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In the interest of the public's right to know, I am a Bernie Sanders supporter, but not a Bernie Sanders cultist, so this is not about sour grapes. This is about ridding America's tree of poison fruit.
 

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Hillary Clinton superdelegate and longtime Democratic Congressman Chaka Fattah was convicted of 22 counts of corruption charges. After serving 11 terms in Congress, Fattah is now out on bail after an indictment was filed in July 2015 against him and four associates. Despite the conviction, Fattah is set to serve the remainder of his term in Congress until January 2017. He faces sentencing in October, and could potentially serve the rest of his life in prison.
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Fattah formally endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in February, shortly before losing his primary bid for re-election in April. He has been a Clinton loyalist for decades, standing by the Clintons amid the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the 1990s, and even helping Bill Clinton coordinate DNC fundraising trips to Philadelphia shortly after he admitted to perjury. “He can be a public servant without being perfect,” Fattah told Philly.com in 1998.
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Fattah isn’t the first Clinton superdelegate to be convicted under corruption charges. Former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was convicted of corruption in November 2015, had close ties to Hillary Clinton while she served as senator of New York. In 2008, Clinton called Silver, who played an important role in convincing Clinton to run for Senate in New York after Bill Clinton’s presidency ended, “a stalwart voice on behalf of the needs of New Yorkers.”
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Silver formally resigned from serving as a superdelegate in March 2016, and Congressman Fattah should do the same. Both Fattah and Silver still maintain their innocence, a tactic perfected by Hillary Clinton over the years—to constantly deny wrongdoing despite the overwhelming evidence suggesting otherwise.
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A number of Clinton’s close associates have been exposed for corruption. Several weeks ago, it was revealed that Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, is currently under federal investigation over questionable contributions to his 2013 campaign for governor—including $120,000 from a wealthy Chinese businessman McAuliffe introduced to Hillary Clinton at a fundraiser in her home. Clinton’s 2008 campaign co-chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has also been informally removed from her position as DNC chair, and faces losing her seat in Congress to primary challenger Tim Canova after the backlash that erupted over Wasserman Schultz’s overt favoritism for Clinton throughout the 2016 Democratic primaries.
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Hillary Clinton herself will be subject to some form of indictment or conviction in the near future, regardless of whether she manages to become president. The State Department inspector general reported in May 2016 that Clinton never had authorization to use a private email server during her service as secretary of state, debunking the defense she and her supporters have been using for over a year to dismiss the issue.
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The Clinton Foundation has also been linked to several cases of fraudulent activity. Clinton appointed Rajiv Fernando, a prominent Clinton Foundation donor, to an intelligence advisory board with the State Department despite the fact that Fernando had no experience or background qualifying him for the role. An IBTimes investigation in 2015 uncovered millions of dollars in donations given to the Clinton Foundation by foreign government dictatorships in exchange for favors from Clinton’s State Department.
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Whistleblower Charles Ortel, who exposed General Electric’s financial discrepancies in 2008, has alleged the charity did not follow legal compliances when it was created, and that donations were collected and used for purposes differing from what donors were told. Ortel is currently pushing the Federal Trade Commission to open a formal investigation into the charity. Clinton Cash, a book by Peter Schweitzer, corroborated many of Ortel’s claims, laying out how the Clinton Foundation provided donor access to Clinton’s State Department.
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The Democratic National Committee has completely disregarded the democratic process by colluding with the Clinton campaign to simultaneously raise funds for itself while helping Hillary Clinton secure the presidential nomination. The Party should be pushing to reform campaign finance law—not embracing policies that allow wealthy individuals and corporations to buy off elections. While a few members of Congress push to get big money out of politics—most notably Bernie Sanders—the Democratic leadership has only strengthened its ties to wealthy and corporate donors who have hijacked the party for their own interests over the progressive agenda held by voters identifying as Democrats.
http://observer.com/2016/05/corruption-is-catching-up-to-the-clintons-an...
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Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign chair, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, is currently under investigation by the FBI and Department of Justice over questionable contributions to his 2013 campaign. According to a recent CNN report, the investigation—which has been going on for at least a year—calls into question Mr. McAuliffe’s service as a board member to the Clinton Global Initiative, a subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation. A $120,000 donation from a Chinese businessman, Wang Wenliang, made through U.S.-based businesses, raised red flags with investigators—along with several other donations, like the $2 million he gave the Clinton Foundation.
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Governor McAuliffe is just one of several close associates to the Clintons currently under investigation for corruption. Ms. Clinton’s 2008 campaign co-chair, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is under immense pressure to resign thanks to her favoritism for Ms. Clinton throughout the Democratic primaries. Ms. Wasserman Schultz essentially tipped the scale against Senator Bernie Sanders, a violation of the impartiality her position at the DNC demands. Prominent Clinton supporter and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is also under review as part of an ongoing federal investigation into two businessmen with close ties to the mayor. The Podesta Group, implicated in the release of the Panama Papers, was founded by Tony Podesta and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief, John Podesta. Several other prominent donors to the Clinton Foundation have also been linked to the Panama Papers, and the Clinton Foundation itself has been frequently cited as a source of money laundering and exchanging political favors for large donations.
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It comes as no surprise that Hillary Clinton’s closest associates are involved in a litany of ethics violations as corruption has been the modus operandi of Ms. Clinton’s campaign for the entire duration of the primaries. Hillary Clinton has publicly vocalized support for campaign finance reform, yet owes much of her success in the primaries to the current corrupt system, which enables her to fundraise unethically, bending and possibly breaking current campaign finance laws. The Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee between the Clinton campaign and the DNC, was recently revealed by Politico to be laundering money to the Clinton campaign to circumvent campaign finance laws. Mr. Sanders’ campaign has also highlighted additional
 violations and ethical breaches made by the Hillary Victory Fund.
http://observer.com/2016/05/corruption-is-catching-up-to-the-clintons-an...
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FBI formally confirms its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server

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In a letter disclosed Monday in a federal court filing, the FBI confirms one of the world’s worst-kept secrets: It is looking into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
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Why say this at all, since it was widely known to be true? Because in August in response to a judge’s direction, the State Department asked the FBI for information about what it was up to. Sorry, the FBI said at the time, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation.
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Now, in a letter dated February 2 and filed in court Monday, the FBI’s general counsel, James Baker, notes that in public statements and congressional testimony, the FBI “has acknowledged generally that it is working on matters related to former Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server.”
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Baker says the FBI has not, however, “publicly acknowledged the specific focus, scope or potential targets of any such proceedings.”
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He ends the one-paragraph letter by saying that the FBI cannot say more “without adversely affecting on-going law enforcement efforts.”
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The letter was filed in one of the Freedom of Information Act cases brought against the State Department over access to documents from Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state. This one was filed by Judicial Watch.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/fbi-formally-confirms-its-investigation-hilla...
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Over the past couple of days, some Hillary Clinton critics have complained over the way her campaign has described the FBI’s probe into her private email server. Clinton and her campaign have called the probe a "security inquiry" regarding information stored on the server, as opposed to a criminal probe.

 

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"I say what I have said now for many, many months: It's a security inquiry," she said on CBS May 8.
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But on May 11, reporters met with FBI Director James Comey, and he said he is not familiar with the term "security inquiry." Instead, he said, "we're conducting an investigation. That's what we do."
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/may/12/fbis-investi...
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The FBI is widening its investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email account while she was U.S. secretary of state to determine whether any public corruption laws were violated, Fox News reported on Monday.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been looking into whether classified material was mishandled during Clinton's tenure at the State Department from 2009-2013.
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It will expand its probe by examining possible overlap of the Clinton Foundation charity with State Department business, Fox reported, citing three unidentified intelligence officials.
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"The [FBI] agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed," Fox quoted one of its unidentified sources as saying.
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The FBI and the State Department had no immediate comment on the report. The Clinton campaign didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus issued a statement calling the Fox News report "a very troubling development."
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The FBI last expanded its probe into the server in November to examine whether "materially false statements" were ever provided to agents throughout the course of the case.
http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-hillary-clinton-email-investigation-2...

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Whom does the country have to blame for Donald Trump’s ascendancy in American politics? The Republican Party, for cultivating conservative populism to score short-term victories against Barack Obama? The media, for covering Trump’s every utterance at the expense of all other candidates? Celebrity culture, for thrusting him into the public consciousness? Capitalism, for making him rich? Tall buildings, of which Trump has many?
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Wrong, says The Washington Post, which revealed the supposed truth on Wednesday: it was former president and candidate spouse Bill Clinton all along.
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According to several Trump sources (and one Clinton source) who spoke to the Post, the two men spoke over the phone in late May, shortly before Trump announced his run in June. During the call, the Trump sources said, Clinton “encouraged Trump’s efforts to play a larger role in the Republican Party” and “analyzed Trump’s prospects and his desire to rouse the G.O.P. base.”
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/08/bill-clinton-called-donald-trump-....

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“People with knowledge of the call in both camps said it was one of many that Clinton and Trump have had over the years, whether about golf or donations to the Clinton Foundation. But the call in May was considered especially sensitive, coming soon after Hillary Rodham Clinton had declared her own presidential run the month before.
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“At the time, Trump was touting a “foolproof” but undisclosed plan to defeat Islamic State terrorists and ramping up his presence on the airwaves, including interviews where he was asked about his donations to the Clinton Foundation. He entered the race June 16.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bill-clinton-called-donald-trump...
 

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A CITIZENRY OF SHEEP BEGETS A GOVERNMENT OF WOLVES - Edward R. Murrow

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Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
[email protected]
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.