James Comey

[soonernvolved]

dailycaller.com/2020/04/19/stefan-halper-papadopoulos-fbi-russian-trubnikov-crossfire-hurricane/

FBI Informant Bragged About Links To Russian Spies In Secret Recording Of Trump Aide

The Senate Judiciary Committee released a declassified transcript of FBI source Stefan Halper’s conversation in September 2016 with George Papadopoulos.
The transcript shows that Halper name-checked several former Russian intelligence officials who he has met throughout his storied career.
The former Cambridge professor plied Papadopoulos with questions about the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia and WikiLeaks.

It wasn’t long into his conversation with George Papadopoulos at a prestigious social club in London weeks before the 2016 election that FBI confidential informant Stefan Halper mentioned his links to several retired Russian spies.

“I have a lot of friends in Russia,” Halper told Papadopoulos during their conversation, which occurred over drinks, and which the FBI recorded.


“My point is that,” Halper said, “the Russians can be very helpful to us at this time and we’ve got some great information coming out.”

Halper, a former Cambridge professor, rattled off the names of the Russians, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Leonid Shebarshin, and Yuri Traughtoff, according to a transcript of the secretly recorded conversation released on Thursday.

Halper was not bluffing about his friendship with at least one of the ex-Russian spies. He has collaborated with Trubnikov, the former head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR. Halper hosted Trubnikov at two intelligence seminars at Cambridge in 2012 and 2015, and interviewed the former Kremlin insider for a 2015 study on China-Russia relations he did for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA).

Halper’s goal in bringing up his Kremlin links was to get Papadopoulos to reveal whether he or the Trump campaign were working with the Russian government or involved the WikiLeaks release of Democrats’ emails, according to the Justice Department inspector general’s (IG) report on the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.



“You know this stuff out of WikiLeaks is really superb,” Halper said.

In a virtually unprecedented move, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham released the newly declassified transcript on Thursday as part of a GOP-led effort to publish documents related to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Two other Republican senators have released declassified information over the past week that shows that the FBI had evidence that the infamous Steele dossier was based on Russian disinformation.

The FBI had opened a counterintelligence investigation on Papadopoulos and several other Trump campaign aides on July 31, 2016, shortly after WikiLeaks released emails stolen from the DNC. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: A London Meeting Before The Election Aroused George Papadopoulos’s Suspicions)

As part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the FBI turned to Halper, a seasoned political veteran of three Republican administrations who had been a confidential human source (CHS) for the bureau since 2008.


The FBI used another CHS to surveil Papadopoulos before the campaign. The Daily Caller News Foundation published a transcript last week of that spy effort, in which a friend of Papadopoulos tried to pry information out of him during a four-hour lunch and casino visit just before Halloween 2016.

The Justice Department IG’s report said that Halper agreed “without any hesitation” to help the FBI with the probe when he was approached about it on Aug. 11, 2016. Halper’s FBI handler told the IG that investigators decided to lure Papadopoulos from the U.S. to the U.K. in hopes he might be relaxed to discuss any nefarious activity involving the Trump campaign.

Former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo is apologizing for calling George Papadopoulos a "coffee boy." (Photo: LinkedIn)
Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos (Photo: LinkedIn)

They also sought to recreate the conditions of another encounter that Papadopoulos had in London several months earlier, the IG report said. The young Trump aide, to whom the FBI gave the nickname “Crossfire Typhoon,” allegedly told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer over drinks that Russians might have information on Democrats that would help the Trump campaign.

The Australian government shared that tip with the FBI in late July 2016, just after WikiLeaks released the DNC emails.

After the FBI brought Halper into the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the 70-something-year-old operative met with and secretly recorded Carter Page, another Trump foreign policy adviser, on Aug. 20, 2016, according to the IG report. He met Sam Clovis, a Trump campaign official, on Aug. 30, 2016, but did not record that conversation.

Halper reached out to Papadopoulos on Sept. 2, 2016, to offer to fly the Trump aide, whom he had never met, to London to discuss writing a paper on energy issues for $3,000. Papadopoulos has said he agreed to the offer and met Halper in London, along with a woman the professor claimed was his assistant, Azra Turk.

Halper and Papadopoulos met twice on Sept. 15, 2016, once for brunch and a second time for pre-dinner drinks.

The IG report says that in the first meeting they discussed details of the research paper Papadopoulos had agreed to write. The FBI team decided to set up a second meeting so that Halper could ask Papadopoulos “direct questions about whether the Trump campaign benefitted from, or anyone in the Trump campaign had knowledge of, Russian assistance or the Wikileaks release of information that was damaging to the Clinton campaign,” according to the IG report.

Papadopoulos shot down Halper’s questions about WikiLeaks and Russian help for the Trump campaign, the transcript shows.

“No one knows what he’s going to release,” Papadopoulos said of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He said that Assange might release information about Trump as a “ploy to basically dismantle” and “undercut” the Republican.

Papadopoulos also said that the Trump campaign would not engage in “this type of activity because at the end of the day it’s…illegal.”

“This is a form of treason.”

The transcript jumbles the names of the ex-Russian spies Halper mentioned, but enough context is provided in the transcript that two of them can be identified from open source records.

“One of them is, ah, Slava Truvnikoff. Do-do you, do you know Truvnikoff? Truvnikoff was the director of the KGB and the FSB,” said Halper, referring to Vyacheslav Trubnikov, the former head of Russia’s SVR.




FBI transcript of George Papadopoulos (CT) and Stefan Halper (CHS), via Senate Judiciary Committee

Halper told Papadopoulos that he hosted Trubnikov at an event to discuss Russia’s intelligence operations.

“So I brought him to [redacted] to talk to us about how-how their intelligence service works,” Halper said. “He was very forthcoming. I mean he’s retired now and he’s, ah, ah very much a, um, sort of an international participant in nuclear disarmament.”

“He’s a private citizen but he’s, ah, really plugged in,” Halper said.


FBI transcript of George Papadopoulos (CT) and Stefan Halper (CHS), via Senate Judiciary Committee

Halper hosted the spy in 2012 and 2015 at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, which he convened alongside Sir Richard Dearlove, the former chief of MI6. The DCNF has previously reported that Halper interviewed Trubnikov for a 2015 study he conducted for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA). (RELATED: British University Deserves More Scrutiny Over Stefan Halper Ties)

While Halper was serving as an FBI informant, he inked $1.1 million in contracts with ONA for four studies on geopolitical events in Russia, China, and India. His offer to Papadopoulos closely matched his pitch to scholars for those studies, in which Halper paid scholars a small honorarium for analysis of geopolitical issues.

Halper told Papadopoulos that he had “developed a friendship with a really senior KGB general.” The transcript spells the general’s name as “Shebasheen,” but other information provided by Halper suggests he was referring to Leonid Shebarshin, who led the KGB for two days in the early 1990s.

He also said he knew a KGB officer identified in the transcript as “Yuri Traughtoff.” The transcript notes that the spelling of the name may not have been accurate, and the DCNF was unable to determine who Halper was talking about.



Halper’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment about the transcripts.



FBI transcript of George Papadopoulos (CT) and Stefan Halper (CHS), via Senate Judiciary Committee

Halper became an FBI informant in 2008, and had a brief falling out with the bureau in 2011. The IG report said that Halper was shut down as a confidential human source in 2011 because of “aggressiveness toward handling agents” that arose out of a dispute over his compensation as a CHS.

Halper also was sidelined because of “questionable allegiance to the [intelligence] targets” with whom he maintained contact, the IG report said.

The report does not identify the intelligence targets, or suggest that they are the Russians that Halper mentioned to Papadopoulos.

Trubnikov has been name-dropped in other conversations related to the Trump probe.

Steele, the former British spy and dossier author, told a State Department official during an Oct. 11, 2016 meeting that Trubnikov was a source of some sort for the dossier. Steele relied on a single source to collect information from a network of contacts inside and outside of Russia. Many of the sub-sources are believed to have unwittingly provided information to Steele’s intermediary.

The IG report blasted the FBI for failing to disclose the potentially exculpatory information that both Page and Papadopoulos shared with Halper.

The FBI failed to tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) about Papadopoulos’s denials to Halper that the Trump campaign was working with Russia. Carter Page had told Halper that he had never met Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, but the FBI failed to share that information with the FISC. It was a key claim in Christopher Steele’s dossier, which the FBI cited extensively in applications to obtain surveillance authority from the FISC to spy on Page.

Halper’s FBI handler, Stephen Somma, is identified as one of the main villains in the IG report. The report cites the counterintelligence veteran as being “primarily responsible” for some of the “most significant” errors in the Crossfire Hurricane probe.

Somma failed to disclose the exculpatory information related to Page and Papadopoulos, as well as information from interviews with Steele’s main source, who disputed many of the allegations from the dossier. Somma was also aware by mid-August 2016 that Page was an “operational contact” for the CIA, but he did not disclose it in applications to the FISC.

Somma insisted to the IG that an encounter that Halper had with Page several weeks before the start of Crossfire Hurricane was a coincidence. Halper first met Page on July 10, 2016 at a Cambridge event centered around the presidential campaign.

The FBI transcript indicates that Halper arranged dinner for Papadopoulos and Arza Turk, the woman he falsely claimed was his assistant. The New York Times has reported that Turk was actually a government investigator operating under a pseudonym.

The transcript shows Halper and Papadopoulos exchanged farewells, with Halper saying he would like to help the Trump campaign as an outside adviser on foreign policy issues.

Crossfire Hurricane continued to rage for months after the London meeting, though Halper himself was spent for the night.

“I’m three sheets to the wind,” he said into his hidden microphone.

[soonernvolved]

Obama’s ex CIA Chief, Mike Morell, was connected to the Trump – Russia collusion lie as early as August 2016. In late 2017, Morell still claimed the Trump-Russia fantasy was real.
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In August 2016, Obama’s former CIA Chief Mike Morell was on the Charlie Rose show. During his interview Morell challenged candidate Trump to stand up to Russian President Putin. At the time this was ridiculous because there was no evidence for Morell’s remarks. Then Morell stated:

You know the single thing in my op-ed that got the most attention was, I said this guy has been recruited, an unwitting agent of the Federation. This guy’s been recruited. That’s why he’s taken the positions he’s taken.



Morell penned an Op-ed at the far left New York Times where he announced his support for Hillary Clinton. The far left Daily Beast described Morell’s Hillary endorsement as such:

www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/08/05/former-cia-head-michael-morell-i-m-voting-hillary

Yet another former George W. Bush administration official has announced they will vote for Hillary Clinton this November. In a scathing New York Times op-ed, Michael J. Morell, a former intelligence briefer for President Bush and an acting CIA director under President Obama, called GOP nominee Donald Trump “a threat to our national security.” The real-estate mogul, Morell wrote, has repeatedly “undermined” security by calling for a ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S., and by taking “policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests.” The latter of which led to Morell’s most damaging conclusion: “In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

What Morell didn’t admit in his op-ed was that he was working for a Clinton related entity at the time:

Morell comes across as apolitical, evenhanded and well-credentialed on matters of national security. What the piece does not say is that he is a senior counselor at Beacon Global Strategies, a Washington consulting firm with connections to Hillary Clinton. Two of the firm’s founders were top aides to Clinton, including Philippe Reines. Leon Panetta, who led the Defense Department and, later, the C.I.A. under President Obama, is also with the firm.

Morell didn’t mention the firm, or its ties to Clinton, in his piece. He simply said that he knew Clinton from working with her while she was secretary of state and he was a top official at the C.I.A. The Times identified him only by saying Morell was the acting director and deputy director of the C.I.A. from 2010 to 2013. It said nothing about the firm he joined after that.

By late 2017, Morell was back at it, suggesting that the US Intel community lacked imagination in understanding Russia’s actions in the 2016 campaign similar to their work before 9-11:

The Russian 2016 hacking, Morell told me, was in fact a U.S. “intelligence failure” in multiple ways. It was, he argued, at the least “a failure of imagination that’s not dissimilar to the failure of imagination that we had for 9/11,” with America’s spy agencies apparently unable to have conceived of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and electronic hacking of Gmail being used to attack the country’s election.

Today we know that the Russia collusion allegations made by Morell and the Intel community were total garbage. The corrupt Mueller team couldn’t even come up with a single connection between the Trump team and Russia.

The actions Russia supposedly took to alter the 2016 through Facebook and Twitter have been totally debunked. The case against Concord Management, the firm accused of purchasing ads and using bots to promote candidate Trump, has been dropped. This too was a total fabrication.

To date we don’t know who sent the DNC emails to Wikileaks. The firm Crowdstrike claimed it reviewed the DNC’s computers but the FBI never obtained servers or evidence to determine if Crowdstrike’s claims were accurate. There is much speculation that the DNC’s servers were never hacked.

From what we now know today, Mr. Morell was pushing a bogus Russia connection to President Trump. He was another Obama Deep State operative who pushed the bogus tale and one of the first to do so. It makes you wonder if Morell was in on it?

[soonernvolved]

dailycaller.com/2020/04/20/media-bias-report-russia-disinformation-christopher-steele-dossier/

Here’s How Outlets Wrote Up — Or Ignored — The Report Of Russian Disinformation In Steele Dossier

Publications that spent years reporting on the Steele dossier have either largely underreported or completely ignored the recent news showing evidence of Russian disinformation.

A GOP-led fact-checking campaign resulted in previously-classified footnotes being released. Some of the news came out April 10, followed by more being released April 15. The footnotes indicate that an organization not named in the IG report gave the FBI evidence about Russian operatives’ disinformation campaign, which ended up in the dossier.


The footnotes also indicate that the FBI had concerns dating back to 2015 regarding the dossier’s author, former British spy Christopher Steele, and his relationship to Russian oligarchs. Additionally, the U.S. intelligence community “indicated that two persons affiliated with RIS [Russian Intelligence Services] were aware of Steele’s election investigation in early July 2016,” in a June 2017 report, according to another footnote.

Numerous publications did not immediately report on the revelation, despite the multitude of reports on the situation published in the media since the dossier’s January 2017 release — much of which painted Steele in a positive, promising light. This lack of reporting was previously noted by the Daily Caller.

Buzzfeed does not appear to have reported on the new footnotes, even though it originally published the dossier and closely covered the past developments of the Russian probe.

Politico is another publication that appears to have ignored the recents news. It, too, has spent considerable efforts covering the Russian probe’s past developments. Adding to that list is The Daily Beast, yet another outlet that generally pushed the collusion narrative and yet appears to be silent on this latest development.



Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, holds a copy of the Steele Dossier, as Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testifies about the Inspector General's report on alleged abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham holds a copy of the Steele Dossier as Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testifies about the Inspector General’s report. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

The New York Times ended up publishing a report about the footnotes April 15. The paper wrote that “footnotes were declassified from a watchdog report that found that the F.B.I. had reason to open the Russia inquiry but made errors in seeking approval to wiretap a former Trump adviser.”

CNN reported a version of the news April 16. The network centered the story around how Republicans were reacting to the news rather than the news itself. CNN’s article is headlined, “GOP seizes on newly declassified material to raise further questions about Steele dossier.”

“Republicans, including Trump, have repeatedly seized on the claims made about Cohen and Trump in the dossier in an effort to discredit the FBI’s Russia investigation and later former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe,” CNN reported. (RELATED: Mystery Footnotes From FISA Report Set For Declassification)
Meanwhile, the Washington Post opted to simply run a wire report from the Associated Press, despite being invested in the past with pushing a narrative surrounding the dossier. WaPo also published an opinion piece by media critic Erik Wemple titled, “The Steele dossier just sustained another body blow. What do CNN and MSNBC have to say?”

Wemple noted publications that did cover the news, including the Daily Caller and Fox News in his round-up. The media critic then pointed out that “the declassified footnotes haven’t preoccupied the coronavirus-obsessed mainstream media.”


He called out CNN in particular for its “factual” but “slanted” headline on Republicans touting the new information.

“Republicans are ‘touting’ the footnotes in part because media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC and others ‘touted’ the dossier with flimsy corroboration in the early months of the Trump presidency,” according to Wemple.

He continued:

The CNN footnote story abridges the findings of the Horowitz report this way: ‘Steele’s report played no role in the opening of the FBI investigation, according to Horowitz, and he found that the most salacious allegations weren’t proven.’ That’s a convenient formulation, considering that the Horowitz report said the FBI determined that the dossier was a mix of uncorroborated, inaccurate/inconsistent and publicly available information.

The underreported news was discovered through the fact-checking campaign conducted by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2020/04/20/7-devastating-revelations-about-crossfire-hurricane-in-new-releases/

7 Devastating Revelations About Crossfire Hurricane In New Releases
To a new Senate website, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s staff uploaded the four Carter Page FISA applications, which were recently further declassified.
Margot ClevelandBy Margot Cleveland
APRIL 20, 2020

Late last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham announced a webpage dedicated to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s probe into the Crossfire Hurricane illicit investigation into the Donald Trump campaign. Graham’s staff uploaded the four Carter Page Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications, which were recently further declassified.

These declassifications reveal more devastating details in the SpyGate saga. Here are seven new revelations.

1. The FBI Always Intended to Spy on the Trump Campaign

When news first broke that the Obama administration had obtained a FISA order to surveil Page, Democrats and the left-leaning press argued the FBI’s surveillance of the former Trump foreign policy advisor didn’t constitute spying on the Trump campaign because the court-ordered surveillance didn’t begin until after Page had left the campaign.

“Conservatives tried to correct the record, noting that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order gave the government access to Page’s past emails and other electronic communications with members of the Trump campaign, but the mainstream media ignored this reality.”

However, Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on FISA abuse later confirmed that, yes, “the FBI gathered substantial evidence of Page’s past electronic communications,” including multiple “emails between Page and members of the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign concerning campaign related matters.”

The recent declassifications of the FISA applications now expose a further reality: The FBI didn’t just seek access to past electronic communications with campaign members, the FBI believed Page would continue to communicate with the Trump campaign and sought the FISA court order to intercept those conversations.


While Page had announced he was “taking a leave of absence from his work with the campaign,” the first FISA application read, “because Page was one of the first identified foreign policy advisors for [Trump’s] campaign, the FBI believes that Page likely established close relationships with other members of [Trump’s campaign.]”

Accordingly, the FBI maintained in its initial FISA application that it “believes that Page likely established close relationships with other members of [Trump’s] campaign and likely would have continued to have access to members of [Trump’s] campaign, which he could exploit to attempt to exert influence on foreign policy matters, regardless of whatever formal role he played in the campaign.”

2. FBI Failed to Brief Trump About Its Page Suspicions
This newly declassified information highlights another huge impropriety in the FBI’s handling of Crossfire Hurricane: The FBI failed to provide the Trump campaign a defensive briefing about Page!

Here, it is helpful to remember what Counterintelligence Division Assistant Director E.W. “Bill” Priestap told the IG about why he opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation instead of providing the Trump campaign a defensive briefing:

we provide defensive briefings when we obtain information indicating a foreign adversary is trying or will try to influence a specific U.S. person, and when there is no indication that the specific U.S. person could be working with the adversary. In regard to the information the [Friendly Foreign Government] provided us, we had no indication as to which person in the Trump campaign allegedly received the offer from the Russians. There was no specific U.S. person identified. We also had no indication, whatsoever, that the person affiliated with the Trump campaign had rejected the alleged offer from the Russians.

In fact, the information we received indicated that Papadopoulos told the [Friendly Foreign Government] he felt confident Mr. Trump would win the election, and Papadopoulos commented that the Clintons had a lot of baggage and that the Trump team had plenty of material to use in its campaign. While Papadopoulos didn’t say where the Trump team had received the ‘material,’ one could reasonably infer that some of the material might have come from the Russians.

Had we provided a defensive briefing to someone on the Trump campaign, we would have alerted the campaign to what we were looking into, and, if someone on the campaign was engaged with the Russians, he/she would very likely change his/her tactics and/or otherwise seek to cover-up his/her activities, thereby preventing us from finding the truth. On the other hand, if no one on the Trump campaign was working with the Russians, an investigation could prove that.


Andrew McCabe, President Obama’s former deputy director of the FBI, likewise told the IG “that he did not consider a defensive briefing as an alternative to opening a counterintelligence case” because, “based on the [Friendly Foreign Government] information, the FBI did not know if any member of the campaign was coordinating with Russia and that the FBI did not brief people who ‘could potentially be the subjects that you are investigating or looking for.’”

McCabe added that, “in a sensitive counterintelligence matter, it was essential to have a better understanding of what was occurring before taking an overt step such as providing a defensive briefing.” There are plenty of problems with Priestap and McCabe’s rationale, as well as the entire predicate for Crossfire Hurricane, but let’s take them at their word, and apply the same reasoning to Page.

More than three months had passed since the FBI received word from a “Friendly Foreign Government” that former Trump advisor George Papadopoulos had learned that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary. Since then, the FBI believed it had discovered the identity of the man engaging with the Russians—Page.

So convinced was the FBI that they had their man that agents swore out four FISA applications attesting that the FBI “believes that Russia’s efforts to influence U.S. policy were likely being coordinated between the [Russian Intelligence Service] and Page, and possible others.” The FBI further swore to the court that Page “was identified by source reporting as an intermediary with Russian leadership in ‘a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation’ to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.”


So why didn’t the FBI provide the Trump campaign a defensive briefing about Page? Why didn’t the FBI warn Trump that it had evidence that Page was acting as an agent for Russia and that the campaign should be aware of that fact in communications with Page?

3. The FBI Spied on the Trump Administration
The FBI also failed to provide the Trump administration a defensive briefing concerning its belief that Russia sought to use Page’s connections with administration officials to influence America’s foreign policy. Instead, as the newly declassified information reveals, following Trump’s inauguration, the FBI sought to, and apparently succeeded in, intercepting communications between Page and members of the Trump administration.

In each renewal application, the FBI stated that “although the election has concluded, . . . the FBI believes the Russian Government will continue attempting to use U.S. based individuals, such as Page, to covertly influence U.S. foreign policy.” Then, after noting that “although Page no longer appears to be an advisor to the now President-elect” (and later “to the now President”), the FISA applications included several blacked-out sentences identified as FISA-acquired information.



The language and placement of these redactions suggest that the FISA surveillance captured communications between Page and members of the Trump transition team and administration.

Significantly, both the April 7, 2017 and the June 28, 2017, FISA renewal applications, after redacting “FISA-Acquired Information,” noted that “the FBI assesses that Page continues to have access to senior U.S. Government officials. Moreover, the FBI further assesses that Page is attempting to downplay his contacts with the Russian Government and to dispel the controversy surrounding him, so as to make him more viable as a foreign policy expert who will be in a position, due to his continued contacts with senior U.S. Government officials, to influence U.S. foreign policy towards Russia.”

These assertions raise significant questions and concerns. Who were these “senior U.S. Government officials”? Did the FBI intercept Page’s communications with Trump administration officials? And why would the FBI not provide President Trump a defensive briefing about Page and his supposed role as a Russian agent?



4. Rep. Adam Schiff Is a Rotten, No-Good, Two-Faced Liar
The latest declassifications also expose—yet again—that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) lied about everything in his “response memo” to Rep. Devin Nunes’s (R-Calif.) memo on FISA abuse. The lawyer who tweets anonymously as Undercover Huber detailed the evidence in a must-read thread on Friday.

“DOJ cited multiple sources to support the case for surveilling Page—but made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016, chiefly his suspected July 2016 meeting in Moscow with Russian officials,” Schiff had claimed.



Not so, as “Undercover Huber” detailed. Rather, the FISA applications stated that “[Carter] Page…has been identified by source reporting as an intermediary with Russian leadership” in “a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” to influence the 2016 election. And that language was lifted directly from the Steele dossier.



Schiff knew this. He also knew that with dueling memorandums, the press would 100 percent back the Democrat, and put Republican Nunes’s memorandum on FISA abuse down to politics.

Schiff was right. He just didn’t expect Trump to survive long enough for proof of his duplicity to come out. But luckily for Schiff, the press backs lying Democrats at the same rate.

5. FBI Relied Solely on Fake News to Support Portions of the FISA Applications
The additional FISA application declassifications reveal another disconcerting fact: The FBI relied completely on media reports that ended up being inaccurate to “assesses that, following Page’s meetings in Russia, Page helped influence [the Republican Party] and Trump’s campaign to alter their platforms to be more sympathetic to Russia.”

In the FISA applications, the FBI supported this “assessment” with summaries of the reporting by two “identified news organizations,” one a July 2016 article and the second an August 2016 article. While the FISA applications did not identify the articles, “one was apparently Josh Rogin’s Washington Post opinion article, which reported claims that Trump campaign members ‘worked behind the scenes to make sure [the GOP]’s platform would not call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces.’”

The second article was likely Michael Crowley’s Politico piece that “opined that while the reason for [Trump’s] shift [in Russian policy] was not clear, [Trump]’s more conciliatory words, which contradict [the GOP]’s official platform, follow [Trump]’s recent association with several people sympathetic to Russian influence in Ukraine, including foreign policy advisor Carter Page.”

With the additional declassifications, we now know that those news reports were the only “evidence” supporting the FBI’s assessment that Page influenced the Republican Party to “soften” the platform’s position on Russia. And the reporting was wrong—which is exactly why the FBI should never rely on a news report in a FISA application, much less rely solely on such reporting.

6. The Special Counsel Pushed Pathetic Intel Too
In May of 2017, Robert Mueller assumed leadership of the Russia collusion investigation, but nothing changed: The FBI continued to push nonsense to the FISA court. However, instead of presenting media reports as proof, the special counsel’s team pushed rumors.

Specifically, as the newly declassified FISA application dated June 28, 2017 reveals, the FBI informed the FISA court that it “believes it has obtained additional information consistent with the above-described reporting from Sub-Source that Page met with Sechin while Page was in Moscow in July 2016.”

The FBI then noted that in June 2017, agents had interviewed an individual whose name remains redacted. That individual told the FBI that he “recalled an instance where Page was picked-up in a chauffeured car and that it was rumored at that time that Page had met with Igor Sechin.” Yes, that’s right—rumor.

7. Oh, the Sweet Irony
The final take-away from the newly declassified portion of the FISA applications reveals just how tone-deaf and oblivious the FBI agents involved in Crossfire Hurricane were. In the final application, the FBI “notes that Pages continues to be active in meeting with media outlets . . . to refute claims of his involvement with Russian Government efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.”

“This approach is important,” the FBI posits, “because, from the Russian Government’s point-of-view, it continues to keep the controversy of the election in front of the American and world media, which has the effect of undermining the integrity of the U.S. electoral process and weakening the effectiveness of the current U.S. Administration” (emphasis added).

As the kids would say, “I can’t even.”

[soonernvolved]

Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff earns the unenviable honor of being known as the biggest liar in the US Congress. The more information is revealed from trusted sources, the more Schiff is seen as a liar and hack.

In 2018 Schiff published his rebuttal document to the Devin Nunes memo.

The far left writers at VOX reported in February 2018:

www.vox.com/world/2018/2/24/17048936/democrat-rebuttal-nunes-schiff-memo

Late on Saturday afternoon, House Democrats surprised the country by releasing their rebuttal to the so-called Nunes memo — the document, prepared by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), that has become a key part of the conservative argument that the FBI is biased against President Donald Trump. The Democrats’ rebuttal memo, written by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), argues that the Nunes memo is full of “distortions and misrepresentations” that don’t stand up to scrutiny based on the underlying classified evidence.

Having now read both memos, I can say with confidence: Schiff makes his case. He quotes key FBI documents that explicitly contradict the Nunes memo’s core arguments. Any fair-minded observer who reads these two documents side by side can only conclude one thing: Nunes is either deeply misinformed or straight-up lying.

Well, this didn’t age very well because any ‘fair-minded person’ who even casually followed Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff over the past few years knows it – Adam Schiff is a serial liar.

In December we were provided a substantial amount of information that covered Schiff’s FISA memo which provided absolute evidence from the Obama appointed DOJ IG that Schiff’s report was a total fabrication – it was a lie. Mollie Hemingway at the Federalist compared the Nunes and Schiff memos when the DOJ IG’s report was released. Hemingway took a look at the facts regarding the FISA warrant obtained to spy on Carter Page, and therefore candidate and President Trump:

thefederalist.com/2019/12/10/ig-report-confirms-schiff-fisa-memo-media-praised-was-riddled-with-lies/

The new inspector general report on FISA abuse settles the debate between Republicans and Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Both groups put out memos about the Department of Justice’s efforts to secure a warrant to wiretap Carter Page.

At the time of their release, the media praised Democrat Adam Schiff and his memo and vilified Republican Devin Nunes and his memo. Nearly two years later, the inspector general’s report vindicates the Nunes memo while showing that the Schiff memo was riddled with lies and false statements.

Hemingway went on to discuss the allegations made by Schiff in his rebuttal report of the Nunes memo:

The Democratic minority on the committee, then led by Rep. Adam Schiff, put out a response memo with competing claims:

FBI and DOJ officials did not omit material information from the FISA warrant.
The DOJ “made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.”
In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ provided additional information that corroborated Steele’s reporting.
The Page FISA warrant allowed the FBI to collect “valuable intelligence.”
“Far from ‘omitting’ material facts about Steele, as the Majority claims, DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele’s background, credibility, and potential bias.”
The FBI conducted a “rigorous process” to vet Steele’s allegations, and the Page FISA application explained the FBI’s reasonable basis for finding Steele credible.
Steele’s prior reporting was used in “criminal proceedings.”

Each of these claims were found by Horowitz to be false.

Horowitz found that FBI and DOJ officials did in fact omit critical material information from the FISA warrant, including several items exculpatory to Page. Material facts were not just omitted but willfully hidden through doctoring of evidence.

The warrants were based on Steele’s dossier, which was known by January 2017 to be ridiculously uncorroborated. The renewals did not find information that corroborated Steele’s reporting. The warrants clearly didn’t allow the FBI to collect valuable intelligence. And Steele’s prior reporting was not used in criminal proceedings.

“We found that the FBI did not have information corroborating the specific allegations against Carter Page in Steele’s reporting when it relied upon his reports in the first FISA application or subsequent renewal applications,” the executive summary of the report says.

This past week, the Senate released more information related to the DOJ IG report. Items that were redacted in the report in December were unredacted last week. Four key comments were unredacted per the request of Republican Senators Grassley and Johnson.

Debra Heine at American Greatness reported on the newly uncovered information:

amgreatness.com/2020/04/17/newly-declassified-fisa-footnotes-expose-major-lies-in-dems-rebuttal-to-gop-fisa-memo/#.XpohiCQ80dc.twitter

The Democrats’ rebuttal to the bombshell GOP FISA memo in February of 2018 has aged very poorly.

In their memo, the Intel Democrats—who had access to the classified FISA information at the time—falsely claimed that officials at the FBI and Justice Department “did not abuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.”

The IG report, released in December by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, identified 17 separate errors and omissions with regard to all four FISA applications.

The Schiff rebuttal also falsely claimed that the DOJ only made “narrow use” of information from Steele’s sources, and that the FBI had an “independent basis” for investigating Page’s motivations.

Dan Bongina had this to share about lying Schiff:

Schiff’s lies are now so egregious that it is clear that he must have some sort of mental disorder and moral disconnect at the core of his being. There really is something horribly wrong with this guy.

[soonernvolved]

House Intel Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) have nothing better to do right now so they are demanding the DOJ’s IG investigate Attorney General Bill Barr’s comments on the firing of ICIG Michael Atkinson.

Recall, Barr said during an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that Trump firing Atkinson was the “right thing” to do.

Barr backed Trump and said it was the right thing to do given Atkinson broke protocol when he ran to Congress with the whistleblower complaint rather than letting the executive branch determine whether there was a problem.

“I think the President did the right thing in removing Atkinson,” Barr said explaining that the whistleblower statute only gave Atkinson jurisdiction over wrongdoing by intelligence people.

www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/president-correct-firing-bill-barr-blasts-fired-icig-michael-atkinson-video/

“Atkinson tried to turn it into a commission to explore anything in the government and immediately report it to Congress without letting the executive branch look at it and determine whether there was any problem,” Barr said.

Nadler and Schiff on Monday in a 4-page letter to DOJ IG Horowitz demanded Barr’s statements be investigated to see whether he “violated applicable DOJ policies and rules of professional conduct.”

www.documentcloud.org/documents/6843263-20209420-Hpsci-and-Hjc-Letter-to-Doj-Opr-and-Oig.html

“Public confidence in our system of justice depends on the integrity, fairness, and impartiality of DOJ’s leadership. It is, therefore, imperative that the attorney general be held to the same high standard expected of all Department personnel, particularly in matters involving the President’s own interests,” Nadler and Schiff wrote.

Nadler and Schiff are a danger to this country.

Schiff hijacked Congress with his phony impeachment against President Trump while the Coronavirus was spreading across the globe and now he’s wasting time and resources investigating Barr over comments he made about a corrupt government official.

[soonernvolved]

Former US Attorney Joe diGenova was again on the radio on Monday and this time he tore into Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, Former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, and D.C. Judge Amy Berman Jackson.

Joe diGenova had more to say on the Spygate saga on Monday. Here are some of his comments from the interview below:

0:30 “Adam Schiff is afraid of honesty. Remember from the beginning of this entire charade he has been lying to the American people.”

0:50 “He [Schiff] has put out, literally, literally, this is important to understand, false information, knowing “that it was false.”


1:45 “Adam Schiff is really one of the most evil and disgusting human beings ever put on the face of this earth.

2:30 “But the real disappointment was Dan Coats, the former Director of National Intelligence, who permitted all of this to occur and did nothing to fix it and harmed President Trump from the first day.”

5:30 “The reason Susan Rice is squealing and screaming about [current Acting DirectGrenell is because she knows she’s in the cross-hairs of John Durham.“

6:10 “[Former Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Michael] Rogers has met with [US Attorney John] Durham regularly, we are told, regularly, in an effort to explain NSA activities and the violation of NSA rules by Susan Rice and others. One of the things we know is there has been grand jury testimony, no doubt about that.”

6:40 “I’m expecting a broad conspiracy charge which will be against Brennan and others to deny the President and people associated with the President, like Carter Page, of their civil rights. But also a huge conspiracy count to defraud the United States government of the faithful service of its employees.”

diGenova went on to express deep admiration for Richard Grenell and to point out more about the Durham Investigation, and much more. At the end of the interview diGenova discussed DC Judge Amy Berman Jackson and stated that he knew her for a long time but that her opinion in the Stone case about juror bias was sophomoric and shows Judge Jackson is a biased judge against anyone related to President Trump.

[soonernvolved]

Not surprising at all:

www.mediaite.com/politics/senate-intelligence-committee-reaffirms-findings-on-russias-pro-trump-2016-election-interference/

The Senate Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan report saying they still stand with the U.S. intelligence community and their conclusions about Russia’s interference during the 2016 presidential election.

The new report is the fourth of five volumes to emerge from the intelligence committee’s assessments from 2017, when the CIA, the FBI, and a number of other agencies agreed that Russia tried to meddle with the election to Donald Trump’s benefit. Though highly-redacted, the volume reaffirms that there was “specific intelligence” to support the conclusions that Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to undermine public trust in American institutions, and it was carried out to the detriment of Hillary Clinton.

The report found that there was “a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis” in assessing Russia’s activities, that the intelligence gathered was properly represented, and that “the Committee heard consistently that analysts were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions.” Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) released statements following the report’s release, expressing agreement on the findings and saluting the “sources, tradecraft, and analytic work behind the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).”

[soonernvolved]

www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/21/fisa-docs-show-john-kerrys-state-dept-was-key-player-in-russia-collusion-hoax/

FISA Docs Show John Kerry’s State Dept. Was Key Player in Russia Collusion Hoax

Newly declassified documents spotlight the role of John Kerry’s State Department in fueling the FBI’s dubious Russia collusion probe, showing it was the State Department that provided “information” leading to the controversial surveillance of Carter Page.

Last Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham released a trove of documents from the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump’s campaign, including a less redacted version of the Obama administration’s FISA warrant applications to spy on Page, who served as a tangential adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.




The disclosures focus renewed attention on the text of the warrant, which begins by claiming Page is “an agent of a foreign power” and that “the status of the target was determined in or about October 2016 from information provided by the U.S. Department of State.”

The newly declassified sections underscore that the FBI under its disgraced former chief, James Comey, relied heavily on the Christopher Steele dossier alleging debunked Russian collision charges. The dossier was produced by Fusion GPS, which was paid for its anti-Trump work by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

The centrality of the State Department in providing “information” purporting that Page was a Russian agent raises questions in light of previous reporting exposing connections on spreading the dossier claims between elements of Kerry’s State Department and Steele, as well as ties to longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer, who is a controversial figure long tied to various Clinton scandals.

One previously declassified FBI document contains a charge that Victoria Nuland, a former Hillary Clinton associate who served as a senior State Department official, was in communication with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.

Also David Kramer, a long-time adviser to late Senator John McCain, revealed in testimony that he met with two Obama administration officials to inquire about whether the anti-Trump dossier authored by was being taken seriously. This was before Kramer obtained the dossier and McCain passed it officially to the FBI.

In a deposition on Dec. 13, 2017 that was later posted online, Kramer said that McCain specifically asked him in early December 2016 to meet about the dossier with Victoria Nuland, a senior official in John Kerry’s State Department, as well as an official from the National Security Council.

Nuland’s role in the dossier episode has been the subject of some controversy for her.

In their book, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, authors and reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn write that Nuland gave the green light for the FBI to first meet with Steele regarding his dossier’s claims. It was at that meeting that Steele initially reported his dossier charges to the FBI, the book relates.

Steele sought out Rome-based FBI Special Agent Michael Gaeta, with whom he had worked on a previous case. Before Gaeta met with Steele on July 5, 2016, the book relates that the FBI first secured the support of Nuland, who at the time was assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs specializing in Russia.



Regarding the arrangements for Steele’s initial meeting with the FBI about the dossier claims, Isikoff and Corn report:


There were a few hoops Gaeta had to jump through. He was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Rome. The FBI checked with Victoria Nuland’s office at the State Department: Do you support this meeting? Nuland, having found Steele’s reports on Ukraine to have been generally credible, gave the green light.

Within a few days, on July 5, Gaeta arrived and headed to Steele’s office near Victoria station. Steele handed him a copy of the report. Gaeta, a seasoned FBI agent, started to read. He turned white. For a while, Gaeta said nothing. Then he remarked, “I have to report this to headquarters.”

The book documents that Nuland previously received Steele’s reports on the Ukrainian crisis and had been familiar with Steele’s general work.

An extensive New Yorker profile of Steele named another former official from Kerry’s State Department for alleged involvement in circulating the dossier. The magazine reported that Kerry’s chief of staff at the State Department, John Finer, obtained the contents of a two-page summary of the dossier and eventually decided to share the questionable document with Kerry.

Finer received the dossier summary from Jonathan M. Winer, the Obama State Department official who acknowledged regularly interfacing and exchanging information with Steele, according to the report. Winer previously conceded that he shared the dossier summary with Nuland.

After his name surfaced in news media reports related to probes by House Republicans into the dossier, Winer authored a Washington Post oped in which he conceded that while he was working at the State Department he exchanged documents and information with Steele.

Winer further acknowledged that while at the State Department, he shared anti-Trump material with Steele passed to him by longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, whom Winer described as an “old friend.” Winer wrote that the material from Blumenthal – which Winer in turn gave to Steele – originated with Cody Shearer, who is a controversial figure long tied to various Clinton scandals.



In testimony, Nuland made statements about a meeting at the State Department in October 2016 between State officials and Steele, but said that she didn’t participate.

At a June 2018 hearing, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) revealed contents of the State Department’s visitor logs while he was grilling Nuland.

At the hearing, Burr asked: “I know you talked extensively with our staff relative to Mr. Steele. Based upon our review of the visitor logs of the State Department, Mr. Steele visited the State Department briefing officials on the dossier in October of 2016. Did you have any role in that briefing?”

“I did not,” Nuland replied. “I actively chose not to be part of that briefing.”

“But were you aware of that briefing?” Burr asked.

“I was not aware of it until afterwards,” Nuland retorted.

Nuland did not explain how she can actively choose not to be part of Steele’s briefing, as she claimed, yet say she was unaware of the briefing until after it occurred. Nuland was not asked about the discrepancy during the public section of the testimony, which was reviewed in full by Breitbart News.

Nuland previously served as chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott under Bill Clinton’s administration, and then served as deputy director for former Soviet Union affairs.

Nuland faced confirmation questions prior to her most recent appointment as assistant secretary of state over her reported role in revising controversial Obama administration talking points about the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks. Her reported changes sought to protect Hillary Clinton’s State Department from accusations that it failed to adequately secure the woefully unprotected U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi.

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2020/04/21/senate-intel-committee-still-running-interference-for-russia-collusion-nonsense/

Senate Intel Committee Still Running Interference For Russia Collusion Nonsense
The report is yet another reminder of how the committee helped Democrats and other critics of President Donald Trump perpetuate the now-debunked theory that Trump was a secret Russian agent.
Mollie HemingwayBy Mollie Hemingway
APRIL 21, 2020
A year after Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded there was no evidence President Trump colluded with Russians to steal the 2016 election, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued its fourth of five reports in a slow-moving and muted investigation into the same matter. While the committee asserted in July 2018 that it agreed with a disputed Obama-era finding on Russia’s motivation for interfering in the 2016 presidential election, its highly redacted report on the intelligence community’s January 2017 claim was finally released Tuesday morning.

The report is yet another reminder of how the committee helped Democrats and other critics of President Donald Trump perpetuate the now-debunked theory that Trump was a secret Russian agent. The Senate’s Intelligence Committee is ostensibly chaired by Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican who is currently avoiding questions about why he dumped stocks after receiving private briefings about coronavirus threats.


In practice, the committee has largely been run by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. The committee’s major and perhaps only contribution to the Russia collusion storyline was to employ a high-level staffer tasked with handling classified information who was convicted of lying to the FBI about leaks of classified information to reporters he was having affairs with. Both Burr and Warner begged a judge to be lenient with their former employee. The judge sentenced him to two months in prison.

Tuesday’s committee report is at odds with the findings of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (at least when it was under the leadership of Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.), which revealed significant malfeasance in how the intelligence community conducted its Russia collusion investigation beginning in 2016.

A sprawling year-and-a-half investigation by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General corroborated all the major findings of the HPSCI report, including that intelligence community officials lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, fabricated and doctored evidence in support of applications to spy on American citizens who volunteered for the Trump campaign, and even colluded with agents of sanctioned Russian oligarchs in their attempt to take down Trump. Here are those HPSCI reports on Russian active measures and the DOJ’s abuse of the FISA process.

What We Know
For years, the country was gripped by selectively leaked pieces of information written in such a manner as to suggest that Trump was a traitor who colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. Grand theories of “collusion” with Russia formed a major portion of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and post-election strategy, and were echoed by a sympathetic media as well as some “NeverTrump” Republican officials and pundits.


An intelligence community assessment leaked to the Washington Post in December 2016 added fuel to the fire. An assessment was publicly released on January 6, 2017, at the same time that high-level Obama intelligence officials were leaking to CNN and other credulous media outlets that they had reasonable confidence in a dossier that detailed Trump’s secret and extensive collusion with Russia.

Further criminal leaks, such as information about what turned out to be a perfectly benign phone call between the incoming national security advisor and a Russian diplomat, created even more of a firestorm. The hysteria led, among other things, to a sprawling special counsel probe that seriously damaged the Trump administration’s ability to govern, dangerously hampered foreign policy, and resulted in no finding of collusion by any single American, much less anyone associated with the Trump campaign, much less Trump himself.

HPSCI’s Russia report questioned not the finding so much as the the tradecraft used for the part of the intelligence community assessment related to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategic intentions. The ICA said Putin “aspired to help” Trump by “discrediting Secretary Clinton.”

Russia’s long-practiced election interference manifested in 2016 with a social media operation that insulted both Trump and Clinton and was mostly about sowing division along racial and political lines. The IC assessment claiming love of Trump motivated the operation was one of the keys to launching damaging investigations against him. HPSCI found that while most of the intelligence community’s analysis held up to scrutiny, “judgments on Putin’s strategic intentions did not employ proper analytic tradecraft.”


The House committee said the ICA’s path to making that judgment “failed to meet longstanding standards,” including properly describing the quality and credibility of underlying sources, properly expressing and explaining uncertainties associated with major analytic judgments, making sure to incorporate analysis of alternative explanations (particularly when major judgments will have high-impact results), basing confidence assessments on the quantity and quality of source material, being informed by all relevant information available, and being independent of political considerations, among other things.

HPSCI said the failure was specific to this finding rather than the overall assessment while also noting how out of the ordinary the drafting and reviewing of the assessment was. It has previously been reported that an extremely small group of individuals hand-picked by some of the most political Obama intelligence officials compiled the assessment instead of going through the normal review process that seeks broader and less-political inputs.

Two years later, HPSCI’s sister committee on the Senate side finally weighs in to report it “did not discover any significant analytic tradecraft issues in the preparation or final presentation of the ICA.” Neither HPSCI nor the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence discuss how they reached those conclusions, since the tradecraft question is highly classified. The SSCI began its report by praising the intelligence community’s “impressive accomplishment in drafting and coordinating of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).”

Wildly Different Oversight Approaches
The two committees’ divergent judgments perfectly encapsulate their wildly different approaches to oversight, at least when they were both controlled by Republicans. Since the House Intelligence Committee was taken over by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., following the 2018 midterm elections, the committees have taken a remarkably similar approach.


From the moment the intelligence community began leaking its Russia findings to the media rather than briefing them to the intelligence committees, the two chairmen responded differently. For Burr, the leaking of the findings to a hostile media were a reason to be cautious — not toward the media or the leakers, but toward Trump.

He later led efforts to protect Robert Mueller from any oversight of or accountability for his sprawling and damaging special counsel investigation into the conspiracy theory of collusion. For Nunes, the chairman of the House committee, the leak itself was problematic.

“I am alarmed that supposedly new information continues to leak to the media but has not been provided to Congress despite my letter asking for more information on this topic, and despite the Committee’s request to schedule an urgent classified briefing that would set the record straight on the IC’s current assessment,” Nunes wrote on December 16, 2016.

The Senate Committee’s uncritical reception of whatever the intelligence community told its overseers or leaked to the media was not matched by the House Intel Committee. Perhaps because the intelligence community treated long-standing Russian interference somehow as a unique 2016 situation to hurt Trump, Nunes was skeptical. While much more of a Russia hawk than some of his fellow members, his posture toward the (admittedly absurd) conspiracy theory of collusion with Russia was noticeable after the election.

Rather than take the intelligence committee at their word, the House Intelligence Committee demanded evidence, threatened agency heads, cajoled agency heads, played hardball … and got actual evidence. By comparison, Burr absconded from the fight, except to reinforce efforts to undermine the Trump administration and proudly employ a man who lied about leaks of highly classified information.

Tale of Two Chairmen On FISA Abuse
The approach Nunes took began to bear fruit with the shocking revelation that the dossier played around with by intelligence officials was in fact a Democratic product that had been secretly bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee . Clinton and the DNC had hidden that absolutely shocking and game-changing fact — and in some cases lied about it — from the American public, journalists, and investigators.

With Nunes closing in on the bank records that would reveal this elaborate ploy, the information was given to friendly reporters at the Washington Post. It likely would have never been made public if not for the tenacious work by Nunes and HPSCI.

But perhaps their biggest achievement was to fight tooth and nail to reveal abuse of the FISA process. While the inspector general has now not just corroborated what the House committee found about tremendous abuse of the process, but added to it, there was a time the conventional wisdom in D.C. was that there were no concerns with the process.

Burr helped form that consensus, joining with Schiff and activists in the media to strongly defend the Department of Justice’s applications to spy on Trump campaign official Carter Page. He told media outlets he saw nothing wrong with the applications and that there were “sound reasons” to spy on Page. The media used this statement to further peddle the collusion narrative.

Two of the applications were later deemed invalid and another two are still under review. The inspector general catalogued numerous errors and failures in the securing of those wiretaps, including the falsification of evidence and 16 other major problems and errors.

Transparency vs. Delay
Since Clinton and the DNC launched their Russia collusion narrative in the spring of 2016, multiple investigations were launched. The FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation was on its last legs when it was picked up by Mueller’s team.

His investigation was concluded more than one year ago. A lengthy inspector general colonoscopy was completed last year. The House committee put out its full report two years ago. But for the central investigation that the Senate Intel committee is supposed to be investigating, the jury is still out. Even this report backing up the discredited intelligence community is only the fourth out of five planned reports.

Purpose Of Committee
Whereas HPSCI members clearly thought oversight of out-of-control intelligence agencies was their job, Burr has always asserted his primary concern isn’t truth so much as to maintain bipartisanship. It is the central feature of his committee, the feature most praised by corporate media, and results in a de facto leadership by Democrats.

This emphasis on bipartisanship reached its most ridiculous point when Burr said he had no problem with text messages that came out showing Warner talking to Adam Waldman, an attorney for Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch. The texts showed Warner trying to arrange a back channel communication with Christopher Steele, the foreign operative who put together a dossier of anti-Trump claims sourced to Russian officials and other questionable characters.

Even when those texts showed Warner specifically saying he wanted to keep the communications outside the purview of the committee, Burr defended him. There were reports that Burr went to then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to falsely accuse the House Intelligence Committee of leaking these texts. That turned out to be true, although the culprit of that leak hasn’t been found. It is more likely that disgruntled Republicans on the committee, frustrated by what Burr and Warner have done to it, were responsible.

While it’s understandable that Burr and Warner wish to further the Russia collusion conspiracy, there is no reason the American people or media need to go along with it. Declassifications have overwhelmingly corroborated and affirmed the HPSCI report, and it’s time for accountability from Congress rather than yet another attempt to paper over what the IC did during the 2016 election and beyond.

With Democrats controlling HPSCI, Republicans should consider whether they want to have someone capable of that oversight and accountability in charge of their sole remaining intelligence committee.

[soonernvolved]

www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/judicial-watch-emails-suggest-obama-fbi-knew-mccain-leaked-trump-dossier/

Judicial Watch announced today it received 138 pages of emails between former FBI official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page. The records include an email dated January 10, 2017, in which Strzok said that the version of the dossier published by BuzzFeed was “identical” to the version given to the FBI by McCain and had “differences” from the dossier provided to the FBI by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and Mother Jones reporter David Corn. January 10, 2017, is the same day BuzzFeed published the anti-Trump dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele, The emails also show Strzok and other FBI agents mocking President Trump a few weeks before he was inaugurated. In addition, the emails reveal that Strzok communicated with then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe about the “leak investigation” tied to the Clinton Foundation (the very leak in which McCabe was later implicated).

[soonernvolved]

John Solomon strikes again:

justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/how-adam-schiff-secretly-thwarted-efforts-bring

How Adam Schiff secretly thwarted efforts to bring transparency in Russia probe
Democrat demanded DNI keep evidence from Trump, holds transcripts that were supposed to be made public.

Article
Dig In
In late September 2018 with a mid-year election approaching, the often bitterly divided House Intelligence Committee forged a rare bipartisan moment: Its Republican and Democratic members voted to make public the transcripts of 53 witnesses in the Russia collusion investigation.

But what was hailed as an act of transparency has not been fulfilled 19 months later, even though U.S intelligence has declassified and cleared the transcripts for release.

The answer why lies in the backroom dealings of Adam Schiff, the committee’s top Democrat and its current chairman, according to interviews and memos obtained by Just the News.

Shortly after Schiff took over from Republican Rep. Devin Nunes as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in 2019, he sent a letter to the office of then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

The letter obtained by Just the News specifically ordered that the witness transcripts — some of which contained exculpatory evidence for President Trump’s team — not be shared with Trump or White House lawyers even if the declassification process required such sharing.

“Under no circumstances shall ODNI, or any other element of the Intelligence Community (IC), share any HPSCI transcripts with the White House, President Trump or any persons associated with the White House or the President,” Schiff wrote in a March 26, 2019 letter to then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

“Such transcripts remain the sole property of HPSCI, and were transmitted to ODNI for the limited purpose of enabling a classification review by IC elements and the Department of Justice,” Schiff added.

File
ODNISchiffLetter3-26-2019.pdf
U.S. intelligence officials said Schiff’s request made it impossible for them to declassify 10 of the transcripts, mostly of current and former White House and National Security Council witnesses, because White House lawyers would have had to review them for what is known as “White House equities" and presidential privileges.

But 43 of the transcripts were declassified and cleared for public release and given to Schiff's team, but they have never been made public despite the committee’s vote to do so, officials said.

One senior official said the 43 transcripts were provided to Schiff’s team some time ago, and the 10 remain in limbo. Asked how long House Intelligence Democrats have had the declassified transcripts, the official said: “You’ll have to ask Mr. Schiff.”

A spokesman for Schiff and House Intelligence Committee Democrats did not return an email Monday seeking comment.

If Schiff possesses the declassified transcripts, he does not appear to have told Republicans on his committee. Several GOP lawmakers and staff on the committee told Just the News they have never been alerted that ODNI finished its review.

Schiff’s letter provides some detail on what prompted his demand to keep the transcripts from Trump or his lawyer. It came just as Special Counsel Robert Mueller was releasing his final report, which declared there wasn’t evidence to prove the core allegation lodged against Trump by Democrats — that Trump had colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election.

Schiff’s letter to Coats states that his staff was briefed earlier in March 2019 about how ODNI planned to handle the declassification, including the need for White House lawyers to review certain transcripts for information that could be covered by executive privilege.

It was that process that set off the alarm bells for Schiff’s team, the letter shows.

Republicans had hoped the witnesses’ testimonies would be released before the 2018 election so Americans could see some of the problems with the Russia probe and the false narrative of collusion that had been foisted on the public. That never happened, and the declassification efforts dragged into 2019, when Democrats took control of the House.

GOP lawmakers have emphasized they specifically would like to see the testimonies of key figures like former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Michael Sussmann, a private lawyer for the Democratic Party, be made public for context and new revelations.

While that hasn’t happened yet, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has released bombshell information, including that the FBI submitted false and unverified evidence to secure surveillance warrants targeting the Trump campaign in the Russia probe.

Newly declassified footnotes from the Horowitz report released last week show the FBI's key informant in the case, the former British spy Christopher Steele, may have been the victim of Russian disinformation. More declassified evidence from that probe is expected to be released later this week.

In the meantime, Republicans who led the House Intelligence Committee probe in 2018 when the witnesses were interviewed are trying to learn what came of the transcripts.

Schiff’s letter to Coats suggests that at the time the new Democratic chairman was still interested in releasing the transcripts.

“I hope our staff can reach agreement soon on a schedule for returning the transcripts to the Committee for ultimate public release,” he wrote.

Nearly 13 months since the letter, that release has not happened.

[soonernvolved]

www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-on-committee-to-oversee-coronavirus-stimulus-payouts-broke-federal-law-by-failing-to-report-stock-sales-report-says

Democrat On Committee To Oversee Coronavirus Stimulus Payouts Broke Federal Law By Failing To Report Stock Sales, Report Says

The only House Democrat selected to be on the committee that was established to oversee hundreds of billions of dollars being distributed from the coronavirus stimulus package allegedly broke federal law when she failed to report stock sales last year.


Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL) “told the Miami Herald on Monday she sold a variety of stocks throughout 2019 to eliminate any potential conflicts of interest after she was elected to Congress in November 2018,” the Miami Herald reported. “But the transactions were not publicly reported as required by the STOCK Act, a 2012 law that prohibits members of Congress and their employees from using private information gleaned from their official positions for personal benefit and requires them to report stock sales and purchases within 45 days.”

Shalala, a former Clinton administration official, claimed that her financial adviser was responsible for the problem.

Shalala’s office asserted Shalala and her financial adviser made a mistake.

Shalala spokesperson Carlos Condarco told the Miami Herald: “She had a misunderstanding about the periodic transaction report process and her need to report the sale of these stocks while preparing a blind trust. As a new member with a broker and attorney who were not familiar with the congressional disclosure rules, there was a misunderstanding.”


Shalala admitted the transactions after Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi selected her for the role and said that she owned stock in multiple companies that could be eligible for bailout money from the American taxpayer.

The Miami Herald added that “the transactions were never disclosed publicly until her office told the Miami Herald.”

The revelation about Shalala’s stock activity comes as multiple U.S. senators have come under the microscope due to stock trading they did in recent months as the U.S. stock market crashed.

Fox News reported:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and three of her Senate colleagues reported selling off stocks worth millions of dollars in the days before the coronavirus outbreak crashed the market, according to reports. …

Feinstein, who serves as ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and her husband sold between $1.5 million and $6 million in stock in California biotech company Allogene Therapeutics, between Jan. 31 and Feb. 18, The New York Times reported. …

Reports identified the three other senators as Richard Burr of North Carolina, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, all Republicans.

Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, used more than 30 transactions to dump between $628,000 and $1.72 million on Feb. 13, according to ProPublica.

On Tuesday, Michigan Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer rushed to cancel coronavirus contracts that she awarded Democrat consulting firms and a Democrat operative who wished for Trump to be infected by the coroanvirus after facing public backlash.

“The Whitmer administration announced Monday that it had awarded a contract for contact tracing in the state to Every Action VAN, an arm of the Democratic data behemoth NGP VAN. The liberal firm works with all of the major Democratic campaign committees and hundreds of labor unions across the country,” The Washington Free Beacon reported. “The move has sparked concern that she is using the coronavirus to strengthen the Democratic Party’s data operation, potentially at the expense of public health.”

[soonernvolved]

Well, who saw this coming?

dailycaller.com/2020/04/23/christopher-steele-dossier-deleted-emails-source/

EXCLUSIVE: Dossier Author Testified His Emails Were ‘Wiped,’ He No Longer Has Documents Related To Primary Source

Christopher Steele told a British court last month that he no longer has key documents related to his infamous dossier.
The ex-spy said in a deposition that his email accounts were ‘wiped’ clean of any correspondence related to the dossier. It is not clear if Steele deleted the accounts himself.
He also admitted he no does not have information related to debriefings he had in 2016 with his lone source of information for the dossier.
Steele suggested in a statement late last year that he ‘meticulously documented and recorded’ his meetings with the source.

Christopher Steele told a British court last month that he no longer has documents and other information from his meetings with the main source for his Trump dossier, suggesting that the former British spy has no way of backing up his side in a dispute with the Justice Department’s inspector general (IG), according to a deposition transcript obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Steele also told the court that his communications regarding the dossier, including with Fusion GPS, were “wiped” in December 2016 and January 2017, the transcript shows.


The former MI6 officer made the disclosures during a March 17-18 deposition in a defamation case related to the dossier. The DCNF obtained a transcript of the deposition.

Steele suggested in a Dec. 10 statement that he had evidence that would shed light on what his main dossier source told him back in 2016, when Steele was working for the firm Fusion GPS to investigate the Trump campaign. (RELATED: Christopher Steele ‘Meticulously’ Recorded Source Who Disavowed Dossier, Lawyers Say)

Steele’s statement was a response to an IG report released the day before that said that Steele’s source — dubbed the “Primary Sub-Source” — told the FBI in January 2017 that Steele misrepresented or embellished information in the dossier.

That bombshell severely undermined Steele’s report, which the FBI used as part of its investigation into the Trump campaign.


In a rebuttal to the IG, Steele’s lawyers disputed what the dossier source purportedly told the FBI, and said that the source’s debriefings to Steele “were meticulously documented and recorded.”

They also asserted that if Steele had been given a chance to respond to the IG report, “the statements by the ‘Primary Sub-Source’ would be put in a different light.”

It is unclear if Steele made audio or video recordings of the debriefings with the source, or if the retired spy was referring to written or electronic documents. It is also unclear whether Steele got rid of the information himself, or if it was lost through other means. Steele’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

The status of the information was revealed during an exchange Steele had on March 18 with Hugh Tomlinson, a lawyer for Petr Aven, German Khan, and Mikhail Fridman, the owners of Alfa Bank.


The three Russian bankers are suing Steele for defamation over a memo in the dossier that accused them of making illicit payments to Vladimir Putin.

Tomlinson pressed Steele over the accuracy of his memo, as well as his relationship with “Primary Sub-Source,” the transcript shows.

The lawyer asked Steele about the existence of the documents and recordings that his attorneys mentioned in their rebuttal to the IG report.

“But none of these documents exist, so they have all been destroyed?” a lawyer asked Steele.

“They no longer exist,” Steele said.



Passage from Christopher Steele’s deposition on March 18, 2020, in a lawsuit involving the dossier.
Steele indicated that many other records related to the dossier were deleted, including from a personal email account he used for the Fusion GPS project.

“As I understand your position, you have no contemporaneous notes or emails, save for your notes of interactions with the FBI; is that right?” Tomlinson asked.

“I believe that is true, yes,” Steele replied.

Steele said he had no records related to the creation of his dossier memos, including “Report 112” from the dossier, which dealt with the Alfa Bank owners.

“You have no record of anything, have you?” Tomlinson asked.

“I haven’t got any records relating to the creation of 112,” said Steele.

“Or indeed any of the other memoranda?”

“No, they were wiped in early January 2017.”

Steele said that a Hushmail account he used in late December 2016 was “wiped” clean. He also said that communications with Fusion GPS on his company’s computer network were scrubbed on Jan. 5, 2017.

BuzzFeed News published Steele’s dossier five days later.



Passage from Christopher Steele’s deposition on March 18, 2020, in a lawsuit involving the dossier.
Steele has closely guarded the identity of his dossier source, including during the Alfa Bank deposition. But he said the source had done work for his firm for “several years,” and that his firm Orbis paid retainers to sources of between $3,000 and $5,000 a month.

The source allegedly used a network of contacts inside and outside of Russia to gather tips about Donald Trump, his associates, and Kremlin officials. Steele alleged that the Trump campaign took part in a “well-coordinated conspiracy of cooperation” with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election. The special counsel’s report found no evidence of a conspiracy, and the IG report cast significant doubt on Steele’s allegations.

Footnotes from the IG report declassified this month showed that the FBI received evidence that Russian operatives may have fed disinformation to Steele.

One footnote said that the U.S. intelligence community gave the FBI a report in June 2017 that said two Russian intelligence officers knew as of July 2016 that Steele was investigating Trump.

Steele also appears to have made an inaccurate claim about the IG report in his haste to defend the dossier during his court deposition. He told Tomlinson, the lawyer for the Alfa Bank owners, that the IG has had to “significantly” amend sections of the IG report dealing with what the dossier source told the FBI.

Steele claimed in the deposition that the IG had retracted claims in the report about the primary dossier source.

“So you think that the U.S. Inspector General’s office has got it wrong and you are right; is that your position?” Tomlinson asked Steele.

He said that the IG report “has already been revised by the Department of Justice in terms of its interviewing of this primary sub-source.” He asserted that the revision “completely changed the nature of the interview that he gave to them in January 2017.”

It is not clear what Steele was referring to since the IG report has not had any significant revisions.

A spokesperson for the IG declined comment but pointed out a section of the report that discusses slight edits to sections regarding the dossier source’s comments to the FBI.

Steele’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

[soonernvolved]

Long, long overdue:

www.dailywire.com/news/flynn-to-be-completely-exonerated-this-week-ag-barr-has-directed-u-s-attorney-to-review-fbi-personnel-communications-and-notes-reports-say

Flynn To Be ‘Completely Exonerated This Week’, AG Barr Has Directed U.S. Attorney To Review FBI Personnel ‘Communications And Notes’, Reports Say

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn will reportedly be “completely exonerated” this week after being charged in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation for allegedly lying to federal agents.


Fox News host Maria Bartiromo tweeted: “Breaking News: sources tell me @genflynn will be completely exonerated this week. It was a total fraud. A Set up. More tomorrow”

A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed Bartiromo’s tweet to The Daily Wire.

CBS News investigative reporter Catherine Herridge called attention to a new filing in the Flynn case that was filed on Friday, tweeting, “#FISA Drawing attention Friday filing Flynn case @cbsnews told important for days ahead. AG Barr directed Missouri US Attorney to review FBI personnel ‘communications and notes,’ in part, to determine whether key evidence withheld. Docs under seal but may change.”

The Daily Wire reported on Friday:


Flynn is currently attempting to withdraw his guilty plea for allegedly lying to the FBI about his contacts with a Russian ambassador during Trump’s presidential transition, which, as the filing makes clear, Flynn says was a set up. Amid past reports of FBI malfeasance, President Trump has signaled that he may fully pardon Flynn.

A supplemental filing submitted by Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell on Friday stated: “This afternoon, the government produced to Mr. Flynn stunning Brady evidence that proves Mr. Flynn’s allegations of having been deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI. It also defeats any argument that the interview of Mr. Flynn on January 24, 2017 was material to any ‘investigation.’ The government has deliberately suppressed this evidence from the inception of this prosecution—knowing there was no crime by Mr. Flynn.”

“In addition, Mr. Flynn’s counsel has found further evidence of misconduct by [head prosecutor Brandon Van Grack] specifically,” the filing continues. “Not only did he make baseless threats to indict Michael G. Flynn, he made a side deal not to prosecute Michael G. Flynn as a material term of the plea agreement, but he required that it be kept secret between himself and the Covington attorneys expressly to avoid the requirement of Giglio v. United States , 405 U.S. 150 (1972). Exs. 1, 2.”

President Donald Trump wrote in mid-March that he was considering a full pardon for Flynn.

Trump tweeted: “So now it is reported that, after destroying his life & the life of his wonderful family (and many others also), the FBI, working in conjunction with the Justice Department, has “lost” the records of General Michael Flynn. How convenient. I am strongly considering a Full Pardon!”

“Multiple investigative reports issued by the DOJ Office of Inspector General revealed myriad instances of corruption by FBI officials throughout the multi-year investigation of Trump and his campaign,” The Federalist’s Sean Davis wrote on Friday. “Former FBI director James Comey was even referred for criminal investigation by the inspector general. Attorney General William Barr, who was confirmed by the Senate and sworn into office last year, appointed a seasoned federal prosecutor to investigate and determine whether other DOJ or FBI officials broke the law in attempt to oust Trump from office.”

[soonernvolved]

[soonernvolved]

[soonernvolved]

Rep. Jim Jordan: “And now we learn that they set up the General Mike Flynn just days into the administration! What I want to know is why didn’t Bob Mueller tell us this? Remember we were told… this is the greatest guy who ever came to Washington. This is the greatest thing since sliced bread. He’s the most honest guy since George Washington. Why didn’t he tell us this and more importantly, where’s Christopher Wray? Why didn’t we learn any of this from him? Thank goodness for Sidney Powell or Bill Barr or we would have never got this information… Again why didn’t we hear this from Chris Wray?.. Again if they can do this to a three star general, if they can do this to the President of the United States, imagine what they can do to you and me?

[soonernvolved]

www.dailywire.com/news/trump-unloads-on-cnn-for-not-covering-bombshell-flynn-story

President Donald Trump unloaded on CNN late on Wednesday night for not reporting on the day’s major development in the case involving former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The Department of Justice unsealed court documents earlier in the day that showed that the FBI questioned whether to use their interview of Flynn on January 24, 2017, to “get him fired” and to “get him to lie.”

“@cnn doesn’t want to speak about their persecution of General Michael Flynn & why they got the story so wrong,” Trump tweeted. “They, along with others, should pay a big price for what they have purposely done to this man & his family. They won’t even cover the big breaking news about this scam!”

Fox News reported:

The handwritten notes — written by the FBI’s former head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap after a meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Fox News is told — further suggested that agents planned in the alternative to get Flynn “to admit to breaking the Logan Act” when he spoke to then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period.

The Logan Act is an obscure statute that has never been used in a criminal prosecution; enacted in 1799 in an era before telephones, it was intended to prevent individuals from falsely claiming to represent the United States government abroad.

…

Flynn previously charged that top FBI officials, including McCabe, pressed him not to have the White House counsel present during the questioning with two agents that led to his guilty plea on a single charge of lying to federal authorities. Flynn was not charged with any Logan Act violation.

Flynn has sought to withdraw his guilty plea and has been seeking exoneration, saying the FBI engaged in “egregious misconduct.” Flynn, who has said more recently that he did not lie to the FBI, pleaded guilty in late 2017 as mounting legal fees pushed him to sell his home. Prosecutors have suggested Flynn’s guilty plea allowed him to escape liability for a possible charge under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), another little-known and once-rarely used law, for his alleged work in Turkey.
Trump continued by slamming CNN over a report they published earlier in the day that claimed that Trump had blown up at campaign manager Brad Parscale.

Trump tweeted, “Just told that Fake News @cnn is falsely reporting that I was recently shouting at my campaign manager over made up nonsense. Actually, he is doing a great job, I never shouted at him (been with me for years, including the 2016 win), & have no intention to do so. Just FAKE NEWS!”

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2020/04/29/explosive-new-flynn-documents-show-fbi-goal-was-to-get-him-fired/


Explosive New Flynn Documents Show FBI Goal Was To ‘Get Him Fired’
Handwritten notes from the FBI that had been withheld from Michael Flynn and his defense team show that the FBI's goal in investigating and ambushing Flynn was 'to get him fired.'
APRIL 29, 2020 By Sean Davis
New documents filed under seal last week by the Department of Justice provide the clearest evidence yet that the investigation and subsequent prosecution of former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was a set-up from the beginning. Handwritten notes from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that had been inappropriately withheld from Flynn’s defense team for years show that a key goal of the agents investigating Flynn was “to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired.”

In early 2017, FBI agents planned to question Flynn under false pretenses and without his attorneys present regarding his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. At the time of those conversations, Flynn was the top foreign policy adviser of the president-elect of the United States. By the time of the ambush FBI interview, Flynn had already been appointed as the White House national security adviser.


In the handwritten FBI notes, the note-taker, whose identity was not made clear in the document production, wrote that an alternate goal is to “get [Flynn] to admit breaking the Logan Act,” a reference to a 1799 law restricting communications between private citizens and foreign governments. The law is widely viewed as unconstitutional and has never been used to successfully prosecute a single American citizen. The previously secret notes do not explain that Flynn was not a private citizen, but rather the incoming national security adviser at the time of his conversations with world leaders.

Accusations that Flynn was a traitor to his country who violated the 1799 law gained steam following the criminal leak of top-secret information to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. Ignatius’ sources suggested the routine conversation between a top incoming White House adviser and his foreign counterparts might be a Logan Act violation. As absurd as the suggestion was, Ignatius dutifully parroted it.

News reports indicate U.S. Attorney John Durham is currently investigating the sources of those criminal leaks of top secret national security information to Ignatius. Although the agents who interviewed Flynn initially stated they believed Flynn told them the truth during the Jan. 24 interview, Special Counsel Robert Mueller nonetheless charged Flynn in late 2017 with making false statements to FBI investigators in the interview.

Flynn pleaded guilty to the charge at the time but is currently trying to withdraw that plea, citing ineffective counsel and government corruption in the conduct of his case.

The explosive new documents support Flynn’s latest claims that Obama-era Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI officials had conspired to set him up from the beginning and that they never had any legitimate basis for investigating him.

The author of the handwritten notes filed under seal last week also wrote, “We have a case on Flynn and Russians,” and “our goal is to resolve case.” Despite those claims of treasonous Russian collusion, Mueller found, after a sprawling, multi-year, multimillion-dollar investigation, that there was zero evidence of illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to steal the 2016 election from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

In reality, the only Russian collusion that happened during the 2016 campaign was between the Clinton campaign and a subcontractor it funded, who was at the time working on behalf of a sanctioned Russian oligarch. That agent, former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, created for the Clinton campaign the entire basis for charges of illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. That document, known as the Steele dossier, has been thoroughly debunked since it was first released in early January 2017. The Clinton campaign, in cooperation with the Democratic National Committee, secretly funded the creation of that document and its distribution throughout the media. To date, none of its key collusion claims has been corroborated.

Steele’s operation became a primary basis for the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump campaign. The false allegations contained in the dossier were also used by FBI and DOJ officials to justify four separate spy warrants against Carter Page, a Trump campaign affiliate. The FBI also investigated Flynn as part of this operation.

The FBI notes also show that the author of the document had misgivings about the FBI’s conduct in interviewing Flynn.

“I agreed yesterday that we shouldn’t show Flynn [REDACTED] if he didn’t admit,” the FBI author wrote. “I thought [about] it last night, [and] I believe we should rethink this.”

“We regularly show subjects evidence, with the goal of getting them to admit wrongdoing,” the notes said. “I don’t see how getting someone to admit their wrongdoing is going easy on him.”

The redaction portion of the notes is believed to reference transcripts of phone calls between Flynn and other foreign officials. Those transcripts have never been publicly released, making it impossible to independently assess whether Flynn lied about those conversations.

The handwritten FBI notes end with a prophetic line, given the voluminous evidence of misconduct by FBI and DOJ officials in their investigation of Trump and their attempt to oust him from office.

“If we’re seen as playing games, [the White House] will be furious,” the author wrote. “Protect our institution by not playing games.”

Flynn is awaiting a ruling on his motion to have the entire case dismissed. You can read the documents unsealed and made available on the public court docket earlier this evening here.

[kcrufnek]

Apr 26, 2020 19:12:40 GMT -6 soonernvolved said:

Long, long overdue:

www.dailywire.com/news/flynn-to-be-completely-exonerated-this-week-ag-barr-has-directed-u-s-attorney-to-review-fbi-personnel-communications-and-notes-reports-say

Flynn To Be ‘Completely Exonerated This Week’, AG Barr Has Directed U.S. Attorney To Review FBI Personnel ‘Communications And Notes’, Reports Say

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn will reportedly be “completely exonerated” this week after being charged in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation for allegedly lying to federal agents.


Fox News host Maria Bartiromo tweeted: “Breaking News: sources tell me @genflynn will be completely exonerated this week. It was a total fraud. A Set up. More tomorrow”

A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed Bartiromo’s tweet to The Daily Wire.

CBS News investigative reporter Catherine Herridge called attention to a new filing in the Flynn case that was filed on Friday, tweeting, “#FISA Drawing attention Friday filing Flynn case @cbsnews told important for days ahead. AG Barr directed Missouri US Attorney to review FBI personnel ‘communications and notes,’ in part, to determine whether key evidence withheld. Docs under seal but may change.”

The Daily Wire reported on Friday:


Flynn is currently attempting to withdraw his guilty plea for allegedly lying to the FBI about his contacts with a Russian ambassador during Trump’s presidential transition, which, as the filing makes clear, Flynn says was a set up. Amid past reports of FBI malfeasance, President Trump has signaled that he may fully pardon Flynn.

A supplemental filing submitted by Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell on Friday stated: “This afternoon, the government produced to Mr. Flynn stunning Brady evidence that proves Mr. Flynn’s allegations of having been deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI. It also defeats any argument that the interview of Mr. Flynn on January 24, 2017 was material to any ‘investigation.’ The government has deliberately suppressed this evidence from the inception of this prosecution—knowing there was no crime by Mr. Flynn.”

“In addition, Mr. Flynn’s counsel has found further evidence of misconduct by [head prosecutor Brandon Van Grack] specifically,” the filing continues. “Not only did he make baseless threats to indict Michael G. Flynn, he made a side deal not to prosecute Michael G. Flynn as a material term of the plea agreement, but he required that it be kept secret between himself and the Covington attorneys expressly to avoid the requirement of Giglio v. United States , 405 U.S. 150 (1972). Exs. 1, 2.”

President Donald Trump wrote in mid-March that he was considering a full pardon for Flynn.

Trump tweeted: “So now it is reported that, after destroying his life & the life of his wonderful family (and many others also), the FBI, working in conjunction with the Justice Department, has “lost” the records of General Michael Flynn. How convenient. I am strongly considering a Full Pardon!”

“Multiple investigative reports issued by the DOJ Office of Inspector General revealed myriad instances of corruption by FBI officials throughout the multi-year investigation of Trump and his campaign,” The Federalist’s Sean Davis wrote on Friday. “Former FBI director James Comey was even referred for criminal investigation by the inspector general. Attorney General William Barr, who was confirmed by the Senate and sworn into office last year, appointed a seasoned federal prosecutor to investigate and determine whether other DOJ or FBI officials broke the law in attempt to oust Trump from office.”

And when this finally happens will there be one major network to report it? I'm thinking no or if they do there will be some sort of spin on this.

I don't know who will go to jail but if no one else does Comey needs to. Hopefully there will be others but this bastard has to pay for his actions.

[soonernvolved]

Apr 30, 2020 22:20:15 GMT -6 kcrufnek said:

Apr 26, 2020 19:12:40 GMT -6 soonernvolved said:

Long, long overdue:

www.dailywire.com/news/flynn-to-be-completely-exonerated-this-week-ag-barr-has-directed-u-s-attorney-to-review-fbi-personnel-communications-and-notes-reports-say

Flynn To Be ‘Completely Exonerated This Week’, AG Barr Has Directed U.S. Attorney To Review FBI Personnel ‘Communications And Notes’, Reports Say

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn will reportedly be “completely exonerated” this week after being charged in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation for allegedly lying to federal agents.


Fox News host Maria Bartiromo tweeted: “Breaking News: sources tell me @genflynn will be completely exonerated this week. It was a total fraud. A Set up. More tomorrow”

A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed Bartiromo’s tweet to The Daily Wire.

CBS News investigative reporter Catherine Herridge called attention to a new filing in the Flynn case that was filed on Friday, tweeting, “#FISA Drawing attention Friday filing Flynn case @cbsnews told important for days ahead. AG Barr directed Missouri US Attorney to review FBI personnel ‘communications and notes,’ in part, to determine whether key evidence withheld. Docs under seal but may change.”

The Daily Wire reported on Friday:


Flynn is currently attempting to withdraw his guilty plea for allegedly lying to the FBI about his contacts with a Russian ambassador during Trump’s presidential transition, which, as the filing makes clear, Flynn says was a set up. Amid past reports of FBI malfeasance, President Trump has signaled that he may fully pardon Flynn.

A supplemental filing submitted by Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell on Friday stated: “This afternoon, the government produced to Mr. Flynn stunning Brady evidence that proves Mr. Flynn’s allegations of having been deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI. It also defeats any argument that the interview of Mr. Flynn on January 24, 2017 was material to any ‘investigation.’ The government has deliberately suppressed this evidence from the inception of this prosecution—knowing there was no crime by Mr. Flynn.”

“In addition, Mr. Flynn’s counsel has found further evidence of misconduct by [head prosecutor Brandon Van Grack] specifically,” the filing continues. “Not only did he make baseless threats to indict Michael G. Flynn, he made a side deal not to prosecute Michael G. Flynn as a material term of the plea agreement, but he required that it be kept secret between himself and the Covington attorneys expressly to avoid the requirement of Giglio v. United States , 405 U.S. 150 (1972). Exs. 1, 2.”

President Donald Trump wrote in mid-March that he was considering a full pardon for Flynn.

Trump tweeted: “So now it is reported that, after destroying his life & the life of his wonderful family (and many others also), the FBI, working in conjunction with the Justice Department, has “lost” the records of General Michael Flynn. How convenient. I am strongly considering a Full Pardon!”

“Multiple investigative reports issued by the DOJ Office of Inspector General revealed myriad instances of corruption by FBI officials throughout the multi-year investigation of Trump and his campaign,” The Federalist’s Sean Davis wrote on Friday. “Former FBI director James Comey was even referred for criminal investigation by the inspector general. Attorney General William Barr, who was confirmed by the Senate and sworn into office last year, appointed a seasoned federal prosecutor to investigate and determine whether other DOJ or FBI officials broke the law in attempt to oust Trump from office.”

And when this finally happens will there be one major network to report it? I'm thinking no or if they do there will be some sort of spin on this.

I don't know who will go to jail but if no one else does Comey needs to. Hopefully there will be others but this bastard has to pay for his actions.

I can not agree enough with you on this.

[soonernvolved]

I would like Judge Sullivan to institute criminal contempt proceedings against the Justice Department and FBI officials responsible for this. This is something the FISA court should have done, frankly, two years ago.

[soonernvolved]

Last night on Hannity Sidney Powell told Sean that it was Chris Wray who promoted the “terrorist of a prosecutor” Andrew Weissmann back during the Bush administration despite his horribly unethical record.

Weissmann was then the lead prosecutor on the Mueller Special Counsel.

Weissmann and Wray and Comey go back years.
This explains Chris Wray’s refusal to clean up the corruption at the agency.

Via Hannity:

[redstripe]

May 1, 2020 7:10:55 GMT -6 soonernvolved said:

Last night on Hannity Sidney Powell told Sean that it was Chris Wray who promoted the “terrorist of a prosecutor” Andrew Weissmann back during the Bush administration despite his horribly unethical record.

Weissmann was then the lead prosecutor on the Mueller Special Counsel.

Weissmann and Wray and Comey go back years.
This explains Chris Wray’s refusal to clean up the corruption at the agency.

Via Hannity:

I would not mess with this woman.  Interesting video.

I dont understand why they wanted to get Flynn so badly?  

[kcrufnek]

May 1, 2020 8:17:35 GMT -6 redstripe said:

May 1, 2020 7:10:55 GMT -6 soonernvolved said:

Last night on Hannity Sidney Powell told Sean that it was Chris Wray who promoted the “terrorist of a prosecutor” Andrew Weissmann back during the Bush administration despite his horribly unethical record.

Weissmann was then the lead prosecutor on the Mueller Special Counsel.

Weissmann and Wray and Comey go back years.
This explains Chris Wray’s refusal to clean up the corruption at the agency.

Via Hannity:

I would not mess with this woman.  Interesting video.

I dont understand why they wanted to get Flynn so badly?  

Her, Joe & Victoria, etc. are the ones you get when your life is on the line. Coffee is for closers.

[kcrufnek]

After Flynn we need to exonorate Roger Stone. K9 units. SWAT. 2 amphibious units behind his house. Air support. His street was blocked off yet somehow CNN was set up in his front yard.

[kcrufnek]

I can not agree enough with you on this.

And through it all the one name we never hear is Obama. Whether I like the guy or not - I don't - can anyone actually make a case for all of this going on in all of his departments and him not knowing anything about anything. I know it's my wet dream but any other president would be front and center. Sort of reminds me how Clinton hid behind Janet reno's skirt after Waco.

[soonernvolved]

Kellyanne Conway: he continued doing that bidding after President Trump was elected and into our first days here at the White House. Look, if Peter Strzok had something important to say about General Flynn, let’s just say he was an existential threat or a real national security threat, he could have come forward and said that. This isn’t the purpose of this inquisition of Michael Flynn. You see the notes, you see them saying, “Don’t end crossfire razor.” Keep it going. Why? To harass and embarrass a general who had served with distinction over three decades. I will remind everybody that President Obama told President-elect Donald Trump he had two things to worry about, North Korea and Michael Flynn! Folks that’s just weird on its face! You gotta worry about a nuclear capable dictator in North Korea and you gotta worry about a general of 37 years who served in the Obama administration. People should look at this for what it is. Taxpayers funded this nonsense.

[redstripe]

Why did they want Flynn out so bad? He have the Glenngary leads?