House Republicans, in a lengthy report on the Justice Department’s leak investigations, formally accused Attorney General Eric Holder of misleading Congress with “deceptive” testimony that he knew nothing of the “potential prosecution” of the press.
Tag Archives: Attorney General Eric Holder
Securing the Vote for All Americans
Yesterday, President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Secretary of Labor Tom Perez met with civil rights leaders, and state and local elected officials at the White House to discuss how to safeguard every eligible American’s right to vote in light of the recent Supreme Court decision on Shelby County vs. Holder.
The Supreme Court’s decision invalidating one of the Voting Rights Act’s core provisions, upsets decades of well-established practices that help make sure voting is fair, especially in places where voting discrimination has been historically prevalent.
President Obama acknowledged that for nearly 50 years, the Voting Rights Act has helped secure the right to vote for millions of Americans, and expressed deep disappointment about the recent decision. He asked the leaders in the room for their ideas on how to strengthen voting rights, and also encouraged them to continue educating their communities on the Voting Rights Act, and how to exercise voting rights.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at The White House
MIT report says it didn't seek federal charges against Aaron Swartz
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology never sought a federal prosecution of Aaron Swartz, the programming prodigy who was charged with stealing millions of academic papers from an online archive at MIT, according to a report by the institute.
Swartz committed suicide in January while facing federal charges including computer intrusion, wire fraud and data theft, which could have led to a sentence of 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine. The case has led to protests against what critics called an overly aggressive prosecution and calls by lawmakers to change the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder later said the government never intended for Swartz to serve more than a few months in prison.
The report, which was requested by MIT President Rafael Reif in January, was issued on Tuesday, the institute said in a press release. It cleared MIT of any wrongdoing but raised questions about whether the institute should have been more actively involved. The report was prepared after conversations with about 50 people, including faculty, students, alumni, staff, police officers and lawyers, and Swartz’s family and friends.
MIT remained neutral on Swartz’s case from the time of his arrest in January 2011 until his death in January 2013, never making public statements about the merits of the case or whether it should proceed, the report found. The institute didn’t request that federal agents get involved in the investigation or federal charges be brought against him. The institute didn’t try to influence the prosecutor’s decisions on the case, other than saying the government shouldn’t assume that MIT wanted Swartz to go to jail, it said.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
Video: Millions Of Americans Set To Gather In DC On Sept. 9th
By Bobby Powell
On September 9th, millions of Americans will gather in Washington D.C. to let their Congressmen and Senators know that they are sick and tired of the crimes being committed by the Obama administration, that they have had enough of the coverups, lies, and scandals that are endemic in the Executive Branch, and that they want their elected Representatives to take immediate action to Impeach – and imprison – Barack Hussein Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder.
Jim Sensenbrenner, GOP Voting Rights Act Champion, Fears Black Panthers Case Will Stop Reform
By The Huffington Post News Editors
WASHINGTON — The best hope for replacing a key provision of the Voting Rights Act is a white Republican lawyer from Wisconsin who supports voter ID laws, thinks the Justice Department went easy on the New Black Panther Party, played a key role in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and once said first lady Michelle Obama has a “big butt.”
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner is a key voice in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives for replacing Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which determines which parts of the U.S. must have changes to their voting laws precleared by the Justice Department. Section 4 was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court last month.
Sensenbrenner, who helped pass reauthorizations of the Voting Rights Act in 1982 and 2006, is once again a key Republican figure now that Congress is trying to fix what the Supreme Court killed. He was on the phone with Attorney General Eric Holder soon after the ruling came down and appeared before at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
Obama’s Latest Blunder Is Treasonous In 178 Countries
By Floyd Brown
In May, I shared with you the details about 172 House members visiting over 90 countries and every continent except Antarctica in 2012 – all on your dime. But members of the U.S. House of Representatives actually travel modestly compared to the VIP travel undertaken by Obama’s friends and appointees.
And of course, any travel review needs to start with the travel queen of the last four years, Hillary Clinton.
Hillary traveled at a record-setting pace, journeying 956,733 miles and setting foot in 112 countries. This adds up to 2,084 hours spent flying around the world, which is equivalent to 86 whole days spent aboard her government-issued luxury jetliner. And how do we know these facts? Because she likes to brag about them.
But when it comes to costs, your guess is as good as mine. Despite repeated Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, her department refuses to come clean about how much this travel cost U.S. taxpayers.
Ironically, Obama’s “most transparent administration in history” works hard to hide the details of the luxurious globe-trotting. But thanks to some hard work by lawyers using the Freedom of Information Act, some other portions of the travel details are beginning to surface.
And That’s Only the Beginning…
It’s only proper that Attorney General Eric Holder tells us how much his travels cost, since he’s the federal officer in charge of FOIA compliance. While he hasn’t been too diligent about asking others to comply, he did comply himself – to some degree.
From his disclosures, we learned that during 2011, Holder filed 62 long-distant jaunts that cost us, at a minimum, $1.45 million. However, he refused to disclose flight costs for seven major trips out, including travels to China, Hawaii, and Brussels.
Holder’s travelling includes an April 2011 sojourn to Las Vegas, mixing business and personal travel, which totaled $46,358. Other “personal” trips, including visits to Martha’s Vineyard and Miami, cost us taxpayers a whopping $169,502.
And of course there’s Joe Biden. Today, we learned that the vice-president’s six-day trip to South America and the Caribbean included one 20-hour stop in Trinidad and Tobago that cost an astounding $245,000. As has become standard, the contract was awarded without “full and open competition” because of security and logistical concerns.
Yet the scariest part is that, while the travel for administration officials sounds expensive to those of us who pay our own bills while flying coach or driving on our summer trips, these Obama appointees don’t even hold a candle to Michelle and Barack.
First, there was Michelle Obama’s 2012 President’s Day weekend ski vacation to Aspen, Colorado with her two daughters. The total cost for the Aspen ski vacation was at least $83,182.99. The bill for the U.S. Secret Service, including accommodations at the Fasching Haus deluxe condominiums and the Inn at Aspen, came to $48,950.38. The cost for the flight, per official DOD published hourly rates, was $22,583.70. Food and miscellaneous on-flight items cost $235.44. The cost for rental cars totaled $6,442.23.
But that’s nothing. A drop in the bucket. More importantly, …read more
" I Don't See Anyone That's Too Big to Indict, No One is too Big to Jail"
By Robert Lenzner, Forbes Staff I think hugely big news was made yesterday when the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York threw down the gauntlet against his boss Attorney General Eric Holder on the extraordinarily sensitive and controversial issue of whether any major banker or financial institution on Wall Street will ever be indicted. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
US surveillance becomes election issue in Germany
Allegations of widespread U.S. data surveillance have created turbulence for Angela Merkel on what looked like a smooth cruise to a third term as German chancellor, even though it remains to be seen whether the flap will threaten her seriously.
Merkel’s center-left opponents have seized on disclosures of National Security Agency surveillance programs by leaker Edward Snowden to assert that she hasn’t been doing enough to confront Washington and protect Germans’ personal data — and to cast doubt on officials’ assertions that they didn’t know of the programs.
The opposition apparently hopes that the issue will breathe life into a so-far stumbling and gaffe-prone campaign for Sept. 22 parliamentary elections. A healthy economy, low unemployment and perceptions that Merkel has managed Europe’s debt crisis well have bolstered the chancellor.
Merkel’s center-left challenger, Peer Steinbrueck, is suggesting that the government turned a blind eye to violations of Germans’ rights and that Merkel violated her oath of office, in which she swore to “keep damage from” her people.
The government, opposition Green party leader Juergen Trittin said, is acting “like the famous three monkeys: hear no evil, speak no evil and definitely see no evil.”
His party called for Germany to take in Snowden. Merkel’s government, like many others, rejected his asylum request.
Protecting personal data is generally a more sensitive issue in Europe than in the U.S. — and particularly in Germany, not least because of memories of surveillance and repression by communist East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, and the Nazis’ Gestapo.
When President Barack Obama visited Berlin June 19, Merkel offered cautious public criticism, saying that a “balance” between national security and data protection must be ensured.
Then, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported that the U.S. bugged European Union offices — prompting officials to say that if true, that would be unacceptable, especially since the Cold War is over. Germany hosted major NSA sites during the Cold War.
Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, dispatched her interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, to Washington last week to discuss the spying issue. There, he conferred with Attorney General Eric Holder and had an unscheduled meeting with Vice President Joe Biden.
After those meetings Friday, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Holder Calls Shooting Of Trayvon Martin ‘unnecessary’
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday called the shooting death of Trayvon Martin “unnecessary,” raising questions about whether he believed George Zimmerman, acted in self-defense when he shot the unarmed teenager.
A jury in Sanford, Florida, found Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter after a three-week trial in which defense lawyers argued that Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, shot Martin in self-defense.
Zimmerman, 29, has gone into hiding since the verdict. Friends, family and defense lawyers have said he will need time to put his life back together and was considering entering law school to help people wrongly accused of crimes.
The attorney general did not indicate whether he intended to bring a federal case.
Ben Crump, a lawyer for Martin’s divorced parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, said the family would weigh its options regarding a wrongful death civil lawsuit against Zimmerman but for now was still “devastated” by the verdict.
Read More at The Chicago Tribune .
Photo Credit: European Parliament Creative Commons
Video: Petition To Prosecute Eric Holder Nears 1 Million
By NewsEditor
A tea party group that launched a petition drive to prosecute U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder reported on its Facebook page that nearly 1 million have signed on — and the movement is only growing by the minute.
Reporters’ Groups Offer Cautious Praise For New DOJ Journalism Guidelines
By The Huffington Post News Editors
(Adds reaction from reporters, publishers groups)
By Lawrence Hurley
WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Friday proposed curbing the ability of prosecutors to seize reporters’ records while investigating leaks to the media, after complaints that journalists’ rights were violated in recent high-profile cases.
A revised set of guidelines proposed by the department said that search warrants would not be sought against journalists carrying out “ordinary news-gathering activities.”
In another change, the department would in most instances notify news organizations in advance if a subpoena is being sought to obtain phone records.
The changes were contained in a report which the department prepared at the request of President Barack Obama and which was given to the president by Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Newspaper Association of America praised the changes but both said that they fell short of what was needed.
“We continue to believe that an impartial judge should be involved when there is a demand for a reporter’s records, because so many important rights hinge on the ability to test the government’s need for records,” the Reporters Committee said in an emailed statement.
NAA called for a federal shield law, which would also mandate a federal judge review any request for confidential source information.
Two cases sparked debate earlier this year about whether the Justice Department had been overzealous in investigating government leaks and had infringed on rights of free speech.
In one, prosecutors obtained a warrant to search Fox News correspondent James Rosen’s emails. He was named a “co-conspirator” in a federal leaks probe involving his reporting on North Korea.
In the other, the Justice Department seized Associated Press phone records without prior notification as part of a probe into leaks about a 2012 Yemen-based plot to bomb a U.S. airliner. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
Advocates Of Murder No More
By Bradlee Dean
“The church is the moral compass of society.”–John Adams
This last week, I have been focusing on the Gosnell crimes against the innocent in the womb. This monster (and a monster he is) has the severed feet of babies in jars at his clinic; his associates stab babies in the neck 20 minutes after they are born alive; babies have been decapitated; their spinal cords have been cut; and to top it off is the account of a baby in a toilet, gasping for air, waiting for someone to stand up and magnify the laws of our republic against the criminal and to preserve the life of the innocent.
Through their inaction, the professed church in America today has been the greatest advocate for the abortion industry. Three hundred thousand pulpits have become accomplices to murder by their silence while 3,700 babies a day are aborted. In the meantime, America seems to have question marks as to why their government acts in the fashion they do.
We need look no further than to the criminal in the White House, who has voted over 241 times advocating abortion, as if to say murdering children is lawful. If that’s not good enough, Barack Hussein Obama has even voted to make sure there is a second doctor in the room to “snuff out” the baby if it is born alive.
Obama, in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show on April 17, 2013, stated the following about Gosnell:
If an individual carrying out an abortion, operating a clinic, or doing anything else is violating medical ethics, violating the law, then they should be prosecuted.
Attempting to justify what he just tried to denounce, Obama also affirmed his defiant stance on abortion in Politico the same day:
What I can say is this: … I think President Clinton said it pretty well when he said, ‘Abortion should be safe, legal and rare.’
There is nothing safe, legal, or rare about abortion.
“Rare,” Mr. President, like 57 million innocent babies who have been murdered since 1973?
“Rare,” Mr. President, like 3,700 innocent babies who are slaughtered in the womb every day?
We also found out last week that Attorney General Eric Holder’s wife went in for the kill as a financial profiteer from the abortion industry.
This administration’s attorney general polarizes or attempts to incriminate old ladies who stand up against the murder of children. And why? Well, now we know.
And now the abortion industry has become so emboldened that they even sent lobbyists to the Florida House floor to advocate killing babies after they are born.
The good news is that despite the criminal behavior of Obama and the silence of the professed church in America, 650,000 real Christian patriots righteously and defiantly stood up against this criminal administration on the topic of abortion at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. Over 70 percent of abortion clinics have been shut down, and three states have declared abortion illegal. Why? Because the younger generations are rising with one voice, crying out “You will not kill off my generation!”
And
Attorney general, FBI director brief Obama on bombing probe
The Justice Department says Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller are briefing President Obama at the White House on developments in the Boston Marathon bombing investigation.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/politics/~3/IV4osQks3so/
Readout of the President’s Briefing on the Explosions in Boston
This morning the President, joined by Vice President Biden, convened a briefing in the Oval Office with his national security team on the ongoing investigation into the explosions in Boston. Participating in the briefing was Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco, Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken, White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, Deputy Chief of Staff Alyssa Mastromonaco, Deputy National Security Advisor For Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes, and National Security Advisor to the Vice President Jake Sullivan.
In the briefing, which was led by Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco, the President received an update from Attorney General Holder and FBI Director Mueller on the collaborative efforts underway as part of the investigation, including the agency’s close coordination with state and local law enforcement in Boston. The President also received an update from Secretary Napolitano on coordination underway between DHS and state and local partners across the country to share information, including any additional security steps state and local law enforcement may take.
A photo of the briefing can be found HERE.
From: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/04/16/readout-president-s-briefing-explosions-boston
'Just Right To Jail' – Small Bankers Do Go To Prison
By Walter Pavlo, Contributor We all know that top banks/bankers seem to have avoided criminal prosecution. Hell, they have avoided missing a bonus. PBS‘ documentary The Untouchables did little more than tell us the obvious that not one banker involved with the financial crisis have even been prosecuted, much less been hauled off to jail. American Banker‘s piece on the problems with government oversight came to the frustrating conclusion that the reason bankers were not prosecuted was because: “Government oversight of financial companies has not worked well in the past, is not working now and little is being done to make it better in the future.” As if that was not discouraging enough, Attorney General Eric Holder testified in March before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying: “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.” In summary, big banks are too big to jail, or fail.
From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2013/04/15/just-right-to-jail-small-bankers-do-go-to-prison/
Impeach Eric Holder, Repeat Offender
By Bradlee Dean
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” – Harry Truman, in a speech opposing communism
Attorney General Eric Holder has again shown his true colors – his disdain for America and her laws. Recently, he took action against the German Romeike family, which is seeking asylum in the United States after being forced to flee the country or risk losing their five children to the German government. Germany was attempting to force the Romeikes to put their children in public school against their religious beliefs in a terrifying repeat of history.
Holder said that asylum should not be granted to homeschoolers because, according to him (not the law), homeschooling is not protected under religious freedom.
Regarding education, let me set the record straight: The federal government does not have the right to break the law by implementing any type of educational curriculum. Parents are responsible for training their children in the way they should go (Proverbs 22:6), not the federal government (Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution).
The fallout of federal education is stupefying. More than 700,000 students who graduate high school each year cannot even read their own diplomas. Bill Bennett, the secretary of education under Reagan, said, “The longer you stay in school in America, the dumber you get.”
Eric Holder, whose position is as a public servant, doesn’t have a right to break the law; his job is to ensure the rights of the people, not to strip them away.
Holder, who is appointed to magnify the law against crime, has instead repeatedly magnified crime against the law.
Wall Street:
On Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Eric Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, implying that Wall Street tycoons are above the law, in essence giving them a license to plunder the American people. Holder’s head of the criminal division did not prosecute a single Wall Street executive for the fraud that destroyed the economy.
Defense of Marriage:
Eric Holder has directed the DOJ not to enforce the federal Defense of Marriage Act. In doing so, Holder has violated his oath of office and clearly shows his violation of the laws of Nature and Nature’s God.
Fast and Furious:
As we all know, Eric Holder is guilty of putting thousands of assault rifles into the hands of Mexican drug lords in an attempt to blame the American people for the crimes administration officials are guilty of contriving and committing. As a result, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed, along with hundreds of Mexican civilians, including teens at a birthday party and a Mexican beauty queen.
Black Panther Voter Scandal:
Soon after being sworn in as Obama’s attorney general, Holder ordered the voter intimidation case against the Black Panthers during the 2008 presidential election to be dropped.
Marc Rich Pardon:
During his tenure as Clinton’s deputy attorney general, Holder was involved
From: http://www.westernjournalism.com/impeach-eric-holder-repeat-offender/
Revolving Door Practices May Leave Investors' Heads Spinning
By M. Joy, Hayes, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Want a good way to make a bundle at your corporate job? Leave it and go work for the government. Then come back.
That’s what Lanny Breuer did when he left his job at law firm Covington & Burling — a law firm that worked for some of the nation’s biggest banks — to serve as the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). After Frontline broadcast a particularly damning expose criticizing Breuer for failing to prosecute (or even adequately investigate!) Wall Street banks for fraud, he resigned and went right back to Covington & Burling, with a $4 million salary to cushion his fall.
In other words, Lanny Breuer passed through the revolving door between the public and private sectors, in which employees regularly go from one sector to the other and then back again.
Let’s take a look at why this practice should concern investors, even as corporate executives benefit from keeping that revolving door well-greased.
Benefits for corporations
Private companies can benefit from having former employees in government positions because they often empathize with their former employers. This makes corporate alumni more likely to approach enforcement and policy making in a way that benefits their former employers.
Also, private companies are willing to pay big bucks for former government workers’ insider expertise and, importantly, the connections of public-sector executives.
Major players
There are plenty of examples of major figures who’ve passed through the revolving door and have been accused of questionable behavior as a result of loyalties to their former employers. Here are just a couple.
- Before serving as chair of the SEC, Mary Schapiro headed the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) — a non-government organization Wall Street set up to regulate itself. During Schapiro‘s time there, she gained the reputation as “a regulator with a light touch ” as the fines levied in 2008 by FINRA dropped by 73% from those levied in 2005 by its predecessor agency, the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). Keep in mind that Schapiro’s tenure overlapped with the Madoff scandal and the 2008 economic crisis, which means she had plenty of villains to chase. When Schapiro was asked to chair the SEC, she got a $9 million sendoff and proceeded to lead the SEC through what some have characterized as a period of wrist-slapping.
- Like Lanny Breuer, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was a partner at Covington & Burling, which has served clients like Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. Along with Breuer, Holder has been criticizedfor failing to prosecute any mortgage servicing companies, despite significant evidence of possible illegal foreclosures.
Greasing the revolving door
What keeps this revolving door rolling? One culprit might be the existence of compensation policies that privilege employees who leave for government positions. For example, Citigroup recently agreed to vest restricted stock and pro-rate incentive and retention awards for Jack Lew when he left his position as chief operating officer of its
From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/12/revolving-door-practices-may-leave-investors-heads/
Drone Warfare In America
By Floyd Brown
In early March, Senator Rand Paul had America buzzing about drones. They were the highlight of his 13-hour filibuster against John Brennan, Barack Obama’s nominee to be director of the CIA. Paul’s intention was not to actually stop the nomination of Brennan – he knew the filibuster would fail. Instead, he wished to turn the nation’s attention to the use of drone-fired missiles to kill American citizens and others around the globe.
Paul repeatedly cited the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, part of our cherished Bill of Rights, saying: “The Fifth Amendment… should protect you from a president that might kill you with a drone.”
“You can’t be judge, jury and executioner all in one,” Paul warned.
Well, John Brennan tried to play that role when executing Americans at the behest of Barack Obama’s War on Terror strategy. Even George W. Bush put terrorists in Guantanamo Bay before bringing them to trial. Obama just dispensed with the trials and moved right to summary execution.
Sadly, Brennan was confirmed, and the missile-mounted drones continue to fly.
“Are you going to just drop a Hellfire missile on Jane Fonda?”
So are drones (or unmanned aircraft systems–UASs–as they are called by the military) useful? Sure – in war zones. They are good for spying on the enemy and targeting enemy forces and supplies.
But even in these situations, drones have scary consequences. By some accounts in the foreign press, secret drone attacks have killed an estimated 4,700 people – nearly one quarter have been civilians, and as many as 200 are reportedly children.
And worse yet, the Obama administration admitted to targeting Americans and foreign nationals (albeit those in terror groups).
They also claim the legal authority to kill U.S. citizens without a trial (even here in America) as long as the target is linked to a terrorist organization.
Look, I am not alone in being very suspicious of these powers. As government agencies increase the use of drone technology, opportunities for abuse grow exponentially, especially when the Obama administration reserves the right to kill Americans without due process.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently defended using lethal force against Americans in America, saying it would be considered legal and justified in an “extraordinary circumstance.”
“The President could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland,” Holder concluded.
10,000 New Drones By 2020
If the Obama administration’s life-extinguishing policy wasn’t enough, get this: A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report anticipates 10,000 new civilian drones will be flying the skies of America by the year 2020.
Sound outlandish? It’s not. Since 2007, the FAA has issued 1,428 licenses to police, universities, and federal agencies to fly drones domestically.
This sounds like a perfect storm of threats to privacy and security. Imagine these drones spying on your business or even your teenage daughter as she sunbathes next to the backyard pool.
Sounding the Alarm Bells
In December 2011, The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a report entitled “Protecting Privacy from Aerial Surveillance” that warned of the potential “mission …read more
Author: Documents “Damning” For Holder
WASHINGTON – A court fight over documentation of the Fast and Furious scandal, where the U.S. government trafficked weapons to drug dealers in Mexico, is just ratcheting up now.
But Katie Pavlich, author of the New York Times bestseller “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up,” news editor of Townhall.com and an expert on the Fast and Furious scandal, says the documents will be “damning” for Attorney General Eric Holder, and possibly even President Obama.
She said both politicians should be concerned “based on the evidence that Attorney General Eric Holder chang[ed] his testimony multiple times under oath in front of Congress.”
“I think these documents are pretty damning to him,” she told WND in an exclusive interview.
It was reported just last month that a federal judge has ordered the House Oversight Committee and Holder to work with a mediator in their battle over the paperwork from the Fast and Furious scandal.
Read More at WND . By Taylor Rose.
Photo Credit: European Parliament (Creative Commons)
Has JPMorgan Finally Turned a Big Investing Corner?
By John Grgurich, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Potential backlash in the form of lawsuits and fines resulting from the housing boom and subsequent financial crisis have left many bank investors wary to go all-in on their favorite financial institutions, perhaps anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop.
For JPMorgan Chase investors, at least, that plummeting piece of footwear may have been stopped dead in its tracks by a recent favorable court decision.
Here comes the judge
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a federal judge has dismissed a major portion of a lawsuit against the superbank, one alleging it knowingly sold bad mortgage-backed securities to the European bank Dexia in the time leading up to the financial crash.
Specifically, the judge threw out that portion of the suit involving 65 mortgage-backed securities issued in 51 offerings, but allowed the suit to continue on five other mortgage-backed securities JPMorgan sold to Dexia.
Foolish bottom line
This is a big win for JPMorgan. The dismissal of such a large portion of this suit may be a signal that the country’s biggest bank has made it through the worst of its housing-boom related difficulties. How? By possibly setting legal precedent for other housing-boom related suits the bank may be facing.
If JPMorgan can have 65 potential mortgage-backed securities claims so quickly and summarily thrown out of court, investors can be genuinely hopeful the same may happen in other pending cases. Such a decision could also be a shot across the bow for other plaintiffs contemplating similar legal action.
Four-plus years on from the start of the financial crisis, many of the big banks are still in a kind of no-man’s land when it comes to the end game, which leaves investors in a similarly grim place.
Just this past January, Bank of America settled with federal housing giant Fannie Mae for $10 billion over claims relating to the housing boom. Such a massive settlement this far out from the crash rightly frightens potential investors, leaving them to wonder, “Where does it all end?”
Of course, this big win for JPMorgan is no guarantee private lawsuits aren’t going to continue popping up, and there’s nothing saying U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff‘s decision won’t be reversed on appeal (though The Wall Street Journal piece made no mention of that).
And the superbank is still facing a lawsuit filed in 2012 by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over allegedly fraudulent deals done by Bear Stearns, the fast-failing investment bank JPMorgan scooped up for next to nothing in March of 2008.
Still, investors should be reasonably buoyed by this action. And if Judge Rakoff‘s decision sets a precedent for the rest of the banking sector regarding suits related to mortgage-backed securities, all the better: If the big banks are still too big to fail, and too big to jail per U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, we might as well let them — and their shareholders — get on with the business …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance