Day: May 4, 2018

Mike Pompeo Struts into State Dept. and TORCHES the Old Guard

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It’s Mike Pompeo’s State Department now, and things are quickly changing.

Pompeo is moving fast – filling vacant senior positions and realigning the State Department to make sure it’s totally inline with President Trump’s “America first” agenda.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is moving immediately to fill vacant senior positions at the State Department, a task so large it has the feel of a “presidential transition” as opposed to a hand-off from one member of President Trump’s Cabinet to another, according to Republican foreign policy experts.

“That is true in the sense that there’s so many vacancies,” Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Elliot Abrams told the Washington Examiner. “It’s really incredible how many vacancies there are. It’s more like starting fresh.”

Five of the nine most senior positions at Foggy Bottom are vacant; the number was six, but Pompeo already has filled the role of counselor of the department. Dozens of ambassadorships are empty, while there are just five Senate-confirmed assistant secretaries of state.

As a result, Pompeo has an unusual opportunity to shape the upper echelons of the diplomatic corps the way he wants to, at a time when the Trump administration has multiple high-stakes negotiations underway.

But it’s also more than just an opportunity — it’s a requirement for him to win over a bureaucracy whose hostility to fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was a seedbed for media controversies and clashes with congressional overseers.

At the moment, he’s being received at Foggy Bottom like a breath of fresh air.
“He has one piece of luck, which is that he is inevitably going to be compared with his predecessor,” said Abrams, who served in the State Department during President Ronald Reagan’s administration and on President George W. Bush’s White House National Security Council. “So Secretary Pompeo starts way ahead of the curve. Rather than following a very popular secretary, he follows an unpopular secretary.”

Beyond the politics of getting confirmed, there have also been signs that Pompeo has a sincere criticism of how Tillerson managed the department.

“I enjoyed working with Secretary Tillerson, I think his lack of appointees being confirmed by this body was one of the problems, but, for whatever the reasons, there’s a morale problem,” Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told Pompeo during his confirmation hearing. “I’m not going to ask you to repeat with me what you said in private, but I was encouraged.”
The lack of political appointees under Tillerson has a number of causes, not least of which is the hostility between Trump and much of the traditional Republican foreign policy establishment. Still, Pompeo was startled to learn the extent of the vacancies as he met with State Department staff after Trump picked him to take over as the top diplomat.

When one official suggested that Tillerson had postponed some nominations until after he finished developing a much-discussed plan to reorganize the State Department, Pompeo dismissed the explanation.

“In my corporate life, I did two multimillion dollar [reorganizations], and that has nothing to do with filling up slots,” Pompeo said during one such meeting, according to a source close to the White House.

Pompeo has promised to nurture State Department morale from the earliest days of his nomination — a message that was a political necessity, given the need to win a precious few Democratic senators to back his confirmation. “He’s already started interviewing people here at the state department for various positions,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters Thursday. “He intends to interview people throughout the weekend.”

His efforts could get bogged down in the Senate, due to the twin pressures of political opposition and the congressional calendar. “The blessing is that he gets to choose his own team,” Abrams observed. “The curse is that I think the confirmation process is going to be a big problem. If you come in on January

BOMBSHELL FBI ‘Monitored’ Phone of President Trump’s Personal Attorney

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The Russia witch-hunt by Robert Mueller has exhibited wild overreach, especially when Mueller raided the office and personal home of President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, totally denigrating “attorney/client” privilege.

Now, we’re learning that not only was Cohen RAIDED like a common criminal, but his phones were also “monitored” by the Obama-era feds.
Federal investigators logged the phone calls of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in the weeks before they raided his Manhattan home, office and hotel room, according to a report Thursday.
It’s unclear what information was uncovered during log of phone calls known as a “pen register.”

NBC News initially reported the feds had wiretapped Cohen and at least one phone call between Cohen and the White House was intercepted.

Hours later, they corrected the story to say investigators did not obtain a wiretap, but rather a call log.

Former mayor Rudy Giuliani, who recently joined Trump’s legal team and has been on a media blitz over the past 24 hours, argued that reports of a phone tap were bogus.

“We don’t believe it’s true. I keep hearing different stories from different sources,” he told the Daily News “We think it’s going to turn out to be untrue because it would be totally illegal. You can’t wiretap a lawyer, let alone the President’s lawyer.”

Federal prosecutors have already revealed they obtained “covert” search warrants on multiple email accounts belonging to Cohen, according court filings.

But no evidence of a wiretap is clear in the heavily-redacted documents related to the raid.

“A pen register just tells you what phone numbers a phone was in contact with,” noted former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti, now a partner at Thompson Coburn LLP. “It’s like obtaining phone records in real time. It does not reveal the content of communications whatsoever.”

Prosecutors would have had to prove to a judge that they believed Cohen was currently using his phone to engage in criminal activity to listen in on calls.
“Obtaining a wiretap on an attorney is so highly unusual that in my nine years as a federal prosecutor I can’t recall anyone obtaining one on a working lawyer,” Mariotti told The News. “This is a very unusual situation. It would have had to be vetted at the highest level of the DOJ. It’s the attorney of the President of the United States of America.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that she could not “verify the validity” of the NBC report.

“I would refer you to the President’s outside counsel about any concerns of wiretapping,” Sanders said.

During the briefing, Sanders said she was unsure of when Trump and Cohen last spoke, and said she is “not aware of specific” matters where Cohen is representing the President.

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

Trump publicly fumed in the weeks following the raid of his longtime “fixer,” saying the FBI “broke in” and calling it “a witch hunt” and “an attack on our country.”

The Feds seized reams of documents, several cell phones and computer hard drives in their search.

Investigators were reportedly targeting information on a campaign era payout Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels in an attempt to squash her alleged 2006 fling with the future President.

Trump for the first time admitted Thursday morning that he reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 he used to keep the adult film star from going public.

The admission directly contradicts what the President told reporters less than a month ago, when he denied knowledge of the payments.

“You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael,” he told reporters on Air Force One. in April.

Sanders told reporters on Thursday that “this was information the President didn’t know at the time but eventually learned … we give the very best information we have at the time.”

It has also been reported that Giuliani warned Trump that Cohen is likely to flip on him.

Trump pushed back against reports that Cohen — who has worked for Trump and his related business for more than a decade — might “flip” by coughing up details of his personal business dealings.

In

BREAKING News Out Of Las Vegas AND Arizona… This Is BIG!

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TUCSON, Ariz. – Tucson Station Border Patrol agents arrested an MS-13 gang member from El Salvador shortly after he entered the United States illegally south of Arivaca early Wednesday.

Agents apprehended 57-year-old Noe Bernal-Portillo and transported him to the Tucson Station for processing. Agents conducted a records check and learned Bernal has numerous felony convictions, including a 1997 conviction for attempted murder in Las Vegas, Nevada. He will remain in federal custody pending prosecution for re-entry as an aggravated felon.

All persons apprehended by the Border Patrol undergo criminal history checks using biometrics to ensure illegal immigrants with criminal histories are positively identified.

Meanwhile, America’s Freedom Fighters reported that in Las Vegas,four alleged MS-13 gang members were charged Tuesday in connection with the kidnapping and murder of a rival gang member whose body was found on federal property in southern Nevada.
The case is the result of a joint investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), FBI, and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, with assistance from DEA.

Josue Diaz-Orellana, 22, Luis Reyes-Castillo, a/k/a “Molesto,” 24, David Perez-Manchame, a/k/a “Herbi” and “Walter Melendez,” 19, and Miguel Torres-Escobar, 20, are charged with assault with intent to commit murder, kidnapping, and discharging a firearm during, and in relation to a crime of violence.

According to court documents, on January 21, 2018, Diaz-Orellana, Reyes-Castillo, Perez-Manchame, and Torres-Escobar, kidnapped and murdered Arquimidez Sandavol-Martinez. His body was discovered February 2 on federal property on East Lake Mead Boulevard, near mile marker 12, in rural Clark County, Nev. Examination of the crime scene indicated that Sandoval-Martinez had been bound and had made some effort to escape his captors before being shot and stabbed to death. Fired 9mm cartridge cases with “Blazer” and “FC” head-stamp markings on them were located within the crime scene.

During the course of the investigation, investigators learned that Sandoval-Martinez was last seen on January 21, at Club 2100, located at 2100 Fremont Street. Investigators obtained cell phone records that indicated Diaz-Orellana’s phone used cell towers near the club, heading eastbound along Lake Mead Boulevard – in the area where Sandavol-Martinez’s body was found. On March 2, law enforcement stopped Diaz-Orellana, who was in a vehicle with Reyes-Castillo, Perez-Manchame, and Torres-Escobar. A large butcher knife, a baseball hat with an apparent bloodstain on it, and three 9mm handguns were recovered in the vehicle.

Reyes-Castillo, Perez-Manchame, and Torres-Escobar are scheduled to appear this afternoon before U.S. District Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach. A date for Diaz-Orellana has not yet been set. The defendants, all citizens of El Salvador, are in federal custody.

The maximum statutory penalty is 20 years of imprisonment for the assault charge and life imprisonment for both the kidnapping and the discharging of a firearm count.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials welcome assistance from the community. Citizens can report suspicious activity to the Border Patrol and remain anonymous by calling 1-877-872-7435 toll free.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the unified border agency within the Department of Homeland Security charged with the management, control and protection of our nation’s borders at and between the official ports of entry. CBP is charged with keeping terrorists and terrorist weapons out of the country while enforcing hundreds of U.S. laws.

SOURCE- ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection