The Patriots

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 Peter Hasson

• Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, deputy DNC chair, claimed on Sunday that he hasn’t met with Farrakhan since crossing paths with him at two 2013 meetings
• Ellison, a former Nation of Islam member, claimed for years that he cut all ties to Farrakhan since running for Congress in 2006
• Ellison disputed Farrakhan’s account that he and Indiana Rep. Andre Carson visited the hate group leader in his hotel room in 2015
• Carson has already confirmed his own presence at the 2015 meeting

Under fire over his ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Democratic Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison claimed Sunday that he hasn’t attended any meetings with Farrakhan since 2013 and “never had” a relationship with him.

Farrakhan is a notorious anti-Semite and racist whose organization teaches that white people are inherently inferior to black people. Ellison, the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), is a former Nation of Islam member who claimed when he first ran for Congress in 2006 that he had left Farrakhan in his past.

New reporting has shown, however, that Ellison attended multiple meetings with Farrakhan while in Congress. That includes a private visit to Farrakhan’s hotel room in 2015 with Democratic Indiana Rep. Andre Carson. Farrakhan referenced the meeting in a December 2016 Facebook video, and Carson has confirmed that he was present. When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Ellison about that meeting, the congressman did not deny that the meeting took place but instead lashed out at his critics.

Ellison lashed out at his critics again in a blog post on Sunday, claiming that he never had a relationship with Farrakhan and hasn’t met him since 2013, apparently contradicting Farrakhan and Carson’s accounts. Ellison did confirm his presence at two Farrakhan meetings that took place in 2013. Ellison claimed questions about his Farrakhan ties are “a smear by factions on the right who want to pit the Jewish community and the Black community against each other.”

“I do not have and have never had a relationship with Mr. Farrakhan, but I have been in the same room as him,” Ellison wrote. “About a decade ago, he and I had a brief, chance encounter in Washington, D.C. In 2013, I attended a meeting in New York City with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and nearly 50 others where I advocated for the release of an American political prisoner. I didn’t know Mr. Farrakhan would be there and did not speak to him at the event. Contrary to recent reports, I have not been in any meeting with him since then, and he and I have no communication of any kind.”

"But as the attacks on me and my fellow Black representatives in Congress intensify, I want to be clear: this is a smear by factions on the right who want to pit the Jewish community and the Black community against each other, and distract from the hatred and bigotry on display by the president and the white supremacists who stormed Charlottesville this summer with their anti-Semitic chants and Confederate flags. I declined to dignify questions raised about Mr. Farrakhan because I know they are inherently political, and are designed to separate me from people who I work with every day on issues of importance for Americans of all backgrounds,” Ellison continued.

“The critics will not be satisfied. They won’t be satisfied any more than President Obama’s production of his birth documents satisfied his critics, or Hillary Clinton’s eleven-hour testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi sated her detractors,” he added.  Ellison’s blog post comes as he is increasingly under fire over his ties to Farrakhan.

The Washington Post awarded Ellison “Four Pinocchios,” their worst possible rating, for claiming that his relationship with Farrakhan ended in 2006. The post cited The Daily Caller’s reporting in the fact-check.

Democratic Illinois Rep. Danny Davis, who has repeatedly praised Farrakhan, compared Ellison’s relationship to Farrakhan to a fallen-away Christian’s relationship to Jesus in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation earlier this month.

“I don’t know that Keith knows Farrakhan as well as I do — in fact, I know he doesn’t,” Davis said. “I don’t think that Keith is no person who is super engaged with Farrakhan, he just happens to be a movement. Just like many of the folks who are Christians, they’re not super engaged with Jesus, but they say they Christians,” Davis said. 

Women’s March organization, a prominent left-wing activist group, has come under fire as well after their leaders expressed support for Farrakhan.  The group’s co-president, Tamika Mallory, attended Farrakhan’s annual Saviour’s Day speech last month where he railed against Jews and white people. Mallory defended Farrakhan after suffering backlash by implying that religious leaders are supposed to consider Jews their enemies.  “If your leader does not have the same enemies as Jesus, they may not be THE leader!” Mallory wrote on Twitter. She has repeatedly declined to condemn Farrakhan.

Women’s March has lost supporters over the Farrakhan scandal, and several regional chapters have slammed the national organization for refusing to denounce him. The group’s social media director, Alyssa Klein, resigned over the group’s support for Farrakhan, the New York Post reports.

A version of this article 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 Martin Walsh

New Zealand-based hacker and political activist Kim Dotcom claims the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 was an inside job. If that’s true, it could blow the case of the mysterious murder of former DNC staffer Seth Rich wide open.

It all began Sunday when President Donald Trump explained on Twitter that he had never denied the possibility of Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election, saying at one point that “it may be Russia, or China or another country or group, or it may be a 400 pound genius sitting in bed and playing with his computer.”