As Democrats line up to defend Rep. Ilhan Omar and come up with her excuses for her anti-Semitism, House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., tried to minimize her comments by arguing that she escaped violence in Somalia, so her experience was "more personal" than Jews who merely had parents survive the Holocaust.

The Hill reports, "Clyburn came to Omar’s defense Wednesday, lamenting that many of the media reports surrounding the recent controversy have omitted mentioning that Omar, who was born in Somalia, had to flee the country to escape violence and spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before coming to the United States."

The article quotes Clyburn as saying, “There are people who tell me, ‘Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.’ ‘My parents did this.’ It’s more personal with her ... I’ve talked to her, and I can tell you she is living through a lot of pain.”

This has to be one of the more bizarre efforts to protect somebody who has repeatedly peddled the worst anti-Semitic tropes, despite multiple interventions by people explaining exactly why her words were offensive. The implication is that because Omar fled Somalia she gets a free pass to target another religious minority.

It also in itself is deeply offensive. Remembering the Holocaust, and the oft repeated phrase "Never Again," is about making sure we're proactive about combating anti-Semitism before it manifests in ways that lead to mass slaughter.

Not to mention, it isn't as if anti-Semitism is an abstract problem. Hate crimes against Jews are on the rise. And in every year since statistics have been compiled since the 1990s, more anti-religious hate crimes have been committed against Jews than any other religious group, even though they make up only 2 percent of the population.

Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, likened President Donald Trump to “chemotherapy” used to cure the “cancer” of America’s “permanent political class.”

Hanson joined Wednesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow to discuss his latest book, The Case for Trump. He explained his motivation for writing the book.

“I wrote it because I felt the literature so far had been either ra-ra fanatically pro-Trump without a lot of analysis, or had been just Trump Derangement Syndrome stuff,” said Hanson. “I felt that people who had voted for him and expected that he would govern successfully were actually pretty astute, so I analyzed how he devised a geographical and political agenda different from pretty much 16 other gifted candidates, and then he beat somebody who would spend $2.5 billion to his $600 million, flip the electoral college, and then he would survive pretty much an orchestrated political effort to abort his campaign and then his presidency.”

Hanson added, “Contrary to the so-called Never Trumpers who said Trump would govern as a liberal, or the left that said he would be so chaotic that government would all but collapse, if you look at all of the rubrics that we assess presidents by — unemployment, GDP, oil and gas production, regulations, judicial appointments, foreign policy — he’s probably had the most successful two years … that we’ve seen in 25 or 30 years, maybe even longer.”

Trump is driving a political realignment and forcing reevaluations of deeply entrenched institutions, said Hanson.

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House Democrat leadership on Thursday delayed a scheduled vote to make “minor tweaks” to a resolution condemning various forms of hate after Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) latest antisemitic remarks sparked turmoil within the party.

House Democrats were slated to unveil a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other variations of bigotry against minorities as they try to end the swirling controversy around Omar’s comments against Israel. The House is still expected to vote on the measure Thursday.

A draft of the seven-page document condemns anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bigotry “as hateful expressions of intolerance” contradictory to “the values and aspirations” of the United States and “rejects the perpetuation of anti-Semitic stereotypes” worldwide.

Earlier Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused to call on Omar to apologize, claiming the freshman congresswoman didn’t realize her controversial statements about Israel would sound antisemitic.

Omar’s comment that a pledge of “allegiance” to the Jewish state is expected of lawmakers sparked enough outrage to split Democrats and throw their agenda into question. Some Democrats wanted a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, while others said that would have unfairly singled out the Minnesota Democrat. Of Omar, Pelosi said, “I do not believe she understood the full weight of her words. These words have a history and a cultural impact.”

Former General Director of MTS’s Uzbek Subsidiary and Former Uzbek Official Charged in Bribery and Money Laundering Scheme Totaling Almost $1 Billion

Moscow-based Mobile TeleSystems PJSC (MTS), the largest mobile telecommunications company in Russia and an issuer of publicly traded securities in the United States, and its wholly owned Uzbek subsidiary, KOLORIT DIZAYN INK LLC (KOLORIT), have entered into resolutions with the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and agreed to pay a combined total penalty of $850 million to resolve charges arising out of a scheme to pay bribes in Uzbekistan.  In addition, charges were unsealed today against a former Uzbek official who is the daughter of the former president of Uzbekistan and against the former CEO of Uzdunrobita LLC, another MTS subsidiary, for their participation in a bribery and money laundering scheme involving more than $865 million in bribes from MTS, VimpelCom Limited (now VEON) and Telia Company AB (Telia) to the former Uzbek official in order to secure her assistance in entering and maintaining their business operations in Uzbekistan’s telecommunications market.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman of the Southern District of New York, Special Agent in Charge Raymond Villanueva of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Washington, D.C. and Chief Don Fort of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) made the announcement.

Gulnara Karimova, 46, a citizen of Uzbekistan, was charged in an indictment filed in the Southern District of New York on March 7 with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.  Karimova is a former Uzbek official who allegedly had influence over the Uzbek governmental body that regulated the telecom industry.  Bekhzod Akhmedov, 44, a citizen of Uzbekistan and the former Uzbek executive, was charged in the same indictment with one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), two counts of violating the FCPA, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.  Karimova’s and Akhmedov’s case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood of the Southern District of New York.

“Gulnara Karimova stands accused of exploiting her official position to solicit and accept more than $865 million in bribes from three publicly traded telecom companies, and then laundering those bribes through the U.S. financial system,” said Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski.  “The indictment and corporate resolution announced today, together with two prior corporate resolutions involving bribes allegedly paid to Karimova, demonstrate the Department’s comprehensive approach to foreign corruption: we will aggressively pursue both corrupt foreign officials and the companies and individuals who bribe them in order to gain unfair business advantages, and we will do everything we can to keep the proceeds of that corruption out of the U.S. financial system.”

“This is the third installment in a trilogy of cases arising from an almost $1 billion bribery scheme that reached the highest echelons of the Uzbekistan government and was orchestrated by some of the largest telecommunications companies in the world,” said U.S. Attorney Berman.  “By funneling multimillion-dollar bribe payments through the U.S. financial system, the companies and individual defendants corruptly tried to tip the global economy in their favor and line their own pockets.  But they are now paying the price.  Today, my Office and our law enforcement partners are sending a bold, unequivocal message that the U.S. financial system is not in business to enable foreign bribery or money laundering.  This Office stands ready to prevent, prosecute, and penalize foreign corrupt practices wherever in the world we find them.”

“Corruption of this level and reach poisons our integrity as a participant in the global marketplace,” said HSI Washington Special Agent in Charge Villanueva.  “Thanks to our skillful and collaborative investigators at HSI and the IRS-CI, Karimova and Ahkmedov’s exploitive crimes will be presented before the just eye of our courts and no longer will such corruption be permitted to metastasize across our borders.”

“With the increase in globalization and ease with which funds can be moved, criminals think their financial transactions cannot be tracked—but they would be wrong,” said IRS-CI Chief Fort.  “We will continue to investigate violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to ensure our country’s financial institutions are not used for devious purposes.  We are committed to aggressively pursuing all who engage in corruption, money laundering, and bribery for their own personal gain and at the expense of the U.S. government.”

According to the indictment against Karimova and Akhmedov, in or around the early 2000s, they agreed that Akhmedov would solicit and facilitate corrupt bribe payments from telecommunications companies seeking to enter the Uzbek market.  In exchange, Karimova allegedly used her influence over Uzbek authorities to help the telecommunications companies obtain and retain lucrative business opportunities in the Uzbek telecommunications market.  In total, Akhmedov conspired with the telecom companies and others to pay Karimova more than $865 million in bribes, and Akhmedov and Karimova conspired with others to launder and conceal those funds to, from and through bank accounts in the United States, in order to promote the ongoing bribery scheme, the indictment alleges.

The charges in the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

MTS entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice in connection with a criminal information filed yesterday in the Southern District of New York charging the company with one count of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery and books and records provisions of the FCPA and one count of violating the internal controls provisions of the FCPA.  KOLORIT pleaded guilty to a one-count criminal information filed in the Southern District of New York, charging the company with conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery and books and records provisions of the FCPA.  Pursuant to its agreement with the department, MTS agreed to pay a total criminal penalty of $850 million to the United States, including a $500,000 criminal fine and $40 million in criminal forfeiture that MTS agreed to pay on behalf of KOLORIT.  MTS also agreed to the imposition of an independent compliance monitor for a term of three years and to implement rigorous internal controls and cooperate fully with the Department’s ongoing investigation, including its investigation of individuals such as Akhmedov and Karimova.  The case against MTS and KOLORIT is assigned to U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken of the Southern District of New York.

In related proceedings, MTS reached a settlement with the SEC.  Under the terms of its agreement with the SEC, MTS agreed to pay a $100 million civil penalty.  Consistent with Coordination of Corporate Resolution Penalties in Parallel and/or Joint Investigations and Proceedings Arising from the Same Misconduct (Justice Manual 1-12.100), the Department of Justice agreed to credit the civil penalty paid to the SEC as part of its agreement with MTS.  Thus, the combined total amount of criminal and regulatory penalties paid by MTS and KOLORIT to U.S. authorities will be $850 million.

According to the companies’ admissions, MTS and KOLORIT, through various managers and employees within MTS, MTS’s Uzbek subsidiaries Uzdunrobita LLC and KOLORIT, and other affiliated entities, paid approximately $420 million in bribes to Karimova, who had influence over the Uzbek governmental body that regulated the telecom industry.  The bribes were paid on multiple occasions between 2004 and 2012 so that MTS could enter the Uzbek market through the acquisition of Uzdunrobita and so that Uzdunrobita could gain valuable telecom assets and continue operating in Uzbekistan.  The companies admittedly structured and concealed the bribes through payments to shell companies that members of MTS’s and Uzdunrobita’s management knew were beneficially owned by Karimova.  MTS and Uzdunrobita also acquired KOLORIT, knowing that the price MTS and Uzdunrobita paid was inflated, in order to bribe Karimova in exchange for Uzdunrobita’s continuing to operate in Uzbekistan.  Uzdunrobita made payments to purported charities and for sponsorships to entities related to Karimova.  The Uzbek government expropriated Uzdunrobita in 2012 as a result of MTS’s, Uzdunrobita’s and KOLORIT’s failure to meet Karimova’s demands for additional payments.

A number of factors contributed to the Department’s criminal resolution with the companies, including (1) the companies did not voluntarily disclose; (2) the companies’ level of cooperation and remediation was lacking, not proactive; (3) the nature and seriousness of the office, including $420 million in bribes to a high-level Uzbek official; and (4) the mitigating factors present in this case, including that the Uzbek government expropriated the companies’  telecommunications assets in Uzbekistan, resulting in no realized pecuniary gain to the companies as a result of the misconduct.

The resolution, reached in coordination with the SEC’s resolution, marks the third such resolution by a major international telecommunications provider for bribery in Uzbekistan.  On Feb. 18, 2016, Amsterdam-based VimpelCom and its Uzbek subsidiary, Unitel LLC, entered into resolutions with the Department of Justice and admitted to a conspiracy to make more than $114 million in bribery payments to Karimova between 2006 and 2012.  On Sept. 21, 2017, Stockholm-based Telia and its Uzbek subsidiary, Coscom LLC, also entered into resolutions with the Department and admitted to a conspiracy to make more than $331 million in bribery payments to Karimova.  The investigation has thus far yielded a combined total of over $2.6 billion in global fines and disgorgement, including over $1.3 billion in criminal penalties to the United States.  In related actions, the Department has also filed civil complaints seeking the forfeiture of more than $850 million held in bank accounts in Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Ireland, which constitute bribe payments made by MTS, VimpelCom and Telia, or funds involved in the laundering of those corrupt payments to Karimova.

The IRS-CI and HSI are investigating the cases as part of the IRS Global Illicit Financial Team in Washington, D.C.  Assistant Chief Ephraim Wernick and Senior Litigation Counsel Nicola J. Mrazek of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Edward Imperatore and Daniel Noble of the Southern District of New York are prosecuting the case against MTS and KOLORIT.  Assistant Chief Wernick and Trial Attorney Elina Rubin-Smith of the Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Imperatore and Noble are prosecuting the case against Karimova and Akhmedov.  Trial Attorney Michael Khoo of the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS) is prosecuting the forfeiture case with substantial assistance from former MLARS Trial Attorney Marie M. Dalton, now an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Western District of Washington.

Law enforcement authorities in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, France, Ireland, Isle of Man, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and the United Kingdom have provided valuable assistance in this case.  The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs provided significant assistance as well.  The SEC referred the matter to the Department and also provided extensive cooperation and assistance.

A court in Uzbekistan has ordered Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the late Uzbek president, to serve the remainder of a criminal sentence in prison for having allegedly violated the terms of her house arrest, the prosecutor general’s office said on Wednesday.

Karimova, a businesswoman who also recorded pop songs, has not been seen in public for several years after an apparent falling-out with her father Islam Karimov, who ran the Central Asian nation for 27 years before his death in 2016.

In the early hours of Wednesday, prosecutors said that Karimova was being sent to prison for having “systematically violated the obligations” related to a previous five-year sentence on charges of embezzlement and extortion.

Those terms included not leaving her home and not using the internet or phones.

Her Swiss lawyer Gregoire Mangeat wrote on Twitter that she was “forcibly removed” from the apartment where she lived in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent on Tuesday. The authorities said she was taken to a prison.

Uzbek authorities have been seeking to freeze Karimova’s assets, including in Switzerland, Britain, France and a string of other countries.

“She was taken to an unknown place,” Mangeat wrote. “The Uzbek authorities continue to exert psychological and physical pressure on her to force her to withdraw her appeals and abandon all her rights and property in Switzerland.”

Karimova disappeared from public view in 2014. The first official word of her fate was in 2017, when the prosecutor general’s office said she had been convicted and sentenced in 2015 to five years probation, the equivalent of house arrest in Uzbekistan, for acquiring stakes in a number of companies through extortion or embezzlement, and for tax evasion.

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Former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley joined Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) in reintroducing the Inspector General Access Act of 2019 to expand the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General to include alleged DOJ attorney misconduct. The bill is also cosponsored by Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

“Federal prosecutors wield tremendous authority to enforce our laws. Any abuse of that authority should be thoroughly and independently investigated to uphold the public trust. Leaving those investigations to other Department attorneys opens the door to real or perceived conflicts of interest, which must be avoided. The Inspector General Access Act ensures that allegations of misconduct by DOJ lawyers are reviewed by independent department watchdogs instead of other DOJ attorneys,” Grassley said.

“Our federal government inspectors general do a valuable job providing the information voters and lawmakers need to hold federal government agencies accountable,” Sen. Lee said. “Unfortunately, the Department of Justice OIG currently does not have the power to review the conduct of DOJ attorneys, an oversight which this legislation corrects.”

“The American people rightly expect that all government employees, including federal prosecutors, are held to the highest ethical and professional standards,” said Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) “To that end, our nation’s inspectors general provide an important public service by making sure Congress has all the information it needs to hold agencies accountable. It simply doesn’t make sense that current law excludes the conduct of DOJ attorneys from the same level of accountability.”

“Inspectors General play an integral role in independently evaluating and investigating alleged instances of waste, fraud, and abuse across federal government agencies and programs, including allegations of employee misconduct,” Rubio said. “However, current law does not allow the DOJ Inspector General to review the conduct of DOJ attorneys. This bill rectifies that by providing the DOJ Inspector General with the appropriate authority to independently and transparently evaluate allegations of misconduct by DOJ attorneys.”

The Inspector General Access Act solves the problems that have long plagued oversight of DOJ lawyers by simply striking the jurisdictional carve out in § 8E of the Inspector General Act. As a result, DOJ’s Inspector General would be fully empowered to investigate allegations of professional misconduct against department lawyers. In addition to enhancing oversight and public accountability at DOJ, this simple, common sense reform will bring DOJ in line with the practices in other federal agencies where allegations of attorney professional misconduct are already subject to investigation by Inspectors General.

Speaking at a news conference on voting rights with Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) in Austin, Texas on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said immigrants “make America more American,” and we should not be “suppressing the vote of our newcomers to America.”

“So, when we talk about newcomers, we have to recognize the constant reinvigoration of America that they are, that we all have been – our families,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “And that, unless you're blessed to be Native American – which is a blessing in itself that we respect – but that constant reinvigoration of hope, determination, optimism, courage, to make the future better for the next generation, those are American traits. And these newcomers make America more American. And we want them, when they come here, to be fully part of our system. And that means not suppressing the vote of our newcomers to America.”

Speaker Pelosi spoke on the importance of passing H.R. 1, the “For the People Act of 2019,” “to lay the foundation to pass the Voting Rights Act, strengthened after the actions of the Supreme Court, which significantly weakened it,” she said.

Below is an excerpt of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s remarks:

“In the campaign, the candidate that I, the president that I quoted the most was Ronald Reagan. Does that surprise you? Maybe. But Ronald Reagan said this: ‘This is the last speech I will make as President of the United States. And I have a message I want to communicate to the country I love.’ He went on to talk about the Statue of Liberty and what it means to the world – that beacon of hope, what it means to people who have come here and seen that statue welcoming them – he said, our ancestors, our grandparents, our parents.”

“We, in California, see people coming from a different direction, but the same welcome. You see them coming, many from the south, southern border, but should be the same welcome. He went on to say, though, after talking about the Statue of Liberty: ‘the vital force of America’s preeminence in the world is every new generation of immigrants who come to our country. And when America fails to recognize that as our vital force, America will fail to be preeminent in the world’ – preeminent in the world.

“So, when we talk about newcomers, we have to recognize the constant reinvigoration of America that they are, that we all have been – our families. And that, unless you're blessed to be Native American – which is a blessing in itself that we respect – but that constant reinvigoration of hope, determination, optimism, courage, to make the future better for the next generation, those are American traits. And these newcomers make America more American. And we want them, when they come here, to be fully part of our system. And that means not suppressing the vote of our newcomers to America.”