Tag: State Department

Biden Administration Aid to the Palestinians Could Go to Hamas

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Hundreds march in New York City to support Palestinians and resistance in Gaza

A spokesperson for the Biden Administration’s State Department confirmed the possibility that some of the aid being sent to the Palestinians could go to the terrorist organization Hamas, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The administration is allocating up to $100 million of American taxpayers’ money to go to the Palestinians, but has repeatedly declined to confirm if there are any safeguards in the aid package that could prevent some of the funds from going to Hamas, the terror group that is responsible for thousands of unprovoked rocket attacks on Israel in recent weeks.

An unnamed senior official with the State Department said that “as we’ve seen in life, as we all know in life, there are no guarantees,” with regards to the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on some of the funds.

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Media Dismissed Lab Leak Theory Because Trump Talked About It, According to a Senior Washington Post Reporter

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Doctor with protective gloves handling vaccine

The corporate press spent much of the pandemic dismissing the theory that COVID-19 could have accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology because former President Donald Trump talked about it, according to Washington Post senior reporter Aaron Blake.

“It has become evident that some corners of the mainstream media overcorrected when it came to one particular theory from Trump and his allies: that the coronavirus emanated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, rather than naturally,” Blake wrote in an analysis piece published Monday. “It’s also true that many criticisms of the coverage are overwrought and that Trump’s and his allies’ claims invited and deserved skepticism.”

Blake explained that the media was justified in being skeptical of the lab leak theory because Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had leaned in “hard” to the theory without providing “even piecemeal evidence” to support their claims.

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U.S. Issues ‘Do Not Travel’ Guidance to 80 Percent of Countries, Cites COVID-19

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Airplane in the sky

The State Department is expanding the “Do Not Travel” guidelines for U.S. citizens to include nearly 80% of countries because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency announced Monday.

The travel advisories will be updated to align with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) health notices as travelers are at risk because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the State Department said in a statement.

“This update will result in a significant increase in the number of countries at Level 4: Do Not Travel, to approximately 80% of countries worldwide,” the department said in a statement.

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Biden State Dept. Creates ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ Position

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President Biden’s State Department announced Wednesday the creation of a chief diversity officer position, as well as a council of deputy assistant secretaries from each of its bureaus, in an effort to bring “diversity and inclusion” to the department, Fox News reported. 

“I am committed to bringing the diversity and inclusion work already underway at the State Department to the next level,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Wednesday. “To make that happen, I am pleased to announce the creation of a new Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer position at State.”

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State Dept. Officials Told They Broke Law by Monitoring Americans During Ukraine Scandal

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State Department officials were explicitly ordered in spring 2019 to stop tracking 13 prominent Americans’ social media accounts for information about the Joe Biden-Ukraine scandal because the monitoring violated federal law, according to emails that were originally redacted to hide the concerns from the American public.

“We are barred by law from actively monitoring the accounts of American citizens in aggregate — and particularly from identifying and monitoring individual, selected accounts,” a State Department official wrote in an April 1, 2019 email to officials in Washington and the U.S. embassy in Kiev.

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United States Has Revoked Over 1,000 Visas for ‘Security Risks’ from China

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Since June, over 1,000 Chinese nationals located in the United States have had their visas revoked after being labeled national security risks, as reported by CNN.
The State Department released a statement on Wednesday addressing the matter, revealing that the initiative had specifically targeted “graduate students and research scholars” at various American universities who had been determined to be “high-risk,” and were thus removed from the country.

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State Department Monitored 13 Americans’ Social Media in Possible Legal Violation

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Officials at the U.S. embassy in Kiev ordered the monitoring of 13 prominent Americans’ social media accounts during the early days of the Ukraine scandal in spring 2019 and later were informed their activities potentially violated the Privacy Act, according to State Department memos made public on Tuesday.

The memos, released under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch, show those targeted for monitoring included President Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr., the president’s personal lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Fox News personalities Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Lou Dobbs. This reporter was one of the 13 individuals on the list targeted.

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State Department Inspector General Is Fired, Was Investigated for Mishandling Sensitive Information

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President Donald Trump fired Steve Linick, the State Department’s inspector general, on Friday night, sources told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Trump notified House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he was removing Linick from office, effective in 30 days. He said in the letter that “it is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General.”

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State Department Suspends Visa Services Across the World

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The State Department is suspending visa services in most countries across the world, the Trump administration’s latest response to mitigating the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement released late Wednesday, the State Department announced it’s cancelling all routine immigrant and nonimmigrant appoints at embassies and consulates in numerous countries. The suspensions became effective immediately, and no specific date was provided on when services would begin again.

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Hunter Biden Was on Board of Trade Coalition Lobbying Obama Admin on Ukraine Aid

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Hunter Biden was on the board of a trade coalition that lobbied the Obama administration in 2014 on foreign assistance to Ukraine, and appears to have set up a State Department meeting for the group’s president.

Biden’s links to the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) and its affiliate, the Center for U.S. Global Leadership, have gone largely unreported in the coverage of his various business dealings, which have caused a headache for his father as he runs for president.

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Commentary: It’s Time for Civilian Control of the State Department

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Consumers of the corporate leftist media’s political coverage have heard a drumbeat of reports that an honorable, highly capable, long-serving diplomat recently was driven from office following a vicious, conspiracy-driven smear campaign by dishonest, shameless partisans who leaked misleading stories to the media, generally abused power, and disregarded the constitutional chain of authority.

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Americans Not ‘Buying’ Democrats’ Impeachment Narrative, Rep. Burchett Tells C-SPAN

Jason M. Reynolds

U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) on Wednesday appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” call-in program to discuss the impeachment inquiry. He blamed a “cocky attitude” among some in the State Department and said they are upset over not being involved in President Donald Trump’s conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

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Report: US May Set Refugee Cap at Zero for Coming Year

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Tennessee Star

by Victoria Macchi   The Trump administration is considering more dramatic cuts to the U.S. refugee program, with one official suggesting the White House not allow any refugees into the country in the coming fiscal year. In a Politico report released Thursday, government officials from several federal agencies attended a meeting last week and discussed several options that included a ceiling of 10,000 — well below the current refugee ceiling of 30,000, which is already an all-time low for the program. The U.S. resettled 23,190 refugees since the beginning of fiscal 2019 last October. With 2½ months remaining until the count resets, the U.S. is on track to fall short of this year’s cap, according to U.S. State Department data. Since the so-called “refugee ceiling” is an upper limit, and not a quota, the government is not required to meet the annual admissions number. Multiple figures Scott Arbeiter, president of World Relief, one of the primary refugee resettlement nongovernmental organizations in the U.S., said he has heard multiple figures proposed for the coming fiscal year, all well below the program’s historical annual threshold of around 60,000 to 70,000. In President Barack Obama’s last year two years in office, his administration made…

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Commentary: Attorney General Barr’s Intelligence Review Should Include the DNC Servers

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by Robert Romano   The Hill’s John Solomon made big news on June 6 when he reported that Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, said in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report to be a Russian agent, was an intelligence source for the U.S. State Department. “In a key finding of the Mueller report, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is tied to Russian intelligence… What it doesn’t state is that Kilimnik was a ‘sensitive’ intelligence source for State going back to at least 2013 while he was still working for Manafort, according to FBI and State Department memos I reviewed.” This is as startling revelation as any that has been discovered, since it calls into question whether somebody purported to be a Russian intelligence officer by the Justice Department really was. It also calls into question other contacts Trump campaign officials were said to have had with supposed Russian agents, and other actions said to have been perpetrated by supposed Russian agents. Kilimnik was practically the entre basis for saying that Paul Manafort had at least been in touch with somebody connected with Russian intelligence. The Mueller report stated, “[O]n August 2, 2016, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met…

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Obama White House Tracked FOIA Request for Hillary Emails that Was Improperly Denied

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by Chuck Ross   The Obama White House kept tabs on a Freedom of Information Act request for information on former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton’s email accounts that the State Department improperly denied, according to newly released emails. The emails, which were provided to Judicial Watch, show for the first time that the Obama White House was aware of the Clinton-related FOIA request, which the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) submitted to the State Department in December 2012. The State Department denied the request in May 2013, claiming that no responsive records existed. That despite officials at the State Department, the White House, and even President Obama himself knowing that Clinton used a personal email account for government business. The State Department’s inspector general determined in a report released on Jan. 7, 2016 that the State Department’s denial of the CREW request was “inaccurate and incomplete.” It is not clear from the emails why the White House was interested in the request. But Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton has a theory. “These documents suggest the Obama White House knew about the Clinton email lies being told to the public at least as early…

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Dr. Carol M. Swain Commentary: Trump’s Heroic Efforts to Fulfill His ‘Make America Great Again’ Promises

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by Dr. Carol M. Swain   With President Donald Trump about to begin his third year in office, it’s fitting to discuss what he has accomplished since his election. Although the news is currently dominated by the federal government shutdown and the conflict between Trump and Democratic leaders over the funding of a wall on the Mexican border, it’s worthwhile to look beyond the headlines. What you will find will be shocking for any person unfortunate enough to get their news exclusively from America’s mainstream media. Despite unprecedented levels of opposition from national and international sources, Trump has been enormously successful at accomplishing his goals. He has been quietly checking items off a list of promises he made as candidate Trump, all part of his overriding goal to “Make America Great Again.” Note that wearing anything bearing that phrase is considered hate speech by the political left and an act of great bravery by the rest of America. Frustrated with media bias, the president’s supporters have kept their own running list of accomplishments. In October 2018, Washington Examiner reporter Paul Bedard reported 289 presidential accomplishments over the 20 months Trump had served in office. There is a website called MAGAPILL that has a running list of the…

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State Department Cancels Next Round of North Korea Talks Without Explanation

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by Will Racke   An upcoming round of high-level talks between the U.S. and North Korea has been postponed, the Department of State announced early Wednesday morning. “The meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korean official Kim Yong Chol, which had been scheduled for Thursday in New York, will now take place at a later date,” department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement. “We will reconvene when our respective schedules permit, she added. Ongoing conversations continue to take place.” Nauert did not provide a specific reason for the cancellation of Thursday’s meeting, which had been touted as a warm-up for a second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in early 2019. Just days ago, Pompeo said he expected to achieve “some real progress” on nuclear disarmament during the meeting with Kim Yong Chol. “I’m confident that we’ll advance the ball again this week when I’m in New York City,” he said Sunday on CBS’s Face The Nation. Instead, the ongoing nuclear talks appear to have hit another snag over major differences in how to proceed with the denuclearization process. North Korea has demanded that any moves it makes toward dismantling its…

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Legal Watchdog, Citing Secret Material in Clinton Emails, Presses State Department in Court

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by Kevin Mooney   In federal court hearings this week, a watchdog legal group keeps the heat on the State Department for answers about the exposure of classified information during Hillary Clinton’s use of unsecure email to conduct official business when she was secretary of state. A hearing is set Friday in U.S. District Court in the nation’s capital to address a request from Judicial Watch for Clinton, longtime top aide Cheryl Mills, and other current or former State Department officials to testify under oath. Judicial Watch wants them to address how the department responded to its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking information about the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. “It is frankly unbelievable that the State Department is still protecting Hillary Clinton and her aides from being asked basic questions about her illicit email system,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a prepared statement. “The courts were misled and obstructed by Hillary Clinton’s email scheme, and we hope to get some more answers about this scandal,” Fitton said. The court hearing Friday follows on the heels of a separate one Thursday where the watchdog group reported on the estimated number of Clinton documents the State Department…

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PROOF: Trio of Project Veritas Videos Expose Unaccountable Federal Government Employees Pushing a Soclialist Agenda From Within the Administrative State

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By Natalia Castro   When federal bureaucrats are unaccountable to even their own managers, it can be hard to identify and correct abuse within the system. In his most recent undercover expose, James O’Keefe sought to uncover the stories of the federal government’s worst employees directly from the source. This week, Project Veritas released three videos highlighting rampant misuse of federal resources by employees for political gain. All stories have a similar thread: the employees believe they can never be fired. And they are not completely wrong, current law makes their removal extremely different despite clear evidence of abuse. O’Keefe’s team of investigative journalists went undercover speaking with federal government employees who are also active members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization dedicated to ridding the country of capitalism — the economic system responsible for freeing and uplifting millions around the world from poverty — and replacing it with socialism (also known as the economic system responsible for killing millions of people in the last century and continuing to leave Venezuelans starving and penniless). In the first Project Veritas video, Stuart Karaffa, a Department of State employee explained how he spends his day working, “I have nothing to lose. It’s impossible to fire federal employees… I’m…

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FAKE NEWS Fact Check: Trump Administration Challenges Washington Post Hispanic Passport Story

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Donald Trump

by Fred Lucas   The Trump administration is pushing back against the accuracy of a Washington Post story that suggests Hispanics applying for passports are facing discrimination from the federal government. Writing that “a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question,” The Washington Post reported in an Aug. 29 article that: The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown. “The facts don’t back up The Washington Post’s reporting,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. A “fact sheet” the State Department released included a chart that found denials of passports because of potentially fraudulent documents have actually declined since 2013 on percentage bias. In calendar year 2013, the chart showed 71.6 percent of passport applications were approved, while 28.4 percent were denied. In calendar year 2018—as of Aug. 29—the State Department approved 74.2 percent of passport applications and denied 25.8 percent. “This is an irresponsible attempt to create division and stoke fear among American citizens…

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Special Counsel Robert Mueller Used Hillary Clinton’s ‘Enemies List’ Disguised As an Intelligence Document

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Robert Mueller

By Robert Romano   When you get right down to it, almost every person being targeted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller or targeted by the Justice Department in 2016 and 2017 via the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court was named in the Christopher Steele dossier, which was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. It was Hillary Clinton’s enemies list, dressed up as an intelligence document, that attempted to make the case that then-candidate Donald Trump and his campaign were Russian agents. It was then used to obtain FISA warrants against former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. George Papadopoulos was also named and stands out as somebody who was not explicitly named by Steele, at least in the version of the dossier that was published by Buzzfeed (we have yet to see the rest of Steele’s work product). But let’s look at who did appear in the Steele dossier. Donald Trump. Michael Cohen. Carter Page. Paul Manafort. Michael Flynn. All are now targets of the Justice Department and the special counsel. But none have been accused by the Department of assisting Russia with hacking the DNC and John Podesta emails and putting them on Wikileaks — Steele’s central…

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Pompeo Extols ‘America’s Essential Rightness’ at State Department

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday extolled the “essential rightness” of the United States in global affairs as he urged demoralized U.S. diplomats to act firmly and aggressively as they promote and carry out the Trump administration’s foreign policies. In a town hall pep talk to State Department employees, Pompeo explained that his repeated calls for the agency to regain its “swagger” meant that diplomats should act with confidence, knowing that the U.S. cause is just. The event was closed to journalists as Pompeo told staff he wanted his conversations with them to be private but the State Department released excerpts of his prepared remarks. “Swagger is not arrogance; it is not boastfulness, it is not ego,” Pompeo said, according to the excerpts. “No, swagger is confidence; in one’s self, in one’s ideas. In our case, it is America’s essential rightness. And it is aggressiveness born of the righteous knowledge that our cause is just, special, and built upon America’s core principles.” “Our task is to preserve our civilization of human dignity, individual liberty, democracy, national sovereignty, and the rule of law, and to challenge anyone seeking to take it down,” he said. “We should be proud and confident…

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Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith Among 100 Catholic and Evangelical Leaders Critical of Trump’s Plans to Cut Foreign Aid Funding

Wendy Wilson

More than 100 Christian leaders from across the country have signed a letter asking Congress to protect funding for America’s foreign aid programs. The letter reveals divides among Christians over President Trump, whose plans continue to enjoy the support of many other Christians. The letter comes as Trump is proposing a 28 percent budget reduction for relief programs run by the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Trump’s budget for 2018 also calls for a 35 percent reduction in spending for the Department of the Treasury’s International Programs. Signers of the letter include Catholics and evangelical pastors, heads of faith organizations and recording artists and authors. Prominent names include Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Both Dolan and Rodriguez spoke at Trump’s inauguration. Other signers include World Vision USA president Rich Stearns, former Southern Baptist Convention president Ronnie Floyd, Habitat for Humanity CEO Jonathan Reckford and Alec Hill, president emeritus of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Musical artists include Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith and Third Day. The letter noted that “many countries experience unparalleled suffering and loss of  life due to extreme poverty, disease, natural disasters and conflict.” “Matthew…

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