JOHN KERRY LAUDS RENEWABLE ENERGY BUT HIS FAMILY TRUSTS INVEST IN FOSSIL FUELS: Dozens of major oil and natural gas firms are recipients of multi-million dollar investments by the family trusts for the Secretary of State and his wife, Heinz heiress Teresa Heinz-Kerry, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock.

“The investments contradict Kerry’s public comments only a week ago at a United Nations’ signing ceremony for the new Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which is designed to reduce the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. At the ceremony, Kerry promised the 175 nations in attendance, ‘we will do our part – we will live up to our responsibility to future generations and together, citizens of the world, we will work to save our planet from ourselves,’” Pollock reports.

Apparently what Kerry meant to say is “we will work to save you from yourselves (but don’t even think about us and divestment!).”

HIRE AN INTERIOR DESIGNER! YEAH, THAT’LL FIX VA’S TOMAH DISASTER: Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group is not making this up.

JOHN KERRY APPARENTLY MISSED OBAMA’S MEMO ON THOSE EVIL OFF-SHORE TAX HAVENS: Seems the Secretary of State and his wife, heiress Teresa Heinz, have millions of dollars invested in at least 11 off-shore tax havens, mostly registered in the Cayman Islands, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock. President Obama calls such actions “gaming the system” when Republicans like Mitt Romney do it.

“Well, I say it doesn’t look good by any means,” Susan Harley, deputy director of Congress Watch, the progressive watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader, told Pollock. “There’s always a question of whether it’s tax avoidance or tax evasion. We would expect our government servants to uphold the law. Those folks need to be held to the same standards as everyone else.”

Either Kerry missed the memo or laws are for, you know, the little people. Like you and me. Now, if we were among “the world’s richest and most powerful people have used offshore bank accounts to conceal their wealth and avoid taxes,” as Pollock describes them, perhaps we would have a different view of these financial tools.

PULITZER PRIZE BOSS BOOTS JUDICIAL WATCH OUT OF CONTEST: Judicial Watch, the conservative non-profit government watchdog, has broken multiple major stories in the Hillary Clinton email and Benghazi terrorist attack scandals, but that doesn’t count, according to the administrator of journalism’s most sought-after award.

“Does the Pulitzer Prize have one standard for liberal non-profits that engage in journalism and a different one for conservative non-profits that also engage in journalism?” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton asked Pulitzer Prize Administrator Mike Pride in a March 14, 2016, email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

Pride had claimed Judicial Watch is ineligible for the journalism award because it is a foundation devoted to “advocacy.” He apparently has not heard of groups like Inside Climate News, Pro Publica and Center for Public Integrity, which, like Judicial Watch, are 501(c)(3) foundations doing investigative journalism. Judges for the Pulitzer Prize have previously recognized Pro Publica with the award.

As it happens, Judicial Watch, which will be deposing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and several of her closest aides in the near future, employees Micah Morrison, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, and Lisette Garcia, formerly of the Los Angeles Times. Between them, they’ve been nominated for Pulitzers six times.

There is one huge difference between Judicial Watch and groups like Pro Publica, but it has nothing to do with advocacy. Judicial Watch combines veterans journalists like Morrison and Garcia with an aggressive staff of experienced attorneys who understand how to wield the Freedom of Information Act to force federal officials to cough up documents they would much prefer to keep behind closed doors.

Judging by the results, Judicial Watch may have demonstrated the model for the future of hard-hitting investigative journalism that puts the fear of God in the hearts of government officials who would otherwise continue their nefarious ways.

SUIT CLAIMS FORMER FDA CHIEF HELPED HUBBY’S HEDGE FUND MAKE MILLIONS: Katie Watson of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group reports that former FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg is accused in a suit filed in federal court of using her office to clear the way to approval for Levaquin, a controversial antibiotic in which her husband’s hedge fund just happened to be highly invested.

“Once confirmed as FDA commissioner, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg acted as the instrumentality that all defendants used to perpetrate their conspiracy and racketeering enterprise by having her act illegally and outside the scope of her authority as FDA commissioner to suppress material information to plaintiffs and the public that Levaquin was inherently dangerous and in fact, deadly,” the complaint alleges, according to Watson.

Alexandra Walsh, an attorney for Hamburg, strongly disputed the suit’s claims, saying “Mr. Klayman’s allegations against Dr. Hamburg are patently false. There is no factual or legal basis for the lawsuit he has filed, and we are confident the court will dismiss his claims in their entirety.” Walsh was referring to Larry Klayman, attorney for the six plaintiffs in the case.

Hamburg was appointed by President Obama in 2009 and served until March 2015.

VA POOBAH LEARNS THE HARD WAY TO NEVER LIE TO CONGRESS: Department of Veterans Affairs Undersecretary David Shulkin assured the House Veterans Affairs Committee Tuesday that an agency employee who participated in an armed robbery during her off-duty hours had been fired.  Committee Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller wasn’t buying it.

The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak reports what happened next: “But in the final seconds of Tuesday’s hearing, Miller, a Florida Republican, returned from outside the hearing room and announced that ‘I just confirmed with the Caribbean Healthcare System that the individual we were discussing is still on the payroll.’”

As N.Z. Bear once said: “That kind of carelessness might have cut it a few years ago, when somnolent Big Media hacks were satisfied to define reporting as getting quotes from both party’s spokesmen. But times have changed, friends: there isn’t just one new sheriff in town, there’s thousands of us.

“We will fact-check your ass, and we will do it thoroughly and properly, with links and primary sources that let our readers decide where the truth lies. So straighten up and fly right, because we are watching —- and we do this crap for fun.” Apparently, they didn’t get the memo at VA.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION BLOWS OFF ANOTHER CONGRESSIONAL SUBPOENA FOR OBAMACARE DOCUMENTS: But it’s for our own good, you see, because we don’t need to know why all but a handful of the Obamacare co-ops have or soon will fail.

NOW OBAMA IS USING REGULATORY “DARK MATTER” – THINK BLOG POSTS – TO RUN OUR LIVES: New report out today from the Competitive Enterprise Institute documents yet another disturbing way President Obama and the federal bureaucracy are doing end-runs around democracy.

“Agencies are increasingly using these informal documents to create official regulations with consequences, like recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guidance claiming landlords and home sellers who don’t rent or sell to convicted criminals are violating the Fair Housing Act,” reports Katie Watson of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

“These guidance documents are “purportedly not legally binding,” but they still “cajole and intimidate” people and businesses into complying with the agency, CEI said. Most new rules never reach the attention of the media or Congress,” Watson said. Go here for more.

GIVE $300K TO CLINTON FOUNDATION, GET $13M BACK IN STATE DEPARTMENT GRANTS! Not a bad deal, at least for former Nobel Prize winner and long-time Clinton friend Muhammed Yunus. Government panels in Bangladesh and Norway accused him of extensive banking and charitable corruption but that didn’t disqualify Yunus from receiving millions in U.S. tax dollars via loans, grants and contracts from Hillary Clinton’s State Department, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock.

“The awards, totaling $13 million, were issued by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the development arm of the State Department, beginning when Clinton became secretary of state. Another $11 million in federal funds went to organizations allied with Yunus,” Pollock reports.

Yunus “is  a high-profile fixture at most of the Clinton Foundation’s major gatherings. The foundation features him at 37 places on its website,” according to Pollock, who also reports that when he asked for details about the $13 million, “USAID Spokesman Raphael Cook said the agency didn’t have the ‘manpower’ to respond to questions about the transactions.” The agency has nearly 4,000 employees.

EPA POURS TOXIC WASTE INTO RIVER, REFUSES TO PROTECT LOCALS: Remember that yellow river EPA created in Colorado last year? Agency officials dumped an estimated 880,000 pounds of toxic metals waste from a mine into the Animas River, which supplies drinking and working water for millions of people in three states and the Navajo Nation.

Nearly eight months later, reports Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group, EPA officials concede they essentially have no plan in place in the event storm water runoff swells the river. That’s likely to happen in Spring and Summer and when it does, the swirling water picks up the toxic waste and deposits it further downstream.

“The EPA is also using a recreational standard, which allows 40 times more lead in the river, even though people in three states and the Navajo Nation depend upon it as a primary water source, New Mexico Environmental Secretary Ryan Flynn said in February,” Barton said. In other words, the same bureaucrats who can raise environmental standards to make work for themselves can also lower the standards to avoid work when it suits them.

A FEDERAL COURT MAY SOON RULE THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BOARD UNCONSTITUTIONAL: Don’t recognize the name? Despite being President Obama’s biggest gift to Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB has mostly flown under the radar since its creation in 2010. That could change soon because of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which is hearing a constitutional challenge to CFPB’s legitimacy.

“Critics of CFPB have noted it is the only agency not accountable to congressional oversight and therefore violates the separation of powers set down by the Constitution. That principle provides that Congress have checks over the executive branch agencies like CFPB. Those checks do not apply to the agency,” reports Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

Created by a Democratic Congress, CFPB was purposely put under the Federal Reserve to get it out of the reach of congressional oversight. Congress doesn’t even have the power to set the bureau’s budget because it is funded entirely via the Fed. Pollock has been putting an investigative spotlight on the bureau for several years, as seen here, here and here.

If the three-judge appeals court panel rules against CFPB, the bureau will appeal to the full Appeals Court, which has a majority of judges appointed by Presidents Obama and Clinton. Next stop will then the U.S. Supreme Court, so stay tuned.

CLINTON FOUNDATION PAYS ITS TOP MALE EXECS 38 PERCENT MORE THAN ITS WOMEN EXECS: Here’s what Hillary Clinton said today on the issue: “Last time I checked, there is no discount for being a woman. Groceries don’t cost us less, rent doesn’t cost us less, so why should we be paid less?”

Well, the former Secretary of State might want to have a chat with the former president in her family about the family foundation. Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group checked the latest available tax return for the William, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation and found this:

“The foundation’s 2013 IRS form 990 reveals that nearly three times as many men as women occupy the executive suites at the Little Rock, Arkansas-based foundation.  On average, top male executives at the foundation earn $109,000 more than the top female executives with positions in the C-suite.” Overall, the men make 38 percent more than the women in the C Suite.

Somebody might also want to explain to Mrs. Clinton that in the real world employees are paid on the basis of the comparative value of their work, not on how much they have to pay for groceries and rent.

AND NOW, HERE IS  TODAY’S OUTRAGE FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS: Officials at VA’s Phoenix hospital manipulated wait-time data to make it appear they were connecting doctors and veterans seeking appointments much faster than they actually were. This was done so VA managers at the Arizona facility could keep getting generous performance bonuses. They got their bonuses but dozens of waiting veterans died.

How does VA respond? They transferred Deborah Amdur from her post managing VA’s White River Junction hospital in Vermont to Phoenix amid much hoopla about her being a turnaround artist.Well, guess what VA officials soon learned from their department’s Inspector General?

“The same week Amdur took over the Phoenix hospital, her superiors saw papers confirming the Vermont hospital had the same issues with wait-time falsification — with equally deadly results — as Phoenix,” reports Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

You might think that would be enough for VA officials to cancel Amdur’s transfer. You would be wrong: “VA officials are typically aware of the general thrust of IG investigations and are given draft reports prior to their release to the media and the public. A VA spokesman refused to tell The Daily Caller News Foundation when agency leaders received a draft copy or why Amdur’s transfer wasn’t cancelled because of the findings,” Rosiak reported.

EPA LETS HUNDREDS OF SUPERFUND SITES GO UNCLEANED FOR DECADES: Federal environmental officials began putting horribly polluted sites on the Superfund list in 1983. Now we find, thanks to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton, that hundreds of Superfund sites go years, even decades, with nothing being done to rectify their environmental damage.

Barton analyzed nearly 14,000 sites in EPA’s Superfund database and found that “of the 818 superfund sites where EPA cleaning hadn’t yet begun, 771 had been waiting for at least five years. In fact, 154 of those sites were among the first added to the NPL in 1983 — when areas were first added to the list.” The National Priority List includes the most serious threats to public health, as defined by EPA.

Barton found another 864 sites were cleanup actions had begun or had been completed but the news is no better: “The agency began cleanup efforts at 460 superfund sites, but only after waiting more than five years on average following their NPL designation — of those, 15 waited longer than 20 years.” Barton said EPA officials weren’t helpful when he asked questions about the Superfund data, typically taking multiple to respond or not responding at all.

EIGHT MORE OBAMACARE CO-OPS TO FAIL: By the end of 2016, odds are only one or two of the original 23 non-profit health insurance providers Obama promised would make for-profit insurers lower prices and improve services will still be around. And the price of this predictably failed experiment is $2.5 billion, plus an incalculable opportunity cost. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock has the details, as he has from the very beginning of the co-op epoch.

THOUSANDS ARE WAITING FOR PUBIC HOUSING BUT HUD WORKER GETS TWO APARTMENTS IN NO TIME: Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group strikes HUD again! Seems a HUD employee was able to rent two subsidized apartments by somehow leaping ahead of the hundreds of thousands of poor people waiting for public housing units to become available.

The employee lived in the Alexandria, VA., apartment and sublet the apartment in the nation’s capital to her sister who used it, among other things, to park her Lexus SUV. Housing authorities in both cities knew about the arrangement, yet did nothing. When the HUD Inspector General discovered the deal, HUD managers initially promised “severe discipline” for their misbehaving colleague.

Can you guess what comes next?

“But instead of being severely disciplined, Mathis was hastily promoted to a position in charge of giving out millions of tax dollars in federal grants,” Rosiak reports. So a HUD employee steps on poor people who need places to live and gets a promotion to give away millions of tax dollars instead of being fired. What’s wrong with this picture???

OBAMA POLITICAL APPOINTEES AT HUD MUST RETURN THEIR SALARIES AFTER OBSTRUCTING CONGRESS: Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group is probably not the most popular reporter covering the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He keeps turning up stories like today’s on the two Obama political appointees who GAO says must pay the penalty for obstructing Congress, literally.

The dynamic duo “refused to let an employee speak with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about a major scandal. The congressional watchdog agency cited a federal law barring the use of taxpayer dollars to pay executive branch officials to obstruct Congress,” Rosiak reports. The scandal involved a fraud in HUD that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The two barred a career subordinate from telling Congress about the fraud.

“The GAO said that unless HUD’s associate general counsel and a deputy assistant secretary personally return their salaries, the department would be knowingly retaining ‘improper payments’ on its books in violation of the law,” Rosiak said. The two political appointees make six-figure salaries and GAO estimates their obstruction lasted six months, so this is going to hurt. Unless HUD’s corrupt leadership contrives to save them, that is.

Rosiak reports that “a HUD spokesman told The Daily Caller News Foundation that officials there have no plans to require the salary repayments despite the GAO opinion.” Stay tuned because GAO has just handed Congress an open invitation to regrow a couple of big brass ones and enforce its power of the purse over the executive branch, as the founders intended.

ANY ONE OR MORE OF THESE FOUR LAWS COULD MEAN JAIL FOR HILLARY AND HER TOP AIDES: That’s the assessment of a former FBI assistant director and multiple national security experts, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock. They aren’t certain that indictments will be filed but what is certain is they, along with a lot of others in the law enforcement and national security communities, will be dumbfounded and outraged if there aren’t indictments.

“As a former career senior intelligence officer and special operations special mission intelligence officer and National Security Council staff member, I believe it is inconceivable that if it is verified that Hillary Clinton’s server contained or had SAP information on it that she could possibly escape indictment and criminal prosecution,” retired Col. James Waurishuk, a 30-year veteran in the national security field, told Pollock.

To date, 22 emails found on Clinton’s private, home-brew server contained Top Secret and SAP materials. The latter contain information related to the nation’s highest national security secrets. Intelligence experts believe hackers working for foreign intelligence agencies hacked Hillary’s server to glean the most sensitive information.

VA MANAGEMENT, UNION LEADERS SABOTAGE PRIVATE CARE OPTION, THEN CALL FOR REPEAL: Department of Veterans Affairs leaders in management and the employee union fought Congress when it adopted the Choice Card program in 2014 allowing veterans to get private care when a government facility couldn’t provide it within 30 days.

Now, the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak reports, there is substantial evidence VA  management and unionized workers purposely mismanaged the program because they fear it threatens their jobs. And guess who is pushing Congress to repeal the program? Lesson: When Big Government feels threatened, everybody in it puts aside differences and defends it.

EIGHT YEARS LATER, THE FEDS DECIDE TO CLOSE A HUGE SECURITY GAP IN GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS: It took nearly a decade, a critical inspectors general report and a Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group story but the federal house-keeping agency is now going to close a major anti-terrorist security gap.

A 2008 Homeland Security directive ordered federal agencies to stop using easily counterfeited ID badges for employees and contractors. The General Services Administration oversees thousands of federal facilities, including courthouses, laboratories, ports of entry and data centers, and is responsible for ensuring such directives are observed. But nothing changed for eight years.

Then TheDCNF posted a story Thursday reporting a watchdog report that noted the eight-year delay and pointed out that having thousands of easily counterfeited badges “increases the risk of a security event, such as an active shooter, terrorist attack, or theft of government property, as well as exposure of sensitive and proprietary information.”

On Friday, GSA Administrator confirmed late in the day to TheDCNF that her agency is now moving on “discontinuing the practice of issuing building-specific local badges.” She declined to say if anybody at GSA would be disciplined or fired for the eight-year delay. And no, this is NOT an April Fool’s Day joke.

FEDS HAVE NO IDEA IF OR HOW MANY FIREARMS HAVE BEEN STOLEN FROM U.S. PRISON ARMORIES: Officials at the federal Bureau of Prisons operate 120 armories containing handguns, rifles, ammunition, and incapacitating chemical agents – think tear gas – all of which could be useful to domestic terrorists.

The problem is, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson, government officials likely have no clue where any of these items are at any given time. Here’s why: The BOP inventory control system is “neither complete nor accurate” and lacks data for “tracking product movement,” which increases “the risk that armory munitions and equipment could be lost or stolen,” an inspector general report notes.

Watson said the IG investigation was prompted in 2011 after a BOP employee pleaded guilty to stealing munitions from a federal prison facility, but changes made since 2011 by BOP have not remedied the problem. U.S. prisons have been hotbeds of Muslim recruiting for decades.

ARE MOST FEDERAL BUILDINGS WIDE OPEN TO TERRORIST ATTACKS? It’s hard not to think so, thanks to a highly disturbing Inspector General report that found “serious security” lapses likely at thousands of federal facilities across the country because General Services Administration bureaucrats have ignored an important national security directive for at least eight years!  

The directive told GSA to stop using easily counterfeited security badges that are unique to specific federal installations. Such badges are issued to employees and contractors to allow holders easy access to facilities like ports of entry, federal courthouses, computer data centers and laboratories.

“Unauthorized access to a federal facility increases the risk of a security event, such as an active shooter, terrorist attack, or theft of government property, as well as exposure of sensitive and proprietary information,” the IG reported. Even worse, the IG added, is that GSA “does not centrally monitor the management of building badges issued by its staff.”

How serious is this? Well, an ISIS attack against the federal courthouse in Rochester was only recently thwarted by the FBI.

Next question: Will anybody in government be fired for this?

ALCOHOLIC BEHAVIOR OR JUST FOLLOWING UNION LOGIC TO ITS PREDICTABLE END? Federal disability Judge Sridhar Boini admits he repeatedly showed up drunk for work at the Social Security Administration. So have some of his colleagues but they weren’t disciplined, he told the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Since management didn’t stop them, it must mean, according to federal employee union logic, that it’s ok to show up soused at the SSA, reports the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak. And that in turn means Boini can’t be disciplined, he told MSPB.

But that’s not all. Boini also claims his drinking qualifies him for a disability pension! And despite MSPB’ rejection of hi appeal, the board note that Boini can still take his case to the federal courts. Rosiak is not making this up, I promise.

WILL HILLARY AND HER CLOSEST AIDES TELL THE EMAIL TRUTH OR RISK JAIL BY LYING TO THE FBI? That’s a question they will likely soon have to answer because it appears federal prosecutors are getting ready to call them all in for a little chat.

SHOOT THE PRESIDENT, THEN LIVE IN LUXURY 35 YEARS LATER: That’s the life of failed Reagan assassin John Hinckley, who spends much of his time these days free to stroll about an upscale gated resort community on the James River near Williamsburg, Virginia, where he shares a luxury residence with his elderly mother.

It was 35 years ago today that Hinckley shot Reagan, White House Press Secretary Jim Brady, Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy and police officer Thomas Delahunt. All four survived, but Brady, who was shot in the head, was permanently disabled. The bullet that hit Reagan came literally within a half inch of striking the president’s heart.

His lawyers are pushing a federal judge to end all restraints on Hinckley, who is often seen shopping, alone, in area stores, and walking, alone, on the many secluded trails in the heavily forested area, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock. Government lawyers are fighting to keep Hinckley under observation because the doctors say some of his mental problems persist.

As it happens, the Hinckley home is on the 13th hole of one of the resort’s three PGA-quality golf courses, not far from where President Obama prepared for one of his 2012 debates with Mitt Romney and both congressional Democrats and Republicans frequently convene meetings.

“This is absolutely so wrong. To let this guy go free. He almost killed the 40th President of the United States, coming within an inch of his heart,” Jim Kuhn, top executive assistant to Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan throughout their eight years in the White House, told Pollock. “He ruined Jim Brady’s life. And he shot two other people. And he’s going to walk? This guy is out scot-free? I just don’t get it.”