Donald Trump says the Clinton Foundation is “the most corrupt enterprise in political history”.

There are calls – eg. from USA Today – for the Clintons to close it. USA Today is far from unsympathetic to the creepy couple, but does outline the nature of the corruption.

The Clintons – and their minions – may believe that if the Foundation were to be closed, that huge stain on their reputations would be wiped out.

It wouldn’t be in truth, of course. But the Clintons don’t concern themselves with truth.

Here’s Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash which exposes the corruption in detail, providing a glimpse of it.

Among the many bad things that Hillary Clinton has accomplished (and she has accomplished only bad things), one of the very worst is her destruction of the rule of law in America.

She could only do this with the co-operation of the Department of Justice; and the Department of Justice could only do it with the co-operation of the FBI.

Two of the chief pillars of justice, two of the the mightiest guarantors of the rule of law, have both been suborned by this woman.

Judge Andrew Napolitano writes at Townhall:

Earlier this week, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress took the FBI to task for its failure to be transparent. In the House, it was apparently necessary to serve a subpoena on an FBI agent to obtain what members of Congress want to see; and in the Senate, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee accused the FBI itself of lawbreaking.

Here is the back story.

Ever since FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 he was recommending that the Department of Justice not seek charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a result of her failure to safeguard state secrets during her time in office, many in Congress have had a nagging feeling that this was a political, not a legal, decision.

The publicly known evidence of Clinton’s recklessness and willful failure to safeguard secrets was overwhelming. The evidence of her lying under oath about whether she returned all her work-related emails that she had taken from the State Department was profound and incontrovertible.

And then we learned that people who worked for Clinton were instructed to destroy several of her mobile devices and to remove permanently the stored emails on one of her servers. All this was done after these items had been subpoenaed by two committees of the House of Representatives. Yet the FBI – which knew of the post-subpoena destruction of evidence and which acknowledged that Clinton failed to return thousands of her work-related emails as she had been ordered by a federal judge to do, notwithstanding at least three of her assertions to the contrary while under oath – chose to overlook the evidence of not only espionage but also obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, perjury and misleading Congress.

As if to defend itself in the face of this most un-FBI-like behavior, the FBI then released to the public selected portions of its work product, which purported to back up its decision to recommend against the prosecution of Clinton.

Normally, the FBI gathers evidence and works with federal prosecutors and federal grand juries to build cases against targets in criminal probes, and its recommendations to prosecutors are confidential.

But in Clinton’s case, the hierarchy of the Department of Justice removed itself from the chain of command because of the orchestrated impropriety of Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton, who met in private on the attorney general’s plane at a time when both Bill and Hillary Clinton were subjects of FBI criminal investigations.

That left the FBI to have the final say about prosecution – or so the FBI and the DOJ would have us all believe.

It is hard to believe that the FBI was free to do its work, and it is probably true that the FBI was restrained by the White House early on. There were numerous aberrations in the investigation. There was no grand jury; no subpoenas were issued; no search warrants were served. Two people claimed to have received immunity, yet the statutory prerequisite for immunity – giving testimony before a grand or trial jury – was never present. 

Because many members of Congress do not believe that the FBI acted free of political interference, they demanded to see the full FBI files in the case, not just the selected portions of the files that the FBI had released. In the case of the House, the FBI declined to surrender its files, and the agent it sent to testify about them declined to reveal their contents. This led to a dramatic service of a subpoena by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on that FBI agent while he was testifying – all captured on live nationally broadcast television.

Now the FBI, which usually serves subpoenas and executes search warrants, is left with the alternative of complying with this unwanted subpoena by producing its entire file or arguing to a federal judge why it should not be compelled to do so.

On the Senate side, matters are even more out of hand. There, in response to a request from the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FBI sent both classified and unclassified materials to the Senate safe room. The Senate safe room is a secure location that is available only to senators and their senior staff, all of whom must surrender their mobile devices and writing materials and swear in writing not to reveal whatever they see while in the room before they are permitted to enter. According to Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FBI violated federal law by commingling classified and unclassified materials in the safe room, thereby making it unlawful for senators to discuss publicly the unclassified material.

Imposing such a burden of silence on U.S. senators about unclassified materials is unlawful and unconstitutional. What does the FBI have to hide? Whence comes the authority of the FBI to bar senators from commenting on unclassified materials?

Who cares about this? Everyone who believes that the government works for us should care because we have a right to know what the government – here the FBI – has done in our names. Sen. Grassley has opined that if he could reveal what he has seen in the FBI unclassified records, it would be of profound interest to American voters.

What is going on here? The FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton has not served the rule of law. The rule of law – a pillar of American constitutional freedom since the end of the Civil War – mandates that the laws are to be enforced equally. No one is beneath their protection, and no one is above their requirements. To enforce the rule of law, we have hired the FBI.

What do we do when the FBI rejects its basic responsibilities? 

Why are most of the media prepared to do ANYTHING to drag sick old incompetent corrupt lying Hillary Clinton, surely the worst candidate ever for the presidency, over the finish line?

They cannot really have a high opinion of her. It must be because they think that the “progressivism” [Leftism] she stands for is an absolutely super-duper ideology.

Today more hacked documents were released. The mob of lefties in the media are not keen to make headlines of them. They seem to be hoping they’ll evaporate and no one will have noticed their coming and going.

Won’t happen.

So what is in them?

The Observer reports:

In September 13, WikiLeaks lived up to its promise of releasing more Democratic National Committee (DNC) documents. This time they were from hacker Guccifer 2.0, serving as a teaser for larger and likely more embarrassing leaks from the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign.

Both the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign have attempted to insulate themselves from the content of the releases by alleging the hacks were organized by the Russian government. The claims are a mix of paranoia and PR/damage control, and will have enduring consequences. It may lead to what former Secretary of Defense William Perry referred to as a drift back into Cold War mentalities.

The leaks include more evidence of overt corruption within the DNC. One email dated May 18, 2016, from Jacquelyn Lopez, an attorney with the law firm Perkins Coie, asked DNC staff if they could set up a brief call “to go over our process for handling donations from donors who have given us pay to play letters.”

Included in the leak was a list of high-profile donors from 2008 and the ambassadorship they received in exchange for their large donation to the DNC and Barack Obama’s Organizing For Action (OFA). Essentially, Obama was auctioning off foreign ambassador positions and other office positions while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state.

The largest donor listed at contributions totaling over $3.5 million, Matthew Barzun, served as U.S. Ambassador to Sweden from 2009 to 2011, served as President Obama’s National Finance Chair during his 2012 reelection campaign, and now serves as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

The second largest donor, Julius Genachowski, donated just under $3.5 million to the DNC and OFA, and in exchange was appointed chairman of the FCC by Obama in 2009.

The third largest donor on the list, Frank Sanchez, donated just over $3.4 million and exchange was appointed to Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade by Obama in 2010

A 2013 article published by the Guardian corroborates the pay-to-play scheme this list suggests. “Barack Obama has rewarded some of his most active campaign donors with plum jobs in foreign embassies, with the average amount raised by recent or imminent appointees soaring to $1.8m per post, according to a Guardian analysis,” wrote Dan Roberts. “The practice is hardly a new feature of U.S. politics, but career diplomats in Washington are increasingly alarmed at how it has grown. One former ambassador described it as the selling of public office.”

A separate release from DC Leaks, an anonymous organization, revealed emails between former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Democratic Party mega-donor and Powell’s business partner, Jeffrey Leeds. In the exchange, Powell vents to Leeds over the Clinton campaign trying to use him as a scapegoat regarding Clinton’s controversial use of a private email server that instigated a FBI criminal investigation. “I warned her staff three times over the past two years not to try to connect it to me. I am not sure HRC even knew or understood what was going on in the basement,” Powell wrote in one email, according to The Intercept.

Another major issue brought up by the latest leaks is the media blackout on the content of what was released. Politico, The New York Times, and several other news outlets opted to report solely on the fact that there was a new leak — citing a statement from DNC Chair Donna Brazile, who claims the DNC is the victim of a Russian cyber-attack — without delving into the specifics of the content.

The recent leak teaser from WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 serves to show how extensive and far back the documents obtained in the hacks go. While no emails were released in this latest release, the documents to come will — at the very least — shed further light as to the extent of corruption in the Democratic Party.

David Seaman, fired from the Huffington Post for questioning the lies it told about Hilary Clinton’s health, fulminates – with reason – against Hillary, her campaign, “Huffpo”, and the left-biased media in general.

He provides a glimpse of the contents of the new batch of leaked documents:

The Democratic Party is trying to pretend there’s nothing seriously wrong with Hillary Clinton’s health. But there obviously is. She is very ill, and could not fulfill the onerous duties of a president of the United States.

She is also widely disliked, hopelessly incompetent, deeply dishonest, disreputable, corrupt, and dangerous to the security of the nation.

So why is the Democratic Party prepared to do and say anything to keep Hillary campaigning for the highest office when they could find a healthier candidate?

We suspect the idea is that Hillary must win the election FOR BILL. They may speak of substituting Joe Biden or Tim Kaine for Hillary as the Democratic candidate if it is absolutely necessary, but they are fervently hoping it won’t be. Neither Biden nor Kaine would do at all, because they won’t get Bill back in the White House. (Apart from the fact that neither Biden nor Kaine can be sure of the votes of the multitudes of silly women who want “the first woman president”.)

Bill (in our supersensitive hearing): “Just get there, Hill, and I’ll do the rest.”

She has already said that she would put the economy in his hands.

In fact, he will do the whole job.

Sick as she is, she must drag herself on to get elected. Once back in the White House, he’ll  take over. She may sit at the Oval Office desk when she can sit upright, but he will be the power.

They see themselves, and the Democratic Party sees them, and about half the electorate sees them, as the natural rulers of “progressive” America. Never mind all their character faults. Never mind their corruption. Never mind that they are thieves. Never mind that he is a rapist. 

They will carry on where Obama has to leave off. They will proceed with the enlargement of government and the augmenting of federal power; the weakening of the military; the humbling of the nation in the eyes of the world; confiscatory and punitive taxation; the alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood; the aid to Iran to become nuclear armed; the importation of millions of Syrian Muslims and Latin American migrants; central government economic planning; strengthening the power of the United Nations in the name of saving the earth from catastrophic “man-made global warming”; stealthily putting an end to individual liberty, objective justice, and freedom of speech; abandoning the Constitution.

Clintons rule, okay?

The Roman satirist Juvenal asked: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

The guardians themselves – who will guard them?

No one. Nothing. The rot of US government corruption in the age of Obama and the Clintons is discovered to be ever deeper, ever wider. There is no bottom, there is no limit.

Breitbart reports on FBI Director James Comey who, as a top guardian of the law, could single-handedly have saved America (and the world) from the appalling possibility of a Hillary Clinton presidency by recommending her prosecution for the high crimes she had committed – and didn’t do it.

What held him back?

It emerges that in his own mind, the Director of the FBI owes a higher loyalty to Hillary Clinton than to America.

A review of FBI Director James Comey’s professional history and relationships shows that the Obama cabinet leader — now under fire for his handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton — is deeply entrenched in the big-money cronyism culture of Washington, D.C. His personal and professional relationships — all undisclosed as he announced the Bureau would not prosecute Clinton — reinforce bipartisan concerns that he may have politicized the criminal probe.

These concerns focus on millions of dollars that Comey accepted from a Clinton Foundation defense contractor, Comey’s former membership on a Clinton Foundation corporate partner’s board, and his surprising financial relationship with his brother Peter Comey, who works at the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation’s taxes.

When President Obama nominated Comey to become FBI director in 2013, Comey promised the United States Senate that he would recuse himself on all cases involving former employers.

But Comey earned $6 million in one year alone from Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin became a Clinton Foundation donor that very year. 

Comey served as deputy attorney general under John Ashcroft for two years of the Bush administration. When he left the Bush administration, he went directly to Lockheed Martin and became vice president, acting as a general counsel. …

Lockheed Martin is a Clinton Foundation donor. The company admitted to becoming a Clinton Global Initiative member in 2010. According to records, Lockheed Martin is also a member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, which paid Bill Clinton $250,000 to deliver a speech in 2010. In 2010, Lockheed Martin won 17 approvals for private contracts from the Hillary Clinton State Department. 

In 2013, Comey became a board member, a director, and a Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee member of the London bank HSBC Holdings. … HSBC Holdings and its various philanthropic branches routinely partner with the Clinton Foundation. …

Breitbart found that James Comey owns the mortgage on his brother Peter’s house. Does Peter Comey also have a connection to the Clintons?

When our source called the Chinatown offices of D.C. law firm DLA Piper and asked for “Peter Comey”,  a receptionist immediately put him through to Comey’s direct line. But Peter Comey is not featured on the DLA Piper website. Peter Comey serves as “Senior Director of Real Estate Operations for the Americas” for DLA Piper.

James Comey was not questioned about his relationship with Peter Comey in his confirmation hearing.

DLA Piper is the firm that performed the “independent” audit of the Clinton Foundation in November during Clinton-World’s first big push to put the email scandal behind them.

DLA Piper’s employees taken as a whole represent a major Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign donation bloc and Clinton Foundation donation base. DLA Piper ranks #5 on Hillary Clinton’s all-time career Top Contributors list, just ahead of Goldman Sachs. 

So there never was the remotest chance that James Comey, head of the FBI, would recommend the prosecution of Hillary Clinton. And Attorney General Loretta Lynch, head of the Department of Justice, surely knew that perfectly well when she said she would accept Comey’s recommendation, “whatever it was”.

In or out of the White House, the Clintons rule.

A Christian child – one of many thousands – burnt to death in Nigeria by Boko Haram

The Nigerian Muslim group Boko Haram (meaning “book-learning – ie Western education – is forbidden”) is as savage as ISIS, of which it has declared itself an affiliate.

While she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton blocked all attempts to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organization. Why?

Patrick Poole writes at PJ Media:

In January 2015, I was one of the first to report on a massive massacre by Nigerian terror group Boko Haram in Borno State in northwest Nigeria, with reportedly thousands killed. Witnesses on the ground reported that bodies littered the landscape for miles as towns and villages had been burned to the ground, their populations murdered or fled.

By that time, Boko Haram had already become the most lethal terrorist organization in the world, now responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. …

And yet, as Boko Haram began to ramp up its terror campaign in 2011 and 2012, Hillary Clinton obstructed the official terror designation of the group over the objections of Congress, the FBI, the CIA and the Justice Department.

Why did Hillary Clinton’s State Department drag its feet on the terror designation in the face of near unanimous opposition from the rest of the U.S. government?

A recent series of reports exposes that a close Clinton family confidante — and Hillary campaign bundler — profited from Nigeria’s lucrative oil fields. He engaged in multiple illegal deals throughout Africa.

Also, other donors to the Clinton Global Initiative are deeply involved in Nigeria’s corrupt oil industry.

Were they the motivation behind Hillary’s inexplicable position on Boko Haram?

As PJ Media’s Bridget Johnson has previously asked, is Boko Haram Hillary Clinton’s biggest scandal? … Why is no one in the media talking about Hillary and Boko Haram?

It is worth nothing that Congress had to drag a reluctant State Department kicking and screaming to get Boko Haram designated in November 2013, after Hillary Clinton had left office.

Hillary Clinton’s willful obstruction in the matter is easy to document:

Members of Congress discovered in 2014 that the Clinton State Department intentionally lied and downplayed the threat from Boko Haram, and worked to kill bills in both the House and the Senate calling for their designation in 2012.

As Reuters reported, the Justice Department’s National Security Division strongly urged the State Department to designate Boko Haram, but then a group of 21 American academics rallied to the State Department’s aid by sending a letter to Hillary Clinton strongly arguing against Boko Haram’s designation.

The letter offers weak arguments. Our suspicion is that it was solicited.

We also now know that the Obama administration was sitting on intelligence — obtained as a result of the Bin Laden raid — that revealed Boko Haram’s direct connection to al-Qaeda and the international terror network in 2011 and 2012. In other words, Hillary’s State Department was arguing that Boko Haram had no such connections, that it wasn’t a transnational terror threat, even though the Obama administration — and likely Clinton herself — knew that was false.

And Mindy Belz and J. C. Derrick, writing at WORLD, answers Patrick Pool’s question. They find that – yes, “donors to the Clinton Global Initiative” who are “deeply involved in Nigeria’s corrupt oil industry” were indeed “the motivation behind Hillary’s [otherwise] inexplicable position on Boko Haram”.

The attacks on Jan. 20, 2012, began not so much as an explosion but as an earthquake.

“Whole buildings were shaking,” said secondary school vice principal Danjuma Alkali. “There was so much vibration that some people collapsed from it.” When the jolts stopped, with smoke rising and fire igniting all over the city of 10 million, it became quickly apparent the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram had pulled off the unthinkable.

In coordinated bombings at 23 separate locations in the city of Kano, including police headquarters and military barracks, the group left one of Africa’s largest cities in disarray and panic. The January attacks killed more than 185 people — Africa’s worst terrorism since the 1998 al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. …

Boko Haram leader Imam Abubakar Shekau took responsibility for the Jan. 20 attacks in a video posted on YouTube …

It would be difficult for Washington to look away: Nigeria at the time was the third-largest source of U.S. crude oil imports. Further, the same day, American Greg Ock was kidnapped in Niger Delta, and Boko Haram announced “an arrangement” to kidnap 22 other Americans.

The next day, Jan. 21, the U.S. Embassy warned U.S. citizens “to review personal security measures”, and it prohibited government personnel from traveling to northern Nigeria. But tracking and cutting off the insider flow of funds propping up Boko Haram was what was needed—and the Kano attacks presented one more overwhelming reason the United States should have designated the group a Foreign Terrorist Organization, or FTO.

A strong chorus rose in Washington for FTO designation — from bipartisan members of Congress to Pentagon officials (including then-head of U.S. Africa Command, Gen. Carter Ham) to a coalition of faith-based human rights groups. At the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued to resist it and other rudimentary steps against the terror group.

Meanwhile, Boko Haram often showed up better equipped than the Nigerian military: “Boko Haram was extorting even government officials in the north, state and local officials, and certainly the military,” said an American working in the area for more than a decade, who spoke to WORLD and is not named for security reasons. “Very wealthy Muslim businessmen totally have been backing Boko Haram. There was huge money involved. Money used to purchase arms — it was crazy.”

Where were the funds and support coming from? In part from a corrupt oil industry and political leaders in the North acting as quasi-warlords. But prominently in the mix are Nigerian billionaires with criminal pasts — plus ties to Clinton political campaigns and the Clinton Foundation, the controversial charity established by Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton in 1997.

The Clintons’ long association with top suspect tycoons — and their refusal to answer questions about those associations — takes on greater significance considering the dramatic rise of Boko Haram violence while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Did some Clinton donors stand to gain from the State Department not taking action against the Islamic terrorist group?

Perhaps the most prominent Nigerian with ties to the Clintons is Houston-based Kase Lawal. The founder of CAMAC Energy, an oil exploration and energy consortium, Lawal had a long history with Bill Clinton before becoming a “bundler” for Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid, amassing $100,000 in contributions and hosting a fundraiser in his Houston home—a 14-room, 15,264-square-foot mansion. Lawal maxed out donations to Hillary’s 2016 primary campaign, and his wife Eileen donated $50,000—the most allowed—to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural committee.

Lawal describes himself as a devout Muslim who began memorizing the Quran at age 3 while attending an Islamic school. “Religion played a very important role in our lives,” he told a reporter in 2006. “Every time you finish a chapter they kill a chicken, and if you finish the whole thing, a goat.”

Today the Houston oil exec — who retired in May as CEO but continues as chairman of the board of CAMAC, now called Erin Energy — tops the list of wealthiest Nigerians living in North America. His firm reports about $2.5 billion in annual revenue, making it one of the top private companies in the United States.

In Africa, Lawal has been at the center of multiple criminal proceedings, even operating as a fugitive. Over the last decade, he faced charges in South Africa over an illegal oil scheme along with charges in Nigeria of illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lawal arranged a 2011 plot to purchase 4 tons of gold from a rebel warlord, Bosco Ntaganda, linked to massacres and mass rapes. Ntaganda was on a U.S. sanctions list, meaning anyone doing business with him could face up to 20 years in prison. Lawal contacted Clinton’s State Department, and authorities in Congo released his plane and associates in the plot. He never faced charges in the United States, and he remains a commissioner for the Port Authority of Houston.

Lawal’s energy firm holds lucrative offshore oil licenses in Nigeria, as well as exploration and production licenses in Gambia, Ghana, and Kenya, where he operates in a conflict-ridden area largely controlled by Somalia’s al-Shabab militants.

The firm also has held contracts in Nigeria for crude oil lifting, or transferring oil from its collection point to refineries. Until last year, when newly elected President Muhammadu Buhari began an effort to reform the process, contracting for lifting has been awash in kickbacks, bribes, and illegal activity.

Overland lifting contracts often involve partnership with the North’s past and present governors, including those who serve as quasi-warlords with ties to Boko Haram and other militants.

Lawal’s enterprises have long been rumored to be involved in such deals, as have indigenous oil concerns like Petro Energy and Oando, Nigeria’s largest private oil and gas company, based in Lagos and headed by Adewale Tinubu, another controversial Clinton donor.

In 2014, Oando pledged 1.5 percent of that year’s pre-tax profits and 1 percent of future profits to a Clinton Global Initiative education program. This year, Adewale gained notoriety when the Panama Papers revealed he holds at least 12 shell companies, leading to suspicion of money laundering, tax evasion, and other corruption.

In 2013 Bill Clinton stood alongside Adewale’s uncle, Bola Tinubu, while attending the dedication of a massive, controversial reclamation project called Eko Atlantic. Critics call Bola Tinubu, leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress party, Nigeria’s “looter in chief”. A Nigerian documentary says that when the billionaire landowner was governor of Lagos State (1999-2007), he funneled huge amounts of state funds — up to 15 percent of annual tax revenues — to a private consulting firm in which he had controlling interest.

In the United States, where he studied and worked in the 1970s and ’80s, Tinubu is still a suspect in connection with a Chicago heroin ring he allegedly operated with his wife and three other family members. In 1993 Tinubu forfeited $460,000 to American authorities, who believe he trafficked drugs and laundered the proceeds.

About the time of the Kano bombings, a lucrative potential for new oil opened up in Nigeria’s North — precisely in the Borno State region where Boko Haram has its headquarters.

Between 2011 and 2013, the Nigerian government allocated $240 million toward oil and gas exploration in the Lake Chad Basin, a petroleum reserve stretching from western Chad across Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon. Largely unexplored until recently, oil production hit 100,000 barrels a day in 2013 on the Chad side of the basin.

On the surface Boko Haram violence halted exploration in Nigeria. Despite the millions it was investing, Nigeria’s government geologists and technical staff fled the region in fear of their lives. Using verified incidents provided by the Nigeria-based Stefanos Foundation and other sources, WORLD documented 85 separate terrorist attacks between 2011-2016 in the Lake Chad Basin areas of Nigeria.

The attacks ranged from market bombings that killed half a dozen to the January 2015 Baga attacks, which killed an estimated 2,000, destroying Baga plus 16 other towns and displacing more than 35,000 people (while the world fixated on Paris after the Charlie Hebdo attack).

Beneath the surface … Boko Haram was making it possible for illicit operators to lay claim to the area for their own purposes, and to pump oil from Nigeria’s underground reserves to Chad. Using 3-D drilling, Chad operators can extract Nigerian oil — without violating Nigerian property rights — to sell on open markets. One benefactor of the arrangement is Ali Modu Sheriff, a leading politician in the North, Borno State governor until 2011, and an alleged sponsor of Boko Haram, who is close friends with longtime Chad President Idriss Déby.

The very terrorism that seems to be deterring oil exploration in reality can help illicit extraction, forcing residents to flee and giving cover to under-the-table oil traders. In 2015, a year when overall oil prices dipped 6 percent, Lawal’s Erin Energy stock value skyrocketed 295 percent — the best-performing oil and gas stock in the United States.

The more unstable an area is, the more such traders can control supply and pricing, explained an oil analyst who asked not to be named for security reasons: “Terrorism is the poor man’s weapons of mass destruction. You want the land and what might be beneath, not the people, so you kill them.” …

Christians are the predominant victims of Boko Haram in Borno and surrounding states. Among 85 documented attacks in a five-year period, Boko Haram killed at least 11 pastors and destroyed more than 15 churches. They also destroyed about five mosques. In all, Boko Haram and its affiliated militants have killed an estimated 6,300 people and displaced  2 million in the Lake Chad Basin area since 2011.

The 2014 kidnapping of 276 girls from a Chibok Christian school catapulted Boko Haram into the international spotlight and sparked first lady Michelle Obama’s #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign.

Hillary Clinton once again demonstrated her superhuman ability to exonerate herself from blame for something for which she was eminently responsible:  

Hillary Clinton called the mass abduction “abominable” and “an act of terrorism”. Clinton said “It really merits the fullest response possible, first and foremost from the government of Nigeria.”

Critics argue it was Clinton herself who has led the way on U.S. indifference, spurning the standard FTO designation (issued 72 times since 1997) that could have bolstered U.S. efforts against Boko Haram years before the infamous kidnappings.

While it’s become increasingly clear that oil and corruption are fueling Boko Haram, the full story will take a serious U.S. investigation. Yet even now there is no evidence it’s happening. The Chibok girls, for example, are known to be in the Sambisa Forest with Boko Haram, but authorities have not pursued them. …

“Besides military intervention, the United States has many tools for aiding Nigerian authorities. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control — the unit tasked with enforcing key aspects of FTO designations — purportedly doesn’t have enough staff to focus on Boko Haram financing. The administration maintains that Boko Haram raises its funding through local means, such as robbing banks and pillaging villages, even though WORLD obtained evidence the militants have access to international bank accounts.

“There has not been an investigation that has had any positive consequences,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the House Africa subcommittee. He said he plans to convene a hearing to find out why U.S. inattention persists: “It’s time to have people come up and testify.”

How likely is it that the truth about the Clintons’ protection of Boko Haram will become known to the American public?

Will people come and testify before the House Africa subcommittee?

If they do, will they tell the truth?

If they tell the truth, will the media report what they say?

If the media report the truth, will Hillary Clinton have to answer for her part in the story?

No. Whether or not Hillary becomes president of the United States, she will remain powerful enough for the rest of her life to evade any attempt to bring her to justice, because she is the leader of the Good People, the ones who care about the underdogs of the world, the poor, the persecuted, the oppressed …

It takes a special band of brigands to divert sums from needy souls for private gain and for political benefit. A vast record already in the public domain suggests this is exactly what members of the extended Clinton family and their associates have done for nearly 20 years, hiding their rampant criminality in plain sight. At present, the IRS is, at best, stalled while a bitterly divided political system awaits the outcome of a pivotal national election. For the Clinton Charity Network to be brought and then held to account, the American public and citizens in other countries where taxpayer funds have been improperly solicited and deployed must raise their voices in a true call and commitment to action. – Charles K. Ortel

Charles Ortel is a Wall Street analyst who uncovered financial discrepancies at General Electric before its stock crashed in 2008, and whom the Sunday Times of London described as “one of the finest analysts of financial statements on the planet”. Ortel spent the past year and a half digging into the Clinton Foundation’s public records, federal and state-level tax filings, and donor disclosures.

Read his paper False Philanthropy: Summary Review of Selected Intentionally False Representations in Clinton Foundation Public Filings here.

We quote from an article on the paper at Zero Hedge by Tyler Durden:

[Charles Ortel writes:]

To informed analysts, the Clinton Foundation appears to be a rogue charity that has neither been organized nor operated lawfully from inception in October 1997 to date … It is a case study in international charity fraud, of mammoth proportions.

In particular, the Clinton Foundation has never been validly authorized to pursue tax-exempt purposes other than as a presidential archive and research facility based in Little Rock, Arkansas. Moreover, its operations have never been controlled by independent trustees and its financial results have never been properly audited by independent accountants.

In contrast to this stark reality, Bill Clinton recently continued a long pattern of dissembling, likening himself to Robin Hood and dismissing critics of his “philanthropic” post-presidency, despite mounting concerns over perceived conflicts of interest and irregularities. …

[Charles Ortel’s] summary:

An educated guess, based upon ongoing analysis of the public record begun in February 2015, is that the Clinton Foundation entities are part of a network that has defrauded donors and created illegal private gains of approximately $100 billion in combined magnitude, and possibly more, since 23 October 1997. …

Ortel leaves us with some critical questions:

Why was the Clinton Charity Network allowed to expand the scope of its illegal activities between 20 January 2001 and 20 January 2009, when George W. Bush served as president?

Why has the administration of Barack Obama allowed the Clinton Charity Fraud Network to grow even more, in bold violation of state, federal, and foreign laws from 20 January 2009 to present?

Why did Valerie Jarrett and the Obama Administration bother with the pretense of signing a legal document, late in 2008, purporting to regulate potential conflicts of interest between Hillary Clinton in her role as Secretary of State and the Clinton Foundation, when this document was false, misleading, incomplete, and manifestly unenforceable?

Why is the IRS still resisting full-scale audits of the Clinton Charity Network?

The answer is surprising and simple – once again, Americans and regulators around the world appear to have fallen victim to the “Big Lie” strategy.

These posts of ours explain why it is a Big Lie that the Clinton Foundation dispenses charity to worthy causes:

The great good works and wonky dilemmas of William J. Clinton, April 18, 2015 (here).

What needs to be know about the Clinton’s charities, April 25, 2015 (here).

Touched by the Clintons, May 1, 2015 (here).

The Clintons’ blood money, May 26, 2016 (here).

How the Clintons deal drugs, August 3, 2016 (here).

The corrupt Department of Justice (is there a federal agency that has not  been corrupted by the Obama administration?) allowed Cheryl Mills, who was an accessory to the criminal acts of Hillary Clinton and was herself therefore under investigation, to act as Hillary Clinton’s lawyer when that infamous liar was questioned by the FBI.

The Clinton gangsters are always up to dirty tricks. And the great machinery of state that is supposed to administer the law lets them get away with it time after time.

The questioning of Crooked Hillary by the FBI, it turns out, was a charade. The fix was in from the start. A little pretense of investigation, a couple of hours chatting, and an announcement would then be made that there was nothing she had done that was criminally wrong.

Shannen Coffin writes at the Weekly Standard:

The FBI’s notes confirm that her former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, was among the several lawyers representing Clinton in her FBI interview. Mills was hip-deep in the events at the heart of the FBI’s criminal investigation and was herself a material witness who had previously sat for her own interview. Yet not only was she allowed by the Department of Justice to participate as counsel in Clinton’s interview, her communications with Clinton and other material witnesses also were actively protected by the Department of Justice throughout the criminal and civil investigations.

Typically, the DOJ would look askance where a material witness sought to act as a lawyer for the subject of a federal criminal investigation. In Mills’s case, Justice lawyers went out of their way to accommodate this highly unusual dual-hat role. For those who wonder whether Clinton’s FBI interview was all for show, Mills’s participation as a lawyer should be Exhibit A. …

Mills’s dual role as fact witness and lawyer posed considerable obstacles to uncovering the truth about Clinton’s email scheme. In a civil deposition ordered by a federal judge, Mills frequently invoked the attorney-client privilege to avoid answering questions about Clinton’s email setup. When asked about the email setup and in particular conversations that she might have had with Clinton’s IT specialist, Bryan Pagliano — who invoked the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to avoid testifying — Mills refused to answer, claiming those conversations were privileged attorney-client communication.

Mills’s knowledge of facts learned while serving in a non-legal capacity at the State Department could not possibly be protected by an attorney-client privilege.

To fix that problem, Mills conveniently claimed that she did not know anything about Clinton’s email setup during her tenure at the State Department and only learned of relevant facts in her later capacity as Mrs. Clinton’s personal lawyer. Mills’s implausible claim she was unaware of the nature of Clinton’s email setup during her tenure at State is undermined by documents showing that Mills was deeply involved as chief of staff in resolving questions regarding Clinton’s email use. …

So Mills told one whopper of a lie after another, and everyone involved knew she was lying, and the FBI and the DOJ supported the deception.  

Even more specious is Mills’s assertion that certain facts she became aware of as Clinton’s chief of staff — such as why she knew that Clinton had transitioned her email to a clintonemail.com address very early in her tenure — were off-limits because she had “refreshed her recollection” as to those facts during her time representing Clinton in the private sector. Mills could only “refresh” her recollection because she had knowledge of those facts during her tenure as Clinton’s chief of staff, putting those facts well beyond the protection of any privilege.

In fact, she was committing a crime even as she was speaking:

Especially given its criminal investigation into Clinton’s email use, the Department of Justice had every reason to challenge an overbroad assertion of attorney-client privilege by a critical fact witness such as Mills. Indeed, Mills’s very representation of Clinton in the criminal investigation raises question under both legal ethics standards and federal criminal law. 18 U.S.C. 207(a) makes it a crime for any former government employee to communicate with the government on certain matters “in which the person participated personally and substantially while in government”. 

But –

Rather than contest Mills’s questionable privilege claims, the Justice Department actually supported them.

One FBI agent made a timid effort to ask a pertinent question:

… When the FBI interviewers broached the question in her May interview of how the email server was set up, Mills and her lawyer walked out. Clinton and her lawyers had demanded that that topic be off-limits to the FBI because of Mills’s more recent role as Clinton’s lawyer.

Clinton demanded. Mills walked out. Because whatever Mills had done before she was Clinton’s lawyer, now she was Clinton’s lawyer so she had attorney-client privilege. So there!

The FBI gave in. And –

The Justice Department apparently agreed. Department lawyers were reportedly taken aback that their FBI colleague had ventured beyond what was anticipated.

The Department of Justice agreement to limit the scope of a criminal interview based on untested claims of attorney-client privilege is, at the very least, unusual. For the more conspiracy minded, it’s downright outrageous.

Yet it pales in comparison to the conduct of a Department of Justice lawyer in Mills’s civil FOIA deposition. On two occasions in that deposition, a lawyer from the Department of Justice’s Civil Division, which represents the State Department in the FOIA cases, invoked Mrs. Clinton’s personal attorney-client privilege to object to questions about Mills’s knowledge of the email setup. When Mills was asked what Brian Pagliano had told her about the setup of the server, a Department of Justice lawyer objected that those conversations had taken place “during the time that [Mills] was representing Secretary Clinton”.

If such a privilege existed, it certainly was not the place of the Department of Justice to invoke it to protect Mills from testifying.

On the whole, the Department of Justice’s accommodating of Cheryl Mills’s dual-hat role as lawyer and witness is mystifying, and it raises significant conflict of interest issues for the department.

On one hand, DOJ was purportedly investigating Clinton, and perhaps even Mills, for the mishandling of government information, including over 2,000 classified emails. On the other, the same Department of Justice was shielding Mills from accounting for her role in the email scandal. Is it any wonder that the FBI and Department of Justice came to the conclusion that they did?

Hillary’s FBI. Hillary’s Department of Justice. They were allowed to put on a little show to bamboozle the stupid public, but there wasn’t the remotest chance that Hillary herself or Cheryl Mills or Bryan Pagliano or any member of the Clinton gang would be brought to trial or found guilty of anything.

The Clinton gang can imperil national security, put the lives of secret agents at risk, plan and prosecute war in Libya, ignore messages from an ambassador and let him be suffocated to death, sell favors to foreign potentates and tycoons in return for vast sums of money paid to a phony charity for the personal enrichment of the Clintons – and the Obama government will protect them from having to answer for any of it.

And what is more, half the voters of America want to put them in charge of the government and give them supreme command of US military power.

Hillary Clinton, she of the Benghazi Massacre, retorts when she is criticized for her actions and inactions in connection with that disaster, that “eleven hours of questioning” by the Foreign Relations Committee “found nothing” to reproach her with.

(Also that an earlier inquiry into the event had positively exonerated her – which indeed it did, being conducted by one of her accomplices who saw no reason even to question her. See our post, Send in the whitewasher, November 3, 2012.)

It now emerges that the Foreign Relations Committee hearing was not an entirely honest inquiry to determine the truth of what happened, but in part a staged performance, scripted in advance by the Clinton gang.

Catherine Herridge reports:

Newly released emails suggest a senior Hillary Clinton aide stage-managed her first hearing on the Benghazi terrorist attack by feeding specific topics Clinton wanted to address to Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, who at the time was acting chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

“We wired it that Menendez would provide an opportunity to address two topics we needed to debunk (her actions/whereabouts on 9/11, and these emails from Chris Stevens about moving locations,)” Clinton media gatekeeper Philippe Reines wrote to Chelsea Clinton the morning of the Jan. 23, 2013 hearing.

Right out of the gate, the first hearing question from Menendez that day covered both topics referenced by Reines.

Menendez asked for Clinton’s “insights on the decision-making process regarding the location of the Mission”. … [And] “Can you also in your response, you touched upon it in your opening statement, but what actions were you and your staff taking the night of September 11 and into September 12?”

The then-secretary of state had an answer on both fronts. She told the committee that “[Ambassador] Chris [Stevens] was committed to not only being in Benghazi but to the location,” and that on the night of the attack, “I was notified of the attack shortly after 4:00 p.m. Over the following hours, we were in continuous meetings and conversations both within the department with our team in Tripoli, with the interagency and internationally.”

Stevens was among four Americans killed in the attack.

The emails were obtained by the group Citizens United as part of its ongoing Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department for emails from Chelsea Clinton and Hillary Clinton’s closest aides.

“This email chain provides a rare behind the scenes look at which Benghazi-related issues the Clinton camp had concerns about going into Secretary Clinton’s January 2013 testimony on Capitol Hill, and what they had apparently plotted out beforehand with a Democrat committee member to deal with those concerns,” Citizens United said in a statement. “Citizens United will continue to release all new Benghazi emails we receive through our FOIA lawsuits as they come in — the American people have a right to know the full picture.”

Fox News asked the Clinton campaign as well as Menendez’s office if they coordinated before the 2013 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing; what was meant by the term “wired”; and how the email exchange was consistent with the principle of independent congressional oversight. Both confirmed receipt of Fox’s questions.  The Senator’s office said they would not be commenting.  The Clinton campaign said they would advise Fox if they decided to react to Reines’ email. In 2013, the New Jersey senator – who is now facing federal public corruption charges – at the time of the hearing was about to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, replacing John Kerry who was in line to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. …

A previous release of emails from a separate FOIA action showed that on the night of the attack, Clinton told her daughter, who used the email pseudonym Diane Reynolds on clintonemail.com, that the attacks were the work of an “Al Queda-like group” – with no mention of an obscure anti-Islam video Clinton publicly linked to the 2012 terrorist attack. Chelsea Clinton uses the same pseudonym in the Menendez email.

Reines is a founding member of the Clinton-aligned consulting group Beacon Global Strategies. The online bios for its founders and managing director suggest no group knows more about the Benghazi terrorist attack and the Obama administration’s response.

One of its senior counselors is former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell, who heavily edited the controversial Benghazi talking points, which helped establish the administration’s initial flawed narrative about the attack. Morell recently endorsed Clinton to the New York Times, but later was criticized for not fully disclosing his relationship to Beacon.

In a follow up Q-and-A with the Times, Morell wrote: “Among the many things I do in my post-government life — teaching and writing, serving on corporate boards, speaking publicly on national security issues — is work with Beacon Global Strategies, a firm that has prioritized nonpartisanship. The firm’s advisory board — composed of appointees of both Republican and Democratic presidents, as well as career military officers — make that priority clear. It all stems from a strong and shared belief that our national security is paramount and needs to be devoid of partisan politics.”

Superb hypocrisy!  

The Clintons and their hoodlums lie so consistently that they are no longer expected to be truthful.

A vote for Hillary is a conscious vote for dishonesty.

But why should it matter? She’s Hillary Clinton. She’s above the law. She’s beyond good and evil. She’s entitled to power and riches. And she needs to be the first woman president of America.

Understood?

Why is it a good thing that Trump is tilting at the Establishment?

Scot Faulkner, who served on President Reagan’s White House staff, explains at Townhall:

Why does The Washington Establishment hate Donald Trump? It is not because of his positions on immigration or trade. …

Trump has declared war on The Establishment itself. In his June 16, 2015 Presidential announcement he asserted:

So I’ve watched the politicians. I’ve dealt with them all my life…. They will never make America great again. They don’t even have a chance. They’re controlled fully by the lobbyists, by the donors, and by the special interests. … It’s destroying our country. We have to stop them, and it has to stop now.

So in a nutshell, The Washington Establishment has a visceral hatred for Donald Trump, because he promises to put their system out of business.

The Washington Establishment sees Trump as serious about them being the primary impediment to making America “great again.” He sees The Establishment as lining their pockets, and their friends’ pockets – as beneficiaries of the status quo. As long as nothing changes, The Establishment will have their mansions, limousines, VIP tables and ego trips.

There is much at stake.

Think of Washington, DC as a mass of “cookie jars”, each containing delicious treats. There are those who control the cookie jars, those who want the cookie jars, and those who can get the cookie jars. Officially, these treats are distributed based on legislative mandates, open competition, and documented needs.

In fact, the treats are almost always handed out to friends, and friends of friends. Friends can be purchased. Friends help friends get reelected, and gain power, and get treats. It is Washington, DC’s “golden rule” – those with the gold rule.

Welcome to “crony capitalism”.  … The term “lobbyist” came from favor seekers hanging out in the lobby of Washington, DC’s Willard Hotel during the Grant Administration in the 1870s.

In 1905, George Washington Plunkett, a ward boss in the Tammany Hall political machine, coined what could be the motto of Washington, DC: “What is the Constitution among friends?”

Today, things have gotten way out of hand. Spending for Washington lobbyists has tripled since 1998 to over $3.22 billion a year. Favor seekers spend $24 million on lobbyists each day Congress is in session.

Campaign fundraising is another dimension of how The Establishment stays in power. Over $750 million has been raised for House races and $520 million for Senate races this election cycle. Leaders of Political Action Committees (PACs), and individual bundlers who raise funds, dominate this ultimate game of “pay for play”.

Those brokering power become gatekeepers for funding and favors throughout the Federal Government. This power comes from a truism overlooked by everyone in the media: all discretionary federal money is earmarked. The popular myth is that earmarks vanished once the Republicans banned them when they returned to power in 2011. Campaign fundraising is another dimension of how The Establishment stays in power. Over $750 million has been raised for House races and $520 million for Senate races this election cycle. Leaders of Political Action Committees (PACs), and individual bundlers who raise funds, dominate this ultimate game of “pay for play”.

Favorites can be based on institutional, administration and ideological biases. Favoritism can also go to the highest bidder. This is federal money flowing out the door as grants, programs, contracts, buildings, leases and employment.

Other “treats” to be dispensed include regulatory relief, tax waivers and subsidies.

Favoritism is rarely purchased with money directly changing hands; that kind of corruption occurs more in state and local government. Washington level corruption is true “quid pro quo”. 

The Washington Establishment swaps favors more insidiously. How many times does a military officer get a major position with a defense contractor years after he favored them with a multi-million dollar contract? A Reagan aide granted a building height waiver near the White House and his salary quadrupled when he’s hired by the developer.

Grant and contract officers obtain slots at prestigious colleges and prep schools for their children for making the “right” choices or being a little lax on oversight.

Trump promises to smash the cookie jars and end the reign of The Establishment.

Normal Americans are rallying around Trump. They are enraged at the lies and duplicity of those in power. Many see a reason to vote for the first time since Reagan. They want November 8, 2016 to be America’s “Bastille Day”, marking the end of Washington, DC’s arrogant and unaccountable ruling class. Billions of dollars are at stake. Perks, prestige and power are at stake. The future of representative government is at stake. Is it any wonder that The Establishment is doing everything and anything to stop Trump? 

It would be good if President Trump makes it harder for the payers to play.

But could he stop the game?

Could anyone or anything stop it?

A smaller government would be more observable (or “transparent”). But how much is the federal government likely to shrink even if the legislative branch is Republican-led and the executive branch is headed by a reformist-minded Trump?

Can government ever be clean of all corruption?

Maybe the best that can be done is to keep the corrupt and their corrupters afraid. And the Clintons out of the higher echelons of power – 0r, better still, in prison.