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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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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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Wedding Invitations Send Trump Family an Unmistakable Message

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There’s been much speculation in the past few months over who is on the guest list for the upcoming royal wedding, where Britain’s Prince Harry will wed American actress Meghan Markle.

Several well-known names will no doubt be on the list, but a new report has revealed arguably the most famous American to get an invite — former President Barack Obama.

It was previously unclear whether or not Obama and his family would get invited to the wedding, which is set to take place on May 19 at Windsor Castle.

Though the former president is good friends with Prince Harry, the royal family was reportedly worried about upsetting President Donald Trump by inviting his predecessor, but not the current president himself.

It is unlikely that Trump, who Markle has publicly criticized in the past, is going to be invited to the wedding.

The U.K. Daily Star, however, reported Monday that the royal couple has decided to disregard their advisers and invite Obama, along with his wife, Michelle.

Prince Harry and Markle “want to do things their own way,” a royal source told The Star. “They are inviting their own friends, and not on the advice of aides.”

The royal couple has sent the Obamas an RSVP, leaving the final decision in the former first couple’s hands.

“I am very, very sure they will attend though,” the source said.

Barack Obama’s friendship with Prince Harry has been well-documented.

Last year, Obama let Harry interview him on BBC Radio 4’s “Today.”

Moreover, following the royal couple’s engagement announcement in November, Obama sent them both well wishes via Twitter.

“Michelle and I are delighted to congratulate Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on their engagement,” the former president wrote. “We wish you a lifetime of joy and happiness together.”

Meanwhile, Trump indicated last month that he is not terribly upset about being left off the invite list. Indeed, he said he hopes the royal couple lives a happy life together.

“I want them to be happy. I really want them to be happy. They look like a lovely couple,” Trump told British journalist Piers Morgan in an interview for ITV, according to Vanity Fair.

Trump’s remarks came despite the fact that Markle accused of being “misogynistic” during the 2016 presidential election cycle.

”Yes of course Trump is divisive,” she said on “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore” in May 2016. “I think it was in 2012, the Republican Party lost the female vote by 12 points. That’s a huge number and with as misogynistic as Trump is and so vocal about it, that’s a huge chunk of it.”

Markle and Prince Harry are set to be married by Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury. The entire royal family is expected to attend. (For more from the author of “Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Wedding Invitations Send Trump Family an Unmistakable Message” please click HERE)

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Family Sues Starbucks After Taking a Sip of Coffee and Discovering Blood in Cup

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A Starbucks store in San Bernardino, Calif. is in hot water over the way one family says its staff handled a particularly disgusting addition to a drink.

As KCBS reported, Amanda Vice plans to take the company to court roughly two years after she and her daughter, Payton, ordered a drink and found blood in their cup.

“She was licking the whipped cream where it had been sitting on top,” the mother said.

Upon further inspection, other members of the family noticed the same thing in their drinks.

“It was on the inside of the rim of my Frappuccino,” Vice said.

According to the Washington Post, documents released by the Frish Law Group indicate Vice and her 2-year-old daughter had been sharing the cup when another family member became suspicious.

Her mother-in-law reportedly noticed an “odd, metallic smell” emanating from her own drink, leading Vice to check the cup from which she and Peyton had been drinking.

“The blood was smeared on the inside and outside rim of the cup,” according to the lawsuit.

While that experience was upsetting enough, she claims the store’s manager compounded the situation by offering an insufficient remedy when confronted with the discovery.

According to Vice, she called the location and learned that a barista did sustain a laceration during her shift that day.

Aside from agreeing to keep that employee away from drink orders until her cut healed, Vice said she was insulted to only receive an offer for a week of free drinks.

“I thought it was sort of belittling,” she said.

The entire ordeal has reportedly caused Vice and others in her family added stress as they struggle with ordering anything prepared by a food-service worker.

“We’re constantly double-checking everything because now I don’t trust, I don’t trust anybody,” Vice said.

Offended by the offer of a few free drinks, Vice said her concern was not the cost but the safety of her daughter and anyone else who might have come into contact with the employee’s blood.

She reportedly requested that the company test the injured employee for communicable diseases, but was denied.

“I thought maybe I’d be a little more at peace if they would have her tested, the one who was bleeding,” she explained.

In addition to ensuring her family was safe, Vice said she also wants to see Starbucks change its policies so that other customers do not make such a discovery in their cups.

Without an agreement on those key issues, she contacted an attorney to file a suit against the company. That lawyer, Stan Pekler, said Starbucks had every opportunity to avoid a legal move by his client.

“The intention was always to try and resolve this with Starbucks,” he said. “And had they acted in a responsible way, we wouldn’t be here today.”

For its part, the coffee giant is offering only a preliminary statement at this time.

“We are aware of this claim that allegedly took place in 2016, and are prepared to present our case in court,” the company said. (Read more from “Family Sues Starbucks After Taking a Sip of Coffee and Discovering Blood in Cup” HERE)

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Shipping Container Full of Body Parts of Americans Discovered on Chinese Cargo Ship

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Exporting companies are using Chinese ships, planes, and trucks to transport dead Americans across the world for research purposes, according to a Thursday report from Reuters.

A Hong Kong-flagged cargo ship departed South Carolina in July carrying 6,000 pounds of human remains valued at $67,204.

The container’s temperature was set at 5 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent the parts from spoiling. Relatives of the dead, meanwhile, did not realize their loved ones’ remains were being dismembered and sent to Europe and elsewhere, the report notes.

Body brokers like Oregon-based MedCure rely on lax regulations to export body parts of deceased individuals to Mexico, China, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, among several other countries.

“There are people who wouldn’t necessarily mind where the specimens were sent if they were fully informed,” Brandi Schmitt, who directs a body donation system at the University of California, told reporters about the trade, which is still shrouded in mystery. “But clearly there are plenty of donors that do mind and that don’t feel like they’re getting enough information.”

The FBI raided MedCure in November, which culminated in a federal investigation.

“MedCure is committed to meeting and exceeding the highest standards in the industry. It takes very seriously its obligation to not only deliver safe specimens securely, but to do it in a way that respects the donors,” said the company’s lawyer, Jeffrey Edelson, who declined to comment on the nature of the raid.

Families of the deceased were shocked to hear that their husbands, fathers, and daughters were shipped overseas.

Marie Gallegos, whose husband’s head was reportedly shipped to a dental school in Israel months after he died of a heart attack, told reporters that she “should have read the fine print” of the forms she signed allowing his parts to be donated for science and research.

“Had I known that my husband’s head was over there, I would have waited to have the ceremony,” she said. “If they really wanted my husband’s body for these purposes, they should have told me upfront and verbally.”

Regulators are also concerned the parts might be infected with HIV or some other highly infectious disease. There is a disconnect between what the industry and government believe is dangerous, Matthew Zahn, chairman of the public health committee for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told reporters.

“It’s a situation where we don’t have a huge amount of regulation or clarity as to what the risks are,” Zahn said. “It feels like one of those cracks in the system where a practice has developed, and the risk factors and oversight have not fully matured.”

Current regulations cover body parts intended for transplant, such as hearts and livers, which has allowed some unsavory elements of the industry to bubble to the top.

FBI investigators raided the warehouse of another so-called Body Broker last year and found a grisly discovery. Court papers reveal the building, owned and operated by businessman Arthur Rathburn, was littered with dead flies, dog bowls, and human remains frozen together in huge “chunks.”

Rathburn’s business, International Biological Inc (IBI), became a target after routine border stops that found he was ferrying human heads to Mexico on their way to forlorn parts of the globe, court records show.

The jury ultimately found Rathburn guilty of fraud for supplying his customers with body parts infected with HIV and hepatitis.

“The fraud scheme orchestrated by IBI shocked even the most experienced of our investigative team,” FBI special-agent-in-charge David Gelios told reporters. Donors were “victimized as IBI intentionally and recklessly marketed and transported contaminated human remains… Personal greed overcame decency,” he said in a statement after the verdict.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

Packing Up, Moving Out: People Leaving California in Droves

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Billy Joel’s classic tune “Movin’ Out” could be an appropriate theme song for the many individuals in the High Desert and California who have packed up and relocated to places like Oregon, Michigan, Arizona, Texas and Idaho.

The Golden State continues to rank No. 1 as the state that has waved goodbye to more residents, about 143,000 last year, than welcomed those who have moved here, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report.

And despite the state losing 3.5 million people to other states from 2010 to 2015, many demographic experts said there is no mass exodus from California.

But this story is not so much about the amount of Californians leaving, but about why so many longtime High Desert residents have moved out of the Victor Valley.

Mike and Velvet Ambuski from Hesperia are among those who have relocated because they wanted to live in an area with less crime, better jobs, friendlier people, improved services, less traffic and a more politically conservative atmosphere. (Read more from “Packing Up, Moving Out: People Leaving California in Droves” HERE)

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Did Obama Lie? Do New Texts Indicate Then-Potus’ Knowledge of Hillary Investigation?

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Did former president Barack Obama mislead the American people when he stated, in the heat of the Clinton email scandal, that he does not involve himself in pending investigations “conducted by the Justice Department, or the FBI … in any case”?

New information released Wednesday concerning texts between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page appears to counter the narrative put forward by the former president. The texts — which have already unearthed several scandalous revelations about FBI officials’ roles in investigating Hillary Clinton — included a conversation a Senate report claims was about President Obama’s role in the Clinton email scandal and investigation.

In September 2016, Page wrote to Strzok about briefing former FBI Director James Comey on the Clinton email investigation, because “potus wants to know everything we’re doing,” Fox News reported.

Yet just five months earlier, then-President Obama stated adamantly that he would not be participating in the Clinton investigation, because it would violate his supposed impartiality.

“I do not talk to the attorney general about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations. We have a strict line, and always have maintained it,” Obama said.

“I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department, or the FBI, not just in this case, but in any case,” he added.

However, in the same interview, Obama said with complete certainty he was confident that Hillary Clinton “has not jeopardized national security.”

Obama continued:

“This is somebody who has served her country for four years as secretary of state, and did an outstanding job. And no one has suggested that in some ways, as a consequence of how she’s handled e-mails, that that detracted from her excellent ability to carry out her duties.”

So did Obama really absent himself from the Hillary Clinton email investigation (which ended without any charges filed against her), or was he always managing the Justice Department’s inquiry behind the scenes?

For his part, President Trump responded on Twitter to the newly released texts, describing them as “bombshells.”

Update: The Wall Street Journal reports that according to unnamed “associates” of Strzok and Page, the texts are in reference to an investigation of Russian interference in American politics. This contrasts with Fox News’ report linking the exchange to Obama’s alleged involvement in the Clinton email investigation. (For more from the author of “Did Obama Lie? Do New Texts Indicate Then-Potus’ Knowledge of Hillary Investigation?” please click HERE)

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Country Becomes the First to Repeal Same-Sex Marriage

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Bermuda became the first country in the world to repeal a law allowing gay couples to marry Wednesday.

The historic change comes after Bermuda governor, John Rankin, approved a bill Wednesday that reversed the nation’s 2017 Supreme Court ruling allowing gays to marry, according to the U.K. Independent.

The passage of the bill followed its approval by both the House and Senate in December. Both chambers approved the bill by wide margins.

Critics say that the move is a direct affront to both the LGBT community as well as a removal of what many deem a civil right for Bermudian citizens.

Conservatives applauded the action as a move that affirms and stabilizes a more traditional view of family.

“Governor Rankin and the Bermuda Parliament have shamefully made Bermuda the first national territory in the world to repeal marriage equality,” Ty Cobb, the Human Rights Campaign Global director, told the Independent.

“This is not equality,” 64-year-old married gay Bermudian Joe Gibbons also said.

“Progress is precious. This should worry us all! #BoycottBermuda” tweeted GLAAD president, Sarah Kate Ellis on Thursday. GLAAD advocates for LGBTQ acceptance and seeks to “shape the media narrative” according to its website.

Bermuda still allows gay couples to enter into domestic partnerships.

Bermuda minister of home affairs, Walton Brown, said that the move isn’t an attempt to ostracize gay community members but is simply an attempt to balance the widespread opposition to gay marriage which exists on the socially conservative island while ensuring protections to same-sex couples.

“The act is intended to strike a fair balance between two currently irreconcilable groups in Bermuda, by restating that marriage must be between a male and a female while at the same time recognizing and protecting the rights of same-sex couples,” Brown said.

Gay couples who married in 2017 while gay marriage was legal in Bermuda will not have their legally married status repealed.

Bermuda’s repeal of gay marriage comes after Australia and Austria both voted to legalize same-sex marriage in December.

Germany also voted to legalize gay marriage in June.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

Bombshell: FBI Informant in Uranium One Scandal Testifies Against Obama. Here’s What He Said.

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The FBI’s informant in the Uranium One scandal involving the Obama administration gave written testimony to three congressional committees this week in which he accused the Obama administration of making decisions that directly benefited the Russian government and their goals of gaining geopolitical advantages over the United States.

The informant, Douglas Campbell, told congressional investigators on Wednesday that Moscow sent millions of dollars to the U.S. with the expectation that it would benefit the Clintons, while Hillary Clinton “quarterbacked a ‘reset’ in US-Russian relations” in her role as Secretary of State during the Obama administration, The Hill reported . . .

Campbell participated in closed-door interviews with the Senate Judiciary, House Intelligence and House Oversight and Government Reform committees.

Campbell said that Russian nuclear officials told him that Moscow hired an American lobbying firm, APCO Worldwide, because it was in a unique position to influence the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton in particular.

Democrats are aggressively trying to discredit him but are having little success as “the FBI found Campbell’s undercover work valuable enough to reward him with a $50,000 check in 2016.” (Read more from “Bombshell: FBI Informant in Uranium One Scandal Testifies Against Obama. Here’s What He Said.” HERE)

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Surprise! Another DNC Link to Spying on Trump Team

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Just when you thought the Democratic National Committee’s funding of the dossier used to spy on Trump’s campaign was scandalous, WikiLeaks has revealed another DNC connection to the FISA spying warrant.

It turns out the author of a Yahoo News story – which was reportedly used by the FBI and DOJ on a FISA warrant application to lend credibility to the anti-Trump dossier – had been secretly working with the DNC “for weeks.”

The Yahoo author who was reportedly working with the DNC is Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent at the news organization and co-author of the upcoming book “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.”

On Wednesday, WikiLeaks released the following May 4, 2016, email from DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa to DNC communications director Luis Miranda.

In it, Chalupa – who was at the center of allegations that Democrats worked with Ukranians to find dirt on Trump – tells Miranda, “… I invited Michael Isikoff whom I’ve been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukranians.”

(Read more from “Surprise! Another Dnc Link to Spying on Trump Team” HERE)

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