IRS finds yet another Lois Lerner email account

Lois Lerner had yet another personal email account used to conduct some IRS business, the tax agency confirmed in a new court filing late Monday that further complicates the administration’s efforts to be transparent about Ms. Lerner’s actions during the tea party targeting scandal.

The admission came in an open-records lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has sued to get a look at emails Ms. Lerner sent during the targeting.

IRS lawyer Geoffrey J. Klimas told the court that as the agency was putting together a set of documents to turn over to Judicial Watch, it realized Ms. Lerner had used yet another email account, in addition to her official one and another personal one already known to the agency.

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Intel, Military Officials Fire Back At Hillary’s Over-Classification Tweet

Former intelligence and military officials were swift to reply Friday to Hillary Clinton’s contention that government over-classification of materials are “the real problem,” not her use of an unsecured private email server to conduct official business during her four years as secretary of state.

“Our ridiculous classification rules” are “the real problem,” she tweeted this morning, quoting a former Justice Department official.

Senior military and intelligence officials immediately fired back.

“It’s not up to her to decide what level it’s classified at. It’s up to her to obey the law, and clearly she did not,” Lt. Col. Col James Williamson told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Williamson entered Special Forces in 1988 and retired in 2012.

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Another: GOP Consultant Attacks Levin, Limbaugh, Hannity, Breitbart Fans as ‘Kool-Aid Drinkers’

The Consultant Class continues its serial-meltdown over the rise of Donald Trump. Already this week, and in front of the entire Internet, top GOP consultant Rick Wilson lit himself on fire by politicizing a rape threat against his own child and attacking Ann Coulter as a prostitute who charges extra for “anal.”

Elsewhere on Internet Cheri Jacobus  picked up Wilson’s genius-baton under the deranged belief that the best way to win elections is by marginalizing and insulting the most reliable of Republican voters.

The genius-consultant baton then jumped to Jacob Perry, a Florida-based consultant who went even further in politicizing the rape threat against Wilson’s child (Perry is also the Chief Strategist for a site many refer to as Pocket Full of Mediocrity.)

Perry claims he’s a friend of Wilson’s but that didn’t stop him from gleefully seizing the rape threat as a political opportunity to attack Breitbart News and pretty much everyone else in the conservative movement. As you’ll see below, this Republican consultant has nothing but dismissive contempt for the millions of everyday voters who make up the conservative base and dare listen to Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

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Special Operations Vets Call For Kerry To Strip Hillary Of Security Clearance

A group of special operations veterans and intelligence community officials have formally asked Secretary of State John Kerry to strip former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of her security clearance along with three of her top aides, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

The organization, called the Special Operations Educational Fund, wrote Kerry August 5 asking that he “immediately suspend the security clearances” because of Clinton’s use of a private unsecured email server and domain name that contains classified information. SOF is a 501 (c) 4 nonprofit group.

The group also asked Kerry to administratively suspend the security clearances of Clinton and aides Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan.

The SOEF demands could significantly escalate the email crisis that has engulfed Clinton’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination in recent weeks.

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Obama protects White House insiders, cracks down on low-level leakers

The Obama administration has a history of dealing harshly with those who mishandle classified information — unless the offender resides in the White House inner circle.

The FBI is conducting a security investigation of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s at-home private email server for holding classified material while she was secretary of state. A new poll shows the majority of Americans want a criminal probe, and some conservatives are calling for one.

This administration has investigated and prosecuted more security leakers and people who mishandled secrets than any other in history. It has sent six persons to prison.

But when it came to retired Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was said to be President Obama’s favorite general, the White House refused to cooperate with a special prosecutor. The prosecutor had named Mr. Cartwright as the target of his investigation of leaked secrets about a covert program to foil Iran’s nuclear program.

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Sessions: Trump Plan Is Doing ‘What Politicians Have Been Promising’ For 30 Years

Senator Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) declared that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s immigration plan is “a mainstream plan to do what politicians have been promising to do for 30 years” on Monday’s “Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel.

Sessions said of the plan, which he consulted with Trump on, “Basically, Shannon, it’s just a mainstream plan to do what politicians have been promising to do for 30 years, and haven’t done. These are things like, you have, end the jobs magnet by not allowing people who are here legally to get jobs. You strengthen border enforcement. You stop the visa overstays. Almost half, maybe more now, of illegal entries into the United States are people who come on visas and overstay. These are things that he talks about in his plan that are bread and butter, basic, and need to be done. And if we do them, we’ll be surprised how dramatically we can reduce the illegality. And in addition to that, we need to create an immigration system that serves the interests of the American people. People are hurting today, wages are down. Jobs are down. So, we’ve got to be concerned about them, and making sure that Americans are given the opportunity to get valuable jobs first.”

Sessions was then asked if he believes Trump’s ideas can get passed by Congress. He responded, “you don’t have to pass a lot of laws. Some smart legislation would help, no doubt about it. And I think if a president is elected on the promise to fix this border, and illegality, the American people will insist that reasonable laws get passed. But, basically, utilizing existing law, we can make huge differences, and reduce this illegality, and create a system that serves the national interest. President Obama is just flat-out refusing to enforce basic law, that’s been on the books, sometimes, for a decade.”

Sessions concluded by answering a question on whether H-1B visa reform can be accomplished stating, “I think we’ve already got bipartisan support that would support a plan like Trump’s to fix this H-1B program. And you’ve got to know, one thing I like about his plan, that he emphasizes how this unlawful flow, huge flow of immigration is hammering poor people, African-Americans, Hispanics who are here, struggling to get a higher wage and a better promotion at work. This — they are getting hurt by current law, and I think he’s correct to say we can help them if we do it right.”

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Gowdy Responds: Hillary Blames Investigation On ‘Nonexistent Right-Wing Conspiracy’

Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy responded to Hillary Clinton’s recent accusations that Congress’ Benghazi investigations are the “same old partisan games” on Chris Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday,” saying she has lashed out in frustration and blamed a “nonexistent right-wing conspiracy.”

Clinton, earlier this week in Iowa, stated: “I won’t get down in the mud with them. I won’t play politics with national security or dishonor the memory of those who we lost. I won’t pretend that this is anything other than what it is, the same old partisan games we’ve seen so many times before.”

Gowdy responded to Wallace’s question if the investigation is partisan by noting that investigators are Obama appointees and that Clinton is blaming a conspiracy, rather than herself.

“The inspector general isn’t partisan. Neither one of them. In fact, they were nominated by President Obama and confirmed by a Harry Reid-lead Senate. The FBI is not partisan. I get that she’s frustrated. Her poll numbers of tanking. Folks who never thought about getting in the race are getting in the race,” Gowdy said.

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If Hillary’s Server Was ‘Blank,’ Why Was It Kept At A Data Center In New Jersey?

The new revelation that Hillary Clinton’s private server was made “blank” in June 2013 — but nonetheless stored at a data center in New Jersey — raises a slew of new questions about the former secretary of state’s handling of her emails.

The attorney for Platte River Networks, the Denver-based cybersecurity company Clinton hired shortly after leaving office to handle the server, says that she does not know why the hardware would have been stored in a New Jersey data center if it was “blank.”

“The server that was turned over to the FBI voluntarily yesterday to our knowledge has no information on it,” the attorney, Barbara Wells, told The Daily Caller in a brief phone interview.

On Wednesday, after Platte River Networks gave the server to the FBI, Wells told The Washington Post that the information from it “had been migrated over to a different server for purposes of transition” in June 2013.

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EPA Contractor Behind CO Mine Spill Got $381 Million From Taxpayers

The EPA may have been trying to hide the identity of the contracting company responsible for causing a major wastewater spill in southern Colorado, but the Wall Street Journal has revealed the company’s identity.

Environmental Restoration (ER) LLC, a Missouri-based firm, was the “contractor whose work caused a mine spill in Colorado that released an estimated 3 million gallons of toxic sludge into a major river system,” the WSJ was told by a source familiar with the matter. The paper also found government documents to corroborate what their source told them.

So far, the EPA has refused to publicly name the contracting company used to plug abandoned mines in southern Colorado, despite numerous attempts by The Daily Caller News Foundation and other media outlets to obtain the information. It’s unclear why the agency chose not to reveal the contractor’s name.

What is clear, however, is that ER has gotten $381 million in government contracts since October 2007, according to a WSJ review of data from USAspending.gov. About $364 million of that funding came from the EPA, but only $37 million was given to ER for work they had done in Colorado.

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IRS officials processed zero Tea Party applications in 2011

Officials at the Internal Revenue Service ignored the tax-exempt applications of conservative groups for years at a time, bringing the growth of new Tea Party nonprofits to a standstill in the run-up to President Obama's re-election.

For example, the IRS approved just one conservative group for tax-exempt status between Feb. 2009 and May 2012, according to Americans for Tax Reform.

More evidence of the stonewalling emerged in a 142-page report released last week by the Senate Finance Committee. The report revealed the details of a high-profile congressional investigation into allegations that the IRS had targeted conservative groups.

Poor management was to blame for much of the internal failures that led to the targeting.

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Jeb Worked With Bloomberg Amid $50 Million Anti-Coal Campaign

Presidential candidate and former Gov. Jeb Bush got into some hot water recently over his past work with a foundation run by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for its funding of Planned Parenthood.

What went unnoticed, however, was that Bush worked with Bloomberg as he gave millions to environmental groups to take down the coal industry.

Bush, who’s looking to win the Republican presidential nomination, served as a founding director of the Bloomberg Family Foundation — now called Bloomberg Philanthropies — from 2010 through 2014. During Bush’s second year with the organization, Bloomberg donated $50 million to the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign.

The Sierra Club’s anti-coal campaign took Bloomberg’s money in 2011 to cut coal production 30 percent by 2020 through litigation, lobbying for more environmental regulations and activism. The Beyond Coal campaign has also targeted coal-fired power plants with litigation, most recently forcing the closure of the 200th coal plant in the country.

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Senior Ben Carson Adviser on Red State Snub: This ‘Smear and Outright Lie’ Will Not Stand

GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson’s long-time business manager and friend told Breitbart News that Erick Erickson lied about his reasoning for not inviting Carson to the RedState event in Atlanta over the weekend.

RedState is a wholly owned subsidiary of Salem Communications, although overseen by Erickson—who is a Fox News Contributor. Salem Communications radio host Hugh Hewitt will be co-hosting the next GOP primary debate in California at the Reagan Library.

Erickson told the Washington Examiner he did not invite Carson because he allegedly saw Carson speak at a veteran’s event where Erickson is saying Carson only talked about himself and President Obama.

“I was at two different events for military non-profits in the last year,” Erickson stated. “They were non-profits that had asked Dr. Carson to speak about military veterans and the work he did with the disabled and both times he spent the entire time talking about himself and his battle with the president and it just struck me wrong. And when we were putting together a list of RedState speakers we had a limited selection and I chose not to put Dr. Carson on the list unless the other spots didn’t fill up. The other spots filled up so I didn’t ask him. I was impressed with his debate performance the other night and his closing statement but I just, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Here’s someone that’s supposed to speak on disabled veterans, [speaking] on himself so that’s why I didn’t do it.”

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Donald Trump, Ted Cruz Understand the Immigration Primary

It’s still all the Donald. He was the big man on stage.

They challenged him in that first question about supporting the eventual nominee — whomever it may be — and he was right to refuse. The issues he represents cannot be subordinated to party. One wishes he had hammered the immigration point in that first question, by saying: “Any candidate who doesn’t respond to the threat of uncontrolled immigration cannot represent me.” He’d better understand that’s his signature issue. Other than that, he sounds informed, smart, and presidential. Brilliant on Obamacare. Brilliant on giving money to politicians. Brilliant on immigration.

Cruz did the best after Trump, including pointing out that he was the only one to vote against Rubio’s amnesty, which he called “Schumer’s amnesty.”

Walker was good, but his best moment came after the debate when he made a point with Hannity of saying he wanted to do something about our uncontrolled legal immigration, too.

After that, the rest of them were hapless. None can speak to central issue of our day. They’re all so enthralled by business interests, they’ve convinced themselves that that thing with Eric Cantor didn’t happen.

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FBI investigation of Hillary’s emails is ‘criminal probe’

The FBI investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s unsecured e-mail account is not just a fact-finding venture — it’s a criminal probe, sources told The Post on Wednesday.

The feds are investigating to what extent Clinton relied on her home server and other private devices to send and store classified documents, according to a federal source with knowledge of the inquiry.
“It’s definitely a criminal probe,” said the source. “I’m not sure why they’re not calling it a criminal probe.

“The DOJ [Department of Justice] and FBI can conduct civil investigations in very limited circumstances,” but that’s not what this is, the source stressed. “In this case, a security violation would lead to criminal charges. Maybe DOJ is trying to protect her campaign.”

Clinton’s camp has downplayed the inquiry as civil and fact-finding in nature. Clinton herself has said she is “confident” that she never knowingly sent or received anything that was classified.

The inspector general for the intelligence community has told Congress that of 40 Clinton e-mails randomly reviewed as a sample of her correspondence as secretary of state, four contained classified information.

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Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin emerges as potential liability in 2016 bid

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s closest aide is starting to look like a liability on the campaign trail for the Democratic presidential front-runner.

Huma Abedin, who has been at Mrs. Clinton’s side as her personal assistant — or “body woman” — since the 2008 presidential race, has come under scrutiny for pocketing a $33,000 payout from the State Department for unused leave and using her simultaneous employment inside and outside of government to “deliver favors” to Clinton cronies.

Ms. Abedin also popped up in the email scandal that has dogged Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

A federal judge last week ordered her and another top Clinton aide at the State Department, Cheryl Mills, to attest, under penalty of perjury, that they had turned over all official email in their possession.

The order followed a revelation that Ms. Abedin and Ms. Mills used a private email account for official business, just like their boss, whose secretive email setup with private accounts hosted on a server in Mrs. Clinton’s home in New York has raised questions about her skirting open-records laws and mishandling classified information.

Ms. Abedin, 39, holds the title of vice chairwoman for the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign, but she continues to serve as Mrs. Clinton’s “girl Friday.” She was captured on surveillance video alongside Mrs. Clinton when the former first lady, senator and top diplomat went unnoticed ordering a burrito bowl at a Chipotle restaurant in Ohio on the first road trip for the campaign.

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GAO Says Medicaid’s Size, Complexity Prompt Fraud, Duplication

Medicaid is inherently risky for fraud due to its massive size and bureaucratic complexity – and thanks in part to Obamacar the program is growing quickly, according to the investigative arm of Congress.

Medicaid’s “size and diversity make it vulnerable to improper payments,” the Government Accountability Office reported. These include “payments for treatments or services that were not covered by the program, that were not medically necessary or that were billed for but never provided.”

More than $508 billion was spent on Medicaid in 2014, with an estimated $17.5 billion of that funding improper payments. Expenditures are expected to increase to $529 billion this year.

There were around 72 million participants in 2013 – “roughly one-fifth of the U.S. population,” the report said.

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Federal Judge Who Banned Planned Parenthood Video Releases Once Raised $230,000 For Obama

A California Federal judge who raised $230,000 for President Obama’s presidential campaign approved an injunction Friday afternoon against the Center For Medical Progress, banning the pro-life group from releasing any more Planned Parenthood sting videos.

The National Abortion Federation filed a restraining order against the CMP early Friday morning, and only a few hours later Judge William Orrick, III approved the request to temporarily ban CMP from releasing any more videos. (RELATED: Nine More Undercover Videos Ready To Drop On Planned Parenthood)

Orrick was not only an Obama appointee in 2012 but also a prominent campaign bundler, the Federalist first reported. According to Public Citizen, Judge Orrick raised $200,000 for Obama in 2008 as well as over $30,000 for committees supporting Obama.

Orrick’s approval of NAF’s injunction came just a day after White House Press Secretary John Earnest said in regards to Planned Parenthood, “the President certainly will not support another effort by Republicans to try to defund an organization that offers important and needed healthcare services to women across the country.”

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IG: After Billions In Loans, Almost All Obamacare Co-Ops Were In The Red After Obamacare’s First Year

Almost all of Obamacare’s landmark health insurance co-ops are in financial trouble.

The co-ops were invented by the health-care law — they’re private nonprofits that were awarded a total of $2.4 billion in loans from the federal government, in order to establish nonprofit competition to private health insurance companies. Most of the 23 Obamacare co-ops failed to meet their own enrollment and profitability expectations in 2014, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General — and 21 of 23 totaled up a net loss for the first year of Obamacare’s operation.

That’s to be expected in their first year of operation, according to CMS, but 19 of the 23 nonprofits’ losses exceeded their own projections for the first year. Four co-ops performed so badly that the agency charged with overseeing both the health-care law and the co-ops, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, put them on enhanced oversight or corrective action plans, and two additional co-ops were given low-enrollment warning notifications. but CMS did not establish any criteria or guidance for the fledgling companies to determine whether a co-op was ultimately sustainable at all, according to the report.

The IG report follows independent figures which found that 22 co-ops had reached net losses by the end of 2014. Thomas Miller, a resident health care fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, crunched the numbers in June and told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the net losses reached a record $614 million for 2014. 

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White House refuses to remove IRS chief

President Obama has no intention of removing the embattled head of the Internal Revenue Service, a White House spokesman said Wednesday.

"Commissioner [John] Koskinen is a man of the highest integrity with a steadfast commitment to public service during difficult times," said Eric Schultz, deputy White House press secretary. "His decades of experience turning around both public and private institutions continue to make him the right person to lead this agency."

The White House's defense of Koskinen came two days after Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee publicly called for Koskinen's removal.

Twenty-one members of the committee sent a lengthy letter to the president outlining evidence that Koskinen had provided false testimony, presided over the destruction of evidence and failed to adequately search for requested documents.

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Israeli Spy Sentenced To Life In Prison For Espionage Will Be Released

The United States Parole Commission announced Tuesday that Jonathan Pollard, a spy sentenced to life in prison in 1985 for sending classified documents to the Israeli government, will soon be released.

The date of his parole was scheduled long in advance, but it was up to the government panel to decide whether to extend his punishment, The New York Times reports. The commission voted unanimously in favor of release.

For 30 years, Pollard has sat in a North Carolina prison, after he was caught shipping suitcases of sensitive documents to the Israeli government. At the time, Pollard was a civilian Navy analyst. He tried to attain asylum at the Israeli embassy but was spurned. The FBI then arrested him. Israel initially refused to say he was their spy, but in 1998, finally admitted to the relationship.

As the Department of Justice has no objection, Pollard will walk November 21.

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