ERIC HOLDER EXPLOITS SECRET FISA LAWS FOR PERSONAL GAIN

While personally holding stocks in Facebook and telecommunications companies, Holder indemnified them for warrantless wiretaps of American citizens

Contributing Writers | Opinion | AMERICANS FOR INNOVATION  | Jul. 02, 2014, Updated Jul. 25, 2014 | PDF

(Jul. 25, 2014 Update)—AFI Readers are encouraged to follow all the links contained in the last few posts. Become conversant with the evidence. We believe the dysfunction in Washington D.C. can be directly attributed to the hidden agendas of this cartel of federal officials, along with their Wall Street and Silicon Valley cronies. Experience shows they will try to divert attention with an endless stream of titillating news rabbit trails. However, readers should let those bullets fly where they will and stay focused on the duplicitous conduct of these individuals. These officials must be held to account for their grotesque violations of ethics laws. Whistleblowers are encouraged to do the right thing and step forward.

U.S. Justice Dept Fraud: Eric H. Holder holds stock in Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan

Jul. 16, 2004 Update—Eric H. Holder played the race card in the midst of his Wall Street

treachery with Citigroup, JPMorgan and Bank of America. He deflects his culpability for protecting his banker cronies with racial innuendo.

See Judge Napolitano on Holder: "This Is a Constitutional Crisis."

Healthcare.gov Privacy Alert:
Reid Hoffman, CEO, LinkedIn, (and Facebook director) admitted to veteran PBS interviewer Charlie Rose on Monday that

he advises the White House on HealthCare.gov integration (with the IRS?) Hoffman famously said that privacy is an "old people issue." Are President Obama and Eric Holder guarding American privacy, or selling it off to the highest LinkedIn and Facebook bidders? See Charlie Rose interview. See also comments below.

(Jul. 17, 2014 Update)—Attorney General Eric H. Holder just announced a $7b settlement with Citigroup over their 2008 bank fraud. He has already settled with JPMorgan for $13b, and has teed up Bank of America. However, Eric Holder personally holds 11 stocks in Citigroup, 10 stocks in Bank of America, and 11 stocks JPMorgan. Holder pledged to disqualify himself from such conflicts of interest. But instead, he has doubled down. Out of Holder's left pocket and into his right. Who will hold this lawless Justice Department accountable? Click here to see Holder's 2008 financial report in GoogleDocs or here for direct PDF download. (Includes an Excel spreadsheet to do your own analysis.)

FISA Judge Reggie B. Walton. Photo: PBS.

The American republic took a bullet from the FISA Court on Dec. 12, 2008 in a "Top Secret" opinion, signed by Reggie B. Walton, ceding near dictator powers to his friend, Eric H. Holder. See below.

More Facebook Cartel Corruption:
CA Judge Lucy H. Koh, another Harvard Facebook Cartel member, refuses to recuse herself despite stockholdings in litigants. Click here. Photo: Wikipedia.

Fig. 1—Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., President Barack H. Obama's self-proclaimed "wingman," has directed the greatest expansion of warrantless domestic surveillance against American citizens in history. Holder and the secret FISA Court he directs hold stock in every one of the telecommunications and Internet providers whom they have secretly indemnified, thus violating fundamental tenants of propriety and conflicts of interest law. Photo: Politico

July 4, 1776

What price freedom?

(Jul. 02, 2014)—Attorney General Eric H. Holder owns 66 stocks in the telecom and Internet providers to whom he has given immunity from prosecution for their participation in warrantless surveillance of American citizens.

Holder's 2008 financial disclosure shows holdings up to $22.4 million, including 14 directly in Facebook, and 106 in Facebook cronies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, IBM, Microsoft and LinkedIn.

Holder even has stock in the Chinese and Russian social networks Baidu and Mail.ru, which are heavily owned by Goldman Sachs, Mogan Stanley, T.Rowe Price, BlackRock, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity and Vanguard, among others. Numerous senior Obama officials and judges are substantially invested in these mutual funds, including former Patent Office director, David J. Kappos, SEC Chair Mary L. Schapiro, and Commerce Sec'ys Rebecca M. Blank and Penny S. Pritzker (11.6 MB). Throw in Energy Sec'y Steven Chu, WH Counsel Nancy A. M. DeParle, WH CTO Aneesh Chopra and HHS Sec'y Sylvia M. Burwell for good measure. Do all members of the Administration hold this group of insider funds? No.

Equally telling, Holder now holds stock in Athenahealth, Castlight Health and CGI, Inc., the companies at the center of the Obamacare fiasco, and companies who are tapped into the IRS computer system. Athenahealth and Castlight Health were founded by White House chief technology officer, Todd Y. Park. Obamacare architect, Robert P. Kocher, MD is now a director of Castlight Health.

It is little wonder that Holder will not investigate the IRS and HealthCare.gov scandals that involve these companies. He owns stock in them.

According to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Holder has overseen the largest domestic surveillance program in American history.

Eric Holder feathers his financial nest

Every time Eric Holder secretly orders a communications provider to cooperate, he benefits financially since: (a) the government pays the provider, and (b) the government indemnifies the provider from prosecution for participation in the warrantless wiretapping.

This conflict of interest is forbidden by ethics laws and constitutes fraud.

Holder held stock in all the providers identified in the Snowden NSA disclosures: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Apple, AOL, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, Century Link, T-Mobile. See also The Guardian.

Department of Justice Racketeering

Other federal officials involved with FISA also hold stock in the providers whom they indemnify and thus protect against damages:

1. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.
2. Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence in 2008
3. Dennis F. Saylor, IV, FISA Judge
4. James E.  Boasberg, FISA Judge

A racketeer is “one who obtains money by an illegal enterprise usually involving intimidation” (Merriam-Webster). Given Holder and Co’s fraudulent concealment of their financial interests in the communications providers they were ostensibly regulating, these individuals were using the intimidation power of the state for personal financial gain. Such is almost a textbook definition of racketeering.

Obama: Do as I say, not as I do.

Fig. 2—Candidate Barack OBama spoke on Aug. 1, 2006 at The Woodrow Wilson Intl. Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. He said the Bush administration “puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.” He promised to give American intelligence agencies the tools to defeat terrorism without undermining the Constitution. He said, “That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime … No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient... The FISA Court works. The separation of powers works.” Hindsight says he did the opposite. Note how he said “the FISA Court works.” Freudian? YouTube Video: John Sexton / Illinois Channel.

Expansion of surveillance powers occurred on Obama's watch

On Dec. 12, 2008, five weeks after President Obama was elected to his first term, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court made a Top Secret” decision to dramatically expand the Bush-era Patriot Act electronic surveillance powers of the Executive Branch. Barack Obama had been against this in 2007 (Fig. 2), but he flipped his position 180 degrees as the election drew near.

Dictatorial Powers

The “Supplemental Opinion” gave the Attorney General power to seize, without a warrant, any user content from telecommunications and internet providers. Up to that point the warrants were limited to metadata (data about data, for example, the time, duration and phone numbers on a call, but not the call recording itself).

The American republic took a bullet from the FISA Court

Buried in the five-page ruling is the smoking gun legalese:

“the Court is persuaded that this objective is better served by the interpretation that the records sought in this case are obtainable pursuant to a section 1861 order.”

In short, the Attorney General was granted almost dictatorial powers with nearly unilateral control over the secrecy of his orders. Is Lois Lerner merely following a Holder gag orders?

See also "In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A. by Eric Lichtblau, The New York Times, Jul. 5, 2013.

Supplemental Opinion, In re Production of Tangible Things From [REDACTED], Docket No. BR 08-13, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Dec. 12, 2008

Fig. 3—Top Secret FISA ruling giving the Attorney General almost dictatorial powers to order warrantless domestic wiretaps of American citizens, decided on Dec. 12, 2008. Buried in the five-page ruling is the smoking gun legalese that handed Eric H. Holder, Jr. almost dictatorial powers to do with impuntiy whatever he decides he wants to do ("section 1861"):

“the Court is persuaded that this objective is better served by the interpretation that the records sought in this case are obtainable pursuant to a section 1861 order.”

Source: www.emptywheel.net.

Harvard Memo: We know what’s best for you

The central role played by Harvard graduates in this scandal is now unmistakable.

Seven weeks after the secret expansion of the Attorney General's powers by the FISA Court, Harvard Law grad Obama appointed his Harvard Law friend, Eric H. Holder, Jr., as Attorney General. Both men had been mentored by Leader Technologies’ intellectual property attorney, Professor James P. Chandler, III. Chandler’s central role in these events is becoming evident. Chandler taught law at Harvard and worked closely with Holder when Holder was Assistant Attorney General in 2001, while Chandler was also representing Leader Technologies.

Concurrently, Obama’s new bailout chief, former Harvard professor and president, Lawrence Summers, was busy shuffling $33 billion in U.S. taxpayer bank bailout funds off to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and State Street Corp.

Harvard graduate and SEC chief counsel Thomas J. Kim, had just cleared the way for Facebook to sell billions of dollars in private stock while staying private in an unprecedented 12(g) waiver. Kim previously worked for Latham & Watkins LLP who represented Harvard graduate, James W. Breyer, when he was chairman of the National Venture Capital Association.

Goldman Sachs, led by Harvard graduate Lloyd Blankfein, then sent some of its newly-minted bailout money to their Moscow partner and Summers protégé, Yuri Milner. Milner and another Summers protégé and Harvard grad, Sheryl K. Sandberg, arranged for Milner to invest billions of these dollars into private Facebook pre-IPO stock, along with Fidelity Contrafund, Vanguard, T.Rowe Price, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and others. Summers also received upwards of $750,000 in Goldman speaking fees that year.

The FISA Court judges are appointed for a seven year term by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., another Harvard grad.  DC-based FISA Judge James E. Boasberg, is yet another Harvard man.

Within just a few months of the filing of the Leader v. Facebook patent infringement case (Nov. 19, 2008), Harvard man Eric Holder secretly ordered Facebook to turn over user content to the NSA. This activity began on Jun. 3, 2009, according to Snowden documents.

Holder colluded with Facebook and prejudiced Leader v. Facebook

Holder’s action prejudiced Leader’s case by throwing a blanket of Justice-Department-induced secrecy over Facebook’s lawsuit conduct. Case in point, Facebook stonewalled release of 28 Mark Zuckerberg hard drives and Harvard emails from 2003-2004 in discovery for more than a year before saying they had lost them. See Request for Congressional Intervention.

Justice is supposed to be blind, but in Leader v. Facebook the Justice Department played favorites without disclosing the conflict of interest to Leader. The Justice Department even hired Facebook's Cooley Godward LLP partner, Donald K. Stern, to advise them on replacing Judge Joseph J. Farnan whose pre-trial rulings were going heavily against Facebook.

One cannot imagine a more prejudicial circumstance.

For example, had Leader known about the Justice Department’s prejudice, Leader would certainly have opposed the recommendation of Obama nominee, Leonard P. Stark, to become the trial judge a month before trial. Every mistake of law in the case occurred after Holder/Stark's take over. Stark's silence about his conflicts is more evidence of this collusion.

This secrecy alone is grounds for a mistrial.

Fraudulent Concealment of Personal Financial Holdings

Eric H. Holder, Jr. holds at least 136 Facebook financial interests. Dennis C. Blair, Holder’s cohort and Director of National Intelligence, holds at least 20 Facebook interests. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. holds 187. Current FISA Judge James E. Boasberg holds 61. Current FISA judge Dennis F. Saylor, IV holds a whopping 344.

If we add in their telecom, media and non-Facebook interest holdings, Roberts holds 242, Holder 173, Blair 24, Boasberg 141 and Saylor 418. No matter how this data is sliced, these men hold stock in every major telecom, internet and media provider. They cannot make a decision regarding surveillance without benefiting themselves and their cronies.

Holder promised to be ethical

These holdings of Facebook interests were fraudulently concealed, not only from Leader Technologies, but from the American people. On Jan. 12, 2009, Eric Holder pledged to recuse himself if matters before him benefited him personally. Saylor, Blair, Boasberg and John Roberts pledged similarly.

By ordering Facebook to funnel user data to the NSA, Holder indemnified Facebook from wrongdoing. Such indemnities are valuable. They benefited the holders of stocks in those companies.

Holder had an ethical duty to either: (a) sell his Facebook financial interests before remaining involved in Facebook matters, or (b) disclose his holdings and disqualify himself.

The Justice Department conduct also compromised Facebook’s legal counsel. Those attorneys had a professional duty to disclose the conflicts inherent in their secret collaboration with the Justice Department

Snowden exposed fraudulent concealment by the Justice Department

The table below shows when telecom and Internet providers joined the NSA warrantless surveillance program. It also shows the number of stocks held in those companies by the federal officials (analyzed by AFI researchers from public disclosures).

Date Provider Joined NSA PRISM	Telecom / Internet Provider	Federal Official, Stockholder
		Eric H. Holder, Jr.	John G. Roberts, Jr.	Dennis F. Saylor, IV	James E.  Boasberg	Dennis C. Blair
		Atty. Gen.	Chief Justice	FISA Judge	FISA Judge	Dir. Nat. Intel.
early	Verizon	5	6	5	5	2
early	AT&T	3	2	2	4	0
09/11/2007	Microsoft	10	16	20	13	0
03/12/2008	Yahoo	5	8	16	3	0
12/03/2008	FISA Court issued a “Top Secret” 5-page  expansion of powers to allow capture of content and give sweeping, almost dictatorial powers to the Attorney General.
01/14/2009	Google	7	16	20	6	1
06/03/2009	Facebook	14	17	19	2	2
12/07/2009	PalTalk	0	0	0	0	0
09/24/2010	YouTube*	7	16	20	6	1
02/06/2010	Skype*	10	16	20	13	0
03/31/2011	AOL	1	1	0	4	0
10/__/2012	Apple	4	15	18	5	1
Unknown	T-Mobile	0	2	1	0	0
	TOTAL	66	115	141	61	7
*Skype was purchased by Microsoft. YouTube was purchased by Google.
Table 1: "Dates When PRISM Collection Began For Each Provider." produced by the National Security Agency (NSA), Top Secret disclosure by Edward Snowden. Published by The Guardian, June 06, 2013 (PDF). Also included are summaries of the stockholdings of federal officials in the providers identified in the Snowden documents, as disclosed in their annual financial disclosures. See also The Guardian online.

Risk indemnification and payment for services is valuable

Just because you are a federal official granted special powers of secrecy does not give you a license to use that privilege to benefit your personal stock holdings, and that of your cronies.

These men benefited personally by providing risk indemnity to companies ordered to participate in the PRISM program. These conflicts of interest have been fraudulently concealed.

Indeed, risk reduction increases a company’s value. Since the 2008 allowance of warrantless wiretaps, Holder and these judges have been lining their pockets under the FISA secrecy blanket.

Mutual Funds = Legalized Bribery, Collusion and Influence Peddling

AFI researchers have now studied hundreds of mutual funds held by these actors. Mutual funds are clearly being used to conceal investments in companies where value-enhancing favors are being solicited from the public officials who hold those stocks.

Facebook's largest shareholder and former chairman, James W. Breyer, Accel Partners LLP, appears to have led this scheme, with the help of a gaggle of unscrupulous law firms led by Fenwick & West LLP, Gibson Dunn LLP and Perkins Coie LLP, along with his mutual fund cronies at the National Venture Capital Association, where Breyer had been a director since 1999, and chairman in 2004-2005.

For example, Roberts, Holder and Saylor all hold Fidelity Contrafund, along with Leader v. Facebook Federal Circuit Judges Moore and Wallach. In fact, Holder and Saylor hold six Fidelity Funds in common, each of which holds Facebook stock. Fidelity was a big winner in the Facebook IPO.

Eric Holder―a fraud from Day 1

Eric H. Holder, Jr. walked into office knowingly holding stock in practically every telecom and Internet company that he indemnified. Since he did not disclose these conflicts of interest, as he said he would, his tenure as Attorney General has been fraudulent since Day 1.

Is it any wonder why whistleblower Edward Snowden does not want to come back to the U.S. and be tried in court by these people? Clearly, they have every interest in shutting him up.

Spread the word.

A free and democratic people cannot tolerate such abuses.

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