The nations top cop just met in private with the spouse of a person her office is allegedly investigating for crimes including espionage. That's right, meeting with the spouse of a person her boss, Barack Obama, has already endorsed. From TheHill
Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately with former President Bill Clinton on Monday night at the Phoenix international airport, ABC 15 reported.
The meeting came hours before the House Benghazi Committee on Tuesday released a report on the 2012 terror attacks in Libya. Lynch told reporters the two did not discuss the issue.
"Our conversation was a great deal about grandchildren, it was primarily social about our travels, and he mentioned golf he played in Phoenix," Lynch said.
"There was no discussion on any matter pending before the Department or any matter pending with any other body, there was no discussion of Benghazi, no discussion of State Department emails, by way of example I would say it was current news of the day, the Brexit decision and what it would mean."
Sources told ABC 15 that the meeting lasted about 30 minutes.
The Department of Justice is conducting an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of State, which was revealed as part of the House investigation into the Benghazi attacks
This administration no longer even cares about appearances, let alone following the rule of law.
On December 16, 1998, President Bill Clinton announced that he has ordered air strikes against Iraq because it refused to cooperate with United Nations (U.N.) weapons inspectors. Clinton’s decision did not have the support of key members of Congress, who accused Clinton of using the air strikes to direct attention away from ongoing impeachment proceedings against him. Just the day before, the House of Representatives had issued a report accusing Clinton of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors” related to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, in which Clinton had–and then lied about–an illicit sexual liaison with an intern in the Oval Office.
At the time of the air strikes, Iraq was continuing its attempts to build weapons of mass destruction including nuclear, chemical and biological agents. Fearful of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s belligerence, and his penchant for using those weapons against his own people, the U.N. sent in weapons inspectors in 1997. After repeatedly refusing the inspectors access to certain sites, Clinton resorted to air strikes to compel Hussein to cooperate.
Ultimately, the American public’s attention, and that of the press, stayed fixated on Clinton and his battle to save his presidency. Both the air strikes and the impeachment threat proved anti-climactic. Clinton was acquitted by the Senate in February 1999 and the air strikes on Iraq failed to intimidate Hussein into allowing weapons inspectors full access to Iraq’s weapons facilities.
The Clinton political machine and it's allies in the media seek to control the narrative on the latest book called Clinton Cash, written by a right leaning author. Left leaning media outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and even Reuters have found the Clinton corruption worthy of investigation and reporting. The latest leftist publication to take a look and find questionable conduct and unanswerable questions is the New Yorker. This is just ONE of the money trails ....
1. Was there a quid pro quo? Based on the Times reporting, there was certainly a lot of quid (millions in donations that made it to a Clinton charity; a half-million-dollar speaker’s fee) and multiple quos (American diplomatic intervention with the Russians; approvals when the Russian firm offered a very “generous” price for Uranium One). The Clinton perspective is that, although the approvals were delivered by the State Department when Clinton led it, there is no evidence that she personally delivered them, or of the “pro” in the equation. The Clinton campaign, in its response to the Times, noted that other agencies also had a voice in the approval process, and gave the Times a statement from someone on the approvals committee saying that Clinton hadn’t “intervened.” The Clinton spokesman wouldn’t comment on whether Clinton was briefed about the matter. She was cc’d on a cable that mentioned the request for diplomatic help, but if there is a note in which she follows up with a directive—an e-mail, say—the Times doesn’t seem to have it.
This speaks to some larger questions about political corruption. How do you prove it? Maybe the uranium people simply cared deeply about the undeniably good work the foundation is doing, and would have received the help and approvals anyway. In cases like this, though, how does the public maintain its trust? Doing so becomes harder when the money is less visible, which leads to the second question:
2. Did the Clintons meet their disclosure requirements? The Timeswrites, of the $2.35 million from Telfer’s family foundation, “Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors.” This is one of the more striking details in the story, because it seems so clear-cut that the donation ought to have been disclosed. Moreover, the Times says that the foundation did not explain the lapse. I also asked the foundation to explain its reasoning. The picture one is left with is convoluted and, in the end, more troubling than if the lapse had been a simple oversight. The legalisms can be confusing, so bear with me: the Clinton Foundation has several components, including the Clinton Global Initiative and—this is the key one—the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, formerly known as the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative. The memorandum of understanding makes it clear that the donor-disclosure requirement applies to each part of the foundation.
Craig Minassian, a Clinton Foundation spokesman, pointed out, though, that there are two legally separate but almost identically named entities: the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership and the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada). The second one is a Canadian charitable vehicle that Giustra set up—doing it this way helps Canadian donors get tax benefits. It also, to the foundation’s mind, obliterates the disclosure requirements. (There are also limits on what a Canadian charity is allowed to disclose.) Minassian added, “As complex as they may seem, these programs were set up to do philanthropic work with maximum impact, period. Critics will say what they want, but that doesn’t change the facts that these social enterprise programs are addressing poverty alleviation and other global challenges in innovative ways.” Minassian compared the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada) to entirely independent nonprofits, like AmFAR or Malaria no More, which have their own donors and then give money to the foundation’s work.
This does not make a lot of sense unless you have an instinct for the most legalistic of legalisms. Unlike AmFAR, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada) has the Clinton name on it. Money given to the Canadian entity goes exclusively to the foundation. Per an agency agreement, all of its work is done by the foundation, too. The Web site that has the C.G.E.P. name on it also has the Clinton Foundation logo and Bill Clinton’s picture; it also has a copyright notice naming the Canadian entity as the site’s owner. Anyone visiting the site would be justifiably confused. They are, in other words, effectively intermingled.
And what would it mean if the Canadian explanation flew—that the Clintons could allow a foreign businessman to set up a foreign charity, bearing their name, through which people in other countries could make secret multi-million-dollar donations to their charity’s work? That structural opacity calls the Clintons’ claims about disclosure into question. If the memorandum of understanding indeed allowed for that, it was not as strong a document as the public was led to believe—it is precisely the sort of entanglement one would want to know about. (In that way, the Canadian charity presents some of the same transparency issues as a super PAC.) At the very least, it is a reckless use of the Clinton name, allowing others to trade on it.
ABC's Stephanopoulos reflexively goes on the defensive for his old bosses.....
3. Did the Clintons personally profit? In most stories about dubious foundation donors, the retort from Clinton supporters is that the only beneficiaries have been the world’s poorest people. This ignores the way vanity and influence are their own currencies—but it is an argument, and the foundation does some truly great work. In this case, though, Bill Clinton also accepted a five-hundred-thousand-dollar speaking fee for an event in Moscow, paid for by a Russian investment bank that had ties to the Kremlin. That was in June, 2010, the Times reports, “the same month Rosatom struck its deal for a majority stake in Uranium One”—a deal that the Russian bank was promoting and thus could profit from. Did Bill Clinton do anything to help after taking their money? The Times doesn’t know. But there is a bigger question: Why was Bill Clinton taking any money from a bank linked to the Kremlin while his wife was Secretary of State? In a separate story, breaking down some of the hundred million dollars in speaking fees that Bill Clinton has collected, the Washington Postnotes, “The multiple avenues through which the Clintons and their causes have accepted financial support have provided a variety of ways for wealthy interests in the United States and abroad to build friendly relations with a potential future president.”
4. Putting aside who got rich, did this series of uranium deals damage or compromise national security? That this is even a question is one reason the story is, so to speak, radioactive. According to the Times, “the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States.” Pravda has said that it makes Russia stronger. What that means, practically, is something that will probably be debated as the election proceeds. 5. Is this cherry-picking or low-hanging fruit? Put another way, how many more stories about the Clintons and money will there be before we make it to November, 2016? The optimistic view, if you support Hillary Clinton or are simply depressed by meretriciousness, is that the Times reporters combed the Schweizer book and that this story was the worst they found. The pessimistic view is that it was an obvious one to start with, for all the reasons above, and that some names that stand out less than Uranium One and ARMZ will lead to other stories. Are the Clintons correct in saying that there is an attack machine geared up to go after them? Of course. But why have they made it so easy?
'The Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee
argued Tuesday in an op-ed that federal regulations helped create the
financial crisis.
“The great tragedy of the financial crisis …
was not that Washington regulations failed to prevent it, but instead
that Washington regulations helped lead us into it,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling
(R-Texas) wrote in an an op-ed published by American Banker.
Hensarling
pointed to the Community Reinvestment Act, which he said required banks
to “abandon their traditional lending standards” for a small number of
home loans.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also are to blame for the
national housing meltdown, Hensarling said, noting that a large portion
of the risky loans that led to the crisis were backed by Freddie and
Fannie, who, in turn, were backed by taxpayers. '
Quick background:
Subprime mortgages have existed for decades. But they were a small
percentage of the mortgage market (well under 10%), until Fannie and
Freddie reduced credit standards to increase market share and meet
low-income and minority home ownership targets mandated by Congress. By
2007, nearly 50% of all mortgages that originated in the U.S. were
subprime, with Fannie, Freddie and other agencies guaranteeing about
70%. @CNNMoney December 20, 2011
President Clinton Takes Credit for Community Reinvestment Act Loans
' "Given their
prominence in the market, investors and underwriters came to believe
that if Fannie or Freddie touched a loan, it was safe, sound, secure and
most importantly, 'sanctioned' by the government,” he wrote. “If anyone
is looking for a root cause of the financial crisis, this is it.”
Earlier this month, President Obama marked the fifth anniversary of the crisis witha speech
in which he touted his administration’s efforts to shore up the
financial sector with needed regulations, many required by the 2010
Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.
“We put in place tough new
rules on big banks, rules that we need to finalize before the end of the
year, by the way, to make sure that the job is done," Obama said during
remarks at the White House.
More than half of hundreds of rules required under Dodd-Frank are still in the works.
On Tuesday, Hensarling criticized the landmark law for failing to reform Fannie and Freddie.
“What
you will find in Dodd-Frank, however, are provisions that make bailouts
permanent, enshrine 'too big to fail' into law and give Washington
bureaucrats more power, more authority and more control over personal
financial decisions that Americans should be making for themselves,”
Hensarling wrote.'
Former Democrat Rep. Barney Frank (Dodd Frank)blames LACK of regulation
