Tag: Corruption

  • Dem Senators to Bob Menendez: It’s Time to Say Adios to Your Political Career

    Dem Senators to Bob Menendez: It’s Time to Say Adios to Your Political Career

    Matt Vespa | TownHall

    Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) vows to fight to the bitter end regarding the recent corruption charges filed against him and his wife. The New Jersey Democrat has been accused of accepting bribes to benefit the Arab Republic of Egypt. The form of payment appears to be mountains of cash, around $480,000, found all over his residence by federal agents—some of which were stuffed in clothing articles. Around $100,000 of gold bars were also discovered. 

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    Menendez made his intention to run for another term known yesterday, adding that he’s confident that he will be exonerated in this indictment. Unlike his recent legal bout with the Justice Department under the Obama administration, the cash and gold bars appear too much for many Democrats. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called on Menendez to resign, blowing up the senator’s initial counternarrative that these charges were racially motivated

    https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1706330559301943789?

    New Jersey Democrats are reportedly freaking out, with Menendez’s own colleagues calling on him to say ‘adios’ to his tenure as a sitting US Senator. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said he should step down. Even John Fetterman, who doesn’t know where he is 80 percent of the time, said it was time to go (via Axios): 

    Vermont Sen. Peter Welch on Monday became the third Democratic senator to call for Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-N.J.) resignation following his federal indictment on bribery charges. 

    Why it matters: Menendez has defied growing calls to resign from lawmakers, including a number of House Democrats and leading New Jersey Democrats. 

    State of play: Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) on Saturday called for the embattled New Jersey lawmaker to step down. 

    Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said in a statement earlier Monday that Menendez “has broken the public trust and should resign from the U.S. Senate.” 

    […] 

    … Nearly half of the Democrats in New Jersey’s congressional delegation and several leading New Jersey Democrats, including New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, have all called for Menendez to resign. 

    Gold bar Bob is expected to be arraigned in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday.

    ***

    UPDATE: Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has joined the ‘Goodbye, Bob’ caucus:

    https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1706691926215250328?

    https://twitter.com/SenBooker/status/1706689173392851098?

    Original Here

  • Inspector General Reveals Criminal Corruption by Biden US Attorney, AG Merrick Garland Declines to Prosecute

    Inspector General Reveals Criminal Corruption by Biden US Attorney, AG Merrick Garland Declines to Prosecute

    AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

     Bonchie |  RedState

    As RedState reported, Massachusetts US Attorney Rachael Rollins stated her intent to resign on Tuesday in the midst of a DOJ probe into her misconduct while in office. Rollins had served in her role since January 2022, but she had faced increasing pressure to step aside as details of his malfeasance became public.

    Of note is that Rollins was only in her position because Vice President Kamala Harris broke a tie twice to ensure she was appointed. Further, one of the instances of corruption involving the US attorney came via a trip taken with Jill Biden while attending a DNC fundraiser. In other words, Rollins seemed to be pretty close to the power brokers in the Biden administration. She was also widely praised by Democrats in the US Senate.

    But while the ethical violations were already clear, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz has released his report on the matter, and things are even worse than first thought. According to Horowitz, not only did Rollins act corruptly and abuse her power, but she also broke the law in the process.

    As usual, the cover-up is worse than the crime, and Rollins lied under oath to the Office of the Inspector General when questioned on the situation. She repeatedly denied being the federal law enforcement official that had leaked sensitive information to the Boston Herald. Horowitz further found that she “lacked candor” when questioned about her conversations with a reporter from the Herald. Rollins also apparently ran up against DOJ regulations (and possibly laws) involving the soliciting of illegal gifts as a government official.

    Incredibly, despite so much criminal corruption being laid out so plainly by Horowitz, AG Merrick Garland and the rest of the powers that be at the DOJ decided not to press charges against Rollins.

    There is no argument that Rollins’ lies were not material to any ongoing investigation, which is usually the out DOJ officials use to not prosecute their own. The lies she told were in response to the investigation into her conduct. Worse, she didn’t just lie to a random FBI agent questioning her. She lied to the inspector general himself. If that’s not worthy of persecution, then what is?

    This is why absolutely no one trusts American institutions anymore. There is no rule of law because there are two tiers of justice. If you belong to the Democratic Party and hobnob with Jill Biden, you don’t get prosecuted for lying to the OIG and receiving improper gifts. On the other hand, if you defend your son from being accosted by a pro-abortion zealot, you end up in court with the possibility of a decade in prison on the table.

    Rollins should have been held accountable. There is no excuse to decline to press charges given the extent of her criminal activity and how cut-and-dry it was. This marks yet another politically motivated decision from the DOJ. Throw in on the pile with the rest.

    Original Here

  • BREAKING: Former FBI counterintel official arrested for violating sanctions on Russian oligarch; UPDATE: Money laundering, and more

    BREAKING: Former FBI counterintel official arrested for violating sanctions on Russian oligarch; UPDATE: Money laundering, and more

    (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

    Ed Morrisey | HotAir

    Last September, I called this allegation “too bad to check.” Now we can call it “too bad to ignore.” The FBI agent who helped kickstart Operation Crossfire Hurricane and created more than two years of panic over Russia collusion has been arrested today for … wait for it …

    A former top FBI official in New York has been arrested over his ties to a Russian oligarch, law enforcement sources told ABC News Monday.

    Charles McGonigal, who was the special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the FBI’s New York Field Office, is under arrest over his ties to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who has been sanctioned by the United States and criminally charged last year with violating those sanctions. …

    McGonigal is charged with violating U.S. sanctions by trying to get Deripaska off the sanctions list.

    McGonigal’s status as the FBI’s point man for counterintelligence in its New York field office makes this bad enough. However, as Business Insider reported in September, McGonigal’s efforts helped launch a fruitless two-years-plus “witch hunt” against Donald Trump and his campaign over the kind of collusion with Russia’s oligarchs that McGonigal allegedly conducted himself:

    Before his retirement in 2018, McGonigal led the WikiLeaks investigation into Chelsea Manning, busted Bill Clinton’s national security advisor Sandy Berger for removing classified material from a National Archives reading room, and led the search for a Chinese mole inside the CIA. In 2016, when reports surfaced that Russia had hacked the email system of the Democratic National Committee, McGonigal was serving as chief of the cybercrimes section at FBI headquarters in Washington. In that capacity, he was one of the first officials to learn that a Trump campaign official had bragged that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, sparking the investigation known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Later that year, FBI Director James Comey promoted McGonigal to oversee counterintelligence operations in New York.

    The connections go even deeper. The US had sanctions on Deripaska in relation to his connections to Paul Manafort, which turned out to be unrelated to the Trump campaign — an investigation that the Department of Justice dropped until after Trump’s election. Robert Mueller resurrected it to pressure Manafort into turning on Trump, but as it happened, Manafort didn’t have anything to give.

    As I wrote at the time, this raises all sorts of questions about what McGonigal has been playing at:

    So why would someone who saw a dumb brag by a low-level campaign consultant as a national security risk agree to work with the oligarch playing a role in the supposed conspiracy? If those connections took place after McGonigal’s retirement, it speaks to the risk that McGonigal truly saw from Deripaska. At the very least, it leaves the impression that McGonigal never bought the Russia-collusion theory even as he and his colleagues pursued it for years.

    If those connections started before McGonigal’s retirement, though … hoo boy. This comes at the same time that we discover that the FBI actively paid Igor Danchenko as a confidential informant starting in early 2017, even as it became obvious that his claims in the Steele dossier were nonsense — and just a few years after the FBI investigated Danchenko as a suspected Russian-intel operative. That’s an awful lot of apparent collusion between the FBI and a couple of Russians. It leaves us to wonder just where the collusion problem may really have been all along.

    Indeed it does. Stay tuned, in other words. Perhaps McGonigal may have more to say on that.

    Update: The Associated Press reports that McGonigal has been charged with money laundering as well as attempting to assist Deripaska in a feud with another Russian oligarch:

    McGonigal, 54, and the interpreter, Sergey Shestakov, 69, were arrested Saturday. McGonigal was taken into custody after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport. They are scheduled to appear in court in Manhattan on Monday. Both are being held at a federal jail in Brooklyn.

    McGonigal and Shestakov are charged with violating and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, conspiring to commit money laundering and money laundering. Shestakov is also charged with making material misstatements to the FBI.

    McGonigal was separately charged in federal court in Washington, D.C. with concealing $225,000 in payments he received from an outside source with whom he traveled to Europe.

    What part of this involves Operation Crossfire Hurricane? Maybe this part:

    The New York indictment alleges that McGonigal was introduced by Shestakov in 2018 to a former Soviet diplomat who functioned as an agent for Deripaska. That person is not identified in court papers but the Justice Department says he was “rumored in public media reports to be a Russian intelligence officer.”

    According to the indictment, Shestakov asked McGonigal for his help in getting the daughter of Deripaska’s agent an internship with the New York Police Department. McGonigal agreed, prosecutors say, and told a police department contact that, “I have interest in her father for a number of reasons.”

    Or this part, perhaps, rinsed through Albania?

    The Justice Department says McGonigal also hid from the FBI key details of a 2017 trip he took to Albania with a former member of that country’s intelligence service who had given him the $225,000.

    McGonigal apparently neglected to report these contacts fully, as required for FBI agents generally and counterintelligence officials more specifically.

    Like I said earlier … stay tuned. This is going to get ugly for the Bureau and for the DoJ.

    Original here

  • Biden Campaign Schedule

    Biden Campaign Schedule

    Joe Biden is making an appearance in North Carolina today and won’t be seen again in public until the debate on Thursday.

    Ostensibly, this is for debate prep, or so his surrogates are saying. Realistically, it’s to prevent any enterprising reporter from asking him about the influence peddling scheme he and his son Hunter cooked up. Polls taken since the news broke are showing a negative effect for Joe, his numbers are down, on average, by 2% points.

    I’ll admit to being somewhat skeptical of the NY Post story when it first broke, however it’s becoming more and more clear that the Biden’s have been selling influence to whomever they could. The latest emails, from a former Hunter Biden business associate, paint a clear picture of Joe being a direct beneficiary of this scheme.

    There has been no denial from the Biden camp of any of the allegations other than a weak, “it wasn’t on his official calender” statement early on.