House Set to Investigate Ex-CIA Director Brennan’s Apparent Perjury

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By Real Clear Investigations. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes next plans to investigate the role former CIA Director John Brennan and other Obama intelligence officials played in promoting the salacious and unverified Steele dossier on Donald Trump — including whether Brennan perjured himself in public testimony about it.

In his May 2017 testimony before the intelligence panel, Brennan emphatically denied the dossier factored into the intelligence community’s publicly released conclusion last year that Russia meddled in the 2016 election “to help Trump’s chances of victory.”

Brennan also swore that he did not know who commissioned the anti-Trump research document (excerpt here), even though senior national security and counterintelligence officials at the Justice Department and FBI knew the previous year that the dossier was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Last week, Nunes (R-Calif.) released a declassified memo exposing surveillance “abuses” by the Obama DOJ and FBI in their investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia. It said the agencies relied heavily on the uncorroborated dossier to take out a warrant to secretly surveil a Trump adviser in the heat of the 2016 presidential election, even though they were aware the underlying “intelligence” supporting the wiretap order was political opposition research funded by Clinton allies — a material fact they concealed from FISA court judges in four separate applications. . .

[A senior House investigator stated,] “John Brennan did more than anyone to promulgate the dirty dossier . . . He politicized and effectively weaponized what was false intelligence against Trump.” (Read more from “House Set to Investigate Ex-CIA Director Brennan’s Apparent Perjury” HERE)

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Did Obama’s CIA Boss Lie About Trump Dossier?

By WND. Under oath before the House Intelligence Committee last May, former CIA director John Brennan testified that the infamous anti-Trump “dossier” funded by the Democratic Party played no role in the intelligence community’s publicly released conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Brennan further declared he did not know who commissioned the opposition-research document, even though senior national security and counter-intelligence officials at the Justice Department and FBI knew the previous year it was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Now, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., is investigating whether or not Brennan committed perjury, reports Paul Sperry at RealClear Investigations . . .

Nunes has said his committee is working on a second phase of the investigation, focusing on the Obama State Department’s role in creating and disseminating the dossier . . .

An aide who spoke to Sperry on condition of anonymity said Nunes will focus on Brennan as well as Obama’s first CIA director, Leon Panetta. Other Obama intelligence officials the committee will scrutinize are former director of national intelligence James Clapper, national security adviser Susan Rice and security adviser-turned U.N. ambassador Samantha Power. (Read more from “Did Obama’s CIA Boss Lie About Trump Dossier?” HERE)

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Why Have Crime Scene Unit Vans Been Spotted at Two Abortion Clinics in Two States?

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Somewhat of a mystery has developed over the past few days as a second group of pro-life activists describe the presence of Crime Scene Investigation van at their local abortion facility.

Last week, Operation Rescue reported on the presence of a Palm Beach County Crime Scene unit at Presidential Women’s Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, on February 6, 2018. It was unclear why the unit was dispatched to that abortion facility, but given the fact that PWC was referred to the State Attorney General’s office by the U.S. House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives for illegally trafficking in aborted baby remains, it raised hopes the Crime Scene unit was gathering evidence in that case.

Since then, pro-life activists in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, told Operation Rescue that a similar Crime Scene unit was seen at the West Alabama Women’s Center abortion facility on February 3, 2018.

However, additional details emerging from the Tuscaloosa incident may shed more light on why Crime Scene Units have now been spotted at two abortion businesses in two states within days of each other.

The van at the Tuscaloosa abortion business was from the City of Gadsden, which is about 120 miles from Tuscaloosa. Pro-life activists also noticed that one of the two CSI officers that entered the abortion facility carried a small Styrofoam cooler in and out of the facility. (Read more from “Why Have Crime Scene Unit Vans Been Spotted at Two Abortion Clinics in Two States?” HERE)

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On Her Last Day in Office, Obama National Security Advisor Rice Sent Suspicious Letter About Obama, Comey, Trump-Russia Collusion Meeting

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On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent a letter to former Obama national security advisor Susan Rice asking her to explain an email she sent to herself on the last day of her duty in the White House. That email was an email from Rice to . . . Rice. And it explained that President Obama had held a briefing on January 5 regarding supposed Trump-Russia collusion. According to the letter:

“If the timestamp is correct, you sent this email to yourself at 12:15 pm, presumably a very short time before you departed the White House for the last time. In this email to yourself, you purport to document a meeting that had taken place more than two weeks before, on January 5, 2017.”

Here’s what Rice wrote:

On January 5, following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present…President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book”. The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book. From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia…The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.

(Read more from “On Her Last Day in Office, Obama National Security Advisor Rice Sent Suspicious Letter About Obama, Comey, Trump-Russia Collusion Meeting” HERE)

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Department of Education: We’re Done Being Involved with Transgender Students and Bathrooms

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The Department of Education has decided it will not investigate or interfere if transgender students complain they are barred from bathrooms that match their chosen gender, according to Buzzfeed News.

On Thursday, Buzzfeed asked Liz Hill, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, if restroom complaints from transgender students are not covered by a 1972 federal civil rights law called Title IX. Hill answered, “Yes, that’s what the law says,” adding on Friday, “Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, not gender identity.”

Hill made it clear that some complaints by transgenders students will indeed be investigated, but bathroom complaints will not be among them. She stated, “Where students, including transgender students, are penalized or harassed for failing to conform to sex-based stereotypes, that is sex discrimination prohibited by Title IX. n the case of bathrooms, however, long-standing regulations provide that separating facilities on the basis of sex is not a form of discrimination prohibited by Title IX.” . . .

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 states that discrimination is forbidden on the basis of sex. The word “gender” is not included in its language:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. (Read more from “Department of Education: We’re Done Being Involved with Transgender Students and Bathrooms” HERE)

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Olympic Oops: Katie Couric Has Now Insulted the Dutch

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By The Daily Wire. NBC believes it’s doing a bang-up job hosting the Olympic Winter Games television broadcast, but in less than two days of coverage, its anchors have already insulted at least two countries.

First, an NBC “Asia correspondent” suggested that Korea was grateful for the presence of Japan’s Olympic delegation, after all Japan had given them (it turns out, the Japanese took more than 200,000 Korean women hostage before World War II to work as “comfort women” for Japanese men). Now, Katie Couric has managed to insult The Netherlands with her quaint, anachronistic (and kind of racist) explanation of the Dutch commute.

While watching the Dutch national team — mostly speed skaters — enter the arena opening night, Couric quipped happily, “‘why are they so good,’ you may be asking yourselves? Because skating is an important mode of transportation in a city like Amsterdam.”

“As you all know, it has lots of canals that can freeze in the winter. So for as long as those canals have existed, the Dutch have skated on them to get from place to place, to race each other and also to have fun,” she continued. (Read more from “Olympic Oops: Katie Couric Has Now Insulted the Dutch” HERE)

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Dutch Mock Katie Couric’s Comments About Speedskating

By USA Today. Katie Couric might want to visit Amsterdam sometime.

The broadcaster is drawing criticism on social media after her unusual reasoning for the Netherlands’ success in speedskating over the years. Couric, who co-anchored NBC’s coverage of Friday’s Olympic opening ceremony in Pyeongchang, said that the Dutch rely on skating as a form of transportation in their capital city, which sits at sea level.

(Read more from “Dutch Mock Katie Couric’s Comments About Speedskating” HERE)

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Trump’s Daughter-In-Law Sent to Hospital After Opening Letter Containing ‘White Powder’

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The suspicious letter that sent President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law to a Manhattan hospital was postmarked from Boston and appeared to contain corn starch, multiple senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.

The letter was addressed to Vanessa Trump’s husband, Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, officials said . . .

Vanessa Trump and two other people were taken to New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center strictly as a precaution.

The NYPD said the white powder in the envelope was deemed to be non-hazardous and was taken to a lab for further analysis. More testing is being done, but officials said it appeared the substance was harmless corn starch.

“How disturbed must a person be to do what they did to a mother of five children?” Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal attorney, said in a statement. “This dangerous and reckless act goes beyond political differences.” (Read more from “Trump’s Daughter-In-Law Sent to Hospital After Opening Letter Containing ‘White Powder'” HERE)

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Trump Proposes Demolishing FBI Headquarters

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The latest development in the ongoing war between the White House and the FBI is that the Trump administration is now proposing to demolish the Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., that serves as FBI headquarters, and to replace it with a new building.

It is a prime piece of real estate. Perhaps Trump can figure out a way to save the taxpayers some money by putting a hotel, condo, or office building on the property, and moving the FBI to somewhere less expensive, like the Virginia or Maryland exurbs, or to some job-thirsty rustbelt location.

Local media in Washington reported that the project could cost up to $2 billion, and that Maryland Senator Cardin and Congressman Steny Hoyer had been pushing to have the FBI relocated to a suburban office park. A report from the General Services Administration, which administers government real estate, to a Senate committee that oversees the topic proposes “a ‘nationally-focused consolidation’ that would move roles that do not need to be conducted in Washington to federally owned sites in Idaho, Alabama and West Virginia,” the Baltimore Sun reported. (Read more from “Trump Proposes Demolishing Fbi Headquarters” HERE)

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Obama Artist Paints Black Women Holding Severed White Heads

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While America is captivated by the newly released portraits of former President Obama and first lady Michelle, there’s something curious about Obama’s artist that’s raising eyebrows: He apparently enjoys painting portraits of black women holding the severed heads of white people.

Kehinde Wiley, a New York artist who paints primarily African-American subjects in heroic poses, was chosen by former President Obama to create a portrait of the 44th president to be displayed at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Wiley’s portrait of Obama was unveiled Monday . . .

Still, it turns out President Obama’s artist has a curious history of painting African-American women holding the severed heads of white people, according to the Media Research Center. Like the presidential portrait, the subjects are depicted with floral backgrounds.

One example is this painting known as “Judith and Holofernes,” a subject from the deutercanonical Book of Judith, which tells of a beautiful woman named Judith who beheads an Assyrian general named Holofernes, who had planned to destroy Judith’s home city.

[There is a] painting from Wiley’s collection known as “The Economy of Grace,” a series that focused on black women whom he recruited from the streets of New York. Wiley described the collection as “a celebration of black women, creating a rightful place within art history, which has to date been an almost exclusively white domain.” (Read more from “Obama Artist Paints Black Women Holding Severed White Heads” HERE)

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Amazon Laying Off Hundreds of Employees

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Amazon is laying off employees in the “low hundreds” an in effort to shift head count allocation to businesses that are growing, CNBC has learned . . .

A person familiar with the matter says the cuts are focused on Amazon’s Seattle headquarters and will affect some workers globally. The layoffs will occur in the consumer retail business, which includes Amazon’s toys, books and groceries units, to make room for head count in businesses that are growing, like Alexa, AWS and digital entertainment. Jeff Bezos, in a statement in the last earnings report, said Amazon would “double down” on Alexa after blowing past projections.

While Amazon supports thousands of jobs, the layoffs are in sharp contrast to its rapid expansion over the past few years. It created 130,000 jobs worldwide last year, not including the nearly 90,000 it added with its acquisition of Whole Foods. It has nearly 4,000 corporate jobs currently open in Seattle and 12,000 worldwide.

“As part of our annual planning process, we are making head count adjustments across the company — small reductions in a couple of places and aggressive hiring in many others,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC. “For affected employees, we work to find roles in the areas where we are hiring.” (Read more from “Amazon Laying off Hundreds of Employees” HERE)

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TV News Confused Restaurant P.F. Chang’s and Pyeongchang

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Pyeongchang is a mountainous county 110 miles southeast of Seoul in South Korea, and the host of the 2018 Winter Olympics.

P.F. Chang’s is an Asian-inspired chain restaurant with 210 U.S. locations, including ones in Chicago, Lombard, Northbrook, Orland Park and Schaumburg.

PyeongChang and P.F. Chang’s are not the same thing, and beyond the fact that they both begin with the letter P and end in “Chang,” they have little in common.

This distinction, however, appears to have eluded WLS-Ch.7’s news team, which on Saturday morning accidentally broadcast a report about the political backdrop to the Winter Olympics, illustrated with the graphic, “P.F. Chang 2018.” (Read more from “TV News Confused Restaurant P.F. Chang’s and Pyeongchang” HERE)

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