In Judicial Watch’s Weekly Update Tom Fitton exposes the blatant
corruption of the Deep State against President Donald Trump and his Administration.
Fitton also delves into a Federal Judge telling
the Department of Army to reconsider its refusal to award Staff Sgt.
Joshua Berry a Purple Heart for wounds received from Islamic Terrorist Nidal
Malik Hasan during the Fort Hood Massacre in 2009.
Staff Sgt. Joshua Berry –
Wounded at Ft. Hood
In case you haven’t figured it out, Deep State is simply
another name for the Democratic Party. And the Dems have string pullers largely
embodied under the auspices of former President Barack Hussein Obama. And at
the risk of sounding the Conspiracy Theorist nut, you can globalist string
pullers such as George Soros.
JRH 9/8/18
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********************
Weekly Update: Strzok Drafted Comey’s Letter to Congress
About Weiner’s Laptop
Email sent by Tom Fitton
Email sent 9/7/2018 5:31 PM
Judicial
Watch (online version)
Strzok’s ‘Fingerprints’ Are on Comey’s Letter About the
Weiner Laptop
We have added two new pieces to the giant jigsaw puzzle
showing the effort to undermine President Trump. They show more of the workings
of the disgraced former FBI Director James Comey and fired FBI official Peter
Strzok.
We have released 424
pages of FBI records, including an email revealing that Strzok
created the initial draft of the October 2016 letter Comey sent to Congress
notifying lawmakers of the discovery of Hillary Clinton emails on the laptop of
disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
Another email suggests that the FBI had not yet completed
its review of Clinton’s emails by the time Comey sent a second
letter to Congress on November 6, 2016, reconfirming his
belief that Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be charged with a crime.
The records were produced as a result of a June 2018 Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed to respond to a
September 1, 2017, request (Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No.
1:18-cv-01448)). Judicial Watch is seeking:
1. All drafts of James Comey’s statement closing the Clinton email
investigation, from his original draft in April or May 2016 to the final
version.
2. All records of communications between or among FBI officials
regarding Comey’s draft statement closing the Clinton email investigation,
including all memoranda and/or analyses of the factual and/or legal
justification for his July 5, 2016 announcement regarding his decision not to
seek Mrs. Clinton’s prosecution.
3. All records previously provided to the Office of Special Counsel
in the course of its now-closed Hatch Act investigation of Mr. Comey.
The documents reveal that on October 27, 2016, Peter
Strzok emailed other
senior FBI officials a draft notice letter from Comey to Congress about the
Weiner laptop discovery and the reopening of the Clinton investigation. The
emails indicated that Strzok and another official Jon (Last Name Unknown)
authored the notification to Congress. The notification, according the
DOJ IG, came a full month after the emails were discovered by the
FBI on the Weiner laptop.
According to the documents, at 11:04 p.m. on Saturday,
November 5, 2016, FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki sent Comey an
email containing a redacted draft document which he referred
to as a “New Proposal” saying: “Folks, Per our 1000pm conversation, below is a
revised straw man for discussion. Again, we could use this if the review when
completed supports our conclusions. My comments again in ALL CAPS and bold
italics.”
Rybicki’s “New Proposal … straw man” apparently refers to a
draft of Comey’s letter to Congress concerning the FBI’s review of the 650,000
Clinton emails found on Weiner’s laptop. At the time of the Rybicki email,
Comey was preparing his letter informing Congress of the FBI’s findings, and
according to page
390 of the June 2018 report from the DOJ Office of the
Inspector General, the deliberations regarding the letter began on the
afternoon of November 3 and concluded “very early on November 6.”
Despite Rybicki’s email suggesting late on November 5 that
the review of the new emails had not been completed, Comey’s November 6 letter
to Congress stated, “[W]e reviewed all of the communications
that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State. Based on
our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with
respect to Secretary Clinton.”
Comey’s “conclusions” in July were that no charges should be
filed against Clinton, despite her repeatedly having sent classified
information over her unsecured, non-State-Department server. Comey later
admitted that he had drafted his July exoneration more than a month earlier.
Real Clear Investigations’ reporter Paul Sperry recently
reported that “only 3,077 of the 694,000 emails [found on the
Weiner laptop] were directly reviewed for classified or incriminating
information. Three FBI officials completed that work in a single 12-hour spurt
the day before Comey again cleared Clinton of criminal charges.”
These new documents provide more details of the corrupt and
dishonest FBI investigation of the incredible revelations that Clinton’s
classified and other emails were present on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. When will
the Sessions DOJ and Wray FBI finally begin an honest investigation of Hillary
Clinton’s national security crimes?
In a related Judicial Watch lawsuit, the State
Department told
the court in October 2017: “The State Department identified
approximately 2,800 work-related documents among the documents provided by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
In January
2018, in accordance with a court
order, the State Department began turning Weiner emails over to us.
Initially, 18
classified emails were found in the 798
documents produced by the State Department.
Further examples of our work in this case on your behalf can
be found here.
We’ve helped the father of a deceased Army sergeant get a
step closer to winning the recognition his son deserves for his role in a
terrorist attack within our borders.
U.S. District Court Judge Christopher R. Cooper has ordered the
Army to reconsider its decision denying a Purple Heart to Sgt. Berry for
injuries sustained in the 2009 international terrorist attack at Fort Hood,
Texas.
If the Army wishes to stick with the denial, it must
sufficiently explain why Sgt.
Berry is not entitled to the Purple Heart.
On remand, the Army, assuming it
wishes to stick with its determination, must explain why Berry is not entitled
to a Purple Heart and do so with sufficient clarity that “a court can measure”
the denial “against the ‘arbitrary or capricious’ standard of the
[Administrative Procedures Act].”
On October 12, 2017, we filed a
lawsuit on behalf of Sgt. Berry’s father, Howard M. Berry, who
is challenging the Army’s denial of the Purple Heart under the Administrative
Procedures Act (APA) (Howard
M. Berry v. Mark Esper, Secretary of the Army, et al. (No.
1:17-cv-02112)).
Following the Fort Hood attack, the Secretary of Defense
declined to recognize the mass shooting as an international terrorist attack
against the United States. Instead, the attack was characterized as “workplace
violence.” As a result, active duty service members injured in the attack were
ineligible for the Purple Heart, among other awards and benefits.
In response, Congress enacted legislation in 2014 mandating
that service members killed or wounded in an attack targeting members of the
armed forces and carried out by an individual in communication with and
inspired or motivated by a foreign terrorist organization be eligible for the
Purple Heart.
As a result, in 2015, the Secretary of the Army announced
that service members injured or killed in the Fort Hood attack were eligible
for the Purple Heart if they met the regulatory criteria.
The Purple Heart is not a “recommended” decoration for
soldiers killed or wounded in combat or under attack. Rather, a soldier is
entitled to a Purple Heart upon meeting specific criteria. Sgt. Berry met the
regulatory criteria for an award of the Purple Heart.
Sgt. Berry suffered a dislocated left shoulder during the
November 5, 2009, terrorist attack on Fort Hood by Maj. Nidal Hasan. Hasan, who
admitted during his 2013 court martial that he had been influenced by al Qaeda,
killed 13 people and injured 30 others.
In witness statements given to the U.S. Army Criminal
Investigative Command (“CID”) and in a separate statement given to a Texas
Ranger, Sgt. Berry had estimated that Hasan fired 30-40 rounds outside Building
42004 at Ft. Hood. Sgt. Berry told those around him to get down on the floor
and stay away from the doors and windows. When Sgt. Berry heard gunshots hit
the metal doors near him, he leaped over a desk to take cover and, in so doing,
dislocated his left shoulder. He then heard Hasan trying to kick in the doors.
According to a witness statement from another individual, Hasan fired three
rounds at the briefing room doors.
Mr. Berry applied for a posthumous award of the Purple Heart
to his son. The U.S. Army Decorations Board denied Mr. Berry’s application. In
April 2015, the Army awarded the Purple Heart to 47 service members injured in
the Fort Hood attack. Sgt. Berry was not among them.
On April 17, 2016, upon Mr. Berry’s application for review,
a three-member panel of the Army Board for Correction of Military Records
recommended that all Army records concerning Sgt. Berry be corrected to award
Sgt. Berry the Purple Heart. The panel found “[t]here is no question that [Sgt.
Berry]’s injury met the basic medical criteria for award of the [Purple
Heart].” The Board’s eight-page determination provided a detailed analysis of
“the degree to which the enemy (i.e., the terrorist) caused [Sgt. Berry’s]
injury.”
A few months later, however, Deputy Assistant Secretary of
the Army (Review Boards) Francine C. Blackmon issued a single paragraph
memorandum rejecting the Corrections Board’s recommendation:
I have reviewed the findings,
conclusions, and Board member recommendations. I find there is not sufficient
evidence to grant relief. Therefore, under the authority of 10 U.S.C. § 1552, I
have determined that the facts do not support a conclusion that his injury met
the criteria for a Purple Heart.
In his ruling, Judge Cooper said the court could not
“meaningfully evaluate the reasoning behind” Blackmon’s decision. Decisions
which are “utterly unreviewable,” the judge added “must be vacated as arbitrary
and capricious.” Judge Cooper noted the Army’s final memorandum:
provides no meaningful
analysis—only a boilerplate determination “that the facts do not support a
conclusion that [Berry’s] injury met the criteria for a Purple Heart.” Why not?
Was there conflicting evidence regarding how immediate of a threat Hasan posed
to Berry as he sat inside the building? Was the evidence clear but the Deputy
Assistant Secretary thought that Berry could have taken cover without injuring
himself? Or did she read the regulations as categorically taking the Purple
Heart off the table for service members injured while taking cover?
The denial letter provides no
hints. In turn, the Court cannot meaningfully evaluate the reasoning behind it.
That is enough to warrant remand.
We are thrilled by the court’s ruling and hope the Army
quickly comes to its senses and finally awards Sgt. Berry a well-deserved
Purple Heart.
You will no longer wonder how Hillary Clinton got away with
using a non-government email system housed in her home basement when you read
this incredible story from
our Corruption Chronicles blog. And you’ll wonder if the
government learned anything at all from 9/11.
Though it claims the 9/11 attacks
“reenergized” its mission, the State Department branch responsible for spotting
visa and passport fraud fails to practice basic security protocols, leaving the
nation extremely vulnerable to foreign threats. To keep potential terrorists
from entering the United States, the monstrous agency with a $37 billion annual
budget uses outdated machines that are poorly monitored and fails to protect
data and perform basic security scans, according to a distressing federal
audit. The report documents the alarming inefficiencies in a
decades-old system—Bureau of Consular Affairs Fraud Prevention Program
(CA/FPP)—used by the State Department to determine if foreigners seeking U.S.
visas are being candid about their identity and where they have traveled. The
goal is to oversee and coordinate the integrity of U.S. visa and citizenship
processes by stopping fraud in the visa and passport system, a crucial tool to
protect national security.
It turns out that the State
Department’s security team is a bit of a joke, according to the incredible
lapses documented in the report, which was made public recently by the agency’s
Office of Inspector General (OIG). The team doesn’t even bother to patch the
system, scan it for computer viruses or audit for evidence of breaches or
compromises by hackers. In short, the State Department consular division
ignores basic information security practices in this essential program used to
screen potential threats. Nearly two decades after the worst terrorist attack
on American soil, this is incredibly disturbing. In fact, the report states
that “the events of September 11, 2001, reenergized CA/FPP’s mission.” Not
enough, apparently. “OIG found deficiencies that included shared passwords and
lack of access control lists or visitor logs,” the watchdog writes in its
report. In addition, the flawed system’s “security officer did not perform
regular patch management or anti-virus scanning on the network or regular audit
and accountability reviews to identify data loss or potential intruder
activities.”
It gets better, or rather, more
enraging. The OIG found that no one monitors the server and the State
Department doesn’t keep adequate logs of who accesses the information on the
database. In fact, a SharePoint site established by the agency a decade ago to
track “possible consular malfeasance” has never even been examined. Auditors
found that management was not even aware that the system had never undergone an
assessment to determine whether it contained information that exceeded
SharePoint’s security categorization. “Without applying appropriate controls,
the case management system and its information are vulnerable to unauthorized
access or compromise,” the report states. This indicates that breaches could
very well have occurred, but we’ll never know for sure thanks to the
government’s incompetence. This may seem inconceivable to most Americans as the
nation faces serious threats from radical elements.
OIG investigators gathered
mountains of evidence in the course of their probe, which considered interviews
with hundreds of State Department personnel and contractors as well as
observations of daily operations and written questionnaires. This includes 178
interviews and 224 questionnaires completed by consular officers in the field
as well as 54 filled out by agency employees and contractors domestically. The
watchdog makes a multitude of recommendations to fix this laughable “security”
system, but this very basic one sticks out: “The Bureau of Consular Affairs
should implement a website content management process for the Office of Fraud
Prevention Programs that includes a dedicated team responsible for the regular
updating of website content.” Another simple recommendation is that the State
Department’s Office of Fraud Prevention Programs implement required security
controls in accordance with federal standards. It’s troubling that the agency
watchdog has to suggest these elementary, common sense approaches to a program
that is so imperative to national security.
Then again, this is the same agency
that allowed Hillary Clinton to traffic
highly classified information on an unsecure, personal email
server. It is also the agency run by high-level officials who knew weak
security at U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide could result in a tragedy
like Benghazi long before Islamic jihadists raided the Special Mission, killing
four Americans.
Every big organization has IT troubles, but this ineptitude
imperils our country.
Until next week …
+++++++++++++++++++
Posted by Judicial Watch
Streamed live 9/7/18
Deep State Sedition against Trump, Court Victory for Ft.
Hood Soldier, Mueller-Weiner Laptop Docs, NEW Fusion GPS/Steele Docs.
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