Barr Failed?

[INSIDE JW]

UKRAINE PROSECUTOR OFFERED ‘HIGH-LEVEL’ ACCESS TO CLINTON
CAMPAIGN

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It’s almost as though Hillary Clinton couldn’t abide Joe Biden
getting all the corruption attention. Her people just had to stick
their fingers in the Ukraine cookie jar. It’s all coming out now
because of our lawsuit.

We received 38 pages
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of records from the State Department revealing that Ukraine Prosecutor
General Yuriy Lutsenko was offered “high-level” access to Hillary
Clinton’s presidential campaign by the same lobbying firm that
represented Burisma Holdings.

This came to light in an email from George Kent, then-U.S. Deputy
Chief of Mission to Ukraine and current Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State for European and Eurasian Affairs. The email was to
then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

The offer was made by Karen Tramontano, who was an assistant
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to President
Clinton and deputy White House Chief of Staff
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She
is the CEO of Blue Star Strategies, a Democrat lobbying firm that was
hired by Burisma Holdings to combat corruption allegations
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In the same 2016 email, Kent stated that he responded to Lutsenko by
recommending that he not take the offer due to corruption concerns
with Burisma and the Clinton Foundation.

We obtained these documents in response to our FOIA lawsuit
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against the State Department seeking documents related to a reported
“untouchables list” given in late 2016 by former U.S. Ambassador
to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy
Lutsenko (_Judicial Watch vs. U.S. Department of State_
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(No. 1:19-cv-03563)). Our lawsuit requests:

* All records of communication between the Department of State and
any representative of the Ukrainian government regarding any actual or
proposed investigation or prosecution of the AntAC; the International
Renaissance Foundation [Open Society Foundations’ office in
Ukraine]; and/or Transparency International.
* All records concerning any meeting or telephonic conversation
between former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former Ukrainian
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
* All records related to the list of individuals and entities
provided to Lutsenko by Yovanovitch in late 2016.

The records include a September 3, 2016, email
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from Kent to Yovanovitch and other colleagues which details that
Lutsenko informed him that he was pitched high-level access to Hillary
Clinton’s presidential campaign by Blue Star Strategies. The
email’s subject line is “Lutsenko now likely not to go to DC with
Blue Star, other Ukr issue comments.” The email says:

[Lutsenko] confirmed he had been pitched by Blue Star, not sought them
out. He said he honestly didn’t know how Blue Star was to get paid
– he didn’t have funds – and that some BPP MP [Petro
Poroshenko’s Solidarity Party member of Parliament] that we probably
didn’t know “and that’s good” ([redacted]??) had introduced
them to him. Blue Star CEO Tramontano’s pitch was that she could
gain him access to high levels of the Clinton campaign (GPK note: she
was Podesta’s deputy as deputy COS the last year of Bill Clinton’s
tenure), and that was appealing – to meet the possible next
Presidential Chief of Staff.
Later in the same email, Kent added that he suggested that Lutsenko
not take that offer because Blue Star represented Burisma. Kent also
mentioned corruption concerns related to the Clinton Foundation and
Podesta:

In connection to Blue Star, I noted their representation of
Burisma/Zlochevsky, mentioned the various money flows from Ukraine to
lobbyists that had been prominently int he news this past month,
whether Manafort/Klueyev via Brussels to Podesta Group and
Weber/Mercury, Yanu’s Justice Minister Lavrynovych to
Skaden/arps-and Greg Craig – and Pinchuk to Clinton Foundation, and
the media attention being paid at present to the Kyiv/Washington gravy
train….

…and he got the drift. Not ideal timing, little receptive audience,
and wrong facilitator. He said he’d figure out a better time when
there would be more traction/better audience.
This email is inconsistent with Yovanovitch’s October 2019 testimony
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under oath before the U.S. House of Representatives in the Trump
impeachment inquiry that she knew very little about Burisma Holdings
and the long-running corruption investigation against it stating,
“it just wasn’t a big issue.”
This smoking gun email ties Hunter Biden’s Burisma’s lobbying
operation to an influence-peddling operation involving the Clinton
campaign during the 2016 election. This further confirms the
Obama-Biden-Deep State targeting of President Trump was to cover-up
and distract from their own corruption.

PETE BUTTIGIEG AGREES TO SEARCH HIS PERSONAL EMAIL ACCOUNT TO AVOID
TESTIMONY IN JUDICIAL WATCH LAWSUIT

Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Indiana mayor, has agreed to
search his personal email for records related to the creation of ID
cards to help illegal aliens in South Bend.

This agreement and subsequent court order
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comes in response to our Access to Public Records Act (APRA) open
records lawsuit
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filed in August 2019 after the City of South Bend failed to respond as
required by law to open records requests seeking emails between
Buttigieg, members of his staff and officials of La Casa de Amistad
regarding the Community Resident Card program. (_Judicial Watch v.
City of South Bend_
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(No. 71C01-1908-Ml-000389)). Andrew B. Jones of the Jones Law Office
LLC in South Bend, IN, represents us. (Joe Biden wants Mr. Buttigieg
to serve as Transportation Secretary if Biden is ultimately installed
as president.)

We initially sought to depose Buttigieg under oath but withdrew our
request upon his agreement to search his personal email for the
following records:

* Emails between Mayor Peter Buttigieg on any personal/private or
non-South Bend email account and any of the below listed individuals
from July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2017 containing the following
terms: “Community Resident Card,” “CRC,” “Municipal ID,”
“SB ID, ”Resident ID,” and/or Community ID.”

Individuals: Same Centellas, John Collins, Felix Bueno, Jr., Laura
O’Sullivan, Tammy Bell, Genevieve Miller, Molly Buser, Cherri Peate,
Scott Ruszkowski, Mark Bode, Eric Horvath, Jamie Morgan, Marcia I.
Jones
On December 16, 2016, the South Bend Tribune reported
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“A nonprofit Latino advocacy group … unveiled a new identification
card it hopes will make life easier for undocumented immigrants who
live in [South Bend].” La Casa de Amistad Inc. are the creators of
this “SB ID
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Buttigieg
reportedly
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worked “closely with La Casa de Amistad, South Bend’s main Latino
outreach center … and the nonprofit’s executive director, Sam
Centellas,” to create a “Community Resident Card … created and
distributed by the group — a private organization — not the city.
Buttigieg’s part to make it all work was to sign an executive order
requiring local services and institutions — like law enforcement,
schools, the water utility and libraries — to accept the card as a
valid form of identification.”

South Bend refused or ignored our APRA requests multiple times between
June 24, 2019, and July 18, 2019. Each time, South Bend said the
requests were too broad and not “reasonably particular.” After
each refusal, we would comply with South Bend’s suggestion to limit
their request. After four exchanges, South Bend produced Mayor
Buttigieg’s executive order and two information bulletins that were
already publicly accessible.

This victory will help the public understand Mayor Buttigieg’s plan
to create special ID cards to make it easier for illegal aliens to
stay in the United States contrary to law. It is curious that the
mayor fought us for so long on this simple request for information. As
I write this, we just received the results of Mr. Buttigieg’s long
delayed search. We will review these records and will be sure to
report back to you anything of interest and our next steps!

ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR RESIGNS AS CONFIDENCE IN THE DOJ TANKS

After getting off to an excellent start by shutting down the corrupt
Mueller investigation, Attorney General William Barr failed to restore
public confidence in the fair administration of justice by
aggressively pursuing the unprecedented and illegal Obama-era spying
abuses targeting President Trump.

Attorney General Barr was unfairly maligned by the Left because they
feared he might prosecute their political allies. Instead, the reality
is too many politicians and corrupt government officials seemed to get
special dispensation from the Barr DOJ – Obama, Biden, Clinton,
Comey, and McCabe, to name a few. Right now, for example, the Barr
Justice Department is protecting Hillary Clinton directly by trying to
shut down all of our Clinton email discovery and FOIA lawsuits, while
withholding the release of the Obamagate-era emails and texts of the
Page/Strzok/McCabe anti-Trump cabal.

The Justice Department was a black hole in terms of transparency under
Attorney General Barr.

It is imperative that President Trump take immediate steps to expose
the full truth about the Obama administration’s spying and abuse of
President Trump and other innocents, such as General Flynn. Americans
are right to expect action, justice, and accountability from Special
Counsel Durham on the worst corruption scandals in American history.
Also, President Trump should ensure that the exploding Biden and
election integrity scandals are fully investigated by the DOJ and
other federal law enforcement agencies.

SEATTLE MAY GIVE CRIMINALS A ‘POVERTY DEFENSE’

Encouraging criminals is not a do-good act. It’s a revolutionary
effort to introduce chaos into our society. Radical leftists in
Seattle are pushing a dangerous assault on the rule of law and the
public safety – as our _Corruption Chronicles _blog reports
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Elected officials in a major U.S. city plan to pass a law that will
allow thieves to sell items they steal if they do it to earn money for
basic needs and trespassers to set up camp on private property when it
is to obtain adequate shelter. Dozens of other crimes—including
assault and harassment—will be excused under the preposterous
measure if suspects are poor, mentally ill or addicted to drugs. It is
being crafted as a poverty defense
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and will allow municipal court judges to dismiss a multitude of crimes
if poverty, mental illness or a substance-abuse disorder drove the
perpetrator to commit them.

Even for a famously liberal left coast city like Seattle it seems like
a bit much. The proposal was first introduced during the Seattle City
Council’s budget deliberations weeks ago, according to a local news
report
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It was put on hold over a budget process bureaucracy but has gained
incredible steam and appears to have enough support to alter the city
code early next year. “The idea could enormously impact the city —
and set Seattle apart from the rest of the country in its approach to
misdemeanor crimes,” according to the news story, which includes the
concerns of frustrated public safety advocates who say the law will
essentially legalize most crimes in Seattle. Not surprisingly, the
idea came from a “wave of activism and historic protests after the
police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota,” the Seattle newspaper
story says. That motivated public defenders and community organizers
to take advantage of the attention to police and court reforms to fix
a “long-held frustration.”

The force behind the push for the new law is a leftist organization
called Decriminalize Seattle
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that
opposes policing and the criminal legal system. The group has called
for defunding the Seattle Police Department by at least 50% and
reallocating the funds to “community led health and safety
systems.” It also demands the release of protestors arrested during
recent violent uprising without charges. An organizer with
Decriminalize Seattle, identified as one of the law’s catalysts in
the media, says “what we’ve already known is that the misdemeanor
system is basically a system of cycling people in poverty through
municipal court over and over again without meeting their basic
needs.” In late October Seattle City Councilwoman Lisa Herbold, who
ironically chairs the public safety committee, introduced the measure
to exempt low-level criminals. The lawmaker, who represents West
Seattle and South Park, writes in her official city blog
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that it is important to make meeting an
individual’s immediate basic need an affirmative defense to a crime.


The councilwoman includes a staff memo
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outlining the proposal, which is identified as “duress
legislation” that will codify a defense against prosecution of
crimes committed due to poverty or behavioral health issues. “The
criminal legal system is ill-suited to address the root cause of
‘crimes of poverty’ and any involvement in the criminal legal
system and incarceration causes harm,” the memo states. “As such,
Central Staff understands that the intent of the proposal is to
provide an exit from the system at trial and without further
involvement in the system for those crimes committed because a person
cannot otherwise afford to meet their immediate basic needs.” The
lengthy document proceeds to reveal that the City Attorney already
exercises his discretion to move away from prosecuting property crimes
that appear to be committed out of “survival necessity.” The
concern, however, is that future prosecutors may not continue the
practice and a law must be enacted to assure individuals committing
crimes to “fulfill their basic needs” have a way to “exit out of
the criminal legal system.”

The proposed law comes as Seattle experiences a big spike in
crime—including the highest homicide rate in over a decade—and
police funding gets drastically cut to appease Black Lives Matter
(BLM) protestors. This is not a new problem for the Emerald City. In
the summer of 2019, a business publication wrote a troubling piece
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on the negative impact of rising crime in downtown Seattle. “The
increasing prevalence of crime, drugs and homelessness in the downtown
core threatens the city’s thriving tourism and convention business,
and worries retailers concerned that the city isn’t doing nearly
enough to combat the crisis,” the story says. “Downtown crime is
increasing at an alarming rate: City of Seattle crime data for
downtown Seattle indicate a jump in “person crimes” (aggravated
assault, robbery, rape and homicide) of 43 percent between 2016 and
2018. In the downtown commercial district, there was a total of 568
person crimes in 2018, up from 397 in 2016, Seattle Police Department
records show.” That was more than a year ago.
Until next week …





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