This is a "life" investment site. I will never ask anything of you. God does not need anything you have and neither do I. My desire, here, is to help people in trouble, lost, guilty, desperate, lonely, fearful,or simply seeking the truths of God.I have been a seeker of truth for sixty three years since I was nineteen and I am still learning and seeking God's will for what is left of my life. I will answer questions and write commentary on most subjects. Psm.115:1, Pastor Blair
Born on Christmas Eve 1930. Retired Pastor whose ministry began in winter of 1950 as a 19 year old Marine in North Korea in Hell Fire Valley.
We were fighting our way into the Battle of Chosin Reservoir where HQ 1stMarDiv was surrounded by 150,000 Chinese Communist Forces. I Pastored 36 yrs. Sweet wife and I have 6 children and 83 grand, great, and great great grand children and it has not stopped yet. I am a happy, old, Preacher who loves Jesus and people. People...only because God so loved the world. We are an unlovely lot.
Psalms 22:16 records the prophetic words of Jesus, the Jewish Christ, while being executed on the cross .... which was demanded by the Jews and performed by the Romans. Within those agonizing, but glorious, words Jesus cried out, in the prophecy, "they pierced my hands and my feet." That predicts his crucifixion. But the Jews did not crucify, the Romans did. But this prophecy was given several hundred years before Rome occupied Israel. The prophecy: "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint .... My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet."Read the entire chapter - Psalms 22.
Then, again, Jesus, the Christ (Messiah), spoke through the prophecy of Zechariah, a promise, that the day would come when He would pour out grace upon the Jews and they would repent and believe that the Jesus whom they had "pierced" and crucified ... was indeed their Christ (Messiah).
"And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom
they have pierced, and they shall mourn ... as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn." Zech.12:10.
After that prophecy, 500 years passed before Jesus came and was pierced with Israeli thorns, Jewish nails, a Roman whip's lash, and spear. And just hours before He was crucified, the Jews seized Him, beat him, and condemned Him to death. Then they delivered Him to the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, for a Roman execution. But Pilate found Jesus innocent of the charges and wanted to release Him, but the Jews demanded that He be executed .... and Pilate acquiesced and had Jesus, the king of the Jews crucified. In his interrogation of Jesus, Pilate reminded Jesus that it was His own Jewish people and Jewish chief priests who "delivered " Him to be executed.
"Pilate answered (Jesus), Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me." John 18:35.
When Jesus refused to answer Pilate's question, the Governor reprimanded Him and Jesus told Pilate that those Jews who "delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin." Thus the Jews were assigned the primary responsibility for this capital crime against Roman Law and this savage but religious assault against God. But we know that every human sin contributed to the cause of Jesus' death. So we are all guilty.
"Then saith Pilate unto him … knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin." John 19:10-11.
It was in that same chapter, of John 19, that the Apostle John quoted the prophecy of Zech.12:10, above, and set the record straight that one day (2000 years later) the Jews would "look on him whom they pierced" , and recognize Jesus as their Messiah, mourn, repent and believe on Him as their Savior.
"And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced." John 19:37.
What I am suggesting is that the Jews "looking on Jesus whom they have pierced" and turning to Christ as their Messiah is another sign of the end times. And God is using Dr. James Tour, the subject of my last two posts, as a key figure in this spiritual transition to Christ among the world's Jews. Expect more Satanic attacks and fake news. R.B. ________________________ This from A Journey Through NYCReligions:
National survey shows Jews leaving Judaism, assimilating, becoming Christians or “Nones”
Jews who are Christian now are one of the major components of the U.S. Jewish population.
Rise of the Messianic Jews
Jews who are Christian now are one of the major components of the U.S. Jewish population. 1.7 million adult Jews identify themselves as Christians. Only the denomination of Reform Judaism has more support among American Jews, with an estimated 1.86 million adherents.
Mitch Glaser, a Messianic Jew and leader of Chosen People Ministries, emailed A Journey through NYC religions that the Pew survey's results are "stunning." Glaser added, "As a Messianic Jew and leader of Chosen People Ministries – it is incredible to think that hundreds of thousands of Jewish people in the United States somehow identify with Jesus the Messiah, according to survey results." But he also cautioned, "However, the number of these individuals who might be considered 'Christians by conviction' remains to be seen."
Although the PEW Center did not count Jews who are Christians as part of their Jewish population count, the researchers used screening questions that identified the number of Jews who identify themselves as Jews and who are “completed Jews,” Christians or Messianic Jews. A close analysis of the results of the PEW Center's screening questions reveals some surprising hidden dimensions of American Jews and possible revised projections about the adult Jewish population in the United States. The research center's report includes a chapter on the analysis of people of "Jewish background" and "Jewish affinity."
The multi-million dollar survey screened over 70,000 respondents in English and Russian by landlines and cellphones between February 20 and June 13, 2013 to identify 3,475 Jews by religion (but not Christian) or Jews of no religion. The screening survey has a very small margin of error. The margin of error for sample of Jews by religion and Jews of no religion is plus or minus three percentage points. The survey also interviewed 1,190 people of Jewish background (73% were Christians) and 467 people with a Jewish affinity (70% were Christians).
Judaic institutions usually don’t recognize as Jews those who say that they believe in Jesus or Gentile Christians who identify themselves as Jews. However, one finding by the Pew Center researchers suggests that the greater Jewish community is becoming more tolerant of Messianic Jews. 30% of Judaic Jews and 47% of Jews of no religion agree that believing in Jesus is compatible with being Jewish. Glaser said that the increased tolerance of Messianic Jews is an "amazing" story of the last decades. "The acceptance of Jewish people who believed in Jesus by the mainstream Jewish community has changed dramatically since I became a follower of Jesus in 1970," Glaser said. "I view this as a positive change, but I am also concerned about the survey results because it indicates that many Jewish people are no longer interested in practicing the Jewish religion, or even in being Jewish."
Most of the Jews who identify themselves as some sort of Christian (1.6 million) were raised as Jews or are Jews by ancestry. Another 100,000 come from mixed ancestral background.
A surprising finding is that 720,000 Christians are “Jews by affinity” who identify themselves as Jews understood under the terminology “grafted-in” Jew. The term originates from New Testament descriptions of Gentiles as being grafted in as a branch of Israel by believing in the Jewish messiah Jesus.
The PEW Center categories of “Jews by religion” and “Jews of no religion.” However, when we include their figures for other types of Jews, particularly those who are “completed Jews,” those believing in Jesus as the messiah, the total adult population of Jews in the United States is 7.0 million plus another 1.9 million “Jews by affinity"....
Here is a video on Israeli Jews converting to Christ:
There is a Christian man, in the world today, who is the globally renowned, Jewish, genius, top chemist on earth. Dr. James Tour understands creation chemistry better than any other human who ever lived. But even he runs out of knowledge to explain how our Glorious, Creator God managed to "create" all things. He does, however, understand, in great detail, why evolution does not... and cannot work. So what does he feel is his greatest calling? Showing the world's Jews that Jesus Christ is, in fact, their Biblical Messiah. RB
These are preliminaries to the Main Event. Who knows what the microchip future holds ? .... Those who read Revelation 13:16-17, 14: 9-11, 15:2, 16:2, 19:20, 20:4
New York Post Reports Microchip Implants
Swedes are getting implants in their hands to replace cash, credit cards
Thousands of people in Sweden are having futuristic microchips implanted into their skin to carry out everyday activities and replace credit cards and cash.
More than 4,000 people have already had the sci-fi-ish chips, about the size of a grain of rice, inserted into their hands — with the pioneers predicting millions will soon join them as they hope to take it global.
“It’s very ‘Black Mirror,’” Swedish scientist Ben Libberton told The Post of the similarity to the TV series highlighting futuristic scenarios.
Like glorified smart watches, the chips help Swedes monitor their health and even replace key cards to allow them to enter offices and buildings.
They have particularly caught on, however, by enabling owners to pay in stores with a simple swipe of the hand, a big deal in a forward-looking country that is moving toward eliminating cash.
The microchips were pioneered by former body piercer Jowan Österlund, who calls the technology a “moonshot” — and who told Fortune magazine that he’s been hit up by hopeful investors “on every continent except Antarctica.”
“Tech will move into the body,” the Biohax International founder told the mag. “I am sure of that.”
Österlund insists the technology is safe — but that has not stopped alarm bells from ringing, with some fearing a link to a doubling in cyber crime in the country over the last decade.
Libberton, a British scientist based in Sweden, praised the “definitely exciting” potential health benefits of accurate health metrics taken from inside the body.
“Think if the Apple Watch could measure things like blood glucose,” he told The Post.
But he also fears the mass of highly personalized data and how it could be used.
“The problem is, who owns this data?” he asked. “Do I get a letter from my insurance company saying premiums are going up before I know I’m ill? If I use the chip to buy lunch, go to the gym and go to work, will someone have all of this info about me? Is this stored and is it safe?”
Libberton added, “It’s not just about the chip, but integration with other systems and data sharing.”
And he fears Swedes are not giving enough thought to the potential dangers.
“People have shown they’re happy to give up privacy for convenience,” he said. “The chip is very convenient, so could we accept our data being shared very widely before we know the risks?”
The trend coincides with Sweden’s march toward going cashless, with notes and coins making up just 1 percent of Sweden’s economy. At the same time, the country has seen a dramatic decrease in some crimes — with just two bank robberies last year compared to 110 in 2008.
In Texas we have an expression invented by some old time, good ole boy, hay farmer, who left the farm and went into the timber business were he used the term to describe some rag-tag, careless, timber outfit who messed up everything they did. In time, the term came to include people who had gone off the deep end .... of left field, into irredeemable, slobbering, screeching lunacy. The word arose out of the tendency of hay bailing wire to come off its spool and entangle itself into a morass of a hopeless ensnarement of a thousand feet of the thin wire. It was worse than a total loss. It had to be gathered up and dumped somewhere it wouldn't continually wind itself up into farm machinery, or trip up animals and humans. It was a terrible nuisance lasting years. Where I was raised, the slur was used mostly by farmers and common folks to describe someone who did some unbelievably stupid thing, Socialist Politicians, and people hauled off to the mental institution. The word is "haywire". Someone who has lost their mind and gone haywire. It was the first word which came to my mind when I saw, on the news, Hillary Clinton saying of, the most sane of the Democrat Candidates for President, Tulsi Gabbard, a Senator, war veteran of 16 years, that "she is a Russian spy asset". This is the third prominent American Hillary has accused of being a spy for Russia, including President Trump. I don't think she really believes it, but said it to stop this Democrat Senator, who has been shunned by the most "haywire" Democrats, because Hillary believes this young lady will run on a third party ticket and split off a lot of less haywire Democrats. This kind of unethical, lying, accusation is not only immoral but shows a level of vicious cruelty, at the top of the Dem Party, which is beyond evil.... even demonic. The really ironic thing is that it was Hillary, herself, who sold out to Russia, when she was Sec. of State. Here is just one example from National Review... just two years ago. The Obama Administration’s
Not only the Clintons are implicated in a uranium deal with the Russians that compromised national-security interests.
Let’s put the Uranium One scandal in perspective: The cool half-million bucks the Putin regime funneled to Bill Clinton was five times the amount it spent on those Facebook ads — the ones the media-Democrat complex ludicrously suggests swung the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.
The Facebook-ad buy, which started in June 2015 — before Donald Trump entered the race — was more left-wing agitprop (ads pushing hysteria on racism, immigration, guns, etc.) than electioneering. The Clintons’ own long-time political strategist Mark Penn estimates that just $6,500 went to actual electioneering. (You read that right: 65 hundred dollars.) By contrast, the staggering $500,000 payday from a Kremlin-tied Russian bank for a single speech was part of a multi-million-dollar influence-peddling scheme to enrich the former president and his wife, then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton. At the time, Russia was plotting — successfully — to secure U.S. government approval for its acquisition of Uranium One, and with it, tens of billions of dollars in U.S. uranium reserves.
Here’s the kicker: The Uranium One scandal is not only, or even principally, a Clinton scandal. It is an Obama-administration scandal.
The Clintons were just doing what the Clintons do: cashing in on their “public service.” The Obama administration, with Secretary Clinton at the forefront but hardly alone, was knowingly compromising American national-security interests. The administration green-lighted the transfer of control over one-fifth of American uranium-mining capacity to Russia, a hostile regime — and specifically to Russia’s state-controlled nuclear-energy conglomerate, Rosatom. Worse, at the time the administration approved the transfer, it knew that Rosatom’s American subsidiary was engaged in a lucrative racketeering enterprise that had already committed felony extortion, fraud, and money-laundering offenses.
The Obama administration also knew that congressional Republicans were trying to stop the transfer. Consequently, the Justice Department concealed what it knew. DOJ allowed the racketeering enterprise to continue compromising the American uranium industry rather than commencing a prosecution that would have scotched the transfer. Prosecutors waited four years before quietly pleading the case out for a song, in violation of Justice Department charging guidelines. Meanwhile, the administration stonewalled Congress, reportedly threatening an informant who wanted to go public.
Obama’s ‘Reset’
To understand what happened here, we need to go back to the beginning.
The first-tier military arsenal of Putin’s Russia belies its status as a third-rate economic power. For well over a decade, the regime has thus sought to develop and exploit its capacity as a nuclear-energy producer. Naïvely viewing Russia as a “strategic partner” rather than a malevolent competitor, the Bush administration made a nuclear-cooperation agreement with the Kremlin in May 2008. That blunder, however, was tabled before Congress could consider it. That is because Russia, being Russia, invaded Georgia.
In 2009, notwithstanding this aggression (which continues to this day with Russia’s occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia), President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton signaled the new administration’s determination to “reset” relations with Moscow. In this reset, renewed cooperation and commerce in nuclear energy would be central.
There had been such cooperation and commerce since the Soviet Union imploded. In 1992, the administration of President George H. W. Bush agreed with the nascent Russian federation that U.S. nuclear providers would be permitted to purchase uranium from Russia’s disassembled nuclear warheads (after it had been down-blended from its highly enriched weapons-grade level). The Russian commercial agent responsible for the sale and transportation of this uranium to the U.S. is the Kremlin-controlled company “Tenex” (formally, JSC Techsnabexport). Tenex is a subsidiary of Rosatom.
Tenex (and by extension, Rosatom) have an American arm called “Tenam USA.” Tenam is based in Bethesda, Md. Around the time President Obama came to power, the Russian official in charge of Tenam was Vadim Mikerin.
The Obama administration reportedly issued a visa for Mikerin in 2010, but a racketeering investigation led by the FBI determined that he was already operating here in 2009.
The Racketeering Scheme
As Tenam’s general director, Mikerin was responsible for arranging and managing Rosatom/Tenex’s contracts with American uranium purchasers. This gave him tremendous leverage over the U.S. companies. With the assistance of several confederates, Mikerin used this leverage to extort and defraud the U.S. contractors into paying inflated prices for uranium. They then laundered the proceeds through shell companies and secret bank accounts in Latvia, Cyprus, Switzerland, and the Seychelle Islands — though sometimes transactions were handled in cash, with the skim divided into envelopes stuffed with thousands of dollars in cash.
The inflated payments served two purposes: They enriched Kremlin-connected energy officials in the U.S. and in Russia to the tune of millions of dollars; and they compromised the American companies that paid the bribes, rendering players in U.S. nuclear energy — a sector critical to national security — vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow.
But Mikerin had a problem. To further the Kremlin’s push for nuclear-energy expansion, he had been seeking to retain a lobbyist — from whom he planned to extort kickbacks, just as he did with the U.S. energy companies. With the help of an associate connected to Russian organized-crime groups, Mikerin found his lobbyist. The man’s name has not been disclosed, but we know he is now represented by Victoria Toensing, a well-respected Washington lawyer, formerly a federal prosecutor and counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
When Mikerin solicited him in 2009, the lobbyist was uncomfortable, worried that the proposal would land him on the wrong side of the law. So he contacted the FBI and revealed what he knew. From then on, the Bureau and Justice Department permitted him to participate in the Russian racketeering scheme as a “confidential source” — and he is thus known as “CS-1” in affidavits the government, years later, presented to federal court in order to obtain search and arrest warrants.
At the time this unidentified man became an informant, the FBI was led by director Robert Mueller, who is now the special counsel investigating whether Trump colluded with Russia. The investigation was centered in Maryland (Tenam’s home base). There, the U.S. attorney was Obama appointee Rod Rosenstein — now President Trump’s deputy attorney general, and the man who appointed Mueller as special counsel to investigate Trump.
Because of CS-1, the FBI was able to understand and monitor the racketeering enterprise almost from the start. By mid-May 2010, it could already prove the scheme and three separate extortionate payments Mikerin had squeezed out of the informant. Equally important: According to reporting by John Solomon and Alison Spann in the Hill, the informant learned through conversations with Mikerin and others that Russian nuclear officials were trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons.
Uranium One, Russia, and the Clintons
There is no doubt that this extraordinarily gainful ingratiation took place. I outlined some of it a year ago in suggesting that the Justice Department should be investigating the Clinton Foundation, and its exploitation of Hillary Clinton’s influence as secretary of state, as a potential racketeering case.
In 2005, former President Clinton helped his Canadian billionaire friend and benefactor, Frank Giustra, obtain coveted uranium-mining rights from Kazakhstan’s dictator. The Kazakh deal enabled Giustra’s company (Ur-Asia Energy) to merge into Uranium One (a South African company), a $3.5 billion windfall. Giustra and his partners thereafter contributed tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Besides the valuable Kazakh reserves, Uranium One also controlled about a fifth of the uranium stock in the United States.
Alas, Putin, the neighborhood bully, also wanted the Kazakh uranium. He leaned on Kazakhstan’s dictator, who promptly arrested the official responsible for selling the uranium-mining rights to Giustra’s company. This put Uranium One’s stake in jeopardy of being seized by the Kazakh government.
As Uranium One’s stock plunged, its panicked executives turned to the State Department, where their friend Hillary Clinton was now in charge. State sprung into action, convening emergency meetings with the Kazakh regime. A few days later, it was announced that the crisis was resolved (translation: the shakedown was complete). Russia’s energy giant, Rosatom, would purchase 17 percent of Uranium One, and the Kazakh threat would disappear — and with it, the threat to the value of the Clinton donors’ holdings.
For Putin, though, that was just a start. He didn’t want a minority stake in Uranium One, he wanted control of the uranium. For that, Rosatom would need a controlling interest in Uranium One. That would be a tall order — not because of the Kazakh mining rights but because acquisition of Uranium One’s American reserves required U.S. government approval.
Uranium is foundational to nuclear power and thus to American national security. As the New York Times explained in a report on the disturbing interplay between the Clinton Foundation and the transfer of American uranium assets to Russia, the United States gets a fifth of its electrical power from nuclear energy, but only produces a fifth of the uranium it needs. Consequently, a foreign entity would not be able to acquire rights to American uranium without the approval of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
CFIUS is composed of the leaders of 14 U.S. government agencies involved in national security and commerce. In 2010, these included not only Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had cultivated a reputation as a hawk opposed to such foreign purchases, but Attorney General Eric Holder, whose Justice Department (and its lead agency, the FBI) were conducting the investigation of Rosatom’s ongoing U.S. racketeering, extortion, and money-laundering scheme.
In March 2010, to push the Obama “reset” agenda, Secretary Clinton traveled to Russia, where she met with Putin and Dimitri Medvedev, who was then keeping the president’s chair warm for Putin. Soon after, it emerged that Renaissance Capital, a regime-tied Russian bank, had offered Bill Clinton $500,000 to make a single speech — far more than the former president’s usual haul in what would become one of his biggest paydays ever. Renaissance was an aggressive promoter of Rosatom. The Clinton speech took place in Moscow in June. The exorbitant speech fee, it is worth noting, is a pittance compared with the $145 million Newsweek reports was donated to the Clinton Foundation by sources linked to the Uranium One deal.
The month before the speech, the Hill reports, Bill Clinton told his wife’s State Department that he wanted to meet while in Russia with Arkady Dvorkovich, who, in addition to being a top Medvedev aide, was also a key Rosatom board member. It is not known whether the State Department gave clearance for the meeting; the question appears to have become moot since the former U.S. president met directly with Putin and Medvedev. You’ll be comforted, I’m sure, to learn that aides to the Clintons, those pillars of integrity, assure us that the topics of Rosatom and Uranium One never came up.
Keeping Congress in the Dark
Meanwhile, congressional opposition to Russia’s potential acquisition of American uranium resources began to stir. As Peter Schweizer noted in his essential book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, four senior House members steeped in national-security issues — Peter King (R., N.Y.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), Spencer Bachus (R., Ala.), and Howard McKeon (R. Calif.) — voiced grave concerns, pointing out that Rosatom had helped Iran, America’s sworn enemy, build its Bushehr nuclear reactor. The members concluded that “the take-over of essential US nuclear resources by a government-owned Russian agency . . . would not advance the national security interests of the United States.” Republican senator John Barrasso objected to Kremlin control of uranium assets in his state of Wyoming, warning of Russia’s “disturbing record of supporting nuclear programs in countries that are openly hostile to the United States, specifically Iran and Venezuela.” The House began moving a bill “expressing disfavor of the Congress” regarding Obama’s revival of the nuclear-cooperation agreement Bush had abandoned.
Clearly, in this atmosphere, disclosure of the racketeering enterprise that Rosatom’s American subsidiary was, at that very moment, carrying out would have been the death knell of the asset transfer to Russia. It would also likely have ended the “reset” initiative in which Obama and Clinton were deeply invested — an agenda that contemplated Kremlin-friendly deals on nuclear-arms control and accommodation of the nuclear program of Russia’s ally, Iran. That was not going to be allowed to happen. It appears that no disclosure of Russia’s racketeering and strong-arming was made to CFIUS or to Congress — not by Secretary Clinton, not by Attorney General Holder, and certainly not by President Obama. In October 2010, CFIUS gave its blessing to Rosatom’s acquisition of Uranium One.
A Sweetheart Plea Helps the Case Disappear
Even though the FBI had an informant collecting damning information, and had a prosecutable case against Mikerin by early 2010, the extortion racket against American energy companies was permitted to continue into the summer of 2014. It was only then that, finally, Mikerin and his confederates were arrested.
Why then? This is not rocket science. In March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea. Putin also began massing forces on the Ukrainian border, coordinating and conducting attacks, ultimately taking control of territory. Clearly, the pie-in-the-sky Obama reset was dead. Furthermore, the prosecution of Mikerin’s racketeering scheme had been so delayed that the Justice Department risked losing the ability to charge the 2009 felonies because of the five-year statute of limitations on most federal crimes.
Still, a lid needed to be kept on the case. It would have made for an epic Obama administration scandal, and a body blow to Hillary Clinton’s presidential hopes, if in the midst of Russia’s 2014 aggression, public attention had been drawn to the failure, four years earlier, to prosecute a national-security case in order to protect Russia’s takeover of U.S. nuclear assets.
The Obama administration needed to make this case go away — without a public trial if at all possible.
Think about this: The investigation of Russian racketeering in the American energy sector was the kind of spectacular success over which the FBI and Justice Department typically do a bells-n-whistles victory lap — the big self-congratulatory press conference followed by the media-intensive prosecutions . . . and, of course, more press conferences.
As the Hill reports, the Justice Department and FBI had little to say when Mikerin and his co-conspirators were arrested. They quietly negotiated guilty pleas that were announced with no fanfare just before Labor Day. It was arranged that Mikerin would be sentenced just before Christmas. All under the radar.
How desperate was the Obama Justice Department to plead the case out? Here, Rosenstein and Holder will have some explaining to do.
Mikerin was arrested on a complaint describing a racketeering scheme that stretched back to 2004 and included extortion, fraud, and money laundering. Yet he was permitted to plead guilty to a single count of money-laundering conspiracy.
Except it was not really money-laundering conspiracy.
Under federal law, that crime (at section 1956 of the penal code) carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment — not only for conspiracy but for each act of money laundering. But Mikerin was not made to plead guilty to this charge. He was permitted to plead guilty to an offense charged under the catch-all federal conspiracy provision (section 371) that criminalizes agreements to commit any crime against the United States. Section 371 prescribes a sentence of zero to five years’ imprisonment.
The Justice Department instructs prosecutors that when Congress has given a federal offense its own conspiracy provision with a heightened punishment (as it has for money laundering, racketeering, narcotics trafficking, and other serious crimes), they may not charge a section 371 conspiracy. Section 371 is for less serious conspiracy cases. Using it for money laundering — which caps the sentence way below Congress’s intent for that behavior — subverts federal law and signals to the court that the prosecutor does not regard the offense as major.
Yet, that is exactly what Rosenstein’s office did, in a plea agreement his prosecutors co-signed with attorneys from the Justice Department’s Fraud Section. (See in the Hill’s report, the third document embedded at the bottom, titled “Mikerin Plea Deal.”) No RICO, no extortion, no fraud — and the plea agreement is careful not to mention any of the extortions in 2009 and 2010, before CFIUS approved Rosatom’s acquisition of U.S. uranium stock. Mikerin just had to plead guilty to a nominal “money laundering” conspiracy charge. This insulated him from a real money-laundering sentence. Thus, he got a term of just four years’ incarceration for a major national-security crime — which, of course, is why he took the plea deal and waived his right to appeal, sparing the Obama administration a full public airing of the facts.
Interestingly, as the plea agreement shows, the Obama DOJ’s Fraud Section was then run by Andrew Weissmann, who is now one of the top prosecutors in Robert Mueller’s ongoing special-counsel investigation of suspected Trump collusion with Russia.
There was still one other problem to tamp down. That was the informant — the lobbyist who alerted the FBI to the Russian racketeering enterprise back in 2009. He wanted to talk.
Specifically, as his attorney, Ms. Toensing, explains, the informant wanted to tell Congress what he knows — about what the FBI and the Justice Department could already have proved in 2010 when CFIUS signed off on Russia’s acquisition of American nuclear material, and about what he’d learned of Russian efforts to curry favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton. But he was not allowed to talk.
It turns out, the lawyer explains, that the FBI had induced him to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The Justice Department warned him that it was enforceable — even against disclosures to Congress. (Because, you know, the FBI is opposed to all leaks and disclosures of confidential investigative information . . . except those initiated by the FBI, of course.) In addition, when the informant was primed to file a federal civil lawsuit to recover his own losses from the scheme, he claims that the Justice Department threatened him with prosecution, warning that a lawsuit would violate the non-disclosure agreement. The Hill reports that it has obtained emails from a civil lawyer retained by the witness, which describe pressure exerted by the Justice Department to silence the informant.
What a coincidence: That was in 2016, the stretch run of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
This stinks. ____________________ Also, this from FOX News
