Exclusive: All 7 Republicans on Senate Judiciary Committee Ask AG Holder to Appoint Special Prosecutor to Look Into Alleged Sestak Job Offer May 26, 2010 1:19 PM
In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder today, all seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee "urge the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Congressman Joe Sestak's claim that a White House official offered him a job to induce him to exit the Pennsylvania Senate primary race against Senator Arlen Specter."
The seven – Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Jon Kyl or Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma – allege that the offer would appear to violate federal criminal laws, including 18 U.S.C. 600, which prohibits promising a government position “as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity” or “in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office.”
Rep. Sestak, D-Penn., who defeated Specter in the primary last week, told Comcast’s Larry Kane in February that the White House had offered him a position in exchange for not challenging Specter. White House senior adviser David Axelrod said on Monday that White House lawyers had looked into it and judged everything “perfectly appropriate.”
CNN’s John King suggested to Axelrod that such a job offer “marches up into the gray area, perhaps into the red area of a felony. It is a felony to induce somebody by offering them a job.”
“If such things happened they would constitute a serious breach of the law,” Axelrod told CNN, “and when the allegations were looked into there is no evidence of such a thing"
That was not enough for the Republican Senators, who wrote to Holder that they “do not believe the Department of Justice can properly defer to White House lawyers to investigate a matter that could involve ‘a serious breach of the law.’ The White House cannot possibly manage an internal investigation of potential criminal misconduct while simultaneously crafting a public narrative to rebut the claim that misconduct occurred.”
Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch last week told Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., that a special counsel is not needed; the Republican Senators are asking for Holder to reconsider that decision, though they suggest he could also refer the matter to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section or the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
-Jake Tapper
May 26, 2010
Obama is hit by 'affair' smears following claims that attractive aide was banned by his wife
By Sharon Churcher Last updated at 11:38 PM on 11th October 2008
Target: Barack Obama faces rumours about his private life
Barack Obama is the target of a shadowy smear campaign designed to derail his bid for the US Presidency by falsely claiming he had a close friendship with an attractive African-American female employee.
The whispers focus on a young woman who in 2004 was hired to work on his team for his bid to become a senator.
The woman was purportedly sidelined from her duties after Senator Obama’s wife, Michelle, became convinced that he had developed a personal friendship with her.
The allegations were initially circulated in August, just two weeks before the convention at which Obama finally beat his opponent for the Democratic Party nomination, Hillary Clinton.
The woman, now 33, vigorously denies the vicious and unsubstantiated gossip.
And some Washington insiders suggested that she was the victim of an 11th-hour attempt to smear Obama by die-hard Hillary supporters.
But now the rumours have resurfaced, suggesting that they may be coming from elements in the Republican Party.
According to sources interviewed by The Mail on Sunday, the respected Los Angeles Times, the tabloid National Enquirer and the huge ABC television network have been provided with the woman’s name.
In the most commonly-purveyed version of the rumour, she was ‘exiled’ to a Caribbean island because Michelle Obama objected to her job on the 2004 campaign. A lawyer representing the woman said: ‘Although her duties on the [2004] campaign changed over time, there was never any hint that Mrs Obama had any concerns about her relationship with the Senator or played any role in recommending a change in her duties.’
According to our investigation into the rumours, they originated with political veterans who claim to be loyal Democrats.
They have tried to persuade reporters that they have the woman’s interests at heart.
One of the sources who has been circulating the rumours admitted never meeting the woman but claimed he has spoken to ‘a group of African American’ women who are her friends and believe she was mistreated.
Denial: The woman, whose identity we have protected, rejected the claims
‘They said she was removed from her position and the political scene because Michelle got wind of the fact that she had a close friendship with her husband,’ the source said. ‘She disappeared, then she reappeared in the Caribbean.’
The Mail on Sunday located the woman in the Caribbean, where she now works. She denied that Mrs Obama had raised any objections to her job on the 2004 campaign.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing happened. I just left ... at the end of the campaign.’
Asked about the claim that Mrs Obama accused her of having a close friendship with the Senator, she said: ‘I have no comment on anything.
‘I switched careers. That’s it. I’m a Democrat and I support Senator Obama ... I don’t have anything to say.’
She added that she emigrated to the Caribbean from the US after falling in love with the man with whom she now lives.
Senator Obama’s team did not respond to our request for comment.
But one day after we contacted Obama’s team, a London law firm informed The Mail on Sunday that it had been retained by the woman to help her to counter the whispering campaign, which they said was ‘absolutely false’.
In the Presidential race, polls showed that with just over three weeks to go until the November 4 election, Mr Obama is leading his Republican rival John McCain.
A Newsweek poll published on Friday showed Illinois senator Mr Obama ahead of the 72-year-old Arizona senator by 52 per cent to 41 per cent.
A month ago, that poll had the two candidates tied at 46 per cent. Other polls in the most contested states have also shown a swing toward Mr Obama. He seems to have benefited as voters anxious about turmoil on Wall Street and across the globe give him higher marks for economic leadership.
Addressing a public meeting in Ohio, Mr Obama called for a plan to help small American businesses hampered by the credit crunch to get loans for operating expenses and payrolls. He urged the world’s finance ministers to take co-ordinated action to tackle the crisis.
‘In this global economy, financial markets have no boundaries. So the current crisis demands a global response,’ he said. Pushing a line of attack that seems to have helped him build an advantage, he said Mr McCain ‘doesn’t really seem to get what’s going on’ with the financial crisis.
Mr Obama mocked a McCain adviser for telling reporters amid a week of panic-selling on Wall Street that he didn’t think it made sense for the campaign to speak daily on the markets.
‘Senator McCain’s campaign manager actually said that Senator McCain wasn’t talking about the market because there’s just not much a candidate for president can say – and they aren’t sure what he’d say each day even if he did talk about it,’ Mr Obama said.
While President Obama assails the culture of greed and recklessness practiced by the men of Goldman Sachs, his administration is infested with them. The White House can no more disown Government Sachs than Obama can disown Chicago politics.
Obama is headed to Wall Street tomorrow to demand "financial regulatory reform" -- just as the US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil suit against Goldman Sachs for mortgage-related fraud.
Question the timing? Darn tootin'.
As the New York Post reported Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee immediately bought sponsored Internet ads on Google that direct Web surfers who type in "Goldman Sachs SEC" to Obama's fund-raising site.
REUTERS
Emanuel: Goldman crowd gave almost $80,000 for his runs for Congress.
"It's time to hold the big banks accountable," the DNC message bellows.
Democrats are silent on the $994,795 in Goldman Sachs campaign cash that Obama bagged in the 2008 presidential race. The class-warfare Dems are also mum on all the president's Goldman men sitting in the catbird's seat:
* Goldman Sachs partner Gary Gensler is Obama's Commodity Futures Trading Commission head. He was confirmed despite heated congressional grilling over his role, as Reuters described it, "as a high-level Treasury official in a 2000 law that exempted the $58 trillion credit default swap market from oversight. The financial instruments have been blamed for amplifying global financial turmoil."
Gensler said he was sorry -- hey, it worked for tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner -- and was quickly installed to guard the henhouse.
* Goldman kept White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on a $3,000 monthly retainer while he worked as presidential candidate Bill Clinton's chief fund-raiser, as first reported by Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney. The financial titans threw in another $50,000 to become the Clinton primary campaign's top funder.
Emanuel received nearly $80,000 in campaign contributions from Goldman during his four terms in Congress -- investments that have reaped untold rewards, as Emanuel assumed a leading role championing the trillion-dollar TARP banking bailout law.
* Former Goldman lobbyist Mark Patterson serves under Geithner as his top deputy and overseer of TARP bailout -- $10 billion of which went to Goldman Sachs.
Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based think tank devoted to transparency in government, noted that, while Patterson agreed to recuse himself on any Goldman Sachs-related issues or related policy concerns, it "still creates a serious conflict for Geithner, as Treasury is being partly managed by a former Goldman lobbyist. Geithner is also placed in a tough position considering that his chief of staff is limited in the areas in which he can work (supposedly)."
* National Economic Council head Larry Summers reaped nearly $2.8 million in speaking fees from many of the major financial institutions and government bailout recipients he now polices, including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Lehman Bros. and Goldman. A single speech to Goldman in April 2008 brought in $135,000.
Summers has prior experience negotiating government-sponsored bailouts that benefit private concerns. In 1995, he spearheaded a $40 billion Mexican peso bailout that bypassed Congress.
Summers personally leaned on the International Monetary Fund to provide nearly $18 billion for the package. Summers' boss, then Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, was former co-chairman of Goldman -- the Mexican government's investment banking firm of choice.
Rubin continues to mentor another of his former employees with regular visits and chats -- Treasury Secretary Geithner, who was head of the New York Federal Reserve in 2008 when it ordered bailed-out AIG not to disclose its sweetheart payments to big banks including, you guessed it, Goldman Sachs.
As Obama harangues Wall Street to clean up its house, all the president's Goldman Sachs men have their feet on the coffee table at his.
The motion, intended to be heavily redacted, was improperly edited -- the full document was easily viewable if the text is copied and pasted to another document (an error first revealed on Capitol Fax).
Below, the six revelations the redacted portions were meant to conceal.
1. Obama may have lied about conversations with convicted fraudster Tony Rezko
Blagojevich's lawyers allege that Rezko admitted breaking the law by contributing "a large sum of cash" to a public official. Blagojevich's attorneys say that public official is Obama. Obama said that Rezko never relayed a request from a lobbyist to hold a fundraiser in favor of favorable legislative action. But the point may be moot: regardless of Obama talking/not talking to Rezko, Blagojevich's attorneys say that Obama refused the request regardless.
Redacted portion: However, the defense has a good faith belief that Mr. Rezko, President Obama’s former friend, fund-raiser, and neighbor told the FBI and the United States Attorneys a different story about President Obama. In a recent in camera proceeding, the government tendered a three paragraph letter indicating that Rezko “has stated in interviews with the government that he engaged in election law violations by personally contributing a large sum of cash to the campaign of a public official who is not Rod Blagojevich. … Further, the public official denies being aware of cash contributions to his campaign by Rezko or others and denies having conversations with Rezko related to cash contributions. … Rezko has also stated in interviews with the government that he believed he transmitted a quid pro quo offer from a lobbyist to the public official, whereby the lobbyist would hold a fundraiser for the official in exchange for favorable official action, but that the public official rejected the offer. The public official denies any such conversation. In addition, Rezko has stated to the government that he and the public official had certain conversations about gaming legislation and administration, which the public official denies having had.
Redacted footnote: The defense has a good faith belief that this public official is Barack Obama.
2. Obama may have overtly recommended Valerie Jarret for his Senate seat Blagojevich's defense team basically alleges that Obama told a certain labor union official that he (Obama) would support Valerie Jarrett's candidacy for the Senate seat. Jarrett, referred to as "Senate Candidate B", is now a senior advisor to the president.
Redacted portion: Yet, despite President Obama stating that no representatives of his had any part of any deals, labor union president told the FBI and the United States Attorneys that he spoke to labor union official on November 3, 2008 who received a phone message from Obama that evening. After labor union official listened to the message labor union official told labor union president “I’m the one”. Labor union president took that to mean that labor union official was to be the one to deliver the message on behalf of Obama that Senate Candidate B was his pick. (Labor union president 302, February 2, 2009, p. 7).
Labor union official told the FBI and the United States Attorneys “Obama expressed his belief that [Senate Candidate B] would be a good Senator for the people of Illinois and would be a candidate who could win re-election. [Labor union official] advised Obama that [labor union official] would reach out to Governor Blagojevich and advocate for [Senate Candidate B] ... [Labor union official] called [labor union president] and told [labor union president] that Obama was aware that [labor union official] would be reaching out to Blagojevich.” (Labor union official 302, February 3, 2009 p. 3).
3. A supporter of President Obama may have offered quid pro quo on a Jarrett senate appointment Redacted portion: Supporter of Presidential Candidate Obama is mentioned in a phone call on November 3, 2008, having offered “fundraising” in exchange for Senate Candidate B for senator (Blagojevich Home Phone Call # 149).
4. Obama maintained a list of good Senate candidates Redacted portion: President-elect Obama also suggested Senate Candidate A to Governor Blagojevich. John Harris told the FBI and the United States Attorneys that he spoke to President’s Chief of Staff on November 12, 2008. Harris took notes of the conversation and wrote that President’s Chief had previously worked as Blagojevich's press secretary. Obama agreed of Staff told Harris that Senate Candidate A was acceptable to Obama as a senate pick. (Harris handwritten notes, OOG1004463) President’s Chief of Staff told the FBI that “he could not say where but somewhere it was communicated to him that” Senate Candidate A was a suggested candidate viewed as one of the four “right” candidates “by the Obama transition team.” 5. Rahm Emanuel allegedly floated Cheryl Jackson's name for the Senate seat Redacted portion: President’s Chief of Staff told the FBI that he had a conversation discussing the Senate seat with Obama on December 7, 2008 in Obama’s car. President’s Chief of Staff told the FBI “Obama expressed concern about Senate Candidate D being appointed as Senator.
[President’s Chief of Staff] suggested they might need an expanded list to possibly include names of African Americans that came out of the business world. [President’s Chief of Staff] thought he suggested Senate Candidate E who was the head of the Urban League and with President’s Chief of Staff’s suggestion.
6. Obama had a secret phone call with Blagojevich Redacted portion: President-elect Obama also spoke to Governor Blagojevich on December 1, 2008 in Philadelphia. On Harris Cell Phone Call # 139, John Harris and Governor’s legal counsel discuss a conversation Blagojevich had with President-elect Obama. The government claims a conspiracy existed from October 22, 2008 continuing through December 9, 2008.6 That conversation is relevant to the defense of the government’s theory of an ongoing conspiracy. Only Rod Blagojevich and President Obama can testify to the contents of that conversation. The defense is allowed to present evidence that corroborates the defendant’s testimony.
Defense Motion To Subpoena President Barack Obama Contained
Sealed Information That Was Visible In Some Electronic Formats
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
Barack Obama laughs with Illinois Gov. Rod
Blagojevich during Governor's Day at the Illinois State Fair in
Springfield, in this Aug. 17, 2005 file photo.
The judge presiding over the corruption case against former Gov. Rod
Blagojevich summoned attorneys to his courtroom Thursday evening after
information in the case that was supposed to remain under seal was
released to the public in a defense filing seeking to subpoena President
Barack Obama.
Blagojevich's attorneys had filed a motion Thursday asking to have the
president give testimony for the upcoming trial.
The filing contained several paragraphs that had been blacked out -- or
redacted -- because the information had been sealed by court order.
However, in the electronic version of the motion, computer users have
been able to copy and paste the blacked out portions into a separate
document and read the passages as an unredacted version.
Zagel scheduled a 6 p.m. hearing to meet with attorneys. Assistant U.S.
attorneys handling the case and defense attorney Sheldon Sorosky
appeared in court Thursday evening, but Zagel held the hearing in out of
public view.
Parties in the case declined to comment on the matter afterward.
Blagojevich has pleaded not guilty to charges that accuse him of
scheming to sell or trade the Senate seat left vacant by Obama's
election as president.
The motion filed Thursday says Obama was interviewed for two hours by
prosecutors and FBI agents regarding the Blagojevich case, and the
defense filed a motion asking for all transcripts, notes and reports
from that interview. But the defense never received the documents, the
motion said.
The motion also claims that prosecutors say Blagojevich met a labor
union official whom he believed to be in contact with President Obama,
and told the official he would appoint a certain candidate to the vacant
Senate seat. In exchange, Blagojevich expected to be named secretary of
Health and Human Services, the motion says prosecutors claim.
But Obama has said he was "confident that no representatives of mine
would have any part of any deals related to this seat," the motion says.
"President Obama has direct knowledge to allegations made in the
indictment. In addition, President Obama's public statements contradict
other witness statements, specifically those made by labor union
official and Senate Candidate B," the motion said.
At one point, White House adviser Valerie Jarrett was interested in
filling Obama's former seat, and prosecutors allege Blagojevich tried to
leverage that interest into campaign cash, or a job for himself.
Blagojevich has denied the charge.
Jarrett, who has been indentified in various media reports as Senate
Candidate B, also was interviewed by the FBI in December 2008.
The labor union official is expected to be a prosecution witness, and
since his story is contradicted by Obama's public statement,
Blagojevich's defense team wants to subpoena Obama.
"They think he could say something that will bolster the former
governor's position that he did nothing wrong," CBS 2 Legal Analyst Irv
Miller said.
That's the simple reason behind the motion filed today, less than two
months before Blagojevich is set to stand trial for allegedly trying to
sell then-Senator Obama's Senate seat for political and monetary gain.
One item in the motion reads: "There are two conflicting stories and the
defense has the right to admit evidence that contradicts the
government's claims. Only President Obama can do this."
No one answered the door at the ex-Governor's Northwest side home and
his attorneys did not return calls for comment.
But the motion states that, in December 2009, the defense asked
prosecutors for all notes, transcripts and information pertaining to the
F.B.I.'s interview of Mr. Obama. Blagojevich's team still hasn't
received it, prompting Thursday's filing.
"The defense is saying the president knows what was going on, the
president knows that this was just typical horse-trading, typical
politics as usual," Miller said. "And that's why they want him on the
stand, to tell the jury that."
It would be unusual, but not unprecedented, for a sitting president to
testify in a court case.
"History is replete with cases in which presidents have been subpoenaed
or have provided evidence in federal cases," the motion said, followed
by a list of presidents who had been deposed or testified in civil or
criminal cases.
Miller cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from Paula Jones' case against
then-president Bill Clinton. In that opinion, justices stated, "the
president, like other officials, is subject to the same laws that apply
to all citizens."
Miller said that ultimately, it will be up to the judge to decide
whether the president must provide testimony in the Blagojevich case.
"The justice department is going to oppose it," Miller said.
If Zagel allows Obama's testimony, don't expect to see him in a Chicago
courtroom during the Blagojevich trial. The president's deposition would
be taken, under oath, in the White House, according to Miller. So, at
the very most, the jury would see his statement on video
A pretrial hearing in the Blagojevich case has been scheduled for next
week. It's not known if the judge will rule on this then or at a later
date.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, Randall Samborn, had no
comment on the 11-page motion. A White House spokesperson also declined
comment on the filing.
White House Subversion: Obama Hands Soros Bank,
Favoritism
Chicagoland gangsta style racketeering in the White House. We are
living in an age of lawlessness by the effete elite, while the
persecution of the common man becomes commonplace. It's ugly.
And Obama is handing over our national treasure to America-hater and self
professed nazi George Soros, who was mentored by and was a longtime
associate of Francois Genoud, Hitler and the Grand Mufti's banker:
Genoud
is notable for being the executor of last
will and testament
of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, and for reportedly making a fortune from
publishing Goebbels' diaries; later he would attain an equal measure of
notoriety for bankrolling the legal defenses of Adolf Eichmann and Klaus
Barbie.[1]
Nazi hunters such as Serge Klarsfeld and Simon Wiesenthal, journalist David Lee Preston and
others have asserted that his role as a benefactor for surviving
National Socialist interests goes much deeper, offering evidence that
Genoud was no less than the principal financial
manager of the hidden
Swiss assets of the Third Reich after WW II,[2]
and would use his banking contacts to set in motion networks that later
became known as ODESSA,
which sponsored evacuation of key Nazi
leaders into Morocco,
Spain and
Latin America.
In 1958 he founded the Arab Commercial Bank, which would be active in
lending money to Arab nationalist groups and as the chief repository
for the Algerian National Liberation Front,[3]
in Geneva in 1958, and in 1962 was named Director of the Arab People's
Bank in Algiers.[4]
He is also believed by Swiss authorities to have been the founder of
Lugano-based al
Taqwa Bank, which was shut down in 2002 for
reputed status as a funding conduit for al Qaeda and Hamas.
Preston, David Lee. "Hitler's Swiss connection". Philadelphia
Inquirer(January 5, 1997):
Note: One month after Swiss banking officials and Jewish
leaders announced an agreement to set up an independent commission,
chaired by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker, to search for
the whereabouts of funds deposited in Switzerland by Holocaust victims,
a Swiss citizen named Francois Genoud committed suicide.
Author David Lee Preston suggests that Genoud's suicide may be linked to
the new commission as well as to Senator D'Amato's investigations for
the U.S. Senate Banking Committee and class action lawsuits against
Swiss banks filed by Holocaust survivors and victims' heirs. Genoud, a
Nazi enthusiast and friend of Hitler's, worked with Swiss and German
intelligence during WWII; he was then active in setting up the ODESSA
network for the transfer of money
from Germany and the evacuation of key Nazi leaders at the end of the
war. Postwar, Genoud used his wartime contacts to become an advisor to
Arab causes and anti-Israel activities.
Accusations of
favoritism swirl in deals for institutions seized by government
A company formed by an investor group that includes billionaire George
Soros
swooped in to purchase a failed California
bank in the latest acquisition by the
company, despite controversy surrounding some of its previous bank
takeovers.
OneWest Bank entered into a purchase and assumption
agreement with the
Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, or FDIC, for the acquisition of all of
the deposits and certain assets of La Jolla Bank.
The acquisition is the latest in a string of failed bank
purchases for the
California-based OneWest, a federal savings bank formed by an investor
group
that includes billionaire George Soros and Dell Inc. founder Michael
Dell.
According to a press release, under the terms of the
transaction OneWest
acquired $3.6 billion in assets, including $3.3 billion in loans, and
$2.8
billion in deposits of La Jolla, as of Dec. 31, 2009. The FDIC and
OneWest have
entered into a loss-sharing agreement covering a majority of the
acquired loans.
Last March OneWest completed the purchase for $13.9
billion of the failed
lender IndyMac Federal Bank, described as one of the largest casualties
of the
housing crisis. IndyMac had been seized by the government prior to
OneWest's
purchase.
OneWest also reportedly acquired and will continue to
operate Financial
Freedom, one of the nation's largest reverse
mortgage businesses, as part of
that deal.
Another bank which recently entered a deal with OneWest
is First Federal Bank
of California, which had been closed by the FDIC. All deposits were
transferred
to OneWest, with California locations reopening as branches of OneWest
Bank.
Investment News
quoted insiders as saying the true draw for the kinds of
purchases by OneWest are the properties and real estate debt the banks hold.
THE CONTENT OF THIS WEBSITE DOES NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE OPINION OF THE OWNER ... At least that's what my lawyer told me, but he was drinking pretty heavily at the time so...
COPYRIGHT HARDIN REPUBLIC, LLC 2009, 2010. All Rights Reserved.
Barack Obama laughs with Illinois Gov. Rod
Blagojevich during Governor's Day at the Illinois State Fair in
Springfield, in this Aug. 17, 2005 file photo.
