mueller’s Setting Stage To Impeach Trump

Bill Clinton attended Pinchuk’s annual Yalta conference, The New York Times reported on Feb. 13, 2014. Pinchuk also attended the former president’s 65th birthday party in Los Angeles.

The FBI reportedly investigated the Clinton Foundation over its foreign donations. The status of that investigation is unclear.

This story originally appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

by Richard Pollock

• The FBI will not expedite the release of documents about secret meetings between Comey and Obama.
• Comey held a secret Oval Office meeting with Obama on Jan. 5, 2017.
• TheDCNF requested records of all meetings between the two.

The FBI states it will not expedite the release of documents about secret meetings between FBI Director James Comey and former President Barack Obama, according to a letter the bureau sent to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Such information is not “a matter of widespread and exceptional media interest in which there exists possible questions about the government’s integrity which affects public confidence,” David Hardy, the section chief for the bureau’s Record/Information Dissemination Section, told TheDCNF in a Feb. 26 letter.

TheDCNF, under the Freedom of Information Act, requested records of all meetings between Comey and Obama and sought an “expedited process” as provided under the act when issues are of great interest to the media and the records address issues pertaining to government integrity. TheDCNF FOIA request was filed Feb. 16, 2018.  The issue prompting the FOIA request was the disclosure Comey held a secret Oval Office meeting with Obama on Jan. 5, 2017. Comey never divulged the meeting to Congress.

Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and former Vice President Joe Biden also attended the meeting.

The National Archives revealed the existence of the meeting and released a declassified version of an email Rice sent to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Rice wrote an email to herself about the secret Jan. 5 meeting with Comey on Inauguration Day Jan. 20, 2017, as President Donald Trump was being sworn into office. The email suggested Comey may have misled Congress and was attempting to cover up the extent of his relationship with Obama.

Christopher Bedford, TheDCNF’s editor in chief, called the FBI denial “shameful.”

“The FBI just told us that Director James Comey potentially lying to Congress should not be of interest to us, that it doesn’t speak to their ‘integrity,’ and that it shouldn’t impact America’s ‘confidence’ in them,” Bedford said. “They said this with a straight face. We disagree, we think the American people disagree, and we think it’s absolutely shameful.”

Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and subcommittee chairman, and Lindsey Graham released the Rice email after they received it from the National Archives.

“President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office,” Rice stated in the email on Jan. 5. 

The president urged Comey to proceed “by the book” on the Russian investigation, according to Rice.  Grassley of Iowa and Graham of South Carolina wrote to Rice in a Feb. 8 letter saying the email seemed “odd” to them.

“It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama,” the two wrote.  “Despite your claim that President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed ‘by the book,’ substantial questions have arisen about whether officials at the FBI, as well as at the Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed ‘by the book,’” the two senators continued.

Comey claimed in June 8, 2017, testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence he had only two face-to-face meetings with the president in which they were alone.

“I spoke alone with President Obama twice in person (and never on the phone) – once in 2015 to discuss law enforcement policy issues and a second time, briefly, for him to say goodbye in late 2016,” Comey’s opening statement read.  The qualifier that he had meetings with Obama “alone” permitted the former director to suggest he only met with the former president on two occasions.

The DCNF filed its FOIA request before the bureau “seeking records that identify and describe all meetings between former FBI Director James Comey and President Barack Obama. This records request is for all meetings with Obama alone or with meetings with the president in the company of other administration officials.”   The DCNF requested records to include all Comey “logs, director appointment schedules, emails and memos outlining the meetings with the former President along with administration officials,” adding, the records “should list the date of the meeting, location, topic and meeting participants.”  TheDCNF stated it sought an “expedited request” for producing the records. 

“The issue of Director Comey’s meetings with President Obama is a key troubling issue for Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley,” TheDCNF wrote in its application for the expedited processing. TheDCNF attached to Grassly-Graham letter to Rice in the FOIA request for expediting handling.

Hardy said The DCNF failed to meet its standards for expedited processing as provided under 28 CFR 16.5 (e)(1)(iv).

“You have not provided enough information concerning the statutory requirements permitting expedition: therefore your request is denied,” he told TheDCNF.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

by Rebekah Baker

Just when it seemed like the government incompetence surrounding the events leading up to the the Parkland, Florida high school massacre couldn’t get any worse, new information reveals that political motivations and bad policy in the leadership at the sheriff’s office had a pivotal role in failing to prevent the shooting.

First, it was the FBI. A tip that outlined the shooter’s “gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting,” was given to the FBI only six weeks before the deadly massacre occurred, NBC reported. The FBI failed to follow up.  Then, it was local law enforcement. Multiple agents within the Broward County Sheriff’s department cowered in the face of danger, and waited outside the Stoneman Douglas high school as innocent students were killed inside.

And there’s more: According to CNN, “Records obtained from the sheriff’s office by CNN show the law enforcement agency received at least 45 calls for service relating to Cruz or his brother from 2008 to 2017, before the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14.”  So was it pure incompetence, or was something more sinister at play?

It may have been both.

According to a report from RedState, a deeply embedded system of public corruption at the sheriff’s department may be to blame for the murderous shooter slipping right through the sheriff department’s fingers.

As reported by CNN, dozens of calls were made to local law enforcement about Nickolas Cruz with descriptions such as “mentally ill person,” “child/elderly abuse,” “domestic disturbance,” “missing person,” and more. Most of those warning calls resulted in “no written report.”  What in the world would have motivated an “oversight” like that?

According to RedState, it all comes back to Sheriff Israel.  First elected as sheriff in 2012, Israel’s run for re-election in 2016 was highly criticized and controversial, according to an August 2016 report from Sun Sentinel.  “Sheriff Scott Israel has hired from the ranks of his political supporters, building a community outreach wing his critics say doubles as a re-election team,” the Sentinel explained. “Israel’s opponents say he’s built a publicly funded political machine, paying back supporters with jobs and using them to keep him in office. They say the money could be better spent, particularly after the sheriff complained about not having enough funding to secure the county courthouse, where a murder suspect recently escaped.”

In other words, Israel rewarded his political supporters with high-paying cushy jobs within the sheriff’s office. The outreach manager position, for example, earned a $78,489 salary. That position was held by the husband of Israel’s campaign manager, the Sentinel reported.

So, a group of unqualified people filled the positions at the sheriff’s office. And we wonder why they failed to stop Nickolas Cruz?  It gets worse. An ominous foreshadowing of the deadly shooting was revealed in the form of a 2016 sheriff re-election campaign questionnaire.

Why are you running and what gives you an edge over your opponents?” the questionnaire asked Israel.  See Israel’s answer below:

I am the incumbent Sheriff for the past four years, and a career law enforcement officer with over three decades in the profession.  The results speak for themselves. As our sheriff, I successfully implemented new policies and approaches to public safety that sharply reduced violent crime and burglary rates – the sharpest declines in the entire State of Florida. My innovative initiatives also helped keep children in school and out of jail, greatly expanding the juvenile civil citation program and making issuance of civil citations mandatory for BSO deputies. I worked to combat gun violence by openly lobbying legislators to curtail Stand Your Ground, block open carry legislation, and block legislation allowing concealed guns on school campuses.

(Emphasis added.)

You read that right. Policies put into place within the sheriff’s department by Israel Scott discouraged arresting or expelling juveniles, apparently even if their behavior was violent or threatening.

Cruz had a history of violence at school and was never officially expelled. He had a history of violent behavior at home but was never arrested.  And one day, he stormed into a school building and murdered 17 innocent people — but it was too late. 

When pressed for answers on allegations about his alleged public corruption, Israel deflected. “Lions don’t care about the opinions of sheep,” he reportedly said at the time.  And lions apparently care more about their own interests than the lives of those they swore to protect.