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Although it's required to by law, the DoD has never had an audit, something every American person, every company and every other government agency is subject to. The result is an astounding $10tn in taxpayer money that has gone unaccounted for since 1996.
"Over the last 20 years, the Pentagon has broken every promise to Congress about when an audit would be completed," the director of the Audit the Pentagon coalition, Rafael DeGennaro, told the Guardian. "Meanwhile, Congress has more than doubled the Pentagon's budget."
Legislation in the early 1990s demanded that all government agencies had annual audits, but the Pentagon has exempted itself without consequence for 20 years now, telling the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that collecting and organizing the required information for a full audit is too costly and time-consuming.
In the meantime, the GAO and Office of the Inspector General (IG) have published an endless stream of reports documenting financial mismanagement: $500m in aid to Yemen lost here, $5.8bn in supplies lost there, $8,000 spent on helicopter gears that really cost $500.
Russian troops will practice amphibious landings and airdrops and carry out firing drills during "offensive and defensive operations".Watch:
The commander in charge of the exercise, Colonel-General Andrei Serdyukov, said the drill was prompted by an "increased terrorist threat" in the region.
Col Serdyukov said: "For the first time in the Russian army's history the Airborne Forces' three large units were simultaneously alerted as part of the drills and partly redeployed to Crimea with weapons and equipment."
"I have confirmed that on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition."Nunes noted...
"None of this surveillance was related to Russia, or the investigation of Russian activities, or of the Trump team."
"In 1976, Congresswoman Bella Abzug wrote to CIA Director George H.W. Bush about the existing moratorium on the destruction of CIA files. As the Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Government Information and Individual Rights, which had jurisdiction over government information policy including FOIA and the Privacy Act, she wanted the moratorium extended โ specifically, she wanted to ensure that Congress had time to enact legislation in response to the Church, Pike, and Rockefeller hearings and the resulting reports."Preservation of records โ the subject of acrimonious debate during the presidential election, thanks to Hillary Clinton's use of a private server and disappearing documents โ is pivotal to government transparency and accountability. And for preventing alterations and staving off lies.
Comment: Trump wiretap is the real election scandal - Russian hack is the cover-up Update: Or, as Bloomberg puts it, " Republican Nunes Tries to Give Trump Cover on Wiretap Claim". Hmm. Anything but, "Nunes Proves Trump Was Right About Wiretap Claim". According to Nunes, the FBI isn't cooperating: Now, there's one obvious conclusion to draw from all of this: Nunes is a Russian agent. So it's no surprise that top Democrats are now calling for him to be investigated: How dare he.
Pelosi went further, calling Nunes a "stooge of the president". (She forgot to say Putin.)