Where did Epstein get his money?

A few days ago, as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal gripped Washington, Senator Ron Wyden offered a striking revelation in an interview with The New York Times. The Oregon Democrat said that his investigators had discovered that four big banks had flagged to the Treasury Department $1.5 billion in potentially suspicious money transfers involving Epstein, much of which appeared to be related to his massive sex-trafficking network.

[...]

Wyden’s office just sent a new letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi—which The New Republic obtained—suggesting seven potent lines of inquiry that the Justice Department could follow, right now, to dig more deeply into Epstein’s web of financial relations with global elites.

  New Republic

That went straight to the shredder.

“I am convinced that the DOJ ignored evidence found in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Epstein file, a binder that contains extensive details on the mountains of cash Epstein received from prominent businessmen that Epstein used to finance his criminal network,” Wyden writes in the letter.

The Treasury Department has this information because that’s where banks file suspicious activity reports, or SARS. Wyden’s letter says his staff has documented that Epstein-related filings by banks contain “information on more than 4,725 wire transfers involving Epstein’s accounts, all of which merit further investigation.”

[...]

Wyden’s move here is in some ways a trolling exercise, since DOJ won’t act on it. But such trolling by lawmakers can be constructive if it communicates new information to the public or highlights the failure of others in power to exercise oversight and impose accountability. Wyden’s letter does both.

[...]

Wyden’s investigators know of these records because his office has been examining Epstein’s financial transactions for several years. In February 2024—when Democrats controlled the Senate—Wyden’s staff viewed in camera (that is, privately) thousands of pages of Treasury files documenting those transactions.

Epstein clearly had access to enormous financing to operate his sex trafficking network, and the details on how he got the cash to pay for it are sitting in a Treasury Department filing cabinet.

[...]

Wyden’s letter also lays out other lines of inquiry for DOJ, urging examination of a number of specific payments to Epstein by several wealthy financiers that his investigators discovered.

[...]

In an intriguing move, Wyden also presses DOJ to examine “hundreds of millions of dollars in wire transfers” discovered by his investigators that passed through “several now-sanctioned Russian banks.” The latter adds suggestively: “It appears that these wire transfers were correlated to the movement of women or girls around the world.”

[...]

Right now the White House insists that [Trump] personally favors transparency on the Epstein files but is letting Bondi, DOJ, and the FBI decide how to proceed.

Yah, sure.

The in-camera review by Wyden staffers of Treasury documents in February 2024 itself shows that Wyden sought this info from the Biden administration—and that he got access to it.

What’s more, a Wyden aide tells me that in 2024, soon after Wyden’s staff viewed these Treasury documents in camera, Wyden actively moved to get the Senate to subpoena their release. Because Finance Committee rules require bipartisan support for subpoenas, Wyden sought the backing of several GOP senators on the committee, including now-chairman Mike Crapo and Marsha Blackburn. But none would support a subpoena, the aide says.

Imagine that.

Here's a little background from January 2024...

The first batch of court documents naming numerous figures tied to Jeffrey Epstein was released Wednesday, as part of New York Southern District Judge Loretta Preska's December order unsealing filings in a prior defamation case against Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. But word about the banking community's ties with Epstein has been trickling out for more than two years.

Executives at JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Barclays have faced considerable blowback from federal regulators after the organizations continued to keep Epstein on as a client for years after he was was convicted in 2008 of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute.

[...]

Barclays Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley is stepping down amid a U.K. regulatory probe into how he characterized his past ties to [...] Epstein.

Staley, 64, is leaving immediately.

[...]

Before the announcement, regulators told Barclays the preliminary findings of a two-year investigation into how Staley explained his long-running relationship with Epstein to the bank. "In view of those conclusions, and Mr. Staley's intention to contest them, the board and Mr. Staley have agreed that he will step down from his role as group chief executive and as a director of Barclays," the lender said in a statement. "The board is disappointed at this outcome." The findings have not yet been made public.

[...]

Jeffrey Epstein was accused and convicted of sex trafficking over a period of years. After he was convicted, and despite the bank's knowledge of his chronic and criminal behavior, Epstein became a client at Deutsche Bank. And then, after he became a client, Epstein tripped multiple red flags during his five-year relationship with the bank.

  American Banker

Deutsche Bank was backing Epstein's friend, Donald Trump, too. Those dealings were frought with suspected money laundering deals.

Epstein is referred to in the [July 2020 New York State Department of Financial Services order] as "a wealthy financier with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets and an extensive network of friends and connections that included prominent financial institutions, politicians, royalty, and billionaires."

[...]

The U.S. Virgin Islands is suing JPMorgan Chase for "turning a blind eye" to former client Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking on his private island there.

U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George said her suit filed in late December 2022 in Manhattan federal court was part of an "ongoing effort" to hold accountable those who facilitated Epstein's activities. Epstein brought many of his victims to his villa on Little St. James, the private island he owned.

"Human trafficking was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JPMorgan," the complaint states.

[...]

According to the suit, JPMorgan concealed "wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude" of women and girls in the Virgin Islands.

State of the Union is disunity and crumbling

 

Every Democrat should follow suit, except for the handful that would stay and shout, "You're lying" every time Trump lies.  Which is, as we all know, every time he opens his mouth.

Go, Ron

“Most of America’s big pro sports leagues gave up their tax exemptions voluntarily when their revenues climbed into the stratosphere, and they hadn’t even shamed themselves with Saudi blood money. An organization that betrays its own word and agrees to become a profit generator for Saudi Arabia’s brutal regime has disqualified itself for a tax exemption,” Wyden said. “Many of the biggest sovereign wealth funds out there belong to countries that do not have our interests at heart, and there’s no good reason for hardworking American taxpayers to have to subsidize their huge profits.”

[...]

Sovereign wealth funds are able to structure income and transactions such as the PGA deal to maximize tax-free profits. The Ending Tax Breaks for Massive Sovereign Wealth Funds Act would deny that benefit to funds belonging to countries that have more than $100 billion invested globally. An exception would apply to countries that have a free trade agreement or a tax treaty with the U.S. and are not deemed by the State Department a “foreign country of concern.” Based on public sources, the countries that are expected to be made ineligible for the tax break are Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

[...]

Senator Wyden opened an investigation in June into the PGA-PIF deal’s financial structure and implications for censorship and national security, given the PGA’s extensive real estate holdings near U.S. military sites. That investigation is ongoing. He and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also called on the Justice Department to scrutinize the deal for potential antitrust violations.

  Senate Finance Committee

Getting the Clarence Thomas corruption ball rolling

Will he do it, or will he have to be subpoenaed?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 04/25/2023:

Ron Wyden statement on government-wide hack

“Finance Committee staff was briefed today on the SolarWinds hack, and I appreciate Treasury and IRS officials sharing what they know as they continue to learn more. According to IRS, there is no evidence that IRS was compromised or taxpayer data was affected. However, the hack of the Treasury Department appears to be significant."

  Senate Committee on Finance

Why should we believe IRS wasn't "compromised" when so many other agencies were?

"Microsoft notified the agency that dozens of email accounts were compromised. Additionally the hackers broke into systems in the Departmental Offices division of Treasury, home to the department’s highest-ranking officials. Treasury still does not know all of the actions taken by hackers, or precisely what information was stolen.

“Finally, after years of government officials advocating for encryption backdoors, and ignoring warnings from cybersecurity experts who said that encryption keys become irresistible targets for hackers, the USG has now suffered a breach that seems to involve skilled hackers stealing encryption keys from USG servers.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ron Wyden making a common mistake

When will people understand that Trump is only in it for himself and the right-winger cabal that is set up around him and has gotten cabinet positions have been hell bent on destroying the government for years.  Who was it who said the object was to shrink the government so small they could drown it in a bathtub?  Oh, yeah.  Grover Norquist.  Whatever happened to that asshole? 

Surprise, surprise!

When it comes to how President Trump's tax cuts have affected the average American, all taxpayers need to do is check their bank accounts, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist told FOX Business' Ashley Webster on Monday.

"Look at your taxes this year, last year, the year before, and you can figure out how much your tax cut was and what you would lose if the Democrats win the presidency and the Senate," Norquist said on "Varney & Co."

  Fox Business News

Let me know how that shakes out for you.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Classic Wyden

I know something important the public should know, but I'm not going to tell you what it is, because it's classified.

Then STFU, Wyden. 

He did the same thing over warrantless surveillance.  Useless.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A hint at where the Senate Intel Investigation is

That's the suspicious money-laundering deal.  I'm guessing here, but I don't think the Senate Intel Committee is charged with investigating anything other than Russian collusion in the election, so my guess would be that this speaks to having blackmail material on Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I hope Ron Wyden is getting those papers together

UPDATE:  It's out, buddy.  Start producing.

Here goes Ron Wyden again

This disgusts me.  This is why Ed Snowden is in exile.  Because Ron Wyden is a twat and publicly admitted to knowing something "sensitive" and "classified" and outrageous that was being done by the NSA, but wouldn't tell us what it was.  If the American people deserve to see something, he has the power to show us. And he won't go to jail or exile for it, like so many whistleblowers have.

We no longer have Congressmen with conscience.  

Amen.

The worst kind of people's representative: I know something that is harming you, but I'm not going to do anything about it, because: rules.

Fuck off, Wyden.

UPDATE:  Here's Jeremy Scahill defending Wyden.  I'm not swayed.

Wyden demands answers

One US senator is calling out the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for pushing the moronic notion that there is somehow a good way to add backdoors to encryption used to protect devices like Apple’s iPhone.

In a speech earlier this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray carried on the time-honored agency tradition of claiming that Silicon Valley can backdoor encryption safely if its workforce just nerds a little bit harder.

[...]

The problem, according to Wray, is that law enforcement is stymied by phone encryption, which is now widespread. [...] Tech companies, Wray said, “should be able to design devices that both provide data security and permit lawful access with a court order.”

But this is exactly what cryptographers and tech companies have repeatedly warned they can’t do, arguing that creating “lawful access” would also open the door to all sorts of hackers and malicious actors, undermining the security of the entire internet in the process.

[...]

During Wray’s confirmation process last summer, [Senator Ron] Wyden pressed him on the topic of encryption. Wray claimed he hadn’t formed a policy position on the issue, and Wyden requested that Wray consult with him before going public with his position. That apparently didn’t happen.

In a letter sent to Wray today, Wyden chastised him for advocating “a flawed policy that would harm American security, liberty, and our economy” and for not contacting Wyden prior to giving his speech.

Your stated position parrots the same debunked arguments espoused by your predecessors, all of whom ignored the widespread and vocal consensus of cryptographers. For years, these experts have repeatedly stated that what you are asking for is not, in fact, possible.

[...]

I would like to learn more about how you arrived at and justify this ill-informed policy proposal. Please provide me with a list of the cryptographers with whom you’ve personally discussed this topic since our July 2017 meeting and specifically identify those experts who advised you that companies can feasibly design government access features into their products without weakening cybersecurity. Please provide this information by February 23, 2018.

We’re guessing it’s a short list.

  Gizmodo

Or a blank one.

I'm still pissed off at Wyden for not reading out on the Senate floor - which was his to do - what he knew about the NSA's illegal domestic spying activities, allowing James Clapper to lie to Congress with impunity and forcing Edward Snowden to release classified documents and go into exile with a price on his head. I can't forgive Wyden. He'll have to do a lot more than this to make up for it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Say it isn't so

The tweet came just 10 hours after the White House issued a statement indicating its support of the renewal efforts and made clear its opposition to an amendment with growing support that would block renewal, raising the prospect that the president simply didn’t understand what the position of his White House had been.

  Weekly Standard

I'd say that's a given, consdering he barely knows what his position is most of the time.

The tweet undercut an effort by some House Republicans hawks to ensure passage of a FISA Act renewal that Republican leadership had long assumed would pass without much of a fight.

[...]

Top Trump national security officials, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo and White House National Security Adviser Tom Bossert, scrambled to clarify the White House position in calls to Capitol Hill.

He's a nightmare for his own party, isn't he?

On Wednesday evening, as it became clearer that passage was uncertain, House Republicans urged the White House to make clear its opposition to the alternative to FISA Act renewal. At 9:12 p.m., the White House issued a statement from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders designed to provide this clarity.

[...]

Proponents of renewal privately expressed frustration with the president, both his lack of discipline and his obvious ignorance of his own alleged policy preferences. House Republican leaders called the White House requesting another statement to clarify the president’s [Thursday morning] tweet.

So, then The Most Notable Loser attempted to fix the problem.

"With that being said," I'm all for the act I was against just a few minutes ago.  And, in fact, I'm the one who directed it to be written.

Democrats are divided on the FISA Act renewal, with Schiff and Dutch Ruppersberger, former ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence panel, supporting the legislation but most rank-and-file Democrats opposed.

Because everybody loves surveilance.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Yeah, but I'm still mad at Ron Wyden for putting his own financial golden egg above the rights and liberties of the people he's supposed to serve, by not telling us what he knew about domestic surveilance, forcing Ed Snowden to have to break laws and become a fugitive in order to do it.

UPDATE 1/12:  What happened between Trump's two tweets.

The presidential decree — a mere 40 words — set off a mad scramble across Washington.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) spent 30 minutes on the phone with the president explaining the differences between domestic and foreign surveillance, as many fellow Republicans reacted in disbelief and befuddlement. White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly also directly intervened with Trump, reiterating the program’s importance before traveling to the Capitol, where he parried questions from confused lawmakers.

[...]

Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted there was no discrepancy between Trump’s two tweets — and said the only confusion was on the part of the media.

“We don’t think there was a conflict at all,” Sanders said. “The president fully supports the 702 and was happy to see that it passed the House today. . . . We don’t see any contradiction or confusion in that.”

  WaPo

Of course you don't, you slithering toad.

“Who saw that coming except for no one?” one White House official said, speaking anonymously to criticize the president. “You just shake your head and laugh a little bit.”

Which is why this shithead is still in office, and the real danger to national security.

What did you expect?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP on Thursday named former Ernst & Young LLP executive David Kautter to serve as the interim head of the Internal Revenue Service after the current chief, John Koskinen, finishes his term on November 12.

[...]

Between 1999 and 2004, E&Y developed a team called Viper to devise strategies for clients making more than $10 million from having to pay U.S. taxes. The effort allowed some 200 wealthy clients to avoid taxes worth about $2 billion. Kautter took on the director-level role in 2000, a period that coincided with the Viper deals.

[...]

In 2013, E&Y paid the IRS a $123 million settlement relating to the scheme.

  The Intercept

Rather short of the $2 billion.

Kautter, who was appointed by Trump this summer to manage tax policy at the Treasury Department, did face questions about the tax avoidance scandal during his confirmation hearings that preceded the vote.

Of course. Every one of his inappropriate appointees "faced questions". They still got confirmed.

Kautter expressed regret for not preventing the scheme, telling a Senate hearing that the firm “greatly disappointed me, and I felt members of the group abused the trust that the firm had placed in them. Looking back, I should have been more active.”

Okay, then. You're good.

Following the committee vote, he was whisked through the full Senate on a voice vote just before the August recess. The objection of a single senator would have stalled, though not killed, his nomination.

[...]

“Mr. Kautter committed to me that he would maintain the highest level of ethical and professional standards if he is confirmed. [...] ” [top ranking Democrat on the committee, Sen. Ron] Wyden said, announcing his support.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Senator Ron Wyden

Too chicken to stand up and reveal the lies about NSA spying. Too chicken to call out Israeli settlement atrocity.  Just the kind of bold leadership that has gotten the Democratic party where it is today.




...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

US Senators Urge Obama to Get Behind Netanyahu

The news that many progressive US senators as well as vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine signed on to an Israel lobby letter designed to limit President Obama’s actions against the Israeli occupation, now nearly 50 years old, has been widely reported, but the plain facts need to be stated.

Yesterday the Israel lobby group AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, flexed its muscle against President Obama and on the side of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu by posting a letter signed by 88 senators warning President Obama not to back any international measures that would pressure Israel to withdraw from occupied territories.

[...]

The letter was circulated by NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and got many progressive signatures: Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Ron Wyden, Tammy Baldwin, Chris Murphy, Barbara Mikulski, Barbara Boxer, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Richard Blumenthal, Ed Markey, Jack Reed, right along with John McCain, Mike Lee, Lindsey Graham and John Barrasso.

[...]

The letter is entirely consistent with the Democratic Party platform pushed through by Hillary Clinton in July, which removed references to occupation and settlements; Cornel West said then that the party was “beholden to AIPAC.”

  Mondoweiss

Indeed.

At Tablet, Yair Rosenberg reports that Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Ben Sasse all did not sign the letter because it didn’t go far enough in support of Israel (and against the two-state solution, in Cruz’s case).

[...]

The brave senators who did not sign this letter [presumably because of disagreement with Israel's policies in Palestine] include Democrats Patrick Leahy of VT, Bernie Sanders, Tom Carper of Delaware, and Dick Durbin of Illinois, along with Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"But He Swore an Oath! He Broke the Law!"

Here's a good article about the difference between Snowden breaking the law and those Senators on the Intelligence Committee who didn't: When it’s wrong to keep your word .

It's not long.  Have a read.  And may I add (or perhaps simply state differently):

1) Keeping an oath is not an honorable thing when your oath is to keep quiet about immoral and illegal activity.

2) Intelligence Committee Senators should not be praised for keeping their oath of secrecy, but instead should be tried for aiding and abetting crimes.

3) Those Senators did not keep their oath of secrecy because of some noble idea of the rule of law. They did it because they didn't want to lose their jobs.  The same reason the other people at the NSA working with Ed Snowden who knew what was being done didn't say anything.

..but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:   From a Nation interview November 2014...

Torture Report on Its Way Down the Memory Hole

Well protected from the American citizens. Everyone else knows what happened. (Well, maybe not the British and Canadian - and Australian - citizens.)

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request for the full, still-classified 6,900-page torture report, government lawyers wrote that most of the executive agencies that had been copied on the transmission of the full report to the White House from then-Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) hadn’t opened their sealed copy -- and in one case, never even picked it up.

[...]

"Neither [the Department of Justice] nor [the Department of State], moreover, has even opened the package with the disc containing the full Report.

[...]

The FBI’s copy remains sealed in the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs, according to the FOIA response. The bureau has yet to collect it.

[...]

"That shows a shocking disregard for their professional responsibilities, and appears to be an organized effort to cover up the truth about torture." [Sen. Ron Wyden]

[...]

The executive branch’s apparent failure thus far to delve into the behemoth study as Feinstein wished -- in the hope that its gruesome accounts would deter the nation from ever torturing again -- underscores the study's uncertain future. The committee’s new Republican leaders have made no secret of their disdain for the document. In a clear change from Feinstein's tenure, [The new Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chair, Republican Richard] Burr is campaigning to snatch back copies of the report and has signaled his intention to return to the CIA the particular contested document.

Certain Democratic lawmakers, including Wyden, and human rights groups have called for the public release of the full study.

But if officials in some of the most relevant, appropriately cleared agencies haven’t laid eyes on it, does the public even have a chance?

  HuffPo

In a word, no. And since Mark Udall declined to read the report into the Congressional record, I guess that leaves Ron Wyden to grow some, and do it himself. Fat chance. Maybe DiFi will. And, as Mike Meyers famously quipped in Wayne’s World…

Wyden/Udall

Two Democratic senators accused the Obama administration on Tuesday of seeking to “ignore or justify” statements it made to the Supreme Court about warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency, contributing to what they called a “culture of misinformation” by the executive branch.

In a letter to Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the senators, Mark Udall of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon, maintained that the Justice Department was not being forthright about what they portrayed as factual misrepresentations to the Supreme Court in 2012. The case involved a challenge to the constitutionality of a law permitting warrantless N.S.A. surveillance.

  NYT

Latest Greenwald Interview

Amy Goodman interviewed Glenn Greenwald today regarding the latest scare story about terror threats and the government’s claims that they caught this information from their overreaching domestic spying; the fact that Congress members can’t even get information on the programs; why Ron Wyden isn’t a hero in all this, as he’s sometimes being portrayed; cancellation of the Congressional hearing that Greenwald was supposed to testify before because suddenly President Obama needed to have a rare meeting with House Democrats at that very time (supposedly to be rescheduled some time in mid-late September); the XKeyscore program; the DEA coverup about how they illegally collect and use information; and Bradley Manning.

Good stuff, as usual for both Amy and Glenn.  Click the pic to get there.

Again with the Wyden Accolades

Sure, he’s better than the Congressional members who knew and didn’t speak out against government abuse and illegality, and a damn sight better than the ones who actively support it, but certainly not better than those who didn't know or were misled, and being better than the bad isn’t really much of an accolade.

[Ron] Wyden finally has the audience he sought. All it took was Snowden. This is an awkward fact of Wyden’s success: To get anyone’s attention, the senator needed somebody else to break the laws that he would not.

“This debate should have started long, long, long ago. And it should have been started by elected officials and not by a government contractor,” Wyden said Friday.

  WaPo

So, what is he, but an elected official?

How proud he must be that he didn’t break any law. Only because not turning in another lawbreaker (in this case the NSA) is not against the law. At least not for Congressmen.

He said he spent years trying to start the debate, without actually saying what the debate was about.

And what kind of sense does that make? I want to start a debate that’s very, very important, but I can’t tell you what that debate is about. Pray tell, asshat, how do I debate something when I don’t know the facts?  Since when did governing become a game of charades?  "Three words.  First word: Sounds like..."

In March, for instance, Wyden asked Clapper about domestic ¬intelligence-gathering.

“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” he asked.

Wyden knew the answer. Clapper knew the answer. The answer was yes.

“No, sir,” Clapper said.

And now Wyden is talking trash about Clapper for having lied. Well, what if we had put Ron Wyden on the stand and asked him a direct question like that? Since he says he couldn’t break the law, or the oath he had taken, he would have had to lie, wouldn’t he? The double standard is astounding.

But Wyden counts it a success and a necessary move (he also says he warned Clapper about the question beforehand). He said he wanted to establish a public marker to show that the administration had been spreading untruths about the reach of domestic spying.

“You can’t do vigorous oversight if the leaders of the intelligence community are misleading the American people, and Congress, in public hearings,” Wyden said.

Nor when the men and women who are charged with oversight aren’t willing to correct the record.

Now, Wyden says he will press — along with allies such as Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) — for legislation to end the bulk collection of telephone records and to declassify some decisions by the secret court.

And where would we be if Edward Snowden hadn’t come forward with what Ron Wyden and Mark Udall should have?  Perhaps it is simply a lesson for all American citizens who have the sense to see it, that we cannot entrust our lives and our rights to group of dollar-dependent pantywaists on a hill.

“We’re starting to put some points on the board,” Wyden said, noting the close vote on Amash’s amendment. “There is no question in my mind that our side is going to grow, and we’re going to stay at it until this is fixed.”

”Our side.” Why don’t you take credit, Mr. Wyden, while Edward Snowden sits in a foreign airport transit zone facing serious punishment, including the possibility of kidnap and rendition, and maybe even at BEST is looking at life in prison? Big brave defender of justice.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.