Wave of Ethics Complaints Hits Top Races

The closest races in the country have always attracted the most ad dollars, ground troops, and media attention. Now, with Election Day approaching, they've become a magnet for something else: ethics complaints.

Over the last month, watchdog groups and political parties have filed dozens of complaints against Republicans and Democrats in tough races, questioning fundraising tactics and accusing campaigns of improper coordination, among other allegations, just as voters begin to tune in to the election-year fight.

 

Regardless of their merits—and some make much stronger cases than others—the likelihood that any of these ethics complaints will be acted on before Election Day is slim. The Office of Congressional Ethics, for example, which deals with complaints against members of the House, is specifically prohibited from acting publicly on a complaint about a member within 60 days of any election in which he or she is on the ballot. And the Senate Ethics Committee hasn't taken public action against any senator in more than two years.

But for many of these groups, the result of a complaint isn't nearly as important as filing the complaint itself. "It's just a political tactic," says Meredith McGehee, the policy director for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group, and a longtime ethics advocate.

The act of filing an ethics complaint allows campaigns and partisan groups to cast aspersions on their opponents in the press—as long as the press obliges by paying attention. In most cases, the question of whether their claims are legitimate will be left until long after Election Day.

 

The practice is hardly new, McGehee said. "It's been a fairly common political tactic certainly in the last 20 years," she said. "Though I would note that it seems to kind of go in and out of fashion. … Some cycles you see more of it than others."

The 2014 cycle certainly appears to be one in which ethics battles are back in vogue. And a new group on the scene, the American Democracy Legal Fund, is laying the pathway for many more groups to wage political warfare through typically ignored regulatory filings and ethics-committee investigations in the future.

The ADLF represents a new breed of complainant in what McGehee terms "Dark Arts Campaigning 101." Whereas most ethics watchdogs maintain at least an appearance of bipartisanship, in the past month the ADLF has filed ethics complaints against nine Republican candidates, eight of whom are facing difficult elections in November, and not a single complaint against a Democrat. The ninth Republican targeted by the group, Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, is running for governor in 2015.

"This looks like a pretty clear and straightforward attempt to go after one party," McGehee said. "I have to say I haven't really seen that before in this way. The groups that have been involved [in filing ethics complaints] have generally been pretty careful about trying to stay nonpartisan. This is kind of a different take on it."

 

The ADLF, which is run by Media Matters founder David Brock and Democratic operative Brad Woodhouse, declined to comment for this story. But the ADLF's website describes it as a group "established to hold candidates for office accountable for possible ethics and/or legal violations," making no mention of party affiliation.

The ADLF is an offshoot of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is now also run by Brock. But unlike CREW, which is incorporated as a nonpartisan nonprofit, the ADLF is registered as a 501(c)4 organization, which can engage in political activity.

All 10 of the ADLF's complaints (including two against Scott Brown, the former senator from Massachusetts now running against Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire) have been filed since September, giving little time for investigators to come to any conclusions before Election Day. "To me, I look at these when they're filed so close to the election—the intent is to influence the outcome of the election," McGehee said.

In that regard, the ADLF and other political groups seem to be having some success. The ADLF's two complaints against Brown in New Hampshire made headlines in a number of national publications. Complaints that the group filed against North Carolina state House Speaker Thom Tillis, Rep. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst—all Republicans running in tight Senate contests this fall—also received significant media attention.

Despite the headlines, the ADLF does not yet appear to be making waves in ethics circles. Staffers at top watchdog groups and even some of the organizations that have received complaints from the ADLF said that they had never heard of the group.

Though the ADLF appears to be the only group currently focused solely on filing ethics complaints against members and candidates of a single party in races across the country, a number of other groups are using similar tactics.

CREW, which identifies itself as a nonpartisan organization, filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics this week, asking the group to investigate whether Rep. Paul Ryan, who is not in a competitive race this year but is a potential 2016 presidential candidate, received special treatment from Amazon in selling his new book.

State parties have also gotten in on the act. Within the last month and a half, state parties have filed complaints against Republican Rep. Cory Gardner of Colorado; Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and her Republican opponent, Cassidy; Democratic Rep. Mike Honda of California; and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes. All are locked in tight races heading into November.

Additionally, the North Carolina Republican Party filed a complaint against Sen. Kay Hagan, one of the GOP's top targets this year, on Monday—just four weeks before Election Day. The state Democratic Party responded by filing a complaint of its own against Hagan's opponent, Tillis, the very next day.

State GOP spokesman William Allison defended the timing of the Hagan complaint in an interview, noting that the story upon which the allegations were based had been published just a week and a half earlier. "If the story is public, everyone knows that this happened, then I think that we have the responsibility to move in a timely fashion, which we have," Allison said.

All of those cases have received significant local coverage and are likely to play large roles in the final weeks of campaign advertising and debates. In some cases, the complaints have even received national coverage.

"The goal is to get the story written, pure and simple. It's often just to get the headline that suggests a candidate is now 'under investigation,'" said Elliot Berke, an attorney who handles ethics and campaign finance cases. But, he warned: "Such headlines are often misleading and lack context, and transparency without context is very dangerous and counterproductive."

Take this headline the North Carolina Republican Party used in a press release announcing its ethics complaint against Hagan: "Senate Ethics Committee Begins Formal Investigation of Kay Hagan's 'Stimulus' Payday."

Technically, the state party is correct. For many of these investigative bodies like the Federal Election Commission, the Senate Ethics Committee, and the Office of Congressional Ethics, the mere act of filing an ethics complaint against a candidate or member of Congress automatically triggers an investigation. That investigation could lead to weeks of interviews and potential ramifications for the candidate, or it could start and end with a staffer reading a complaint and throwing it in the trash. Whether the committee will pursue the complaint or believes that there are any merits to it—as the party's headline implies—is not clear. The Senate Ethics Committee does not comment on complaints or ongoing investigations.

When asked about the press release's potential to mislead voters, Allison, the state party's spokesman, defended the language as accurate. "What we're saying is that once the complaint is filed, they're automatically required to begin looking into to it," he said. "The precise steps that [the committee takes] to do that, they can speak for themselves. But they are automatically required to begin looking into it."

But that nuance isn't the only issue. Technically these watchdog groups and political parties can file ethics complaints against any individual, regardless of whether that candidate falls under an ethics committee or agency's jurisdiction. The ADLF, for example, filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against Republican Barbara Comstock, who is running for a House seat in Virginia. The problem: The office can only investigate matters relating to members of the House, not candidates for Congress.

"ADLF filed the complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics, and many media outlets reported that fact while stating that the complaint likely wouldn't be resolved before Election Day," said Berke, who is working as legal counsel for Comstock's campaign. "But what no one reported was that the OCE has no jurisdiction over nonincumbent candidates and, consequently, it has no power to even review the complaint. So there is literally nothing to resolve now or after Election Day."

Regardless of the eventual outcome—and the motivations of the filer—the specter of an ethics inquiry can still be damaging to a candidate heading into Election Day. And that's what many of these groups, Berke and McGehee say, are counting on.

"Everybody knows it's not going to get resolved between now and the election. Everybody knows it's a tactic. But, for the people who don't pay attention, it's a good lick to get in on your opponent," McGehee said.

McGehee and Berke said they worry that more and more groups dedicated specifically to filing ethics complaints against members of the opposing party in an election year, like the ADLF, will begin to emerge. Berke called it an "unfortunate trend," but a "profitable one," noting that campaigns and outside groups often use ethics complaints to solicit money from donors.

McGehee said she worries specifically that a flood of complaints with clear partisan goals could further turn off an electorate that already questions the ethics of their elected officials. "I think it turns people off from the process, and that's dangerous," she said. "When you start going down a partisan path, I think—to me, it begins to undermine the work that is done to try and say that, look, these are common standards that everyone regardless of partisan ideology agrees upon. And I think that's an incredibly important kind of line and principle to have, regardless of whether you're Republican or Democrat."

What's more, the use of ethics inquiries as a campaign tactic, particularly in cases without a solid foundation, could cause voters to have less faith in more legitimate cases. "It will either desensitize the voters to legitimate ethics cases, or it will continue to negatively affect the voters' confidence in our elected officials. And neither is good for our country," Berke said.

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World Bank workers turn on bosses, protest pay cuts and executive bonuses

The World Bank has been the go-to financier for developing nations for decades. But now its own employees are staging a rich-nation protest reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street, voicing outrage that top managers got hefty bonuses while pushing an aggressive cost-cutting agenda expected to include salary reductions and layoffs for lower-level staff.

The behind-the-scenes clash has gone public in recent days with a series of employee rallies — held in the bank’s headquarters lobby just blocks from the White House — thrusting the famously tranquil institution into turmoil just ahead of the annual World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings that open Friday.

Bank insiders said the situation reached a boiling point Tuesday.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim led a hastily arranged “town hall” meeting to announce that bank Chief Financial Officer Bertrand Badre would “renounce” a bonus he received while spearheading efforts to shave $400 million from the bank’s budget through layoffs and other savings.

A World Bank source later clarified that Mr. Badre already had received more than half of his $94,000 “scarce-skills premium” bonus but agreed to forgo the rest “effective immediately.”

The announcement was made just hours after hundreds of bank staffers gathered in the World Bank lobby to protest management secrecy over the massive reorganization Mr. Kim is pushing.

Bank staffers said the protests were organized clandestinely because of fear among the rank-and-file economists that their jobs would be at risk if they spoke out.

According to the sources, a roar of applause and cheering erupted Tuesday morning when one staffer grabbed a microphone circulating among the protesters and bellowed: “When managing change, it’s like cleaning the stairs: You have to start at the top!”

“What the guy meant was that if you really want to bring positive changes through any reorganization, you should start by making sure management is being ethical and being transparent,” said one bank staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity with The Washington Times. “So far, that’s not happening.”

World Bank spokesman David Theis maintained that the dissent and protests marked a positive development.

“Of course staff unease is natural and understandable in any large organization undergoing such a large-scale realignment,” he said. “We believe we will come out of this process as a stronger, more unified organization, better positioned to achieve our mission.”

Mr. Kim’s announcement about Mr. Badre in the afternoon suggested that the message had been heard. Bank staffers said hundreds turned out for Mr. Kim’s impromptu meeting in an auditorium at World Bank headquarters but that the staffers remained skeptical of management’s sincerity.

“People welcomed Badre’s bonus denouncement,” said one staffer. “But the perception was still there that the top is not being affected by the belt-tightening the way the rest of us are.”

“There’s also still this fear of retribution,” said another, who added that attendees were stopped by a security guard for what they were told was a routine check “to make sure there are no journalists” trying to get into the Kim meeting.

Others voiced outrage over the way Mr. Kim, an American nominated by President Obama in early 2012, has implemented a reorganization that he says will help the bank better achieve its goals of ending extreme poverty in the world by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity for the globe’s poorest 40 percent.

The crux of the reorganization, announced in April, would double the World Bank’s annual lending to middle-income nations from $15 billion to $27 billion a year while shaving $400 million off the bank’s annual budget.

The point of contention, according to sources inside the bank, stems from general opaqueness surrounding the proposed cuts — specifically on the question of who among the bank’s 10,000 employees are about to lose their jobs.

Frustration soared two weeks ago when word spread that Mr. Badre, a former top official at the French banking giant Societe Generale, had been awarded his skills “premium” on top of a $95,000 signing bonus he received when Mr. Kim hired him in 2013 to spearhead the budget cuts.

The World Bank’s most recent annual report shows the bonuses rival what the majority of the institution’s rank and file — the economists who do the legwork in crafting, granting and collecting on loans to governments worldwide — make in total salary. Bank “professionals” and “senior professionals” get $102,000 and $140,000 a year respectively in base pay.

News that Mr. Badre had received $189,000 in bonuses on top of his $379,000 base salary as the bank’s CFO prompted a stern reaction from the World Bank’s staff association, essentially the union for the bank’s rank-and-file economists.

“We question the timing of such payments given the sacrifices the rest of us are being asked to make as a result of the back to front Expenditure Review process underway and the staff cuts that will follow,” the staff association wrote in a Sept. 25 internal email obtained by Bloomberg News.

Rumors have swirled through the bank that Mr. Kim also may have approved bonuses for three other managers.

World Bank sources confirmed Tuesday that four “scarce-skills premium” bonuses have been given out over the past year but Mr. Badre was the only top executive to receive one, suggesting that the other bonuses may have gone to midlevel managers.

The turmoil has risen at a sensitive moment for the World Bank, which faces growing lending competition from emerging economic powers such as the “BRICS” — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — challenging the traditional U.S. dominance of the bank and its policies.

An internal blog post Tuesday by World Bank Vice President of Human Resources Sean McGrath revealed how $200 million of the impending budget cuts would “be related to staffing” — but maintained that there was no specific number of staffers to be cut.

A copy of the post, obtained by The Times, also said there “is not single date when staff whose employment is at risk will be notified.”

Bank employees said privately that the blog post was just the latest example of management’s lack of transparency over the reorganization.

“These guys are running the premier development bank in the world, and it’s being mismanaged,” one World Bank source said.

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House Aide Tied to Insider-Trading Probe Creates Legal Fund

A top committee aide to House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp has established a special trust fund to solicit donations for his legal defense against an insider-trading investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.

The creation of the legal-expense trust fund on behalf of Brian Sutter, staff director of the committee's Health subpanel, is the latest development in a matter that has for months left Congress itself fighting subpoenas from federal regulators and investigators.

 

A main argument of congressional lawyers in this standoff has been that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution protects against such an outside inquiry into legislative business in most cases. But the fight also has become as much about the limits of a much-ballyhooed law passed in 2012 that was billed as clarifying that even members of Congress and their staff are subject to insider-trading prohibitions under securities laws.

News that federal regulators and prosecutors were seeking testimony and documents from Sutter and the Ways and Means Committee became public in early May. That's when Sutter formally notified Congress he was in receipt of subpoenas from the SEC and Justice Department, and Camp reported the committee had also received a subpoena for documents.

In court documents and in communications with the House General Counsel's office, federal officials later confirmed that the focus of the inquiry relates to a spike in stock trading of certain health care companies based on a prediction of a government health care policy by a research company, Height Securities. The questions have centered on role what, if any, Sutter's advance knowledge may have played in that company getting information on which to make its prediction.

 

Neither Sutter, who remains in his job with the Ways and Means Committee, nor his lawyer Christopher Guest of Washington, returned telephone calls Monday for comment about Sutter's new legal-expense trust.

But papers filed in the House clerk's office show the trust was created last Tuesday "to provide a proper means for the acceptance of money, property and services."

Donations collected, according to the document, are to be used by Sutter's trust toward legal fees "in connection with his official duties and position as a staffer in the United States House of Representatives, in connection with any action taken against Mr. Sutter by the Securities and Exchange Commission or the United States Department of Justice."

Such a trust cannot accept more than $5,000 in any calendar year from any individual or corporation, or from any registered lobbyist. Whether lawmakers and fellow congressional staffers might be among those who could give to the trust could not be determined Monday.

 

Specifically, the matter under which Sutter has come under federal scrutiny involved stock trading just before an April 1, 2013, Medicare Advantage reimbursement rate announcement for 2014 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

In a letter dated May 8 of this year, an SEC official explains the inquiry is focused, at least in part, on Sutter's knowledge of the rate announcement beforehand, his relationship and communication with a lobbyist at Greenberg Traurig, and whether that lobbyist may have then sent an email to an employee of Heights Securities approximately one hour prior to the rate announcement, causing a spike in stock trading.

According to that letter, Sutter may have modified his initial recollection of his discussions with the lobbyist after initially talking to FBI and Health and Human Service Office of Inspector General officials in early 2013.

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Medicaid Scam In Michigan Takes $29 Million From Taxpayers

Health care providers defrauded Medicaid to the tune of $29 million dollars by coordinating with a day care center for mentally ill adults to steal patient information, the Washington Examiner reports.

Abdul Malik Al-Jumail and his daughter Jamella Al-Jumail created a series of fake health companies, and then collaborated closely with Felicar Williams, 51, who ran the day care center. Felicar would steal patient information, the Jumails would file false claims, and then provide kickbacks to Felicar. Many complex procedures for mental health were billed that were simply never provided.

Sometimes the Jumails would even fabricate entire medical records if necessary to gain reimbursement, showing how patients desperately needed treatment, and how their companies provided care. All three individuals involved are now in prison. The actual sentencing, however, hasn’t yet been scheduled. Two others, Mohammed Sadiq and Philandis Thomas, are charged in the indictment and scheduled for trial later this month. Another individual remains on the loose.

A 61-year-old psychiatrist, Carey Vigor, was also named in the indictment, but was later acquitted by the jury.

As the investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general (HHS-OIG) deepened and Malik Al-Jumail was promptly arrested, his daughter panicked and instructed an employee to burn the falsified medical records. In total, they siphoned off $29 million dollars in the scam.

However, since its inception in 2007, the HHS-OIG has worked closely with the Department of Justice and the FBI, among others. These agencies together work in the Medicare Fraud Task Force, and together, they have recuperated approximately $14.9 billion dollars. The task force has charged almost 2,000 individuals and operates in 9 cities across the United States.

With this recent case in mind, the HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are joining with the HHS-OIG to further crackdown on fraud.

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Special Agent and Whistleblower Vince Cefalu's Trial Against ATF For Retaliation Starts Monday

After eight years of constant government stonewalling and mistreatment, including an unexplained firing in a Denny's parking lot, Special Agent and whistleblower Vince Cefalu's trial against the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives for retaliation and unlawful termination is set to start Monday. 

In 2005, Cefalu exposed ATF corruption and illegal wiretapping. Prior to becoming a whistleblower, he put dozens of hard criminals in prison and received promotions in addition to consistently positive evaluations. In 2009, he launched the website CleanUpATF.org in order for agents within ATF to blow the whistle on corrupt behavior anonymously due to the agency's history of retaliation against those who "jump their chain of command." His website is where bloggers and news reporters first saw allegations of gunwalking in Operation Fast and Furious. The site is heavily monitored by the Department of Justice.

In the February 2012 issue of Townhall Magazine, Cefalu detailed the ATF corruption leading up to Fast and Furious and his retaliation case from inside the bureau. When ATF managers fired him without explanation, again in a Denny's parking lot, the following was posted on CleanUpATF.org.

It's well-known that ATF management and their viciously corrupt counsel are, for the most part, brutally self-serving and mean-spirited. But this Cefalu termination is nevertheless surprising in its utter incomprehensibility under the circumstances, from purely legal and elemental federal labor law standpoints. If they had any prayer of making the action stick, they had to do it more than a year ago, before so many additional events have transpired that will render the termination plainly unlawful and inescapably untenable. It's just plain moronic no matter how you slice it.

It seems apparent that ATF's leadership at all levels has degenerated to a pathetic state of paroxysmal, shoot-from-the-hip incompetence. They can't even do the wrong thing right.

Cefalu's trial will take place in U.S. District Court Northern District of California in San Francisco. 

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FBI moves to fire 11 whistleblowers, key senator fears retaliation

Eleven whistleblowers in the FBI say the bureau is targeting them for termination in retaliation for their revelations about FBI wrongdoing, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary announced Wednesday.

The whistleblowers, who have spoken out about various problems and wrongdoing at the law enforcement agency, said they recently have been served with Loss of Effectiveness orders, warning that their performance is suffering and that they could soon be fired.

“These whistleblowers never have the opportunity to make their case,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican. “It’s stereotypical treatment of whistleblowers for the executive branch.”

The letters sent to the employees mark the first major case showing how new FBI Director James B. Comey may react to internal whistleblowers.

Mr. Grassley noted that the Loss of Effectiveness orders don’t allow employees an appeal and bypass the bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which usually deals with employee matters.

“If these allegations are true, the FBI’s treatment of whistleblowers stands in stark contrast with how it treats agents who have been found by [internal investigators] to have committed actual, disciplinable offenses,” Mr. Grassley said in a September letter to the FBI director.

The senator cited the case of an FBI agent who was having a relationship with a foreign citizen and had divulged sensitive information. The agent was never sent a Loss of Effectiveness (LOE) letter, and the agent’s case was handled through the Office of Professional Responsibility, he said.

“There is serious cause for concern that the FBI’s use of LOEs may be similarly arbitrary and capricious in other cases as well as a tool of whistleblower retaliation,” Mr. Grassley wrote.

Officials at the FBI could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening.

But in a September response to Mr. Grassley’s letter, the bureau said that LOE letters are a means to “maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of our workforce.”

“The FBI intends the process to be fair and to improve the efficiency of the workforce,” the bureau said. “A LOE transfer does not result in a loss in pay or a demotion in rank.”

“All FBI employees are subject to being moved from a particular assignment for the betterment of the organization and to promote the leadership qualities needed for the FBI to be effective,” the bureau letter said.

The whistleblowers said the FBI Office of Integrity and Compliance is concerned about the issue of retaliation and is working on drafting changes to the agency’s policies on the treatment of whistleblowers.

Mr. Grassley pointed to the case of agent Richard Kiper, who was working as the unit chief of the Investigative Training Unit in the FBI Training Division. But Mr. Kiper claims FBI leaders gave him a Loss of Effectiveness letter in July 2013 in retaliation after he provided information on problems in the training curriculum and business process. Based on the Loss of Effectiveness order, Mr. Kiper was demoted.

The FBI has taken retaliatory action against whistleblowers in the past. In 2007 former agent Jane Turner won a court case against the agency after she was forced out due to retaliation. FBI officials said she had tarnished the agency’s reputation for reporting about the potential theft of property from ground zero in New York City.

Mr. Grassley said that several of the whistleblowers are women who have reported sexist treatment at the FBI. He asked the Justice Department’s Inspector General to investigate, stating that the women “allege that they suffered gender discrimination and that they were retaliated against when they tried to report these abuses.”

The senator noted the whistleblowers said there are others in the bureau who would come forward to report wrongdoing but fear retaliation.

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GAO: Admin Needs Congress To Approve Insurer Payments Under Obamacare

The Obama administration can’t spend funding on a bailout for insurance companies in Obamacare exchanges without an express appropriation from Congress, according a nonpartisan legal opinion.

The health-care law’s controversial risk corridors provision allows Obamacare administrator the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to collect user fees from insurers taking part in Obamacare exchanges and, presumably, to redistribute them to the companies that are struggling the most.

The program is intended to incentivize insurers to join Obamacare exchanges, cutting back on any fear they might have of pricing their health plans too low and taking a large financial hit by attracting sick, expensive customers.

The Obama administration believes that it can hand out this money on its own, without congressional approval, because the text of the Affordable Care Act provides that the Health and Human Services secretary “shall pay” risk corridor funding to exchange health plans that qualify (although that power’s now been delegated to the CMS chief). But according to the General Accountability Office, that’s not the case.

“The making of an appropriation must be expressly stated in law,” the GAO found. “It is not enough for a statute to simply require an agency to make a payment.” 

That said, according to the GAO, the congressional appropriation to CMS for fiscal year 2014 did give current CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner the authority to distribute the funds.

But CMS won’t hand out any risk corridor payments until the next fiscal year, officials told the GAO. That means 2015 appropriations must include funding for “other responsibilities of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services” in order for the risk corridor payments, which the Obama administration has already promised to nervous insurers, to be available.

It’s an especially pressing political issue in light of changes to the program the Obama administration made earlier this year. Under intense pressure from insurers, who had been threatening to hike premium rates drastically in the months before November midterm elections, CMS opened the door to expanding the program. 

While officials had claimed the risk corridor provision would be budget neutral, only redistributing the user fees collected, that may no longer be the case. So many insurance companies have been faced with such costly claims, the administration paved the way for using taxpayer funds to cut Obamacare insurers’ losses as well, amounting to a bailout. 

Needless to say, getting a bailout of any kind through Congress, especially one run by Republicans if the GOP takes the Senate in November, will be extremely difficult. 

“I hope this nips in the bud any ideas this overreaching Administration might have of paying out money not appropriated by Congress,” said Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions, who requested the legal opinion along with House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Rep. Fred Upton.

“We had serious concerns with the legality of the Obama administration’s plan from the get go, and the government’s watchdog confirms we were right,” Rep. Upton said.

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Dinesh D'Souza: Holder's Next Job: Crime Boss!

Conservative filmmaker and author Dinesh D’Souza told Breitbart News that the federal government was “out to get me” and tried but failed to “put me away” during a wide-ranging interview at the National Security Action Summit on Monday.

“I know that the government was not only out to get me but to put me away—and put me away in such a significant way that if I got a sixteen-month sentence, for example, I’d be in a federal prison camp from now until the end of next year,” D’Souza said in the interview, conducted for Breitbart News Radio for Sirius XM Patriot Channel 125 and available on demand.

“The chances that I could film in the presidential election year of 2016 would be very low,” D’Souza said. “But interestingly, the zealous prosecution ran into a wall and that wall was called a judge. Interestingly, this was a liberal Democratic judge—a Clinton appointee—and it was way too much for him. He looked at the facts and he decided that what the prosecution wanted was not going to happen.”

D’Souza faced prosecution from the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York for violating campaign finance laws by illegally donating over federal limits and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission. The office of the U.S. Attorney for that district, Democrat Preet Bharara, recommended that after D’Souza pled guilty to the charges he spend 10 to 16 months in prison for his actions. However, U.S. District Judge Richard Berman sentenced D’Souza to no jail time, five years probation, weekly therapy, one day of community service per week of probation time, and he has to pay a $30,000 fine.

When asked if he’s happy with the terms of the sentence he received, D’Souza told Breitbart News, “I am.”

“I think it’s a fair sentence,” D’Souza said. “It’s kind of a tough sentence. But look, I did do something wrong, and I do deserve to be punished. My issue from the beginning was that I need to be punished in the same manner as anyone else who did it who isn’t me. I think that I got a fair judge, so I’m thankful to him for not going along with a very powerful Justice Department and a very powerful U.S. government that would have liked to put me away.”

D’Souza said that if Bharara is nominated by President Barack Obama to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder—as some have suggested Obama might in the wake of Holder’s resignation announcement this week—Republicans in Congress should fight it. 

“Let’s just say that if that happens, I hope the Republicans take the Senate in November because then they can hold government officials accountable in the way that they should be,” D’Souza said.

As for Holder, D’Souza said he might land a post-government job with a “criminal syndicate.”

“I’m really worried about Eric Holder’s job prospects,” D’Souza said. “I just don’t think he’s going to land—but I don’t know maybe there’s a criminal syndicate somewhere looking for a boss with government experience.”

Administration-wide—not just on his specific case—D’Souza said congressional Republicans need to investigate political targeting, and officials in the Obama administration need to “go to jail” if they did engage in such behavior.

“It’s now time to look at this. In civil rights cases you can tell, for example, if blacks are being systematically discriminated against,” D’Souza said. “You look at all the studies and then look at the rate at which someone commits an offense and then you look at the amount of time they’re prosecuted. For example, if blacks commit 10 percent of the crime but are prosecuted 50 percent of the time, that’s very suspicious and that’s prima facie evidence of discrimination. I think we need to study all the IRS audits and look to see if these audits are falling randomly on liberals and conservatives or if there’s a pattern. If there’s a pattern here, then lots of people need to go to jail. This needs to be vigorously prosecuted and so this is where the Republicans have to step up to the plate. This is not a case where it’s simply kind of just speculating and whining. It’s time to hold the government accountable in the way the founders intended.”

D’Souza said the government’s attempts to shut him down have failed, and he is currently planning a major film for mid-2016 release.

“I am definitely going to make a big film in 2016,” D’Souza said. “I’m going to release it in the summer, just like the movie ‘2016’ which came out in 2012. I’m in a very early stage—I’ve been preoccupied with legal problems and I’ve been trying to dodge a bullet, and I’m very glad I’ve been able to do that and so I’ve been pulling blueprints and starting to think about what that movie will look like.”

During the interview, D’Souza laid out how America is currently facing a political “pathological moment,” in large part thanks to the mainstream media—which hasn’t aggressively investigated the Obama administration or vetted the president’s political agenda. 

“The press does not want the first African-American president to fail, and for that reason, the normal lens of analysis and criticism—which is part of what keeps our democracy healthy—is not properly functioning,” D’Souza said. “Obama knows that and therefore he knows he can get away with things. The great line from Julius Caesar is ‘he would not be a wolf if we were not sheep.’ He knows that, from the press’s point of view, they’re being sheep, and therefore he can run amok.”

D’Souza said that the political left has institutionalized itself in America, taking over education, Hollywood, and other entertainment distribution channels and other parts of the culture.

“The left is dominant in that it has the huge institutions on its side,” D’Souza said. “What helps us is we are at a huge moment of opportunity at which the business models of these institutions are obsolete. These gigantic studios, these tyrannical unions, colleges cost way too much, a lot of the old media models are crumbling. So out of this chaos comes hope, and what I’m hoping to do is to create some new institutions in these areas, take advantage of the free market system and technology to not only make rival movies but create a business model that works better than theirs.”

Because of the left’s dominance in American culture, D’Souza said that the right needs to expand its influence on the culture as well—and do things like his documentary films rather than just writing books or fighting day-to-day political and policy battles.

“My last two books, for example, were both number one on the New York Times bestseller list—they sold between 100,000 and 200,000 copies, which is a lot, and I’m certainly happy to be outselling, say, Hillary’s book,” D’Souza said. “But on the other hand, 7 million people saw ‘2016.’ We put one and a half million people in the theater to see ‘America,’ and it’s coming out on DVD in October. So you have a different level of reach. The left has been really effective while conservatives are kind of huddled on ‘how do we take the Senate?’ The left has been moving in higher education and media and Hollywood and taken over the high ground of the culture. So what I’m trying to do is create institutions and megaphones to be able to get out a rival message and contest the leftist hegemony on its own grounds.”

D’Souza said that he’s not thrilled with the GOP establishment, a party that seems to be “slumbering” and “incompetent at best.”

“The 2012 election was the Republicans’ election to lose, and they lost it,” D’Souza said. “This election is a Republican election to lose—I don’t know how it’s going to come out. I sometimes feel like I’m out on the front lines on these battles, and I look around for the RNC and it’s nowhere to be found. So we have a Republican Party that’s slumbering, incompetent at best. The donors who give to the Republican Party need to hold the party accountable. I’m not saying not to help or not to contribute—we need the Republican Party—but we need the Republican Party to fight.”

Moving forward and heading into the 2016 presidential cycle, D’Souza said the Republicans will lose the White House yet again if the GOP keeps shunning the different elements of the conservative movement—national security conservatives, social conservatives, and libertarians or fiscal conservatives.

“There’s no way to win elections without national security conservatives, without social conservatives, and without libertarians,” D’Souza said. “We need all those groups. That coalition, I strongly believe, can be put back together. By and large, entrepreneurs and business guys—big money—they’ve got wives, they’ve got small kids, they are socially conservative. But the social conservative issues need to be articulated in a little bit of a new way, sort of like national security—there’s a little bit of weariness over the way it was done under Bush. So it’s important for conservatives to say we’re not just against Obama and that Bush was right. We have learned some lessons under Bush, and we’re going with a sort of new prudence but also a new idealism into the future.”

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Iowa VA patients not told of Legionnaires' bacteria in hospital water: Report

Patients at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Iowa were not told that deadly Legionella bacteria was found at the facility, the Des Moines Register reported Sunday.

VA officials plan to spend $6.5 million to rid the Iowa City VA hospital of Legionella, which was found in the water pipes. Patients were not told of the presence of the bacteria that causes Legionnaire’s disease, the Register reports.

“There is a very, very low risk involved at these levels,” VA pathologist Stacy Klutts told the Register.

But that was of little comfort to a veteran and former VA hospital employee quoted by the Register, who said he learned of the outbreak from friends who still work there.

“I’m not looking to blame anybody,” Vietnam veteran Dick Allison said. “I only fault them for not telling people about it.”

All plumbing in patient care areas of the 600,000-square-foot facility will be replaced starting next year, according to agency plans cited by the newspaper.

Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports VA officials are investigating whether a Pennsylvania veteran diagnosed with Legionnaires’ might have contracted the disease at an agency healthcare facility.

So far, tests of the medical center in Oakland, Pa., have tested negative for the bacteria.

A Legionnaire’s outbreak in 2011 and 2012 at VA facilities in the Pittsburgh area led to the deaths of six patients and the sickening of at least 22 others.

Subsequent investigations have blamed management failures for the outbreak.

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No Senator Should Vote for Holder Replacement Who Doesn't 'Firmly Reject' Executive Amnesty

Senate Budget Commitee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told Breitbart News exclusively that the replacement for the outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder should publicly “firmly reject” President Barack Obama’s planned executive amnesty, or every U.S. Senator should vote against him or her.

In a Thursday evening statement, Sessions said:

The Attorney General is the top law enforcement position in government. But Mr. Holder’s DOJ has taken numerous actions that have weakened the rule of law in America, and none more dramatically than his political actions that have undermined the immigration laws of the United States. Amazingly, he declared amnesty to be a "civil right" for individuals who entered or remained illegally in the country. Behind the back of the American people, the Justice Department negotiated an agreement with the ACLU to allow deported illegal immigrants to return to the U.S. He reduced prosecutions of illegal immigrants required by the proven Operation Streamline program. He is using tax dollars to provide lawyers for unlawful immigrants. And the President has stated that he is depending on the Attorney General, along with Homeland Security Secretary, to advise him on developing and implementing an executive amnesty.

Sessions noted that the Senate Democrats have played as a team to protect Obama's planned executive amnesty—something the president delayed until after the upcoming midterm election so as to not hurt vulnerable Senate Democrats seeking re-election—but if the president carries through with his plans it would cause an even greater surge in illegal immigration.

"This illegal executive amnesty—which the Senate Democrat Caucus has worked together to protect—would destroy immigration enforcement in America," Sessions said. “It would wipe away the moral authority for our immigration laws and invite a flood of new illegal immigration.”

For those reasons, Sessions said every U.S. Senator should oppose that nominee unless the forthcoming nominee to replace Holder explicitly rejects Obama's planned executive immigration actions.

"We need someone at the Department of Justice who will restore fidelity to our national laws and boundaries," Sessions said. "No Senator should vote to confirm anyone to this position who does not firmly reject the President’s planned executive amnesty—or any other scheme to circumvent our nation’s immigration laws—and who does not pledge to serve the laws and people of the United States.”

With Sessions throwing down the gauntlet like this, this type of a pledge against voting for any attorney general nominee who doesn’t explicitly and publicly reject Obama's planned executive amnesty as a Holder replacement could become a wedge issue in the final 40 days of the 2014 midterm election season. 

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Report: HealthCare.gov Actually Cost Over $2.1 Billion — And Counting

HealthCare.gov alone has cost federal taxpayers $2.1 billion so far, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis — and the feds still aren’t finished building it.

The Obama administration’s most recent estimate on spending related to HealthCare.gov was just $834 million through February 2014. Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Burwell projected in May that through fiscal year 2015, additional costs would bring HealthCare.gov’s grand total to just above $1 billion. 

“The way in which Obamacare has been rolled out has been very messy,” Peter Gosselin, the study author, told Bloomberg News. “One of the reasons it has been implemented in the way it has been, financially, is precisely to deny opponents of the law a clear target.”

Federal officials intentionally spread out HealthCare.gov spending across “dozens of contracts,” according to the report, in a concerted effort to prevent transparency on the health-care website’s true cost.

The bungled process of building HealthCare.gov was characterized by infighting between federal agencies and constant misdirection to federal contractors, according to many emails obtained by Congress.

And despite the massive cost, HealthCare.gov remains woefully incomplete. The back-end operations of the website are reportedly still not finished and the GAO reported this month that HealthCare.gov continues to lack basic security measures.

“Expenditures related to the Affordable Care Act are publicly available and widely known,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman Aaron Albright told Bloomberg. “CMS takes its responsibility for spending taxpayer dollars seriously.” 

The nonpartisan General Accountability Office took aim at CMS this week for failing to keep track of $3.7 billion so far this year, including spending on Obamacare. The agency failed to document and verify money spent on advertising and public relations efforts, according to the GAO report.

“CMS’s processes are inconsistent with certain federal accounting and internal control standards,” the report concluded.

And that’s just HealthCare.gov. The Obama administration also splashed out hundreds of millions on the 14 states and Washington, D.C. that built their own Obamacare exchanges (or at least attempted to). CMS oversees and approves spending for the state marketplaces as well as HealthCare.gov.

Nevada and Oregon are joining HealthCare.gov permanently beginning in November, after spending millions on failed websites. Massachusetts and Maryland also took advantage of millions in federal grants for sites they gave up on — both states are debuting their second tries at Obamacare exchanges in the fall.

While states are rushing to get their own exchanges ready in time (much like last year), the administration still doesn’t have HealthCare.gov ready either. Andy Slavitt, CMS’s new number two, has already warned the public that the second open enrollment period will again be “bumpy.”

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Climate Summit: UN Exempts World's #1 Polluter from Stricter CO2 Enforcement

The European Union and United States government-funded Global Carbon Project (GCP) released their latest Atlas that tracks annual CO2 emissions by 196 countries in cooperation with Sunday’s People’s Climate March and President Obama’s keynote speech at the United Nations Global Climate Summit Tuesday. The GCP report warns that man-made global warming is accelerating and names China as the chief culprit. However, GCP blames consumption in Europe and the United States for high levels of CO2 emissions and supports continued UN exemptions from enforcement for China.

GCP complains that a record 36 billion tonnes of carbon from all human sources were emitted in 2013 due to the global economic recovery. They point out that China is not only the world’s largest emitter of CO2 with a 29% share but also now exceeds the emissions on a per capita basis by the 28 countries in the European Union.

The GCP warns that 66% of the CO2 budget “scientifically established” to limit the man-made global warming to a maximum rise of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) established at the 1992 Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro is being expended faster than expected.

But according to former high-ranking Obama Administration official Dr. Steven Koonin, who is a computational physicist, such climate science and the implications of global warming are not “settled,” and such “misguided’ claims have been used to stifle debate on the matter. He adds, “We often hear that there is a 'scientific consensus' about climate change. But as far as the computer models go, there isn't a useful consensus at the level of detail relevant to assessing human influences.”

The United Nations' setting of mandated CO2 levels has an interesting background. Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit gave each of the 196 UN attendees an equal vote on the future of CO2 enforcement, the negotiating position for the large number of emerging countries was favored over the smaller number of developed nations. The emerging nation caucus used their voting majority to successfully negotiate their own CO2 exemptions as a competitive advantage. The final Earth Summit protocol set per-capita CO2 restrictions that economically hammered the EU and U.S.

When George W. Bush was elected U.S. president in 2000, he was asked by former U.S. Senator and current Defense Secretary Hagel what his administration's position was on climate warming. Bush replied that he took climate change “very seriously” but opposed the proposed Kyoto global warming treaty, because “it exempts 80% of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the US economy”.

The United States in 1992 was the world’s biggest CO2 emitter and still is the largest on a per capita basis. But since 1992, China has grown from 3% to 29% of world’s annual CO2 emissions. China now produces twice the U.S. amount, triple the EU amount, and over four times India’s CO2 emissions.

At the U.N. climate change committee meeting in Warsaw last November, China and India were virtually exempted from having to make annual CO2 reduction “commitments.” The two fastest-growing CO2 emitters will be allowed to continue making loosely defined “contributions” toward reducing CO2 emissions for the next two years.

The reason China is the world’s largest and fastest growing CO2 emitter is that their production and consumption of coal as an energy source has tripled since 1990. China now relies on coal power for approximately 70-80% of its energy needs. According to the International Energy Agency’s Clean Coal Centre, China operates 620 of the 2,300 coal-fired power stations worldwide. China approved 15 new coal mines to support expanded coal-fired electrical generation in July.

Carbon Project researcher Professor Corinne Le Quere from the UK’s University of East Anglia tried to justify China’s CO2 exemption by blaming consumption in Europe and the United States. “In China, about 20% of their emissions are for producing clothes, furniture, even solar panels that are shipped to Europe and America.” He added, “If you look at the emissions in Europe with that perspective, they would be 30% higher if we accounted for those goods that are produced elsewhere.”

This type of bizarre rationalizing of blame for the rise in CO2 emissions on Europe and the United States, no matter what the facts are, explains why manufacturing jobs and wages are booming in China and India and shriveling in Europe and the United States.

President Obama told the UN at the climate summit meeting Tuesday that “We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.” Mr. Obama promoted the executive action he announced this year that mandates cutting pollution from the nation’s power plants by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. He emphasized that the United States would also meet its previous pledge to reduce the nation’s overall carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.

Although the climate summit focused on China as the world’s largest CO2 emitter, Chinese President Xi Jinping chose not to attend. He sent Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, who presented his own figures to make the case that China was “doing its part.” 

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