Free Republic

Health provider Kaiser Permanente paid Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh more than $100,000 to buy about 20,000 copies of her “Healthy Holly” children’s books during a period when the company was seeking a lucrative contract to provide health benefits to city employees. Kaiser confirmed Monday to The Baltimore Sun that it paid approximately $114,000 for the books in multiple orders from 2015 to 2018. Pugh, a Democrat, became mayor in December 2016. In September 2017, the city’s spending board, which Pugh sits on and controls, awarded the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States Inc. a $48 million contract to...

A House Committee Hears Our Clinton Foundation Scandal Evidence Obama’s State Department Worked to Undermine the Trump Administration Hillary Clinton Claims Her Email System Was for ‘Convenience’ Media Buries Key Facts to Conceal Migrant Health Threat — TB, Hepatitis, HIV A House Committee Hears Our Clinton Foundation Scandal Evidence When I was asked by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s Subcommittee on Government Operations to testify this week about the Clinton Foundation, I knew the challenge would be organizing the vast trove of information we have accumulated through court action over the past several years. That evidence,...

The investigation began in part after federal agents seized materials from the president's former personal attorney Michael Cohen. President Donald Trump's inaugural committee is under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan for pay to play and misspending some of the $107 million it raised from donations, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The probe was launched by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, the paper said, citing people familiar with the investigation. The investigation, which is reportedly in its early stages, is looking into whether some of the committee's top donors gave money to gain access to the...

Witnesses have been grilled by members of a US House oversight committee over the probability that the Clinton Foundation had received donations from foreign powers who wanted favors in return. The shady donation tactic, otherwise known as "pay-to-play," allows donations as a means for preferential treatment for outside influencers.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office and New York state police are expected to arrest several senior executives in former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s finance company on fraud charges Tuesday, The New York Times reported. The executives are expected to be a part of a larger arrest of roughly a dozen senior executives spanning several companies involved in New York real estate and development. The district attorney’s office launched a new investigation into New York’s $62 billion construction industry, including the construction and facilities department of Bloomberg L.P., in 2017. Investigators uncovered a pay-to-play scheme in which subcontractors and...

In the year after Hillary Clinton’s presidential defeat, donors seemed to abandon the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, with contributions plummeting nearly 58 percent. The $36 million nosedive in donations has come to light as Republican legislators plan to hold hearings on the results of a federal corruption investigation into the non-profit next month. Federal authorities have long been probing the non-profit over allegations of “pay to play.” Specifically, the FBI investigation focused on whether any donations made to the foundation were linked to policy decisions made while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, according...

Seven documented examples of when payments to the Clintons and their foundation coincided with political favors The Clinton Foundation has raised more than $2 billion since its inception in 1997, and Bill and Hillary Clinton have been paid more than $150 million for delivering speeches. Notably, these payments increased dramatically after Hillary Clinton took office as secretary of state in 2009. The tens of millions of dollars that flowed directly to the Clintons or their foundation, from foreign governments or other entities (or “benefactors”) who could benefit from Secretary Clinton’s actions, seem to pose inherent conflicts of interest. The foundation...

Prominent Buffalo developer Louis Ciminelli has been sentenced to 28 months in Federal prison along with a $500 thousand fine for his conviction on charges in connection with the 'Buffalo Billion' program. Ciminelli is out on bail pending appeal. Ciminelli was sentenced Monday in federal court for a pay-to-play conspiracy in which his firm won a development job worth a half billion dollars. Ciminelli and three others were convicted over the summer. Prosecutors say the scheme involved state-funded contracts worth more than $850 million. Prosecutors say Ciminelli and others in his company contributed nearly $100,000 to Cuomo's campaign. The Democratic...

According to the New York Times, During the 2016 election cycle, Chuck Schumer Raised more money from Facebook employees than any other member of Congress (about $40K) according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Schumer’s daughter Alison was hired by Facebook and is now a marketing manager in Facebook’s New York office and the Senator protected Facebook from an investigation in the Senate. It sure looks hinky,” political strategist Susan Del Percio told The Post. “This is an industry that’s been trying for years to fend off heavy government regulation by actively cultivating relationships with senators and House members.” Why...

Imagine if it emerged that the Republican chairman of the House or Senate intelligence committee had a Russian spy working on their staff. Think it would cause a political firestorm? .. Feinstein (D-Calif.) had a Chinese spy on her staff who worked for her for about 20 years, was listed as an “office director” on payroll records and served as her driver when she was in San Francisco, all while reporting to China’s Ministry of State Security through China’s San Francisco Consulate. The reaction of the mainstream media? Barely a peep. ... asked several former senior intelligence and law enforcement...

Rahm Emanuel ducked out of City Hall alone on Tuesday, his usual security detail walking slightly ahead of him. Across the street at Daley Plaza, 150 activists had gathered to celebrate his vanquishing at an event called "Celebrate the End of Rahm Emanuel’s Reign of Terror". . . The calm, matter-of-fact way that Rahm's rule is coming to an ending is shocking—particularly so if you compare it to the mood of eight years ago. In 2010, Obama's former chief of staff returned to Chicago from the White House poised as a conquering hero ready to assume his rightful place on...

It looks like Judge Bruce will not be hearing any more cases in the near future. Back in October of 2013 Judge Bruce was appointed by Barack Obama to the federal court. Judge Bruce was set to hear two of the most extreme profile cases in the region. Before he was in the federal court, he was an assistant US Attorney in the Central District. As an Obama-Appointed federal judge, he has finally been removed from his position. Recently, the judge admitted to being involved with illegal activity with the cases he had been hearing in the past. It was...

Barack Obama warned supporters that politicians had “monkeyed around” with elections, during a campaign speech at Kent State University in New Philadelphia, Ohio, on September 3, 2008. Then-Senator Obama (D-IL) said (0:29 in the video below): “I come from Chicago. It’s not as if it’s just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in the past. Sometimes Democrats have, too. You know, whenever people are in power, they have this tendency to try to tilt things in their direction.” Obama called for establishing a “voting rights division” within the Department of Justice (DOJ) to combat “voter fraud” and what he...

For nearly four years the FBI investigated the international theft of STEALTH defense technology from a small Florida marine company that invented an ingenious way to help protect Navy ships and nuclear ballistic submarines from being detected on enemy radar and sonar. And on the eve before the case was go to a Grand Jury, the case was closed by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller and then-Attorney General Eric Holder. “This was the original pay-to-play scheme and it involves Mueller, Holder, (James) Comey and (Hillary) Clinton,” said Steve Morton, inventor and owner of a rare robotic ship and submarine stealth painting...

Sheldon Silver, a former New York Assembly speaker who brokered legislative deals for two decades before criminal charges abruptly ended his career, was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison by a judge who said political corruption in the state must end. The punishment, announced by U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni, amounts to five fewer years in prison than she gave him after he was initially convicted in the case in 2015. She noted that the conviction of the 74-year-old Democrat came in a year in which Joseph Percoco, a once-close aide to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and former...

Flashback to 2012 Truth No One in Obama/Clinton Administration Will Talk About – Ties to Obama Aided in Access for Big Utility – ( Unreleased Documents Showing More Collusion by deep state?) WASHINGTON — Early in the Obama administration, a lobbyist for the Illinois-based energy producer Exelon Corporation proudly called it “the president’s utility.” And it was not just because it delivers power to Barack Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago. Exelon’s top executives were early and frequent supporters of Mr. Obama as he rose from the Illinois State Senate to the White House. John W. Rogers Jr., a friend...

When no one questioned the missing $2.3 Trillion by the Pentagon the day before 9/11, the swamp has filled up with bottom feeders that have bled the American people to death. How many wars have American men/women fought and died in for greed? How many lies were told for it to happen? How many of the liars fear the Trump investigations? WHAT HAS BEEN DONE IS TREASON FOR GREED! An attorney for Trump, Jay Sekulow announced Wednesday the American Center for Law and Justice uncovered thousands of documents showing Clinton Foundation pay-to-play with Hillary’s State Department through a FOIA lawsuit....

The Clinton Foundation, after seeing a drop in donations amid increased scrutiny and "pay-to-play" allegations, is revving back up with a glitzy fundraising gala that coincides with a broader push by the Clinton machine to stay in the political spotlight. Axios reported Monday that longtime Clinton supporters received an invitation offering access -- a word that dogged Hillary Clinton throughout her failed 2016 presidential campaign -- to the family at a May 24 benefit for the Clinton Foundation. The cheapest tickets for the event will be $2,500 for cocktails and dinner. Deep-pocketed donors can lay out $100,000 for a package...

Judicial Watch Files New Lawsuit on Clinton Pay-to-Play Issues McCabe Firing Only the Beginning Nearly 200 Busted in $3.7-Million Food-Stamp Fraud Operation Judicial Watch Files New Lawsuit on Clinton Pay-to-Play Issues Judicial Watch meticulously documented Hillary Clinton’s use of the State Department to take care of donors to the Clinton Foundation. She and Bill are the poster children for pay-to-play. Now we’re looking into a potential linchpin of that operation. We just sued the State Department for emails, calendar entries and other information in the electronic file of Dennis Cheng, who was deputy chief of protocol for two years...

Special interests have continued to shower California legislators with hundreds of thousands of dollars in freebies, including foreign travel, golf games and concert tickets, as efforts to rein in gifts to elected state officials after a series of corruption scandals have stalled. New filings show lawmakers also were given bottles of champagne and whiskey, cigars, flowers, neckties and makeup in 2017, continuing a trend of gift-giving with few limits that has not slowed after the bribery scandals that sent former Sens. Leland Yee and Ron Calderon to prison. {snip} The governor reported $44,000 in gifts, most to cover the costs...