James Comey

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thefederalist.com/2020/05/17/media-must-report-truth-of-anti-trump-spy-operation-before-its-too-late-for-them/

Media Must Report Truth Of Anti-Trump Spy Operation Before It’s Too Late For Them
As facts about the Obama administration's spying and leaking are spilling out, media have a brief window of opportunity to salvage some credibility.
Mollie HemingwayBy Mollie Hemingway
MAY 17, 2020

As new details emerge about the Obama administration’s broad spying-and-leaking campaign against the incoming Trump administration, reporters have a choice to make about whether to cover this story honestly, at long last. There is a brief window of time afforded the media to get the story right. They should take advantage of it.

Journalist Lee Smith already noted the seriousness of the problem facing legacy media after the implosion of the Russia collusion conspiracy theory they peddled. “Americans still want and need accurate information on which to base their decisions about their own lives and the path that the country should take. But neither the legacy media nor the expert class it sustains is likely to survive the post-dossier era in any recognizable form,” he wrote. “For them, Russiagate is an extinction level event.”

Many of our supposedly smart media elites are dinosaurs who are completely unaware of the asteroid headed right to them. Instead, they are doing their part in an all-hands-on-deck effort to continue pushing out Democratic talking points that got them into the mess. This week, that meant they regurgitated the Democratic claim that the Obama administration’s spying and leaking was “normal” and that to be concerned about it is nothing more than a “distraction.”

The Media Are in Too Deep
The less deft at pushing out the partisan talking point include MSNBC’s Brian Williams, who literally asked implicated former CIA chief John Brennan if he could “once and for all” explain to people who had heard about the scandal despite his corporation’s best efforts why it was no big deal. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo complained that a biased NBC News piece that itself attempted to wave away the scandal was not biased enough for his liking. The Daily Beast’s Sam Stein begged Axios not to cover the issue lest it help Trump, in the way that covering Hillary Clinton’s email scandal may have helped Trump.

Susan Glasser at the New Yorker suggested that acknowledging the Obama administration’s recorded attempts to undermine a duly elected administration through spying and leaking was a form of political agitprop. Her husband Peter Baker over at the New York Times took the same line but went with the authoritative gaslighting approach in which he suggested it was odd that Trump would want to correct the false narrative that he was a traitor to his country and replace it with the truth that he was the victim of a coordinated attack to spy on his campaign, criminally leak against him, and force him out of office. CNN’s Jake Tapper, a journalist implicated in one of the early Russia hoax stories, reported for duty to spread this partisan talking point as well.

Many of these people are simply in too deep. They’re not giving back the awards they got for peddling the false story uncritically. To do so is a level of honesty they are not currently capable of. But not everyone needs to follow them. For liberal media who want to be honest, there is plenty of ground between shouting “OBAMAGATE!” in all caps and denying the spying and leaking ever happened.

Honest Reporting Could Help Trump — and Journalism
The big problem with covering the story honestly is what Stein himself pointed out — it might help Trump and Republicans. But they should look to left-wing journalists who were able to put aside their genuine dislike of the Orange Bad Man and his co-partisans and retain their journalistic integrity. These brave reporters, including Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Tracey, managed to buck in-group journalistic and political pressure to report accurately about the political scandal.

Among the few journalists on the right who covered these issues well, there were many who weren’t particularly fond of Trump. Whether left or right or otherwise, skepticism of the intelligence community helped these reporters, certainly, but only in that they have been consistently skeptical across multiple administrations. These reporters are honest enough to say that political spying and criminal political leaking is not what our intelligence agencies should have been doing. This should not even be a debate.

A rather obvious intimidation campaign has been launched against any reporter who breaks with the groupthink on whether it’s a scandal (or even just a legitimate news story!) to spy and leak falsehoods against political opponents. The Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani alleged that merely reporting on the existence of public documents related to the spying and leaking campaign, as opposed to ignoring them, meant that CBS’ Catherine Herridge was problematic. No one could defend the journalistic merits of killing such an explosive story. These attacks on Herridge — which sadly did not result in a strong defense from her employer or colleagues — are chin music directed at everyone else who might be courageous enough to step out of the groupthink zone.

The media should know, however, that journalism’s trashed reputation is not going to go away by further suppressing the story. They’re not going to dig themselves out of their self-dug hole by taking swings at Herridge or other courageous reporters with their shovels.

It’s not even a difficult question to answer whether this story is newsworthy, but it does require a bit of courage. Journalists aren’t known for their courage so much as their belief that there is safety in crowds. Yet the world is eager to see if there are many real journalists left. No, not the types of journalists who give each other awards for peddling false narratives that the average American can see right through. But real journalists who can think critically when a spy chief or operative comes to them with a ludicrous claim about prostitutes and videotaped urination in a Moscow hotel or Jeff Sessions being a Russian spy or the key to the 2016 election result involving subliterate Facebook memes. Far too many journalists failed that test in recent years. But they have another opportunity to get it right.

Reporters are clearly kowtowing to Democrats in fear that if they win in 2020, they’ll act with vengeance against any reporter who failed to follow their dictates. It is in this light that the courage of the Taibbis and Greenwalds should be particularly noted.

Taibbi’s piece in recent days — “Democrats Have Abandoned Civil Liberties: The Blue Party’s Trump-era Embrace of Authoritarianism Isn’t Just Wrong, it’s a Fatal Political Mistake” — is worth a careful read. Vindictive punishment from Democrats is a legitimate concern, but these reporters should consider the very real possibility that the media’s obvious political campaign against Trump and Republicans will fail in 2020. Even as a face-saving measure, reporting honestly on this story could help them retain their positions from which to attack Trump and their hold on their jobs covering the next term.

The Truth Is Coming Out
It was one thing for reporters to stick with the false narrative through the disappointing conclusion of the Mueller special counsel report, in which no evidence of any American colluding with Russia could be found. They were able to make it through the embarrassing results of that report and the embarrassing performance of Mueller in the hearing about the report and were never confronted with a need for a mea culpa.

But if reporters think they can continue to ignore the very real concerns about politicization of intelligence agencies under Obama, or gaslight Americans by claiming such spying and leaking is normal and even good, they should wake up.

Unlike the Russia collusion fiction that was maintained by the Obama administration, holdouts in the Trump administration, and finally the Mueller special counsel posse, the spying and leaking campaign story is coming out with facts. Declassifications, court documents, and investigative reports have all shown the falsehood of the Russia collusion hoax and the truth of the spying scandal. More could be coming.

It was one thing to spin the Russia collusion hoax during a time of mass elite freakout. But now everyone knows it was false. The truth is an existential threat to journalists, which is why the more activist among them are scrambling to kill the story and paint it as a distraction. These reporters won book contracts, TV gigs, promotions, and political success by peddling the hoax. They truly can’t be honest about it.

But others who weren’t so complicit have a shot here. There is no getting out of this easy, so if there are any reporters who care about their reputation, much less the truth, they should get on the side of truth now.

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www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/us/politics/trump-obama.html

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dailycaller.com/2020/05/17/obama-clapper-trump-russia-collusion/

Obama Officials Said On TV That Trump Colluded With Russia — They Said Otherwise Under Oath

Newly declassified documents have shown that several Obama administration officials now say they saw no empirical evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, contradicting earlier statements they made on television.

Chief among these Obama officials is former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. He stated on CNN that President Donald Trump’s campaign was “aiding and abetting” the Russian attempt to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election. When the anchor pressed him on the issue he said he was using the term aiding and abetting “colloquially.”


Newly released sworn testimony, however, shows that Clapper told Congress he “never saw any direct empirical evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. (RELATED: Documents Shed Light On Media Leak Central To Michael Flynn Case)

“That’s not to say that there weren’t concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence …[redacted],” Clapper continued in the transcript. “But I do not recall any instance when I had direct evidence of the content of these meetings. It’s just the frequency and prevalence of them was of concern.”

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill May 8, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill May 8, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

When a Republican congressman asked when whether it was reasonable to assume meetings implied collusion, Clapper deflected.

“I really can’t answer it other than the sort of visceral reaction to why all these meetings with the Russians,” he said. He acknowledged according to National Review that it was not abnormal for incoming administrations to meet with foreign representatives before assuming office, but said “I think there is a line … between that and violating the principle that in this country we traditionally have one president and one administration at a time.”


The lack of empirical evidence wasn’t enough to stop the Trump-Russia collusion from being far worse than Watergate in Clapper’s mind, however.

“I have to say though that I think, if you compare the two, Watergate pales really in my view compared to what we’re confronting now,” he said in 2017.

Clapper wasn’t alone in testifying to the lack of evidence of collusion. House members asked former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Powers whether she had seen any evidence herself.

“I am not in possession of anything—I am not in possession and didn’t read or absorb information that came from out of the intelligence community,” she said according to Fox News.


United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power (R) arrives before the United Nations Security Council voted to approve a resolution in South Sudan at the United Nations in Manhattan, New York, U.S., July 29, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power (R) arrives before the United Nations Security Council voted to approve a resolution in South Sudan at the United Nations in Manhattan, New York, U.S., July 29, 2016. (REUTERS/Andrew Kelly)

Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice told the same story.

“To the best of my recollection, there wasn’t anything smoking, but there were some things that gave me pause,” she said, “I don’t recall intelligence that I would consider evidence to that effect that I saw … conspiracy prior to my departure.”

Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff also said in March 2019 that there was “direct evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. (RELATED: ‘Illegal’: Trump Goes After Tech Giants Google, Facebook For ‘Radical Left’ Bias)

“I think there is direct evidence in the emails from the Russians through their intermediary offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of what is described in writing as the Russian government effort to help elect Donald Trump,” Schiff said on CBS in March 2019.

Schiff at the time was relying on the very testimony from Clapper, Powers, Rice, and others which indicated direct empirical evidence of collusion had yet to be discovered.

Republicans have said they will bring Clapper and other Obama-era officials to testify before the Senate regarding the new revelations, but no official dates have been announced.

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thefederalist.com/2020/05/18/heres-why-judge-sullivan-cant-legally-punish-michael-flynn-for-perjury/

Here’s Why Judge Sullivan Can’t Legally Punish Michael Flynn For ‘Perjury’
Sullivan should not embark on any contempt proceeding against Michael Flynn. Doing so would be a misuse of his contempt power.
Leslie McAdoo GordonBy Leslie McAdoo Gordon
MAY 18, 2020

Stunning developments in the criminal case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn exploded onto the national scene the past two weeks. First, the government moved to dismiss the case, a one-count plea for allegedly making false statements to the FBI.

Then the trial judge, Emmet Sullivan, issued an order permitting people and groups claiming to have an interest in the matter to file briefs about whether he should grant the government’s motion. Further, Sullivan appointed a retired federal judge, John Gleeson, to act as amicus curiae (friend of the court) to present opposing arguments to the government’s motion.


Much has been and will be written about these developments, but somewhat lost in the uproar they’ve caused is the second portion of the order appointing Gleeson, which directs him to advise Sullivan on whether he should issue a show-cause order to Flynn for criminal contempt for perjury.

I can save Gleeson the trouble. The controlling legal authority from the Supreme Court holds that contempt power cannot be used to punish people for making statements, even under oath, that the judge deems false.

Why Did Flynn Plead Guilty?
When Flynn pleaded guilty, and again when he was originally scheduled to be sentenced by Sullivan, he acknowledged under oath that he was guilty of making false statements to the FBI agents who questioned him about his telephone conversation with the Russian ambassador. He made these statements, however, while he was represented by counsel who had an apparent conflict of interest and before the government disclosed that the FBI lacked a legitimate reason to question him about the telephone call.

More recently, after Flynn obtained new counsel, he moved to withdraw his guilty plea and submitted a declaration stating that he was innocent of the crime. The potential discrepancy between that declaration and his earlier statements appears to be the basis for Sullivan flagging the perjury issue.


Flynn may well have legitimate defenses to any charge for perjury that might be brought against him, such as reliance on conflicted counsel and ignorance of the defect in the FBI’s interview of him, which render any statement he made legally immaterial. Of more interest is whether Sullivan has a legal basis to explore these issues in a contempt proceeding.

Sullivan Lacks Authority to Charge Flynn with Perjury
A court issues a show-cause order for contempt as a prelude to possibly punishing a person for alleged misconduct. It describes the misconduct and requires the person to defend against that allegation. It is similar to an indictment except the court, rather than a prosecutor, initiates it. The person receiving a show-cause order must appear and defend the accusation but has certain due process rights, such as the right to notice, the right to counsel, and the right to present a defense.

Sullivan has not yet issued a show-cause order to Flynn, but he has directed Gleeson to advise him as to whether he should do so. The answer is absolutely not, because Sullivan lacks the authority to sanction Flynn for perjury.

Under the separation of powers established by the Constitution, criminal charges are brought by the executive branch and adjudicated by the judiciary. Thus, any actual prosecution of Flynn under federal statutes for perjury would have to be brought by the Department of Justice.


Courts are, however, permitted to initiate prosecutions for criminal contempt of court. Contempt is behavior that disobeys, offends, or disrespects a court’s authority or dignity. It can occur directly in court, or indirectly when it happens outside the judge’s presence. Judges have the authority to summarily punish contempt committed in their presence in certain instances.

The federal criminal code specifically recognizes a court’s contempt authority. Section 401 of the federal criminal code provides that a federal court can punish contempt of its authority, consisting of misbehavior in its presence that obstructs the administration of justice.

Rule 42 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure governs contempt proceedings. It provides that, generally, a person charged with contempt shall be given notice of the charge, a prosecutor shall be appointed, and a trial shall occur to adjudicate the charge. If the potential punishment exceeds 180 days, the defendant also has a right to a jury trial.

Precedent Cuts Against Seeking a Contempt Proceeding
But the Supreme Court decided 100 years ago in a case called Ex parte Hudgings that perjury does not constitute contempt of court under Section 401. In that case, a judge held a witness in criminal contempt for giving what in the judge’s view was perjured testimony.


The Supreme Court held that to convict the witness of contempt for alleged perjury, “there must be added to the essential elements of perjury … the further element of obstruction to the court in the performance of its duty.” It voided the contempt conviction because “the punishment was imposed for the supposed perjury alone without reference to any circumstance or condition giving it an obstructive effect.”

The D.C. Circuit, which sits over Sullivan, has reinforced the Hudgings limitation and emphasized that “actual, not theoretical, obstruction is the test, and that any claimed obstruction must be proven precisely.” That decision, called In re Brown, involved a person who falsely claimed to be, and acted as, an attorney in a criminal proceeding before the court. The D.C. Circuit ruled that this conduct, however fraudulent, had not obstructed the proceeding.

Flynn’s statements in connection with his plea did not obstruct the court in the performance of its duty. Thus, they simply cannot constitute contempt of court under long-standing precedent. Sullivan should therefore not embark on any contempt proceeding. Doing so would be a misuse of his contempt power.

Leslie McAdoo Gordon is the principal of McAdoo Gordon & Associates, P.C., founded in 2003. She graduated cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1996, and is licensed to practice law in Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and numerous federal trial and appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to entering the field of law, Leslie McAdoo Gordon served as a Special Agent for the Department of Defense, Defense Investigative Service (now the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency).

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On Monday, it was revealed John Gleeson will file an initial amicus brief by JUNE 10!

Another huge delay!

John Gleeson in a motion filed Monday asked the Court permission to submit a brief addressing three issues.

One of the issues: “any factual development I may need before finalizing my argument in opposition to the government’s motion in this case.”

By “factual development” – he may claim he needs to interview witnesses, says attorney Techno Fog.

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www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/05/18/house-democrats-tell-supreme-court-they-may-impeach-trump-again-by-2021/

House Democrats Tell Supreme Court They May Impeach Trump Again by 2021

House Democrats told the Supreme Court on Monday they need access to secret grand jury materials because they are still investigating President Donald Trump in connection with Russia “collusion” and may want to impeach him, again.

In a legal filing published by CNN, Democrats said that they need the grand jury materials because the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry into Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation is ongoing.




The Democrat-run House seeks “disclosure to the House Committee on the Judiciary of a limited set of grand-jury materials for use in the Committee’s ongoing Presidential impeachment investigation,” the Supreme Court filing says.

The saga began in 2019, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller determined that there had been no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. When he released his report, however, Mueller submitted two volumes — one on the collusion investigation, and one on a separate obstruction of justice investigation. Though he made no recommendation for prosecution, Democrats seized on the latter as providing the basis for potentially impeaching Trump for obstruction.

Democrats also claimed that certain redactions in the report must have hidden relevant information — though they declined to read a less redacted version. They also demanded access to material that Mueller had shown a grand jury. Normally grand jury proceedings are secret, and so Attorney General William Barr, citing federal law, declined the Democrats’ request. They then held him in contempt of Congress, and took their case for the materials to federal court.

The case made its way through the courts, and Democrats won at the D.C. Circuit. The Department of Justice appealed to the Supreme Court on May 7, and Chief Justice Roberts put a temporary hold on the grand jury materials on May 8.

In their court filing, the Democrats complain that further delays in the release of the grand jury materials would make it impossible for them to impeach the president again before Congress’s term ends:

If DOJ’s request for a stay is granted, DOJ need not file its certiorari petition until August 2020, and therefore this Court likely would not determine whether to grant or deny that petition until at least October 2020. This substantial delay will seriously endanger the Committee’s ability to complete its impeachment investigation during the current Congress— which ends not long thereafter on January 3, 2021.

Republicans could take over Congress on that date if they win 17 seats from Democrats.

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www.cnn.com/2020/05/18/politics/house-supreme-court-mueller-grand-jury/index.html

House Democrats tell Supreme Court they need Mueller grand jury materials to decide on new articles of impeachment

Washington (CNN)The Democratic-led House of Representatives on Monday told the Supreme Court that the House needs secret Mueller grand jury materials to determine if there is new evidence of impeachable offenses involving President Donald Trump.

The House Judiciary Committee has been attempting obtain the documents prosecutors collected from witnesses about Trump in a back-and-forth legal fight that's now reached the Supreme Court.
"The Committee's impeachment investigation related to obstruction of justice pertaining to the Russia investigation is ongoing," Douglas Letter, the House general counsel, said in a court filing Monday.
"If this material reveals new evidence supporting the conclusion that President Trump committed impeachable offenses," Letter said, "the Committee will proceed accordingly -- including, if necessary, by considering whether to recommend new articles of impeachment."
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The filing comes after a federal appeals court cleared the way for the release of the documents in March holding that the Judiciary Committee had a "compelling need" to view the secretive details prosecutors had collected from witnesses about Trump.
The Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to block the release of the materials, saying it would suffer "irreparable harm" if it had to turn over the grand-jury records before the justices had decided whether to take up the appeal.
Supreme Court debates Trump's ability to keep financial information and taxes secret
Supreme Court debates Trump's ability to keep financial information and taxes secret
But Letter noted that the House had originally requested the information more than a year ago , and he said he feared if the court were to grant the department's request to take up the case it would be months before a decision is rendered.
"This substantial delay," Letter argued, "will seriously endanger the Committee's ability to complete its impeachment investigation during the current Congress," he said.

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dailycaller.com/2020/05/18/fbi-crossfire-hurricane-leaks-donald-trump-russia/

The FBI relied heavily on media reporting, often based on leaks, to justify taking additional steps in Crossfire Hurricane, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of public records.
FBI officials relied on the so-called news hooks to conduct interviews with Michael Flynn.
A series of news hooks also led to the publication of the now-debunked Steele dossier. The FBI relied on the publication of the dossier itself to provide cover to conduct interviews for Crossfire Hurricane.
And James Comey himself crafted his own news hook to spur the appointment of a special counsel to take over Crossfire Hurricane after he was fired.
A common theme that has emerged from the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation is bureau officials’ use of media reports and leaks to advance aspects of the bureau’s probe of the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia.

In at least five instances, FBI officials capitalized on the so-called news hooks — also called news pegs, in journalistic jargon — as justification to open up new areas of the investigation.

James Comey, Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok all took advantage of media reports to push the investigation forward. And in one case, Comey orchestrated a leak of his own to spur the appointment of a special counsel.

Prominent media outlets played a key role in advancing the now-debunked theory that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. Much of that media manipulation centered around the infamous Steele dossier, which the Clinton campaign and DNC funded.

Christopher Steele, a former British spy, briefed numerous reporters, the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), State Department and think tank officials on his dossier. The FBI’s possession of the dossier itself would eventually serve as a news hook that allowed Steele’s unverified allegations to make their way into public view.

Comey’s dossier briefing to Donald Trump

Comey’s briefing on Jan. 6, 2017, to then-President-elect Donald Trump regarding allegations in the Steele dossier touched off a series of events that shifted the collusion investigation into high gear.

The FBI received information from Steele months earlier, and numerous media outlets had a copy of the full dossier, which accused the Trump campaign of conspiring with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election. Steele, a former MI6 officer, also alleged that the Kremlin was blackmailing Trump with a sex videotape.

Comey has justified briefing Trump on the blackmail portion of the dossier claiming that he did so because the media had the dossier and was poised to publish it.

“I said I wasn’t saying this was true, only that I wanted him to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands,” Comey wrote in a memo following his briefing.


“I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write the FBI has the material or [redacted] and that we were keeping it very close hold.”


James Comey memo following Jan. 6, 2017 briefing with then-President-Elect Donald Trump
Despite Comey’s concerns, CNN found its excuse to write about the dossier. Four days after the briefing, the network reported that the meeting with Trump occurred and that he was briefed on the existence of a salacious document that alleged that the Russian government had compromising information on the president-elect.

BuzzFeed News used the CNN report as a news hook of its own. The website cited CNN’s report as justification to publish the entire dossier, sparking a controversy that drags on to this day.

While Comey has publicly claimed that his purpose for the Trump briefing was to warn the incoming president of rumors floating around about him, he also appears to have used the meeting to advance the Crossfire Hurricane probe.

FBI officials told the DOJ’s office of the inspector general (OIG) that they and Comey discussed using the briefing to collect information for Crossfire Hurricane.

“Witnesses interviewed by the OIG also said that they discussed Trump’s potential responses to being told about the ‘salacious’ information, including that Trump might make statements about, or provide information of value to, the pending Russian interference investigation,” reads an August 2019 report regarding Comey’s memos.

Comey told the OIG that he treated the memo he wrote following the Jan. 6, 2017, briefing as if it were obtained through surveillance, suggesting that he viewed it as material derived through an investigation rather than a simple defensive briefing.

According to the OIG report, Comey said his post-briefing memo “ought to be treated … [like] FISA derived information or information in a [counterintelligence] investigation,” a reference to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Peter Strzok capitalizes on dossier’s release

The FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigators were far from upset over the publication of the dossier.

Strzok, the FBI deputy chief of counterintelligence at the time, immediately seized on the publication in order to advance the probe.

“Sitting with Bill watching CNN. A TON more out,” Strzok texted FBI lawyer Lisa Page on Jan. 10, 2017, just after publication of the dossier.

Strzok was seemingly referring to Bill Priestap, his boss at the FBI.

“Hey let me know when you can talk. We’re discussing whether, now that this is out, we use it as a pretext to go interview some people,” Strzok added.

Deputy Assistant FBI Director Peter Strzok testifies before a joint committee hearing of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill July 12, 2018 in Washington, DC. While involved in the probe into Hillary ClintonÕs use of a private email server in 2016, Strzok exchanged text messages with FBI attorney Lisa Page that were critical of Trump. After learning about the messages, Mueller removed Strzok from his investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.
Strzok testifies before a joint committee hearing in July 2018 (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
According to an inspector general’s report on the Crossfire Hurricane probe, Strzok said that he recalled that the text messages referred to the possibility of interviewing former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Steele accused both of taking part in the Trump-Kremlin conspiracy.

Strzok told the OIG investigators that the Steele dossier could be used as cover to conduct the interviews without compromising the Crossfire Hurricane probe.

“Strzok said the media release of the reports would be a logical reason for the FBI to interview Cohen and Manafort without alerting them to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the OIG report stated.

Weeks after the dossier was published, two FBI agents would investigate former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos for the first time. Court documents show that the investigators initially told Papadopoulos that they wanted to speak to him about an associate, Sergei Millian, who had been identified in the media as a possible unwitting source for the dossier. (RELATED: Strzok Sought To Capitalize On News Reports About The Dossier)

FBI agents also interviewed Steele’s primary dossier source in the days before Trump’s inauguration. That source told investigators that Steele embellished key parts of the dossier.

McCabe says leaks about Michael Flynn prompted White House interview

The FBI also seized on a seemingly illegal leak of classified information to the media in order to advance its investigation of Michael Flynn.

McCabe, who served as deputy director of the FBI, testified on Dec. 19, 2017, that FBI leaders wanted to use a column published in The Washington Post as a pretext to interview Flynn.

On Jan. 12, 2017, Post columnist David Ignatius cited a senior U.S. government official who said that Flynn had spoken by phone weeks earlier with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. Ignatius raised the possibility that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia and that the retired general might have violated an obscure law called the Logan Act.

The leak appeared to be based on information from classified transcripts of Flynn’s calls in late December 2016 with Kislyak.

At the time, the FBI was investigating whether Flynn and three other Trump associates were working as agents of Russia.

On Jan. 24, 2017, days after Flynn took over as national security adviser, McCabe phoned him to arrange an interview at the White House.

“Why did the Bureau interview General Flynn when they did? What was the reasoning for the interview?” then-Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina asked McCabe in a December 2017 House Intelligence Committee deposition.

“To the best of my recollection, we interviewed General Flynn at that time because of the existence … of his conversation, the record of his conversation with Ambassador Kislyak had become widely known through press reporting,” McCabe answered.

“[T]here was no reason to continue, kind of, in a covert investigative posture and so we wanted to sit down with General Flynn and understand, kind of, what his thoughts on that conversation were.”

Flynn pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, to making false statements during that interview. But the DOJ has since filed to drop the case after Flynn retracted his claim to have lied to the FBI.

Flynn’s lawyers and supporters have theorized that Flynn was somehow set up in a perjury trap through the use of the leak to the Post and McCabe’s request to interview Flynn. Ignatius’s source has not been publicly identified.

Comey orchestrated leaks to prompt special counsel

After his firing on May 9, 2017, Comey created a news hook to justify the appointment of a special counsel to take over Crossfire Hurricane.

Comey testified that he provided his memos to his friend, Daniel Richman, after his firing in order to prompt the appointment of a special counsel. (RELATED: Comey Admits He Orchestrated Leak To New York Times)

Comey said he authorized Richman to provide New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt with memos that laid out Comey’s interaction with Trump regarding the alleged request to not investigate Flynn.

“I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons,” Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 7, 2017.

“I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”

The Times published an article based on Comey’s memo on May 16, 2017. The next day, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller to serve as special counsel.

Mueller’s investigation ultimately found no evidence to support the initial theory of Crossfire Hurricane: that members of the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. Mueller also found no evidence that any Trump associates acted as agents of the Russian government.

FBI used news articles to justify steps in Carter Page investigation

The FBI used several media reports to justify steps in their investigation into whether Carter Page was a Russian agent.

Applications for FISA orders that the FBI submitted on Page in 2016 and 2017 show at least three areas where news reports about the Trump aide were used to open up new lines of inquiry or to make the case that he was working for Russia.

The FISAs stated that an FBI confidential human source, or CHS, met with Page on Oct. 17, 2016, and “made general inquiries about the media reporting regarding Page’s contacts with Russian officials.”

The FBI source, Stefan Halper, had met with Page for the first time months earlier.

“Although Page did not provide any specific details to refute, dispel, or clarify the media reporting, he made vague statements that minimized his activities,” read the FISA applications, which have recently been declassified.

WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 02: Carter Page, former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, speaks to the media after testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on November 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. The committee is conducting an investigation into Russia's tampering in the 2016 election. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Carter Page, former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The FBI also cited reports that appeared in summer 2016 to justify its logic that Page was working with Russia.

One of Steele’s unverified claims was that Page secretly met two Kremlin insiders in Moscow in July 2016 to discuss relaxing U.S. sanctions against Russia, and to drive a wedge between the United States and Ukraine.

News reports in the Post and other outlets in July and August 2016 said the Trump campaign mysteriously altered the language in the GOP platform regarding providing lethal aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

Citing those reports and Steele’s allegations, the FISA applications said that the “FBI 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.”

That theory was ultimately debunked. The OIG report on Crossfire Hurricane said that the FBI omitted information showing that Page “played no role” in the platform change.

The FBI also cited a Yahoo! News article published Sept. 23, 2016, as part of the applications to obtain surveillance orders against Page, the FISA application shows.

There is some debate over whether the bureau cited the article as further evidence that Page was a Russian agent, or if the article was included in the FISA request in order to show that Page had denied working with the Kremlin.

The FISA application shows that the FBI discussed the article in a section which showed that Page denied allegations in the Yahoo! News story. The FBI dismissed Page’s denials, writing in the surveillance application that the “FBI believes that Page’s comments were self-serving and, based on the source reporting described above, untrue.”

Steele was the source for the article, but the FBI failed to disclose that link in the FISA applications. The IG report stated that while some FBI investigators believed that Steele was Yahoo’s source, other FBI agents believed that someone else was the source.

Steele himself denied being the source during an Oct. 3, 2016, meeting with FBI agents. He expressed frustration at what he called leaks regarding his dossier, the IG report stated.

He said that the leaks were causing his source network to dry up. One FBI agent told the IG that he was shocked that Steele would complain about leaks when he was the source for multiple journalists who wrote about the dossier.

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An exclusive report at the Ohio Star claims that a whistleblower has come out who claims the crooked Obama Administration regularly spied on General Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort and the Trump family:

theohiostar.com/2020/05/18/exclusive-the-treasury-department-spied-on-flynn-manafort-and-the-trump-family-says-whistleblower/

EXCLUSIVE: The Treasury Department Spied on Flynn, Manafort, and the Trump Family, Says Whistleblower

EXCLUSIVE: The Treasury Department Spied on Flynn, Manafort, and the Trump Family, Says Whistleblower

May 18, 2020 Neil W. McCabe



President Barack Obama’s Treasury Department regularly surveilled retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn’s financial records and transactions beginning in December 2015 and well into 2017, before, during and after when he served at the White House as President Donald Trump’s National Security Director, a former senior Treasury Department official, and veteran of the intelligence community, told the Star Newspapers.

“I started seeing things that were not correct, so I did my own little investigation, because I wanted to make sure what I was seeing was correct” she said. “You never want to draw attention to something if there is not anything there.”

The whistleblower said she only saw metadata, that is names and dates when the general’s financial records were accessed. “I never saw what they saw.”

By March 2016, the whistleblower said she and a colleague, who was detailed to Treasury from the intelligence community, became convinced that the surveillance of Flynn was not tied to legitimate criminal or national security concerns, but was straight-up political surveillance among other illegal activity occurring at Treasury.

“When I showed it to her, what she said, ‘Oh, sh%t!’ and I knew right then and there that I was right – this was some shady stuff,” the whistleblower said.

“It wasn’t just him,” the whistleblower said. “They were targeting other U.S. citizens, as well.”

Only two names are listed in the whistleblower’s official paperwork, so the others must remain sealed, she said. The second name is Paul J. Manafort Jr., the one-time chairman of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The other names include: Members of Congress, the most senior staffers on the 2016 Trump campaign and members of Trump’s family, she said.

“Another thing they would do is take targeted names from a certain database – I cannot name, but you can guess – and they were going over to an unclassified database and they were running those names in the unclassified database,” she said.

This ruse was to get around using classified resources to surveil Americans, she said. Once the Treasury personnel had enough information about someone they were targeting from the black box, they would go to the white box for faster and more informed search.

It was routine for these searches that had no criminal nor national security predicate, merely a political predicate, she said.

Complaint filed with Treasury Inspector General

In March 2017, she filed a formal whistleblower complaint with Acting Treasury Inspector General Richard K. Delmar, who continues in that office today, she said. Beyond Delmar acknowledging receipt of the complaint, the inspector general never followed up on the matter.

This formal complaint was a follow-up to an August 2016 notification to Delmar that did not meet the full requirements of formal complaint, but it provided Delmar with the details of Treasury’s surveillance of Flynn, she said.

The whistleblower filed a subsequent complaint with the Office of Special Counsel May 2017, which is the permanent office established to work with whistleblowers and is not related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

This surveillance program was run out of Treasury’s Office of Intelligence Analysis, which was then under the leadership of S. Leslie Ireland. Ireland came to OIA in 2010 after a long tenure at the Central Intelligence Agency and a one-year stint as Obama’s daily in-person intelligence briefer.

The whistleblower said Treasury should never have been part of the unmasking of Flynn, because its surveillance operation was off-the-books. That is to say, the Justice Department never gave the required approval to the Treasury program, and so there were no guidelines, approvals nor reports that would be associated with a DOJ-sanctioned domestic surveillance operation.

“Accessing this information without approved and signed attorney general guidelines would violate U.S. persons constitutional rights and civil liberties,” she said.

“IC agencies have to adhere to Executive Order 12333, or as it is known in the community: E.O. 12-Triple-Three. Just because OIA does not have signed guidelines does not give them the power or right to operate as they want, if you want information on a U.S. person then work with the FBI on a Title III, if it is a U.S. person involved with a foreign entity then follow the correct process for a FISA, but without signed AG guidelines you cannot even get started,” she said. Title III refers to the FBI authority to electronically surveil Americans.

Top Obama Treasury officials among those who unmasked Flynn

Because the intercepts from Flynn’s Dec. 29, 2016 phone call with the Russian ambassador Sergei were captured by an entity other than Treasury, Patrick Conlon, the OIA director, who succeeded Ireland, was on the list of 37 Obama administration officials who either requested that Flynn’s name be unmasked or were shown the unmasked surveillance product.

Conlon accessed the Flynn file Dec. 14, 2016.

There must have been some kind of meeting that day. These are all of the other Treasury Department officials looking at Flynn that day: Secretary Jacob Lew, Acting Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis A. Daniel “Danny” McGlynn, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Michael Neufeld, Deputy Secretary Sarah Raskin, Under Secretary Nathan Sheets and Acting Under Secretary Adam Szubin.

Lew is the only one who made the list again, this time Jan. 12, 2017 – and if his deputy’s name sounds familiar, Raskin is the wife of Rep. Jamin B. “Jamie” Raskin (D.-Md.), one of the House Prosecutors, who argued for the removal of Trump after his impeachment. The congressman’s wife was also an Obama-appointed Federal Reserve governor.

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More than three years later, and another incident of Obama crimes uncovered and another Obama Inspector General covering up the crimes.

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www.dailywire.com/news/several-attorneys-general-demand-judge-drop-flynn-case-disrobes-the-judiciary-of-its-cloak-of-impartiality

Several Attorneys General Demand Judge Drop Flynn Case: ‘Disrobes The Judiciary Of Its Cloak of Impartiality’

On May 7, the case against former Trump national security adviser retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn — “one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller,” as the Associated Press put it — was dismissed by the Department of Justice “after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information.” Among that newly disclosed information was evidence that the interview around which the case hinges was a “perjury trap,” as Attorney General William Barr has described it.

But the federal judge overseeing the case, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has refused to accept the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case, tabling the motion and instead opening the case up for amicus briefs from outside entities — a move blasted by Flynn’s legal team as a “travesty of justice.” Among those invited to file amicus briefs is the legal team that Flynn fired and who has since been accused by his new attorneys as being in “the grip of intractable conflicts of interest.”

But, as reported by CBS News investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge, Judge Sullivan’s opening up of the case has also drawn responses from over a dozen attorneys general who have signed an amicus brief calling on the judge to support the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss without commentary, “because such punditry disrobes the judiciary of its cloak of impartiality.”

Attorneys general from 15 states — Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia — filed the briefing to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Monday “in support of the United States” and arguing that “the Court lacks authority to exercise judgement over a decision that constitutionally belongs to the executive branch.”

The argument of the attorneys general aligns with arguments made by Flynn’s legal team, who has called for the immediate dismissal of the case.

“This travesty of justice has already consumed three or more years of an innocent man’s life — and that of his entire family. No further delay should be tolerated or any further expense caused to him and his defense,” Flynn attorney Sydney Powell wrote in a court filing responding to Sullivan’s decision to shelve the Justice Department’s motion and reopen the case. “This Court should enter the order proposed by the government immediately.”

In the filing, Powell, who Flynn acquired after dismissing his initial legal team who advised him to plead guilty to lying to the FBI, pointed out that “this Court has consistently — on twenty-four (24) previous occasions — summarily refused to permit any third party to inject themselves or their views into this case.”

Attorney General Barr has made clear where the Justice Department stands on the case, calling for the dismissal of the case and condemning the charges against Flynn as being the result of a “perjury trap” laid by James Comey’s FBI.

In an interview with CBS News that aired on the same day the Justice Department filed the motion to dismiss, Barr explained the DOJ’s rationale. “It’s on the question of materiality that we feel really that a crime cannot be established here because there was not, in our view, a legitimate investigation going on,” he said. “They did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage, based on a perfectly legitimate and appropriate call he made as a member of the transition.”

Asked by Herridge if “the counterintelligence case against General Flynn was simply left open to lay a trap for lying,” Barr said, “Yes.”

“I think a very important evidence here was that this was not a bona fide counterintelligence investigation – was that they were closing the investigation in December,” he explained. “They started that process. And on January 4th, they were closing it. They initially tried some theories of how they could open another investigation, which didn’t fly. And then they found out that they had not technically closed the earlier investigation. And they kept it open for the express purpose of trying to catch, lay a perjury trap for General Flynn.”

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Grennell is quickly becoming my favorite President Trump appointee.

Grenell has done more for transparency in three months than Senator Graham has done in his entire Senate career.

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Attorney Sidney Powell announced on Tuesday morning that Team Flynn has just delivered to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit a Petition for Writ of Mandamus to correct Judge Sullivan’s unauthorized actions.

Here is the link to the Writ of Mandamus filing.

From the filing:

sidneypowell.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Petition-filed.pdf

RELIEF SOUGHT
Petitioner respectfully requests that this Court order the district court immediately to (1) grant the Justice Department’s Motion to Dismiss; (2) vacate its order appointing amicus curiae; and (3) reassign the case to another district judge as to any further proceedings.

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Acting DNI Richard Grenell on Tuesday declassified the remaining portion of Susan Rice’s email.

CBS reporter Catherine Herridge obtained the declassified email and released it to the public (screenshot below).

It was previously known the junk Russia dossier and General Flynn’s calls to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were discussed in the secret meeting.

The newly declassified portion of the email once again implicates Barack Obama and Comey!

Barack Obama and Comey discussed Flynn’s communications with Kislyak.

Comey suggested to Obama in the meeting that the National Security Council [NSC] might not want to pass “sensitive information related to Russia” to then-incoming National Security Adviser General Mike Flynn.

“President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn. Comey replied “potentially” and noted “the level of communication (w/Russian Ambassador) is unusual.”

Tom Fitton said a special counsel should be appointed to investigate the seditious conspiracy.

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thefederalist.com/2020/05/19/breaking-declassified-susan-rice-email-confirms-michael-flynn-was-personally-targeted-in-oval-office-meeting/

BREAKING: Declassified Susan Rice Email Confirms Michael Flynn Was Personally Targeted In Oval Office Meeting
Newly declassified portions of a key Susan Rice email confirm that Michael Flynn was personally targeted during a January 5 Oval Office meeting with Obama.
MAY 19, 2020 By Sean Davis
Michael Flynn was personally targeted during a crucial Jan. 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting arranged by then-President Barack Obama, a newly declassified document shows.

On Jan. 20, 2017, as President Donald Trump was being inaugurated, former White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice sent herself a bizarre email detailing the Jan. 5 meeting between her, Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and fired former Federal Bureau of Investigations Director James Comey. In the email, portions of which were not declassified until recently, Rice recorded that Flynn, who at the time was the incoming national security adviser for Trump, was personally discussed and targeted during the meeting with Obama.

www.scribd.com/document/462170596/Declassified-Susan-Rice-E-Mail-Targeting-Michael-Flynn#from_embed

From a national security perspective, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.” At the time, the Obama administration was actively spying on members of the Trump team as part of its Crossfire Hurricane investigation against Trump.

“Comey said he does have some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak,” Rice wrote in a portion of the email that was only recently declassified. “Comey said that could be an issue as it relates to sharing sensitive information.”

“President Obama asked if Comey was saying the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn,” Rice continued. “Comey replied ‘potentially.'”

“[Comey] added that he has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak, but he noted that ‘the level of communication is unusual.'” The email did not explain how it would be “unusual” for an incoming national security adviser to converse with foreign leaders ahead of a new president’s inauguration. Many observers believe the calls between Flynn and Kislyak were little more than pretext to hide the Obama administration’s spy campaign against Trump from the newly elected president’s team and to justify a continued inquisition against Flynn.

The newly declassified portions of the Jan. 5 Rice email confirm that the targeting of Flynn was coordinated within the inner sanctum of the White House and that both Obama and Biden were deeply involved in the campaign to take down Flynn.

Documents previously released and declassified showed that the FBI never possessed any evidence that Flynn was a secret Russian agent or that he had broken any laws. An FBI electronic communication closing the agency’s counterintelligence investigation against him, which was dated Jan. 4, made clear that “no derogatory information” about Flynn had been obtained during the months-long investigation of Flynn.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently determined that an ambush FBI interview of Flynn, which later formed the foundation of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s single charge against Flynn, had no legal basis. Contemporaneous handwritten notes from the FBI’s top counterintelligence official at the time show that the FBI’s goal in targeting Flynn in early 2017 was to “prosecute him or get him fired.” DOJ is currently in the process of dismissing all charges against Flynn, citing rank corruption and abuse of power in the FBI’s campaign against Flynn.

You can read the full email, including the newly declassified portions, here.

www.scribd.com/document/462170596/Declassified-Susan-Rice-E-Mail-Targeting-Michael-Flynn

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Where is Christopher Wray?

Reps Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Monday evening invited former FBI special agents Bill Priestap and Joe Pientka to appear before the Judiciary Committee.

Both Priestap and Pientka were involved in the Flynn ambush interview in January of 2017.

Unsealed handwritten FBI notes revealed the true intent of the FBI’s January 24, 2017, White House interview of General Flynn:

What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute [Flynn] or get him fired?” Bill Priestap wrote.

The FBI framed General Flynn.

Here’s how they planned to get Flynn removed:

1) Get Flynn “to admit to breaking the Logan Act”; or

2) Catch Flynn in a lie.

A few weeks ago, Jordan and Johnson demanded FBI Director Wray turn over all documents on the operation against Flynn and provide Priestap and Pientka for interviews.

After failing to hear from FBI Director Christopher Wray, hero Jim Jordan took the initiative and invited Bill Priestap and Joe Pientka to appear before the Judiciary Committee.

Ranking member Jim Jordan asked, “Where is Christopher Wray?”

The GOP lawmakers are seeking an interview with FBI special agent Joe Pientka, who still has yet to be questioned even though Grassley repeatedly requested to speak with Pientka.

On May 11, 2018, then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and then-Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein stating Comey testified the FBI didn’t think General Flynn lied.

Grassley also revealed Joe Pientka was the second FBI agent who joined Peter Strzok on January 24th, 2017 in an ambush style interview to take down General Flynn.

Rosenstein refused to give the Senate Judiciary Committee the requested documents. Instead, Rosenstein provided “insufficient” documents prompting Grassley to send a second scathing letter to the Deputy AG.

Here we are two years later and Republican lawmakers are still fighting to speak with special agent Joe Pientka.

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dailycaller.com/2020/05/19/jeffrey-lord-washington-post-obamagate/

It is 1973.

In his memoir “A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures,” the late Ben Bradlee, who served as the executive editor of The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal, proudly recalls the paper receiving the Pulitzer Prize for its work in relentlessly uncovering the scandal that had at its center the paper’s longtime adversary, Republican President Richard Nixon. Bradlee cites this specific salute to The Post from the Pulitzer jurors. The Post, the citation says:


“ … mobilized its total resources for a major investigation, spearheaded by two first-rate investigative reporters, Carl Bernstein and Robert Woodward. As their disclosures developed the Watergate case into a major political scandal of national proportions, The Post backed them up with strong editorials, many of them written by Roger Wilkins, and editorial cartoons drawn by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Herbert A. Block (Herblock).”

Nixon famously wound up resigning the presidency in disgrace to avoid certain impeachment. And in the run-up to his resignation the House Judiciary Committee did in fact pass Articles of Impeachment, although Nixon resigned before the full House could pass them. For those who came in late it is worth recalling that Article I specifically cited Nixon for “endeavoring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, [and] the Federal Bureau of Investigation … ” Article I also cited Nixon for “endeavoring to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency, an agency of the United States.” (RELATED: CODEVILLA: I Helped Write FISA. Let’s Destroy It)

The Post editorialized when Nixon resigned about the “terrible danger in which his wrongdoing put the nation for as long as it remained undiscovered and uncorrected.”

What a difference the passage of 47 years can make at The Post.


As recent days have unearthed now-declassified documents that plainly show multiples of Obama officials “unmasked” incoming Trump National Security adviser Michael Flynn, more detail is added to what was already a scandal involving the Obama administration’s abuse of the FBI and CIA. In the words of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board:

“The 2016 and 2017 spying on Trump officials and then leaking to promote a false narrative of collusion is one of the dirtiest tricks in the history of American politics. It is not ‘perfectly legitimate,’ and the public needs to know the full story behind it.”

And the response of The Post to what critics have quickly dubbed “Obamagate?” Out comes an editorial titled: “The absurd cynicism of ‘Obamagate’” in which the paper that received a Pulitzer Prize for investigating a president who abused the power of the FBI and CIA now says that when another president — this one a president they endorsed and lionized for eight years — is accused, with evidence, of having his administration abuse the power of the FBI and CIA? Now there is no relentless Post investigation. Instead, for The Post 47 years after Watergate, Obamagate is all just one big no-never-mind.

The now-documented charge that the Obama administration abused its power — including committing the federal crime of leaking the classified details of Flynn’s conversations and leaking it to The Post — is, says The Post, “totally untethered from reality, despite the credulous or cynical efforts of senior Republicans and conservative media to advance it.” (RELATED: How The FBI Used ‘News Hooks’ To Advance The Trump-Russia Probe)


Suffice to say, the illegal leak by the Obama administration of classified information to, yes, The Post, is in fact a federal crime.

Considering The Post’s one-time insistence that all of the paper’s resources be poured into a relentless investigation to find out what Nixon knew of Watergate and when did he know it, it is more than curious that it has refrained from pouring the same resources into an investigation of former President Barack Obama and Obamagate.


Unless, of course, it isn’t curious at all.

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Fun flashback:

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Sidney Powell appeared on Fox Business to discuss Judge Sullivan’s latest dirty move against Flynn.

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How many times have we seen that the wife of a politician or a crooked Deep State operative is in a position of influence. Now we know that Rep. Jamin Raskin, who participated in the unconstitutional and corrupt Schiff impeachment presentation to the Senate, has a wife who unmasked General Flynn.

www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/05/19/heres-why-so-many-treasury-department-officials-requested-unmaskings-of-gen.-flynn/

We all wondered why the names of so many Obama Treasury Department officials appeared on the list of those who requested unmaskings of Gen. Michael Flynn’s telephone calls. The requests all came on December 14, 2016 and were made by then-Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew (Lew made a second request on January 12, 2017), then-Acting Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Arthur “Danny” McGlynn, then-Acting Assistant Deputy Secretary Mike Neufeld, then-Deputy Secretary Sarah Raskin, then-Under Secretary Nathan Sheets and then Acting Under Secretary Adam Szubin.

(Note: Sarah Raskin is married to anti-Trumper Rep. Jamin B. “Jamie” Raskin (D.-Md.), who served as one of the House Managers in the Senate impeachment trial.)

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OH look, actual evidence of a quid pro quo taking place. I'll eagerly await the MSM to begin their calls for an investigation into this.

www.dailywire.com/news/ukrainian-lawmaker-releases-recorded-phone-calls-of-biden-poroshenko-that-contain-eyebrow-raising-remarks

Ukrainian Lawmaker Releases Recorded Phone Calls Of Biden, Poroshenko That Contain Eyebrow-Raising Remarks

Andriy Derkach, an independent member of Ukraine’s parliament, said at a press conference on Tuesday that he had received recorded phone call conversations between presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, then-vice president in the Obama administration, and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which Derkach reportedly played at the press conference.

The Washington Post reported that the “recordings of private phone calls between former vice president Joe Biden and former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko” were “a new broadside against the presumptive Democratic nominee for U.S. president.”

The Post reports that Derkach has past links to Russian intelligence and that he claimed that the tapes were made by Poroshenko. The Post noted that the clips consisted of “edited fragments of phone conversations Biden and Poroshenko” but did not dispute that the clips were authentic.

The Post said that recordings “shed relatively little new light on Biden’s actions in Ukraine,” which were hotly contested last year.

However, one particular exchange stood out as being potentially newsworthy.

It was widely reported last year that Biden bragged to a group of people in 2018 that he threatened Poroshenko that if he did not fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was on the board of, that the U.S. would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees from Ukraine.

In one of the audio clips that Derkach allegedly released dated February 18, 2016, Poroshenko appeared to tell Biden [emphasis added]:

I have some positive and negative news. I will start with positive news. … Yesterday, I met with the General Prosecutor Shokin. And despite the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong, I specifically asked him – no, it was a day before yesterday – I specifically asked him to resign … as his position as a state person. And despite of the fact that he has a support in the power and as a finish of meeting with him, he promised me to give me the statement on resignation. And one hour ago he bring me the written statement of his resignation. And this is my second step for keeping my promises.
USA Today reported last year that, according to former Obama administration officials and an anti-corruption advocate in Ukraine, the reason that Biden pushed for Shokin to be fired was that “Shokin wasn’t pursuing corruption among the country’s politicians.” The Post cites a scandal that “erupted under [Shokin’s] watch in which prosecutors were found with bags of diamonds and stashes of cash” and Shokin having “clashed with two young prosecutors whom Western officials hoped would clean up what has long been a corrupt office.”

Biden spokesman Andrew Bates responded to the release of the tapes by claiming, “They heavily edited this, and it’s still a nothingburger that landed with a thud.”

Here is how The Post summarized the aforementioned phone call:

In one call, Poroshenko reported to Biden that he had met with Shokin and asked for his resignation and that Shokin had, an hour before the call, complied and written a letter resigning from his post. Poroshenko described the move as the “second step of keeping my promises.”
The Post did not mention that Poroshenko allegedly told Biden that he didn’t “have any information about [Shokin] doing something wrong” when he asked Shokin to resign from his position, which Biden had said must happen in order for Ukraine to get the $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.

It is not clear whether there is any missing context or comments in the alleged remarks that Poroshenko made to Biden that could change the meaning of what was said between the two.

LISTEN:



President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., highlighted another leaked audio clip that allegedly showed portions of a private phone call between Biden and Poroshenko from a conversation that supposedly took place on May 13, 2016. Transcript of that clip below:

THEN-VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Hey Mr. President, Joe Biden. How are you?

THEN-UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT PETRO POROSHENKO: Very well indeed, as usual, when I hear your voice. Thank you very much.

BIDEN: Well you are doing very well, congratulations on getting the new Prosecutor General. I know there is a lot more that has to be done, but I really, I really think that’s, I think that’s good. And I understand your working with Rada in the coming days on a number of additional laws to secure the IMF. But congratulations on installing the new Prosecutor General, it’s going to be critical for him to work quickly to repair the damage Shokin did. And I’m a man of my word and now that the new Prosecutor General is in place, we’re ready to forward to signing that new $1 billion loan guarantee. And I don’t know how you want to go about that. I’m not going to be able to get to Kyiv anytime soon, I mean, next month or so. And, and I don’t know whether you could either sign it with our ambassador or if you came here, we could sign or if you want, we’re inviting Groysman here later. I’m going to be talking to him later this morning, not for that purpose, we’re inviting him to Washington and so I’ll leave it up to you as to how you want that done and when you want it done.

POROSHENKO: First of all, thank you very much indeed for these words of support. Believe me, that it was a very tough challenge and a very difficult job and Mrs. Tymoshenko and Mr. Lyashko fraction tried to break this because we not only voted for the new Prosecutor General, which we do in a very short period of time, within one day we changed the law. By the way, in this law we are presenting the set, the new structure of the General Prosecutor’s Office, including the General Inspection as we agreed with you. And the second thing, I immediately invited Lutsenko and said that he should contact your embassy and I would be very pleased if you will have certain person, who can come either from Washington or whatever. We have here – I don’t remember his name – the Ukrainian origin American prosecutor. He is a little bit old. I sent to the Jeffrey his name, and he was ready to come and to be assistant and adviser. He has a very good experience in the American system and he can be the person of trust within new prosecution system. I think this is exactly the right time to do that. And if he’s still ready to come and to cooperate from the very first step, from the very first minute of the new Prosecutor, that is exactly what I’m looking for.

BIDEN: Well, let me, let me get in contact with the Justice Department and pursue that. I’ll get his name and let me find out where that is, because it is in our interest, obviously, to provide professional assistance as quick as we can. So this gets up and started it in the right direction. So, I will move on that as soon as we hang up. I’ll put that in train and I’ll get back to you as to what we are, what I am able to do.

POROSHENKO: Absolutely. Second, thank you very much indeed, this is exactly what I am looking for. The second thing is that I want to thank you that you give me your word that immediately when we change the legislation and I appoint the new Prosecutor General, and it would be Yuriy Lutsenko as we agreed on our previous meeting in Washington and when it happen, we can have this loan guarantee and thank you very much…
WATCH:

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Former US Attorney Brett L. Tolman spoke out about the Susan Rice email to herself. In a series of tweets, he shows that Rice’s efforts were not only to cover her and Obama’s behinds, they were to cover everyone’s behinds. Unfortunately for all, the effort backfired.

Tolman shares his thoughts on Rice’s ‘CEA’ effort for all involved:

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thefederalist.com/2020/05/20/6-ways-the-obama-administration-railroaded-the-rule-of-law-to-destroy-michael-flynn/

6 Ways The Obama Administration Railroaded The Rule Of Law To Destroy Michael Flynn
The fact that the Obama administration targeted Flynn isn’t just a crime against him, but a crime against our constitutional system.
Krystina Skurk
By Krystina Skurk
MAY 20, 2020
In prosecuting Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Obama administration holdovers used the appointment of a special counsel to weaponize the legal system. After finding no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia to influence the 2016 election, Robert Mueller’s team had to justify continuing their investigation by going after Flynn for a crime even James Comey’s FBI didn’t believe he committed.

1. Unmasking and Leaking
The decision to prosecute Flynn was not the first nor the last affront to due process or the rule of law Flynn suffered at the hands of the Obama administration. Recently released documents from Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell reveal there were 49 requests to unmask Flynn’s name in just two months, meaning attempts to reveal his identity in intercepted communications, particularly those between Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.


These requests came from officials such as Joe Biden, Obama’s chief of staff Denis McDonough, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and UN Ambassador Samantha Power. Power alone submitted 300 requests to unmask American citizens in less than a year. These new facts vindicate the claims of Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., from three years ago that there was wide-scale unmasking of Trump officials by the Obama administration.

Almost every report from mainstream media sources states that unmasking is commonplace. “Nothing to see here,” they say. Yet looking at unmasking from a constitutional perspective paints a different picture.

It is illegal to spy on an American citizen without a warrant. To do so is a breach of that citizen’s right to due process and of protections against undue search and seizure. So when an American citizen’s phone conversation with a foreign national is inadvertently recorded, the law dictates the American’s name be masked. While unmasking is at times necessary, it should be done with the utmost of caution.

Flynn’s constitutional rights were obviously not considered in the Obama administration’s frenzied search for a crime. The Obama administration was intent that Flynn not be Trump’s national security adviser. They advised the Trump transition team not to hire Flynn, but were ignored.


The fact that the Obama administration targeted Flynn isn’t just a crime against him, but a crime against our constitutional system. The Obama administration had no right to try to handicap Trump’s foreign policy or to ensure that a corrupt investigation into a presidential candidate continue as a clandestine investigation into a sitting president.

To make matters worse, not only was Flynn’s name unmasked, but the contents of his call with Kislyak were leaked to the press. While unmasking isn’t a crime, leaking certainly is, and can carry a sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison. Leaks were commonly used as a political weapon during the early days of the Trump administration. Three leaks were made to the Washington Post from this call alone. To date, no one has answered for these crimes.

2. The Sham Crossfire Razor Investigation
The FBI’s reasons for opening a sub-investigation into Flynn called Crossfire Razor are ridiculous. The first reason given was Flynn’s service as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

The campaign was already being investigated in the umbrella case known as Crossfire Hurricane. This investigation was predicated on an uncorroborated dossier paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. In Comey’s FBI, any type of association with Trump was reason enough to release the full force of the bureau’s investigative powers — just ask Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.


Another reason Flynn was targeted was because of a trip he took to Russia in 2015. After the trip, stories came out about Flynn’s meeting with various Russian state actors as well as an alleged affair with Svetlana Lokhova, a supposed Russian spy.

Just a few problems with this story: Lokhova is not a Russian spy, and she has sued the Wall Street Journal for publishing this claim, not the likely move of an actual spy. She and Flynn also both deny having an affair and assert they only met once at a Cambridge dinner. Further, newly released documents confirm that Stefan Halper was the FBI’s confidential human source that peddled this false information, the same Stefan Halper who spied on Papadopoulos, Page, and Sam Clovis.

Additionally, Flynn very well may have met Russian state actors, as it was his job. What most accounts leave out is that after his trip, he gave a full report to the Defense Intelligence Agency and had cleared the trip with the Pentagon.

One reason using the 2015 Russia trip to investigate Flynn is ridiculous is that in April 2016, the Obama administration had renewed Flynn’s top secret/sensitive compartmented information clearance, meaning he passed extensive background checks and a polygraph test. One of the newly released documents is a case-closed memo, written Jan. 4. An FBI agent wrote that they found “no derogatory” evidence that Flynn committed a crime or posed a national security threat. However, agent Peter Strzok rescinded the memo, saying the seventh floor (FBI leadership) was now involved.

3. The FBI Interview

Flynn was further victimized when the FBI ambushed him. In an unprecedented and underhanded move, Comey sent two FBI agents to the White House to interview Flynn about his phone call with Kislyak. In so doing, Comey bypassed the normal procedure of going through the Department of Justice and the White House Counsel’s office.

Not only did Comey not go through the DOJ, he defied the wishes of Sally Yates, a former deputy attorney general. She and others had expressed concerns about interviewing Flynn without proper procedures. She was ignored. As Comey now infamously said in a televised interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace: “I sent them. Something I would not have ordinarily done with a more organized administration.”

Newly released documents reveal some of the behind-the-scenes conversations taking place among FBI agents about the interview, including discussions about its purpose. Was it to find out the truth, or get Flynn to lie so he would be fired or prosecuted?

Also discussed was how to trick Flynn into not realizing he was at an official FBI interview, how to get around the legal requirement to inform Flynn that lying to the FBI was a crime, and how to get him not to bring a lawyer. To schedule the meeting, then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe called Flynn and asked whether some FBI agents could meet with him, telling Flynn “it was no big deal” and it would be easier if he could just meet with the agents alone.

Normal interview procedures were not followed. Flynn wasn’t shown a transcript of his call and instead was asked to recall from memory a conversation he had weeks prior.

Flynn didn’t deny talking about sanctions. He said he didn’t know and that it was possible he and Kislyak had talked about sanctions, although he didn’t think so. Flynn would have been stupid to lie, as he admitted to McCabe in the phone call that set up the interview that he was sure the FBI had a recording of the call. “You listen to everything they say,” Flynn told McCabe.

In their motion to dismiss, the DOJ has decided that even if Flynn did lie, since there was no legitimate investigation going on, it was not material to the case and was therefore not a violation of law.

There are, however, major doubts that he lied in the first place. Strzok and Joe Pientka, the two agents who interviewed Flynn, left the meeting believing that though he hadn’t gotten the particulars of his call correct, he displayed no behavior that indicated he was lying. Pientka had even attended a briefing with Flynn prior to the interview to get an understanding of his baseline demeanor to compare with the interview to follow.

According to Yates, the FBI wasn’t even sure what kind of investigation they were operating. They seemed to morph between describing it as a counterintelligence investigation and a criminal investigation. In the end, it wasn’t an investigation at all, but a setup, a perjury trap.

A perjury trap occurs when the facts are known to the prosecutors or investigators and the only purpose of the interview is to catch the subject in a false statement. Then-Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Bill Priestap wrote in a note that he was afraid the FBI was “playing games” with the interview to get Flynn to lie so they could either prosecute him or get him fired.

He conveyed his concerns to McCabe and Comey, but was ignored. A handwritten note by Priestap reads, “What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

4. Misuse of the Logan Act
The Logan Act was used as the pretense for the FBI’s interview of Flynn as well as for Yates’ campaign to get Flynn fired. As Mark Hemingway quips, the fact that the Logan Act is still on the books is an “accident of history.”

The law is considered by almost all legal experts to be unconstitutional. Passed in 1799, it has been used to prosecute only two cases, neither successfully, and last in 1852. The law makes it illegal for a private citizen to speak with a foreign government about policy in a way that contradicts the current administration’s policy.

Applying this law to Flynn’s phone call with Kislyak is problematic for several reasons. First, this antiquated law is an obvious infringement on the First Amendment right to free speech. The only reason the law hasn’t been struck down is because it hasn’t been prosecuted since the creation of the DOJ.

Second, the Logan Act is violated all the time and often far more publicly than Flynn’s phone call. Dennis Rodman and John Kerry are just a couple of the famous perpetrators, yet there has never been talk of prosecuting them.

In reality, the Logan Act was a mere pretense. Obama, the FBI, and the DOJ all knew it wasn’t going to be used to prosecute Flynn. They simply used the Logan Act as a tool to get Flynn fired. McCabe testified that he was told a prosecution under the Logan Act was a long shot. In a DOJ memo, Mary McCord, assistant attorney general at the time, said a Logan Act prosecution seemed like a stretch.

5. Flynn’s Prosecution and Guilty Plea
Flynn was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which makes it a federal crime to “knowingly and willfully” make a false statement of “a material fact” to a federal official.

More evidence has come out to indicate that Flynn’s plea was coerced. It turns out the prosecution threatened to prosecute Flynn’s son for Foreign Agents Registration Act violations unless Flynn senior pleaded guilty. Even worse, the prosecution sought to keep this deal off the books so they would not have to reveal it when using Flynn to testify against his business partner. This is a violation of Giglio disclosures and demonstrates the prosecution’s disregard for the rule of law.

Further, the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence from Flynn’s defense team. They withheld the emails, texts, and handwritten notes of FBI agents that demonstrated Flynn was being set up and that there was no underlying investigation. They also withheld texts between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page that prove they significantly edited the original 302 document.

Both Nunes and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, requested materials on Flynn’s case and other related matters more than two years ago, but were told such records did not exist.

6. Judge Sullivan Taking the Law into His Own Hands
In an unprecedented move, Judge Emmet Sullivan has put the motion to dismiss charges against Flynn on hold. He will allow friends of the court to argue against the dismissal.

Sullivan’s moves act against two controlling precedents, according to Mark Chenoweth, executive director of the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Just one week ago, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticized the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for similar tactics.

As Margot Cleveland argues, the Constitution makes clear that it is not the judiciary’s role to second-guess prosecutorial decisions. Based on mandatory precedent from the D.C. Circuit Court in United States v. Fokker, the prosecutorial role lies squarely within the executive branch.

This move by Sullivan is like a bad sequel. Flynn has suffered unjustly enough: first at the hands of the Obama administration, then at the hands of overzealous prosecutors, and now at the hands of an activist judge. It is time to let the man move on with his life

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2020/05/20/gop-sens-increasingly-concerned-surveillance-of-trump-campaign-began-before-crossfire-hurricane/

GOP Sens. ‘Increasingly Concerned’ Surveillance Of Trump Campaign Began Before Crossfire Hurricane
MAY 20, 2020 By Tristan Justice
Two top Republican senators have expanded their request for records related to the “unmasking” of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to include information prior to the start of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane operation, which began in July 2016.

On Wednesday, acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassified the names of those in the White House involved in revealing Flynn’s identity as a U.S. citizen corresponding with a foreign actor, as requested by Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Flynn had held discussions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition as the incoming national security advisor. This became the alleged basis for the grand Russian collusion conspiracy and the key to setting up Flynn in a perjury trap.


Names in the declassified report of White House officials targeting Flynn include top intelligence chiefs, including Obama CIA Director John Brennan, Obama Department of National Intelligence Director James Clapper, former Obama Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, and former Vice President Joe Biden.

“We write now both to reiterate our request for the declassification of additional information related to the unmasking of Americans around the time of the 2016 election, but also to expand the scope of our request to include information as early as January 2016,” Grassley and Johnson wrote. “Based on our investigation and recent press reports, we are increasingly concerned that the surveillance of U.S. persons affiliated with the Trump campaign began earlier than the opening of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation in late July 2016.”

Sens. Grassley and Johnson say the administration’s deep-state surveillance operation on the Trump campaign involved unmasking even more U.S. citizens tied to the campaign that preceded the official launch of Crossfire Hurricane. Since it is a crime to surveil American citizens without a probable cause, their names are usually redacted on surveillance transcripts. Unmasking uncovers their identities.

“It has become evident that the FBI, and possibly members of the U.S. Intelligence Community, were focused on U.S. persons affiliated with the Trump campaign in early 2016, if not even earlier,” the senators wrote. “One example is that, in April 2016, FBI headquarters directed its New York Field Office to open a counterintelligence investigation of Carter Page, which on August 10, 2016, became part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

The senators’ expanded request marks a significant escalation into the unraveling of the previous administration’s surveillance scandal dubbed “Obamagate” and “Spygate,” as new information reveals the level to which the Obama White House went to prevent President Donald Trump from holding power. On Tuesday, newly declassified excerpts from former National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s bizarre inauguration day email sent to herself confirm that Flynn was a prime target at a Jan. 5, 2017 Oval office meeting between Obama, Rice, Biden, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and then-FBI Director James Comey.

“From a national security perspective, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia,” Rice wrote while the administration was conducting secret surveillance on U.S. citizens in the Trump campaign and transition team. “Comey said he does have some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak… President Obama asked if Comey was saying the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn. Comey replied ‘potentially.'”

Three years later, and after a two-and-a-half year special counsel investigation with unlimited resources conducted by Robert Mueller buoyed by endless media coverage, the Mueller report found not one person on the Trump campaign, let alone the president himself, spied for the Russian government

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2020/05/20/susan-rices-email-proves-fbi-had-no-legitimate-reason-to-question-flynn/


Susan Rice’s Email Proves FBI Had No Legitimate Reason To Question Flynn
The recently declassified paragraph in Susan Rice’s email confirms the FBI had no valid investigative purpose for questioning Flynn on January 24, 2017.
Margot Cleveland
By Margot Cleveland
MAY 20, 2020
Yesterday’s release of Susan Rice’s inauguration-day email to herself provided further evidence of former President Barack Obama’s participation in the FBI’s targeting of Michael Flynn. The recently declassified paragraph in Rice’s email, however, proves significant for another reason: It confirms the FBI had no valid investigative purpose for questioning Flynn on January 24, 2017.

In February 2018, Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham announced that as part of their efforts to conduct oversight of the FBI and DOJ they had discovered “a partially unclassified email sent by President Obama’s former National Security Advisor (NSA) Susan Rice to herself on January 20, 2017—President Trump’s inauguration day.”


At the time, the Republican senators noted that in her email Rice “purport[ed] to document a meeting that had taken place more than two weeks before, on January 5, 2017,” and then quoted the unclassified portions of the document:

On January 5, following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present.
President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book’. The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.
From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.
The next paragraph was redacted, but Rice then concluded by writing, “The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team.”

On Tuesday, the previously redacted paragraph was declassified, and buried behind the blackout were details of the Obama administration’s focus on Flynn:

Director Comey affirmed that he is proceeding ‘by the book’ as it relates to law enforcement. From a national security perspective, Comey said he does have some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. Comey said that could be an issue as it relates to sharing sensitive information. President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn. Comey replied ‘potentially.’ He added that he has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak, but he noted that ‘the level of communication is unusual.’
This paragraph reveals several significant details. First, Comey distinguished between law enforcement and national security, and was not proceeding “by the book” related to the latter. Second, Obama knew of Comey’s intent and condoned the withholding of information from the incoming administration.


Now, thanks to the additional declassification, we know the purported concerns about Flynn were specific: Comey told President Obama he was concerned about the level of communication with Kislyak and raised the possibility that Flynn might pass classified information to Kislyak.

Of course, it would be entirely normal and appropriate for Flynn to speak with the Russian ambassador as part of the Trump transition team, and there is no reason to believe Flynn would share classified information with Kislyak. In fact, we know from the FBI’s closing memorandum on Flynn that a thorough investigation had revealed no derogatory information.

But Comey cautioned Obama otherwise. Why? And why did Rice belatedly document this conversation?

Possibility one: Comey, and in turn Rice and Obama, truly believed Flynn was compromised and might hand classified information to the Russians. But if that was the case, it was inexcusable for Comey not to brief President-elect Trump on that fear. And it was inexcusable for then-President Obama not to direct Comey to provide that briefing.


The second possibility is that no one suspected Flynn of being a Russian agent, but the FBI needed a pretext to continue to investigate Flynn so it could justify withholding details of the broader Crossfire Hurricane investigation from Flynn and thereby Trump. Either possibility is a huge political scandal that runs right through Comey to Obama.

However, there is a second significance to the details released yesterday, namely the declassified paragraph, when read together with other recently released documents, confirms that when FBI Agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka questioned Flynn on January 24, 2017, the FBI had no valid investigative purpose.

It was during that January 24, 2017 questioning of Flynn that the retired general purportedly lied to Strzok and Pientka about his conversations with Kislyak. In late 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, but later sought to withdraw his guilty plea.

While that motion was pending, U.S. Attorney General William Barr ordered an independent review of the Flynn prosecution. That review, conducted by Missouri-based U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, revealed the lead prosecuting attorney—a hold-over from the special counsel’s office—Brandon Van Grack, had withheld exculpatory evidence from Flynn’s attorneys. That evidence included a January 4, 2017, FBI memorandum closing the investigation into Flynn and a series of text messages showing Strzok short-circuited the case closing by orders from above.


Also uncovered were handwritten notes discussing the FBI’s planned January 24, 2017 interview of Flynn, and scribbles questioning the motive: Was it to get the truth? Or was it to get Flynn to lie to get him prosecuted or fired?

That evidence, and Jensen’s independent investigation, led the DOJ to conclude that the January 24, 2017 interview “was not conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore, even if Flynn made false statements, they were not material.” Based on this conclusion, the D.C. U.S. attorney filed a motion to dismiss the criminal charge against Flynn.

Rather than toss out the criminal charge, however, presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan appointed a biased former judge as an amicus curiae to argue against dismissal. Yesterday, Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell filed an emergency petition (called a petition for a writ of mandamus) with the D.C. Circuit Court, asking the appellate court to direct Sullivan—or a newly assigned judge—to dismiss the charge.

Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, pundits have been debating the propriety of the motion to dismiss. Those condemning Barr’s decision to drop the charge against Flynn have argued that the FBI’s ongoing Russia collusion investigation provided FBI agents a proper predicate to question Flynn. While the FBI may have intended to close the investigation into Flynn on January 4, 2017, critics argue, the discovery of Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak raised new questions related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, justifying the questioning of Flynn.

Rice’s email spoils that talking point, because she lays out Comey’s supposed counterintelligence concern: that Flynn may be passing classified information to Russia. But between January 5, 2017, when Comey told Obama about his misgivings, and January 24, 2017, when the FBI questioned Flynn, the FBI must have ruled out that possibility.

How do we know? Because the handwritten notes discussing the purpose of the interview were silent on that possibility. Bill Priestap, the former FBI counterintelligence head, after asking if the FBI’s goal was “truth” or “to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired,” spoke of “getting” Flynn “to admit [his] wrongdoing.” And the only wrongdoing suggested was the Logan Act—an antiquated and most assuredly unconstitutional law that no one even pretends would serve as the basis for a legitimate investigation.

So, contrary to the left’s current talking points, the discovery of Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak did not provide a basis to question Flynn on January 24, 2017, because the FBI had already ruled out any connection between those conversations and the Russia collusion investigation. And there was no other proper investigative purpose to questioning Flynn. That is why the government sought to dismiss the charge against Flynn.

Whether, and when, the government will be able to do so, remains unclear. But we should know more later today on the schedule the D.C. Circuit sets for resolving Flynn’s petition for a writ of mandamus

[soonernvolved]

www.nationalreview.com/news/declassified-susan-rice-email-shows-comey-had-no-indication-flynn-passed-classified-info-to-russian-ambassador/

Declassified Susan Rice Email Shows Comey Had ‘No Indication’ Flynn Passed Classified Info to Russian Ambassador
By TOBIAS HOONHOUT
May 19, 2020 3:41 PM

In a newly declassified email that Susan Rice sent to herself on January 20, 2017, the former national-security adviser said that former FBI director James Comey had “no indication” that Michael Flynn had passed along classified information to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but stipulated that Comey was nevertheless wary about sharing sensitive information with Flynn because of the frequency of his contact with Kislyak.

The document, reportedly declassified by acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, says that Comey said he was “proceeding ‘by the book’ as it relates to law enforcement,” and that he had “concerns” that Flynn, Trump’s former national-security adviser, was “speaking frequently” with Kislyak.

Flynn and Kislyak spoke five times in December 2016 after President Obama signed an executive order that announced sanctions against Russia for trying to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In the calls, which were monitored by the FBI, Flynn told the Russian ambassador not to escalate tensions, which Russia agreed to.

“President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn. Comey replied ‘potentially,’” the email reads. “He added that he has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak, but he noted that ‘the level of communication is unusual.’”

Flynn was interviewed by the FBI on January 24, 2017, about his calls with Kislyak, and subsequently pleaded guilty to “materially false statements and omissions” stemming from the questioning. In 2018, Comey admitted that he “sent” the agents to interview Flynn in the White House, adding that it was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration.” Comey also told Fox News’s Bret Baier in a 2018 interview that he “didn’t believe” and “didn’t say” that the agents who interviewed Flynn found him to be truthful — contradicting multiple accounts of his 2017 briefing to lawmakers about the interview.

52
The Justice Department, which earlier this month moved to drop its case against Flynn after a review, explained in its filing that Flynn’s interview was not “conducted with a legitimate investigative basis” and was immaterial “even if untrue.” Recently released documents showed that the FBI moved to close its investigation of Flynn on January 4, 2017 — a day before the Oval Office meeting discussed in the Rice email — after finding “no derogatory information” with respect to Flynn’s Russian contacts. But FBI agent Peter Strzok intervened to request that the case be kept open, revealing that the “7th floor,” a FBI euphemism for senior leadership, was “involved.”

Rice’s email was sent to herself 15 days after the Oval Office meeting. Former deputy attorney general Sally Yates testified that she was “so surprised” to hear Obama asking about Flynn’s communications with Kislyak in the meeting, because she had not been aware of the calls herself.

[soonernvolved]

www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/the-arts-of-government-criminality/

The Arts of Government Criminality
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
May 19, 2020 6:30 AM

Destroying or altering evidence, lying under oath, leaking classified info … but no pre-dawn televised raid for any of the wrongdoers.
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE
In the entire 2016–19 efforts to derail the Trump campaign, transition, and presidency, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Steele, and the FBI, Department of Justice, CIA, and other government bureaus have consistently sought to distort reality. Some of our best and brightest have destroyed evidence, altered documents, lied, leaked, and pled amnesia when questioned about their reprehensible conduct. At each stage, they were aided and abetted by a compliant media.

The dissimulation over the past four years has fallen into four rough categories. Here are a few examples of each.



Deletion of Evidence

Christopher Steele, who bragged for years of his meticulous research and whose work has been quoted chapter and verse as proof of Trump wrongdoing, recently testified under oath to a British court that he now has no records of his supposed conversations with “sub source” Russian informants. His lawyers previously had insisted that his sources were “meticulously documented and recorded.” Now Steele sheepishly admits that such an assertion was a lie, given that he can produce no evidence at all for his meticulous allegations. He admits that his emails and documents were wiped clean from his devices by January 2017.

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FBI operatives working with the Mueller investigation team admitted that thousands of undisclosed text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page simply disappeared. In addition, the phones of Strzok and Page apparently were wiped clean after Strzok was dismissed from the Mueller team. Most of these mysterious losses, according to the Mueller investigation, were supposedly a result of a software glitch or other computer malfunctions.

Hillary Clinton, remember, had her lawyers delete some 33,000 emails that were subpoenaed by the FBI; she claimed that they were private and not work-related. The FBI, however, subsequently recovered a few thousand of them from her private server. Among that trove, it found, to the contrary, several emails that were in fact work-related and could have easily been compromised.

Why destroy evidence if one has nothing to hide? And why would all these deleters and erasers at one time or another be found working for the most esteemed agencies of the U.S. and U.K.?



Doctoring / Altering / Falsifying Documents

The inspector general Michael Horowitz found that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith altered an email that he submitted as part of a FISA court request to monitor Carter Page. The CIA had confirmed to Clinesmith, in an email, that Page had been a source for the CIA working on behalf of the United States. Clinesmith altered this email to make it say that Page had not worked for the CIA. Apparently, his FBI superiors either did not know of Clinesmith’s felonious behavior or ignored it, despite the FBI’s role in obtaining government permission to surveille a U.S. citizen who has never been charged with a crime — though the government did leak to the press that Page was under surveillance.

In addition, FBI attorney Lisa Page and Peter Strzok altered the 302 report of the FBI’s Flynn questioning, again apparently in an effort to misrepresent the agents’ on-site and initially positive impressions that Flynn was truthful, despite the circumstances of the agents’ planned perjury ambush. Apparently the original 302 had become so heavily altered, with Page sending edits to Strzok, who inserted them into the file alongside his own changes, that the FBI eventually submitted instead as evidence a later interview of Strzok’s about his original interview of Flynn. The original 302 is apparently nowhere to be found and may well have been also destroyed.

On Inauguration Day, 15 minutes after Trump took the oath of office, outgoing National Security Adviser Susan Rice strangely concocted an email sent to herself, to post facto reconstruct the January 5 West Wing meeting of President Obama and his intelligence heads that had coordinated reports of ongoing surveillance of the Trump campaign and his presidential transition. Why would Rice write an email for the record to herself on her last day in office?



Can’t Remember / Don’t Know / Lying

Samantha Power testified to Congress that she could not remember her own requests to the NSA for the identities of more than 300 redacted American names swept up in government surveillance. In response, Congressman Trey Gowdy described her as “the largest unmasker of U.S. persons in our history” — a curious obsession with espionage and intelligence for a U.N. ambassador. Did Power have sudden memory loss while testifying under oath, or was her office a de facto clearinghouse for dozens of lower-level operatives who sought her pro forma signature to allow them to request unmaskings of such redactions? Or was the Harvard-trained lawyer simply lying under oath? Did she assume that no one of her stature who lies to Congress — compare the exemptions given congressional prevaricators such as James Clapper and John Brennan — is ever held to account? Apparently not in Power’s mind, when in March 2018 she warned Donald Trump about the reach even then of former CIA director John Brennan: “Not a good idea to piss off John Brennan.”

James Comey on 245 occasions could not remember or did not know the answer when asked factual questions by the House Intelligence Committee. Did the FBI stickler for memorializing presidential conversations and taking notes nonstop simply have an unplugged moment like Power, or is he suffering some of the same cognitive issues that now challenge Joe Biden?

Robert Mueller on 198 occasions told House members while under oath that he could not answer their questions because he didn’t know, he couldn’t remember, he couldn’t speculate, or he couldn’t get into such matters. He seemed oblivious to the role that the Steele dossier and Fusion GPS had played in the entire collusion mythography — as Congress was left to speculate whether Mueller was either lying or non compos mentis, or a figurehead who knew nothing about the basic facts and nomenclature of his own 22-month investigation.

Clapper, McCabe, and Comey could not remember or indeed cite any incriminating evidence of Trump–Russia collusion in their respective testimonies before the House Intelligence Committee. But all most certainly acted as if they could when they appeared on cable television as paid analysts. Obviously, CNN and MSNBC do not pay good money for marquee insiders who can only offer their television audiences “I don’t remember” and “I don’t know” and “not to my knowledge” in the manner that they discussed the same topics under oath before Congress.

Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe was cited on at least three occasions by the IG for giving false information. But so what, when President Obama himself said that he had no idea that his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was communicating over an illegal private server — at least until he was reminded that he himself had communicated with her over it multiple times.



Leaking Classified Documents

The FBI Steele dossier was leaked by the FBI — most likely by the FBI’s top lawyer James Baker — to Yahoo and Mother Jones before the election.

James Comey via a friend leaked to the media his classified memos of private presidential conversations. After he admitted his illegal leaks, Comey’s former friends and subordinates in the FBI, including Page and Strzok, post facto determined that the leaked memos were — mirabile dictu — almost all not so secret and thus the leaks were not actionable. But even if Comey’s friends had not classified his presidential memos as merely “confidential,” Comey had an out. Later he claimed that his conduit to the media, Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia University and Comey’s close friend, was his own personal attorney. Thus, he signaled that he could exercise attorney-client privilege to avoid testifying at all about the leaked memos in any proposed criminal trial.

There were numerous other illegal leakers. Who leaked to the press the unmasking of Michael Flynn, both his conversation with the Russian ambassador and the fact that he was interrogated by the FBI? We will likely no more learn of the leaker’s identity than we will discover which lawyer of the Mueller dream team leaked in advance to the media the written questions about “collusion” and “obstruction” that they were sending to Trump.

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There are three things to remember about all the above illegality.

The perpetrators all are self-described elites and our best and brightest. They were after the supposed scoundrel Trump. So they felt that such a noble quest justified any means necessary to snare such an upstart menace. They have no remorse, about either breaking the law or acting unethically.
If you, Joe Citizen, dare to leak classified information, lie to federal investigators, destroy subpoenaed evidence, or testify to an IRS auditor that you can’t remember, don’t know, or would not choose to speculate, you most certainly will go to jail. These miscreants apparently were initially convinced that Hillary Clinton would be president, much of the Obama team would remain in power for 16 years, and their illegal behavior would be praised and rewarded, if not become the basis for promotion and advancement.
There is likely little chance that any of the above will be convicted and for several reasons:
As a rule, we don’t like to jail those with letters of certification after their name. Nor do we convict those who claim to be our bipartisan “wise” public servants who have purportedly sacrificed so much on our behalf. Nor do we indict and go after any who were close to presidents and thus might flip or turn state’s evidence to save themselves by ruining the good name of their president emeritus boss. In other words, we send swarms of cops or on occasion even SWAT teams to the homes of the likes of a Roger Stone or Paul Manafort or a sleazy Michael Cohen, but not to the townhouse of a Samantha Power, or James Comey’s abode, or the estate of Hillary Clinton, or the seaside digs of Barack Obama.

You see, it’s just not done.

[soonernvolved]