King County moves to ban some chartered ICE flights from Boeing Field

SEATTLE – King County Executive Dow Constantine has signed a directive that aims to ban U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from using Boeing Field for chartered flights to transport immigrant detainees unless there's a court order. According to a news release from King County, officials learned in June 2018 that ICE was using charter planes to transport immigrant detainees through King County International Airport - Boeing Field.

An investigation found that neither ICE nor its private contract air-carriers are required to file passenger manifests or flight schedules with King County. King County cannot board planes to inspect passengers or cargo, nor direct federal air traffic controllers to prevent any plane from landing. That's what led Constantine to sign a directive that says future long-term leases with companies operating out of Boeing Field must comply with local immigration ordinances. King County does not cooperate with ICE agents or facilitate immigration enforcement directives unless accompanied by a court order. The executive order also updates Boeing Field's “minimum standards” to provide reports and audits from businesses involved with transporting immigration detainees. The airport will install security cameras at public ramps and other key locations to monitor activity, officials said.

“Here in King County, we are a welcoming community that respects the rights of all people. My executive order seeks to make sure all those who do business with King County uphold the same values,” Constantine said in a prepared statement. “Our goal is to ban flights of immigrant detainees from our publicly owned airport, and I hope members of Congress shine a light on this practice and how it is currently funded.”

https://q13fox.com/2019/04/24/king-county-moves-to-ban-some-chartered-ice-flights-from-boeing-field/

BREAKING: FBI Texts Show Agents Discussed Recruiting White House Sources To Spy For Bureau

Senior Republican chairmen submitted a letter Thursday to Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr revealing new texts from former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok to his paramour FBI Attorney Lisa Page showing the pair had discussed attempts to recruit sources within the White House to allegedly spy on the Trump administration. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson revealed the information in a three page letter. The texts had been obtained by SaraACarter.com Tuesday and information regarding the possible attempt to recruit White House sources had been divulged by several sources to this news site last week.

The texts and sources reveal that Strzok had one significant contact within the White House – Vice President Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff Joshua Pitcock, whose wife was working as an analyst for Strzok on the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server. A senior White House official told this news site that Pitcock’s wife recused herself from the Clinton investigation as soon as Pence and Trump became the Republican nominees in July 2016. A senior law enforcement official also told SaraACarter.com that Pitcock’s wife no longer worked under Strzok after she recused herself from the Clinton investigation. However, the text messages uncovered from November, 2016 and have left questions lingering about the relationship between Strzok, Pitcock and his wife among congressional investigators and lawmakers. “The course of our oversight work we have reviewed certain text messages that may show potential attempts by the FBI to conduct surveillance of President-elect Trump’s transition team,” the letter states. “In text messages exchanged between former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and former FBI Attorney Lisa Page, the two discussed the possibility of developing “potential relationships” at a November 2016 FBI briefing for presidential transition team staff. Specifically, it appears they discussed sending “the CI guy” to assess an unnamed person ‘demeanor’ but were concerned because it might be unusual for him to attend.” The Senators are investigating if any “of these communications, and the precise purpose of any attempts to ‘develop relationships’ with Trump or VP Mike Pence transition team staff are not immediately clear.”

“Were these efforts done to gain better communication between the respective parties, or were the briefings used as intelligence gathering operations? Further, did any such surveillance activities continue beyond the inauguration, and in the event they did, were those activities subject to proper predication,” the letter states. “Any improper FBI surveillance activities that were conducted before or after the 2016 election must be brought to light and properly addressed.”

https://saraacarter.com/breaking-fbi-texts-show-agents-discussed-recruiting-white-house-sources-to-spy-for-bureau/

Mueller Report Reveals Russia Taped Bill Clinton Having Phone Sex With Monica Lewinsky

The Washington Examiner reports that a redacted portion of the Mueller report mentions a claim that Russia recorded President Bill Clinton having phone sex from Air Force One with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton allegedly was recorded by Russia in the 1990s, allowing Russia to learn of the affair before American officials. A reference to the Clinton intercept was redacted from the Mueller report to protect “personal privacy,” but sources told the Washington Examiner that the context makes clear what was blacked out.

According to the report, Center for the National Interest President Dimitri Simes sent Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner a 2016 email with recommended talking points to counter Hillary Clinton's Russia attacks. The email referenced “a well-documented story of highly questionable connections” between Bill Clinton and Russia.

''At a meeting in New York, Simes told Kushner the details: Russia allegedly recorded President Clinton on the phone with Lewinsky, opening questions of foreign leverage over the ex-president-turned-potential first spouse. -Washington Examiner''

"During the August 17 meeting, Simes provided Kushner the Clinton-related information that he had promised. Simes told Kushner that, [redacted]," reads the Mueller report. "Simes claimed that he had received this information from former CIA and Reagan White House official Fritz Ermarth, who claimed to have learned it from U.S. intelligence sources, not from Russians." As the Examiner's Steven Nelson notes, the redaction is likely to anger Republicans - as "the allegation has been known since at least 2001 and the Mueller report's reference to a claim that President Trump watched prostitutes urinating in a Moscow hotel room was not struck out."

According to Ermarth, a 78-year-old who worked in the CIA for 25 years and was chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 1988 - 1993, the Mueller report inaccurately suggests that he mishandled classified information - when in fact he says he used public sourcing. "The line in the Mueller report that says any of this was based on intelligence information is the product either of faulty remembering by Dimitri or a flawed inference … or a hostile fabrication by the Mueller people," said Ermarth. "[The report wording] implies my misuse of intelligence or use of intelligence that is classified in this context. And that is completely false."

Independent counsel Ken Starr's 1998 report on Clinton's affair with Lewinsky identified 17 phone sex calls in 1996 and 1997. The report says Clinton told Lewinsky "that he suspected that a foreign embassy (he did not specify which one) was tapping his telephones, and he proposed cover stories. If ever questioned, she should say that the two of them were just friends. If anyone ever asked about their phone sex, she should say that they knew their calls were being monitored all along, and the phone sex was just a put-on."

''Ermarth thinks he told Simes that the Clinton-Lewinsky phone call was intercepted while the president was traveling on Air Force One, but that detail is believed to not have been conveyed to Kushner or included in the report. -Washington Examiner''

According to Ermarth, he was not interviewed by Mueller - and says he discussed the Clinton phone sex intercept with Simes during a 2014 or 2015 trip to Washington. Spokespeople for Mueller, Simes and Kushner did not respond to the Examiner's requests for comment. The Mueller report was redacted by the Justice Department in collaboration with Mueller's team. Overall, there were 855 redactions, according to The Smoking Gun. Just 7% of those were for "personal privacy," according to Vox. The majority of the redactions, however, was due to the involvement of grand jury deliberations or harm to an ongoing case.

''According to the report, Simes told investigators Kushner appeared to consider the phone-sex story “old news,” as news outlets had long ago reported that Russia had advanced knowledge about Lewinsky. Meanwhile, Kushner told Mueller's team he did not receive information from Simes that could be "operationalized" and doubted new negative information could be unearthed on the Clintons. -Washington Examiner''

So - an unverified claim that Trump had hookers pee on a Moscow bed was published without redactions, while Bill Clinton's alleged Air Force One phone sex conversation was kept under wraps.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-25/russia-taped-bill-clinton-having-phone-sex-monica-lewinsky-report

Surgeon who operated on Biden: He's better now than before brain surgery

Joe Biden almost died after suffering an aneurysm while serving in the Senate, but the surgeon who operated on his brain says that the incident shouldn't hold him back in his pursuit of the presidency. Dr. Neal Kassell, the renowned neurosurgeon who operated on Biden, said he’s confident that Biden is “totally in the clear,” and joked that he believed the surgery had even “made him better than how he was.” “Joe Biden of all of the politicians in Washington is the only one that I’m certain has a brain, because I have seen it,” Kassell said. “That’s more than I can say about all the other candidates or the incumbents.”'''

Apart from Kassell's endorsement of his brain health, little has been publicly disclosed about Biden’s overall health since 2008, when he released medical records as a vice presidential candidate. Biden would be 78 on Inauguration Day, and he still calls up Kassell every year on the anniversary of his surgery.

At the time of Biden’s brush with death in 1988, his wife, Jill Biden, feared that he would never be the same. In a forthcoming autobiography, “Where the Light Enters," Jill recounts Joe's doctor telling the family that there was a significant chance he’d have permanent neurological damage, particularly after he suffered a second aneurysm, a condition in which an artery becomes weak and bulges out. "Our doctor told us there was a 50-50 chance Joe wouldn't survive surgery," she wrote. "He also said that it was even more likely that Joe would have permanent brain damage if he survived. And if any part of his brain would be adversely affected, it would be the area that governed speech." Initially, Joe Biden suffered an aneurysm that burst and required him to undergo emergency surgery. He was so close to death that a priest was preparing to administer the Catholic sacrament of last rites. A few months later, surgeons clipped a second aneurysm before it burst, after discovering it during a routine screening. Despite a “messy recovery,” as described by his wife, Biden left the operating room with his “brain function intact.” He took a seven-month leave from the Senate following the surgery, and has described it in blunt terms, saying, “they literally had to take the top of my head off.” Not everyone is as fortunate after an aneurysm as Biden was: 30,000 people have aneurysms that rupture every year, and about 40 percent of those cases are fatal. Of those who survive, 66 percent have a neurological deficit.

The last time Biden disclosed information about his health was in 2008 when Dr. Matthew Parker, a physician the Obama campaign selected when Biden was the running mate, spoke to the press. Biden’s actual doctor, John Eisold, the physician who attended to Biden and the rest of Congress, was not the one to present the medical records. The 2008 disclosure revealed that Biden had an irregular heartbeat that was attributed to sleep apnea, and that he had his gallbladder removed in 2003. He continued to suffer from asthma and allergies, conditions which began in childhood, and took aspirin and the prescription drug Zocor to lower cholesterol. Doctors removed a benign polyp during a colonoscopy in 1996, and he had been diagnosed with an enlarged prostate, for which he took Flomax. Parker said he didn’t know whether Biden had more aneurysms, and said “everything that could be done is being done.” From the information revealed, it was not clear how often Biden has been screened for aneurysms, and there wasn't any other information provided when he was vice president. In contrast, records show that Barack Obama had at least four medical checkups during his presidency. No law requires presidents, vice presidents, or candidates to have a medical checkup or to disclose what comes of it.

Dr. Babu Welch, a neurological surgeon with University of Texas-Southwestern’s O’Donnell Brain Institute, said that people who have had one aneurysm can always have another. People are supposed to undergo regular screenings shortly after they have an aneurysm, but then can space them out further as time goes on, he said. Dr. Gavin Britz, director of the Houston Methodist Neurological Institute, said his research has revealed that people have a decrease in life expectancy after an aneurysm. The key, he said, is to make sure to catch them before they rupture.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/surgeon-who-operated-on-joe-biden-hes-better-now-than-before-brain-surgery