Stephen Miller flexes policy might with new asylum crackdown

by Paul Bedard

| April 30, 2019 03:00 PM

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/stephen-miller-flexes-policy-might-with-new-asylum-crackdown

The White House move this week to crackdown on asylum fraud is the latest example of top aide Stephen Miller’s influence on President Trump’s trademark issue, according to insiders.

Facing a growing crisis with tens of thousands of illegal immigrants coming in monthly, Miller and his team earlier this month pushed for changes to asylum processing that was letting most of those who sought it into the country despite just 10% eventually winning amnesty.

In his late Monday action, Trump moved to speed up the process that can take over two years to work through immigration courts. The new plan is to handle each case within 180 days, require fees to file for asylum and work permits, and return illegals quickly after being denied asylum.

“Trump is calling the bluff of the illegal migrants and their lawyers — he is saying, ‘You want to hide behind an asylum claim, fine, let’s adjudicate it quickly, and when it is found to be bogus, the party is over and you will be sent home, do not pass Go, do not collect $200 (or a work permit),” said Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies.

She added, “There is no question that Stephen Miller has been pushing for actions like this, and prodding the agency leaders to do more. He’s right; these things should have been done long ago.”

[Related: Trump's true immigration chief: Stephen Miller, the hidden hand in Homeland shake-up]

The new moves come as another top Trump aide, son-in-law Jared Kushner is working a parallel track to fix legal immigration and border security.

Their relationship has been described in the media as a feud, but allies insist that they are working together. Insiders said that Kushner is working on the "long-term" reform of immigration, Miller the immediate crisis.

The asylum crackdown is seen as a first step in stalling the illegal immigration crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border. Immigration experts said a similar system of turning away fraudulent asylum claims has worked in the past to slow immigration.

Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said last week that the policy would send a message that paying to enter the U.S. illegally won’t work.

“You start sending people back who paid $6,000, $8,000, $10,000 to come here … and you would see a rapid decline,” he said.

Vaughan told Secrets: “Importantly, the plan addresses the real reasons people are coming, which is the prospect of release to live and work freely here for years into the future without fear of deportation. After the plan is implemented, it will become harder to claim asylum, there will be a clocking ticking on the claim, and there will be less of a reward and more chance of deportation.”

Other immigration reform groups also lauded Trump’s plan.

R.J. Hauman, the government relations director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said: “Given congressional inaction and ineptitude, we applaud President Trump’s use of executive and inherent authority to restore integrity to our asylum system. A proper deterrence must be restored. It is not a change in asylum policy just yet, but rather marching orders for DOJ and DHS. These changes would be significant if they go into effect but still need to go through the regulatory process and inevitable legal challenges from open borders groups.”

Hauman added, “These recommendations serve as a clear road map for Attorney General William Barr and acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan. There is no time for foot-dragging at the agency level.”

And Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, said: “The current asylum laws have been grossly exploited by those making fraudulent claims as a back-door into the United States. While we should always welcome people with legitimate claims, the president is showing leadership by introducing new ways to address what has been a long-festering problem.”

ICE to start administering 90-minute DNA tests on immigrant families at border

by Anna Giaritelli

| May 01, 2019 09:39 PM

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ice-to-start-administering-90-minute-dna-tests-on-immigrant-families-at-border

Federal immigration officers working on the U.S.-Mexico border will start “as early as next week” carrying out rapid DNA tests on immigrants in custody who claim to be related, a Department of Homeland Security official told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday evening.

The official said Immigration and Customs Enforcement will start a trial with the 90-minute DNA tests at unspecified locations on the southern border in an effort to verify familial claims and refer for prosecution adults who try to use an unrelated child to take advantage of U.S. policy.

ICE told the Examiner it has seen 29 verified fake families, each with an unrelated child and adult, since April 18. Forty-five cases were referred for prosecution for fraud and the U.S. attorney’s offices accepted 33 of those referrals. The agency hopes the pilot will allow them to increase the number of cases referred to the Justice Department.

The debut marks the first time DNA testing of any sort has been at the border. Currently, ICE and Customs and Border Protection employees must use verbal statements and written documents to verify family connections.

“We’ve never done anything like this before,” the DHS official said.

The Examiner was reported last month that Homeland Security and ICE were looking at adopting ANDE, an automated system that processes cheek swabs and other DNA, to verify familial relations.

Annette Mattern, spokeswoman for the company, told the Examiner the upside to relying on science is that it cannot make a biased or flawed decision, unlike with human error.

“Identifying an individual at the border today probably requires an officer to say, ‘I don’t know if this is their kid or not their kid,’” Mattern told the Examiner. “DNA doesn’t have to make those judgments. It’s just science.”

Members of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations arm will not carry out the actual tests. Technicians with ANDE will be on site at all locations at which its mobile tests are present to handle the machines.

Adults will have to consent to self-administering a cheek swab as well as doing one for the child he or she is claiming to be related to. The swab is then inserted into the machine by the ANDE technician. ICE employees will have no contact with the swab at any point in the test, the official said.

“All of the DNA is destroyed within the machines,” said the Homeland Security official. “It’s not hooked up to any government systems.”

>>6390916

The official did not share who decided to go forward with the pilot or how long it will carry out the trial until a decision is made on whether to employ the technology at all ICE locations on the southern border, but described it as another tool HSI officers can use in their investigations.

“We’re looking at all the investigative tools available. This is something that we’re trying out,” the Homeland Security official said, adding there is “no silver bullet” for this type of immigration work. “Agents will have to continue relying on their training and experience.”

Homeland Security deployed special agents, forensics interviewers, and other immigration experts to the border earlier this year to help process the growing number of people who have illegally crossed into the U.S. and claimed to be part of a family. Families from Central America make up the largest demographic of immigrants arriving at the southern border.

Roughly 53,000 of the 92,000 people arrested at the southern border in March claimed to be traveling with a family member, the highest percentage and number of people in Border Patrol history.

The department has documented 3,000 incidents in the past six months in which an adult and child who claimed to be related were not. That’s a small portion of the 361,000 people Border Patrol took into custody in that timespan.

A 2015 court ruling in the Flores settlement agreement mandated families going through asylum proceedings not be held in ICE custody more than 20 days. The Trump administration has repeatedly said the ruling created an “incentive” to travel to the U.S. with real or faux family members.

The company’s technology was co-developed with the military when the Pentagon needed mobile DNA processing for missions in the Middle East and elsewhere. It had to be “ruggedized,” Mattern said, and able to be done in the back of a Humvee, making it a good fit for the border.

Last June, the FBI approved the use of ANDE. In October, it was used on human remains found after wildfires swept through Northern California. A company representative who spoke at the ConnectID conference in Washington Wednesday said each system used to identify remains in the California fire cost $225,000.

The DHS official said a "full blown privacy impact" study would need to take place if the department chose to roll out ANDE to the entire southern border.

White House requests extra $4.5B from Congress for border crisis

By Niv Elis - 05/01/19 11:58 AM EDT

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/441589-white-house-requests-extra-45b-from-congress-for-border-security

The White House on Wednesday asked Congress to allocate an extra $4.5 billion in emergency funding to deal with the crisis along the southern border.

The request includes $3.3 billion for humanitarian assistance, which the administration said would be used to increase shelters and care for unaccompanied minors, in addition to processing arrivals. About $1.1 billion would go toward other border operations like expanding the number of detention beds and providing more investigation resources.

The $1.1 billion includes $377 million for the Pentagon, which is providing logistical and active-duty support at the border.

The remaining $178 million would go toward technological upgrades and paying law enforcement.

None of the funds would go toward President Trump's border wall, according to the White House. Trump declared an emergency in February in order to reprogram about $8 billion in military funds to start construction of the wall.

A White House official said Wednesday that the administration could not use reprogrammed Department of Defense (DOD) funds from the emergency declaration to aid the humanitarian situation at the border.

“The idea that you’d take DOD funds and shift them to [Department of Homeland Security] DHS is outside the scope of [emergency declaration] authority,” a senior administration official said.

The White House funding request came a day after acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan told lawmakers that current funding, which was signed into law in March, would run out before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

“Given the scale of what we’re facing, we will exhaust our resources before the end of this fiscal year," he said.

Wednesday's request said funds for dealing with unaccompanied children crossing the border into the U.S. will run out by June.

House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday slammed the administration’s “cruel and ill-conceived” immigration policies, but said she would “carefully review this request in its totality and, where possible, work with the Senate and the White House to make conditions at the border more humane.”

Congress in February approved $415 million for humanitarian relief on the border, part of $14.9 billion designated for Customs and Border Protection in the DHS funding bill.

The White House said the U.S. has apprehended more than 360,000 migrant families crossing the border illegally in the first half of the fiscal year, almost twice the number it saw in the same period last year, and more than the total number in all of 2017.

The number of border apprehensions and denials of people attempting to enter the U.S. through the southern border spiked to 92,607 in March, up from 66,884 the previous month, according to government figures.

Earlier this week Trump sought far-reaching changes in how asylum cases are treated, which the White House said would seek to “safeguard our system against rampant abuse of our asylum process.”

Democrats blasted the plan, which would impose fees and require permits from those seeking asylum.

https://twitter.com/45__Schedule/status/1123818172648439808

POTUS_Schedule

‏ @45__Schedule

"The FBI is investigating anti-fascist activists for an alleged plot to buy guns from a Mexican cartel in order to “stage an armed rebellion” at the southern border, according to an unclassified document obtained by The Chicago Tribune."

#POTUS_Schedule

FBI Investigating Antifa For Plotting To Buy Guns From Cartel For ‘Armed Rebellion’

5:55 PM 04/29/2019 | US

Rachel Stoltzfoos | Staff Reporter

https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/29/fbi-antifa-plot-armed-rebellion-cartel/

The FBI is investigating anti-fascist activists for an alleged plot to buy guns from a Mexican cartel in order to “stage an armed rebellion” at the southern border, according to an unclassified document obtained by The Chicago Tribune.

The FBI document, from December of 2018, warns of militant antifa activists planning to “disrupt security operations” at the U.S.-Mexico border. The group allegedly planned to buy guns from a Mexican cartel associate known as Cobra Commander, in order to “stage an armed rebellion at the border.”

The source who provided it to the San Diego Tribune asked the outlet not to publish the six-page document because the investigation is ongoing, and the outlet cited two additional law enforcement officials who confirmed the news. The FBI has warned dozens of law enforcement agencies in both Mexico and the United States of the alleged plot.

Two of the men named in the report told the San Diego Tribune the allegations are absurd.

“It doesn’t make any sense that someone from the United States would purchase guns in Mexico,” Ivan Reibeling, the man known as Cobra Commander, told the outlet. “And the Hondurans certainly didn’t bring money to buy guns. It doesn’t make any sense; in fact it’s extremely absurd to say the Hondurans wanted to attack the United States at the border.

The FBI sent the report marked “priority” to agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the CIA and the National Security Administration.

Antifa is known for using violent means, including in protests against peaceful conservative speakers, free speech advocates and even journalists. The well-documented instances of violence include a protester repeatedly punching a man in the face, throwing water bottles and launching fireworks at police officers and starting fires on a college campus with Molotov cocktails. The Daily Caller News Foundation’s reporting led to the arrest of an Antifa leader who stands accused of accosting and assaulting two Marines in Philadelphia.

Former Vice President Joe Biden launched his campaign for president by praising the group. He referred to a group of protesters who gathered in Charlottesville, VA, and violently confronted white nationalists “a courageous group of Americans.”

https://twitter.com/45__Schedule/status/1123848380608851969

POTUS_Schedule

‏ @45__Schedule

4h4 hours ago

AG Bill Barr, in hearing, says he's working closely with FBI Director Wray to determine "exactly what went down" in the counter-intel investigation into the Trump 2016 campaign.

#POTUS_Schedule

https://twitter.com/45__Schedule/status/1123878551252602880

POTUS_Schedule

‏ @45__Schedule

Rep. Jerry Nadler threatens to issue a citation to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt if he does not agree to a new date and time to testify in front of the House within the next 2 days.

#POTUS_Schedule

https://twitter.com/45__Schedule/status/1123908785683169281

POTUS_Schedule

‏ @45__Schedule

2m2 minutes ago

339 pages of emails from Nellie Ohr's private account to Department of Justice (DOJ) email account, have been released under a FOIA request by the conservative legal group Judicial Watch @JudicialWatch .

#POTUS_Schedule

Judicial Watch Uncovers DOJ Records Showing Numerous Bruce Ohr Communications with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele

MARCH 07, 2019

https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-uncovers-doj-records-showing-numerous-bruce-ohr-communications-with-fusion-gps-and-christopher-steele/

Ohr Repeatedly Thanked Steele for ‘Updates’ and Assures Steele he will ‘Pass this [Information] along to my Colleagues’

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received 339 pages of heavily redacted records from the U.S. Department of Justice which reveal that former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr remained in regular contact with former British spy and Fusion GPS contractor Christopher Steele after Steele was terminated by the FBI in November 2016 for revealing to the media his position as an FBI confidential informant.

The records show that Ohr served as a go-between for Steele by passing along information to “his colleagues” on matters relating to Steele’s activities. Ohr also set up meetings with Steele, regularly talked to him on the telephone and provided him assistance in dealing with situations Steele was confronting with the media.

Judicial Watch obtained the records through a March 2018 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed after the Justice Department failed to respond a December 2017 request Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00490)). The lawsuit seeks:

All records of contact or communication, including but not limited to emails, text messages, and instant chats between Bruce Ohr and any of the following individuals/entities: former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele; owner of Fusion GPS Glenn Simpson; and any other employees or representatives of Fusion GPS.

All travel requests, authorizations and expense reports for Bruce Ohr.

All calendar entries for Bruce Ohr.

>>6390976

The timeframe for the requested records is January 1, 2015, to December 7, 2017.

The emails between Bruce Ohr and Steele were heavily redacted, including some of the dates they were sent and received.

On Friday, July 29, 2016, Steele emails Bruce Ohr about a meeting that is to include Bruce’s wife Nellie Ohr, who then worked for Fusion GPS, at the Mayflower Hotel:

Steele: Dear Bruce,

Just to let you know I shall be in DC at short notice on business from this PM till Saturday eve, staying at the Mayflower Hotel. If you are in town it would be good to meet up, perhaps for breakfast tomorrow morn? Happy to see Nellie too if she’s up for it. Please let me know. Best, Chris

Ohr: Dear Chris –

Nice to hear from you! Nellie and I would be up for breakfast tomorrow and can come into town. What would be a good time for you? Bruce

Steele: Thanks Bruce.

On me at the Mayflower Hotel, Conn Ave NW at 0900 should work but I’ll confirm the time for definite this eve if I may. Looking forward to seeing you. Chris

Ohr: Sounds good, but we won’t let you pay for breakfast! I’ll wait for your confirmation on time. Bruce

Steele: Let’s do 0900 then. See you in the lobby. Chris

Ohr: Very good. See you at 900.

On Saturday, July 30, 2016, Steele sends his thanks to Bruce Ohr for the meeting, “Great to see you and Nellie this morning:”

Ohr: Great to see you and Nellie this morning Bruce. Let’s keep in touch on the substantive issues/s. Glenn [Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson] is happy to speak to you on this if it would help. Best, Chris

On Friday, September 16, 2016, Steele and Ohr begin planning a meeting in the Capital Hilton:

Steele: Dear Bruce,

I hope you are well. I am probably going to visit Washington again in the next couple of weeks on business of mutual interest. I would like to see you again in person and therefore to coordinate diaries. So when are you planning to be in town please? Thanks and Best, Chris

P.S. I don’t think I have up to date cell or landline phone numbers for you. Grateful if you could send met them.

Ohr: Hi Chris –

It would be great to see you I DC. I’ll be out of town Sept 19-21 but should be here the rest of the time. My numbers are office 202 307 2510 and cell [Redacted] Let me know what works best for you.

Steele: Dear Bruce,

I have now arrived in DC and am staying at the Capital Hilton, 1101 16th Street NW. I don’t know my client-related programme yet but am keen to meet up with you. Might we provisionally say breakfast on Friday morn or even tomorrow morn if necessary? Look forward to hearing back from you. Best, Chris

More at Link!

https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-uncovers-doj-records-showing-numerous-bruce-ohr-communications-with-fusion-gps-and-christopher-steele/

https://twitter.com/45__Schedule/status/1123784948966670338

POTUS_Schedule

‏ @45__Schedule

8h8 hours ago

Hunter Biden, the son of former VP @JoeBiden, was paid about $50,000 per month through accounts linked to Burisma Holdings, which was owned by Ukrainian oligarch Zlochevsky.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html

Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies

By Kenneth P. Vogel and Iuliia Mendel

May 1, 2019

WASHINGTON — It was a foreign policy role Joseph R. Biden Jr. enthusiastically embraced during his vice presidency: browbeating Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government to clean up its act. And one of his most memorable performances came on a trip to Kiev in March 2016, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite.

The pressure campaign worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was soon voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.

Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.

Hunter Biden was a Yale-educated lawyer who had served on the boards of Amtrak and a number of nonprofit organizations and think tanks, but lacked any experience in Ukraine and just months earlier had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine. He would be paid as much as $50,000 per month in some months for his work for the company, Burisma Holdings.

The broad outlines of how the Bidens’ roles intersected in Ukraine have been known for some time. The former vice president’s campaign said that he had always acted to carry out United States policy without regard to any activities of his son, that he had never discussed the matter with Hunter Biden and that he learned of his son’s role with the Ukrainian energy company from news reports.

But new details about Hunter Biden’s involvement, and a decision this year by the current Ukrainian prosecutor general to reverse himself and reopen an investigation into Burisma, have pushed the issue back into the spotlight just as the senior Mr. Biden is beginning his 2020 presidential campaign.

They show how Hunter Biden and his American business partners were part of a broad effort by Burisma to bring in well-connected Democrats during a period when the company was facing investigations backed not just by domestic Ukrainian forces but by officials in the Obama administration. Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma prompted concerns among State Department officials at the time that the connection could complicate Vice President Biden’s diplomacy in Ukraine, former officials said.

“I have had no role whatsoever in relation to any investigation of Burisma, or any of its officers,” Hunter Biden said Wednesday in a statement. “I explicitly limited my role to focus on corporate governance best practices to facilitate Burisma’s desire to expand globally.”

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>>6390992

Hunter Biden, who left Burisma’s board last month, was one of many politically prominent Americans of both major parties who made money in Ukraine over the last decade. In several cases — most notably that of Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman — that business came under criminal investigation that exposed a seedy side of the lucrative Western consulting industry in Ukraine.

But the renewed scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s experience in Ukraine has also been fanned by allies of Mr. Trump. They have been eager to publicize and even encourage the investigation, as well as other Ukrainian inquiries that serve Mr. Trump’s political ends, underscoring the Trump campaign’s concern about the electoral threat from the former vice president’s presidential campaign.

The Trump team’s efforts to draw attention to the Bidens’ work in Ukraine, which is already yielding coverage in conservative media, has been led partly by Rudolph W. Giuliani, who served as a lawyer for Mr. Trump in the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. Giuliani’s involvement raises questions about whether Mr. Trump is endorsing an effort to push a foreign government to proceed with a case that could hurt a political opponent at home.

Mr. Giuliani has discussed the Burisma investigation, and its intersection with the Bidens, with the ousted Ukrainian prosecutor general and the current prosecutor. He met with the current prosecutor multiple times in New York this year. The current prosecutor general later told associates that, during one of the meetings, Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Trump excitedly to brief him on his findings, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Mr. Giuliani declined to comment on any such phone call with Mr. Trump, but acknowledged that he has discussed the matter with the president on multiple occasions. Mr. Trump, in turn, recently suggested he would like Attorney General William P. Barr to look into the material gathered by the Ukrainian prosecutors — echoing repeated calls from Mr. Giuliani for the Justice Department to investigate the Bidens’ Ukrainian work and other connections between Ukraine and the United States.

Mr. Giuliani said he got involved because he was seeking to counter the Mueller investigation with evidence that Democrats conspired with sympathetic Ukrainians to help initiate what became the special counsel’s inquiry.

“I can assure you this all started with an allegation about possible Ukrainian involvement in the investigation of Russian meddling, and not Biden,” Mr. Giuliani said. “The Biden piece is collateral to the bigger story, but must still be investigated, but without the prejudgments that infected the collusion story.”

The decision to reopen the investigation into Burisma was made in March by the current Ukrainian prosecutor general, who had cleared Hunter Biden’s employer more than two years ago. The announcement came in the midst of Ukraine’s contentious presidential election, and was seen in some quarters as an effort by the prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, to curry favor from the Trump administration for his boss and ally, the incumbent president, Petro O. Poroshenko.

Mr. Poroshenko lost his re-election bid in a landslide last month. While the incoming president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has said he will replace Mr. Lutsenko as prosecutor general, Mr. Zelensky has not said whether the prosecutors he appoints will be asked to continue the investigation.

Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, a deputy for Mr. Lutsenko who was handling the cases before being reassigned last month, told The New York Times that he was scrutinizing millions of dollars of payments from Burisma to the firm that paid Hunter Biden.

>>6391000

No evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal. Some of his former associates, moreover, said Mr. Biden never did anything to deter other Obama administration officials who were pushing for the United States to support criminal investigations by Ukrainian and British authorities — and potentially to start its own investigation — into Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, for possible money laundering and abuse of office.

The Biden campaign cast the revival of the Ukrainian investigation as politically motivated and pointed to the involvement of Mr. Giuliani to question the motives behind the new scrutiny.

Kate Bedingfield, a Biden campaign spokeswoman, said the former vice president’s 2016 push to oust the former prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, was undertaken “without any regard for how it would or would not impact any business interests of his son, a private citizen.”

The effort, she added, was consistent with “the United States’ foreign policy to root out corruption in Ukraine” and was backed by the United States government, allies and multilateral institutions, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The younger Mr. Biden said in the statement, “At no time have I discussed with my father the company’s business, or my board service, including my initial decision to join the board.”

Mr. Lutsenko denied any political motivation in reopening the case.

Hunter Biden, 49, is the middle of three children his father had with his first wife, Neilia Biden. She and the youngest child died in an automobile crash in 1972. Hunter and his older brother, Beau, survived the crash, and Beau Biden went on to a career in public service. Beau Biden died from brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.

After graduating from Yale Law School, Hunter Biden took on a number of roles that intersected with his father’s political career, including working with a Delaware-based credit card issuer, working at the Commerce Department under President Bill Clinton and working as a lobbyist on behalf of various universities, associations and companies.

When his father was selected as Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008, Hunter Biden terminated his lobbying registrations, which at the time included a company that had lobbied the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which his father had served, about online gambling issues.

Months after his father became vice president, Mr. Biden joined with Christopher Heinz, the stepson of John Kerry, then a senator, and Devon Archer, a Kerry family friend, to create a network of investment and consulting firms with variations of the name Rosemont Seneca. Mr. Kerry would go on to become secretary of state.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Archer pursued business with international entities that had a stake in American foreign policy decisions, sometimes in countries where connections implied political influence and protection.

>>6391003

Among the companies they did work for was Burisma, a natural gas company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky. Mr. Zlochevsky had served nearly four years in the government of the former Ukrainian president Viktor F. Yanukovych, who stepped down in early 2014 and fled amid mass street protests.

In the months after the collapse of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, Mr. Zlochevsky also fled the country as Ukrainian prosecutors opened multiple investigations into him and his businesses. Britain’s Serious Fraud Office froze London accounts linked to Mr. Zlochevsky containing $23 million, declaring it was connected to money laundering and Yanukovych-era corruption. (The British prosecution later collapsed because of what American officials said was a lack of cooperation from the office of the Ukrainian prosecutor general who preceded Mr. Shokin.)

When Mr. Shokin became prosecutor general in February 2015, he inherited several investigations into the company and Mr. Zlochevsky, including for suspicion of tax evasion and money laundering. Mr. Shokin also opened an investigation into the granting of lucrative gas licenses to companies owned by Mr. Zlochevsky when he was the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources. Mr. Zlochevsky and Burisma have always vigorously disputed the accusations against them.

Views about the role of the Bidens in the matter depend to some degree on questions about Mr. Shokin’s motives. Among both Ukrainian and American officials, there is considerable debate about whether Mr. Shokin was intent on pursuing a legitimate inquiry into Burisma or whether he was merely using the threat of prosecution to solicit a bribe, as Mr. Zlochevsky’s defenders assert.

Concerns about Mr. Shokin notwithstanding, the cases against Burisma had high-level support from the Obama administration. In April 2014, it sent top officials to a forum on Ukrainian asset recovery, co-sponsored by the United States government, in London, where Mr. Zlochevsky’s case was highlighted.

Early that year, Mr. Archer, the Kerry family friend, and Hunter Biden were part of a wave of Americans who would come from across the Atlantic to help Burisma both with its substantive legal issues and its image. Their support allowed Burisma to create the perception that it was backed by powerful Americans at a time when Ukraine was especially dependent on aid and strategic backing from the United States and its allies, according to people who worked in Ukraine at the time.

First, Mr. Archer joined Burisma’s board. Around the same time, the company started paying the New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, where Hunter Biden was working.

The firm, which Mr. Biden left at the end of 2017, declined to describe the nature of Boies Schiller’s work for Burisma. But previously unreported financial data from the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office show the company paid $283,000 to Boies Schiller for legal services in 2014.

Soon after Mr. Archer joined Burisma’s board, Hunter Biden followed, despite being warned by associates who had experience in Ukraine to stay away from Mr. Zlochevsky, according to a person familiar with the conversations.

A news release from the company said Hunter Biden would “be in charge of the holdings’ legal unit and will provide support for the company among international organizations.” Mr. Biden said the news release mischaracterized his role with Burisma. “At no time was I in charge of the company’s legal affairs,” he said.

Among the Americans brought in by Hunter Biden’s American business partners to help fend off the investigations was Blue Star Strategies, a consulting firm run by Clinton administration veterans that had done substantial work in Ukraine.

A team from Blue Star, and an American lawyer Blue Star hired, John D. Buretta, who had served as a senior official in the Obama Justice Department, held two previously unreported meetings in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, with Mr. Lutsenko, who took office in May 2016 after Mr. Shokin’s dismissal, according to people with direct knowledge of the meetings. Mr. Lutsenko denied attending the meeting.

>>6391009

Mr. Lutsenko initially took a hard line against Burisma. But within 10 months after he took office, Burisma announced that Mr. Lutsenko and the courts had “fully closed” all “legal proceedings and pending criminal allegations” against Mr. Zlochevsky and his companies, and that the oligarch had been removed by a Ukrainian court from “the wanted list.” Mr. Zlochevsky returned to the country.

Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine appears to have been well compensated. Burisma paid $3.4 million to a company called Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC from mid-April 2014, when Hunter Biden and Mr. Archer joined the board, to late 2015, according to the financial data provided by the Ukrainian deputy prosecutor. The payments continued after that, according to people familiar with the arrangement.

Rosemont Seneca Bohai was controlled by Mr. Archer, who left Burisma’s board after he was charged in connection with a scheme to defraud pension funds and an Indian tribe of tens of millions of dollars. Bank records submitted in that case — which resulted in a conviction for Mr. Archer that was overturned in November — show that Rosemont Seneca Bohai made regular payments to Mr. Biden that totaled as much as $50,000 in some months.

Amos J. Hochstein, who worked with Vice President Biden on Ukraine issues as the State Department’s coordinator for international energy affairs, said the Obama administration’s support for prosecuting Mr. Zlochevsky contradicts any implication that the elder Mr. Biden was seeking to oust Mr. Shokin in order to protect his son or Mr. Zlochevsky.

“I was in almost every single meeting that Vice President Biden had with President Poroshenko, I was on every trip, and I was on most of the phone calls, and there was never a discussion about his son, or Burisma,” Mr. Hochstein said. “None of these issues ever came up.”

On Wednesday, Hunter Biden said in his statement that his term as a director had expired and that he was stepping down from Burisma’s board in a political climate “where my qualifications and work are being attacked by Rudy Giuliani and his minions for transparent political purposes.”

>>6390992

https://twitter.com/45__Schedule/status/1123785312340201472

POTUS_Schedule

‏ @45__Schedule

8h8 hours ago

Ukraine's prosecutor general recently made the decision to reopen an investigation into Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden stepped down from Burisma Holdings board last month ahead of his father's Presidential run.

https://twitter.com/45__Schedule/status/1123788019713097729

POTUS_Schedule

‏ @45__Schedule

8h8 hours ago

Today, as the third US intelligence officer in less than a year has been found guilty of conspiring with Chinese intelligence services to pass them national defense information, @JoeBiden claims that the Chinese are "good folks" and "they are not competition for us (America)".

https://twitter.com/45__Schedule/status/1123741767520722946

POTUS_Schedule

‏ @45__Schedule

Daily Public Schedule for May 2, 2019:

11:00AM POTUS and FLOTUS participate in the National Day of Prayer Service.

2:30PM POTUS meets with Republican Members of the Senate.

Rod Rosenstein: Hero

Brian Cates

May 1, 2019 Updated: May 1, 2019

https://www.theepochtimes.com/rod-rosenstein-hero_2901409.html

Commentary

On April 29, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein submitted his long-awaited resignation letter to President Donald Trump, the man who had selected him for what turned out to be one of the most crucial jobs in his entire administration.

Controversy has swirled around Rosenstein since he was sworn in on April 26, 2017, following his confirmation hearings. He stepped into that top job almost two months after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself, on March 1, 2017, from all 2016 election-related DOJ investigations.

Sessions’s recusal meant that his deputy was going to play a crucial role. And indeed, Rosenstein had little time to become acclimated to the new job; by early May, he was thickly involved in Trump’s decision to fire James Comey as FBI director.

Rosenstein was originally scheduled to leave in mid-March this year, but new Attorney General William Barr asked him to stay on until the Mueller special counsel’s report was finished and released, and Rosenstein agreed.

Rosenstein ended his resignation letter to the president this way:

“We enforce the law without fear or favor because credible evidence is not partisan, and truth is not determined by opinion polls. We ignore fleeting distractions and focus our attention on the things that matter, because a republic that endures is not governed by the news cycle.

We keep the faith, we follow the rules, and we always put America first.”

Yes, you are reading that correctly. Rosenstein ended his resignation letter with the words “America first,” Trump’s own slogan.

For more than two years, I’ve watched various commentators sell narratives to the public about how a bewildered Trump kept being outmaneuvered by the man I’ve sarcastically dubbed “The Nefarious Rod Rosenstein,” a smirking traitor at his elbow who was supposedly helping to plot a coup against him.

Some people just can’t shake this firmly held belief that Trump is the world’s worst player at the game of “Spot The Traitor.”

I don’t buy that for a second. The truth about Rosenstein is far different from the popular narrative.

I firmly believe that Trump knew he and his campaign were being spied on by politicized federal agencies long before then-National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers visited him at Trump Tower on Nov. 17, 2016, following the election. Following that meeting, Trump the very next day moved his transition team to Bedminster, New Jersey.

You’re not supposed to remember that Trump hand-picked Rosenstein for this crucial deputy attorney general position long after he had become aware of spying shenanigans against him. Trump came into the White House knowing full well that he had to have immediate countermeasures ready to combat the Spygate plot. To believe anything else is to believe Trump is abjectly incompetent.

>>6391173

And Trump’s biggest most powerful countermeasure to the Spygate plot was: Rod Rosenstein.

Nobody really paid any attention to what Rosenstein said as he was grilled during a House hearing in June 2018: listen carefully to what Rosenstein says at 5:50 of the linked video.

Rosenstein: “We sit down with a team of attorneys from the Department of Justice, all of whom review that [the FISA warrant] and provide a briefing for us about what’s in it. Sir, I’ve reviewed that one in some detail and I can tell you, sir, that the information that’s public about that doesn’t match with my understanding of the one that I signed.

But I think it’s appropriate to let the Inspector General complete that investigation. These are serious allegations and I don’t do the investigation, I’m not the affiant. I’m reviewing the finished product, sir. If the Inspector General finds that I did something wrong then I’ll respect that judgment, but I think it’s highly highly unlikely, sir.”

Most missed what Rosenstein meant when he explained to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) that he wasn’t the affiant of the FISA renewal application on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page; that is, he wasn’t the one who did the investigating and prepared the information.

If the people who presented that FISA warrant to Rosenstein lied to him and hid things from him—deceiving him to get it renewed—they instantly became guilty of perjuring themselves when he signed off on it.

That would be a very serious offense indeed, and I can assure you that Justice Department (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been taking a long and very serious look at all of this FISA abuse and will soon be releasing a report detailing what he’s discovered. Barr publicly testified before Congress that Horowitz will release that report “in May or June.”

Far from being a key Spygate plotter trying to cover up the attempted coup, I believe Rosenstein is going to play a key role as a witness in prosecuting the plotters. It’s why he has to exit the DOJ now, before the prosecution phase begins, as I detailed in this earlier column, “Trump Continues to Prepare the Battlefield.”

I was one of the first people to buck that popular narrative by telling you that Rosenstein is really Trump’s hand-picked guy and not the Deep State rat many were claiming he was. Here’s my take in August of last year: “Rod Rosenstein: The Man With the Most Thankless Job in America.”

And here again last October, I once again provided an alternative to the popular narrative that Rosenstein had Trump wrapped around his little finger: “The Circus of Confusion and Chaos That Hangs Around Rosenstein Is Deliberate.”

And again from last October, I challenged the “Rosenstein Is a Top Spygate Plotter” narrative: “Is Rosenstein’s Endgame Approaching?”

And in this column from February, I noted the desperate gambit of Spygate plotters Andrew McCabe and James Baker trying to sell the idea that Rosenstein was plotting a coup with them against a sitting president: “McCabe Tries to Play Bystander, Pin it All on Rosenstein.”

And in March, I again explained Rosenstein’s role in handling the Spygate investigations, while juggling the Mueller special counsel probe and the leak hunts: “How the DC Leak Culture Was Made Powerless to Thwart Spygate Investigations.”

If Rosenstein was the dirty Spygate plotter as some had painted him to be, then he’s the dumbest, most ineffective traitor ever, since the entire Spygate plot was killed dead and exposed. It’s now going to be declassified and prosecuted by Barr, and all this happened despite Rosenstein’s best efforts to keep it from happening, or something.

So, I’m clearly on the record since at least August 2018 about Rosenstein. And so are the doomcriers who spent two years selling the public narratives about how Rosenstein was somehow blackmailing Trump with the Mueller investigation so as to keep his job, while he smirked and plotted against the president.

There’s no doubt, is there? There isn’t even a hint of a grey area here.

And I’m going to be proven right. Rosenstein is the biggest hero in this unfolding drama we’ve been watching for the past two years inside the Department of Justice.

And you can quote me on that.

Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and author of “Nobody Asked For My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!” He can be reached on Twitter at @drawandstrike.