Phantom ballots: who is cleaning the voter rolls?

Jay Valentine at American Thinker has published a couple of columns expressing his concern:

You would think rational electioneers in the Republican Party would, in 2022, do everything to stop the election jiggering that took place in 2020.  You would be wrong.

And from his column yesterday:

Two years ago, most Americans thought phantom voters were comic book characters.  Nobody had ever seen one.

This week, we reached our 5,000th volunteer request (in 60 days) to help clean voter rolls — and we never asked for a single volunteer.  We are just technology guys.

Americans are fed up; they get it that their elected officials are not going to clean voter rolls.  Perhaps some people did not dig the Big Steal for the Trump election — but after Kari Lake, the Senate in Nevada, and dozens of local races, they are on fire now.

Mr Valentine’s Omega4America website is here. And he has expressed frustration at the lack of attention to election fraud from top politicians.

However, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch mailed subscribers, including this blogger, the following message:

President Donald J. Trump, the 45th president of the United States, delivered the keynote address last night [Jan 19] at our 6th Judicial Watch Annual Roundtable, a private event, which was held at the Trump National Doral in Miami, FL.

President Trump engaged in a historic battle against government corruption and abuse, a battle that continues to this day. We are honored that he addressed and educated our supporters about the ongoing rule of law crisis that so threatens our Republic.

The Roundtable also featured important discussions on the election integrity crisis, the border crisis, the Left/government/Big Tech attack on free speech, the January 6 political prisoners, Biden corruption [emphasis added] and more!

This is good news:  President Trump participated in an event that directly addressed election integrity.  Judicial Watch is one of the few watchdog agencies that regularly files FOIA lawsuits to expose government corruption, and their recent conference tells us that they have their eye on the ball, so to speak.

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Stop Voter Fraud Handbook: Voter Registration lists

 

Your precinct is, relatively speaking, a small part of your city or town.  The following is from Judicial Watch’s Stop Voter Fraud Handbook;  it contains some suggestions of how to help clean up voter registration rolls in your precinct:

Perform Voter Registration Research

Without question, the key to ensuring voter integrity during an election is being able to verify that the names and addresses on the voter registration list are legitimate and up-to- date. In each state, voter registration lists can be obtained ahead of the election. Checking these lists against other available data is a laborious, time-consuming — but essential — job for which your help would definitely be welcomed.

While voter registration lists can be purchased from an online service and directly from some of the states (either of which can be expensive), you should have no difficulty getting a copy of the list for your precinct from the state headquarters of your candidate or your party. You can also file an “Open Records” request with your state.

The process of checking voter registration lists requires a degree of patience and creativity. For example, volunteers working on lists will attempt to check the voter entries against other available resources, such as property tax information and dates of birth. The website, www.tributes.com, and local papers can even be checked for obituaries.

Duplicate registrations, which do occur, will be more easily discovered. As indicated, the process is time-consuming and tedious, but it is an extremely important function, as it is the bedrock of ensuring voter integrity on Election Day.

Information for each county elections board in Ohio can be found at this link.  Your precinct details appear on the postcard notice from your Board of Elections.

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Vote-by-mail: the threat

Bob Gorrell cartoon via Townhall

  

Probably the single biggest threat to the future of the United States as we know it is election fraud.  Recently on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekends,” Government Accountability Institute research director Eric Eggers explained if vote-by-mail was done on a mass scale that would bring “voter role irregularities into play.”  Via Pam Key at Breitbart:

According to Eggers, “a lawsuit found 30,000 more registered voters than citizens of legal age. They also found 2500 dead people that were registered to vote in the city of Detroit. This is actually a problem nationwide. The U.S. Supreme Court in a decision last decade cited statistics that said one in eight voter registrations in this country -- that’s 24 million -- have significant problems or [are] completely inaccurate.

So it’s not just limited to Detroit. But I think we’re wise to be – to use the term from the congressman in the previous segment . . . concerned because you have to remember in 2016, Donald Trump won the state of Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes. So if you start talking about more than 30,000 registered voters and citizens of legal voting age in the city of Detroit alone, I think that’s pretty concerning.”

. . . there is a difference between people voluntarily choosing to cast a mail-in ballot as by the way 1 million people in the state of Michigan choose to do regularly and mailing everyone a ballot as they are doing in California or as they are about to do in the state of Michigan, mail everyone an absentee ballot request form. What it does brings all these voter role irregularities into play. Now you’ve got the guaranteed likelihood of people who shouldn’t be receiving a ballot, people that aren’t real voters because they have either moved or dead or, you know, they are on the roll erroneously those people will now have the opportunity or request forms will go to addresses for those people. And we know that there are forces out there attempting to sway elections. Look at what happened in Philadelphia recently. An elections judge was just charged with literally stuffing the ballot box. So, it’s not as if, you know, the idea that people are trying to sway elections illegally haven’t been proven. We saw one literally just this week in a major American city.”

BizPacReview reported on another voter fraud settlement:

Allegheny County, Pennsylvania — home to the city of Pittsburgh and its surrounding suburbs — has settled a lawsuit directing officials to clean up voter registration rolls.

County officials settled the suit on Monday with the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which focuses on election integrity, after the Allegheny election manager and three board of elections members were sued over registration rolls containing duplicate entries and the names of persons who had died, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Representatives of the elections watchdog said researchers discovered almost 1,600 dead registrants, nearly 7,500 with erroneous data, and more than 1,500 who were older than 100 years — including 49 who were born in the 1800s.

. . .

Last year Judicial Watch won a lawsuit against the state of California which required it to purge 1.5 million inactive voters from its registration rolls, as required by federal voter registration law.

“Los Angeles County has a registration rate of 112 percent of its adult citizen population,” the watchdog group noted in a statement in January 2019. “The entire State of California has a registration rate of about 101 percent of its age-eligible citizenry.”

There have been many instances of voter registration ‘errors’ discovered since Trump’s 2016 win, including in Ohio, where, again, scores of people listed as being well over 100 years old were discovered on registration rolls.

So safeguarding future elections is no longer mostly about poll-watching.  The guidelines prepared by Judicial Watch had several sections on what citizens could do as poll-watchers, but with mail-in voting already a precedent in Ohio, Cleveland Tea Party members may ask what else can be done?

My next blog will share Judicial Watch’s section on cleaning up voter rolls by researching voter registration.  

# # #

Tom Fitton on voter registration

Tom Fitton’s update on voter registration is at Breitbart:

One of the most important things we can do in this election year is to continue to force states and counties across the nation to comply with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).

And we are. We have sent notice-of-violation letters to 19 large counties in five states that we intend to sue unless they take steps to comply with the law and remove ineligible voter registrations within 90 days. Section 8 of the act requires jurisdictions to take reasonable efforts to remove ineligible registrations from their rolls.

. . .

378 counties nationwide have more voter registrations than citizens old enough to vote, i.e., counties where registration rates exceed 100%.

. . .

Our previous lawsuits have already led to major cleanups in California, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio – but more needs to be done. It is common sense that voters who die or move away be removed from the voting rolls.

Ohio’s been on the list.  (The full article by Tom Fitton is here.) Recently, Judicial Watch sent out a pamphlet titled “8 Things You can DO Now to Help Stop Voter Fraud.” I’ll be sharing some of those recommendations later this month.

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Election Fraud on a National Scale?

art credit: Center of the American Experiment

Some of us continue to be concerned about voter fraud in the 2020 election.  Eric Georgatos at American Thinker published a sobering report this past week:

Dallas patriots Kevin Freeman, host of the Economic War Room on BlazeTV and Russ Ramsland, a voter fraud and election expert, have released detailed findings from a cyber/forensic investigation into election fraud utilizing compromised voting machines in 2018 (and quite probably, in the governor’s race in 2019 in Kentucky). 

In summary terms, Freeman’s “Episode #70” reveals that (1) security protections in voting machines were disabled, (2) penetration and manipulation of actual vote tabulations was and is possible, and (3) evidence already exists that votes were surreptitiously, electronically manipulated to change election results. 

This is the 21st century version of Stalin’s ruthless observation, “it’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.”  Only today’s Stalins can do it all by online penetration of unsecure ‘voting machines’ to count and alter votes, and leave almost no IT fingerprints. 

. . .

If the fraud is as widespread and systemic as Episode #70 suggests, there isn’t going to be a technical fix in time for the 2020 elections. 

There may in fact be only one solution:  An American grassroots effort on a scale never before seen to demand that the 2020 election be by paper ballot, counted manually, in all 50 states.

Read the full report here. Judicial Watch recently distributed a pamphlet about what concerned citizens can do in the coming months to prevent or reduce voter fraud in their precincts; I plan to post some highlights later this month.

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How the Left is saving me money

image credit: businessingamble.com

James Mullin at American Thinker closed his column “How The Left Is Saving Me Money”:

So, I thought, what else has the Left ruined for me, and in the process saved me money?  Well, I no longer contribute a dime to my college alma mater. . . I attend the movies hardly at all anymore, thanks to Hollywood's antics.  I can't see the character for the repugnant actor or actress.  I also scaled back my cable subscription due to the disgust I have for Comcast and Disney.  I read more and learn more, instead.  Just last week, I chose a much more reasonable store brand sneaker over the odious Nike brand, after it made Kaepernick its spokesperson.  Likewise, I gave up Ben and Jerry's ice cream for store brand and chose AMAC over the costlier AARP as a retirement organization.  I wouldn't give a dime to Progressive Insurance, but in fact, I made a good deal on a less expensive policy from a competitor, with much better service.

Oh, and my savings?  It let me increase my contribution to Judicial Watch. 

To which I would add our own household decisions to change brands (no more Gillette razors or visits to Starbucks, etc.) And I like Mr. Mullin’s plug for Judicial Watch. Full column is here.

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Voter fraud in the millons

art credit: omnithought.org

At least 3.5 million more people are on U.S. election rolls

 than are eligible to vote. 

Investors Business Daily reports:

Elections: American democracy has a problem — a voting problem. According to a new study of U.S. Census data, America has more registered voters than actual live voters. It's a troubling fact that puts our nation's future in peril.

The data come from Judicial Watch's Election Integrity Project. The group looked at data from 2011 to 2015 produced by the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, along with data from the federal Election Assistance Commission.

As reported by the National Review's Deroy Murdock, who did some numbers-crunching of his own, "some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America's adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud."

. . .

In his spread sheet, he listed Delaware county as the Ohio county with the largest number of “ghost” voters. Delaware County includes heavily red Columbus. His chart did not list Cuyahoga County, so I did a little search of my own and found the following at a blog called End of The American Dream, by a blogger named Michael Snyder, reporting on the 2012 election:

Barack Obama received more than 99% of the vote in more than 100 precincts in Cuyahoga County, Ohio on election day.  In fact, there were a substantial number of precincts where Mitt Romney got exactly zero votes.  So how in the world did this happen?  Third world dictators don’t even get 99% of the vote.  Overall, Mitt Romney received 30.12% of the vote in Cuyahoga County.  There were even a bunch of precincts in Cuyahoga County that Romney actually won.  But everyone certainly expected that Cuyahoga County would be Obama territory.  And in most of the precincts that is exactly what we saw – large numbers of votes for both candidates but a definite edge for Obama. 

However, there are more than 100 precincts in Cuyahoga County where the voting results can only be described as truly bizarre.  Yes, we always knew that urban areas would lean very heavily toward Obama, but are we actually expected to believe that Obama got over 99% of the votes in those areas?  In more than 50 different precincts, Romney received 2 votes or less.  Considering how important the swing state of Ohio was to the national election, one would think that such improbable results would get the attention of somebody out there.  Could we be looking at evidence of election fraud hidden in plain sight?

Perhaps if there were just one or two precincts where Obama got more than 99% of the vote we could dismiss the results as “statistical anomalies” and ignore them.

But there were more than 100 precincts where this happened in the most important swing state in the nation.

Maybe there is some rational explanation for the numbers that you are about to see.  If there is, I would really love to hear it.

What makes all of this even more alarming is that there were reports of voting machine problems during early voting in Ohio.  It was being reported that some voters were claiming that they tried to vote for Romney but that the voting machines kept recording their votes as votes for Obama…

Lots more here, including specific data on precincts in Cuyahoga County.

Some Cleveland Tea Party readers often volunteer at the polls as observers. Glenn Reynolds has argued for a return to paper ballots. I wish.

# # #

Where is the Attorney General?

“You know we talk about special prosecutors, but enough of that…I don’t want new prosecutors, I want prosecutions.” Fitton demanded.

 

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton was talking to the CPAC audience about the Clintons and other scandals that never seem to result in grand juries or indictments. Meanwhile, the Mueller investigation grinds on.

For those who are frustrated at Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s seeming invisibility or failure to take action, maybe it’s simply that we don’t know what is going on behind the scenes. Thomas Lifson at American Thinker makes a good point:

One other thing to never forget: Jeff Sessions spent 12 years as a U.S. attorney in Alabama and went on to spend two years as the attorney general of Alabama before becoming a United States senator.  He is a veteran prosecutor, and he knows that you keep evidence secret, and that when you bring an indictment, you must have all your ducks in line, not compromised by leaks and not requiring more investigation.

The rest of Lifson’s article is here.

# # #

Judicial Watch: Lois Lerner and the IRS lied

"Tea Party and other conservative group tax exempt applications

 would not be approved before the November 2012 presidential election"

cartoon credit: ulstermanbooks.com

Ali Meyer at the Washington FreeBeacon reports (h/t American Thinker):

Staff at IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C., buried conservative groups’ tax exemption applications beginning in 2010 and lasting through President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, according to documents released this week by Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group.

The group released 105 pages of FBI documents, which included interviews with Cincinnati IRS employees who disclosed that applications by Tea Party groups were automatically denied approval and assigned to a special group until they heard from the IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“The FBI’s 302 interviews with Cincinnati IRS employees reveal that the agency adopted a series of policies assuring that Tea Party and other conservative group tax exempt applications would not be approved before the November 2012 presidential election,” according to a statement from Judicial Watch.

The full report is here. 

Will any of the top officials be charged with anything? Perjury for starters? 

# # #

Your tax dollars at work

at credit: www.telegraph.com.uk

From today’s Press Release from Judicial Watch:

Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained records from the Department of the Air Force revealing the Obama family 2015 Christmas vacation to Honolulu, Hawaii, cost the taxpayers $3,590,313.60 in flight expenses alone. According to the Air Force records, the Obamas used both Air Force One and a Boeing C-32A, the military equivalent of a Boeing 757, which was apparently use to transport the First Lady.

Judicial Watch also has obtained records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security revealing that President Obama’s four trips to New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Palm City, Florida in 2014 and 2015 cost taxpayers at least $286,416.64 for Secret Service travel and accommodations.  The Obama trips to New York and Los Angeles were solely for fundraising events. In Chicago, the president campaigned for Rahm Emanuel. The Palm City trip was a golf outing with no official activities.

Judicial Watch has previously reported the flight expenses of the New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Palm City trips.

The records obtained by Judicial Watch for the Obama family’s 2015 Honolulu Christmas vacation reveal the following flight expenses totaling $3,590,313.60:

• Air Force One, at $180,118 per hour for 18.2 hours – totaling $3,278,147.60
• A Boeing C-32A, at $15,846 per hour for 19.7 hours – totaling $312,166

 More infuriating details are here.

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Judicial Watch Sues to Obtain Documents Regarding Cost-Based Rationing of Medicare/Medicaid

Judicial Watch, who just recently filed another suit against the Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS) to obtain documents about the granting of 'exemptions' from Obama Care for some companies and Unions, has again filed suit against HHS requesting information about the rationing of Medicare/Medicaid services based on cost.

From Judicial Watch --

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it filed a lawsuit on January 3, 2011, against the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regarding a controversial decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to undertake a one-year review of the prostate cancer treatment Provenge to determine if the treatment is “reasonable and necessary” and should therefore be reimbursed.

Provenge, the first ever therapeutic vaccine cancer treatment approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), was shown to have extended life spans by an average of four months in clinical trials with few side effects. It costs $93,000 to administer the three necessary treatments. Medicare and the FDA are legally prohibited from denying approval of a medical treatment based solely on cost. Yet multiple press reports suggest that cost is the major factor in the unusual decision by CMS to undertake a review of the treatment which could signal a move by the Obama administration to begin implementing healthcare rationing based on the cost of treatments.

Judicial Watch’s original FOIA request, filed on November 9, 2010, seeks the following information: “All records concerning CMS’s national coverage analysis of the vaccine Provenge, including but not limited to the criteria being used to analyze Provenge.”

Health and Human Services was required by law to respond to Judicial Watch’s request by December 15, 2010. However, to date, the agency has failed to provide any documents or indicate why documents should be withheld. Nor has it indicated when a response is forthcoming.

CMS Administrator Donald Berwick is on record supporting the idea of rationing healthcare based on cost. Berwick said the following in a June 2009 interview with Biotechnology Healthcare: “The social budget is limited — we have a limited resource pool. It makes terribly good sense to at least know the price of an added benefit, and at some point we might say nationally, regionally, or locally that we wish we could afford it, but we can’t… The decision is not whether or not we will ration care, the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Owing to the controversy surrounding Berwick’s statements, President Obama bypassed Senate confirmation and made Berwick a “recess appointment,” a decision criticized by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

“The Obama administration claims there is no merit to the charge that the Provenge decision is the first step in implementing healthcare rationing so why not release these records? What does the Obama administration have to hide? Provenge is an FDA approved drug that has a proven track record and the Obama administration has no legal right to deny this treatment based on its cost. But the American people are right to be concerned about this Provenge review, given the fact that a man dubbed ‘Death Panel Donald’ Berwick is in charge of Medicare and Medicaid,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Judicial Watch Files Suit Against HHS to Obtain Documents Regarding Obamacare Waivers

From Judicial Watch --

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it filed a lawsuit on December 30, 2010, against the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to obtain records regarding the agency’s decision to grant “waivers” to companies and unions seeking to be exempt from requirements of Public Health Services Act Section 2711, President Obama’s healthcare reform law. According to HHS’s own estimate, at least 222 companies and unions have received waivers from the law, commonly known as Obamacare.

With its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, Judicial Watch seeks the following information:

A. All records concerning the decision to grant waivers of the Annual Limits Requirements of PHS Act Section 2711; and
B. All communications between McDonald’s Corp. and HHS concerning Annual Limits Requirements.
The time frame for this request is from March 2010 to the present.

Judicial Watch filed its original FOIA request on October 7, 2010. HHS was required by law to respond by November 8, 2010. However, to date, HHS has failed to produce any records or to provide a justification for withholding responsive records. Nor has the agency indicated when a response is forthcoming.

In September 2010, McDonald’s corporation announced it would have to eliminate a health insurance program for nearly 30,000 low wage employees due to an Obamacare requirement that 80 to 85% of all insurance premium revenue be spent on patient care. Due to the high administrative costs associated with this type of health coverage program (known as a mini-med plan), McDonald’s insurer indicated it could not possibly meet the Obamacare requirement. HHS provided McDonald’s a one-year waiver concerning the Obamacare mandate and has been deluged with waiver requests from hundreds of other companies and unions since.

The Wall Street Journal deemed the McDonald’s waiver request, “one of the clearest indications that new [Obamacare] rules may disrupt workers' health plans as the law ripples through the real world.”

President Obama’s healthcare reform law does not specify which companies or unions should receive waivers for its requirements and under what circumstances. Critics of how HHS has chosen to handle these waiver requests highlight the haphazard nature of the approval process and the fact that companies able to secure these coveted Obamacare exemptions are given an unfair competitive advantage over their rivals.

“The Obama administration is the most secretive in modern times. The Obamacare waiver fiasco is exactly the type of chaos that ensues when the federal government attempts to seize control of a large sector of the private economy. And Kathleen Sebelius’s HHS is willing to violate the Freedom of Information Act to keep Americans in the dark about this Obamacare failure. Secretary Sebelius might want to begin her implementation of Obamacare by obeying federal law regarding public records. The Obama administration’s slapdash handling of these waiver requests has created an enormous potential for political favoritism and influence peddling. The Obama administration must make this waivers completely transparent to the American people so they can be assured, in the least, that the process is not infected by corruption,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

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Judicial Watch Praises New "Tea Party Congress" for keeping Office of Congressional Ethics

From Judicial Watch --

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton issued the following statement on the Republican House leadership’s decision to continue the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) in the 112th Congress:

Congratulations to the new Tea Party Congress.

Recently, Judicial Watch joined other public interest groups seeking to protect the House Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). Our voices were heard. The incoming Republican majority will keep the OCE, the most significant reform to the House ethics process in a generation.

I know the Republican leadership has never liked the idea of the OCE but this was the right thing to do, and the new leadership praise and support. And we appreciate that outgoing Speaker Pelosi listened to us and set up a key reform that will stay into the new Republican-controlled House.

It is the hope of Judicial Watch that the new Republican leadership succeeds in breaking the cycle of cynicism among the American electorate by diligently policing corruption in the House.

Though off to a good start, the work of Republicans has only begun. Draining the swamp of corruption that engulfs Washington will be difficult, uncomfortable work. But those House members — of both parties — who take on the challenge of reform, ethics, and accountability will have the gratitude of the American people.

Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians for 2010

From Judicial Watch --

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2010 list of Washington's “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The list, in alphabetical order, includes: Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Rahm Emanuel, Former Obama White House Chief of Staff, Senator John Ensign (R-NV), Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), President Barack Obama, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY), and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA).

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics. But it appears she still needs an ethics lesson. Boxer presided over a year-long investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee into whether two of her Senate colleagues, Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Kent Conrad (D-ND), received preferential treatment from Countrywide Financial as part of the company’s “VIP” program. (Senate ethics rules prohibit members from receiving loan terms not available to the general public.) In fact, according to The Associated Press, during an Ethics Committee hearing Boxer asked “the bulk of the questions.”

However, Boxer failed to mention (or disclose on her official Senate Financial Disclosure documents) that she and her husband have signed no less than seven mortgages with Countrywide! At the time of the hearing, Boxer reportedly indicated she had paid off two Countrywide mortgages, but did not mention the others.

The evidence clearly showed that Dodd and Conrad knew they were receiving preferential treatment despite repeated denials. Yet Boxer’s Senate Ethics Committee allowed Dodd and Conrad to wriggle off the hook with a light admonition that suggested the two Senators should have exercised better judgment. The same, apparently, can be said of the Committee’s own chair, who either neglected to mention or outright lied about her own dealings with the corrupt mortgage company.

Rahm Emanuel, Former Obama White House Chief of Staff didn’t earn the nickname “Rahmbo” for being a mild-mannered shrinking violet. He served as Bill Clinton’s chief money-man at a time when the Clinton campaign was corrupted by foreign money. He defended the “worst of the worst” Clinton scandals, and, in fact, earned his reputation as a ruthless political combatant by fiercely defending President Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky investigation. (Notably, Emanuel also served on the board of Freddie Mac when the company was involved in fraudulent activity.)

The bottom line is that when the Clintons’ dirty work needed to be done, Emanuel did it and apparently without question. That didn’t change under Obama. Remember when the Obama White House wanted to manipulate Democratic primaries in 2010?

Emanuel teamed with his then-Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina to allegedly interfere with Senate elections in Pennsylvania and Colorado by offering federal appointments to Rep. Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff. Sestak and Romanoff were not Obama’s favored candidates, so Emanuel and Messina apparently attempted to unlawfully persuade them to abandon their campaigns.

A Judicial Watch complaint to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel on June 15, 2010, tells the story: “As widely reported in the media, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, on behalf of the Obama Administration, have both used their position and influence as highly placed federal employees to affect the outcome of federal elections in direct violation of the Hatch Act, which states that an employee may not ‘use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.’”

And then, of course, there’s Emanuel’s participation in the Blagojevich scandal.

According to sworn testimony during the “Blago” trial, Emanuel served as Obama’s chief negotiator with the Blagojevich team as the former Illinois Governor attempted to illegally sell Obama’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, the federal prosecutor cut short the case against Blagojevich and Emanuel and other Obama insiders were never called to testify.

Emanuel left the White House under an ethical cloud and has decided to throw his hat in the ring for Mayor of Chicago, where he again stands accused of ignoring the rules and violating the law regarding candidate residency requirements.

Senator John Ensign (R-NV): In a scandal that first broke in 2009, Senator Ensign publicly admitted to an affair with the wife of a long-time staffer. And the evidence indicates Ensign then tried to cover up his sexual shenanigans by bribing the couple with lucrative gifts and political favors.

According to The New York Times, after Ensign’s aide, Douglas Hampton, discovered the affair, “Mr. Ensign asked political backers to find a job for…Hampton. Payments of $96,000 to the Hamptons also were made by Senator Ensign’s parents, who insist this was a gift, not hush money. Once a lobbying job was secured, Senator Ensign and his chief of staff continued to help Mr. Hampton, advocating his clients’ cases directly with federal agencies.”

These lobbying activities were seemingly in violation of the Senate’s “cooling off” period for lobbyists. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Under Senate rules, former Senate aides cannot lobby their former colleagues for one year after leaving Capitol Hill.” Hampton began to lobby Mr. Ensign’s office immediately upon leaving his congressional job.

Ensign seems to have ignored the law and allowed Hampton lobbying access to his office as a payment for his silence about the affair. And despite the claims of Ensign and his parents, the $96,000 in “gifts” provided to the Hamptons were clearly hush payments.

Nonetheless, on December 1, 2010, the Obama Justice Department announced it will file no criminal charges against Ensign, while the Federal Election Commission has also dismissed a related ethics complaint. If there is to be justice for Ensign, it will have to be up to the corrupt (see Boxer entry above) Senate Ethics Committee, which is still considering the charges against the Nevada Republican.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): In a story that continued to mushroom throughout 2010, Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) improperly intervened for Maxine Waters (D-CA) on behalf of his home-state OneUnited Bank to obtain Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds. When asked about the scandal, the Massachusetts Democrat admitted he spoke to a “federal regulator” but, according to The Wall Street Journal he didn’t remember which federal regulator he spoke with.” According to explosive Treasury Department emails uncovered by Judicial Watch in 2010, however, it appears this nameless bureaucrat was none other than then-Treasury Secretary Henry “Hank” Paulson!

While Frank’s “partner in crime” in the OneUnited scandal, Congressman Maxine Waters, is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee (see below), Frank’s colleagues in the House have inexcusably ignored the Massachusetts Democrat’s connection to the OneUnited grant.

To this day, Barney Frank continues to defend his role in the meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying he was just as blindsided as the rest of America when the two government sponsored enterprises collapsed, triggering the financial crisis. Frank has been peddling this fiction ever since the economy collapsed in September 2008. But, as The Boston Globe reported in a devastating article published on October 14, 2010, not many people are buying Frank’s lies anymore. And Frank knows it.

Here’s an excerpt from the Globe:

The issue…in 2003 was whether mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were fiscally strong. Frank declared with his trademark confidence that they were, accusing critics and regulators of exaggerating threats to Fannie’s and Freddie’s financial integrity. And, the Massachusetts Democrat maintained, ‘even if there were problems, the federal government doesn’t bail them out.’ Now, it’s clear he was wrong on both points…

Frank wasn’t wrong. He was just lying through his teeth. Frank claims that he “missed” the warning signs with Fannie and Freddie because he was wearing “ideological blinders,” which was just his lame attempt to blame Republicans. But he did not miss them. According to evidence uncovered by Judicial Watch, he just chose to ignore them.

Judicial Watch obtained documents in 2010 proving that members of Congress, including — and perhaps especially — Barney Frank, were well aware that Fannie and Freddie were in deep trouble due to corruption and incompetence and yet they did nothing to stop it.

Moreover, as the Globe notes, in July 2008, then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says he called Frank and told him the government would need to spend “billions of taxpayer dollars to backstop the institutions from catastrophic failure.” Frank, despite that conversation, appeared on national television two days later and said the companies were “fundamentally sound, not in danger of going under.” Less than two months later, the government seized Fannie and Freddie and the bailout began.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL): This year’s trial of scandal-ridden former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich ended with “Blago” being convicted of only 1 of 24 charges related to the scheme to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder. But as the government plans its second attempt to prosecute the case, one person who should be on the hot-seat is Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL).

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, “Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. directed a major political fund-raiser to offer former Gov. Rod Blagojevich millions of dollars in campaign cash in return for an appointment to the U.S. Senate.”

How much cash?

The Chicago Sun Times put that figure at $1.5 million in its initial reports. But according to Jackson’s fundraiser, Raghuveer Nayak, the Illinois Congressman asked him to offer not $1.5 million, but a whopping $6 million in campaign cash to Blagojevich to secure the Senate seat!

In addition to his corrupt deal-making, in 2010 Jackson was also nailed for conducting an improper and potentially criminal relationship with a female “social acquaintance.”

Nayak told investigators that Jackson asked him to “pay to fly a Washington, DC, restaurant hostess named Giovana Huidobro…to Chicago to visit him.” Nayak reportedly did so twice.

We all know what “social acquaintance” means under these circumstances. Jackson says this is a “private and personal matter between me and my wife.” But not if it involves public funds or illegal gifts — issues which remain unsettled.

President Barack Obama: Remember the promise President Obama made just after his inauguration in 2009? “Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

Instead, Americans have suffered through lies, stonewalling, cover-ups, corruption, secrecy, scandal and blatant disregard for the rule of law…this has been the Obama legacy in its first two years.

In 2010, Obama was caught in a lie over what he knew about Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s scheme to sell the president’s vacated Senate seat. Blagojevich’s former Chief of Staff John Harris testified that Obama had personal knowledge of Blago’s plot to obtain a presidential cabinet position in exchange for appointing a candidate handpicked by the President. In fact, according to Harris’s court testimony, Obama sent Blagojevich a list of “acceptable” Senate candidates to fill his old seat. Obama was interviewed by the FBI even before he was sworn into office. He claimed he and his staff had no contact with Blagojevich’s office. Unfortunately federal prosecutors never called the President or his staff to testify under oath.

The President also broke his famous pledge to televise healthcare negotiations. And in 2010, we learned why he broke his pledge. In what is now known as the “Cornhusker Kickback” scheme, Obama and the Democrats in the Senate “purchased” the vote of one of the last Democrat hold-outs, Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, who opposed Obamacare over the issue of covering abortions with taxpayer funds. Nelson abandoned his opposition to Obamacare after receiving millions of dollars in federal aid for his home-state, helping to give the Democrats the 60 votes they needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. Same goes for Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, who received a $100 million payoff in what has been called “The Louisiana Purchase.” (The Kickback was so corrupt that Democrats stripped it out at the last minute. The Louisiana Purchase, on the other hand, became law of the land.)

Obama lied about his White House’s involvement in this legislative bribery that helped lead to the passage of the signature policy achievement of his presidency.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): “Air Pelosi” is now grounded.

Judicial Watch uncovered documents back in 2009 detailing attempts by Pentagon staff to accommodate Pelosi’s numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft for herself and her family as well as the speaker’s 11th hour cancellations and changes. In 2010, Judicial Watch kept the pressure on Pelosi, uncovering documents that demonstrated the Speaker was using U.S. Air Force aircraft as her own personal party planes. Overall, the Speaker’s military travel cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over a two-year period — $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol.

For example, purchases for one Pelosi-led congressional delegation traveling from Washington, DC to Tel Aviv, Israel and Baghdad, Iraq May 15-20, 2008, included: Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey’s Irish Cream, Maker’s Mark whisky, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewar’s scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.

Moreover, Pelosi also abused the rules by allowing members of her family to join her on taxpayer-funded Air Force flights. For example, on June 20, 2009, Speaker Pelosi’s daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons joined a flight from Andrews Air Force Base to San Francisco International Airport. That flight included $143 for on-flight expenses for food and other items. On July 2, 2010, Pelosi took her grandson on a flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, which is northeast of San Francisco.

Judicial Watch’s efforts not only exposed Nancy Pelosi’s corrupt abuse of military aircraft, but they also led to reform when Rep. John Boehner announced after Election Day that, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, he will fly commercial to and from Ohio instead of using military aircraft.

Of course, it was Rep. Nancy Pelosi who famously promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington, DC during the campaign of 2006 when the Democrats seized control of power on Capitol Hill. That did not happen. Aside from her own personal transgressions, Pelosi also turned a blind eye to corruption on the part of her Congressional colleagues (see Charlie Rangel entry below).

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): On December 2, 2010, the House of Representatives voted 333-79 to “censure” Rep. Charles Rangel. Next to expulsion, this is the most serious sanction that can be taken by the House against an individual member. This censure vote followed an investigation by the Committee for Official Standards of Conduct, which finally convicted Rangel on 13 ethics violations, including:

• Forgetting to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his off-shore rental property. (Rangel was formerly in charge of the committee responsible for writing tax policy.)
• Misusing his congressional office, staff and resources to raise money for his private Rangel Center for Public Service, to be housed at the City College of New York. (He also put the squeeze on donors who had business before his House Ways and Means Committee, and used the congressional “free mail” privilege to solicit funds.)
• Misusing his residentially-zoned Harlem apartment as a campaign headquarters.
• Failing to report $600,000 in income on his official congressional financial disclosure reports, which contained “numerous errors and omissions.”

It is worth noting that the Committee did not consider other serious corruption charges against Rangel. For example, it has been alleged that Rangel preserved a tax loophole for an oil company in exchange for a Rangel Center donation. The Committee also did not consider the charge that Rangel used improper influence to maintain ownership of his highly coveted rent-controlled apartment — the same apartment he improperly used for campaign activities.

As this is Washington, politicians of both parties will pretend that censure is a serious punishment. But it is a “punishment” that simply requires Rangel to come to the well of the House and hear a disapproving statement read by lame-duck House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the real world, you get fired or thrown in jail for abusing your office and not paying your taxes.

Here is further context: The last time the House censured anyone was in 1983, when two congressmen (a Republican and Democrat) were censured for having sexual relationships with teenaged House pages. It seems that unless one is convicted of a crime, one can do anything as a congressman and not be thrown out of the House! The fact that the House has so rarely resorted to censure is more indicative of the lack of seriousness about ethics in Congress than of the so-called severity of the censure punishment.
Rangel should have been expelled from the House of Representatives.

Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY): On Election Day 2010, voters sent Congress a clear message: No more big spending or corrupt back-room deals! And what did House Republicans decide to do as one of their first moves for the new Tea Party Congress? Appoint Rep. Hal Rogers, also known as the “Prince of Pork,” to chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

According to ABC News: “In two years, Rogers pushed through 135 earmarks worth $246 million. He’s brought tens of millions of dollars into his hometown of Somerset, Ky., so much so that the town has been dubbed ‘Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood.’” Among the most egregious earmarks was a $17 million grant Rogers obtained for an “Airport to Nowhere,” a Kentucky airport with “so little traffic that the last commercial airline pulled out in February (2010).”

But the most serious charge against Rogers involves an earmark he obtained that could benefit one of his own family members.

Rogers secured $5 million in the House for conservation groups that work with wild cats, including the Cheetah Conservation Fund, a Namibia-based organization that employs Rogers’ daughter Allison. In fact, Allison Rogers serves as grants administrator. After she joined the organization in 2007, Congressman Rogers began his push for funding. In 2009, with help from Rogers, the bill passed the House by a 2-1 margin. (It has yet to be voted on in the Senate.)

Congressman Rogers claims he’ll change his stripes now: “No more earmarks. I’ll be the enforcer of the moratorium.” But Rogers’ 27 year history of wasting taxpayer funds on questionable projects is certainly cause for skepticism.

On November 9, 2010, Judicial Watch sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner asking him to reject a bid by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), who made our 2009 “Top Ten” list, to once again serve as Chair of the Appropriations Committee, given Lewis’s penchant for influence peddling. Rep. Rogers, however, is no upgrade.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA): Now that Charlie Rangel has been “punished” for his wrongdoing is California Rep. Maxine Waters next up on the hot-seat?

The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (known informally as the House Ethics Committee) plans to hold hearings, although the committee delayed the trial indefinitely on November 29, 2010, citing newly discovered documentary evidence that may impact proceedings. According to The Associated Press, “The charges focus on whether Waters broke the rules in requesting federal help for a bank where her husband owned stock and had served on the board of directors.”

Judicial Watch has investigated the Waters/OneUnited Bank scandal for months. In fact, JW successfully sued the Obama Treasury Department to get documents and obtained explosive emails from the Treasury that provide documented evidence to support the charges against Waters.

For instance, a January 13, 2009, email from Brookly McLaughlin, Treasury’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, expresses surprise at Waters’ apparent conflict of interest:

Further to email below, WSJ [Wall Street Journal] tells me: …Apparently this bank is the only one that has gotten money through section 103-6 of the EESA law. And Maxine Waters’ husband is on the board of the bank. ??????

Judicial Watch also uncovered documents detailing the deplorable financial condition of the bank at the time of the cash infusion, which showed that the bank would have been an unlikely candidate to receive TARP funding without intervention from Waters and Frank.

Aside from OneUnited, there was yet another scandal with Waters’ fingerprints all over it.

According to The Washington Times: “A lobbyist known as one of California’s most successful power brokers while serving as a legislative leader in that state paid Rep. Maxine Waters’ husband $15,000 in consulting fees at a time she was co-sponsoring legislation that would help save the real-estate finance business of one of the lobbyist’s best-paying clients, records show.” That “real-estate finance business” was labeled a “scam” by the IRS in a 2006 report.

Justice Dept. emails show politics influenced Dismissal of Black Panther Voter Intimidation Case

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Justice Department released emails to Judicial Watch that reveals how political appointees dictated the decision to abandon a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

From Judicial Watch --

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) that provide new evidence that top political appointees at the DOJ were intimately involved in the decision to dismiss the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense (NBPP). These new documents, which include internal DOJ email correspondence, directly contradict sworn testimony by Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, who testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that no political leadership was involved in the decision. The new documents were obtained last week by Judicial Watch pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No.10-851)).

The new documents include a series of emails between two political appointees: former Democratic election lawyer and current Deputy Associate Attorney General Sam Hirsch and Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli. Both DOJ officials were involved in detailed discussions regarding the NBPP decision. For example, in one April 30, 2009, email from Hirsch to Perrelli, with the subject title “Fw: New Black Panther Party Update,” Hirsch writes:

Tom,

I need to discuss this with you tomorrow morning. I’ll send you another email on this shortly.

If you want to discuss it this evening, please let me know which number to call and when.

These emails were put in further context by an updated Vaughn index obtained by Judicial Watch, describing NBPP documents the Obama DOJ continues to withhold. These documents, which were attached to the DOJ’s Motion for Summary Judgment filing, include a description of a May 13 email chain that seems to suggest political appointee Sam Hirsch may have been orchestrating the NBPP decision.

Acting DAAG [Steven Rosenbaum] advising his supervising Acting AAG [Loretta King] of DASG’s [Hirsch’s] request for a memorandum by the Acting DAAG reviewing various options, legal strategies, and different proposals of relief as related to each separate defendant. Acting DAAG forwarding emails from Appellate Section Chief’s and Appellate Attorney’s with their detailed legal analyses including the application of constitutional provisions and judicial precedent to strategies and relief under consideration in the ongoing NBPP litigation, as well as an assessment of the strength of potential legal arguments, and presenting different possible scenarios in the litigation. [Emphasis added]

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that no political appointees were involved in the NBPP decision. Perez suggested that the dispute was merely “a case of career people disagreeing with career people.”

In fact, political appointee Sam Hirsch sent an April 30, 2009, email to Steven Rosenbaum (then-Acting Assistant Deputy Attorney General in the Civil Rights) thanking Rosenbaum for “doing everything you’re doing to make sure that this case is properly resolved.” The next day, the DOJ began to reverse course on its NBPP voter intimidation lawsuit.

Judicial Watch also obtained two email reports sent by former Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Loretta King to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The first report, entitled “Weekly Report for the Week ending May 8, 2009,” and sent on May 12, 2009, notes: “On May 15, 2009, pursuant to court order, the Department will file a motion for default judgment against at least some of the defendants” in the NBPP lawsuit. The report further notes that the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense “has been identified as a racist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League and the founders and members of the original Black Panther Party.”

The second report, entitled “Weekly Report for the Week ending May 15, 2009,” and sent on May 18, 2009, demonstrates that the DOJ did an abrupt reversal on the NBPP issue: “On May 15, 2009, the Department voluntarily dismissed its claims” against the NBPP and two of the defendants, the report noted. The DOJ moved for default judgment against only one defendant.

“It is now obvious to me why the Obama administration continues to be so secretive regarding the Justice Department’s decision to abandon its lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party. These documents show that not only was the Black Panther decision shamelessly politicized by the Obama administration but also that Obama officials lied to cover up the scandal. And these documents raise more questions about Attorney General Holder’s involvement. The American people need to know if racism and political favoritism are corrupting the nation’s highest law enforcement agency,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

The DOJ filed its lawsuit against the NBPP following an incident that took place outside of a Philadelphia polling station on November 4, 2008. A video of the incident, showing a member of the NBPP brandishing police-style baton weapon, was widely distributed on the Internet. According to multiple witnesses, members of the NBPP blocked access to polling stations, harassed voters and hurled racial epithets. Nonetheless, the DOJ ultimately overruled the recommendations of its own staff and dismissed the majority of its charges. Current and former DOJ attorneys have alleged in sworn testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that the Holder DOJ’s NBPP and other civil rights-related decisions are made on the basis of race and political affiliation.

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