Mediaboss Marketing

The New York Times blamed former Obama administration officials for releasing information that a U.S. general says allowed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi to slip away from American forces.

Gen. Tony Thomas, oversees Special Operations Command, told Fox News Catherine Herridge last week that his team was particularly close to al Baghdadi in May 2015 after killing a top ISISofficial,Abu Sayyaf, and capturing his wife, who reportedly providedintelligence to U.S. forces. The Pentagon announced Sayyafs death and the capture of his wife in a press release the same day.

The NYT published a storyon June 8, 2015 titled,A Raid on ISIS Yields a Trove of Intelligence,citing unnamed U.S. officials who shared confidential intelligence assessments with the NYT.

U.S. President Barack Obama (3rd L) and members of his delegation, including Defense Secretary Ash Carter (L) and Secretary of State John Kerry (2nd L), sit down to meet with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker alongside the NATO Summit in Warsaw, Poland July 8, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The NYT cited five senior American officials who provided additional details about the materials recovered from the house of Abu Sayyaf, a nom de guerre for a Tunisian militant whom American authorities have since identified as Fathi ben Awn ben Jildi Murad al-Tunisi. The officials, according to the NYT, spoke only on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence assessments.

Information obtained from the 2015 raid was a very good lead, Gen. Thomas said last week. Unfortunately, it was leaked in a prominent national newspaper about a week later and that lead went dead. Thomas did not name the NYT specifically, but Herridge noted that he appeared to be referencing the NYT story.

Following Fox News reporting on Gen. Thomass comments, President Trump said in a tweet that The Failing New York Times foiled U.S. attempt to kill the single most wanted terrorist, Al-Baghdadi. Trump accused the NYT of putting their sick agenda over National Security.

The paper ran a fact check articleon Sunday disputing Trumps claims. The NYT blamed instead the Obama officials who released the information. NYT reporter Michael Gordon noted that the information in the Times article on June 8 came from United States government officials who were aware that the details would be published.

Gordon also questioned then-Defense Secretary Ash Carters decision to publish a statement about the successful raid.

If the military wanted to exploit the information from Umm Sayyaf about Mr. Baghdadis movements, why did the Pentagon rush to announce her capture on the day of the raid? Gordon asked.

The NYT article stated as fact that the papers reporting hadnt foiled an attempt by the United States military to kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State.

Continue reading here:
NYT Blames Obama Officials For Foiled Attack On ISIS Leader - The Daily Caller

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Westchester Beats Obama Wall Street Journal (subscription) Westchester County Chief Executive Rob Astorino spent seven years fighting Obama-era Department of Housing and Urban Development accusations that his county's zoning laws are racist. Now HUD has conceded that the suburban New Yorker was right ...

Original post:
Westchester Beats Obama - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

In March of 2016, President Barack Obama granted Carol Denise Richardson a commutation of the life sentence she received in June 2006 after being convicted on two counts of conspiring to distribute crack cocaine and other drug-related charges. Her long criminal history included two previous felony drug offenses, which brought her a lifetime sentence for her later convictions.

Richardson was one of 1,715 federal inmates, including 567 others serving life sentences, selected by the Obama administrations far-reaching clemency program. A major focus of the clemency effort was easing punishments meted out to nonviolent drug offenders serving lengthy sentences.

When she was released through the clemency program from a federal prison for women in Aliceville, Alabama on July 28, 2016, Richardson had served almost 10 years of her sentence. A condition of her release was that she remain under court supervision for the next 10 years.

But less than a year later, on April 13 this year, Richardson was arrested in the Houston suburb of Pasadena for allegedly stealing $60 worth of laundry detergent. Her court-appointed lawyer said she planned to sell the detergent to buy drugs, since she had relapsed into addiction to crack. In addition to the theft arrest, federal prosecutors said Richardson had violated five other conditions of her release among them failing to tell the court of her arrest or her change of address, and having been fired from a job for not showing up for work.

Now 49, Richardson lives in the Galveston area and has four children and two grandchildren. Her former husband, Eskico Garner, 37 years her senior, died in prison after drawing a 30-year sentence (later reduced to 20 years) for heading up a drug operation.

At a June 8 hearing, federal district Judge Keith Ellison voiced disappointment that Richardson had squandered the new opportunity she had received when her former sentence was commuted. He ordered her back to prison for 14 months, to be followed by a five-year supervised release. The judge also noted that he would make successful completion of a drug rehabilitation program a condition of her release.

Richardsons lawyer requested that she be referred to a drug rehab program and questioned why she had not been allowed to take part in a 500-hour residential program offered in prison. The judge replied that, as an inmate serving a life sentence, she had not been eligible for that drug rehabilitation program while she had been incarcerated, under Federal Bureau of Prisons policy.

According to CAN-DO, a pro-clemency activist group which worked to gain clemency for Richardson and others, while incarcerated, the Texas grandmother completed a 40-hour nonresidential drug abuse program less than a year before receiving her presidential grant of clemency.

Amy Povah, the groups founder and herself a clemency recipient who spent over nine years in prison due to her husbands ecstasy-manufacturing operation, notes Richardson suffers from bi-polar disorder, has twice attempted suicide, and may have lost access to her medications after being released. Reportedly, after being released, she also became involved with a man who was a bad influence on her, resumed using drugs, and stopped keeping in contact with her family.

Richardson's case underscores the need for rehabilitative approaches to incarceration, and raises the question as to whether the simple use of illicit drugs should result in a prison sentence. Povah says clemency was not wasted on Richardson, because she "did not hurt anyone but herself," and asserted that society's attitudes toward addiction must change, unless we're willing to lock up tens of millions of addicts for the behavior associated with addiction. The current drug war, she says, is further fuelled by racial bigotry. "If Carol had been born into a white, affluent family, its doubtful she would be in this current situation," Povah wrote in a Huffington Post op-ed.

Christopher Zoukis is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Co., 2014) and Prison Education Guide (Prison Legal News Publishing, 2016). He can be found online at ChristopherZoukis.com and PrisonerResource.com.

The Morning Email

Wake up to the day's most important news.

Read more:
Texas Grandmother Freed by Obama Heading Back to Prison - HuffPost

Long before he became President Donald Trumps White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci was a simple hedge fund manager getting shut down by Barack Obama.

In 2010, as the nation was digging its way out of the 2008 financial collapse, Scaramucci took the microphone at a CNBC town hall to ask the then-president a former Harvard classmate and sometimes opponent on the basketball court whether he planned to stop whacking at the Wall Street piata.

Scaramucci didnt get the answer he was looking for.

I have been amused over the last couple years, this sense of somehow me beating up on Wall Street, Obama said. I think most folks on Main Street feel they got beat up on.

The line was met with applause.

In a four-minute response to Scaramuccis question, Obama discussed the need to nurture a vibrant financial sector, but to do so in a responsible way and took aim at critics who compared his practical financial reform efforts to Adolf Hitler storming Poland.

Me saying, Maybe you should be taxed more like your secretary, when youre pulling home a billion dollars or a hundred million dollars a year I dont think is me being extremist or me being anti-business, Obama said.

The White House appointed Scaramucci to the role of White House communications director on Friday. He had previously made donations to Obama, and has made anti-Trump comments in the past.

In a Twitter rant early Saturday morning, Trump said Scaramucci would have endorsed him early on if the hedge fund manager had known he was running.

Here is the original post:
Scaramucci once asked Barack Obama on live TV if he'd be softer on Wall Street. It didn't end well. - Mic

ASPEN, Colo. Two former senior Obama administration intelligence officials on Friday expressed anger at President Trumps statements disparaging the intelligence community and disbelief at his embrace of Russia.

In remarkably strong terms and in their first extensive remarks on the topic since leaving office on Jan.20, former CIA director John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. let loose on Trump, who before taking office had compared his intelligence community to Nazi Germany.

That was a terrible, insulting affront to the rank and file completely inappropriate, over-the-top, Clapper said at the Aspen Security Forum. He said he could not let that pass and had called Trump to register his displeasure.

Brennan said its interesting that Trump will invoke U.S. intelligence when it suits his foreign policy aims in North Korea, Syria or Iran. But when its inconsistent with ... preconceived notions as well as maybe preferences to what the truth would be and the analysts conclusions are disparaged, thats when Jim Clappers blood and my blood boils, he said.

A case in point is the intelligence communitys assessment made public in January that Putin ordered a campaign to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election, sow discord, undermine Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump win.

The intelligence chiefs, including then-FBI Director James B. Comey, briefed Trump on Jan.6 at Trump Tower in New York.

What we did do is give him the benefit of the evidence, which they could not share with the public, Clapper said. He added: I thought it was pretty compelling.

That day, Trump did not push back on it, Clapper said. But since then, Trump has expressed doubts that the intelligence showed Moscows culpability. I think it could very well have been Russia, but I think it could well have been other countries, Trump said at a speech in Poland a day before he met with Putin this month. Nobody really knows for sure.

That contradiction of his own intelligence community, Clapper said, put him at a great disadvantage in the run-up to his meeting with President Putin.

The veteran intelligence figures whose years of service together total more than seven decades were remarkably candid, with Clapper showing some gallows humor. I was kind of hopeful that after [Trump] got rid of the two chief Nazis John and me then maybe things would have improved.

He added: Its liberating to be a former official.

Brennan said he was dismayed by the photo op of Trump leaning over and telling Putin its an honor to be with you. That, he said, was not the honorable thing to say. The Russian leader assaulted one of the foundational pillars of our democracy our electoral system ... invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, has suppressed and repressed political opponents in Russia and has caused the death or killed many of them.

Said Brennan: For someone who knows the art of the deal, I thought it was a very, very bad negotiating tactic.

Asked by the moderator, CNNs Wolf Blitzer, why Trump seemed so uncritical of Russia, Brennan said that he found incongruous Trumps position toward the Kremlin and the negative things he says about U.S. intelligence agencies.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is conducting an investigation into whether Trump or his associates coordinated with Moscow in the election meddling. The probe has upset Trump, who in May fired Comey, who was then running the probe. Trump has accused Muellers team of having conflicts of interest that undercut their credibility, and he has not disavowed the possibility that he might fire Mueller.

If Trump attempts to fire Mueller, I hope that our members of Congress are going to stand up and say, Enough is enough, Brennan said.

He added that he thought it would be the obligation of executive branch officials to refuse to carry out such an order.

On Dec.29, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia over its election interference. The sanctions included the seizure of two Russian compounds that the administration said were used in part for spying. The Trump administration reportedly is considering returning them to Moscows custody.

What have the Russians done to deserve getting them back? Clapper said.

I dont see any earthly reason to do that, Brennan added.

At the end of their panel discussion, Clapper and Brennan received a standing ovation.

Read the original post:
Former Obama spy chiefs upbraid Trump for his remarks about his intelligence agencies - Washington Post