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Post by soonernvolved on Jul 17, 2020 18:00:32 GMT -6
On Friday new documents were released by the Senate Judiciary Comittee on the Russia Collusion hoax.
The second set of documents exposes the outlandish New York Times story that the Trump team had “repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials.” The declassified documents reveal The New York Times reporting was transparently dishonest and an attempt to fuel the Russiagate narrative in its early stages.
The New York Times along with the Washington Post later won Pulitzer Prizes for their junk Trump-Russia collusion reporting that now is confirmed to be factually inaccurate and misleading. If these outlets had any integrity they’d return their phony prizes.
They might need to give that Pulitzer back.
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Post by soonernvolved on Jul 20, 2020 13:57:52 GMT -6
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Post by soonernvolved on Jul 23, 2020 18:01:43 GMT -6
dailycaller.com/2020/07/23/fbi-memo-michael-flynn-briefing-trump/Declassified Memo: FBI Planted A Crossfire Hurricane Agent In Trump, Flynn Briefing The director of national intelligence declassified an August 2016 FBI memo which detailed the bureau’s use of an agent to provide a counterintelligence briefing to Donald Trump and Michael Flynn in order to collect evidence for the Russia probe. Joseph Pientka, an FBI supervisory special agent, conducted the briefing. The Justice Department’s inspector general criticized the FBI for sending an agent into the briefing, saying that it could erode trust that presidential candidates have in future dealings with the FBI. John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, on Thursday sent Congress a newly declassified memo related to an FBI briefing given to Donald Trump and Michael Flynn in August 2016 that was used as cover to collect evidence for the Russia probe. Joseph Pientka, a supervisory special agent, wrote the memo following his Aug. 17, 2016 briefing to Trump, Flynn and Chris Christie, a Trump campaign adviser. Pientka, who was one of the top agents on Crossfire Hurricane, developed the briefing materials in coordination with Peter Strzok, the lead investigator on the Trump-Russia probe. Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI lawyer found to have altered an email related to Carter Page, also worked on the plan to use Pientka in the briefing, according to the memo. Ratcliffe sent the memo and Pientka’s notes to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, who have for months pressed for the declassification of documents related to the Trump campaign briefing. The FBI’s covert use of the briefing was revealed in a Justice Department inspector general’s (IG) report released on Dec. 9, 2019. Investigators provided a briefing to Hillary Clinton on Aug. 27, 2016, but did not use it for purposes of collecting evidence on the candidate. The FBI opened an investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia on July 31, 2016. Investigators opened a counterintelligence probe of Flynn on Aug. 16, 2016, a day before the campaign briefing. (RELATED: IG Report Blasts FBI For ‘Significant’ Inaccuracies In FISA Applications) The IG report said that FBI “viewed that briefing as a possible opportunity to collect information potentially relevant to the Crossfire Hurricane and Flynn investigations.” Pientka told the IG that he saw the briefing as an opportunity “to gain assessment and possibly have some level of familiarity with [Flynn]. So, should we get to the point where we need to do a subject interview….I would have that to fall back on.” Pientka’s memo does not indicate that Trump or Flynn made any incriminating statements. According to Pientka, Trump asked about Russia’s spy activities in the United States compared to other hostile nations, such as China. “This brief will advise you that if you are not already a target of a Foreign Intelligence Service, due to the fact you are receiving this classified briefing, you will be,” Pientka said in the briefing, according to his memo. Pientka then detailed differences in how Russia and China use intelligence officers to collect information inside the United States. He also told Trump and Flynn the number of suspected Russian and Chinese intelligence officers working inside the U.S. According to Pientka, Trump asked him to assess whether Russia or China poses a greater counterintelligence threat. “Joe, are the Russians bad? Because they have more numbers are they worse than the Chinese?” Trump said, according to Pientka. Flynn asked Pientka for statistics on the number of FBI special agents and the number of ongoing investigations into homegrown violent extremists, or HVEs. “See, they don’t have enough resources to work the HVE threat and the IOs,” Flynn told Trump after Pientka shared the data. Pientka said in response to a question from Flynn that the foreign intelligence threat was be equal to or greater than during the Cold War. Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director, told the IG that officials picked Pientka to sit in on the briefing because of his position on the Crossfire Hurricane team. The inspector general’s office criticized the FBI for using the briefing for Crossfire Hurricane. “We concluded that the FBI’s use of this briefing for investigative reasons could potentially interfere with the expectation of trust and good faith among participants in strategic intelligence briefings, thereby frustrating their purpose,” the report said. Pientka and Strzok were the two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017. Flynn would later plead guilty to making false statements in that interview regarding his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. The Justice Department has moved to dismiss the case because the FBI and prosecutors withheld documents related to the probe. One document was a Jan. 4, 2017 memo authorizing investigators to close the counterintelligence investigation against Flynn. The memo said that investigators did not have evidence that Flynn was acting as a Russian agent. Strzok intervened to keep the investigation open, according to text messages released in Flynn’s case. Pientka drafted a three-page memo of the briefing on Aug. 30, 2016, according to the IG report. Strzok and Clinesmith approved the document. Clinesmith was identified as the FBI lawyer mentioned in an inspector general’s report sending an anti-Trump text message after the 2016 election, “Vive le resistance!” He is also said to be the FBI lawyer who altered an email from the CIA to say that Carter Page was not a source for the spy agency, when he had actually been an operational contact for years. Clinesmith was removed from the special counsel’s investigation over the anti-Trump text message. Strzok was also removed from the special counsel’s probe in July 2017 over his own anti-Trump messages. Both Strzok and Clinesmith have been fired from the FBI. The New York Times has reported that Clinesmith is a target of an investigation led by U.S. Attorney John Durham. go.skimresources.com/?id=94434X1548854&isjs=1&jv=14.1.5-stackpath&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2020%2F07%2F23%2Ffbi-memo-michael-flynn-briefing-trump%2F&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scribd.com%2Fdocument%2F470184956%2FJoseph-Pientka-briefing-document%23from_embed&xguid=01D89T6E47TTM3GE5R6GKJK4JA&xs=1&xtz=240&xuuid=dcdcc060627975514f136e471e98b3b0&xjsf=other_click__auxclick%20%5B2%5D
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Post by soonernvolved on Jul 23, 2020 18:17:21 GMT -6
www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/22/revealed-christopher-steeles-own-source-debunked-pee-tape-claim-in-fbi-interview/Details revealed in newly released FBI notes show the primary subsource of the anti-Trump dossier — written by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele — debunking the infamous “pee tape” claim, as the source told the FBI that his report on Trump’s “unorthodox sexual activity” at a hotel in Russia was mere “rumor and speculation,” having been unable to confirm the story. The Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday released a newly declassified FBI memo from an interview with the primary subsource for Christopher Steele’s infamous dossier which took place over a three day period in late January 2017. On the second day of the interview, the FBI inquired of the dossier’s infamous claim that while staying at the presidential suite at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow in 2013, Trump hired “a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ [sic] (urination) show in front of him.” The dossier claims that Trump sought to “defile” the bed after learning that President Obama had used the same suite during a trip to Russia. The primary subsource told the FBI that Steele was given the names of the management at the Ritz Carlton, admitting that he reported Trump’s unusual sexual activity at the hotel as “rumor and speculation” and that he “had not been able to confirm the story.” The primary subsource told the FBI that “the ability to blackmail Trump was a ‘logical conclusion’ rather than reporting.” He also told the FBI that he “had no idea” where the (Steele dossier’s) mention of department “K” — which supposedly possessed the compromising material — originated from and “does not recall hearing that, or mentioning that” to Steele. That disgraced former FBI Director James Comey’s FBI knew then that the perverse claim was baseless raises questions concerning Comey’s decision — which he acknowledged in prepared remarks for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence delivered on June 8, 2017 — to push back against requests from President Trump to investigate the origins of that very claim. In a private White House dinner with Trump on January 27, only two days after the FBI interviewed the primary subsource, Comey said the topic of the “salacious material” again came up as Trump was considering asking the FBI to investigate the origins of the claims, a move which Comey strongly discouraged. Comey writes: During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn’t happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren’t, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would think about it and asked me to think about it. Not only did Comey choose not to disclose that information to President Trump, but he even added that it would be “very difficult to prove a negative.” There is no evidence that Comey ever shared his knowledge discrediting the “pee” claims with Trump. Instead, Comey allowed the perverse allegations to persist, resulting in the notion that Russia possessed material that granted them leverage over the president. It is unclear why Comey saw fit to brief Trump on the “pee” claims in the first place. Comey and other former Obama administration officials presented the unusual briefing as a courtesy to Trump to warn him about the news media possibly publicly releasing embarrassing claims about the newly elected president. However, questions have been raised regarding the need to include the dossier’s wild and unsubstantiated charges in the classified briefings, since it is highly unusual for the intelligence community to warn politicians about possible pending negative publicity. Comey’s classified briefing was subsequently leaked to the news media, with CNN reporting in early January that the contents of the dossier were presented during classified briefings one week earlier to Trump and then-President Barack Obama. Prior to CNN’s report leaking the briefings, which was picked up by news agencies worldwide, the contents of the dossier had been circulating among some major news media outlets, yet the sensational claims were largely considered too risky to publish. Comey’s briefing seems to have provided the news media with the hook to publish a story on the controversial dossier containing the infamous “Russian prostitute” claims, as well as unsubstantiated charges of collusion between Russia and members of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Shortly after CNN’s January 10 report on the classified briefings about the dossier, BuzzFeed infamously published the dossier’s full unverified contents. Meanwhile, the newly declassified FBI notes raised further questions about the FBI’s conduct, as they showed that the agency was alerted by the primary subsource of numerous flaws and red flags undermining Steele and his reporting at the time the dossier’s claims were used as an excuse to spy on Carter Page, a former tangential adviser to Trump’s campaign. During the period when the interview was conducted, Comey signed successive applications to obtain FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrants to spy on Page. The FISA warrants repeatedly relied on the dossier authored by Steele that contained the debunked “golden showers” claim. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), who released the newly declassified FBI notes, stated that the memo regarding the FBI interview of the primary subsource in January 2017 should have “required the system to stop and reevaluate the case against Mr. Page,” while labelling the FBI and the Department of Justice’s persistence in seeking a FISA warrant against Page in April and June of 2017, a “miscarriage of justice.” The DOJ memo clearly indicated that “the reliability of the dossier was completely destroyed after the interview with the primary subsource in January 2017,” Graham argued. “Those who knew or should have known of this development and continued to pursue a FISA warrant against Mr. Page anyway are in deep legal jeopardy in my view.” Graham added that the documents — which he had long sought — tell a “damning story for anyone who’s interested in trying to find the truth behind the corrupt nature of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016 and beyond.”
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Post by soonernvolved on Jul 23, 2020 18:25:18 GMT -6
thefederalist.com/2020/07/23/declassified-documents-show-fbi-used-defensive-briefing-in-2016-to-spy-on-donald-trump/Declassified Documents Show FBI Used ‘Defensive’ Briefing In 2016 To Spy On Donald Trump The new documents detail the FBI's attempts to use a briefing ostensibly meant to warn the Trump campaign about foreign intelligence threats to spy on the Trump campaign itself. Sean DavisBy Sean Davis JULY 23, 2020 Newly declassified internal Federal Bureau of Investigation documents prove the top U.S. law enforcement agency used a so-called defensive briefing of the Trump campaign in 2016 to spy on and collect information about Donald Trump himself. The new documents, which are just the latest in a string of declassifications regarding the FBI operation to spy on the Trump campaign and later the Trump administration, detail the FBI’s attempts to use a briefing ostensibly meant to warn the Trump campaign about foreign intelligence threats to spy on the Trump campaign itself. The documents were formally declassified by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on July 23 then provided to Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. In one of the documents declassified and released on Wednesday, FBI supervisory Special Agent Joe Pientka wrote that he deliberately used the briefing to “actively listen for topics or questions” from Trump “regarding the Russian Federation.” Rather than provide the Trump campaign a specific warning that certain campaign principals were being targeted by Russian intelligence, the FBI instead gave a general, non-specific warning that foreign intelligence services might eventually target the campaign. Pientka’s written summary of the briefing noted that Trump, Michael Flynn, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were the only three Trump campaign members in attendance. Christie’s attendance had not previously been disclosed. The August 17, 2016 meeting came the day after the FBI opened a formal counterintelligence investigation against Flynn and just two days after FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok texted his former lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, about an “insurance policy” he had designed to keep Trump from becoming president. “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy [McCabe]’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Strzok texted Page on August 15, 2016. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40….” The very next day Strzok opened an investigation of Flynn then used the pretext of a defensive intelligence briefing to collect intelligence on both Flynn and Trump on August 17. Pientka’s notes on the meeting stated that it lasted for two hours, beginning at 3:55 p.m. and ending at 5:51 p.m. While Pientka spent only 13 minutes of the two-hour meeting warning Trump, Flynn, and Christie of foreign intelligence threats, he lamented in his notes that other intelligence officials didn’t have enough time to get through their material. “Due to time constraints, not all ODNI briefers presented their material,” Pientka wrote. He did not say whether his use of the meeting as means of spying on and collecting information against Trump may have precluded other intelligence officials from presenting their material to the attendees. Pientka was excoriated in a report from the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Inspector General (OIG) for his behavior during the FBI’s spy operation against the Trump campaign. Pientka told the OIG that he designed the August 17 meeting to “gain assessment and possibly have some level of familiarity with [Flynn].” According to the OIG report, Pientka “was selected to provide the FBI briefings, in part, because Flynn, who was a subject in the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation, would be attending the Trump campaign briefing.” Pientka told the OIG that he was selected to attend on behalf of the FBI so he could “record” or “overhear” from Trump, Flynn, or Christie “any kind of admission” that they were colluding with the Russian government to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Pientka also added that he wanted to get a baseline impression of Flynn’s “overall mannerisms” in case he needed to later use that information against him. Pientka later took part in the FBI’s 2017 interview of Flynn, which became the basis of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s criminal case against Flynn. Following the discovery of exculpatory documents that had previously been suppressed by the government, the DOJ moved to dismiss all charges against Flynn. A top federal appellate court panel ordered Emmett G. Sullivan, the judge overseeing Flynn’s case, to dismiss the charges against Flynn, but Sullivan has thus far refused to comply. Pientka’s account of the meeting was approved by Strzok and former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith. According to the DOJ OIG, Clinesmith fabricated evidence against Carter Page to ensure that a warrant to spy on him would be approved by the federal spy court. Rather than inform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that Carter Page had previously worked with a U.S. intelligence agency in its successful efforts to capture and prosecute Russian intelligence officers working against the United States, Clinesmith allegedly changed an e-mail from that intelligence agency to eliminate the agency’s confirmation that Page had worked with them against the Russians. According to the OIG report, Clinesmith “altered the [intelligence agency liaison’s] email by inserting the words ‘not a source’ into it, thus making it appear that the liaison had said that Page was ‘not a source’ for the other agency.” Clinesmith’s fabrication was included in a spy warrant against Page that was later found to be illegal because it included so much false and fabricated information. Clinesmith is reportedly under federal criminal investigation and is no longer employed by the FBI. U.S. Attorney General William Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham last year to investigate the entire anti-Trump spy operation launched by the FBI and to determine whether criminal charges are warranted. Durham has not yet indicted any individuals for their roles in illegally spying on the Trump campaign and Trump presidential administration.
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Post by soonernvolved on Jul 23, 2020 18:26:26 GMT -6
thefederalist.com/2020/07/23/new-fbi-notes-re-debunk-major-nyt-story-highlight-media-collusion-to-produce-russia-hoax/New FBI Notes Re-Debunk Major NYT Story, Highlight Media Collusion To Produce Russia Hoax The New York Times in 2017 falsely reported that the Trump campaign had 'repeated' contacts with Russian intelligence officials during the 2016 campaign, and instead of being held accountable for publishing lies, the story's authors received Pulitzer prizes. Mollie HemingwayBy Mollie Hemingway JULY 23, 2020 The FBI official who ran the investigation into whether the Donald Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election privately admitted in newly released notes that a major New York Times article was riddled with lies, falsehoods, and “misleading and inaccurate” information. The February 2017 story was penned by three reporters who would win Pulitzers for their reporting on Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia. The FBI’s public posture and leaks at the time supported the now-discredited conspiracy theory that led to the formation of a special counsel probe to investigate the Trump campaign and undermine his administration. “We have not seen evidence of any individuals affiliated with the Trump team in contact with [Russian Intelligence Officials]. . . . We are unaware of ANY Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials,” former FBI counterespionage official Peter Strzok wrote of the Feb. 14, 2017 New York Times story “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.” That story, which was based on the unsubstantiated claims of four anonymous intelligence officials, was echoed by a similarly sourced CNN story published a day later and headlined “Trump aides were in constant touch with senior Russian officials during campaign.” Strzok’s notes are the latest factual debunking of these stories, which were previously shown to be false with the release of Robert Mueller’s special counsel report finding no evidence whatsoever in support of the Hillary Clinton campaign assertion that Trump affiliates colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. A report from the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General on just one aspect of the investigation into Russia collusion — FBI spying on Trump campaign affiliates — also debunked these news reports. Former FBI Director James Comey admitted under oath in June 2017 that the reporting was “false,” something his deputy director Andrew McCabe privately acknowledged to the White House earlier that year but refused to admit publicly. Efforts by the White House to get the FBI to say publicly what they were admitting privately were leaked to the media in order to suggest the White House was obstructing their investigation. “Obstruction” of the Russia investigation would form a major part of the special counsel probe, and media and Democrat efforts to oust the president. As for the merits of the explosive New York Times story alleging repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials before the election, Strzok said it was “misleading and inaccurate… no evidence.” Of the unsubstantiated claim that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was on the phone calls with Russian intelligence officials, Strzok said, “We are unaware of any calls with any Russian govt official in which Manafort was a party.” And of the New York Times claim that Roger Stone was part of the FBI’s inquiry into Russian ties, Strzok said, “We have not investigated Roger Stone.” The Times report, which came hours after National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was ousted due to criminal leaks against him, was one of the most important articles published by major media as part of their campaign to paint Trump as a Russian operative. Widely accepted by the media and political establishment, it did as much to cement the false and damaging Russia conspiracy theory as CNN’s story legitimizing the now-discredited Christopher Steele dossier or the Washington Post’s now-discredited suggestion that Flynn was a secret Russian operative who was guilty of violating an obscure 1799 law called the Logan Act. The New York Times declined to retract or correct the article three years ago, even after Comey testified it was false, on the grounds that the anonymous sources who fed the false information remained pleased with the initial story. The damage this false story caused the Trump administration can not be underestimated. It’s a story worth recounting here. Leaks Real, News Fake “The leaks are real, the news is fake,” President Donald Trump said on February 16, 2017, when ABC News’ Jonathan Karl asked him at a press conference to respond to The New York Times’ explosive report. As other reporters asked more questions related to the New York Times story, he went on to deride the media for writing negative and false stories based on anonymous sources. The response was roundly mocked by a media class that asserted it was unimaginable that intelligence officials might be leaking anything but the most accurate information. CNN’s Jake Tapper, echoing other Democrat activists, called the press conference “unhinged.” “I guess I don’t understand,” said CNN’s Jim Acosta, asking, “How can the stories be fake?” Numerous other reporters, presumably all college-educated, publicly claimed to wonder the same thing. The few reporters who were skeptical of the anonymously sourced reports on Russia were also mocked. If someone associated with an intelligence agency had been granted anonymity to claim without evidence that Donald Trump — Donald Trump — had been a secret Russian agent for decades, or had for some reason paid prostitutes to urinate on a Moscow hotel bed President Obama once slept in, or had arranged clandestine meetings in Prague with top-level Kremlin operatives in a grand dirt-and-dollars-and-election-support scheme, it simply had to be true! Who was to say otherwise? Who was to demand evidence for the absurd conspiracy theory that had, it turned out, been manufactured as part of a Clinton campaign operation? The response to Trump’s claim that the leaks from anonymous intelligence officials were producing fake news was one of many indicators that U.S. political media would be in no position to think critically or skeptically about whether they were being used by a politically motivated cabal of intelligence officials. The smarter ones might have known they were being used but simply determined they would be more than happy to play an important role in the operation. Trump was right that the leaks were real but the news was false. Trump campaign aides did not have repeated contacts with Russian intelligence, contrary to what Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo breathlessly reported. Flynn was not a secret Russian agent. Neither was former Sen. Jeff Sessions. Published At The Right Moment The New York Times story was completely false, but the damage it caused the Trump administration was very real. The false story was published mere hours after intelligence officials had successfully ousted Trump’s National Security Advisor Flynn following weeks of criminal and selectively edited leaks about his benign communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States. CNN “confirmed” the New York Times’ false reporting hours later. The Wall Street Journal’s Shane Harris and Carol E. Lee reported based on anonymous sources two days later that the CIA was withholding important national information from Trump because of supposedly legitimate concerns over his ties to Russia. Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo debunked that reporting immediately. The Washington Post openly talked about the “cloud of Russia” hanging over the Trump administration. Still, the combination of stories and resulting hysteria was enough to lead Trump to hold a press conference in the East Room to address the growing Russia collusion narrative. It was there he described the “real” leak, “fake” news phenomenon he was dealing with. As a reminder, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee had secretly bought and paid for the conspiracy theory to be manufactured, disseminated in the press, and seeded to the U.S. government. It failed to take off as much as they hoped before the election — and yes, contrary to popular reporting, Clinton’s Russia operation was absolutely deployed before the election, and resurrected by the Clinton campaign in the hours after her stunning defeat. Then corporate media, humiliated by their failure to accurately report on the 2016 campaign, latched onto the conspiracy theory as a way to explain away their failure. Obama intelligence officials worked to give credence to the theory by leaking about Russia’s long-standing efforts to meddle in U.S. elections and attempting to insinuate Trump’s collusion with same. At the time the New York Times story ran, it was received credulously by nearly the entire political and media class and received no meaningful pushback from them. “BREAKING: Minutes ago, NY Times bombshell– Trump campaign officials in contact w/Russian intelligence for full year,” tweeted Michael Moore. “Flynn was the appetizer. This is the meal,” tweeted Washington Post columnist Brian Klaas. “Yes, this is as bad as it looks,” the Democratic National Committee stated. “If not a smoking gun, this is a very hot pistol,” opined Paul Begala. “The trail linking Trump to Russian interference in the election is getting closer and closer,” wrote Robert Reich. “Way beyond Flynn!” wrote an excited Sen. Amy Klobuchar, asking for support for a bill investigating Trump. “Big NYT scoop,” bragged New York Times editor Cliff Levy. Slate’s Ashley Feinberg said, “it is [expletive deleted] insane that trump is not being impeached.” Rolling Stone senior writer Jamil Smith said, “This story is a mother[expletive deleted]. We have crossed the Rubicon, folks.” “Whoa,” said Twitter enthusiast Bill Kristol. “It’s all starting to unravel. This won’t be over soon and we must be relentlessly disciplined in how we discuss it,” said Russia hoaxer Susan Hennessey. “There are some important caveats in NYT story on Russia and Trump. But harder to see how Republicans resist probe,” lobbied Los Angeles Times White House reporter Chris Megerian. “Holy moly,” said the Los Angeles Times’ Matt Pearce. “Oh wow,” wrote the Washington Post’s Abigail Hauslohner. “Boom,” wrote Der Spiegel’s Matthieu von Rohr. “Words just fail me,” said NPR’s Neela Banerjee. “Blockbuster story has been out 24 hrs & Trump has provided no explanation or refutation. Instead attacks leakers,” said Washington Post-enabled Max Boot. “Siren,” wrote Politico’s Blake Hounshell. “Can’t overstate the importance of a diligent, independent press that protects sources,” wrote Mallory Busch about the anonymously — and erroneously — sourced account. “This is one of the biggest scandals in American history. Where will it end?” asked American Federation of Teachers union president Randi Weingarten. “Are there any constitutional redresses if the President of the US proves to be the Muscovian Candidate?” asked Foreign Policy senior correspondent Michael Hirsh. The story was tweeted by Rachel Maddow, lead reporter Michael Schmidt, the New York Times’ Nate Cohn, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, CNN’s Jake Tapper, Times reporter Jeremy Peters, AP bureau chief Michael Tackett, and rabid Democratic activist and CNN White House correspondent John Harwood, Democrats pounced. “The need for an independent commission to investigate grows more urgent by the hour. Where is the GOP?,” lobbied Sen. Dick Durbin. “When is enough going to be enough for my GOP colleagues to allow a vote on independent investigation of White House?” asked Rep. Susan Davis. “It’s time for a full, in-depth, bipartisan investigation into the Trump administrations ties to #Russia,” wrote Colorado Democrats. “We need full investigation into connection between @realdonaldtrump campaign & Russia. Too many unanswered questions,” was a popular refrain from House Democrats such as Ann McLane Kuster. The comments went on and on and on. Each time the story has been debunked, this received little to no coverage from the same corporate media that trumpeted it. Fighting the False Story Was Treated As Obstruction Television news the week The New York Times published its false report was non-stop Russia hysteria. It dominated the Sunday shows. When White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told CBS’ John Dickerson “I think that the media should stop with this unnamed source stuff,” The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman — who would also win a Pulitzer for her perpetuation of the false and dangerous Russia collusion hoax — claimed he was demanding that the media stop using anonymous sources. When the New York Times story came out, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe asked to speak privately with Priebus, according to reporting in Howard Kurtz’s book “Media Madness.” McCabe told Priebus that “everything” in the story was “bulls–t.” Priebus motioned to the bank of televisions showing that the media was taking it seriously and talking about it non-stop. He asked McCabe if he could say something publicly to push back. McCabe said he’d check with his colleagues and get back to him. McCabe called back to say he couldn’t do anything. Comey also called Priebus to claim there was nothing they could say publicly. (McCabe admitted in his book “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” that he declined to say publicly that the report was false.) What the FBI was willing to do, however, was leak to CNN that the “FBI refused White House request to knock down recent Trump-Russia stories.” That report made it seem like the reporting from The New York Times was legitimate and that the White House was obstructing a legitimate investigation, which, again, became a major theme of the Mueller investigation and attempts to impeach the president. Comey did offer to brief congressmen and senators that the New York Times report was completely false. When those members said publicly that the New York Times report was false, that too was characterized as something nefarious. “Trump administration sought to enlist intelligence officials, key lawmakers to counter Russia stories,” was how the Washington Post’s Greg Miller spun that effort. Miller noted that the FBI declined to comment on whether they had told the White House that the New York Times story was completely false. Miller would also win a Pulitzer for his role in perpetuating the Russia collusion hoax. In his book, McCabe said there was a disinformation campaign in the conservative blogosphere to suggest he had animus toward the president and had gleefully pursued Flynn, both of which he claimed were false. Of the reports, he said, “The stories may be fictional and the information false, but the consequences of this strategy are real.” Whether or not McCabe’s denials are plausible, how much more powerful is the strategy when it’s not unread blogs but the most powerful media outlets in the world that are willing to spread fictional and false information. Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College and a Fox News contributor. She is the co-author of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway
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Post by soonernvolved on Jul 23, 2020 21:06:45 GMT -6
FOX News legal expert Gregg Jarrett went on with Sean Hannity on Thursday to discuss the documents released on Thursday.
Jarrett said Chris Wray is protecting corrupt spygate player Joe Pientka from Congressional investigators.
Gregg Jarrett: At the heart of it, Joe Pientka. You’re right. I write about it in my book. But interestingly the government has scrubbed him from all reports including the FBI report, the Department of Justice report, even the FISA Court report. And the FBI has removed him from their website and sequestored him to San Francisco’s field office refusing to make him available, not withstanding any repeated demands to Congress. That’s the coverup by the existing FBI director Christopher Wray. And the other part of this equation is that the documents today – they’re exculpatory. They tend to prove Trump’s innocence and yet the FBI and Christopher Wray have concealed these documents along with the intel community for the better part of four years. It’s unconscionable. It’s corrupt.
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Post by soonernvolved on Jul 23, 2020 21:10:56 GMT -6
Why would Seth Rich investigative reports be classified if it was a late night hold up?
William Binney, a thirty-year veteran of the National Security Agency and its former technical director, will expose the continuing suppression by British intelligence agencies and their American counterparts of his evidence disproving the entire “Russiagate” story.
“We can prove, that all the data that Wikileaks published from the DNC, that was downloaded on the 23rd and 25th of May, and also the 26th of August of 2016; all of that carried the signatures of being downloaded to a thumb drive or a CD-ROM, and physically transported,” Binney says. “So, we can prove that in a court of law. In fact, I put that in sworn affidavits that I submitted in the Roger Stone case and also in the General Flynn case. And the judges would not let my testimony in. I’ve been hard pressed to find anything (Russia) did in the 2016 election, let alone anything they’re trying to do in the 2020 election,” Binney said.
Roger Stone, speaking with Sean Hannity on FOX TV July 13 in the aftermath of the commutation of his jail sentence by President Donald Trump, stated: “I could have proved at trial, using forensic evidence and expert testimony from fellows like Bill Binney, former NSA counter intelligence expert…that no one hacked the DNC, that there was no online hack of the DNC… But I wasn’t allowed to present that defense, because Judge Jackson would not allow it.” ............................................................ Presenter Diane: Yes I am here, Joe Hoft, from Gateway Pundit, which shortly after we announced they got shut down was able to get back on, but I think it was a coincidence. Anyway, they are asking about Seth Rich. Does the Deep State have any information he talked to WikiLeaks as has been reported?
Binney: Well there are reports, yeah, there are reports that that was true. I assume that he’s addressing the Sy Herch comments and the illicitly recorded, recording of his conversation, where he said the FBI had a report that said that examined Seth Rich’s computer that found communications between Seth and WikiLeaks.
But that’s not come out, I mean, I don’t know why, well, I don’t know why the President doesn’t order the FBI to follow up with that and see whether that’s true or not. He’s not done that. I mean, if he orders them and they don’t follow it, he can just simply fire them because for insubordination and hire the next guy and say, release it or else. That’s the way he could do that. And I think that’s primarily what has to happen here because the FBI is involved in so much cover up and this activity, not just of that. They haven’t followed the investigation as far as I know.
And, but also they are covering up a lot that they know about. The Russiagate issue and all this business, they actually helped pay for Steele at one point and I don’t know whether it was directed for the dossier or not or for him as an agent to work with them. You know the government needs to be ordered to do things and if their level of management refuses, they need to be fired, and just get other ones in. And finally, eventually after you fire so many somebody will find the ones who will take the job and do it right, and, they’ll comply.
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Post by soonernvolved on Jul 30, 2020 11:07:28 GMT -6
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Post by soonernvolved on Jul 31, 2020 7:21:58 GMT -6
dailycaller.com/2020/07/30/fbi-fisa-carter-page-russia-errors/FBI Finds Two ‘Material’ Errors In Audit Of 29 FISA Applications. The Carter Page FISAs Had 17 ‘Significant’ OmissionsThe FBI said Thursday that the bureau found just two “material” errors in an audit of 29 applications to surveil American citizens, an error rate that pales in comparison to the 17 “significant” problems discovered in applications for surveillance orders against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. In a statement, the FBI said that the two errors found in the 29 applications likely would not have changed the FISA Court’s decision to grant the underlying surveillance orders. “None of the errors that had been identified by DOJ-OIG undermined or otherwise impacted the validity of the FISC’s orders,” the FBI said in a statement, according to Fox News. That finding is in stark contrast to the Justice Department’s decision to invalidate two of four FISA orders granted against Page because they contained so many errors and omissions. The FBI conducted the review of the surveillance orders in response to a Justice Department inspector general report that said that errors were found in all 29 FISA orders selected for a random audit. The IG conducted the audit due to the problems discovered in the Page case. The FBI provided a preliminary update to the FISA Court last month saying that one material error had been found in a review of 14 of the 29 FISA applications. (RELATED: DOJ Concedes That Two Of Its Carter Page FISAs Are Invalid) The FBI’s findings suggest that the bureau’s problems with FISA are not systemic throughout the bureau. But while that paucity of errors might be a positive finding for the FBI overall, it raises questions about why so many discrepancies appeared in applications to surveil Page. 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 (Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Republicans have accused the FBI of targeting Page for political reasons. The FBI asserted in four FISA applications against Page, a former officer in the Navy, that he was working covertly as an agent of Russia. The FISA Court granted the first order on Oct. 21, 2016. The surveillance lasted through September 2017. The IG said in a report released Dec. 9 that the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team omitted information that undercut the theory that Page was a Russian asset. An FBI agent and an FBI attorney withheld information from the CIA that Page was an “operational contact” for the spy agency through at least 2013. Investigators also withheld evidence that undermined the Steele dossier, which asserted that Page was a central figure in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between the Kremlin and Trump campaign. Christopher Steele, the dossier author, told FBI agents three weeks before the first FISA order was granted that an individual he believed to be a key source for the dossier was a “boaster” and “embellisher.” The FBI did not include that information in the initial FISA request. The FBI also failed to disclose details that Steele’s primary source, Igor Danchenko, provided during interviews in January 2017. Danchenko, a Russia analyst, told the FBI that the dossier overstated information he had provided Steele. The Justice Department deemed the final two FISA orders against Page to be invalid in large part because of the omissions from the Danchenko interviews. On Dec. 17, Judge Rosemary Collyer, who presided over the surveillance court at the time, said that the FBI provided “false information” to the court and withheld information that was “detrimental” to the case against Page.
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 1, 2020 6:15:26 GMT -6
www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/new-disclosures-confirm-trump-was-the-target-of-obama-administrations-russia-probe/New Disclosures Confirm: Trump Himself Was the Target of Obama Administration’s Russia Probe By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY August 1, 2020 6:30 AM Assertions that the focus was ‘the Trump campaign’ are now known to be ludicrous Long-sought documents finally pried from U.S. intelligence agencies prove that the Obama administration used the occasion of providing a standard intelligence briefing for major-party candidates as an opportunity to investigate Donald Trump on suspicion of being a Russian asset. I say investigate Donald Trump advisedly. As I contended in Ball of Collusion, my book on the Trump-Russia investigation, the target of the probe spearheaded by the FBI — but greenlighted by the Obama White House, and abetted by the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies — was Donald Trump. Not the Trump campaign, not the Trump administration. Those were of interest only insofar as they were vehicles for Trump himself. The campaign, which the Bureau and its apologists risibly claim was the focus of the investigation, would have been of no interest to them were it not for Trump. Or do you suppose they moved heaven and earth, surreptitiously plotted in the Oval Office, wrote CYA memos to cover their tracks, and laboriously sculpted FBI reports because they were hoping to nail . . . George Papadopoulos? My book was published a year ago. It covered what was then known about the Obama-administration operation. In collusion with the Clinton campaign, and with the complicity of national-security officials who transitioned into the Trump administration, the Obama White House deployed the FBI to undermine the new president, dually using official investigative tactics (e.g. FISA surveillance, confidential informants, covert interrogations) and lawless classified leaks — the latter publicized by dependable journalists who were (and remain) politically invested in unseating Trump. NOW WATCH: 'Trump Confirms US Conducted Cyberattack Against Russia' WATCH: 0:29 Trump Confirms US Conducted Cyberattack Against Russia Now the paper trail is finally catching up with what some of us analysts long ago surmised based on the limited information previously available. You don’t like Donald Trump? Fine. The investigation here was indeed about Donald Trump. But the scandal is about how abusive officials can exploit their awesome powers against any political opponent. And the people who authorized this political spying will be right back in business if, come November, Obama’s vice-president is elected president — notwithstanding that he’s yet to be asked serious questions about it. How to Conceal a Politicized Investigation It seems mind-boggling that, for so long, the FBI and Justice Department were able to keep a lid on the documents now being released. President Trump could have directed their disclosure at any time over the last four years. But when you think about it, concealing the paper trail was the easy part. The real challenge was: How to continue the probe even after Trump had taken office and was, at least nominally, in a position to shut it down? The Obama officials, including holdovers who transitioned into the Trump administration, pulled that off by intimidation: not-so-subtle suggestions that they could disclose damaging allegations at any time (e.g., the notorious “pee tape”), and that White House efforts to inquire into the scope of the investigation would be portrayed as criminal obstruction. Prior to the 2016 election, the FBI intentionally concealed the existence of the Trump-Russia probe from the congressional “Gang of Eight” (the bipartisan leadership of both houses and their intelligence committees). Senior Republicans were thus kept in the dark regarding purported suspicions that the Republican presidential campaign was a Russian front, unable to pose tough questions about the probe’s gossamer predication. Crucially, the Trump-Russia fabulists managed to sideline two Trump loyalists who would have been positioned to thwart the effort: national-security adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. That left in place Obama holdovers and Trump-appointed placeholders. They were indifferent to Trump himself and cowed by the prospect of being framed as complicit in a Trump–Russia conspiracy, or a cover-up. The paper record is profoundly embarrassing, so it is only natural that the FBI and Justice Department resisted its disclosure. But documents about the investigation were demanded by congressional investigators starting years ago — particularly by the investigation led in the House by then–Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.). Congress’s investigation was stonewalled. The more revelation we get, the more obvious it is that there was no bona fide national-security rationale for concealment. Documents were withheld to hide official and unofficial executive activity that was abusive, embarrassing, and, at least in some instances, illegal (e.g., tampering with a document that was critical to the FBI’s presentation of “facts” to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court). Democrats wanted this information suppressed all along. So of course, once Democrats took control of the House in 2019, there was no possibility of pressing the question of why the Justice Department and FBI failed to comply with House information demands back in 2017–18, when Republicans led the relevant committees. ALL OUR OPINION. FREE DELIVERY. The NR Daily newsletter puts all our analysis in your inbox. Email Address One wonders, though, why the GOP-controlled Senate had so little interest in finding out why this paper trail stayed hidden despite repeated inquiries. Ditto the House Republican leadership in the first two years of Trump’s term. It is hard to draw any conclusion other than that the GOP establishment bought the “Russian interference in our democracy” hysteria. Moscow always meddles in U.S. elections. The 2016 interference was par for the course and, as always, utterly ineffective. This time, though, Democrats were perceived as the victims, rather than the beneficiaries. For once, they and their media megaphone demanded that the political class treat Russia as a serious threat. On cue, Washington Republicans genuflected, lest they be portrayed as covering up for Trump, or as soft on Putin. Meanwhile Democrats, the party of appeasement (very much including appeasement of Moscow through the Obama years), were transmogrified into Russia hawks. And Russia hawks they’ll remain . . . right up until the moment Joe Biden takes the oath of office. Exploiting Politics to Surveil the Opposition Among the most significant of the newly declassified documents is a memorandum written by FBI agent Joe Pientka III, the case agent on Trump-Russia. It was Pientka who, at the FBI’s New York City headquarters on August 17, 2016, purported to brief Trump and two top campaign surrogates — the aforementioned General Flynn and then–New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was slated to run the transition if Trump won. In reality, Pientka and the FBI regarded the occasion not as a briefing for the Republican presidential nominee but as an opportunity to interact with Donald Trump for investigative purposes. Clearly, the Bureau did that because Trump was the main subject of the investigation. The hope was that he’d blurt things out that would help the FBI prove he was an agent of Russia. The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they who were meddling in a presidential campaign — using executive intelligence powers to monitor the president’s political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that he’d had any role in Russian intelligence’s suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts. You didn’t have to believe Trump was a savory man to know that. His top advisers were Flynn, a decorated combat veteran; Christie, a former U.S. attorney who vigorously investigated national-security cases; Rudy Giuliani, a legendary former U.S. attorney and New York City mayor who’d rallied the country against anti-American terrorism; and Jeff Sessions, a longtime U.S. senator with a strong national-defense track record. To believe Trump was unfit for the presidency on temperamental or policy grounds was a perfectly reasonable position for Obama officials to take — though an irrelevant one, since it’s up to the voters to decide who is suitable. But to claim to suspect that Trump was in a cyberespionage conspiracy with the Kremlin was inane . . . except as a subterfuge to conduct political spying, which Obama officials well knew was an abuse of power. So they concealed it. They structured the investigation on the fiction that there was a principled distinction between Trump himself and the Trump campaign. In truth, the animating assumption of the probe was that Trump himself was acting on Russia’s behalf, either willfully or under the duress of blackmail. By purporting to focus on the campaign, investigators had the fig leaf of deniability they needed to monitor the candidate. Just two weeks before Pientka’s August 17 “briefing” of Trump, the FBI formally opened “Crossfire Hurricane,” the codename for the Trump-Russia investigation. The Bureau also opened four Trump-Russia subfiles, related to Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Flynn. There was no case file called “Donald Trump” because Trump was “Crossfire Hurricane.” The theory of Crossfire Hurricane was that Russia had blackmail information on Trump, which it could use to extort Trump into doing Putin’s bidding if Trump were elected. It was further alleged that Russia had been cultivating Trump for years and was helping Trump’s election bid in exchange for future considerations. Investigators surmised that Trump had recruited Paul Manafort (who had connections to Russian oligarchs and pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs) as his campaign manager, enabling Manafort to use such emissaries as Page to carry out furtive communications between Trump and the Kremlin. If elected, the theory went, Trump would steer American policy in Russia’s favor, just as the Bureau speculated that Trump was already corruptly steering the Republican party into a more pro-Moscow posture. Get Them Talking Besides obtaining FISA surveillance warrants against Page, the Bureau’s favored tactic — a common one in criminal investigations — was to create or exploit situations in which the suspects would be at ease. Either the settings would not seem investigative or, in Trump’s case, repeated assurances were provided that he was not under investigation. With no notice that the FBI was trying to catch them and even prompt them into making incriminating statements, Trump and his campaign advisers would be invited to talk about Russia. Agents parsed their statements and scrutinized their demeanor, searching for any indication of pro-Russia sentiment or uneasiness about the topic — anything that could be portrayed as incriminating. If the Bureau’s contacts with Trump officials were not covertly recorded (as they were, for example, when informants interacted with Papadopoulos), agents would generate written reports about them, the kind of reports the FBI routinely writes when building a criminal case. This is exactly what Pientka did in connection with the August 17 “briefing,” under the supervision of Kevin Clinesmith, the rabidly anti-Trump FBI lawyer later found by the Justice Department’s inspector general to have tampered with a key email, and Peter Strzok, the rabidly anti-Trump counterintelligence agent who was later fired. Pientka’s significantly redacted seven-page memo is worth reading. The point of it is not the national-security information provided to the candidate; that is just context for the Bureau’s documenting of statements made by Trump in response. For example, when the topic is differences in methodology between Russian and Chinese espionage, Pientka carefully notes that Trump asked, “Joe, are the Russians bad? Because they have more numbers [of FBI cases] are they worse than the Chinese?” After all, maybe we’ll find out he was reporting back to the Kremlin. When the topic turned to signals intelligence, Pientka notes that Trump interjected, “Yes I understand it’s a dark time. Nothing is safe on computers anymore,” and elaborated that his then-ten-year-old son had broken the code for access to a computer — you know, just the kind of badinage you’d expect from a co-conspirator in a Russian hacking scheme. Pientka then recounts that when other intelligence-agency briefers took over to continue the briefing on other topics, Pientka did not leave; he stayed in the room “actively listen[ing] for topics or questions regarding the Russian Federation.” Here, in a classified report they figure no one will ever see, there is no pretense: FBI agents are monitoring Trump. Pientka notes that when one briefer said the U.S. was the world’s leader in counterterrorism, Trump interjected, “Russia too?” And when the discussion turned to cheating by Russia and China on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, “Trump asked, ‘Who’s worse?’” When the briefer replied, “They are both bad, but Russia is worse,” Pientka took pains to relate, “Trump and Christie turned toward each other and Christie commented, ‘Im shocked’” [sic]. You’re thinking, “So what?” Yeah, well, that’s the point. They had nothing, but the agents were exploiting the U.S. political process to try to turn nothing into a federal case. And would any public official voluntarily attend a security briefing, ostensibly meant to help him perform his public-safety mission, if he thought the FBI might be spying on him and writing reports with an eye toward portraying him as a hostile power’s mole? Just as we’ve seen in the Flynn investigation, Pientka’s official FBI report is marked in bold capital letters: “DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL.” Why deliberate over a draft when the purpose is to document a suspect’s statements? After all, he said whatever he said; there shouldn’t be a need to edit it. Drafts and deliberations are necessary only if a report is being massaged to fit the perceived needs of the investigation. Observe that, although the briefing was August 17, the memo is dated August 30. Nearly two weeks later, and it’s still in the form of a deliberative draft, meaning they’re not done yet. This is not materially different from the Obama administration’s plan on January 6, 2017. That is when the FBI’s then-director, James Comey, “briefed” Trump in New York City. This briefing came just a day after Comey met with his Obama-administration superiors — the president, Vice President Biden, national-security adviser Susan Rice, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. They discussed withholding information about the Russia investigation from President-elect Trump and his incoming team. Consistent with this White House strategy session, Comey did not actually brief Trump about the Russia investigation; he buzzed Trump with an allegation that the Putin regime might be in possession of blackmail material — the pee tape — that it could hold over Trump’s head in order to get him to do the Kremlin’s bidding. The point was not to give information. It was to get information: to provoke Trump into making incriminating or false statements, or statements evincing consciousness of guilt. Outside Trump Tower was an FBI car equipped with a laptop so Comey could immediately write an investigative report. The director and his team treated this as an investigative event, not a briefing. Comey memorialized Trump’s statements, as well as his physical and emotional reaction to the suggestion that Moscow might have video of the soon-to-be president cavorting with prostitutes. If a case had ever been made on Trump, Comey could then have been a witness, with his investigative report available to refresh his recollection about Trump’s comments and comportment. That is one of the main reasons such reports are done. The FBI did the same thing with Flynn: a sandbag interview, against Justice Department and White House protocols, conducted after extensive planning about how to put him at ease, how to make sure he doesn’t think he’s a suspect, how to refrain from advising him of his rights. Then, knock him back on his heels by portraying a legitimate conversation between the incoming national-security adviser and the Russian ambassador as if it were nefarious. Don’t play him the recording or show him the transcript; just grill him and hope he says something incriminating or redolent of guilty knowledge. And then, instead of following the FBI rules for promptly completing interview reports, generate another “deliberative draft” that can be kneaded for a few weeks . . . with the help of a former prosecutor (Lisa Page) who serves as counsel to the second-highest-ranking FBI official (then–deputy director Andrew McCabe). 17 There is still plenty of paper trail to uncover. I haven’t even referred here to the Steele dossier, which investigators knew was bogus but relied on to seek — and obtain — court-authorized eavesdropping. I haven’t mentioned the unmasking of Trump officials indirectly targeted in foreign-intelligence collection. We haven’t considered the collaboration of American and foreign intelligence agencies in the scrutiny of Trump, or the collaboration of Obama officials and congressional Democrats, as well as the media, to promote the narrative that Trump was a Russian operative. There is much still to learn and to weigh. But this much we know: In the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, President Obama authorized his administration’s investigative agencies to monitor his party’s opponent in the presidential election, on the pretext that Donald Trump was a clandestine agent of Russia. Realizing this was a gravely serious allegation for which there was laughably insufficient predication, administration officials kept Trump’s name off the investigative files. That way, they could deny that they were doing what they did. Then they did it . . . and denied it.
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 1, 2020 10:44:28 GMT -6
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 2, 2020 15:17:36 GMT -6
By not addressing the question, Jarrett indirectly admits that President Obama was behind the fraudulent and criminal spying and investigations targeting candidate and President Trump. Of course this comes as no surprise.
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 3, 2020 11:51:15 GMT -6
thefederalist.com/2020/08/03/media-silent-as-christopher-steele-hero-spymaster-narrative-crumbles/COLLUSION Media Silent As Christopher Steele ‘Hero’ ‘Spymaster’ Narrative Crumbles With such shoddy information collection and analysis methods, there was never any reason to give credence to any of the salacious allegations in the dossier. That didn't stop corporate media. Mollie Hemingway By Mollie Hemingway AUGUST 3, 2020 It turns out Christopher Steele wasn’t 007. For years, the media assured Americans that the dossier alleging treasonous collusion between Donald Trump and Russia was based on the scrupulous work of a mastermind British ex-spy and his vast network of credible and well-connected sources spread throughout Europe. It wasn’t true. Steele did not personally collect any of the factual information in his reports. The “vast network” was instead a “social circle” of an American-based former Brookings Institute junior staffer, recently identified for the first time as Igor Danchenko. The friends didn’t have well-documented claims so much as rumors, drunken gossip, and outright brainstorming, conjecture, and speculation. Even that information was “multiple layers of hearsay upon hearsay” before it got to Steele, who then hyperbolically overstated it. And the damning claims of “collusion” appear to have been scandalously misattributed or invented out of whole cloth. With such shoddy information collection and analysis methods, there was never any reason to give credence to any of the salacious allegations in the dossier, whether it was claims of secret deals with Russian oil concerns, secret meetings in foreign capitals, prostitutes urinating on Moscow hotel room beds, files of compromising information, or the careful cultivation of Trump, yes Trump, into the most effective Russian agent in history. The media have a problem, then, given that they repeatedly led viewers and readers to believe Steele was a master spy. They can almost get away with ignoring the recent news that once again shows their previous reporting was catastrophically wrong. In fact, some media outlets did just that. But after breathlessly reporting — day in and day out for years — what they claimed were important updates buttressing Steele’s collusion narrative, they can’t completely hide the on-the-record revelations showing how the collusion narrative was invented and used to undermine the Trump campaign and administration. Declassification Leads to Identification of Steele’s Source The New York Times’ Adam Goldman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his role in pushing the Russia collusion narrative, and his colleague Charlie Savage came up with an inventive framing for how to downplay the latest declassified document revealing in detail that the FBI knew by January 2017 that the dossier was bunk. Perhaps because The New York Times played such a pivotal role in advancing the Russia collusion narrative, they buried the explosive news deep in the second half of the lengthy story and instead went with “The F.B.I. Pledged to Keep a Source Anonymous. Trump Allies Aided His Unmasking.” It is a common trope for media who pushed the collusion hoax to fret that transparency about the Russia collusion hoax will harm the republic. Here are a few other times they did that. The reporters provided no evidence for their main claim that the FBI pledged to keep Danchenko’s identity a secret, although they do report he was given immunity for speaking with the FBI about his conversations with friends that ended up in the dossier. They do not explain why such immunity was requested or granted. In his December 2019 report, Michael Horowitz repeatedly wrote that the FBI’s interviews of Steele and the person now identified as Danchenko should have made the agency realize that their Russia investigation had massive problems. Horowitz strongly criticized the Russia collusion investigators for falsely portraying the dossier and the results of the interview to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to be able to continue spying on Trump associate Carter Page. The Times begrudgingly admits late in the story that “[t]he Steele dossier was deeply flawed,” and that “Danchenko’s statements to the F.B.I. contradicted parts of the dossier, suggesting that Mr. Steele may have exaggerated the soundness of other allegations, making what Mr. Danchenko portrayed as rumor and speculation sound more solid.” It’s a remarkably dry way to describe the seriousness of the wrongdoing. All four of the applications to spy on Page relied on a particular part of the dossier to support probable cause. Steele told the FBI the information came from a sub-source “close” to Trump, and that this person was the original provider of the pee-tape information. It strongly appears this source is supposed to be Sergei Millian, a Russian-American businessman. Steele also said Danchenko met with this individual two or three times. But Danchenko said he never met this individual and that the pee-tape story came from someone else. Millian says he got two emails from Danchenko, but never acted on them. Danchenko believed Millian might have placed a phone call to him, although he didn’t identify himself, but in this phone call the individual said no “exchange of information” between Trump and the Kremlin had anything “bad about it.” By the time that information got into the Steele dossier, the source was supposedly acknowledging that “the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the Wikileaks platform” and that the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian leadership was a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation.” This was the most serious and consequential allegation in the dossier, and it was based on nothing. Oh How The Mighty Have Fallen When the dossier story was rolled out in the media from September 2016 through January 2017, the media portrayal of Steele and his spycraft was hagiographic. And yes, the dossier began to be rolled out in September 2016, contrary to the revisionists. They have said that while the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee secretly bought and paid for the dossier operation, it didn’t actually come out until after the election. Steele admitted in court he was meeting with reporters and law enforcement officials to get his dossier publicized and weaponized prior to the election. Michael Isikoff’s September 23, 2016, Yahoo story framed businessman and veteran Page as a colluding Russian asset. It was lifted directly from Steele’s claims. Both Steele and Isikoff admit Steele was the source for the article. Isikoff showed no skepticism of Steele, whom he described as “a well-placed Western intelligence source.” By the time Steele and his bosses at the research and media campaign firm Fusion GPS filtered their operation through Mother Jones’ David Corn a month later, Steele was described as a “veteran spy.” Later he was described as “a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence” and his memos were claimed to be “based on his recent interactions with Russian sources.” Corn wrote, “a senior US government official not involved in this case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government.” Much of what would become the settled Russia collusion hoax narrative was set in this Mother Jones article, which also claimed Steele, who was not yet identified by reporters, was maybe the foremost expert in Russia matters in the world. He “spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients.” ‘It started off as a fairly general inquiry,’ says the former spook, who asks not to be identified. But when he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, ‘there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit.’ The Mother Jones story was part of an “October surprise” dump of Russia-Trump stories from the Clinton campaign. It didn’t work and Clinton didn’t push it, partly because of her own FBI troubles and partly because she was expected to win in a landslide. The James Bond Myth Continues By the time CNN’s Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper, and Carl Bernstein really got the Russia collusion hoax going full-steam on January 10, 2017, by serving as credulous leak receptacles for “multiple” anonymous “intelligence officials,” the credibility of the spy and his network were key components of the collusion narrative. CNN told the world of the “classified documents” that include serious allegations of Russian operatives having “compromising personal and financial information” on Trump. The allegations came from a “former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible,” they wrote. They said the information was so legitimate that it was “presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs — Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.” Some memos “were circulating as far back as last summer. What has changed since then is that US intelligence agencies have now checked out the former British intelligence operative and his vast network throughout Europe and find him and his sources to be credible enough to include some of the information in the presentations to the President and President-elect a few days ago.” In fact, there had been no vetting at that point of the operative or his “vast network throughout Europe” (which did not exist). Their first interview of Danchenko, the “primary sub-source” who was the conduit for his old friends’ ideas, wouldn’t take place until weeks later. Perez, Sciutto, Tapper, and Bernstein should have been good enough reporters to be skeptical of what their highly placed intelligence sources were wanting them to publish. They should have been skeptical enough to demand evidence for these claims, even if the claims came from high-level Obama appointees. Sciutto himself was an Obama appointee. Steele Identified, Legend Grows The Wall Street Journal also pumped up Steele, who was revealed as the mysterious British mastermind. Quoting the firm’s marketing material, the paper described his firm’s work as relying on a “global network” of “experts and business leaders” who conduct “complex, often cross-border investigations.” Of the operation that would be done by a man who had elsewhere been described as “desperate” to keep Trump out of office, a colleague was quoted as saying, “We have no political ax to grind.” Steele had a “good reputation in the intelligence world and was stationed in Russia for years,” according to a former CIA official. Of note, the Wall Street Journal may have been one of the few if not only publications to at least include a contrary opinion about whether Steele, who peddled a cartoonishly false dossier, was the best spy to ever work. In the concluding paragraphs of the article penned by Bradley Hope, Michael Rothfeld, and Alan Cullison, a sole voice expressed skepticism of the dossier’s allegations, saying they were “not convincing at all.” Andrew Wordsworth didn’t think it would make sense for Russian intelligence officials to give a former MI-6 officer state secrets and that the claims made were “just way too good.” He said, reasonably, “If the head of the CIA were to declare he got information of this quality, you wouldn’t believe it.” In fact, when BuzzFeed published the dossier that CNN and others were praising as well-researched and credible, millions of Americans surmised what Wordsworth did. That almost no journalists reached this obvious conclusion is a shameful indictment of America’s media industry. Any reporter with any sense at all could look at the criminal leak operation surrounding the dossier and the larger collusion narrative and figure out on his own that the real story was not that Trump was a Russian agent but that U.S. intelligence agencies were behaving in remarkably malicious and corrupt ways. (This reporter’s January 17, 2017 story headlined “Top-Level Intel Officers’ War Against Donald Trump Is Bad For The Country” is an example of what should have been obvious to hundreds of reporters.) FIFA and Disinformation Claims Also False The New York Times was also effusive about Danchenko and Steele’s work. On the day CNN helped intelligence officials with their anti-Trump operation, the Times’ Scott Shane, Adam Goldman, and Matthew Rosenberg penned a similar story. “Former C.I.A. officials described him as an expert on Russia who is well respected in the spy world,” they wrote, adding that he was “considered a competent and reliable operative with extensive experience in Russia.” Of the operation that involved Steele embellishing the incredibly weird gossip and brainstorming Danchenko collected, the Times wrote: As a former spy who had carried out espionage inside Russia, Mr. Steele was in no position to travel to Moscow to study Mr. Trump’s connections there. Instead, he hired native Russian speakers to call informants inside Russia and made surreptitious contact with his own connections in the country as well. Shane, Goldman, and Rosenberg couldn’t find a single person to question the quality of the work that later turned out to be of no quality at all. “By all accounts, Mr. Steele has an excellent reputation with American and British intelligence colleagues and had done work for the F.B.I. on the investigation of bribery at FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. Colleagues say he was acutely aware of the danger he and his associates were being fed Russian disinformation,” they wrote. There are two problems with that characterization. On the FIFA front, it became a well-worn talking point that Steele was considered credible because of his excellent work for the FBI on FIFA corruption. In fact, that’s what the FBI told the secret spy court that granted warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. They said Steele’s prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.” It wasn’t true. Steele’s prior handling agent at the bureau told Inspector General Horowitz that he would have never approved such a description of Steele’s work, since most of his prior work had not been corroborated and none of it had ever been used in criminal proceedings. As for his “acute” awareness of the danger of being fed Russian disinformation, that was also not true. Horowitz found that Steele was an agent of “Russian Oligarch 1,” a reference to Oleg Deripaska, and that he was in frequent contact with agents of Russian oligarchs. Had the FBI been properly informed that Steele was working both for the Clinton-funded operation and the Russian oligarch, they said they would have been much more sensitive to the possibility his entire operation was related to Russian disinformation. The inspector general also noted a 2017 report showing that the FBI received information that there was reason for concern that Steele’s reporting about Michael Cohen “was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.” The “pee tape” allegation may have been the result of Russian intelligence services “infiltrating source into the network” of Danchenko. British Press Goes Overboard Luke Harding at The Guardian had excellent access to Steele. His description of Steele’s work could not have been more flattering. Of Steele’s collection of unsubstantiated gossip from Danchenko, he wrote, “At first, obtaining intelligence from Moscow went well. For around six months – during the first half of the year – Steele was able to make inquiries in Russia with relative ease. It got harder from late July, as Trump’s ties to Russia came under scrutiny. Finally, the lights went out. Amid a Kremlin cover-up, the sources went silent and information channels shut down.” Sounds dramatic! And fictional! “Steele was adamant that his reporting was credible. One associate described him as sober, cautious, highly regarded, professional and conservative. ‘He’s not the sort of person who will pass on gossip. If he puts something in a report, he believes there is sufficient credibility in it,’ the associate said. The idea that Steele’s work was fake or a cowboy operation or born of political malice was completely wrong,” Harding wrote. Well, you can take that to the bank. “The dossier, Steele told friends, was a thoroughly professional job, based on sources who had proven themselves in other areas. Evaluating sources depended on a critical box of tools: what was a source’s reporting record, was he or she credible, what was the motivation?” Harding wrote. Harding would later write a story claiming that Paul Manafort and WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange held clandestine meetings at the Ecuadorian embassy. Despite the lack of evidence in support of this blockbuster and explosive report, the story went viral as the media clung to their Russia collusion hoax. It’s Not Fake News If Jane Mayer Isn’t Involved The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer co-wrote one of the most widely mocked and disparaged stories of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process, and the competition for bad journalism in that debacle was fierce. Her hagiography of Steele was noteworthy in part because it came out so late in the process, well after few were clinging to the dossier. The errors she transmits in her reporting are instructive. Here’s how she describes Steele’s work on the pee tape: Within a few weeks, two or three of Steele’s long-standing collectors came back with reports drawn from Orbis’s larger network of sources. Steele looked at the material and, according to people familiar with the matter, asked himself, ‘Oh, my God—what is this?’ He called in Burrows, who was normally unflappable. Burrows realized that they had a problem. As Simpson later put it, ‘We threw out a line in the water, and Moby-Dick came back.’ Steele’s sources claimed that the F.S.B. could easily blackmail Trump, in part because it had videos of him engaging in ‘perverted sexual acts’ in Russia. The sources said that when Trump had stayed in the Presidential suite of Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, in 2013, he had paid ‘a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him,’ thereby defiling a bed that Barack and Michelle Obama had slept in during a state visit. The allegation was attributed to four sources, but their reports were secondhand—nobody had witnessed the event or tracked down a prostitute, and one spoke generally about ’embarrassing material.’ Two sources were unconnected to the others, but the remaining two could have spoken to each other. In the reports Steele had collected, the names of the sources were omitted, but they were described as ‘a former top-level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin,’ a ‘member of the staff at the hotel,’ a ‘female staffer at the hotel when trump had stayed there,’ and ‘a close associate of trump who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow.’ Leaving aside that Steele had only one primary sub-source and not “two or three long-standing collectors,” here’s the ridiculous way that story made it into the dossier and, eventually, into a blackmail attempt of the president-elect by the sitting FBI director. Danchenko asked Source 2, a “hustler always looking for a lucrative score,” whether he had any dirt on Trump. Source 2 said there was this pee-tape story he’d heard about. He said the hotel where it was alleged to have occurred was known to be bugged by Russian intelligence, so they might have video. Danchenko met with the hotel managers and “during a free minute” asked them about the story. One of them said “all kinds of things happen at the hotel” with celebrities and “one never knows what they’re doing.” Danchenko opined that at least it “wasn’t a denial.” Another hotel staffer commented that “anything goes” at the hotel and that “officially, we don’t have prostitutes.” Danchenko gave Steele the names of the management at the hotel. Danchenko also said he explicitly told Steele the story was “rumor and speculation” and that he hadn’t been able to confirm it. One of the four claimed sources may not have actually been a source (the “close associate” who may not exist) and two of the four were just two rando hotel workers who weren’t even second-hand as Mayer described them. A Special Shoutout to ‘Fusion’ Natasha Bertrand Perhaps no reporter bootstrapped her credibility, as even the Washington Post put it, to Steele’s dossier as Natasha Bertrand did. Bertrand could have been Steele’s publicist and in fact has been jokingly referred to as “Fusion Natasha,” a reference to how frequently she promotes Fusion GPS’s discredited work in the various publications that have employed her. Bertrand calls Steele a “spymaster.” Admitting that portions of the interrogation had been contentious, she wrote, quite inaccurately, that “investigators ultimately found Steele’s testimony credible and even surprising.” She described the false Steele reports about Carter Page that were used to justify spying on the innocent American as “not far off.” Confronted with how much effort she put into distributing Steele’s false reports, including about the non-existent Moscow pee tape, the non-existent Cohen trip to Prague, and about non-existent misbehavior by Page, Bertrand told the Washington Post, “I stand by everything I’ve said on air and reported.” This Aged Poorly More than a year after Steele was identified as the author of the dossier, Christian Caryl, an editor with the Washington Post global opinions section, sang his praises. Caryl is Steele’s top fan, and he’s honest about the central role the completely discredited dossier played in the Russia collusion hoax: Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose claims about Donald Trump’s ties with Russia hold center stage in Washington right now, drives Republicans crazy. They have recommended that the Department of Justice open a criminal investigation into his work. They released a formerly classified memo by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) that vilifies him — and now they are holding back a Democratic brief that tries to correct the record. Their Fox News minions have promised damning new revelations about Steele’s perfidy on a near-weekly basis… Yet, try as they might, Steele continues to haunt them. You sense it in the tone of frustration and anxiety. “There’s nothing to see here,” they keep insisting. And insisting. And insisting. What is it about Steele that possesses them so? Could it be that his findings from the summer of 2016 — when the world was still wondering why Trump kept saying such nice things about Russia’s Vladimir Putin — proved so extraordinarily prescient? On and on it goes. According to Caryl, Steele had “sussed out the basic ingredients” of collusion by June 2016. While the inspector general and even the FBI admitted the dossier failed to pan out with any not-already-public information, Caryl quotes a former CIA agent saying it “turned out to be stunningly accurate.” “If all the information in the dossier is false, it is a very sophisticated fabrication,” New York Times reporter Scott Shane wrote in “What We Know and Don’t Know About the Trump-Russia Dossier.” Many journalists set aside necessary skepticism to embrace this view. As the sophisticated fabrication continues to unravel, the media that won Pulitzers and acclaim for hyping it are strikingly silent. Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College and a Fox News contributor. She is the co-author of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 3, 2020 21:08:15 GMT -6
www.breitbart.com/the-media/2020/08/03/manhattan-d-a-investigating-trump-for-possible-fraud-based-on-media-reports/Manhattan D.A. Investigating Trump for ‘Possible Fraud’ Based on Media Reports Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. told a federal court Monday that his office was pursuing a broad inquiry into possible fraud by President Donald Trump and his private businesses, based on reports that had appeared in the media. The New York Times reported: The Manhattan district attorney’s office suggested on Monday that it has been investigating President Trump and his company for possible bank and insurance fraud, a significantly broader inquiry than the prosecutors have acknowledged in the past. The suggestion by the office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., came in a new federal court filing arguing that Mr. Trump’s accountants should have to comply with a subpoena seeking eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns. Mr. Trump had asked a judge to declare the subpoena invalid. … In the new filing, the prosecutors did not directly identify the subject of their inquiry. But they said that “undisputed” assertions in earlier court papers and several news reports about Mr. Trump’s business practices showed that the office had a wide legal basis for the subpoena. … They cited newspaper investigations that concluded the president may have illegally inflated his net worth and the value of his properties to lenders and insurers. They also included an article on the congressional testimony of his former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who told lawmakers last year that the president had committed insurance fraud. Lawyers for the president have denied wrongdoing. The links above all refer to reporting by the New York Times, which apparently is the source for Vance’s claims of possible fraud. Vance’s filing comes after the Supreme Court ruled in a pair of cases last month that the president could not demand that local prosecutors meet a heightened burden for an ordinary subpoena, but that Congress did not have the right to demand whatever documents it wanted of the president.
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 4, 2020 22:04:35 GMT -6
President Trump: We caught them spying. Now it’s up to our Attorney General. As you know I wanted them to do it. I didn’t want to get overly involved… I do hear it’s breathtaking what they found that’s all I can say.
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 5, 2020 18:01:05 GMT -6
Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates threw fired FBI Director James Comey under the bus on Wednesday in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Lindsey Graham (SC) held a hearing on Wednesday on oversight of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
Sally Yates testified that she never authorized a counter-intelligence investigation of General Mike Flynn and agreed that Comey had gone “rogue.”
Comey sent FBI CI chief Peter Strzok and Special Agent Joe Pientka to the White House on January 24, 2017 to ambush General Flynn without his lawyers present.
Comey even bragged about this publicly.
Yates made the comments about Comey as she was being questioned by Senator Lindsey Graham.
“I was upset that Director Comey didn’t coordinate that with us and acted unilaterally,” Yates said.
“Did Comey go rogue?” Graham questioned.
“You could use that term, yes,” Yates said.
WATCH:
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 5, 2020 18:01:58 GMT -6
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 5, 2020 18:02:28 GMT -6
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 5, 2020 21:53:08 GMT -6
thefederalist.com/2020/08/05/sally-yates-partisanship-on-full-display-in-russiagate-judiciary-committee-hearing/Sally Yates’ Partisanship On Full Display In Russiagate Judiciary Committee Hearing AUGUST 5, 2020 By Margot Cleveland Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday about the Russia investigation. During her hours-long testimony, Yates repeated her claim that she feared the Russians had compromised President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn. “We do not want anybody in the U.S. government to be compromised by a foreign adversary,” Yates told the committee from her Atlanta home during her telephonic testimony, adding, “My great concern was the Russians knew that Gen. Flynn had not only engaged in these back-channel discussions, but that he was misleading and lying about it to the vice president and others.” Yates had told the Judiciary Committee the same story in May 2017, when she testified, “We believed that Gen. Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians.” “To state the obvious,” Yates expanded, “you don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians.” In the interim, however, Americans have learned much more about the Flynn affair, and information declassified since then established that the FBI didn’t fear Flynn was compromised; they fear Flynn. Only a deeply indoctrinated partisan could continue to believe the “compromised” canard. Thanks to the release of material previously withheld from Flynn’s criminal attorneys, we now know that the FBI agents sought to question Flynn about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador not because they believed he was compromised, but because they wanted him fired or prosecuted. They sought to shore up a nonsensical Logan Act charge or to ensnare Trump’s national security adviser in a perjury trap. The gambit succeeded when then-FBI agent Peter Strzok and his in-the-shadows partner Joe Pientka questioned Flynn, concluded he wasn’t lying, yet successfully set in motion Flynn’s prosecution by the special counsel’s office. Following their questioning of Flynn, then-FBI Director James Comey did an about-face, now agreeing with Yates that the Trump White House should be briefed on the conversations Flynn had with the Russian ambassador in late December. That briefing led to Flynn’s ouster. For Yates to continue to claim she believed Flynn was compromised speaks not of Flynn’s character but hers. She has taken the ostrich defense to a new low. Yates continues to ignore the suspicious circumstances under which she first learned of Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador: during a Jan. 5, 2017 meeting when Comey discussed Flynn’s calls with then-President Barack Obama. Yates had no prior knowledge of the calls, blindsiding her so she had a hard time processing the conversation at the time. Yet we are to believe Yates thought Flynn’s conversations were a back-channel to Russia. But she did nothing to inform President-elect and then President Trump of the conversations until after Comey had sent his FBI agents to question Flynn. We are to believe this talking point even after Strzok’s declassified notes indicated that Comey informed Trump and Vice President Joe Biden that Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador “appear legitimate.” While Yates takes refuge in her claimed concern that Flynn was compromised because he had “lied” to the vice president, FBI notes show agents had no such concern. After interviewing Flynn, the FBI agents also did not believe Flynn had lied about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Did they tell her otherwise? Did Comey and his crew play Yates? Frankly, that is too easy of a cop-out. Yates might not be complicit, but she possessed the willful blindness only a true partisan could, to swallow the tale the Resistance peddled: that a retired lieutenant general with top-secret security clearance could be compromised by the Russians so easily. Americans need to remember that for all her talk of bipartisan service to this country, Yates demonstrated her true blue colors when she refused to enforce Trump’s travel ban, the essence of her job as acting attorney general. Yet Yates also refused to resign, forcing Trump to fire her instead. That might be a badge of honor for Yates, but her continued refusal to see the soft coup plotted under her leadership of the Department of Justice will be her legacy.
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 7, 2020 16:37:09 GMT -6
dailycaller.com/2020/08/07/igor-danchenko-steele-dossier-russia/Steele Source Had Meeting In Russia At Crucial Point In Dossier Saga Igor Danchenko, the primary source for Christopher Steele’s dossier, met in June 2016 with an official in the Russian ministry of energy and a journalist who is speculated to be a sub-source for the dossier. Danchenko’s activities in 2016 have come under intense scrutiny since he was identified as Steele’s source last month. His meetings and travels could shed light on how he obtained information that he later passed to Steele. Sergey Abyshev, who served as a deputy director in the Russian ministry of energy, confirmed meeting with Danchenko in Russia days before the first memo of the dossier was written. In June 2016, a month that is key to the origin story of the Steele dossier, the primary source for that salacious document met with an official in the Russian ministry of energy and a journalist friend in Russia, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. Igor Danchenko, a Russia analyst who worked for Christopher Steele, met with Sergey Abyshev, who was then a deputy director in the energy ministry, and Ivan Vorontsov, the editor-in-chief of a Russian finance website, according to a Facebook post by Vorontsov and confirmation from Abyshev. It is not entirely clear what relevance the rendezvous might have to the dossier, but it helps fill in the timeline of Danchenko’s interactions and movements at a critical stage in the development of the provocative report. At the time of the meeting, Danchenko was well at work for Steele collecting information about Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia. Danchenko, a Russian national who lives in Washington, D.C., told the FBI in January 2017 that Steele, a former MI6 officer, tasked him in June 2016 to dig up dirt on Trump. Steele was hired in May 2016 by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm working for the Clinton campaign and DNC. Vorontsov posted a photo on June 16, 2016 from the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), an annual business conclave, saying he had met the prior evening with Danchenko and Abyshev. “The night before was so nice with Sergey Abyshev and Igor Danchenko,” Vorontsov wrote. Four days later, on June 20, 2016, Steele penned the first of 17 memos that make up what is colloquially known as the dossier. Steele has said that most of the information was collected by a single source who worked as an independent contractor for his firm, Orbis Business Intelligence. (RELATED: FBI Memo Raises Red Flags About Sources Behind The Steele Dossier) Danchenko was identified as the contractor last month by an anonymous Twitter user after the Senate Judiciary Committee released a memo of his interviews with the FBI from Jan. 24-26, 2017. The first Steele memo contains the dossier’s most eye-catching allegation: that the Kremlin was blackmailing Donald Trump with video of him watching prostitutes urinate on each other in a room at the Moscow Ritz Carlton in 2013. Danchenko told the FBI that the information came from two sources who are referred to as Source 1 and Source 2 in the FBI memo of the interviews. It is unclear if Danchenko passed any information from either Vorontsov or Abyshev to Steele, though a group of Twitter sleuths who helped identify Danchenko as Steele’s source have pointed to clues about Vorontsov that match up with descriptions about Source 2. The DCNF reached both Vorontsov and Abyshev for comment about their interactions with Danchenko and about the dossier. Abyshev confirmed meeting with Danchenko and Vorontsov after being shown the photo Vorontsov posted on Facebook, though he said that the encounter occurred in Moscow rather than St. Petersburg. He described the encounter as “an almost accidental meeting in the center of Moscow with three ‘cheerful’ guys.” “As a result, I had to listen to a lecture on investment opportunities for about 20 minutes,” he said in a message translated from Russian. The FBI memo describes many of Danchenko’s meetings, but locations and participants are all redacted. Vorontsov told the DCNF when asked about Danchenko, Abyshev, and the dossier that he was “ready to talk.” He called Danchenko a “good man” with whom he has a long relationship. Vorontsov later decided against discussing Danchenko, saying that he did not feel comfortable talking about his friend without his consent. Vorontsov and Danchenko appear to have a close friendship stretching back several years. Vorontsov has posted photos of Danchenko dating as far back as 2014 and as recently as November 2019. Vorontsov, the editor-in-chief of BANKIFIN, also referred to Danchenko in a post on Nov. 26, 2018 as a “special correspondent” for his media outlet at the 4th annual Russian-British Business Forum, which was held in London. Danchenko displayed a badge that said he was with Sidar Global Ventures, a Washington, D.C. firm where he worked as a Eurasia analyst. Cenk Sidar, the president of Sidar Global, said he knows nothing about the dossier, and has never met Danchenko. “Igor worked for Sidar Global as a political risk and commercial due diligence analyst. He did periodic Russia political reports for my Wall Street and corporate clients, and did a good job,” Sidar told the DCNF. “I don’t know him personally or don’t have anything to say about his work quality as there were other people who managed him but in general, he is a smart guy and knows well about Russia.” But Sidar said that Danchenko did not attend the forum in London on behalf of Sidar Global. “I have no idea about that conference and we did not send him to this event,” he said when shown a photo of Danchenko’s badge. 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. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Danchenko told the FBI about his work for Steele and his sub-sources for the dossier during his interviews. He undercut several aspects of the dossier, telling investigators that he provided Steele with unverified rumors he picked up from friends. There is no indication of wrongdoing on Danchenko’s part. He agreed to meet with the FBI in exchange for immunity, according to the FBI memo of his interviews. A Justice Department inspector general report released on Dec. 9 said that the FBI described Danchenko as “truthful and cooperative” in applications for surveillance warrants against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. The IG report did raise the prospect that Danchenko was not entirely forthcoming with investigators. According to the report, the FBI intelligence analyst who took part in the Danchenko interview believed Danchenko might have been “minimizing” his contacts with some of his sub-sources. A source close to Danchenko told the DCNF that he stands by the information he presented to Steele, but has no comment on how Steele wrote it in the dossier. Steele provided the dossier to the FBI and briefed numerous reporters about it in 2016. The FBI relied heavily on Steele’s information to obtain warrants to surveil Carter Page. The revelation last month that Danchenko was Steele’s source has drawn even more scrutiny to the dossier. That’s because the narrative initially spun by Democrats and Steele-friendly journalists was that the retired spy used a deep network of Russian sources with insight into the Kremlin’s links to Trumpworld and its interference in the U.S. election. Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, cited Steele’s use of Russian sources during a March 20, 2017 hearing in which he touted the allegations in the dossier. But according to what Danchenko told the FBI, he appears to be far removed from Kremlin power centers. He told investigators that he derived most of his information from friends he had in Russia who he believed had some loose affiliations with Russian government officials. Danchenko, who worked for the Brookings Institution years before partnering with Steele, told the FBI of six people he said were sources for the information he gave Steele, according to the FBI memo. One of the purported sources has been identified as Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman long reported to be a major but unwitting source for the dossier. ABC News and The Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 24, 2017, the same day that Danchenko met with the FBI, that Millian was a key source for the dossier. Danchenko undercut the claim that Millian played a prominent role in the dossier in the FBI interview, according to the memo. He told the FBI that he believes he may have talked to Millian by phone once in late July 2016, but that the person on the other end of the line did not identify himself. His statements conflict with reports that popped up after the dossier was published in January 2017 that said that Millian was the source for the story about Trump with prostitutes in Moscow. (RELATED: A Dossier Source Of Mystery) Millian, who is referred to as Source 6 in the FBI’s Danchenko interview memo, attended the SPIEF event that Danchenko may also have attended. He posted photos on his Facebook account speaking with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who once hired Steele, and Alexander Novak, Russia’s minister of energy. Danchenko told the FBI that Source 2, who he said was a friend, provided the information to him about the alleged Trump sex tape. According to Danchenko, the source told him in June 2016 that there was a “well known story” about Trump’s activities at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow. The source said that people knew about the allegation but that “it only becomes fact if people come forward.” Danchenko told the FBI he investigated the allegation himself, but was unable to verify it after speaking with staff at the Ritz Carlton. Trump has vehemently denied the so-called “pee tape” allegation. People with him on his trip to Moscow have said Trump spent only a few hours in his hotel room, making it unlikely he would have had the time to take part in a sex romp. Danchenko also said he met with another source, Source 1, in June 2016 at a cafe in an unidentified location and discussed the purported Trump blackmail. According to the FBI memo, the source passed along information from a conversation he had with a former Russian intelligence official. Danchenko said that the former spy said the Kremlin had “embarrassing stuff — sexual/pornographic material” on many people, including Trump. The former Russian spy is not identified in the FBI memo, but Steele indicated in a meeting with State Department officials in October 2016 that Vyacheslav Trubnikov, the former chief of Russia’s FSB, was somehow a source for the dossier. The Justice Department’s inspector general, which released a scathing report of the FBI’s handling of the dossier, raised the prospect that the Trump sex tape story could have been the product of Russian disinformation. According to the report, a U.S. intelligence community report dated Feb. 27, 2017 said that a person with possible ties to Trump and Russia claimed that the sex tape allegation was planted by Russian intelligence operatives. The IG report said that allegations in the dossier regarding former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen — which Danchenko said came from a source called Source 3 — may have been Russian disinformation. Adding more potential significance to Danchenko’s relationship with Vorontsov is speculation that he is Source 2 described in the FBI memo. Danchenko told the FBI that Source 2 was a collector of some sort, and that he gave the source Scottish currency that he took out of an ATM. Vorontsov’s Facebook account shows that he is an avid collector of foreign currency. In several posts he thanked Danchenko for gifting him paper money and coins. “I thought Danchenko brought me my salary!” Vorontsov wrote in a March 13, 2015 post. He thanked Danchenko in a post on June 21, 2017 for a bill issued by the United Cigar Stores of America. He referred to Danchenko as Santa Claus in a post on Nov. 9, 2014 thanking him for a coin set from the U.K. Vorontsov thanked Danchenko “for remembering and caring for us” in another post with a five-pound bank note. Danchenko has not responded to repeated phone calls and messages seeking comment. The DCNF reached his attorney, Mark E. Schamel, with questions about Vorontsov, Abyshev and the dossier, but he was unable to provide comment on the record. Abyshev, who left the Russian ministry of energy in August 2016, is the highest ranking Russian official identified to date who Danchenko is known to have met. Abyshev has served in various local and federal government positions, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before joining the ministry of energy in 2011, Abyshev worked for Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service. He served as vice mayor and head of the city duma for Nizhny Novgorod in the early 2000s. Radio Free Europe, the news outlet, reported in October 2002 that Abyshev was impeached as speaker of the Duma on allegations of embezzlement and improper actions related to budget issues. Abyshev confirmed to The Daily Caller News Foundation through Facebook chat that he met with Danchenko and Vorontsov, though he suggested that they met in Moscow a day before SPIEF. Whether Danchenko used any information from Abyshev in the dossier is unclear. Danchenko indicated that some of his sources were unaware that he was working for Steele on an investigation of Trump’s possible contacts with Russia. He also said that his sources provided rumor and speculation over drinks about Trump and Kremlin activities, and that it was unverified information. Abyshev did not answer a follow-up question about whether he might have been a dossier source, either witting or unwitting. But he did volunteer some information that matches up with details about Danchenko in the FBI memo. Abyshev told the DCNF that he recalls that Danchenko worked as a translator for a Russian delegation who visited the Library of Congress in 2002. “Igor was a translator for the Open World program at the Library of Congress in 2002 for the organizers,” Abyshev said. According to the FBI memo, Danchenko said that he was a “facilitator” for an event held at the Library of Congress. Details of the event are heavily redacted, as are many other pieces of information in the FBI document. “I don’t remember the details, a lot of time has passed, I don’t even remember the place, but I remember about the congress, because it is not easy for the citizens of the country to get to it,” Abyshev said. Abyshev said he has not seen Vorontsov since their 2016 rendezvous. He did not say whether he has met with Danchenko, saying that “Igor also never came to Moscow, in any case, I don’t know about it.” Vorontsov did not address questions about whether he provided Danchenko with information found in the dossier. He shut down access to his Facebook account during the reporting for this story.
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 7, 2020 19:33:14 GMT -6
thefederalist.com/2020/08/07/sally-yates-testimony-showed-shes-either-ignorant-or-lying-about-russiagate/Sally Yates’ Testimony Showed She’s Either Ignorant Or Lying About Russiagate Over the three hours she testified, Sally Yates proved herself ignorant of basic facts and ready to dissemble rather than admit that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign. Margot ClevelandBy Margot Cleveland AUGUST 7, 2020 On Wednesday, former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified via a live video link before the Senate Judiciary Committee. With a sure demeanor, the long-time federal prosecutor presented herself as an apolitical creature concerned only with Russian interference in the 2016 election Yet, over the three hours she testified, Yates proved herself ignorant of basic facts and ready to dissemble rather than admit that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign. Most appallingly, Yates unequivocally condemned Attorney General William Barr’s decision to dismiss the criminal charge against Michael Flynn, and in doing so, she exposed herself as no better than the more blatant political operatives involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Sally Yates Knew Nothing and Saw Nothing While much of Wednesday’s hearing focused on the four fraudulent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications submitted to the FISA court, and Yates’s approval of two of those applications, the senators’ questioning of the one-time acting attorney general revealed Yates had little understanding of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and still lacks a solid grasp on the facts developed since. For instance, Yates testified that on January 4, 2017, when agents had originally decided to close the investigation into Flynn, she had not even known an investigation had been opened on Flynn. Even now, Yates apparently still does not know that the supposed impetus for opening the investigation into the Trump campaign was fallacious—that an individual connected to Russian intelligence supposedly offered then-Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos emails damaging to Hillary Clinton. The FBI learned, Yates testified, “that someone affiliated with the Russians had actually approached a foreign policy advisor of the Trump campaign and had told them that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousand of emails, that could be released anonymously and wanted to know if the campaign was interested in this.” Later, Sen. Lindsey Graham pushed Yates on this testimony to see if she understood that the individual who had approached Papadopoulos, Joseph Mifsud, was not acting on behalf of Putin. Was that individual “a Russian agent?” Graham queried. “He was connected with Russian intelligence,” Yates responded. Graham’s guffaw said it all. While Joseph Mifsud’s role in SpyGate may not yet be clear, Yates’ belief that Mifsud was “connected with Russian intelligence” shows she hasn’t a clue about even the most fundamental facts underlying the investigation into the Trump campaign. There were many other facts Yates did not seem to know, or if she did know them, there is a more troubling implication: the former acting attorney general attempted to mislead the Judiciary Committee and the public. For instance, in discussing the intel the FBI had received concerning Mifsud’s conversation with Papadopoulos about the “thousands of emails,” Yates claimed the FBI received this information in May and then “it actually happened—the emails were then dumped in July.” But the emails “dumped” in July were those hacked from the Democratic National Committee and released by WikiLeaks, which was an entirely different set of emails than the “thousands of emails” Papadopoulos said Mifsud had claimed the Russians had: According to the special counsel’s office, Papadopoulos “admit” that Mifsud told him “the Russians had emails of Clinton.” Whether Yates understood this distinction is unclear. It is also unclear which is worse—that she was ignorant on this basic fact or understood the fact but sought to conflate the two distinct categories of emails to justify the investigation. Still Running Debunked Collusion Theory Yates also seemed ignorant Russia’s end game in interfering in the 2016 election. She told the Judiciary Committee that Russia was “trying to put a thumb on the scale for one particular candidate, to try to aid the election of Donald Trump and to hurt Hillary Clinton.” But, as Rep. Devin Nunes told The Federalist, “the idea that Putin thought he could install Trump in the White House by buying cheap Facebook ads is absurd.” In fact, “some of the Russian ads were anti-Trump,” Nunes added, showing Putin’s true purpose “was to sow division and pit Americans against each other.” “And because of the Democrats’ and the media’s hysterical accusations that Trump conspired with his campaign, it succeeded beyond Putin’s wildest dreams,” the California Republican noted. Also troubling was Yates’ testimony that “the Obama administration was not surveilling the Donald Trump campaign.” She then pushed the same debunked talking point Democrats and the media have been regurgitating for three years, telling the Judiciary Committee that Carter Page “was not a member of the Trump campaign at the time we initiated the FISA.” But that Page was not a member of the Trump campaign at the time the DOJ obtained the FISA surveillance warrant—illegally, as we now know—does not mean the Trump campaign was not surveilled, because the FISA order gave the FBI access to Page’s past electronic communications. In fact, the IG report stated, “the evidence collected during the first FISA application time period demonstrated that Carter Page had access to individuals in Russia and he was communicating with people in the Trump campaign.” Moreover, as I detailed: Horowitz’s report added that, ‘based on our review of the Woods Files and communications between the FBI and [Office of Intelligence], we identified a few emails between Page and members of the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign concerning campaign related matters.’ Don’t let the ‘few emails’ mislead: The FISA surveillance didn’t just accidently sweep in a few random campaign communications. Rather, the ‘few’ campaign communications the IG identified came from its limited review of the Woods file and select FBI communications. The IG report made this point clear in a footnote, stating it did not review the entirety of the FISA-intercepted communications—only those “pertinent to” the IG’s review of FISA abuse. While we do not know how many campaign emails and communications were swept into the FISA surveillance of Page, we do know the FBI would have had access to all campaign emails that originated from Page or included him as a recipient. And the number of emails accessed appears large, given that the IG report stated that 45 days into the surveillance order, the FBI ‘team had not reviewed all of the emails the first FISA application yielded and believed there were additional emails not yet collected.’ The IG report also established that the Crossfire Hurricane team recognized ‘the possibility that the FISA collection would include sensitive political campaign related information.’ Not only was Yates uninformed or inaccurate about the FISA surveillance of the Trump campaign, she ignored the other surveillance of the Trump campaign members until asked whether the FBI had also taped Papadopoulos. Yates then acknowledged that the government had “recorded a conversation between Papadopoulos and a source,” but noted it was “not wiretap surveillance.” Whether Yates knew about the other surveillance of the Trump campaign or didn’t consider it “surveillance” because it was not “wiretap surveillance” is unclear. But what is clear is that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign in many ways. Yes, Sally, Obama Spied on Trump’s Campaign In addition to accessing campaign communications vis-a-vis the FISA warrant illegally obtained on Page and recording a conversation with Papadopoulos, confidential human source Stefan Halper recorded conversations with Page and, more significantly, Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis. When Halper recorded his conversation with Clovis on September 1, 2016, he asked several questions about sensitive campaign strategies, such as “whether the Trump campaign was planning an ‘October Surprise.’” Clovis also shared with Halper “additional comments about the internal structure, organization, and functioning of the Trump campaign.” And then there was the FBI’s use of agent Joe Pientka to spy on Trump and Flynn during a campaign briefing. But sure, Sally, there was no surveillance of the Trump campaign. Fact-Less Smearing Of Flynn and Barr Yates’ ignorance of these facts—or her purposefully slanting of them—is bad. But what is worse is what she did to Flynn and Barr: She disparaged them without knowing the facts. Yates unequivocally declared, under oath, that when the FBI questioned Flynn concerning his conversations with the Russian ambassador, “the continuing investigation into Michael Flynn was legitimate.” When asked if Flynn’s “lies to the FBI were material,” Yates intoned “they certainly were.” Yates further testified that the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss Flynn’s case was “highly irregular,” adding that “there’s no issue with respect to the materiality here, nor to the government’s ability to be able to prove falsity.” The question of “materiality” and “falsity” were key to the criminal charge the special counsel’s office brought against Flynn for lying to the FBI agents who questioned him about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. But after appointing an outside U.S. attorney, Missouri-based Jeff Jensen, to review the Flynn prosecution, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the charge, concluding the FBI’s questioning of Flynn was not part of a legitimate investigation and thus any false statements he made were not material. The DOJ also noted that it did not believe it could prove Flynn had knowingly made a false statement. The full results of Jensen’s investigation have yet to be made public, and that alone should have cautioned Yates from commenting on the case. But her testimony suggests much more than carelessness, it suggests—again—an ignorance of the facts or a desire to deceive. Did You Even Read the Documents? Throughout her testimony about the questioning of Flynn, Yates stressed that the FBI was not investigating a Logan Act violation but conducting a counterintelligence investigation. “I was operating under the impression that this interview of General Flynn was in the context of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. That being trying to discern what the connections were between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” Yates explained to the committee. But recently declassified documents show that the FBI’s purpose in questioning Flynn had no relation to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Rather, “the only investigative standpoint the FBI agents floated concerned the Logan Act, and not the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” And that is assuming the FBI agents sought “the truth,” and not to “get [Flynn] to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired.” Other documents establish that the FBI agents did not believe Flynn had lied to them. It was this (and likely other) evidence that convinced U.S. Attorney Jensen to recommend the charge against Flynn be dismissed. Yates’ entire basis for declaring the questioning of Flynn “legitimate” was her “impression” that the FBI agents interviewed Flynn in the context of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Her “impression,” though, was wrong. As Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell told The Federalist, “Yates’ comments ignore the shocking evidence the government produced that shows General Flynn was honest with the agents who interviewed him, and the FBI and DOJ had no reason to investigate him, and she had no basis to run to the White House to get him fired.” “Obviously,” Powell added, “Yates has not even read the government’s motion to dismiss.” Or if Yates did read it, she didn’t care. She clearly intended to slam Flynn and Barr, and this gave away her partisan game because, when asked whether she agreed with Rod Rosenstein’s memorandum recommending FBI Director James Comey be dismissed, Yates stated, “I’m not going to weigh in on what a successor of mine, a decision he made.” When pushed, she demurred again, saying she did not think it was appropriate to weigh in on whether the memo was accurate. Yet Yates had no problem weighing in on a successor attorney general’s decision to dismiss the charge against Flynn—even though she did not know the facts underlying the decision. (Yates also did not know the substance of Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador, claiming on multiple occasions Flynn had discussed sanctions. He had not.) Rather, all she knew was her “impression” of the FBI’s purpose for questioning Flynn. But as the FISA fraud showed, Yates’ impression of the FBI’s handling of Crossfire Hurricane is far removed from reality.
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 9, 2020 9:08:24 GMT -6
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 9, 2020 9:51:36 GMT -6
Steven Shrage joined Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures this morning. Shrage worked with FBI spy Stefan Halper for years. Steven introduced Stefan Halper to Carter Page back in 2016 while Halper was spying on the Trump campaign. On Sunday he spoke with Maria Bartiromo in his first interview. Shrage told Maria, “Halper was not that engaged up to the point he crossed paths with Page and Christopher Steele’s former MI6 boss Sir Richard Dearlove…” Shrage said he was surprised that Stefan Halper was making over a half a million dollars for writing reports for the government. Shrage said the key part, the real smoking gun in this is, “All these tentacles rlead back to the “small group” including Stefan Halper in SpyGate, Christopher Steele at the center of Russiagate, Stefan Halper’s FBI handler. None of the Senate has subpoenaed or called these peopel to talk in four years. I think that is the real smoking gun. How are these people being protected?” Shrage brought an audiotape interview he had with Halper back in early 2017. This was just days before a huge hit piece was published by the Washington Post deep state stenographers. Shrage thought it was interesting that Halper knew about General Flynn’s upcoming problems before anything was published in the news. Steven Shrage also added that Halper bragged that David Ignatius was one of his press media contacts. Shrage added, “So it seems to me that this is something that needs to be investigated.”
Shrage then added that he believes there were quite a few Republicans involved in leaking this damning smears against the Trump campaign.Via Sunday Morning Futures:
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 10, 2020 8:07:20 GMT -6
thefederalist.com/2020/08/10/what-we-learned-sunday-from-spygate-insider-steven-schrage/What We Learned Sunday From Spygate Insider Steven Schrage What Spygate insider Steven Schrage revealed suggests significant revelations will be forthcoming from U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation. Margot ClevelandBy Margot Cleveland AUGUST 10, 2020 This weekend, Spygate insider Steven Schrage broke his silence. In “The Spies Who Hijacked America” and a follow-up appearance on Maria Bartiromo’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Schrage detailed the origins of Stefan Halper’s meeting with then-Trump advisor Carter Page. Halper would later serve as a confidential human source (CHS) for the Crossfire Hurricane probe, secretly recording multiple conversations with Page, as well as Trump advisor George Papadopoulos. But it is what Schrage revealed about Halper’s initial non-interest in Page then Halper’s prediction on January 10, 2017, that Michael Flynn would not last long in the Trump administration that suggest significant revelations will be forthcoming from U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the origins of Spygate. In July 2016, Schrage was finishing his Ph.D. at Cambridge University under Halper’s supervision when he invited Page to speak at a conference entitled “2016’s Race to Change the World: How the U.S. Presidential Campaign Can Reshape Global Politics and Foreign Policy.” Given Halper’s later role as a CHS in Crossfire Hurricane, many surmised that Halper sought out Page’s attendance at the conference. But on Sunday, Schrage made clear that he, not Halper, was responsible for Page’s participation in the conference. In fact, Halper “ironically,” as Schrage wrote, “had repeatedly urged [Schrage] to cancel” the conference, which was “headlined by Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton’s confidante Madeleine Albright.” But Schrage did not cancel the conference. Instead, “after a 20-something Cambridge administrative official smugly told me ‘there’s no way Trump can win’ and cut our travel funding, it sent me on a mad scramble,” Schrage wrote. “I had to find someone, anyone, to fly over on a last-minute economy ticket to represent the Trump campaign,” and that is how Page crossed paths with Halper. During his interview with Bartiromo, Schrage added that he wanted a representative of the Trump campaign at the conference to provide balance. From Schrage’s telling, then, neither he nor Halper sought out Page’s participation in the conference for a nefarious purpose. But he says things changed when former MI6 director Sir Richard Dearlove arrived toward the end of the conference. “For most of the conference, Halper couldn’t be bothered with Page, about whom he made snarky comments about behind Page’s back,” Schrage wrote. “That all changed,” though, after Halper spoke to his “long-time collaborator,” Dearlove. Halper then “seemed desperately interested in isolating, cornering, and ingratiating himself to Page and promoting himself to the Trump campaign.” Schrage’s statement contradicts the tale Halper told FBI agents on August 11, 2016, when they asked for his assistance in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. According to inspector general’s report, the FBI asked Halper if he knew Papadopoulos, and after saying he didn’t, Halper “then asked whether the team had any interest in an individual named Carter Page.” “[T]he members of the investigative team ‘didn’t react because at that point we didn’t know where we were going to go with it,’” the IG report noted, but the Crossfire Hurricane team then asked Halper about how he knew Page. According to the report, “Halper told the agents in mid-July 2016, Carter Page attended a three-day conference, during which Page had approached [Halper] and asked [Halper] to be a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign.” Given Halper’s connection to Page, the FBI tasked him to spy on Page as well as Papadopoulos, leading to Halper recording multiple conversations with the Trump advisor. If Schrage’s version is accurate, Halper purposefully connected to Page and then sold that connection to the FBI to spy on him. Also, under the scenario Schrage presents, Halper did so at Dearlove’s behest. But why? What was Dearlove’s interest? Here, Schrage’s article is a must-read synopsis of what he calls “the Cambridge Four,” which in addition to Dearlove and Halper includes Dearlove’s former MI6 underling, Christopher Steele, and the official MI5 historian turned Cambridge academic Christopher Andrew. Together, the four have fingers in several different strands of Spygate, from the spying on Page, to the invention of an affair between Flynn and the Russian-born, Cambridge Ph.D. student Svetlana Lokhova, to, of course, the Steele dossier. Steele, we know was paid by the Clinton campaign. But what induced Dearlove, Halper, and Andrew to join in the endeavor? Was it money? Or did intelligence agencies seek out their assistance? If so, which intelligence community? While questioning Dearlove, Steele, or Andrew may prove impossible, Halper is a U.S. citizen. So why hasn’t he been hauled before Congress to explain himself? Halper has quite a bit to explain because, in addition to grooming Page during the Cambridge conference, according to Schrage, Halper seemed amazingly prescient about the fate of Trump’s national security advisor. In a January 10, 2017, conversation with Halper that Schrage recorded, Halper told him, “I don’t think Flynn’s going to be around long.” Halper then detailed the Machiavellian maneuvers likely to come: “The way these things work,” Halper said, was that “opponents. . . . so-called enemies” of Flynn would be “looking for ways of exerting pressure.” Flynn would be “squeezed pretty hard,” Halper suggested, and then Flynn’s “reaction to that is to blow up and get angry. He’s really f-cked. I don’t know where he goes from there. But that is his reaction. That’s why he’s so unsuitable.” When Halper made these predictions, Flynn’s telephone calls with the Russian ambassador were not yet publicly known. Two days later, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported those calls after receiving a leak of classified information from a still unknown source, and set in motion the scenario that led to Flynn’s firing. Whether Halper knew the specific “squeeze” that would be put on Flynn, in the form of a leak followed by a perjury trap sham investigation, is unclear. But that Halper saw Flynn not lasting long because “opponents” or “enemies” would seek to “exert pressure” seems strange because Halper supposedly was a Cambridge academic far removed from the D.C. scene. Even stranger is that Halper purported to know how Flynn would react, since Halper has never met Flynn. How did Halper know any of this? Did Halper have connections in the intelligence community sharing their thoughts on Flynn? Or was Halper hearing things from David Ignatius? Here, Schrage’s interview with Bartiromo proves enlightening. According to Schrage, Halper often bragged that Ignatius was one of his media contacts. This statement complements Lokhova’s statement to The Federalist that Halper (as well as Andrew) were connected to Ignatius. In fact, Lokhova told The Federalist that after Halper was outed as a CIA and FBI informant in May 2018, she spoke with Ignatius, and when they spoke, she “registered surprise about Halper’s role” as a CHS. As previously reported, “that prompted Ignatius to say ‘he always found Halper reliable as a source.’ When I said, ‘Wow, he was your source,’ Ignatius hung up. We never spoke again.’” So maybe intel was flowing two ways between Halper and Ignatius. Schrage doesn’t know what prompted Halper’s comments, but what he does know he has shared with U.S. Attorney Durham. However, with that investigation dragging on, and Flynn’s case coming before the entire D.C. Circuit Court on Tuesday, Schrage decided to speak out now, telling what he knows. Schrage, who alerted Durham of his plans to go public, has promised more information will be forthcoming in the days and weeks ahead. Hopefully, the same can be said of information coming from the government’s investigation into the Spygate scandal.
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 10, 2020 14:41:35 GMT -6
www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/susan-rice-emails/In responding to each of the 13 questions asked of her, Rice claimed 18 times that she “does not recall” critical information.
When asked to describe meetings or discussions about the events in Benghazi other than daily intelligence briefings, Rice said that she had discussions with friends and family, and “does not recall attending any meetings focused on the events in Benghazi between September 11, 2012 and September 16, 2012, other than attending a ceremony on September 14, 2012, at Joint Base Andrews … ” Rice said she believes she would have discussed the Benghazi attack with members of her UN staff, colleagues at the United Nations, and individuals in attendance at the ceremony on September 14, 2012, at Joint Base Andrews. When asked why she used a non-government email accounts to conduct U.S. government business while U.S. Ambassador to the United States, Rice acknowledged using her personal email account, at times, to conduct official government business without answering the question why she used non-government email accounts. Rice did not directly answer a question about deleting emails. Rather, Rice answered that “when emails related to U.S. government business were sent to [her] personal email account, [she] took steps to ensure that a copy of that email was also on her government email account.” and she “does not recall having need to review and return emails form any non-governmental email account.”
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 11, 2020 9:31:48 GMT -6
Politico hack Kyle Cheney thinks the DC Appeals Court is skeptical of dismissal against Flynn who was set up and should never have been charged with a crime in the first place.
The DC Circuit Court is out to prove Obama has sullied every system of government in his 8 year reign.
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 11, 2020 9:32:53 GMT -6
At one point Judge Leon Wilkins started blathering on about a hypothetical case with nuns and priests. How bizarre!
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 12, 2020 15:27:14 GMT -6
www.nationalreview.com/news/ron-johnson-says-gop-senators-on-homeland-security-committee-blocking-subpoenas-of-comey-brennan/Ron Johnson Says GOP Senators on Homeland Security Committee Blocking Subpoenas of Comey, Brennan; Committee Says Comments Were Based on a Misunderstanding Update 4:30 p.m.: Senator Johnson’s committee said his comments with Hugh Hewitt earlier on Wednesday were based on a misunderstanding, and that no Republican committee members are currently blocking subpoenas. “Chairman Johnson is committed to running a thorough investigation into abuses by the Obama administration toward the Trump campaign,” a spokesman for Johnson said in a statement. “Committee members want Chairman Johnson to attempt to get voluntary compliance, and also to be fully prepared for interviews by obtaining necessary documents, before compelling testimony.” Senator Ron Johnson (R., Wisc.) said on Wednesday that his Republican colleagues on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which he chairs, were blocking subpoenas of former officials involved in the Russia investigation. The 15-member committee has seven Democratic senators, meaning Johnson cannot issue subpoenas without the full support of its Republican members. Johnson has expressed a desire to subpoena former FBI director James Comey, former CIA director John Brennan, and others in connection with the Russia investigation. The Homeland Security Committee has already authorized Johnson to subpoena those individuals. However, the Wisconsin senator indicated that not all committee Republicans were on board with the subpoeneas, in comments on The Hugh Hewitt Show. “Which Republican doesn’t want to get to the bottom of this?” Hewitt asked. “We had a number of committee members that were highly concerned about how this looks politically,” Johnson responded. When pressed further by Hewitt, Johnson said “I’m just not going to be naming names that way.” ALL OUR OPINION. FREE DELIVERY. The NR Daily newsletter puts all our analysis in your inbox. Email Address Hewitt repeatedly expressed frustration with the pace of the investigation and told Johnson, “If there’s a senator who is blocking a subpoena, we need to know who that is so we throw them out.” 17 Johnson maintained that he and his staff are working “full time” on probing the Russia investigation, and cautioned that the committee requires more documentation to be able to question witnesses effectively. The probe into the origins of the Russia investigation, in which FBI agents investigated the Trump campaign for alleged connections to Russian intelligence operatives, is also being carried out by the Senate Judiciary Committee. On Sunday, committee chairman Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) released an FBI memo which he claimed amounted to evidence that the agency misled Congress regarding the veracity of the intelligence alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
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Post by soonernvolved on Aug 14, 2020 11:00:43 GMT -6
www.thedailybeast.com/kevin-clinesmith-former-fbi-lawyer-plans-to-plead-guilty-to-falsifying-documents-in-russia-probe-per-report?ref=homeKevin Clinesmith, a 38-year-old lawyer assigned to the FBI probe into foreign election interference, is expected to plead guilty to altering an email from the CIA that investigators used to seek a wiretap on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2017. Investigators relied on that document to seek extended court permission for the secret wiretap on Page, who had previously provided information to the U.S. spy agency. The anticipated guilty plea is part of U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation of the original 2016 probe. The lookback at the previous probe has been orchestrated by Attorney General William Barr, with plenty of prodding from Trump.
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