Showing posts with label FBI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FBI. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Contacted Joe Hartunian at Sen. Schumer's Office regarding NYPD reform

Follow-up on request for assistance in creation of a new commission with powers to investigate and prosecute NYPD corruption and misconduct

2014-12-01 Senator Charles Schumer Office Fax (NYPD Commission Follow-Up Letter) (FILE COPY) by NYPDFivePoints

Activists ask for a new commission, modeled after Knapp and Mollen, to investigate NYPD and IAB, but this time with the power to prosecute cases of corruption, authority that both the Knapp and Mollen commissions lacked

Joe Hartunian, a legislative staff member to New York's senior U.S. Senator, was contacted to day as a follow-up to a letter sent on December 1.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was asked in the letter for his assistance and support for the creation of a new commission to investigate a pattern of corruption and misconduct and the lack of accountability at the New York Police Department, including at its troubled Internal Affairs Bureau.

As soon as there is new information, a new update will be provided.

RELATED


Written letter to Senator Charles Schumer asking for his assistance and support for the creation of a new commission to investigate and prosecute NYPD corruption, including at IAB (Scribd)

Exigen crear nueva comisión que investigue quejas contra NYPD (El Diario)

Written demand to Mayor de Blasio to appoint a new commission to investigate NYPD corruption, including at IAB (Scribd)


Massage Therapist NYC

Michael Hayes, LMT, has practiced massage for more than 20 years as a licensed massage therapist. Flatiron Massage is located in New York City.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Sen. Schumer asked for help to appoint a new commission to investigate and prosecute NYPD, IAB corruption

Letter to Sen. Charles Schumer - Help us appoint a new commission to investigate NYPD, IAB

Activists ask for a new commission, modeled after Knapp and Mollen, to investigate NYPD and IAB, but this time with the power to prosecute cases of corruption, authority that both the Knapp and Mollen commissions lacked

Sen. Charles Schumer, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was asked for his assistance and support for the creation of a new commission to investigate a pattern of corruption and the lack of accountability at the New York Police Department, including at its troubled Internal Affairs Bureau.

"The nation needs a substantive examination of the overreach, the corruption, the brutality and murder, the abuse of discretion, and the lack of accountability of police departments in the nation, beginning with the NYPD, the largest police force in the nation. As your office contemplates how best the U.S. Senate can take part in the national debate over the need for policing reforms, we hope that in the meantime you will call for either Manhattan District Attorney Vance, U.S. Attorney Bharara, or Assistant Director Venizelos to create a new, independent commission with subpoena power to investigate -- and prosecute -- corruption, brutality, and murder by the NYPD, including corruption at IAB, along with other violations of constitutional rights, civil liberties, and civil rights."

The letter to Sen. Schumer was sent after a prior e-mail to City Hall, dated 13 October 2014, went unanswered.

RELATED


Written letter to Senator Charles Schumer asking for his assistance and support for the creation of a new commission to investigate and prosecute NYPD corruption, including at IAB (Scribd)

Exigen crear nueva comisión que investigue quejas contra NYPD (El Diario)

Written demand to Mayor de Blasio to appoint a new commission to investigate NYPD corruption, including at IAB (Scribd)


Massage Therapist NYC

Michael Hayes, LMT, has practiced massage for more than 20 years as a licensed massage therapist. Flatiron Massage is located in New York City.

2014-12-01 Senator Charles Schumer Office Fax (NYPD Commission Follow-Up Letter) (FILE COPY) by NYPDFivePoints

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Alteration of Headline by The New York Times Aimed to do "Damage Control" for Embattled Governor Cuomo

Did political operatives for Gov. Cuomo bully The New York Times into changing its headline ?

Andrew Cuomo Eyes photo Andrew-Cuomo-Other-Eyes-Pre-Close-Up_zpsdd05f2d5.jpg

RELATED


G.O.P. Power Broker in Albany Accused of Lying to F.B.I. (The New York Times)

When The New York Times published its article about the federal indictment of State Senator Thomas Libous, the headline read, "G.O.P. State Senator, Ally of Cuomo, Is Indicted." Minutes later, the headline was altered to remove any reference to embattled Gov. Andrew Cuomo, "State Senate's No. 2 Republican is Indicted."

The alternation of the headline, mentioned on Twitter by intrepid reporter Azi Paybarah, triggered scrutiny from Mr. Paybarah's Twitter followers.

Rebecca Baird-Remba replied to Mr. Paybarah's tweet with, "hmm. is there a particular reason they edited cuomo out of the headline?"

Many political bloggers and government reform activists await the fallout of grand jury findings and other investigatory outcomes as a result of the premature implosion of Gov. Cuomo's Moreland Commission. The Moreland Commission was a state-wide, corruption-fighting panel with subpoena power, staffed with various hot-shot district attorneys. But before the Moreland Commission could indict any corrupt politicians, or publicly name corrupt politicians facing corruption-related investigations, Gov. Cuomo bargained away the Moreland Commission's existence for short-term political gains.

In the time since the Moreland Commission ceased to exist, a few local and state level indictments have been made, but so far the heavy hand of the powerful federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for New York's Southern District have yet to fully open the flood gates to what bloggers and activists anticipate may be a deluge of corruption indictments that reach higher than local and state prosecutors have ever dared to attempt.

The backpedalling in The New York Times headline may be an indication that political operatives close to Gov. Cuomo fear a public relations backlash, or worse, as federal prosecutors ratchet up their investigation of corruption up in Albany.

If State Senator Thomas Libous "flips" on other corrupt high-ranking Albany politicians, does his indictment foreshadow the opening of the floodgates of the federal corruption crackdown that government reform activists have been expecting since the break-up of the Moreland Commission ?

New York State Senator Thomas Libous photo Thomas_Libous_zpse0c99714.png

The indictment against State Sen. Libous came about as a result of a sitting grand jury in the Southern District's White Plains office.

Three months after Gov. Cuomo pulled the plug on the Moreland Commission, scandal and controversy still swirls around his motivations. Moreland Commission Executive Director Regina Calcaterra is still drawing her annualized salary of $175,000 after Gov. Cuomo disbanded the corruption investigation panel, The New York Daily News reported, leading some astute political observers to question the reason why Ms. Calcaterra needs to be being paid off like this.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

FBI agents seeking to determine if NY-CLASS donors hid Super PAC donations in coordinated effort to influence mayoral election

Federal Investigation Of Campaign Finance Scandal Looks At Coordinated Super PAC Donations

The NYC Is Not for Sale Super PAC TV attack blitz last year against former Council Speaker Christine Quinn brought to the fore years of grassroots discontent and organizing against Speaker Quinn. But FBI agents are investigating whether the hundreds of thousands of Super PAC expenditures were being coordinated behind the scenes by the de Blasio campaign or its surrogates, The New York Daily News reported.

Christine Quinn Bill de Blasio NY-CLASS FBI Investigation Campaign Finance Scandal photo 2014-05-04NY-CLASSFBITheNewYorkDailyNewsScreenShot_zpsd9803b1a.png

According to federal law, it is illegal for Super PAC's to coordinate their efforts with the official campaigns of political candidates. But on May 21, 2013, the attorney Jay Eisenhofer, who was Mayor de Blasio's largest campaign bundler, gave $50,000 to NY-CLASS, the animal rights group leading the charge to ban horse-drawn carriage. Ten days later, on May 31, NY-CLASS gave an equal amount -- $50,000, to the NYC Is Not For Sale Super PAC. On June 1, NY-CLASS received another large donation, this time for $175,000. It came from UNITE HERE!-- a labor union formerly headed by John Wilhelm, the mayor's cousin. Two days after that, on June 3, NY-CLASS sent the same amount, $175,000, to the NYC Is Not For Sale Super PAC, The New York Daily News reported.

If Mr. Eisenhofer and UNITE HERE! contributed directly to the NYC Is Not For Sale Super PAC, their involvement would have been made public within weeks because of campaign finance disclosure rules, but because they funneled their contributions through NY-CLASS, Mr. Wilhelm and Mr. Eisenhofer were cloaked in anonymity for months. The trigger for NY-CLASS to disclose their donors did not take place until NY-CLASS began its own campaign expenditures, an event that occurred on Sept. 7, three days before the Sept. 10 mayoral primary, The New York Daily News reported. NY-CLASS finally disclosed the contributions on Sept. 17, 10 days after the primary. The coordinated campaign contributions were first reported by Crain’s New York Business.

Confronted last year about the NYC Is Not For Sale campaign, then candidate de Blasio initially defended NYC Is Not For Sale's attack ads, saying, "People decided to speak out, and that's their legal right. But the fact is in our system, everything can and will be disclosed, and that's what the people require," although, contrary to then candidate de Blasio, the Super PAC got into trouble for failing to fully disclose its activities, as "the people require." At the time, Mr. de Blasio added that he'd be open to later reforming campaign finance laws (presumably after NYC Is Not For Sale sank former Speaker Quinn's mayoral campaign). "The important thing is to respect the fact that we may not like the way the law is, but it's the law. I certainly will put energy going forward into trying to further reform the campaign finance system, but so long as the law is the law, people will make choices within it. That is their right, but I will certainly never ask anyone to engage in such behavior." But so far, the mayor has betrayed his campaign promise to reform the loose campaign finance laws that allow Super PAC's to game elections. Furthermore, former Speaker Quinn has appeared to be milking the NY-CLASS scandal to portray herself as a victim of shady campaign finances ; meanwhile, she has a long record of political corruption.

If Mayor de Blasio was a true progressive, he would under take real reforms, like banning all private campaign donations in municipal elections, ending the appointment of municipal campaign finance regulators by politicians, and instituting newer, tougher regulations of campaign consultants/lobbyists. But perhaps Mayor de Blasio needs to protect the status quo of the broken campaign system. Judging by his 2013 campaign strategy, his 2017 reëlection campaign may be predicated on such.

Separate from violating campaign finance laws, the roles of NYC Is Not For Sale, NY-CLASS, and the lobbying firm advising them both -- The Advance Group -- had damaging effects on the opportunity for reform in a post-Quinn municipal government. Because of the independent campaign expenditures that nearly totaled $2 million, the influence of NY-CLASS perverted the ability of other issue reformers from being taken seriously by the media. Witness how the media accepted the controversial appointment of William Bratton as police commissioner, even though he still supports unconstitutional tactics, such as stop-and-frisk and the broken windows theory of policing, which unfairly targets low-income communities and people of color -- but does nothing to combat the white collar crimes by political operatives or by Wall Street. Further, NY-CLASS misappropriated the grassroots work by reform activists, including tenants' rights activists like John Fisher, police reform activists, QUILTBAG civil rights activists, and St. Vincent's Hospital activists, who each had separately and collectively spent years organizing to vote the former Council Speaker Quinn out of office. There was even a serialized book, recounting former Council Speaker Quinn's long record of community and political betrayals.

Casting a further pall on Mayor de Blasio's young administration is the outsized influence of lobbyists in City Hall, coordinating 501(c)(4) political campaign spending by loyal political operatives for his universal pre-kinder initiative with City Hall, his failure to reform the city's campaign finance system, and the reluctance by his administration to answer a FOIL request for records pertaining to possible obstruction of justice in the mayor's efforts to bust one of his campaign supports out of jail.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

FBI ''secretly spying'' on Google users

The FBI used National Security Letters -- a form of surveillance that privacy watchdogs call “frightening and invasive” -- to surreptitiously seek information on Google users, the web giant has just revealed. (FOX News)

Sunday, December 23, 2012

FBI OWS Documents

On Page 61, redacted notes show that a sniper was being planned to take out leadership of OWS protesters in Houston, Texas. It is unclear who was planning the sniper attacks.

FBI Occupy Wall Street "OWS" Documents

On 22 November 2011, the FBI lied when it said that it had no documents on the Occupy Wall Street protests : FBI Claims It Does Not Have Any Documents on Occupy Wall Street (Truthout)

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Has NYPD Become A Lawless Unit, Making NYC A Police Dictatorship ?

The New York Police Department may be involved in some unlawful activities, reported Jason Leopold and Matthew Harwood on Truthout. (If the NYPD has become lawless, then are social movement activists being targeted for silence and arrest to prevent government reforms that would hold police accountable ?)

According to an e-mail that was leaked by Anonymous, a high-ranking FBI official repeated information on a what appears to be an official listserv :

I keep telling you, you and I are going to laugh and raise a beer one day, when everything Intel (NYPD's Intelligence Division) has been involved in during the last 10 years comes out - it always eventually comes out. They are going to make [former FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover, COINTEL, Red Squads, etc look like rank amatures [sic] compared to some of the damn right felonious activity, and violations of US citizen's rights they have been engaged in.

During the last 10 years, Michael Bloomberg has been mayor and Raymond Kelly has been commissioner of the police department.

Are citizens living under laws of order that do not apply to police ? These and other important questions are raised from the information, which was contained in an e-mail sent to Fred Burton, a former counterterrorism official at the State Department, who is now an intelligence officer at Stratfor.

Read more : Hacked Intel Email: NYPD Involved in ''Damn Right Felonious Activity''

Thursday, January 19, 2012

After MegaUpload Crackdown By Government Authorities, Anonymous Responds To FBI With Internet Attacks


Today the Feds raided the website MegaUpload, which led to the arrests of seven people across the globe, according to some reports. Now the Hacktivist group, Anonymous, has come forth in retaliation to the crackdown and launched an attack on several websites including The Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, and the Recording Industry Association of America. The wave of attacks is just the beginning and Barrett Brown, founder of Project PM, joins us to discuss whats next for the groups.