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Sunday, August 14, 2016

In hearings under oath, much can be opinion debate, some can be question and answer. [UPDATED]

This YouTube, Benghazi hearings. In the six and a quarter minute segment, there was questioning and answering. Little of the video segment was questioning and answering. Apparently this YouTube post is from PBS News Hour.

UPDATE: Checking the web, this from Rand Paul later, about his questioning.

____________UPDATE______________
While skepticism here is over the Clinton-Wall Street relationships, TPP likely passage once/if a Clinton/Kaine ticket reaches the White House, what TPP and trans-Atlantic trade comparable arrangements might look like, etc.; there are others still suggesting prosecutable criminality. WND here, saying emails show knowledge of arming ISIS out of Libya, related to the annex, and in the linked full Paul-Clinton part of the Benghazi hearings Clinton's glide and slide about having to ask the agency running the annex as if left and right hands somehow lacked expected coordination.

This item, some in DC with time on their hands; this item which raises unanswered questions about parking some donor as a favor where arguably he may have attained insider insights related to trading.

It is in flux, but October is weeks away.

Of speculative interest, the May 27, 2016, WND item is headlined, "Declassified docs: Hillary aided rise of ISIS -- Confirm reports of U.S. arming Middle East jihadists," with this procedural rather than substantive excerpt:

NEW YORK – More than 100 pages of previously classified Department of Defense and Department of State documents implicate the Obama administration in a cover-up to obscure the role Hillary Clinton and the State Department played in the rise of ISIS.

The documents were obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Washington watchdog Judicial Watch.

They confirm WND reporting over the past three years of evidence that U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was involved in shipping weapons from Benghazi to support the al-Qaida-affiliated militias fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, effectively arming the Sunni jihadists who morphed into ISIS.

[...] Judicial Watch also noted the DOD documents released this week contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria.

[...] The heavily redacted document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons.

Another Defense Intelligence Agency report, written in August 2012, the same time period the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria, said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al-Qaida and other extremist Muslim groups: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.”

Judicial Watch noted the sectarian direction of the war in Syria was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS.

The DIA document noted the following:

This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.

Judicial Watch commented that some of the “dire consequences” are blacked out but the DIA presciently warned one such consequence would be the “renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.”

What is most curious, this Judicial Watch FOIA litigation was hanging fire for years. "Recently declassefied" means somebody, in some position in the government that has classified the stuff decided to declassify. How that decision was reached, by whom, and the timing given it not being the Clinton family's thing to lift the curtain to show the wizard, should have been questioned with answers found by mainstream media. But they've left that about as short of growing legs as this favors-for-donors, park the dude somewhere, ABC news item, reported elsewhere earlier also failed to grow legs. A websearch of the man's name will show other web content, but not much mainstream. Raj Ferando reporting: here by blog (latter link, Aug. 10, 2016, a different individual accorded a favor), here (hardly mainstream, but with helpful factoid tie-in, "Sri Lankan Americans for Obama"), and here, stating:

Clinton Raises $450,000 at Fundraiser by Raj Fernando - News Dispatches Aug 12, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton is pushing an agenda that takes on Wall Street, going after financial investors for focusing too heavily on their own immediate profits. But she's also taking their money, targeting some of those same executives to fund her presidential campaign.

A day after proposing higher capital gains taxes on short-term investors, Clinton raised at least $450,000 July 21 at the Chicago home of Raj (Rajiv) Fernando, a longtime donor, according to an Associated Press report. His firm, Chopper Trading, specializes in high-frequency transactions and was recently purchased by Chicago-based competitor DRW.

Fernando personally gave the family charity between $500,001 and $1 million according to the foundation's contributor list, and his company donated between $100,001 and $250,000.

Fernando has helped raise money in the past, raising more than $500,000 for the President Barack Obama reelection campaign, [...]

Compare coverage here, dismissive of allegations of possible impropriety. The Wikipedia entry for Raj Fernando echos the defense of the appointment, but what rings a question is as soon as the appointment was questioned per, "who, what qualifications," the man's business interests pressed him for time to where he resigned days after inquiries were voiced, for such business-pressure independent reasons.

What was going on, other than being the placement of a high-speed commodity trader in a position to see (possibly to act on) insider information not generally known in the trading markets? Good question? Suggest an answer, none has come out of Dept. of State nor from the Clinton pack; beyond the stuff of that MediaMatters linked item and the Wikipedia ambivilence.

Questions of propriety exist, as well as allegations of perjury. We live in interesting times, October being several weeks away. The fundamental question of whether there was provable influence peddling out of the Clinton Foundation awaits possible growing of legs. Favors for cash/return favors - government actions rendered in return for something of value, by officials knowingly so, seems the core understanding of bribery as a crime.

___________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
Chopper Trading, online:

Founded in 2002 by Raj Fernando, Chopper Trading began as a small fixed-income trading company. From four employees in a small office to currently over 200 people in five locations, Chopper has experienced phenomenal growth throughout its lifetime. Our company is headquartered in the historic Chicago Board of Trade building in downtown Chicago with satellite offices in New York, London, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. We have substantially expanded the scope of our business to include every major asset class and a wide variety of strategies and holding periods.

In order to stay competitive we invest substantial time and resources into technology to ensure our traders have the fastest and most efficient tools at their disposal.

Chopper Tradings bio blurb for Fernando states:

In 2015, Chopper was sold to DRW – a global leader in the financial industry.

In 2016, Mr. Fernando launched Scoutahead.com™, an Internet start-up he developed to deliver the most trusted information to companies and individuals in order to increase corporate and professional growth and productivity.

With twenty-five years of experience and expertise in the international financial markets and over a decade of experience leading cyber security initiatives, Mr. Fernando provides exceptional insights and counsel for his own companies as well as the boards and organizations he serves.

Reliable insider information would be "trusted" information for "companies and individuals," but that Scoutahead venture was well after the brief intelligence/security panel stint per Dept. of State appointment discretion.

The bottom line looks to be the Fernando situation would fit the Comey criteria, unwise but no credible prosecutor would run with it [alone] to claim criminality happened.

But back to the Paul-Clinton exchange, what did the Secretary know of Syrian arms traffic, and when did she know it?

Did she testify correctly?

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National Review doing some crystal balling about Wikileaks' next major EMAIL RELEASE move.

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What about the Trump emails? Was there no hacking attempt against him and his business situations? Or is his systems security better than the government's and the DNC's? Unless somebody has a better explanation, there are no smoking gun emails to be rattled out of his closet. Just a bunch of collective talking heads on TV saying how unstable a threat he is compared to eight more years of the Clintons. Sure.

Trump seems quite loose and imprecise, but that's being allowed by questioners to be that, and it really is not a bad political strategy. Sure we do not know how he'd function if president, but who dares to step up and say what the Clintons would actually do, apart from what they say? Jill Stein, I trust what she says as what she'd work to do. Likely so with the Johnson-Weld ticket; only what they say likely being what you'd get involves differences between the Libertarian and Green present world views. Stein's promises and visions are more attractive to some. Opinions can differ. Some, in reported polling, even say they trust Trump or Clinton. Minorities I believe, yet whether growing or lessening as we approach November is a matter to be seen as events unfold.

One great analysis of the Trump enigma, Michale Moore, online here. Riding the tiger?