The Department of Justice under President Obama was and is a joke!

The Justice Department under President Obama and Eric Holder was and is a joke!

Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama made sure that none of their friends in the banking industry went to jail for the crimes they committed. A large number of Covington & Burling’s Law Firm corporate clients are mega-banks like JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America. Lanny Breuer who ran the criminal division for Holder’s Justice Department and Eric Holder were lawyers for Covington & Burling prior to taking positions under Obama in the Justice Department.  Their specialty was protecting corporations, especially banking, investment and savings corporation from prosecution – looking for loopholes in the law that would allow them to escape prosecution if caught.

Covington & Burling was given the American Lawyer “Litigation Department of the Year,” award in March 2014 for getting clients accused of financial fraud off with  only a slap-on-the-wrist fines. if you want to understand what Eric Holder did for the perpetrators and firms of the largest financial fraud in history that blew up the nation’s economy in 2008, you only have to read one line from his former employer praising Eric Holder: “He helped them, get the best deal they could possibly get.”

As for homeowners, they received a raw deal, in the form of little or no compensation for some of the greatest consumer abuses in American history. As far back as 2004, the FBI warned of an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud, which they said would have “as much impact as the Savings & Loan crisis.” They were wrong; it was worse.

By the time the bubble collapsed, the recession hit and Holder took over the Justice Department, Wall Street was a target-rich environment for any federal prosecutor. Physical evidence to an untold number of crimes was available in court filings and county recording offices. The proof was there. Chief Executives could have been easily held criminally responsible for misrepresenting their risk management controls to bank regulators.

In 2009, Congress passed the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, giving $165 million to the Justice Department to staff the investigations necessary to bring those accountable for the financial crisis to justice. Keep in mind this was a Democrat House and Senate that gave Eric Holder the funds to prosecute these C.E.O.’s. Yet, not one major executive has been sent to jail for their role in the crisis.

The department has put real housewives in jail for mortgage fraud, but not real bankers. The D.O).J. saved their firepower for people who manage to defraud banks, not for banks who manage to defraud people. Most of the “investigations” of financial institutions over six years was swiftly moved to cash settlements, often without holding anyone responsible for admitting wrong doing or providing a detailed description of what they did wrong.

The National Mortgage Settlement, for example, was touted by Holder’s Justice Department as a $25 billion deal. In reality, banks were able to pay one-quarter of that penalty with other people’s money, lowering principal balances on loans they didn’t even own. Banks were even allowed to satisfy their obligations under the settlements through routine business practices (including some, like making loans to low-income homeowners that make them money.

A series of securities fraud settlements with JP Morgan, Bank of America and Citigroup, which the Department of Justice and Eric Holder approved and claimed cost the banks $36.65 billion, actually cost them about $11.5 billion and shareholders, no executives bore that cost. Wall Street Journal has found out that only 25% of the fines were actually collected from the corporations involved in the banking crisis.

The Department of Justice Inspector General criticized this in a March 2014 report and revealed that that the Department of Justice de-prioritized mortgage fraud, making it the “lowest-ranked criminal threat” from 2009-2011.

The banking sector’s get-out-of-jail free card gave them confidence that they could commit the same crimes again, with little if any legal implications and if you think the problem is not continuing you are naive.

The decision to protect banks instead of homeowners should be laid at the feet of President Obama and his administration. Guess where Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer work today – the law firm of Covington and Burling the law firm that represented the big banks during the crisis.

 Eric Holder was U.S. Attorney General when the world desperately needed the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to hold accountable the elite bankers who oversaw the epidemic of fraud that drove the 2008 global financial crisis and triggered the Great Recession. But, nearly six years in office, Holder announced on Sept. 25, 2014 that he plan to step down, without bringing to justice even one of the executives responsible for the crisis. His tenure represents the worst  failure against elite white-collar crime in the history of the Department of Justice. Eric Holder was careful not to step down until the statue of limitation ran out on prosecuting banking executives.

In both the U.S. savings and loan debacle of the late 1980's and the Enron-era accounting frauds of the early 2000's, there were more than 1,000 successful felony convictions in white-collar crime cases. In those cases Federal Prosecutors prioritized the top executives of the corporations responsible and sought convictions.

In addition to the failure to prosecute the leaders of those massive frauds, Holder’s dismal record includes 1) failing to prosecute the elite bankers who led the largest price-rigging cartel in history — the LIBOR scandal, in which the world’s largest banks conspired to rig the interest rates at which banks were willing to lend to one another, which affected prices on over $300 trillion in transactions; 2) failing to prosecute the massive foreclosure frauds (robo-signing), in which bank employees perjured themselves by signing more than 100,000 false affidavits in order to deceive the authorities that they had a right to foreclose on homes; 3) failing to prosecute the bid-rigging cartels of bond issuance in order to raise the costs to U.S. cities, counties and states of borrowing money in order to increase banks’ illegal profits; 4) failing to prosecute money laundering by HSBC for the murderous Sinaloa and Norte del Valle drug cartels; 5)  failing to prosecute the senior bank officers of Standard Chartered who helped fund terrorists and nations that support terrorism; and 6) failing to prosecute the controlling officers of Credit Suisse who for decades helped wealthy Americans unlawfully evade U.S. taxes and then obstructed investigations by the DOJ and Internal Revenue Service for many years.

How quick minority voters either forget or never knew that Eric Holder blamed them for the banking crisis.  Eric Holder stated on more than one occasion that mortgage fraud was largely an ethnic crime that was committed almost exclusively by primarily ethnic borrowers rather than the officers controlling the lenders.

Eric Holder in June 2016 still maintain the Department of Justice did not have the evidence to criminally prosecute banks – how much more evidence did he need? Eric Holder, for a combination of political and self-serving reasons, held his department back.

Career prosecutors in 2012 wanted to criminally charge the global bank HSBC for facilitating money laundering for Mexican drug lords and terrorist groups. But Holder said no. Aggressive attorneys wanted to prosecute HSBC, but Holder overruled them. From 2006 to 2010, HSBC failed to monitor billions of dollars of U.S. dollar purchases with drug trafficking proceeds in Mexico. It also conducted business going back to the mid-1990's on behalf of customers in Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Burma, while they were under sanctions. Such transactions were banned by U.S. law. So many people within the Treasury Department were pressuring Eric Holder to charge HSBC than he finally on November 7, presented HSBC with a “take it or leave it” offer of a deferred prosecution agreement, which would involve a cash settlement and future monitoring of HSBC and no criminal charges and no admission of guilt. HSBC negotiated until December getting employee bonus’ guaranteed, a guarantee no employee would ever be criminally prosecuted and the fine reduced and that no one at the bank would ever be tried for aiding terrorist – Eric Holder agreed.

Will President Obama share these facts while on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton or will he continue to blame George Bush and the Republican Party for all that is wrong with the United States Government?

September 16, 2016 - Deutsche Bank stated  today they have no intention of settling with the U.S. Justice Department over their part in the mortgage/banking scandal for $14 billion dollars. They will not accept any offer higher than Eric Holder gave U.S. Banks. 

Is Edward Snowden or the Government the villain?

In 2001 the Bush administration secretly ordered NSA to eavesdrop on the electronic communication of Americans without obtaining the warrants required by criminal law. At the time it was reveals by the New York Times it had been going on for four years. Edward Snowden was not the first to reveal the dirty antics of the NSA or the Bush/Obama administrations.

The government justified its actions by saying the threat of terrorism gave the President virtually unlimited authority to do anything to keep “the nation safe”.  This unlimited power has led to abuse. Does this also mean martial law?

The Founding Fathers protested laws that let British officials ransack at will any home they wished. The colonists all agreed the British needed warrants to carry out such actions. They also believe the warrants must specify the name of the person being searched and what was to be searched. The Fourth Amendment enshrined this idea in American law. It was designed to prevent Americans from being searched without probable cause and a warrant. The Founding Fathers would not have agreed to the NSA abuse as Bush and Obama want us to believe.

The purpose of mass surveillance is to suppress dissent and mandate compliance. The procedure has been used by Syria, Egypt, Libya, U.K., French, Germany, East Germany, U.S.A., China, North and South Korea, Iran and most likely all countries that have the capability to do so.

The ability to eavesdrop on people gives immense power to the governments. It is almost certain human nature will lead those with that power to abuse it.

In 2006 Bush denounced American companies for cooperating with China to carry out surveillance of its citizens when at the same time the Bush administration was doing the exact same thing here in America.

The threat of terrorism and fear has given the government a wide array of ways to abuse their power with little dissent from Americans. The Internet should advance democracy by giving those without power the power to express their dissatisfaction with those in power.  But, when it is used by the government to stifle discourse freedom of expression is lost. The Fourth Amendment becomes worthless.

How many Americans know that the government has the capability to activate their cell phones and laptops remotely and use them as eavesdropping devices? How many know even after Edward Snowden made it public? In 2006 a Federal Judge presiding over a mobster case ruled that the FBI turned on cell phones and used them as listening devices and it was legal to do so.

 How many Americans know about the program called PRISM, which allowed the NSA to collect private communications from the world’s largest Internet companies, including Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Apple, Microsoft, Paltalk, AOL and Skype.   How many know today even after Edward Snowden made it public?

The NSA does not operate alone the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand (the five eyes) are willing partners in mass surveillance.  They share information among what they call the “Five”.  What one of the “five” knows they all know.

In 1978 The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was created to prevent surveillance abuse that the Church Committee revealed. Eventually FISA itself became corrupt and rubber stamps anything the NSA wanted. FISA ordered Verizon to turn over all its records for communication between the U.S.A. and abroad, including any local telephone calls. That one decision made it possible for the NSA to collect private information on ten million American citizens.

For a one month period ending February, 2013 NSA collected more than three billion pieces of communication. Is it any wonder they missed the attack in San Bernardino.  They do not have the man power to handle that much information – no one does. The terrorist involved in that act had been communicating for over two years via telephones and Internet discussing their plans. Only after the fact did the NSA discover the records. The NSA “Collect it All” program was a complete failure in preventing the terrorist attack.

The Obama administration’s senior national security official, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, lied to Congress when, on March 12, 2013 he was asked by Senator Ron Wyden: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions of Americans?” He lied under oath, but was never prosecuted. Edward Snowden confirmed he had lied.

The Obama administration made Americans think Edward Snowden was a liar by asking us to believe that it was impossible for a “HIGH SCHOOL” dropout to do what he claimed he did. They painted a picture of Edward Snowden as being inexperienced, young, seeking fame and “COCKY”.  If a “HIGH SCHOOL” dropout was not qualified then why was he hired in the first place? He dropped out of high school most liked because the public school system failed him. The curriculum probably bored him and the teachers were probably not qualified to teach him. Diploma or not he impressed government officials enough to hire him several times!

 In 2007 he applied for a position with the CIA in Geneva and got the job. He was given diplomatic credentials. He worked undercover. He was handpicked to support the President at the 2008 NATO summit in Romania. It was during his time with the CIA that Edward Snowden began having problems with what the government was doing.  He left the CIA in 2009.

Like many he thought Obama was going to bring transparency and change to government. He soon realized it was all campaign rhetoric and in fact Obama wanted more secret surveillance. It was at that time he began to think of becoming a whistle blower.

Edward Snowden was chosen by the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Joint Counter-intelligence Training Academy to teach cyber counterintelligence at their Chinese counterintelligence course. This does not sound like the incompetent, unintelligent person media in cooperation with the government tried to make Americans believe he was. He was a cyber security expert that NSA was glad to have and had even stated they wish they could find more people like him.

I believe Edward Snowden was willing to sacrifice his own interests for the sake of the greater good!

TO BE CONTINUED…