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    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    U.S. Attorney Behind D'Souza Indictment On Short List To Replace Eric Holder

    U.S. Attorney Behind D'Souza Indictment On Short List To Replace Eric Holder

    by DEBRA HEINE
    25 Jan 2014


    The U.S. Attorney behind the indictment of conservative author and commentator Dinesh D'Souza, is a politically connected Obama appointee who has been talked about as a potential replacement for Attorney General Eric Holder.Preet Bharara, a former staff member to Senator Chuck Schumer, helped lead the Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys by the Bush administration. As the U.S. Attorney for Southern District of New York, he has received glowing press accounts from the media for cracking down on insider trading.

    D’Souza, whose movie “2016: Obama’s America,” based on the 2010 book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” became a surprise box office hit during the 2012 election season, has been charged with campaign finance violations and is facing a $1,000,000 fine and up to 7 years in jail. His book and movie about the president's background posited that his politics were driven by the anti-Western, anti-colonialist ideas of his Kenyan father.

    Bharara has an undefeated record in prosecuting insider trading - 77 for 77 in convictions since taking over as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in August 2009, but in an unflattering profile in the New York Post in February of 2012, Fox Business Network senior correspondent Charles Gasparino wrote that Preet Bharara "is a guy with clear political ambitions, and he’s no Eliot Ness."

    At the time of the oped, the rumor mill out of Washington was saying Bharara was on the short list to replace the "scandal-tarred" Attorney General Eric Holder.

    Gasparino wrote that according to his colleagues, Bharara is "a decent and smart man but one with a mediocre resume highlighted by five uneventful years as a federal prosecutor before joining the staff of Sen. Chuck Schumer."

    It was in Schumer’s office that Bharara made his political bones, burnishing his Democratic Party street cred as chief counsel in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into the Bush administration’s firings of US attorneys.

    While the hearings that Bharara helped conduct made the firings look sordid, the legal impact was pretty minimal. For all the political hoopla (including high-level resignations), the Justice Department’s career staff decided not to prosecute any of those involved.

    But Bharara had made his political mark, and the Obama administration rewarded him with the country’s premier law-enforcement post in May 2009 — just as the nation was recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, and when public outrage against Wall Street was at its highest. What has Bharara done since taking the job? A lot less than his headlines suggest.

    Consider that the biggest cases coming from his office involve insider trading, something he had very little do with. As most insiders know, it was the Bush Justice Department that launched the massive crackdown on insider trading nearly two years before Bharara even took office, mainly by following up on evidence already developed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
    President Obama and the left-leaning press may like to spin a tale that Republicans are easy on Wall Street miscreants, but keep in mind that the key ingredient in these cases has been the aggressive use of wiretaps, which were usually reserved for snaring terrorists and mobsters — and this, too, is something the prior administration fought for and won, even if Bharara has been taking credit for the results.

    Of course, you wouldn’t know any of this as Bharara’s press office continues its selective leaking and obsessive image-building, which isn’t such a bad thing if it weren’t so blatantly political.

    Gasparino concluded, "if President Obama wants to replace the hapless Eric Holder with somebody who knows how to massage the press to look good, maybe he’s got his man in Preet Bharara."
    Bharara's office claims that D'Souza's indictment is the result of a routine reviewby the FBI of campaign filings with the FEC.

    PJ Media's Rick Moran, who's known for being politically moderate, smells a rat:

    How is it possible that a measly $20,000 in donations could leap out at investigators during a “routine review”? Most people charged with this crime front hundreds of thousands of dollars — and end up with far lesser charges. And are we to believe this “routine review” only snared Mr. D’Souza? If $20,000 in contributions leapt out at the FBI, are we to believe that D’Souza is the only contributor guilty of setting up straw donations? Where are the other lawbreakers?

    Indeed.
    http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2...ce-Eric-Holder

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    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    GAI report exposes Obama campaign accepting foreign donations



    (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)




    Christopher CollinsPaulding
    County Republican Examiner


    October 8, 2012

    Two days ago, the Paulding County Republican Examiner reported on a new Obama scandal that was emerging over the weekend that the Obama campaign was accepting illegal overseas donations and that the report would be released by an unnamed tax payer watch group.

    This morning, the non-partisan group, Government Accountability Institute (GAI) released its 108 page report, the first ever analysis of election campaign donations issues called, “America the Vulnerable: Are Foreign and Fraudulent Online Campaign Contributions Influencing U.S. Elections?” raises indications the Obama campaign has potentially violated federal election law by failing to prevent the use of fraudulent or foreign credit card transactions on the official Obama for America [OFA] donation webpage. The use of the CVV number for donation transactions is non-existent by the Obama campaign among other suspicious activity.

    For nearly nine months, the GAI has been investigating foreign online campaign donations in House, Senate, and presidential elections.
    “As FBI surveillance tapes have previously shown, foreign governments understand and are eager to exploit the weaknesses of American campaigns,” the report said. “This combined with the Internet’s ability to dis-intermediate campaign contributions on a mass scale, as well as outmoded and lax Federal Election Commission rules, make U.S. elections vulnerable to foreign influence.”

    The Paulding County Republican Examiner reviewed the report and although the report outlined issues with on-line campaign donations for several members of Congress, including the Romney campaign, the report focused heavily on the Obama 2012 reelection campaign and revisited the 2008 Obama election campaign due to the vast known illegal donor corruption.

    The report outlined the Obama reelection campaign’s online donation system that contained at least three major security vulnerabilities:


    • The absence of the industry-standard CVV and unknown use of AVS anti-fraud security for online credit card donations.
    • The presence of a branded, major third party-owned website (Obama.com)redirects its 68% foreign traffic to a campaign donation page.
    • Active foreign solicitation using indiscriminate email solicitations and exposure to social media


    The report outlined further each of these three major security vulnerabilities that:

    Obama Campaign Lacks the Industry-Standard Level of Credit Card Security For Donations, But Uses It For Merchandise Purchases: To purchase Obama campaign merchandise, the campaign requires buyers to enter their credit card CVV security code, but does not require the credit card security code to be entered when making an online campaign donation. By GAI’s estimates, the Obama campaign’s failure to utilize industry-standard protections potentially costs the campaign millions in extra processing fees.

    Obama.com Purchased By An Obama Bundler In Shanghai, China With Questionable Business Ties to State-Run Chinese Enterprises: In 2008, Obama.com was purchased by an Obama fundraiser living in Shanghai, China, whose business is heavily dependent on relationships with Chinese state-run television and other state-owned entities.

    68% Of Traffic To Anonymously Registered Obama.com Is Foreign: According to industry leading web analytic site Markosweb, an anonymously registered redirect site (Obama.com) features 68 % foreign traffic. Starting in December 2011, the site was linked to a specific donation page on the official BarackObama.com campaign website for ten months. The page loaded a tracking number, 634930, into a space on the website labeled "who encouraged you to make this donation." That tracking number is embedded in the source code for Obama.com and is associated with the Obama Victory Fund. In early September 2012, the page began redirecting to the standard Obama Victory Fund donation page. Search engine optimization (<acronym title="Search Engine Optimization"><acronym title="Search Engine Optimization"><acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym></acronym></acronym>) efforts, using common spamming techniques, may have been undertaken by unknown third-parties, generating foreign traffic to Obama.com.

    Using a collection of online research tools, the Government Accountability Institute analyzed a portion of the foreign links that lead to the Obama campaign website, my.barackobama.com. The Institute stated that they found a wide variety of instances in which apparent foreign nationals either received solicitation emails or posted links to my.barackobama.com.

    When foreign nationals received Obama campaign donation solicitation, they would brag about it on their blogs the report stated as shown by the examples below.

    In July and August, a Chinese blogger re-posts letters he has received from the Obama campaign, each of which contains a solicitation for $3 or $5; none of these small donations require the campaign to keep any record of them. 87.8% of the traffic flowing to the site comes from China while only 4.5% is from the United States. The website contains hyperlinks that lead to the campaign’s donation page.

    On August 9th, 2012 the Obama campaign sent a solicitation letter to “Hikemt Hadjy-Zadh,”an Azerbaijani citizen. His email address is on an Azerbaijani domain and he posts numerous solicitation letters he has received from the Obama campaign. Mr. Hadjy-Zadh re-posts the complete letters on a discussion forum, including numerous hyperlinks that go directly to the campaign’s donation page.

    A writer in Vietnam writes on a website for the Vietnam Institute for Development Studies (a government-backed think tank) and posts emails he has received from my.barackobama.com with more than 24 total links to the campaign’s donate page embedded in the emails. The website is in the Vietnamese language, hosted on a Vietnamese server, and uses a Vietnamese domain address. In one instance, a letter from Mitch Stewart, Director of the Obama campaign’s “Organizing for America,” asks for donations. Ironically, Stewart laments that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is reportedly taking money from foreign sources. The reader is then prompted to give his name and email address and thereafter begins receiving solicitation letters for donations.

    A Dutch blogger writing in Dutch on a Dutch website reprints an email from March 22, 2010 in which President Obama thanks his supporters for their help. “You’re welcome, Mr.President,” he writes back.
    The Dutch blog “His Dirk” received a donation request from the campaign. Aware of the U.S. law, the blogger decided not to contribute. The blogger observed, “I imagine many non-Americans have money transferred to the Obama campaign. It’s just too easy.”
    A member of the Italian Radical Socialist movement and an administrator of their website re-posts solicitations from the Obama campaign which he reports receiving regularly for three years. “And because we are three years in his mailing list…But frankly after 3 years his letters excite me much less...”
    The campaign’s decision to not use the CVV is rather curious – their technology experts use it in their other commercial and charitable endeavors. Michael Slaby, the chief integration and innovation officer for the Obama Campaign, sits on the board of Citizen Effect, a charitable organization that largely accepts its donations online.

    Slaby’s college roommate started the charity and Slaby sits on the board. To make charitable donations online to Citizen Effect donors are required to use the CVV. Harper Reed, the chief technology officer of the Obama campaign, was previously the chief technology officer for Threadless, a successful crowd sourcing T-shirt company. It likewise requires the CVV for financial transactions.

    This is clear evidence that the Obama campaign’s technology experts understand the threat of fraud and the necessity of security for online transactions. Even more curious is the fact that the Obama campaign sees the benefit of using the CVV in its merchandise shop. To buy official merchandise from the Obama campaign website—a T-shirt, hat, hoodie, etc., one is required to input the CVV the report stated.

    The Obama campaign has claimed that it doesn't need the CVV because they are able to vet contributions on the back end using sophisticated techniques that it doesn't disclose. This begs the question the report asked: "Why is it using different techniques when it comes to selling campaign merchandise?"
    As reported over the weekend, the Obama campaign raised $181 million in September alone where only 2 percent or $3.6 million of those donations are required to be reported to the FEC.

    Although the Romney campaign attempts to prevent foreign donations isn't perfect, throughout the report, unlike the Obama campaign’s activities and raised corruption, no evidence of specific wrongdoing or potential illegal activity has been presented with regard to the Romney campaign.
    The entire report can be read here.

    http://www.examiner.com/article/gai-...eign-donations

    See Also:
    Report: Obama.com solicits foreign contributions for prez

    BY PAUL BEDARD | OCTOBER 8, 2012 AT 10:50 AM

    TOPICS: WASHINGTON SECRETS

    The independently owned website Obama.com, which steers users to the president's campaign donation website, gets most of its traffic from foreign countries, raising questions about the legality of tens of millions of small dollar donations to the campaign, according to a new report.

    The Government Accountability Institute today released details of an eight-month probe into fundraising by the presidential candidates and all House and Senate candidates that also shows that the president's outreach and fundraising have targeted websites in Chinese, Arabic, Thai, and Korean. Generally, donations from foreign nations are illegal.

    The 108-page analysis from the group that made news in an earlier report that suggested President Obama skips many of his national security briefings studied security flaws in credit card fundraising conducted by Obama, Mitt Romney, and congressional candidates. Many have security flaws, said the report.

    http://washingtonexaminer.com/report-obama.com-solicits-foreign-contributions-for-prez/article/2510096

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