James Comey

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Half the intelligence...

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According to Sarah Westwood, the CNN White House reporter, Representatives Nunes and Gowdy were not given the documents they were promised.

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Since Rosenstein & the DOJ/FBI refused to follow through on their promise of showing the requested material, it’s time to do several things:

Fire Sessions and replace with one of Gowdy or McCarthy
Fire& impeach/hold in contempt of Congress Rosenstein
President Trump immediately declassifies said materials and gives those documents to the Congressional investigators requesting them.

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saraacarter.com/what-happened-during-the-fbi-interview-with-flynn/

FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka, if subpoenaed, will provide testimony regarding the circumstances surrounding his interview with former National Security Advisor Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, sources with knowledge have been telling this reporter for more than a year.

It’s this reporters understanding that Pientka will account for what Flynn said in the interview and will give context to the FBI’s accusation that he lied during the interview. If asked, Pientka will also give his personal opinion as to whether or not that was actually the case. He will also discuss how forthcoming Flynn was about very specific sensitive information that Flynn could not have possibly known the investigators already knew, which may give additional insight into Flynn’s veracity and willingness to tell the truth.

Pientka, however, will only testify about the circumstances regarding the Flynn interview and the issues that pertain to that interview, according to two sources with knowledge. There is no reason to believe that Pientka has any information on Comey’s role in the Trump Russia investigations but wants the opportunity to “state the truth” what has been said about Flynn, said the source, with direct knowledge.

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Now, narrative shift:

Corrected by facts by an intelligence expert:

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amp.dailycaller.com/2018/05/24/pompeo-udall-trump-tax-returns/

Pompeo appeared in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Sen. Udall suggested Trump could have conflicts of interest between American foreign policy and his own business dealings.

“Given that the president refuses to disclose his tax returns, how can you assure the American people that American foreign policy is free of his personal conflicts of interest?” Udall asked.

“Senator, I find that question bizarre,” Pompeo responded.

“You don’t want to answer it then?” Udall pressed. “You want to describe it as bizarre and not give me an answer?”

“Yes I do,” Pompeo said angrily. “I think that’s indicative of my answer, Senator. I’ve been incredibly involved in this administration’s policy now for some 16 months and I’ve seen literally no evidence of what you are scurrilously suggesting.”

“It is an outrageous suggestion,” Pompeo added.

Udall argued that “many people” have raised questions about Trump’s business interests abroad and Pompeo shot back that such people are only doing so because they are politically opposed to the president.

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May 24, 2018 16:29:41 GMT -6 soonernvolved said:

Never should have allowed all of them in. Now they can walk out and say whatever they want. Tell them to pound sand. This isn't about being bipartisan. It's about getting to the truth.

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www.cnn.com/2018/05/24/politics/roger-stone-finances-special-counsel-mueller-russia-investigation/index.html

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has been probing Roger Stone’s finances as it summons a series of witnesses to gather more information about one of President Donald Trump’s longtime advisers, according to people familiar with the situation.

Mueller’s team has questioned associates about Stone’s finances, including his tax returns.
[…]
“The special counsel having found no evidence or proof whatsoever of Russian collusion, trafficking in allegedly hacked emails with WikiLeaks or advance knowledge of the publication of (then-Clinton campaign chair John) Podesta’s emails now seems to be combing through every molecule of my existence including my personal life, political activities and business affairs to conjure up some offense to charge me with either to silence me or induce me to testify against the President,” Stone told CNN. “I have no intention of being silenced or turning my back on President Trump.”
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Translation: Still fishing for anything to remain relevant.

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May 24, 2018 21:00:57 GMT -6 soonernvolved said:

www.cnn.com/2018/05/24/politics/roger-stone-finances-special-counsel-mueller-russia-investigation/index.html

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has been probing Roger Stone’s finances as it summons a series of witnesses to gather more information about one of President Donald Trump’s longtime advisers, according to people familiar with the situation.

Mueller’s team has questioned associates about Stone’s finances, including his tax returns.
[…]
“The special counsel having found no evidence or proof whatsoever of Russian collusion, trafficking in allegedly hacked emails with WikiLeaks or advance knowledge of the publication of (then-Clinton campaign chair John) Podesta’s emails now seems to be combing through every molecule of my existence including my personal life, political activities and business affairs to conjure up some offense to charge me with either to silence me or induce me to testify against the President,” Stone told CNN. “I have no intention of being silenced or turning my back on President Trump.”
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Translation: Still fishing for anything to remain relevant.

I honestly am not a fan of Roger Stone, but this Special Council has gotten out of control.

The lack of oversight and clear conflicts of interest have destroyed their credibility. The only thing keeping the Council in effect is the taboo nature of dissolving it before it completes its processes.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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According to The Hill, Bill Priestap, the assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, and Michael Steinbach, the former head of the FBI’s national security division.

Bill Priestap was the FBI official who changed the wording in the James Comey July 2016 speech to remove the word “President” and replace it with “another senior government official” to hide this fact from the American public.

The third witness is John Giacalone who preceded Steinbach as the bureau’s top national security official and oversaw the first seven months of the Clinton probe.

The word is that Giacalone quit the FBI in protest over how the higher ups were killing the investigation.

Giacalone resigned from the Hillary Clinton case and retired from the FBI because he felt the case was going “sideways”; that’s law enforcement jargon for “nowhere by design.”

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May 24, 2018 16:37:56 GMT -6 soonernvolved said:

Since Rosenstein & the DOJ/FBI refused to follow through on their promise of showing the requested material, it’s time to do several things:

Fire Sessions and replace with one of Gowdy or McCarthy
Fire& impeach/hold in contempt of Congress Rosenstein
President Trump immediately declassifies said materials and gives those documents to the Congressional investigators requesting them.

I could see McCarthy but not definitely not Gowdy....he didn't get any charges on anyone during his kabuki theater...

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dailycaller.com/2018/05/24/washington-dc-capitol-police-evidence-house-hacking-suspect-attorney/

Capitol Police Accidentally Gave Evidence To House Hacking Suspect’s Defense Attorney
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The House IG said Democratic IT aides made unauthorized access to data, but prosecutors haven’t charged them

Democrats appear to want to keep the case out of court; a trial could expose their reckless IT practices

Capitol Police didn’t make arrests despite numerous red flags and then ‘inadvertently’ gave evidence to defense attorneys that was supposed to go to prosecutors

Prosecutors appear to be sharing info with someone on Capitol Hill who is leaking details to the hacking suspect’s lawyer

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The Capitol Police turned over a trove of evidence in the alleged Imran Awan House cyberbreach and theft case to the defense attorneys when they were supposed to deliver it to prosecutors instead, according to court documents and a source.

And hours after The Daily Caller News Foundation asked prosecutors about the disclosure, Awan’s lawyer said he had learned of the forthcoming story from a source on Capitol Hill. TheDCNF had not told anyone other than prosecutors about it.

“The cop came to [Awan’s defense attorney] Chris Gowen’s office with a stack of papers … Then he came back and said, ‘I thought you guys were the other party.’ He was very, very angry. But Gowen made copies,” the source, who’s familiar with The Awans, told TheDCNF.


Awan, three relatives and a friend ran IT for one in five House Democrats and could read all their emails and files until they were banned on Feb. 2, 2017, for “numerous violations of House security policies.” The violations alleged by the House Office of Inspector General include logging into the House Democratic Caucus server thousands of times without authorization. This allegedly occurred during the same period in 2016 the DNC was hacked.

Prosecutor Michael Marando alluded to the disclosure of evidence in court on Oct. 6, 2017.

“Earlier this week, there was the inadvertent disclosure of law enforcement materials to defense counsel,” Marando told the judge. “There may be a motion on that.”

Another disclosure may have occurred after TheDCNF emailed the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia for comment on this story. Three hours after spokesman Bill Miller was contacted, Gowen emailed TheDCNF.

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thefederalist.com/2018/05/25/ridiculous-say-fbis-spying-trying-protect-trump-campaign/

Why It’s Ridiculous To Say FBI Spying Meant To Protect The Trump Campaign
The decision to use Stefan Halper as an informant instead of a messenger cannot possibly be considered a favor to the Trump campaign. It’s as insulting as it is ridiculous to assert.
Jason Beale
By Jason Beale
MAY 25, 2018

An interesting thing happened last Friday: a bizarre confluence of events that left many of us wondering if we’d stepped into the Twilight Zone.

It began without much acclaim. Reps. Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy had been scheduled to meet with Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials to finally review the classified information to which they’d been denied access until Nunes threatened to subpoena the information and hold the officials in contempt.


But they decided not to attend the meeting. According to Nunes, after getting word that they wouldn’t be provided the unredacted information they sought, they declined the invitation.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Shortly after the meeting would have ended, The New York Times and Washington Post published articles describing the dispute between Nunes and the DOJ, in which the authors referenced the FBI informant whose actions before the initiation of a formal FBI investigation into the Trump campaign apparently provoked Nunes’ interest in having the information unredacted.

The Post and Times’ Reporting on Stefan Halper
The Post and Times had been writing about the suspected source, Stefan Halper, all week, but generally refrained from including information that could reveal his identity. That all changed Friday evening. Both papers did everything but provide his Social Security number and home address.

Their descriptions of his prior association with the FBI and CIA, his meetings with at least two of the Trump campaign members, and the timing of these meetings closely tracked Chuck Ross’s reporting in The Daily Caller two months ago, in which Ross named the informant as Stefan Halper.


The Times and Post declined to include Harper’s name in their otherwise-illuminating biographical profiles of him. They wrote that they withheld the name to protect him and others who may be placed in danger if his identity became public, while knowingly and effectively making his identity public.

As if that bizarre departure from reality wasn’t enough, they then blamed it all on Nunes, Gowdy, and President Trump. They said their own role in identifying the informant was a direct result of Republicans’ interest in viewing the unredacted FBI records initiating the investigation. They made us do it. We had no choice.

Nunes appeared on Fox News the next day and pointed out the curious timing of the revelatory reports. He wondered if the decision to reveal Halper’s identity (in all but name) was timed to follow his scheduled meeting, inviting speculation that Nunes, his colleagues, or someone in the Trump administration had leaked all that information on Halper to the press. Under the circumstances, he was right to wonder.

If The FBI Really Were Trying to Protect Team Trump
All of this, though, was incidental to the core issue of the raging debate following the revelation the FBI had employed Halper: Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign, and if so, what was the goal of their operation?

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thefederalist.com/2018/05/25/code-name-crossfire-hurricane-evidence-fbis-russia-cover-story/

How The Code Name ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ Undermines The FBI’s Russia Story
The paper of record has apparently joined a campaign, spearheaded by government and political operatives, to minimize Christopher Steele’s role in the Russia investigation.
Lee Smith By Lee Smith
MAY 25, 2018
The New York Times’ 4,000-word report last week on the Federal Bureau of Intelligence investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign’s possible ties to Russia revealed for the first time that the probe was called “Crossfire Hurricane.”

The name, explains the paper, refers to the Rolling Stones lyric “I was born in a crossfire hurricane,” from the 1968 hit “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Mick Jagger, one of the songwriters, said the song was a “metaphor” for psychedelic-drug induced states. The other, Keith Richards, said it “refers to his being born amid the bombing and air raid sirens of Dartford, England, in 1943 during World War II.”


Investigation names, say senior U..S law enforcement officials, are designed to refer to facts, ideas, or people related to the investigation. Sometimes they’re explicit, and other times playful or even allusive. So what did the Russia investigation have to do with World War II, psychedelic drugs, or Keith’s childhood?

The answer may be found in the 1986 Penny Marshall film named after the song, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” In the Cold War-era comedy, a quirky bank officer played by Whoopi Goldberg comes to the aid of Jonathan Pryce, who plays a British spy being chased by the KGB.

The code name “Crossfire Hurricane” is therefore most likely a reference to the former British spy whose allegedly Russian-sourced reports on the Trump team’s alleged ties to Russia were used as evidence to secure a Foreign Intelligence Service Act secret warrant on Trump adviser Carter Page in October 2016: ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele.

Helping Spin a New Origin Story
It is hardly surprising that the Times refrained from exploring the meaning of the code name. The paper of record has apparently joined a campaign, spearheaded by the Department of Justice, FBI, and political operatives pushing the Trump-Russia collusion story, to minimize Steele’s role in the Russia investigation.


After an October news report showed his dossier was funded by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, facts that further challenged the credibility of Steele’s research, the FBI investigation’s origin story shifted.

In December, The New York Times published a “scoop” on the new origin story. In the revised narrative, the probe didn’t start with the Steele dossier at all. Rather, it began with an April 2016 meeting between Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and a Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud. The professor informed him that “he had just learned from high-level Russian officials in Moscow that the Russians had ‘dirt’ on Mrs. Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails.’”

Weeks later, Papadopoulos boasted to the Australian ambassador to London, Alexander Downer, that he was told the Russians had Clinton-related emails. Two months later, according to the Times, the Australians reported Papadopoulos’ boasts to the FBI, and on July 31, 2016, the bureau began its investigation.

Further reinforcement of the new origin story came from congressional Democrats. A January 29 memo written by House Intelligence Committee minority staff under ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff further distances Steele from the opening of the investigation. “Christopher Steele’s raw reporting did not inform the FBI’s decision to initiate its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016. In fact, the FBI’s closely-held investigative team only received Steele’s reporting in mid-September.”

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thefederalist.com/2018/05/24/fbi-used-secret-spy-program-protect-killers-jail-innocents-screw-victims/

The FBI Used Its Secret Spy Program To Protect Killers, Jail Innocents, And Screw Victims
An internal FBI spy program reportedly used to surveil the Trump campaign has a long history of being used to protect killers and jail innocents.
Sean Davis By Sean Davis
MAY 24, 2018
Following reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used at least one spy to secretly surveil members of the Trump campaign, fired former FBI director James Comey lashed out at critics of his agency’s activities during the 2016 election.

“Facts matter. The FBI’s use of Confidential Human Sources (the actual term) is tightly regulated and essential to protecting the country,” Comey tweeted on May 23. “Attacks on the FBI and lying about its work will do lasting damage to our country.”


While Comey’s record on truth-telling is decidedly mixed, he is correct that facts matter and that the FBI’s use of informants is governed by strict guidelines. How and why many of those guidelines came to be are important facts that the American public deserves to know as it considers revelations that the FBI used wiretaps and spies to surveil Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, his transition, and perhaps even his presidential administration.

Those guidelines, many of which the Government Accountability Office found were not being followed as recently as 2015, were put in place after rogue FBI agents working in the Boston field office routinely worked to cover up murders committed by their informants. You might say they were the direct result of justifiable attacks on the FBI for unconscionable violations of the public trust.

In fact, years-long violations of the rules about the FBI’s use of secret spies have led to massive investigations across every branch of government, including a multi-volume, 3,528-page congressional investigative report in 2003, a scathing 314-page report from the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general in 2005, and even a scathing 228-page, $102 million ruling against the government in 2007 after a federal judge ruled that the FBI deliberately withheld evidence, leading to the wrongful convictions of four men, in order to protect a mob informant. (Three of the men were originally sentenced to death; two died in prison awaiting justice for a crime they didn’t commit.)

The 2007 ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Gertner, which the federal government chose not to appeal, reads more like a John Grisham novel than it does a legal dictum. In her introduction, Gertner made clear that the horrific miscarriage of justice perpetrated under the guise of the FBI’s confidential spy program wasn’t the result of innocent missteps by a few bad apples, but was instead a coordinated conspiracy involving the rogue agents, their supervisors, and even the FBI director himself.

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