Leid Stories

Candidates squared off yesterday in special off-year elections across the country to fill congressional, state and municipal seats that were up for grabs, and President Donald Trump’s toxic leadership boosted strong turnouts and decisive victories for   Democrats—a harbinger of the duopoly’s dogfight in 2018’s midterm elections.

Democrats, naturally, are euphoric about capturing governorships in Virginia and New Jersey and a slew of seats in state houses. But these wins may have more to do with voters’ anti-Trump sentiment than the battered Democratic Party’s direct support for the candidates.

Leid Stories, noting the almost total absence of non-duopoly parties in these elections, discusses the stranglehold the duopoly continues to have on American electoral politics.

The Clinton Foundation and its principals are about to come under even heavier fire as Nov. 15 looms before them. It’s their final deadline to submit to the IRS a mountain of missing paperwork, reports and documentation for how they ran their multi-million-dollar global nonprofit.

Charles Ortel is a retired Wall Street banker turned financial investigator whose self-initiated investigation proved that several Wall Street-traded companies had been overvaluing their stocks by hundreds of billions of dollars during the time of the 2008-2009 stock market crash. He has spent the past two years examining closely The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation and has declared it “a total fraud” and “the largest unprosecuted charity fraud in U.S. history.”

As he did yesterday, Ortel has been sharing his findings on the foundation in detailed reports on Leid Stories. He returns today to answer listeners’ questions.

Hillary Clinton is unmasked as a political hijacker in Donna Brazile’s Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, being released tomorrow. Brazile, a longtime Democratic Party strategist and cam-paign manager, claims that when she temporarily headed the Democratic National Committee, she discovered that Clinton, by then building her 2016 presidential campaign, was in control of all vital aspects of the party.  

A key aspect of Clinton’s hijacking of the party, Brazile contends, was an “unethical”

agreement with then-DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz that gave Clinton total control of funds raised. Schultz was forced to resign over poor management of the debt-ridden DNC, sabotaging of Bernie Sanders’ candidacy and lack of support to other candidates.

Leid Stories discusses the parallels between Brazile’s account of the “cancer” she discovered within the Clinton-controlled DNC and that which has existed within the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Charles Ortel, a retired Wall Street banker turned financial investigator and a recognized expert on the Clinton Foundation, is our guide. 

Speak your truth to power on Leid Stories’ “Free Your Mind Friday,” the best on-air open forum anywhere. Share your take on issues in the news, topics we’ve covered on the program, or whatever you think merits further discussion or debate.

Join us for a mind-freeing hour of great radio. Call 888-874-4888.

Leid Stories adds more to the question it raised yesterday about the “act of terror” committed by alleged ISIS “associate” Sayfullo Habibulaevic Saipov in Lower Manhattan on Oct. 31.

Saipov, driving a rented truck, mowed down people as he ripped through a mile-long bike path. Eight people were killed; 12 others were wounded. The attack is considered the largest in the United States since the al Qaeda-directed Sept. 11, 2001 suicide attacks on the World Trade Center.

Leid Stories questioned why Saipov’s act is strictly being described as “terrorism.” Today, more weight behind the contention that it was an act of war. The U.S. government, however, refuses to acknowledge that fact.

Yesterday’s attack in the shadow of the World Trade Center that left eight people dead and 12 was “an act of terror and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio of the gruesome handiwork of Sayfullo Habibulaevic Saipov, an Uzbekstani national who emigrated to the United States seven years ago.

Saipov survived being shot by a police officer after he mowed down his victims with a rented truck. He underwent surgery and remains in police custody.

The attack is said to be the largest terrorist act committed in the United States since the al Qaeda-directed Sept. 11, 2001 suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that claimed 2,996 lives.

Leid Stories, however, asks: Are these acts of terror or something else?

Robert Mueller, the Justice Department’s special counsel probing possible collusion between the Russian government and the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, yesterday announced indictments of three former Trump aides—Paul Manafort, who ran Trump’s early campaign manager; Rick Gates, a longtime business partner of Manafort; and George Papadopoulos, who was a foreign policy adviser to the campaign.

Manafort and Gates are contesting the charges against them. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty as charged.

Mueller’s indictments, five months into his investigation, have triggered a firestorm of debate within the legal, political and legislative worlds, especially regarding the   thrust, scope and duration of his secret probe.

There are other major concerns, too. It may be too early to tell where Muller is headed, but yesterday’s indictments appear to be of no help in answering the key question: Did Donald Trump collude with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election?

Nine months after tens of thousands braced the cold in Washington, D.C., and other major U.S. cities in a women’s march to announce “resistance” to President Trump and his incoming administration, thousands again gathered at the Cobo Center in Detroit over the weekend to set priorities for a movement spawned by the Jan. 21 marches.

Leid Stories discusses notable aspects of the Detroit convention.

“Free Your Mind Friday” on Leid Stories is the best open forum in Radioland. Your thoughts on the issues of the day—or most anything, for that matter—are the star of the show.

Let’s hear what you have to say. Call 888-874-4888 and free your mind.

The Clintons are cornered, and there’ll be no easy escape—not for them, nor for a multitude of slicksters who happily climbed aboard the Clinton gravy train, hoping to ride it until the wheels fall off.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley means business; he’s already requested that the Justice Department’s Jeff Sessions speed up the appointment of a special prosecutor. And many foreign governments and philanthropic organizations

Because the Clintons solicited and/or received hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign governments and philanthropic entities to fund the foundation’s “good works” around the world, several of them have launched their own investigations, demanding detailed accounts for where their money went.

Charles Ortel, a retired Wall Street banker turned financial investigator and a recognized expert on the Clinton Foundation, takes us into the Grassley probe and what’s ahead.