The FBI Investigation of Hillary: Is the fix in?

Slick Willy wiggling through the terrain....

The FBI Investigation of Hillary: Is the fix in?

Steven Hayward, Powerline

Now I know what you’re thinking based on this headline: Of course the fix is in, you idiot! What makes you think the Obama Administration will allow the First Woman President to be indicted for mere sloppiness about emails?

And then there’s this breaking story out of Arizona this morning:

Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton meet privately in Phoenix

PHOENIX – Amid an ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of email and hours before the public release of the Benghazi report, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately with former President Bill Clinton. 

The private meeting took place on the west side of Sky Harbor International Airport on board a parked private plane. 

Former President Clinton was visiting the Phoenix area and arrived to Sky Harbor Monday evening to depart.

Sources tell ABC15, Clinton was notified Lynch would be arriving at the airport soon and waited for her arrival.

Lynch was arriving in Phoenix for a planned visit as part of her national tour to promote community policing.

ABC15 asked Lynch about the meeting during her news conference at the Phoenix Police Department.

“I did see President Clinton at the Phoenix airport as he was leaving and spoke to myself and my husband on the plane,” said Lynch.

The private meeting comes as Lynch’s office is in charge of the ongoing investigation and potential charges involving Clinton’s email server. . .

Whatever could they possibly have talked about?

Lynch said the private meeting on the tarmac did not involve these topics. “Our conversation was a great deal about grandchildren, it was primarily social about our travels and he mentioned golf he played in Phoenix,” said Lynch Tuesday afternoon while speaking at the Phoenix Police Department.

Sources say the private meeting at the airport lasted around 30 minutes.

Yeah, we can really trust all of these people to tell the truth.

Defeating Jihad

Talk about "sustainability".... we are faced with real threats that are being ignored in a practiced disciplined way all to our detriment and our ability to sustain our way of life. Trump is right, there is something afoot, there is a reason that the real danger and enemy is being scrubbed from our records and language. (BH)

“What I have been trying to convince this city of for many years now is that we have not even begun to engage in the information operations battlefield. We do almost everything at the tactical level and have allowed political correctness to infect the way we do Information Operations and Psychological Warfare. America is preeminent at the application of kinetic force. The U.S. Abbottabad raid will be taught from the Beijing Military Academy to Sandhurst for the next hundred years as how you do a kinetic application of lead-on target. But tactical perfection does not automatically add up to victory. Tactical victories do not necessarily bring strategic success. We must delegitimize the ideology of the enemy or this will be exercise in “whack-a-mole.” Your children, my grandchildren, will be hunting jihadists a hundred years from now unless we take down their ideology of Global Jihadism.” —Dr. Sebastian Gorka

Testimony to House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, 8 Jan 2016

 Dr. Gorka currently serves as the Chairman of the Threat Knowledge Group (ThreatKnowledge.org) based in McLean, VA, which provides high-level training and analysis at the strategic and operational level to those in the Defense, Intelligence, Law Enforcement and Homeland Security communities.

We are a Fish, Rotting from the Head

We are a  Fish, Rotting from the Head

 John Hinderaker, Powerline

Glenn Reynolds’  USA Today column addresses the rapid decline of the United States as a high-trust society, something that sociologists have found to be critical for economic development and security:

[T]he CIA’s “accident” was only the latest in a long rash of “accidental” losses of incriminating information in this administration. The IRS — whose Tea Party-targeting scandal is now over 1,100 days old without anyone being charged or sent to jail — seems to have a habit of ”accidentally” destroying hard drives containing potentially incriminating evidence. It has done so in spite of court orders, in spite of Congressional inquiries and in spite of pretty much everyone’s belief that these “accidents” were actually the deliberate, illegal destruction of incriminating evidence to protect the guilty.

The IRS scandal would have sunk a Republican administration, perhaps leading to impeachment. But the Democratic press is in on the joke, and the Obama administration is set to run out the clock in its usual fashion.

Then there’s Hillary’s email scandal, in which emails kept on a private unsecure server — presumably to avoid Freedom of Information Act disclosures — were deleted. Now emails from Hillary’s IT guy, who is believed to have set up the server, have gone poof.

The only way Hillary will be indicted, as she certainly deserves to be, is if the Democrats decide that she can’t beat Donald Trump–an increasingly likely eventuality–and decide to go with someone else.

“Destroy the evidence, and you’ve got it made,” said an old frozen dinner commercial. But now that appears to be the motto of the United States government.

Sad but true. Worst of all, perhaps, is the way Barack Obama and his Attorneys General, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, have corrupted the Department of Justice. Time after time, federal judges have found that DOJ lawyers have lied to the courts on behalf to the Obama administration’s political agenda. 

Then there is the fact that Barack Obama is a scofflaw. Repeatedly, he has ignored the Constitution and violated federal law, refusing to enforce the nation’s immigration laws, imperiously changing his own Obamacare statute with no legal authority, and so on. Years later, the courts sometimes catch up with him; the administration has lost a number of 9-0 Supreme Court decisions where its lawbreaking was indisputable. But more broadly, the Obama administration’s campaign of lawbreaking and stonewalling has succeeded.

Glenn asks the right question: if our purported leaders are scofflaws, why should the rest of us be honest?

So why do the rest of us bother to obey the law? And, yes, that’s an increasingly serious question.***[P]eople may obey the law because they think that being law-abiding is an important part of maintaining a viable society. But that’s the kind of law-abiding behavior that’s at risk when people at the top treat the law with unconcealed contempt. 

Being law-abiding for its own sake is a traditional part of bourgeois culture, and our ruling class has lately treated the bourgeoisie with contempt as well. Which raises the risk that this contempt will be returned.

It is being returned, as evidenced by the Trump and Sanders candidacies.

America has been — and, for the moment, remains — a high-trust society. In high-trust societies, people extend trust to strangers and follow rules for the most part even when nobody is watching. In low-trust societies, trust seldom extends beyond close family, and everybody cheats if they can get away with it.
High-trust societies are much nicer places to live than low-trust ones. But a fish rots from the head and the head of our society is looking pretty rotten.

Which is why this year’s election is so important. Barack Obama’s legacy must be repudiated, root and branch.

REPORT: Clinton Donor Bought Spot on National Security Board

REPORT: Clinton Donor Bought Spot on National Security Board
Paul Mirengoff, Powerline

ABC News reports, based on State Department emails, that “a major Clinton Foundation donor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field.” The decision “baffled” the department’s professional staff.

The emails further reveal that, after inquiries from ABC News, Clinton’s staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter, and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later.

The Clinton Foundation donor in question is Rajiv Fernando. The agency is the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB). Fernando, a Chicago securities trader who specialized in electronic investing, possessed no known background related to the matters the ISAB deals with, such as nuclear disarmament and other arms control issues.

Fernando himself would not answer questions from ABC News in 2011 about what qualified him for a seat on the board or led to his appointment.

When ABC News finally caught up with Fernando at the 2012 Democratic convention, he became upset and said he was “not at liberty” to speak about it. Security threatened to have the ABC News reporter arrested.

It isn’t difficult, though, to see what “qualified” Fernando for his national security gig:

Fernando’s history of campaign giving dated back at least to 2003 and was prolific. He was an early supporter of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 bid for president, giving maximum contributions to her campaign, and to HillPAC, in 2007 and 2008. 

He also served as a fundraising bundler for Clinton, gathering more than $100,000 from others for her White House bid. After Barack Obama bested Clinton for the 2008 nomination, Fernando became a major fundraiser for the Obama campaign. 

Prior to his State Department appointment, Fernando had given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation, and another $30,000 to a political advocacy group, WomenCount, that indirectly helped Hillary Clinton retire her lingering 2008 campaign debts by renting her campaign email list.

It seems to have been Cheryl Mills, not surprisingly, who pushed through Fernando’s appointment. When the State Department searched for an explanation as to why he had been placed on the ISAB, it concluded that “the true answer is simply that S staff (Cheryl Mills) added him.”

Soon after Fernando’s appointment came under media scrutiny, the trader resigned. He said he needed to devote more time to his business.

Fernando continues to devote time to raising money for Hillary. According to ABC News, he emerged as one of the first “bundlers” to raise money for Clinton’s 2016 bid and in July 2015 hosted a fundraiser for Clinton at his Chicago home.

Fernando has also continued to donate to the Clinton Foundation. He now is listed on the charity’s website as having given between $1 million and $5 million.

The ISAB isn’t a normal, or suitable, landing place for a big donor. Fernando “served” alongside David A. Kay, the former head of the Iraq Survey Group and United Nations Chief Weapons Inspector; Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, a former National Security Advisor to two presidents; two former congressmen; and former Sen. Chuck Robb. William Perry, the former Secretary of Defense, chaired the panel.

Moreover, the emails confirm that the appointment qualified Fernando for one of the highest levels of top secret access.

It is scandalous that Fernando could buy himself a seat at that table. And it is a sign of things to come if corrupt Hillary becomes president.