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2016

Russian Fighter Crowds U.S. Aircraft Over Syria Close call prompts U.S. officials to register pointed concerns to Moscow By Gordon Lubold

WASHINGTON—A Russian jet fighter flew within a half-mile of an American military aircraft over Syria earlier this month, prompting U.S. officials to register pointed concerns to Moscow, U.S. military officials said.

The encounter was sufficiently close that the “jet wash,” or turbulence from the passing Russian fighter, was felt by the crew of the American aircraft, according to Col. John Dorrian, the spokesman for the American-led coalition against Islamic State in Baghdad.

“That’s closer than we’d like,” he said of the Oct. 17 incident.

Col. Dorrian said U.S. officials have determined thus far that the Russian jet fighter’s near miss to the U.S. aircraft wasn’t done for any “nefarious” purpose, but was an accident. The jet fighter apparently was escorting a Russian spy plane. U.S. officials declined to identify the American plane involved, citing the sensitivity of its mission.

U.S. military personnel aboard the American craft immediately contacted the Russian aircraft crew. The following day, U.S. officials followed up on the incident more formally through an official channel with the Russian military, first established in October 2015.

The memorandum of understanding establishing the channel provides for routine military-to-military exchanges in an effort to “de-conflict” the airspace over Syria. The more formal and higher-level exchange between senior level military and civilian officials on both sides may also take place as needed.

Two California Men Charged With Trying to Export Military Parts to Iran Shipments went to other destinations in Persian Gulf before being routed to Iran, prosecutors say

LOS ANGELES—Federal prosecutors charged two California men with conspiring to smuggle fighter-jet parts to Iran in a scheme that allegedly dates to 2009.

The pair worked with two Iranian nationals to break laws that restrict exports to the longtime U.S. adversary, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said in a statement Friday.

A nine-count federal indictment unsealed Wednesday alleged that Zavik Zargarian of Glendale tried to help one of the Iranians purchase more than $3 million worth of parts for fighter jets, including F-15s and F-18s. Their would-be supplier was an undercover federal agent.

Prosecutors also said Vache Nayirian of Los Angeles exported more than 7,000 fluorocarbon rubber O-rings, which could have military uses, including for aircraft landing gear.

To evade detection, the shipments went to other destinations in the Persian Gulf before being routed to Iran, where the national air force received them, prosecutors said.

Both defendants have been assigned court-appointed attorneys and pleaded not guilty Wednesday. The attorney representing Mr. Nayirian questioned the strength of the government’s case, given that it began seven years ago and a grand jury produced the indictment in 2014.

Congress: Attorney General Lynch ‘Pleads Fifth’ on Secret Iran ‘Ransom’ Payments Obama admin blocking congressional probe into cash payments to Iran BY: Adam Kredo

Attorney General Loretta Lynch is declining to comply with an investigation by leading members of Congress about the Obama administration’s secret efforts to send Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, prompting accusations that Lynch has “pleaded the Fifth” Amendment to avoid incriminating herself over these payments, according to lawmakers and communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) initially presented Lynch in October with a series of questions about how the cash payment to Iran was approved and delivered.

In an Oct. 24 response, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik responded on Lynch’s behalf, refusing to answer the questions and informing the lawmakers that they are barred from publicly disclosing any details about the cash payment, which was bound up in a ransom deal aimed at freeing several American hostages from Iran.

The response from the attorney general’s office is “unacceptable” and provides evidence that Lynch has chosen to “essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries regarding [her] role in providing cash to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” Rubio and Pompeo wrote on Friday in a follow-up letter to Lynch, according to a copy obtained by the Free Beacon.

The inquiry launched by the lawmakers is just one of several concurrent ongoing congressional probes aimed at unearthing a full accounting of the administration’s secret negotiations with Iran.

“It is frankly unacceptable that your department refuses to answer straightforward questions from the people’s elected representatives in Congress about an important national security issue,” the lawmakers wrote. “Your staff failed to address any of our questions, and instead provided a copy of public testimony and a lecture about the sensitivity of information associated with this issue.”

A Fine FBI-Clinton Mess Comey reopens the email probe 11 days before the election.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey revealed Friday that the FBI has reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and her handling of classified material, merely 11 days before Election Day. Mr. Comey cited new evidence, but the disclosure raises troubling new questions about the Democratic candidate and FBI.

In a letter to Congress, Mr. Comey wrote that in connection “with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” The FBI “cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant,” but presumably the new emails are significant enough for Mr. Comey to conclude he had no choice but to take the extraordinary step of returning to the Clinton file so close to Nov. 8.

Liberals decided in real time Friday that Mr. Comey is now a partisan attempting to influence the election, but the same liberals had a ball after his July media appearance when he created a new legal standard of “extremely careless” instead of “grossly negligent” to exonerate Mrs. Clinton. Then the FBI chief was the reincarnation of Eliot Ness. At the third debate, Mrs. Clinton cited Mr. Comey’s probity: “The FBI conducted a yearlong investigation into my emails. They concluded there was no case.” Liberals can’t have it both ways.

The reality is that Mr. Comey’s Clinton probe has been a kid-glove exercise all along. Only days before he prematurely ended the investigation and proclaimed that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case”—a decision for the Justice Department, not the FBI— Bill Clinton met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an Phoenix airport tarmac.

When the FBI later released its investigation summary and interview notes on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, they showed Mrs. Clinton telling agents that she “could not recall” or “did not remember specifically” key details and events 27 times. The interview wasn’t taped, and Mrs. Clinton wasn’t put under oath, though it is a crime to lie to the FBI.

Recent revelations include the immunity deals extended to Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson to get them to surrender their laptops. The FBI could have sought a subpoena or search warrant to do as much, but Justice didn’t empanel a grand jury. Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson were allowed to serve as lawyers for Mrs. Clinton at her FBI interview, despite being material witnesses. Their deals specified that the laptops would be destroyed, meaning they can’t now be re-searched and cross-checked against Mr. Comey’s new information.

This week we learned that Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe steered more than $675,000 to the political campaign of the wife of FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who oversaw the Clinton investigation in the FBI’s Washington D.C. field office. Mr. McAuliffe is a longtime Clinton friend who is under FBI investigation himself over campaign finances. CONTINUE AT SITE

Lest Anyone Gets Too Excited… View all posts from this blog By:Srdja Trifkovic

The FBI bombshell is not necessarily a gamechanging event. The Clinton campaign, and its mainstream media extension, have weathered with surprising ease the fainting episode on September 11.

In the next two days they will focus on:

the possibility (they will claim likelihood) that Anthony Weiner’s/Huma Abedin’s server does not contain any emails not known to the FBI already, let alone those designated confidential, classified, secret or top secret – that was Hillary Clinton’s predictable immediate reaction;
that the FBI will not be able to sift through thousands of emails quickly enough to provide a clear answer to (1) before the election, which is the coded message behind the Clinton camp’s demand for a “detailed and thorough” investigation – demands for “immediate” disclosure notwithstanding – and an unnamed official has already indicated that it was not likely that the FBI’s review of the additional emails could be completed by Election Day; and
that the FBI was acting under political pressure from Clinton’s foes: Sen. Dianne Feinstein has already declared that “the FBI has a history of extreme caution near Election Day so as not to influence the results. Today’s break from that tradition is appalling.”

The one truly appalling event in this saga was James Comey’s decision last spring not to ask for a grand jury, without which the entire investigation into Clinton’s emails was predictably sidetracked. On that inglorious form, his surprise Friday announcement may indicate that the potential for scandal is so great that his options for further damage limitation in Clinton’s interest were extremely limited.

However . . . In 1982 I interviewed for the BBC World Service one of Ireland’s best respected diplomats and political commentators, Connor Cruise O’Brien, at his home by the cliffs above the Irish Sea. In passing he mentioned Ireland’s scandal-ridden prime minister of the day, Charles Haughey, who had managed repeatedly to survive numerous disclosures of corruption and wrongdoing. O’Brian said that if he saw Charlie Haughey “buried at midnight at a crossroads with a stake driven through his heart, I should continue to wear a clove of garlic around my neck, just in case.”

New Emails in Clinton Case Came From Devices Once Used by Anthony Weiner NYTimes

WASHINGTON — A new trove of emails that appear pertinent to the now-closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was discovered after the F.B.I. seized at least one electronic device shared by Anthony D. Weiner and his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton, federal law enforcement officials said Friday.

The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner, a former Democratic congressman from New York, sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case — one federal official said they numbered in the tens of thousands — potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.

In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”

Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. was taking steps to “determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He said he did not know how long it would take to review the emails, or whether the new information was significant.

Mr. Trump has fallen behind Mrs. Clinton in most national polls and in many key states. Polls have been tightening in recent days, however, amid the daily release of hacked Clinton campaign emails published by WikiLeaks.

Mr. Trump seized on the F.B.I. action on Friday at a rally in New Hampshire. To cheers of “lock her up” from his supporters, Mr. Trump said: “Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.”

After deriding the F.B.I. for weeks as inept and corrupt, Mr. Trump went on to praise the law enforcement agency.

FBI reopens Clinton email investigation By Stephen Dinan

The FBI has renewed its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s secret emails, Director James Comey told Congress in a new letter Friday, heightening the stakes for the Democratic presidential nominee with less than two weeks before Election Day.

The FBI has renewed its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s secret emails, Director James Comey told Congressin a new letter Friday, heightening the stakes for the Democratic presidential nominee with less than two weeks before Election Day.

Mr. Comey said his agents learned of new emails “pertinent” to their probe while working on an unrelated case. He said his agents need to review those messages to see whether they contain classified information and whether they affect his previous decision.

In July, Mr. Comey announced that while he determined Mrs. Clinton did mishandle classified information, she was too inept to know the risks she was running, so he couldn’t prove she did it intentionally — undercutting a criminal case.

His new announcement Friday threatened to upend the presidential campaign.

Comey’s October Surprise: New York Sun

Donald Trump is taking the high road in the wake of the October surprise of the director of the FBI, Jas. Comey, who announced earlier this afternoon that the bureau will reopen — if that’s what it’s doing — the investigation in respect of Secretary Clinton’s email. Mr. Trump, in remarks made but minutes after the announcement, praised both the FBI and the Justice Department for “courage.” Mr. Comey’s letter, in any event, is quite the October surprise.

“In previous Congressional testimony, I referred to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had completed its investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server,” Mr. Comey wrote to committee chairmen at Congress. “Due to recent developments, I am writing to supplement my previous testimony. In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”

“I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation. Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether this material may be significant.”

Even with the vagueness the development is huge, coming as it does ten days before an election in which the candidate at the center of this probe is regarded by the public with record distrust. It is a tragedy for Mrs. Clinton, but people don’t trust her. That, more than the sex scandals and Donald Trump’s rough-hewn temperament, is the central character question in this campaign. CONTINUE AT SITE

FBI Reviewing Newly Discovered Emails in Clinton Server Probe Emails surfaced during agency’s investigation into former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s alleged sextingBy Byron Tau

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has uncovered and is reviewing new evidence in connection with its investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s email server, a probe that the FBI had closed this summer.

In a letter to Congress, FBI director James Comey said the FBI had discovered new emails in an unrelated case that “appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into whether Mrs. Clinton or her aides mishandled classified information while she was serving in the State Department.

“I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation,” Mr. Comey wrote Friday to a group of congressional committee chairmen and ranking members.

The emails in question were found during the search of a device in the FBI probe of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is being investigated for allegedly sending sexually explicit messages to a minor, a person familiar with the case said.

Mr. Weiner is married to Huma Abedin, a longtime senior aide of Mrs. Clinton who recently announced she was separating from Mr. Weiner. Ms. Abedin was questioned earlier this year by the FBI in the Clinton email probe.

On Friday, Mr. Comey said it wasn’t clear whether the new emails would be important to the probe. “The FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work,” he wrote.

Mr. Comey recommended no charges against Mrs. Clinton or her aides when the investigation was closed this summer.

The announcement of a renewed probe into Mrs. Clinton’s handling of sensitive and classified information comes with just 11 days left in the increasingly bitter presidential contest between her and Republican opponent Donald Trump. CONTINUE AT SITE

‘Let Me Be Clear’: GOP Chairman Tells Comey to Review New Emails Before Election Day By Bridget Johnson

WASHINGTON — One of the eight GOP committee chairmen notified by FBI Director James Comey about new emails pertaining to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server urged the bureau to finish its review before Election Day.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who leads the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, responded to Comey’s notification to Congress that he green-lighted “appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”

Comey stressed that “the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work.”

The emails in question reportedly were recovered from electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin and her estranged husband Anthony Weiner during the FBI’s probe of the former congressman sexting a 15-year-old. CNN reported that the new emails were not written by Clinton.

In his letter today, Shelby requested that the FBI “expeditiously and thoroughly conduct its review” due to “the serious nature of this matter.”

“Unfortunately, it has now become apparent that the FBI, with all its extensive resources and highly-trained personnel, closed an incomplete investigation that resulted in only partial findings. I firmly believe that the American people deserve to know the facts – all of them.” The emphasis on those last three words was added by the senator.

Shelby, who is up for re-election this year but expected to keep his seat, added that how the investigation is conducted is “critical to the integrity of the FBI and the American people’s ability to place their trust in government.”