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Senators press DHS over scheme that ‘gamed’ immigration system

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, WND

 

Two U.S. senators are demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security after they discovered data breaches that alllowed the immigration system to be “gamed.”

Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., are pressing DHS to explain the breach as well as a fraud case involving foreign nationals employed at U.S. embassies in Jordan and Russia.

The suspects apparently were stealing refugee case information and selling it for profit.

The senators explained the employees had been hired as “foreign service nationals” by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to process asylum requests.

“For years, these individuals flew beneath the radar of federal authorities, accessing, stealing and selling hundreds of case files involving applicants for U.S. refugee status,” the senators said. “The stolen material was then used to help other potential refugee applicants game the application system.”

The actions were concealed because they used an “older, less secure version of a State Department database that was not removed when newer systems with enhanced security features were installed,” the senators said.

Grassley and Tillis, in a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have asked what steps have been taken to prevent a reoccurrence.

In the letter, the senators note that the Department of Justice has revealed that Haitham Sad, a Jordanian citizen who worked at the embassy in Jordan, admitted to conspiracy to steal U.S. government records. He said his crimes “were part of a broader fraud scheme that involved Aws Abduljabbar, an Iraqi living in Amman, and Olesya Krasilova, a Russian citizen formerly employed as an Immigration Assistant at the USCIS field office in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.”

“Both used their employment to access the Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System to steal highly confidential information about U.S. refugee applicants. Then they sent the information to Abduljabbar in Jordan, who used the information to assist applicants who were seeking admission to the United States under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program,” they said.

The scheme operated for years, the letter explained, and Sad “admitted that he was able to access information on at least 270 Iraq cases after his employment by USCIS ended.”

“As members of the Judiciary Committee, we are responsible for ensuring that U.S. immigration laws, including U.S. refugee laws, are properly enforced. We must also ensure that proper safeguards are in place to prevent foreign adversaries from obtaining access to confidential government records,” the senators wrote.

The questions they want answered include the “steps DHS has taken to identify individuals with ties to Mr. Aws Abduljabbar who have also applied for U.S. refugee status” and what was done with the applications.

Also, the senators want to know what DHS has done to notify people whose information was accessed and what reviews such employees need to go through.

Also, why wasn’t the original system deactivated when the new one was installed? And has USCIS “undertaken an investigation to determine how Mr. Sad was able to continue to access the WRAPS system after he was no longer associated with USCIS?”

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Biden State Department Nominee Is a Defender of China Propaganda Program

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, Washington Free Beacon

A top State Department nominee is a defender of the Confucius Institute, a Chinese government program that disseminates pro-Beijing propaganda on American college campuses.

Victoria Nuland, President Biden’s choice for undersecretary of state for political affairs, voiced support for the expansion of the Chinese government-funded Confucius Institute at American universities in a 2012 press conference. Nuland, then an Obama administration spokeswoman, praised the campus institutes as a crucial part of “people-to-people exchange” between the two superpowers, dismissing concerns about Chinese ambition.

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A reporter asked Nuland if the Obama administration was concerned about “the Confucius Institute’s expansion in the U.S. as the strongest Chinese soft power?”

“No,” Nuland responded. “This [Confucius Institute] is something that we support. It’s part of the people-to-people understanding.”

The Confucius Institute quickly expanded its influence during the Obama era, establishing itself at more than 100 American universities and colleges during its peak in 2017, despite warnings about the Chinese Communist Party’s influence. Several government reports found the Chinese government exercised high degrees of control over campus institutes, barring their instructors from teaching taboo topics such as Tibet or Hong Kong. Frequently, instructors were contractually obligated to follow Chinese law even when teaching on American soil.

Nuland’s sympathetic comments about the Confucius Institute could ruffle feathers in the Senate, which will decide whether to confirm the former diplomat to the third-highest position in the State Department. Republican senators have demanded answers from multiple Biden nominees for China-friendly comments or business deals in the authoritarian country.

“Any nominee who has spoken in favor of Confucius Institutes is extremely concerning,” said a spokesman for Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.). “We cannot have individuals who are either naïve to—or even sympathize with—the threat that Beijing poses in top national security positions.”

Nuland’s comments are emblematic of the Obama administration’s welcoming approach to the Beijing-backed institutes.

According to a report by the National Association of Scholars, an education watchdog, Obama’s Department of Education sponsored a Confucius Institute-backed conference for Chinese teachers in the United States. Several Obama senior officials also served on the conference’s advisory board.

Nuland should answer for her support for the Chinese government-backed institute, said Rachelle Peterson, the author of the watchdog’s report.

“The Obama administration repeatedly underestimated the Chinese government’s soft power campaign, even going so far as to endorse Confucius Institutes,” she told the Washington Free Beacon. “Both Nuland and Biden must prove their ability to protect American higher education from CCP interference.”

This was not the only time Nuland made comments sympathetic to China to advocate for the Obama administration’s policy of engagement with the authoritarian country. In another press conference from 2011, Nuland said that she welcomed the “rise of a prosperous, successful China.”

“We don’t see China’s rise as a threat, nor do we seek to contain China’s rise,” Nuland said.

The Confucius Institute’s rapid expansion alarmed legislators on both sides of the aisles, prompting bipartisan action. The Senate unanimously supported a bill to rein in the influence of the Confucius Institute in 2020, after which the Democrat-controlled House passed a watered-down version of the legislation.

“Confucius Institutes are threatening academic liberty and free speech without shame, and too many American schools have fallen victim to the political con,” Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.), the sponsor of the anti-Confucius Institute bill, said in August. “It’s time to end Communist China’s deceitful attacks on democratic freedoms.”

The Confucius Institute continues to be a hot button issue in the Senate, which will decide whether to confirm Nuland to the undersecretary position. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s pick for U.N. ambassador, received a severe grilling from senators during her confirmation hearing because she gave a paid speech for the Confucius Institute in 2019.

The post Biden State Department Nominee Is a Defender of China Propaganda Program appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Judge rules DOE must provide charter schools with COVID-19 tests

Filed Under: MORE NEWS, NY Post

The Department of Education must begin administering COVID-19 tests in charter schools, a court ruled Friday. New York County Supreme Court Justice Frank Nervo determined that the DOE “shall provide and administer COVID-19 screening tests to students and staff of charter schools upon identical terms as testing provided to public schools,” court papers say. The…

Biden Nominee for Top State Dept Post Contributed to Book About How ‘Israel Lobby’ Controls American Politics

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, Washington Free Beacon

Uzra Zeya

President Joe Biden’s nominee for a top State Department position played a key role in assembling a book on the nefarious influence of the “Israel lobby” while working for an organization that promoted claims about Jewish media control and dual loyalty to Israel.

As a staffer at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Uzra Zeya compiled research for a book that argues that “the Israel lobby has subverted the American political process to take control of U.S. Middle East policy” by establishing a secret network of “dirty money” PACs that bribe and extort congressional candidates into taking pro-Israel positions. Zeya, a former U.S. diplomat who was nominated for undersecretary for civilian security, democracy, and human rights, worked for the Washington Report and its publishing group, the American Educational Trust, in 1989 and 1990. The news outlet is staunchly anti-Israel and has published articles questioning the national loyalty of American Jews and opposing taxpayer funding to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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Zeya’s work for the Washington Report and American Educational Trust raises questions about her views on Israel and could become an obstacle during her confirmation hearings. Biden’s recent hiring moves on foreign policy and conflicting statements from staffers have made it unclear how his administration plans to approach Israel policy issues. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki recently declined to denounce the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, contradicting statements condemning the movement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the Washington Free Beacon recently reported. Biden also tapped anti-Israel activist Maher Bitar for a top intelligence post and is reportedly considering Matt Duss, an outspoken critic of Israel, for a State Department position.

Sean Durns, a research analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, called the Washington Report a “fringe organization” that has “published content with anti-Semitic themes,” including claims that the Mossad was behind the JFK assassination and the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Organizations like the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs have a history of propagating fringe and sometimes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and I think it’s absolutely fair for questions to be raised in any sort of potential hearings,” said Durns.

Zeya did not respond to a request for comment sent through her nonprofit the Alliance for Peacebuilding. The White House also did not respond to a request for comment.

Zeya was listed as one of the staffers who helped compile the research for the American Educational Trust’s 1990 book Stealth PACs: How Israel’s American Lobby Took Control of U.S. Middle East Policy, according to the acknowledgments section.

In a section titled “Jewish Power in the Formulation of U.S. Middle East Policy,” the book claims that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee gives American Jews secret marching orders on how to vote and which candidates to support financially.

“Congressmen must assume that individual Jewish donors will be informed in advance as to exactly where each local and national candidate stands on Israel, and that on Election Day Jewish voters will be willing to cast their own votes on that issue alone,” says the book.

The book argues that “non-Jewish Americans increasingly perceive their Jewish fellow citizens as members of a single-issue voting bloc which, at best, divides its loyalties between an increasingly exploitative Israel, and an increasingly exploited United States.”

“[T]he more strident lobbyists for Israel must also accept a major share of the blame for whatever changes have taken place in American public perceptions of the loyalties of America’s Jews,” says the book. “The inevitable public perception is that such ardent supporters of Israel have no real interest in making the United States a better place for all of its citizens, but only in making Israel a more secure and prosperous place for Jews.”

The book ends with an appeal to readers to pressure members of Congress to stop accepting donations from pro-Israel PACs.

“When that happens, the people of the United States will regain control of their own Middle East policy,” the book concludes. “For better or for worse, in the Middle East as in other parts of the world, American foreign policy will, at last, be truly American.”

Zeya was hired as director of the American Educational Trust’s speakers’ bureau in July 1989, according to the Washington Report, where she helped connect the publication’s writers with groups looking for speakers.

“Ms. Zeya, a Muslim, will seek out Islamic groups seeking to work effectively within the American political system, and non-Muslim groups looking for authoritative speakers on Islam,” reported the outlet. She published several book reviews in the Washington Report and was listed as “program coordinator for the American Educational Trust specializing in Islamic affairs” in March 1990.

The Washington Report and its publisher, the American Educational Trust, were founded in 1982 by former U.S. foreign service officials Richard Curtiss and Andrew Killgore.

During Zeya’s time at the Washington Report, the organization published multiple screeds against the “Jewish Lobby” and accusing American Jews of controlling the media.

“Many Jewish Americans would unhesitatingly declare they are not Zionists,” wrote Alfred Lilienthal in an August 1989 column in the Washington Report. “But they conduct themselves, nonetheless, as if they were part of that nation and thus in possession of two national identities.”

“Through their tremendous outpouring of financial and political support and their inordinate influence over the media, so many Jewish Americans indicate that they are moved, if not compelled, by this almost involuntary duality,” Lilienthal wrote.

After her work at the Washington Report and the American Educational Trust, Zeya moved to the U.S. State Department where she worked in various diplomatic roles until 2018.

The post Biden Nominee for Top State Dept Post Contributed to Book About How ‘Israel Lobby’ Controls American Politics appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Oregon Education Department Promotes Course on ‘Dismantling Racism in Math’

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, Washington Free Beacon

math

The Oregon Department of Education wants teachers to enroll in a class focused on “dismantling racism in mathematics,” Fox News reported Friday.

The “Pathway to Math Equity Micro Course,” which the Oregon Department of Education advertised in its newsletter, aims to provide middle school teachers with the resources needed to abolish “white supremacy culture” in math class. Concentrating on finding the right answer and asking students to show their work demonstrate white supremacy, according to the 82-page course document.

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The course packet describes precisely how math teachers can become antiracist. Educators must analyze how math “is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.” Teachers are also encouraged to create a “mathematical identity” so that students “can see themselves as mathematicians” and adopt homework policies that address the needs of minority students. Class worksheets ask teachers to describe antiracist qualities they should develop during the school year.

The course sets different goals for each month of the school year. In November, teachers are asked to consider how they “authentically” include minority and multilingual students in math class. In May, teachers will evaluate how they “dismantle power structures in the classroom.”

The course begins on Feb. 25, according to the Oregon Department of Education’s email.

Months of racial justice protests spurred state education departments and public school districts across the country to insert elements of critical race theory—the idea that American government and economic institutions are inherently racist—into K-12 curricula.

The North Carolina Board of Education approved new American history standards this month that will teach high school students to “explain how slavery, xenophobia, disenfranchisement, and intolerance have affected individual and group perspectives of themselves as Americans” and “compare how some groups in American society have benefited from economic policies while other groups have been systemically denied the same benefits.”

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State Dept Refuses to Explain Iran Envoy’s Talks with China

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, Washington Free Beacon

Rob Malley

The State Department is refusing to provide details or even confirm statements by the Chinese government indicating the U.S.-Iran envoy Robert Malley recently spoke to Communist Party officials about the Biden administration’s efforts to reenter the 2015 nuclear accord.

Chinese vice foreign minister Ma Zhaoxu “had a phone conversation with U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley at the latter’s request, and the two sides had an in-depth exchange of views on the Iranian nuclear issue,” China’s foreign ministry announced late last week.

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When asked to confirm the press release and provide further details about Malley’s conversations, the State Department ignored multiple Washington Free Beacon emails before stating on Sunday, “Special Envoy Rob Malley is in the early stages of engaging Members of Congress, allies, partners, and others.” The State Department would not provide any details when pressed to specifically address the talks with China. Normally, the State Department provides reporters with readouts of conversations held by senior U.S. diplomats with their counterparts, particularly if those talks are held at the request of the United States.

Malley’s diplomatic talks with China come as the Biden administration is pressing Iran to end its revamped nuclear work, which includes stockpiling highly enriched uranium, the primary fuel for a nuclear weapon. China is still party to the 2015 accord and has a vested interest in seeing the United States rejoin the agreement. It is a primary ally of the Iranian regime and has supported the rollback of a United Nations arms ban on Tehran, which would permit the Communist Party and nations like Russia to sell Iran billions in advanced arms.

Malley’s overtures to China on the Iran portfolio appear to be at odds with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s repeated promises to not pursue diplomacy with Tehran until it rolls back its nuclear work and proves it is in compliance with the restrictions placed on its program as part of the agreement. The State Department’s silence on Malley’s meeting could be an indication the Biden administration’s public statements on the deal are at odds with its private diplomacy on the matter.

Iranian officials said during the weekend that the country is poised to further block access to international nuclear inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran is taking this step as part of a pressure campaign to force Western nations into granting it sanctions relief. In addition to booting IAEA inspectors—who recently found that Iran is producing uranium metal in violation of the accord—Iran plans to increase its enrichment of uranium and install advanced centrifuges, machinery that enriches uranium to levels needed for a weapon.

Iran also plans to suspend its cooperation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a nuclear arms pact, by the end of the month.

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Biden Justice Dept. Asks Supreme Court to Save Obamacare

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, Washington Free Beacon

Obamacare

The Biden Justice Department on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to reject a red-state legal attack on the Affordable Care Act, breaking with the department’s Trump-appointed predecessors who argued the entire law is unconstitutional. 

The High Court heard arguments in the latest Obamacare challenge on Nov. 10. A decision is expected by summer. 

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Changing sides in a Supreme Court case is a controversial practice. But Wednesday’s move was expected since the government’s prior position created a conflict for President Joe Biden, who has promised to protect and expand the Affordable Care Act. The Trump Justice Department’s position was itself surprising since the department defends the constitutionality of federal laws as a matter of course. Wednesday’s letter forthrightly cites “the change in administration” as the reason for the change. 

A coalition of red states brought a fresh challenge to Obamacare after the 2017 tax reform law zeroed out the financial penalty for failing to buy health insurance. The states argue that the mandate cannot be sustained as a tax if it isn’t raising any money for the government. They add that the mandate is integral to the law’s design, so the entire law must be struck down if the mandate is found unconstitutional. 

The Trump administration endorsed those arguments before the justices and declined to defend Obamacare in court. Wednesday’s letter retreats from that position, arguing instead that the zeroed-out mandate “preserved the choice between lawful options,” albeit without consequences for non-compliance. 

The letter adds that if the Court deems the mandate unconstitutional, it should strike that particular provision and salvage the rest of the law—something the Court seemed inclined to do during oral arguments in November.

By normal Court practice, an initial vote in the case would have followed a few days after the Nov. 10 argument. The majority opinion has likely been assigned for several months. 

The Justice Department did not call for further hearings or additional legal filings because “oral argument was held and these cases were submitted three months ago, and because other parties have fully briefed both sides of the questions presented.”

Deputy solicitor general Edwin Kneedler, a career government lawyer, submitted the letter because acting solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar is recused. Prelogar filed a brief in the case on behalf of Democratic lawmakers as an attorney in private practice.

Wednesday’s cases are No. 19-840 California v. Texas and No. 19-1019 Texas v. California.

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Biden Justice Department Pick Opposed Enforcing Civil Rights Laws Against Blacks

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, Washington Free Beacon

The incoming Justice Department civil rights chief has a history of opposing civil rights prosecutions of black defendants, arguing against bringing a complaint against an African-American Democratic leader who discriminated against white voters.

As an NAACP lawyer, Kristen Clarke lambasted the Justice Department for bringing a complaint against an African-American party boss in Mississippi who worked to suppress white votes, according to a federal probe. On a separate occasion, a federal oversight commission investigated claims that Clarke worked with allies at the Justice Department to quash the prosecution of the Black Panthers who menaced voters outside a Philadelphia precinct in 2008.

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Clarke’s nomination to an influential Justice Department post will test the Biden administration’s commitment to “equity-based” policy making, which purportedly promotes racial justice by giving special attention to marginalized groups. Clarke’s professional history suggests a staunchly ideological approach to civil rights enforcement where touchstone civil rights laws are applied to advantage some demographic groups but not others.

Clarke made waves in 2007 as an outside critic of the Justice Department’s civil prosecution of a corrupt party leader in Mississippi. A federal judge found that the leader, Ike Brown, violated the Voting Rights Act by suppressing white votes in a rural Mississippi county where whites are the minority. He was found to have pushed election workers to count deficient absentee ballots from blacks but disqualify ballots from whites with the same problems and held rigged caucuses in the homes of friends and supporters.

Then legal director of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, Clarke opposed the Justice Department’s decision to prosecute him, according to 2010 testimony from Justice Department official Christopher Coates before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

Coates described a 2008 meeting with Clarke in which she “spent a considerable amount of time criticizing the division and the voting section for bringing the Brown case,” and identified Clarke as part of a coterie of civil rights litigators who “believe incorrectly but vehemently that enforcement of the protections of the Voting Rights Act should not be extended to white voters but should be extended only to protecting racial, ethnic, and language minorities.”

Unanswered questions also linger over Clarke’s role in the Justice Department’s abrupt retreat from the 2009 prosecution of two uniform-clad Black Panthers intimidated voters and poll workers outside a Philadelphia voting precinct. An internal Justice Department report said that the pair intimated voters, shouted racial epithets, and castigated a black couple serving as poll watchers for the Republican party. One of them carried a billy club.

Federal prosecutors brought a civil complaint against the two Black Panthers in 2009, alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act. The defendants never responded to the complaint—effectively a forfeit—so the government was poised to win its case by default. But on the cusp of victory, in May 2009 the Justice Department dismissed its case against one of the panthers and recommended reduced sentencing for the other.

USCCR began investigating her involvement following a press report that she was in touch with DOJ lawyers about the case.

In a deposition before the Civil Rights Commission the following year, Clarke acknowledged contact with two Justice Department lawyers about the case but denied those contacts were substantive. Coates, the Justice Department official, revealed a third alleged contact, testifying in September 2010 that Clarke approached one of his subordinates about the case in 2009.

That approach, Coates said, “led me to believe in 2009 that the Legal Defense Fund political participation director, Ms. Clarke, was lobbying for the dismissal of the New Black Panther Party case before it was dismissed.”

At the time, Clarke was director of political participation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which denied any role in back-channel communications that led to the case’s dismissal. “LDF played no role in, and conducted no advocacy around, DOJ’s New Black Panther Party litigation,” the group said in a letter to the Civil Rights Commission. “Statements that LDF, or any of its staff, sought to influence the manner or to limit the scope of the litigation in any respect are false.

Clarke, whose post requires Senate approval, has also faced criticism for promoting pseudoscientific theories of black racial superiority as a student at Harvard, and hosting an avowed anti-Semite on campus.

A hearing on Clarke’s nomination before the Senate Judiciary Committee has not yet been scheduled. A White House spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

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Biden’s Justice Department Drops Discrimination Lawsuit Against Yale

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, Washington Free Beacon

The Justice Department on Wednesday abandoned its Trump-era lawsuit that claimed Yale University discriminated against Asian and white applicants during its admissions process.

The decision upends the department’s two-year investigation of the university, which concluded in August. Federal investigators initially found that Yale’s admissions process is discriminatory and unlawful because “preferred racial groups” are more likely to be admitted than equally qualified Asian and white applicants.

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The Justice Department previously threatened to sue Yale if it continued using race as a predominant factor. A department spokesman said at the time that Yale’s case was different from other affirmative action cases because the school often used race as the “determinative” factor for admitting students.  

Black students with the same academic qualifications as Asian students were up to eight times as likely to gain admission to Yale, the Washington Free Beacon reported last year. 

Yale spokeswoman Karen Peart said the school is “grateful” for the Justice Department’s decision. The school has denied all allegations that it treated Asian and white applicants unfairly during its admissions process. 

The move signifies the Justice Department could also reverse its decision to back Students for Fair Admissions in the group’s lawsuit against Harvard University. In 2014, the group sued Harvard, alleging the school’s admissions process discriminated against Asian-American students. The Justice Department wrote an amicus brief on behalf of Students for Fair Admissions in February 2020. 

Despite the Justice Department’s decision in the Yale case—and prior Supreme Court decisions confirming the constitutionality of affirmative action—some legal scholars consider a conservative majority on the Supreme Court a threat to precedents that support race-based admissions processes. 

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