This maybe the source document for the President’s wiretapping belief

 

EXCLUSIVE: FBI ‘Granted FISA Warrant’ Covering Trump Camp’s Ties To Russia

 

By Louise Mensch | 10:18 pm, November 7, 2016

Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.

Contrary to earlier reporting in the New York Times, which cited FBI sources as saying that the agency did not believe that the private server in Donald Trump’s Trump Tower which was connected to a Russian bank had any nefarious purpose, the FBI’s counter-intelligence arm, sources say, re-drew an earlier FISA court request around possible financial and banking offenses related to the server. The first request, which, sources say, named Trump, was denied back in June, but the second was drawn more narrowly and was granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russia’s Alfa Bank. While the Times story speaks of metadata, sources suggest that a FISA warrant was granted to look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US persons.

 

The FBI agents who talked to the New York Times, and rubbished the ground-breaking stories of Slate ( Franklin Foer) and Mother Jones (David Corn) may not have known about the FISA warrant, sources say, because the counter-intelligence and criminal sides of the FBI often work independently of each other employing the principle of ‘compartmentalization’.

The FISA warrant was granted in connection with the investigation of suspected activity between the server and two banks, SVB Bank and Alfa Bank. However, it is thought in the intelligence community that the warrant covers any ‘US person’ connected to this investigation, and thus covers Donald Trump and at least three further men who have either formed part of his campaign or acted as his media surrogates. The warrant was sought, they say, because actionable intelligence on the matter provided by friendly foreign agencies could not properly be examined without a warrant by US intelligence as it involves ‘US Persons’ who come under the remit of the FBI and not the CIA. Should a counter-intelligence investigation lead to criminal prosecutions, sources say, the Justice Department is concerned that the chain of evidence have a basis in a clear  warrant.

In June, when the first FISA warrant was denied, the FBI was reportedly alarmed at Carter Page’s trip to Moscow and meetings with Russian officials, one week before the DNC was hacked. Counter intelligence agencies later reported to both Presidential candidates that Russia had carried out this hack; Donald Trump said publicly in the third debate that ‘our country has no idea’ if Russia did the hacking. The discovery of the Trump Tower private Russian server, however, communicating with Alfa Bank, changed matters, sources report.

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To further complicate the story, the FISA warrant was allegedly granted in part because of the involvement of Vladimir Putin’s own daughters. One is married to a senior official at Gazprom, where Carter Page and Paul Manafort reportedly have holdings; another to Kirill Shamalov, a banking official.

The fact that the alleged warrant was a FISA warrant is itself significant. The court exists to grant warrants to examine cases concerned with Foreign Intelligence.

Pursuant to FISA, the Court entertains applications submitted by the United States Government for approval of electronic surveillance, physical search, and other investigative actions for foreign intelligence purposes. Most of the Court’s work is conducted ex parte as required by statute, and due to the need to protect classified national security information.

Bradley P. Moss is a national security lawyer. He told us:

If a FISA warrant was issued, it does not necessarily mean that the court considered any U.S. persons as literal ‘spies.’ I can imagine an argument having been made that there was probable cause to believe they were “agents of influence” who were unwittingly being influenced by a foreign power.

If the operation concerns suspected money laundering involving a foreign government, the FISA warrant could theoretically encompass U.S. persons in that limited context. A FISA warrant is authorization to collect evidence, not to arrest.

On October 9th, the Trump campaign released a large number of documents pointing out what they alleged were Hillary Clinton’s ties to Russia.  On October 12th, rumors of a FISA warrant started to surface online.  Donald Trump’s campaign had not answered requests for comment on the matter at time of going to press.

Above is from:  https://heatst.com/world/exclusive-fbi-granted-fisa-warrant-covering-trump-camps-ties-to-russia/

 

The Washington Post alleges the connection.

 

This former British lawmaker is at the heart of the Trump wiretap allegations

5 / 27

The Washington Post

Karla Adam1 hr ago

 

© Stefan Wermuth /AFP via Getty Images Louise Mensch in 2012.

LONDON — A former British legislator is at the heart of the Trump administration’s explosive allegation that President Barack Obama was spying on him during the 2016 campaign.

But who exactly is Louise Mensch?

For starters, the politician-turned-journalist is the writer behind an article published on the eve of the election titled: “EXCLUSIVE: FBI ‘Granted FISA Warrant’ Covering Trump Camp’s Ties To Russia.”

The article, published on the right-leaning, libertarian website Heat Street, did not create much of a stir at the time. But it has come under the spotlight after Trump, in a tweetstorm over the weekend, accused Obama of wiretapping his offices during the election campaign. Trump compared the alleged bugging to the Watergate scandal, but he has not offered any evidence to back up his claims.

In tweets on Monday, Mensch emphasized that her reporting does not back up Trump’s wiretapping claim, even though the White House cited her article to justify the allegation. She stressed that her reporting refers to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrant and does not mention anything about wiretapping.

Over the weekend, the White House cited reports “from BBC, Heat Street, New York Times, Fox News, among others” to justify the claims. Former Obama administration officials and aides have denied the accusation.

After combing through these news reports, The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler concluded that the piece by Mensch in Heat Street was “the most important” of the lot.

In her report, published Nov. 7, Mensch said the FBI was granted a FISA court warrant in October “giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.”

She cited “two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community” as evidence for those claims.

Mensch, who is based in New York, said her sources contacted her because of her outspoken backing for the intelligence community. She has, for instance, called Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified documents, “a loathsome traitor.”

“They gave me one of the most closely guarded secrets in intelligence,” she said, referring to her sources. Speaking to the Guardian, a left-leaning British newspaper, she added: “People are speculating why someone trusted me with that. Nobody met me in a darkened alley in a fedora, but they saw me as someone who has political experience and is their friend. I am a pro-national security partisan. I don’t have divided loyalties.”

Mensch, 45, is a force on social media and describes herself on Twitter as a “Conservative. Feminist. Optimist. Patriot.”

Anyone who follows her on Twitter — and more than 170,000 people do — knows that she is not a Trump supporter and has been probing Trump-Russia links for some time.

Her name also appeared in the hacked emails of John Podesta, the former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. In an email she sent to the Creative Artists Agency that was forwarded to Podesta, Mensch described herself as a “committed Republican” who was concerned about a Trump presidency and offered a suggestion for a campaign ad for Clinton.

In Britain, Mensch is best known for her stint as a Conservative lawmaker and for her work as a successful chick-lit novelist under her maiden name, Louise Bagshawe.

She resigned as a lawmaker in 2012, saying it “proved impossible to balance the needs of my family.” The mother of three moved to New York to live with her husband, Peter Mensch, manager of the bands Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Although she served as a member of Parliament for only two years, she quickly became a high-profile figure, partly because of her leading role in a parliamentary committee investigating phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid.

Mensch was one of four Conservative lawmakers on the committee who refused to endorse the panel’s conclusions. The committee’s description of Murdoch as “not a fit person” to run a major international company, Mensch said, was “partisan” and unjustified. She also apologized to the broadcaster Piers Morgan after falsely accusing him of admitting to phone hacking.

Mensch was regularly featured in the news when she was a politician. She was once contacted by an investigative journalist who claimed to have pictures proving that Mensch had taken drugs in a nightclub in the 1990s with the violinist Nigel Kennedy.

Mensch responded in a statement by saying it was “highly probable” and apologized for her dancing.

“Since I was in my twenties, I’m sure it was not the only incident of the kind; we all do idiotic things when young. I am not a very good dancer and must apologise to any and all journalists who were forced to watch me dance that night at Ronnie Scott’s,” she said.

She works as an executive for News Corp., a media company owned by Murdoch. She helped to launch Heat Street last year but left that role in December and is focusing on creating digital media projects for the company.

Washington Post :  http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/this-former-british-lawmaker-is-at-the-heart-of-the-trump-wiretap-allegations/ar-AAnU2xB?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Trump, citing no evidence, accuses Obama of ‘Nixon/Watergate’ plot to wiretap Trump Tower before the election

 

By Philip Rucker, Ellen Nakashima and Robert Costa March 4 at 2:20 PM

President Trump arrives Thursday to speak to Navy and shipyard personnel aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford in Newport News, Va. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

President Trump on Saturday angrily accused former president Barack Obama of orchestrating a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to tap the phones at his Trump Tower headquarters last fall in the run-up to the election.

While citing no evidence to support his explosive allegation, Trump said in a series of four tweets sent Saturday morning that Obama was “wire tapping” his New York offices before the election in a move he compared to McCarthyism. “Bad (or sick) guy!” he said of his predecessor, adding that the surveillance resulted in “nothing found.”

Trump alleges wiretapping by Obama; gives no evidence

In a series of tweets, President Trump accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping him in October during the late stages of the presidential election campaign, but offered no evidence to support the allegation. (Reuters)

Trump offered no citations nor did he point to any credible news report to back up his accusation, but he may have been referring to commentary on Breitbart and conservative talk radio suggesting that Obama and his administration used “police state” tactics last fall to monitor the Trump team. The Breitbart story, published Friday, has been circulating among Trump's senior staff, according to a White House official who described it as a useful catalogue of the Obama administration's activities.

Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Obama, said in a statement early Saturday afternoon: “A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

Officials at the FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment.

Trump has been feuding with the intelligence community since before he took office, convinced that career officers as well as holdovers from the Obama administration have been trying to sabotage his presidency. He has ordered internal inquiries to find who leaked sensitive information regarding communications during the campaign between Russian officials and his campaign associates and allies, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn.

 

Some current and former intelligence officials cast doubt on Trump's assertion.

“It's highly unlikely there was a wiretap,” said one former senior intelligence official familiar with surveillance law who spoke candidly on the condition of anonymity. The former official continued: “It seems unthinkable. If that were the case by some chance, that means that a federal judge would have found that there was either probable cause that he had committed a crime or was an agent of a foreign power.”

A wiretap cannot be directed at a U.S. facility, the official said, without finding probable cause that the phone lines or Internet addresses were being used by agents of a foreign power — or by someone spying for or acting on behalf of a foreign government. “You can't just go around and tap buildings,” the official said.

Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, issued a statement chastising Trump for leveling a "spectacularly reckless allegation" against Obama without evidence.

Referencing Trump's description of Obama as a "bad (or sick) guy," Schiff said, "If there is something bad or sick going on, it is the willingness of the nation's chief executive to make the most outlandish and destructive claims without providing a scintilla of evidence to support them. "

Trump sent the tweets from Palm Beach, Fla., where he is vacationing this weekend at his private Mar-a-Lago estate. It has long been his practice to stir up new controversies to deflect attention from a damaging news cycle, such as the one in recent days about Sessions and Russia.

Trump's tweets took numerous top White House aides by surprise, according to a second White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly. Saturday was expected to be a “down day, pretty quiet,” this official said, and there was little, if any, attempt to coordinate the president's message on the wiretapping allegations.

Here are Trump's tweets, in the order they were sent:

The big stories and commentary shaping the day.

Trump did not stop tweeting there. About an hour later, the president revived one of his favorite feuds, this one with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movie star-turned-California governor has been hosting “The New Celebrity Apprentice,” the NBC reality franchise that Trump helped found.

Schwarzenegger announced Friday that he would not return to the show for another season because, he said, the show had too much “baggage.” But Trump insisted on Twitter that there is more to the story than that.

Above is from:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/04/trump-accuses-obama-of-nixonwatergate-plot-to-wire-tap-trump-tower/?utm_term=.85948a4b2dd0&wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-politics%252Bnation

Boone County property values climbing for second straight year

 

Friday

Posted Mar 3, 2017 at 12:32 PM Updated at 1:55 AM

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By Susan Vela
Staff writer

BELVIDERE — Boone County property values are on the rise for the second straight year.

In 2015, the equalized assessed value of all property ticked up for the first time in seven years. The 1.68 percent increase brought the total value to about $889.4 million. In 2016, assessors estimate a 5.35 percent increase, to a total value of $937 million.

Boone County officials say the two-year trend is a significant sign the local housing market is rebounding from the Great Recession. Before the housing bubble burst, and many people lost their homes through foreclosure, the county's property values peaked at $1.26 billion in 2008.

"Finally, a healing local economy," County Administrator Ken Terrinoni said. "If your values are going up, then there's a demand for housing. The sales are pushing the numbers up."

With demand growing, Boone County officials are starting to dream of a new subdivision development, which hasn't happened since 2008. Realtors sold more homes in Boone, Winnebago and Ogle counties in 2016 than any year since the Great Recession.

"We have record low inventories," said Michelle Huber, a Realtor specializing in Boone County property for Dickerson & Nieman in Rockford. "People are fighting (over homes).

These days, she may receive several offers for one home. Some of her clients also are more willing to wait for homes considering what's available.

Poplar Grove is a hot spot because of the Sherman Oaks and Candlewick Lake developments, Huber said. Too often, though, available homes are pricey, running up to $500,000.

"I would like to see a new subdivision where it's an affordable price range," Huber said. "I would like to see someone figure out how to build my clients a nice $155,000 to $165,000 house."

Mayor Mike Chamberlain wouldn't mind hearing from developers interested in building apartment complexes.

"After the downturn, we had maybe one in seven houses that were in some kind of transition," he said. "I need someone to build some lifestyle apartments for people who don't yet want to invest in a house."

Rachel Condon and her husband, Michael, moved into their first home in Poplar Grove about 10 years ago. They stayed there longer than they expected because of the Great Recession. Their mortgage was larger than their home's value.

With three growing children, they eventually were forced to consider a different home. They sold their home over the summer but then moved in with Condon's mom. The family wanted to stay in Poplar Grove.

"Unfortunately, there was just nothing for us to purchase," Condon said.

Condon and her husband have an offer on a home with a big yard for their 9-, 6- and 5-year-old children. It has four bedrooms, two full bathrooms and, at about $170,000, is in the family's price range.

"We've been fortunate that we've been able to stay with family," Condon said. "(But) it's nice to see that it is becoming a hot spot again. It's nice to see that people are moving into the homes and there are families able to live there again."

Jane Eurek, also a Dickerson & Nieman agent specializing in Boone County property, said she's been canceling showings because homes are selling quickly.

"It's kind of crazy out there. (But) it's a good thing," she said.

She wants to see new homes in the $150,000 to $200,000 range.

"Then the first-time buyers can get into the market," she said. "It's going to be a good 2017. That's for sure."

Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/news/20170303/boone-county-property-values-climbing-for-second-straight-year

'Gun for hire': how Jeff Sessions used his prosecuting power to target Democrats

'Gun for hire': how Jeff Sessions used his prosecuting power to target Democrats

4 / 16

The Guardian

Jon Swaine and Oliver Laughland

 

© REUTERS/Yuri Gripas U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions holds his first meeting with heads of federal law enforcement components at the Justice Department. in Washington U.S., February 9, 2017. Arthur Outlaw wanted a second term.

It was 1989 and Outlaw, the Republican mayor of Mobile, Alabama, was girding himself for his re-election campaign. Word was that Lambert Mims, a popular local Democrat, would run against him. Some Republicans were growing skittish.

But a close friend of Outlaw’s had something planned. The friend had been president of the state Young Republicans, chairman of the regional GOP, then a senior official in the Mobile County Republican party. And now he was the top federal prosecutor in southern Alabama.

“Jeff says that Mims won’t be around by that time,” an Outlaw aide said ominously, while discussing the election at a City Hall meeting that February, according to a sworn affidavit from an official who was in the room.

A few months later, Mims confirmed that he would be challenging Outlaw. Then Jeff Sessions made his move.

Sessions, then the US attorney for Alabama’s southern district, indicted Mims on criminal corruption charges relating to obscure four-year-old negotiations over a planned recycling plant. Mims was the ninth notable Democrat in the area to be indicted by Sessions since the young Republican was appointed by President Ronald Reagan. He would not be the last. 

Opponents concluded that Sessions used his federal prosecutor’s office, and the FBI agents who worked for him, as political weapons, according to more than half a dozen veterans of Mobile’s 1980s legal and political circles. Some alleged in court filings that the ambitious young Republican actually worked from a “hitlist” of Democratic targets.

“Sessions was a gun for hire,” said Tom Purvis, a former sheriff of Mobile County, “and he went after political enemies.” Purvis was acquitted of charges against him that Sessions oversaw after Purvis unseated another Outlaw ally from the elected sheriff’s position.

The decades-old concerns have been revived by Donald Trump’s appointment of Sessions as US attorney general, and the mounting anxiety over his ability to remain even-handed as the nation’s most senior law enforcement official given his record of vigorous partisanship. Earlier this week, Sessions was pressured into removing himself from oversight of any FBI investigations into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia.

Bolstering the claims are the remarkably thin prosecution cases brought by Sessions against some of those Democrats he indicted, which are detailed across thousands of pages of archived court filings that were reviewed by the Guardian.

© Provided by Guardian News Lambert Mims.

Sessions had no direct evidence that Mims had committed a crime. The recycling plant was never even built. “I’ve never seen such a flimsy, weak case as this against anybody,” Mims’s attorney said in court.

Still, Sessions’s office, which boasted a 95% conviction rate, persuaded a jury to find Mims guilty. Mims, a 60-year-old lay preacher, sobbed through his trial. He cried when he was convicted, then cried again when he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. “I will go to my grave proclaiming my innocence,” Mims told Judge Charles Butler.

A few years later, Sessions ran to be Alabama attorney general. His old friend Outlaw, who was also a wealthy businessman, personally donated $25,000 to Sessions’s campaign. It was more than any other contributor gave.

‘He is an ideologue’

Sessions began the 1980s on the front lines of Mobile’s partisan warfare.

Having left his job as an assistant US attorney following the election of Jimmy Carter as US president, Sessions worked on Ronald Reagan’s triumphant 1980 White House bid in Alabama and campaigned to elect fellow Republicans to local offices that were then still dominated by conservative Democrats.

After one such contest ended in narrow defeat for a Republican nominee, Sessions was incandescent. The 34-year-old disputed the result in the county courts and forcefully demanded a full recount.

During one hearing, Sessions so furiously accused the Democrats of wrongdoing that the judge ruled him “out of order” three times. The Republicans took the election challenge all the way to the Alabama supreme court before finally admitting defeat.

It was a declaration of intent.

“He is an ideologue,” said Ed Massey, a Mobile attorney who has known Sessions since the 1970s. “His attitude was, ‘I’ve got a job to do, and this is what I think my job is, and I’m going to do it with guns blazing’.”

A few months later, Sessions was announced as Reagan’s choice to fill the top job in the federal prosecutor’s office in Mobile. Once installed, he quickly got to work on reshaping the agenda of this little outpost of the US justice department.

In September 1982, Bob Gulledge, a first-term Democratic state senator, was preparing to defend his seat when Sessions indicted him for alleged land fraud conspiracy. Gulledge and an associate had profited from the sale of a tract of land that had been bought with a mortgage from a government-backed lender where the associate was also an executive.

“What are we doing here? Where’s the crime?” Gulledge’s exasperated attorney asked the court at trial, after Sessions gave an extravagant 90-minute opening statement.

The attorney, Barry Hess, said Gulledge was no different from other borrowers except he “happened to be in the state senate, and happened to be running for re-election” soon:

“The prosecutor is like a dog with a bone,” said Hess. “It’s a bone with no meat on it, but he keeps playing with it, burying it. There just ain’t any meat on it.”

A mistrial was declared after jurors could not reach a verdict. But by then, Gulledge had lost his party primary contest, and was out of his re-election race altogether. He did not respond to requests for comment.

As the next election season approached in late 1984, Sessions struck again. The city commissioner, Gary Greenough, was sentenced to 10 years for allegedly stealing a cut of the profits from Mobile’s municipal auditorium, a city-run entertainment venue that hosted top-tier shows such as the Jacksons, Santana, and Kool and the Gang.

Greenough, who had, with Lambert Mims, pushed through municipal contracting reforms that left Sessions allies out of pocket, always maintained his innocence.

And a review of the case shows that the evidence against him was far from clear-cut. His conviction rested on the testimony of two auditorium managers, who were clearly guilty of embezzlement themselves, and made plea deals with Sessions in return for their cooperation in prosecuting Greenough.

In the paperwork that he submitted earlier this year to the US Senate judiciary committee for his confirmation hearings, Sessions named the Greenough case as one of the 10 most significant of his career.

“It was about eliminating opposition,” said Danny Mims, one of Mims’s sons. “The reason they targeted my father was that he was really good at it.”

Rejection for a federal judgeship

© Provided by Guardian News Activists call on the Senate to reject Jeff Sessions as attorney general in November.

The fight was not only partisan but generational. Members of a so-called “Old Establishment” in Mobile politics were increasingly seeing their jobs, and patronage for their corporate backers, threatened by a new breed of upstarts. With Sessions as its spearhead, the establishment fought back.

Rumors began flying around Mobile’s corridors of power and newspaper gossip columns about who might be next in line for indictment. The atmosphere grew increasingly febrile.

“They would do it just to shake the branches,” said one prominent Mobile attorney from the time, who did not want to be identified being critical of the US attorney general because he still practices law. “The FBI would put people through these vague, threatening interviews, trying to get them to say things about other people.”

The inquiry into Greenough was led by Jack Brennan, a senior FBI agent in Mobile who was close to Sessions. Distinctive for his puffy red face and thinning hair, Brennan would reappear several times in Sessions’s cases against local Democrats. Reached by email, he did not respond to questions.

At 7am on 25 November 1985, Brennan and two other investigators paid a visit to the home of Gurney Owens, Mobile County’s top waste disposal official. Owens was in deep trouble.

He had been caught on tape soliciting a bribe from a local businessman, who had been trying to secure a landfill contract. Unknown to Owens, the businessman, Gerald Godwin, had been wearing a wire for the FBI and Sessions when the pair chatted over a breakfast of eggs, bacon and coffee at the Quality Inn.

Now the agents in his living room were telling Owens they could help him to help himself. He was facing a long prison sentence, they said, but it could be cut down to two years if he cooperated with what they and Sessions wanted.

“The US attorney’s office and the FBI presented to Mr Owens a hitlist of approximately 20 people that they wanted him to snare,” Owens’s attorney, Jim Atchison, said in a statement filed to court. “It is interesting to note that every single person on the list is either a well-known Democrat or active in the Democratic party.”

The county waste official said he was “dumbfounded” by what was being asked of him. “They told me that they wanted me to wear a concealed radio transmitter and go out and talk to a number of people and see if I could involve them in something improper or illegal,” Owens said in his own statement.

Sessions flatly denied the existence of a hit list, later telling US senators that Owens’s allegation was “one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my practice of law”. A justice department review agreed that the claim of a list was “utterly without foundation”.

But William Hinshaw, the FBI official who took over the Mobile office in 1986, said in an interview that it was feasible. “It is a technique that is used,” he said, noting that a justice department official should sign off on such a target list.

Owens declined to take the deal. He was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

“Sessions would get really, really mad at my dad because my dad refused to roll over,” recalled Owens’s son Gerry, who said he once watched an enraged Sessions berate his father in a courthouse corridor. “He’d be sitting there calm as can be, and would then explode like a firecracker.”

In any case, Owens had already helped Sessions and the FBI with one of their targets. On the secret recordings, Owens was heard claiming he had been ordered to collect the bribe by Douglas Wicks, a Democratic county commissioner, who had voting power on who should win the contract.

Wicks insisted that this was merely a cover story that Owens told to make himself look better while requesting money he would actually keep himself. Sessions did not initially indict Wicks for involvement in the alleged bribery. But then came Sessions’s disastrous visit to Washington DC.

Still only 39 years old, Sessions was nominated by Reagan for another promotion – as a federal judge for Alabama’s southern district.

Democrats in the Senate had other ideas. Members of the Senate judiciary committee voted to reject Sessions, after receiving allegations of racism toward African Americans. It was only the second time in 50 years that a nominee had been denied a federal judgeship.

Wicks, who had been the first black person elected to the Mobile County commission, had a walk-on role in the melodrama. During the Senate hearings, future vice-president Joe Biden asked Sessions if it was true that he called Wicks a “n---er” during a break in a court hearing in November 1981.

Sessions denied using the racist term but the allegation, coupled with other first-hand accounts of Session’s use of racially insensitive language, went some way to killing his nomination.

A few months later, his judgeship prospects in tatters, Sessions indicted Wicks after all. The indictment for extortion was publicly unveiled by Sessions two days after the Senate confirmed an attorney to take the judgeship he had been denied.

“Sessions decided to go after me because he didn’t get the judgeship,” Wicks said, echoing remarks he made immediately after being indicted.

Sessions accused Wicks of demanding a bribe from the owner of a pumping firm in return for a permit. Owens said so, too. But the businessman testified that he voluntarily gave Wicks a campaign contribution after the permit had been given. “I don’t feel that I was extorted,” he said.

© Provided by Guardian News douglas wicks

There was also no proof offered that Wicks had received the bribes that Owens was recorded asking for. Brennan, the FBI agent, fed Godwin wads of marked $20 bills to make the bribes, and then followed Wicks around Mobile trying to catch him spending them at stores and restaurants. But none of the $20s were recovered.

The lack of any smoking gun might have seen Wicks headed for an acquittal. But something extraordinary happened in the days before his trial.

On 4 March 1987, Wicks and a friend were looking around vacant houses that had recently been bought by the city of Mobile. The structures were to be sold and moved elsewhere to make way for new construction. Wicks and his friend stopped at one house with a set of anti-burglar bars on the ground outside. They picked up the bars and threw them in their truck to sell as scrap metal.

But a man appeared and told them that he was in the process of buying the house. “Where are you going with my stuff?” asked the man. Wicks, who thought he recognized the man, apologized. “We didn’t know anybody owned this place,” Wicks said. They returned the bars to where they had been found, and left.

Wicks later realized that the man who had confronted them was Brennan, the FBI agent and friend of Sessions, who had been surveilling Wicks for months for the corruption case. Wicks was charged with theft. A story about the case ran on the front page of the Mobile Register under the headline “Wicks charged with felony”. Days later, Wicks’s trial for extortion began.

“It was unfair, so unfair,” said Irmatean Watson, a Democratic city councilwoman at the time. “It was all political. Douglas didn’t do anything wrong.”

Hinshaw, then the FBI field office chief, said in an interview that Sessions had personally approved the arrest of Wicks for the theft and brushed aside any concerns about “political correctness” or awkward timing.

He strenuously denied that the theft charge was cooked up to tarnish Wicks’s name before his trial. Agent Brennan insisted that he really was buying the house, and that another man named as the purchaser in the county records was acting on his behalf.

But Wicks and his attorney, Billy Kimbrough, claimed the FBI had been watching and waiting for any act by Wicks that they could make look like criminal activity. The following month the charges relating to the burglar bars were dismissed. By then, Wicks had been found guilty in the corruption trial and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

‘Mims was not a crook’

It was the prosecution of Mims, however, that astonished even hardened Mobile political operatives. At the center of the case, wearing a wire once again, was Gerald Godwin, the same businessman who helped Sessions nail Owens and Wicks.

Godwin alleged that he had been pressured to give 40% of his company to a friend of Mims’s if he wanted Mims to award him the contract to develop the recycling plant.

There was no evidence presented of such extortion, let alone Mims’s knowledge of it, let alone his involvement in it. Godwin claimed to have been threatened on 30 September, yet Mims had already signed a city resolution agreeing to the plant almost a week before that. The negotiations collapsed and the plant was never built.

And yet – four years after Mims had stepped down from politics, and shortly after he reappeared with his campaign for mayor – Sessions proceeded with criminal charges against him.

“Mims was not a crook. He would never have knowingly done anything like what they claimed,” his attorney, Thomas Haas, said in a recent interview. “These people were politically motivated.”

After pleading not guilty, Mims told reporters that he was “a victim of people who have used the system to try to destroy me politically” and that the indictment had been timed “to affect the outcome of the election”.

The authorities had even sent an FBI agent into Mims’s office, posing as an executive from a mortgage lender, and tried to make Mims reveal illegal cronyism by saying on tape that his friend would definitely be awarded the contract. But Mims was only recorded saying platitudes such as: “Naturally, I’d rather see local people get it rather than to bring in somebody from out of state.”

So underwhelming was the evidence when played in court that the Mobile Register’s front page headline the following day was: “Recording reveals no wrongdoing”.

Attempting to have the case thrown out, Haas called it “a farce” and a “cruel joke”. In his closing argument, he told jurors: “You have wasted 10 weeks of your life. There is no evidence of any criminal activity by Mr Mims. You’ve heard the evidence. That’s all there is, folks. The fat lady has sung.”

After more than 20 hours of deliberations, however, the jury found Mims guilty.

Asked following the trial whether he had brought the prosecution to kill Mims’s political career, Sessions said nothing could be further from the truth. “These cases are based on the law and the facts – and not on any other consideration,” he said.

Above is from:  http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gun-for-hire-how-jeff-sessions-used-his-prosecuting-power-to-target-democrats/ar-AAnM7KW?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

There still is an election in Belvidere—however some positions were decided in the Primary

 

 

Above is from:  http://www.boonecountyjournal.com/news/2017/Boone-County-News-03-03-17.pdf

Belvidere gun shop owner could build city’s first indoor shooting range

 

 

By Susan Vela

Staff writer

BELVIDERE — Chris Linenfelser didn't want Biglinny Firearms to be "a good ol' boy gun shop" when he opened the store in August.

He wanted an indoor shooting range to be part of his $1.2 million investment at 485 Southtowne Drive.

He is requesting a special-use permit to build and operate a 4,300-square-foot range with six 75-foot-long lanes behind Biglinny Firearms.

It could be the first shooting range in the city when it opens around the July Fourth holiday.

The City Council is scheduled to consider Linenfelser's request at its meeting at 7 p.m. on Monday.

"Sales have been really good," he said. "We just had a lot of people come in saying they'd love to see a range. We started putting numbers together, and there's no reason really to wait.

"To know that many people are walking around carrying weapons and there's no place to practice scares me."

Some aldermen say they're prepared to approve the permit despite concerns about noise among some residents.

"I used to shoot in them all the time," said Alderman Ronald Brooks of the 4th Ward. "As long as it's a business and they comply with regulations ... I have no problems. I'll probably vote for it. They're safe ... a lot safer than having a fellow go into the woods and shoot away with a gun."

Third Ward Alderman Wendy Frank also said she was likely to vote to approve the permit. Linenfelser has promised to use materials that would muffle the sounds of firearms.

"We don't have anything like that," she said. "If they've done all the provisions to keep it safe for the neighborhood ... it would be a good thing. We've got to promote businesses in Belvidere."

Earlier this month, the Belvidere Planning and Zoning Commission voted 5-0 to recommend approval of the special-use permit with the following conditions:

— Hours of operation are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

— There is a six-lane limit.

— All shooting range activities happen indoors.

— Materials for exterior renovations match existing building materials.

— A seven-foot wooden privacy fence is installed between Biglinny Firearms and the Southtowne residential neighborhood.

Community Development Planner Gina DelRose said a federal appeals court had held in a 2011 decision — Ezell v. City of Chicago — that municipalities could not bar commercial shooting ranges. Because of the ruling, Belvidere city officials amended a zoning ordinance to allow shooting ranges in industrial districts, she said.

They'll vote on permitting them in Belvidere's planned and general business districts — with special-use permits — the same evening they'll also consider Biglinny Firearms' special-use permit request.

"With the increase in gun ownership, the demand for shooting ranges increases as well," DelRose said.

Some residents still have concerns.

"The proposed use will detrimentally impact the environment, resulting in increased noise, increased traffic, (a potential) environmental impact as well as a detriment to the surrounding properties," wrote attorney Stephen Daday, who represents the Southtowne Village Condominium Association, in documents submitted to city officials. "It is inconsistent with the residential use of the surrounding neighborhood."

Then there are the gun enthusiasts hankering for a new place to take classes and shoot their weapons.

Chris Gaddis drops by Biglinny Firearms whenever he sees the lights are on. He lives a few blocks away.

"I decided that this was going to be my new favorite place to be in town," he said. "Chris and his wife, Michelle, are the most honest, trusting, most friendly people I've ever met in my life."

His favorite shooting range is in Dundee, about 30 minutes away. Gaddis hopes council members grant Linenfelser a special-use permit so he can save gas money.

"We need a place to shoot where it's safe," he said. "Gun safety is what gun ownership is all about."

Susan Vela:

Above is from:   http://www.rrstar.com/news/20170228/belvidere-gun-shop-owner-could-build-citys-first-indoor-shooting-range

Records show EPA's Pruitt used private email, despite denial at confirmation hearing

 

 

Records show EPA's Pruitt used private email, despite denial at confirmation hearing

 

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

Michael Biesecker, Sean MurphyAssociated Press

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt occasionally used private email to communicate with staff while serving as Oklahoma's attorney general, despite telling Congress that he had always used a state email account for government business.

A review of Pruitt emails obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request showed a 2014 exchange where the Republican emailed a member of his staff using a personal Apple email account.

Emails released under court order last week in response to a different public records request yielded additional examples where emails were addressed to Pruitt's private account, including a 2013 exchange with a petroleum industry lobbyist who emailed Pruitt and a lawyer on the attorney general's staff. That suggests Pruitt made his private email address available to professional contacts outside his office.

It is not illegal in Oklahoma for public officials to use private email as long as they are retained and made available as public records. Pruitt's use of the private account appears to directly contradict statements he made last month as part of his Senate confirmation.

 

In a written questionnaire, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., asked Pruitt whether he had ever conducted state business using personal email accounts. Pruitt responded: "I use only my official OAG email address and government issued phone to conduct official business."

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., later followed up with Pruitt on the issue when he testified Jan. 18 before the Senate Energy and Public Works Committee. The senator asked why an email address with the Apple address me.com was listed on a form as one of his business contacts.

Emails detail new EPA chief Scott Pruitt's close ties to fossil fuel industry

"The 'me' address is not a business email address," Pruitt responded. "I am not sure why it was designated as such."

Pruitt did not respond Monday to emails sent to his EPA staff seeking comment.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the issue raises questions about Pruitt's credibility.

"Now that he is in charge of protecting clean air and water in every community across the country, the public must decide for themselves whether they can trust Pruitt when he can't even be honest about his email or his ties to the oil and gas industry," Wyden said Monday.

AP and other news organizations reported last week that 7,500 pages of emails released following a lawsuit filed by a left-leaning advocacy group showed Pruitt and his staff in Oklahoma coordinated closely on legal strategy with fossil-fuel companies and special interest groups working to undermine federal efforts to curb planet-warming carbon emissions.

The emails were released after an Oklahoma judge ruled that Pruitt had been illegally withholding his correspondence, which is public record under state law, for the last two years. Pruitt's Republican successor, new Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, has appealed that ruling and is fighting to keep hundreds more withheld emails from public view. Hunter's spokesman, Lincoln Ferguson, did not return telephone and email messages on Monday seeking clarification on Pruitt's use of a private email or whether more messages to the Apple account were among those still being withheld.

Senate Democrats earlier this month sought to delay a vote on Pruitt's confirmation until after the requested emails were released. Republican leaders used their slim majority to confirm him to lead the federal agency he had frequently criticized and repeatedly sued during his six years as Oklahoma's attorney general.

Pruitt's use of private email was first reported earlier this month by FOX 25 television of Oklahoma City.

Senate environment committee chairman John Barrasso, R-Wy., declined to comment Monday about whether Pruitt was inaccurate in his testimony. Barrasso's spokesman, Mike Danylak, pointed to another exchange during Pruitt's testimony where he was asked whether he would use only government email to conduct business at EPA, so that his correspondence would be publicly available through the Freedom of Information Act.

"I really believe that public participation and transparency in rulemaking is very important," Pruitt responded.

Above is from:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-epa-scott-pruitt-private-emails-20170227-story.html