Eight years after its informant uncovered criminal wrongdoing inside Russia’s nuclear industry, the FBI has identified 37 pages of documents that might reveal what agents told the Obama administration, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others about the controversial Uranium One deal.

There’s just one problem: The FBI claims it must keep the memos secret from the public.

Their excuses for the veil of nondisclosure range from protecting national security and law enforcement techniques to guarding the privacy of individual Americans and the ability of agencies to communicate with each other.

(…) “I was the reporter who first disclosed last fall that a globetrotting American businessman, William Douglas Campbell, managed to burrow his way inside Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear giant, Rosatom, in 2009 posing as a consultant while working as an FBI informant.

Campbell gathered extensive evidence for his FBI counterintelligence handlers by early 2010 that Rosatom’s main executive in the United States, Vadim Mikerin, orchestrated a racketeering plot involving kickbacks, bribes and extortion that corrupted the main uranium trucking company in the United States. That is a serious national security compromise by any measure.

The evidence was compiled as Secretary Clinton courted Russia for better relations, as her husband former President Clinton collected a $500,000 speech payday in Moscow, and as the Obama administration approved the sale of a U.S. mining company, Uranium One, to Rosatom.

The sale — made famous years later by author Peter Schweizer and an epic New York Times exposé in 2015 — turned over a large swath of America’s untapped uranium deposits to Russia.

Mikerin was charged and convicted, along with some American officials, but not until many years later. Ironically, the case was brought by none other than current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — a magnet for controversy, it turns out.

But the years-long delay in prosecution mean that no one in the public, or in Congress, was aware that the FBI knew through Campbell about the Russian bribery plot as early as 2009 — well before the Obama-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) approved Uranium One in fall 2010.

Since the emergence of Campbell’s undercover work, there has been one unanswered question of national importance.

Did the FBI notify then-President Obama, Hillary Clinton and other leaders on the CFIUS board about Rosatom’s dark deeds before the Uranium One sale was approved, or did the bureau drop the ball and fail to alert policymakers?

Neither outcome is particularly comforting. Either the United States, eyes wide open, approved giving uranium assets to a corrupt Russia, or the FBI failed to give the evidence of criminality to the policymakers before such a momentous decision.” (Read more: The Hill, 10/01/2018)

Stefan Halper (l) and Adam Lovinger (Credit public domain)

(…) “Judicial Watch is representing Adam Lovinger, a former ONA analyst who claims he was fired because he raised questions about contracts awarded to Halper and to a friend of Chelsea Clinton’s. The conservative watchdog group is seeking ONA records related to Lovinger’s security clearance, which was revoked months after the 12-year ONA veteran began raising questions about the contracts.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton questioned whether the Pentagon was aware that Halper was spying on the Trump campaign.

“Americans want to know if the Defense Department was working with the corrupt FBI, DOJ and other Obama agencies to spy on Donald Trump in an attempt to destroy his reputation,” Fitton said in a statement. “Our new lawsuit against the Defense Department will help determine to what extent it was helping to finance any Spygate targeting of President Trump.”

It is unclear if ONA funds were used to finance Halper’s efforts to meet Trump campaign officials. But as The Daily Caller News Foundation first reported in March, Halper used academic papers to approach at least one Trump campaign adviser.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 10/02/2018)

Kyle Freeny (l) and Brandon van Grack (Credit: LinkedIn/MSNBC)

“Two Justice Department prosecutors assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller‘s ongoing investigation are leaving the office to return to previous postings.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, confirmed in an email to The Hill that Kyle Freeny and Brandon Van Grack are leaving the probe.

The two prosecutors had worked on the criminal cases involving former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to CNN.

Van Grack recently left the probe to return to the agency’s national security division while Freeny will remain on until mid-October before returning to the agency’s criminal division.

Carr said that Van Grack will continue to contribute to the special counsel investigation “on specific pending matters that were assigned to him during his detail.” (Read more: The Hill, 10/02/2018)

(Credit: Fox News)

“A former top FBI lawyer acknowledged he was personally involved in the warrant application to surveil then-Trump campaign aide Carter Page and confirmed other “unusual” steps taken in the FBI’s Russia probe in 2016, during a closed-door congressional interview.

“I was aware of the [Russia] investigation,” James Baker told House investigators in October. Fox News has confirmed details of the transcript which is still under government review before its public release.

Baker said he was briefed on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant “as time went by” and recalled how he got involved early in the process. The warrant relied heavily on the unverified anti-Trump dossier, which was financed by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign via the law firm Perkins Coie.

“I don’t want to see it at the end, like when it is about to go to the director [for] certification, because then it is hard to make changes then,” Baker told House investigators when Republicans controlled the chamber. “So I wanted to see it when it was gelled enough but before it went through the process and before it went to the director. I wanted to see it and I wanted to read it because I knew it was sensitive.”

Fox News confirmed the Baker transcript also includes the following exchange with investigators regarding his involvement in the surveillance application:

Question: “So that is why you took the abnormal or unusual step in this particular situation because it was sensitive?”

Baker: “Yes.”

Question: “So you actually got involved because you want to make sure that, what?”

Baker: “I wanted to make sure that we were filing something that would adhere to the law and stand up over time.” (Read more: Fox News, 1/22/2019) (Baker Transcript)

James Baker (Credit: Fox News)

“Former top FBI lawyer James Baker gave “explosive” closed-door testimony on Wednesday detailing for congressional investigators how the Russia probe was handled in an “abnormal fashion” reflecting “political bias,” according to two Republican lawmakers present for the deposition.

Some of the things that were shared were explosive in nature,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told Fox News. “This witness confirmed that things were done in an abnormal fashion. That’s extremely troubling.”

Meadows claimed the “abnormal” handling of the probe into alleged coordination between Russian officials and the Trump presidential campaign was “a reflection of inherent bias that seems to be evident in certain circles.” The FBI agent who opened the Russia case, Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page and others sent politically charged texts, and have since left the bureau.

Baker, who had a closely working relationship with former FBI Director James Comey, left the bureau earlier this year.

The lawmakers would not provide many specifics about the private transcribed interview, citing a confidentiality agreement with Baker and his attorneys. However, they indicated in broad terms that Baker was cooperative and forthcoming about the genesis of the Russia case in 2016, and about the surveillance warrant application for Trump campaign aide Carter Page in October 2016.” (Read more: Fox News, 10/03/2018)

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

“[James] Baker served as the FBI’s general counsel when the bureau investigated the Trump campaign and Hillary Clinton’s use of an unauthorized private email server. During two days of testimony on Oct. 3 and Oct. 18, he told lawmakers that he believed even toward the end of the Clinton investigation that she should have been charged over her “alarming, appalling” mishandling of classified information.

He argued with others, including then-FBI Director James Comey, about the issue all the way toward the end of the investigation, but was ultimately persuaded that Clinton should be exonerated.

“My original belief … after having conducted the investigation and towards the end of it, then sitting down and reading a binder of her materials, I thought that it was alarming, appalling, whatever words I said, and argued with others about why they thought she shouldn’t be charged,” Baker told lawmakers.

As of October 2018, nearly two years after the Clinton probe concluded, Baker still believed that the conduct of the former secretary of state and her associates was “appalling” with regard to the handling of classified information.

(…) As general counsel, Baker advised senior FBI leaders on the legal aspects of key investigations and served as the liaison with the Department of Justice (DOJ). In testimony, he detailed a series of unusual steps he took in the Trump-Russia investigation, including serving as the conduit between Perkins Coie—the firm working for the Clinton 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—and the FBI.

Baker left his position as general counsel in early January 2018 and then resigned from the FBI in early May 2018.” (Read more: Epoch Times, 1/18/2019)

Larry Klayman (l) and Dennis Montgomery (Credit: public domain)

On the same day House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes gave a press conference disclosing that President Trump had been under “incidental surveillance,” attorney and FreedomWatch chairman, Larry Klayman, sent a letter to the same committee, imploring them to pursue the claims and evidence presented under oath at a Washington DC FBI Field Office by his client, CIA/NSA whistleblower Dennis Montgomery, who Klayman claims “holds the keys to disproving the false claims that there is no evidence that the president and his men were wiretapped.”

When Montgomery attempted to deliver this information through the appropriate channels, he was met with closed doors.

In a March 2017 Newsmax article, Klayman writes:

(…) “Montgomery left the NSA and CIA with 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of information, much of which is classified, and sought to come forward legally as a whistleblower to appropriate government entities, including congressional intelligence committees, to expose that the spy agencies were engaged for years in systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, prominent businessmen such as Donald Trump, and even yours truly. Working side by side with Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence (DIA), James Clapper, and Obama’s former Director of the CIA, John Brennan, Montgomery witnessed “up close and personal” this “Orwellian Big Brother” intrusion on privacy, likely for potential coercion, blackmail or other nefarious purposes.” 

(…) “After Montgomery was turned away as a whistleblower, he came to me at Freedom Watch. With the aid of the Honorable Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who I had come to respect and trust over the years of my public interest advocacy, we brought Montgomery forward to FBI Director James Comey, through his General Counsel James Baker. Under grants of immunity, which I obtained through Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Curtis, Montgomery produced the hard drives and later was interviewed under oath in a secure room at the FBI Field Office in the District of Columbia. There he laid out how persons like then-businessman Donald Trump were illegally spied upon by Clapper, Brennan, and the spy agencies of the Obama administration. He even claimed that these spy agencies had manipulated voting in Florida during the 2008 presidential election, which illegal tampering resulted in helping Obama to win the White House.

This interview, conducted and videoed by Special FBI Agents Walter Giardina and William Barnett, occurred almost two years ago, and nothing that I know of has happened since. It would appear that the FBI’s investigation was buried by Comey, perhaps because the FBI itself collaborates with the spy agencies to conduct illegal surveillance. In landmark court cases which I filed after the revelations of Edward Snowden, the Honorable Richard Leon, a colleague of Judge Lamberth, had ruled that this type of surveillance constituted a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

Deborah Curtis, the DoJ attorney who helped Montgomery receive a grant of immunity, also served on Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation team.

Here is the relevant testimony in James Baker’s transcript release:

“Could the impeachment scandal have been prevented if the now-fired U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman had followed up on Ukrainian allegations about Joe Biden and his family in 2018?

That’s the tantalizing question raised by emails from fall 2018 between an American lawyer and the chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan that were obtained by Just the News.

The memos show that well before Ukrainian prosecutors reached out to Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s lawyer, in 2019 to talk about the Bidens and alleged 2016 election interference they first approached Berman’s office in New York in October 2018 via another American lawyer.

Bud Cummins (Credit: public domain)

The memos show Little Rock, Ark., lawyer Bud Cummins, a former U.S. attorney himself, reached out at least five times in October 2018 to Berman seeking to arrange a meeting with then-Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko.

Lutsenko, who emerged as a key figure in the impeachment scandal, wanted to confidentially share with federal prosecutors in New York evidence he claimed to possess that raised concerns about the Bidens’ behavior as well as alleged wrongdoing in the Paul Manafort corruption case.

“Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko is offering to come to the U.S. meet with high-level law enforcement to share the fruits of investigations within Ukraine which have produced evidence of two basic alleged crimes,” Cummins wrote Berman on Oct. 4, 2018, one day after the two had talked on the phone about the allegations.

The allegations included that Joe Biden had “exercised influence to protect Burisma Holdings” after his son Hunter and his son’s business partner Devon Archer had joined the Ukrainian gas company’s board of directors and “substantial sums of money were paid to them,” Cummins wrote.

Devon Archer, far left, with former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, far right, golf in the Hamptons 2014.

(…) “The allegation by Prosecutor General Lutsenko et al is that the US ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch, Biden and Kerry made conclusions about who were the good guys and the bad guys in local government. They believe Biden and Kerry were influenced by payments to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer to influence certain decisions, particularly those benefitting Burisma,” Cummins wrote, relaying the allegations from the Ukrainian officials.

In addition, Cummins told Berman that Lutsenko had evidence that a ledger found in Ukraine in 2016 alleging to show payments to Manafort from a Russian-backed political party in Ukraine was doctored and the U.S. knew the evidence was corrupted. The emergence of the ledger caused Manafort to resign as Trump’s campaign chairman in August 2016, and eventually led to his conviction on money laundering and tax charges.

“The second allegation above is that the Embassy and FBI willfully pressured Ukrainian officials to falsify evidence to be leaked to the media about Manafort to affect the outcome of the 2016 election,” Cummins wrote Berman. (Read more: JustTheNews, 6/23/2020)  (Archive)

Attorney Ty Clevenger files a FOIA request with the NSA in November, 2017 for the communication records of Seth Rich. Here are the specific documents Clevenger requests:

The NSA responded to Ty Clevenger in a letter dated October 4, 2018 stating:

Executive Order 13526, Section 1.4, Subparagraph (c) reads as follows:

It is not clear if the Seth Rich documents found by the NSA are connected to Julian Assange because there are many other names listed in the FOIA request that could be connected to the documents.

(NSA letter, 10/04/2018)

Judge Royce C. Lamberth (Credit: Charles Dharapak/The Associated Press)

“Judicial Watch announced today that in his opening remarks at a Friday, October 12 hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth strongly criticized the U.S. Department of State, stating, “The information that I was provided was clearly false regarding the adequacy of the [Clinton email] search and… what we now know turned out to be the Secretary’s email system.”

Turning his attention to the Department of Justice, Judge Lamberth said that he was “dumbfounded” by the agency’s Inspector General report revealing that Cheryl Mills had been given immunity and was allowed to accompany former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to her FBI interview:

I had myself found that Cheryl Mills had committed perjury and lied under oath in a published opinion I had issued in a Judicial Watch case where I found her unworthy of belief, and I was quite shocked to find out she had been given immunity in — by the Justice Department in the Hillary Clinton email case. So I did not know that until I read the IG report and learned that and that she had accompanied the Secretary to her interview.

(In an April 28, 2008 ruling relating to Mills’ conduct as a White House official in responding to concerns about lost White House email records, Judge Lamberth called Mills’ participation in the matter “loathsome.” He further stated Mills was responsible for “the most critical error made in this entire fiasco … Mills’ actions were totally inadequate to address the problem.”)

Lamberth also complained that the Justice Department attorney representing the State Department was using “doublespeak,” and playing “word games.”

The hearing had been ordered by Judge Lamberth regarding a request from Judicial Watch for testimony under oath from Clinton, Mills and several other State Department officials regarding the State Department’s processing of Judicial Watch’s FOIA request and Clinton’s emails. The State Department still opposes all of Judicial Watch’s requests for additional discovery into the Clinton email scandal.

Judge Lamberth said he was relieved that he did not allow the case to be shut down prematurely, as the State Department had requested.

The case started with a motion for summary judgment [seeking to close the case] here and which I denied and allowed limited discovery because it was clear to me that at the time that I ruled initially, that false statements were made to me by career State Department officials and it became more clear through discovery that the information that I was provided was clearly false regarding the adequacy of the search and this – what we now know turned out to be the Secretary’s email system.

I don’t know the details of what kind of IG inquiry there was into why these career officials at the State Department would have filed false affidavits with me. I don’t know the details of why the Justice Department lawyers did not know false affidavits were being filed with me, but I was very relieved that I did not accept them and that I allowed limited discovery into what had happened.

Judge Lamberth also said the State Department was using “doublespeak” and word games. (Read more: Judicial Watch, 10/12/2018)

Ron Johnson (l) and Christopher Wray (Credit: Carolyn Kaster/The Associated Press)

“Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson is calling on FBI Director Christopher Wray to hand over documents related to a former FBI lawyer’s meeting during the 2016 campaign with an attorney that represented the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign.

The meeting was revealed during a congressional deposition that former FBI general counsel James Baker gave on Oct. 3. Baker told lawmakers that in September 2016 he met with Michael Sussmann, a partner at Perkins Coie.

As the lead law firm for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, Perkins Coie hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn hired Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous dossier alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Sources familiar with Baker’s testimony say he testified that Sussmann provided him with documents related to Russian hacking of Democrats. He also testified that the meeting was unusual.

Republican lawmakers have questioned why Baker was meeting with a top Democratic lawyer at a crucial point in the campaign. Baker was interviewed as part of an investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe, as well as the Steele dossier.

Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee, is also asking Wray for FBI notes of interviews, known as 302s, conducted with Bruce Ohr, a Department of Justice official who met numerous times before and after the election with Steele. Ohr’s wife also worked for Fusion GPS while the firm was investigating President Donald Trump.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 10/13/2018)

Marc Elias (Credit: Getty Images)

Onetime Trump campaign aide Carter Page filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against the Democratic National Committee and a law firm that represented them.

The lawsuit, which was filed in a federal Oklahoma court against the DNC, Perkins Coie, and Perkins Coie partners Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann, is about obtaining “justice,” Page said.

“It goes beyond any damages or any financial aspects,” Page told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Monday night. “There have been so many lies as you are alluding to, and you look at the damage it did to our democratic systems and institutions of government back in 2016. I’m just trying to get some justice in terms of getting some disclosure.”

Michael Sussmann (Credit: Perkins Coie)

Elias represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and hired Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on Trump. Fusion GPS is the same firm that commissioned former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele who authored the so-called “Trump dossier” that contained scandalous and unverified claims about President Trump’s ties to Russia and was used by the FBI to help obtain the authority to spy on Page.

According to the dossier, Page was the Trump campaign’s intermediary to Russia and proposed disclosing stolen DNC emails via WikiLeaks, among other claims. Page has vehemently denied the allegations about him in the dossier.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 10/15/2018)

(Credit: Marco Polo)

“Hunter Biden shows himself to be a real first son-of-a-gun in the latest embarrassing personal video leak for President Biden’s scandal-scarred offspring.

A naked Hunter casually waves around a handgun and even points it at the camera while cavorting with a nude hooker in a swank hotel room, according to a video provided to The Post by the nonprofit Marco Polo research group.

The cavalier clip of Hunter Biden holding the apparently illegally obtained weapon emerged amid the rash of mass shootings — and random gun violence in major cities  — that included 11 incidents on Saturday and Sunday alone that left at least 15 people dead and 61 injured across the U.S., data shows.

It also came just days after his dad called on Congress to pass new gun-control measures to stem the slaughter, declaring in a televised, primetime address last week that “the Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute.”

(…) Hunter Biden recorded the video on Oct. 17, 2018, according to Radar Online, which first revealed its existence. The outlet and a Post source described his companion in the video as a prostitute.

Five days earlier, he bought a .38-caliber handgun in Delaware, Politico reported last year.

In order to make the purchase, Hunter Biden answered “no” to a question that asked, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” Politico reported last year. (Read more: The New York Post, 6/06/2022)  (Archive)

Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards (Credit: public domain)

“A senior official working for the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has been charged with leaking confidential financial reports on former Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort, Richard Gates and others to a media outlet.

Prosecutors say that Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior adviser to FinCEN, photographed what are called suspicious activity reports, or SARs, and other sensitive government files and sent them to an unnamed reporter, in violation of U.S. law.

Banks file SARs confidentially in order to tip off law enforcement to potentially illegal financial transactions. The unauthorized document disclosures, which began last October, are said to have provided the basis for 12 news articles published by an unnamed news organization.

Edwards is being charged in the Southern District of New York with one count of unauthorized disclosures of suspicious activity reports and one count of conspiracy to make unauthorized disclosures of suspicious activity reports, both of which carry a maximum five years in prison.

The charges are the latest indication of the Trump administration’s efforts to root out alleged leakers within the government, something that prosecutors emphasized in announcing the charges on Wednesday.” (Read more: The Hill, 10/17/18)

Judge Dabney Friedrich Stephen (Credit: Stephen J. Boitano/The Associated Press)

“A Washington federal judge on Thursday ordered special counsel Robert Mueller’s team to clarify election meddling claims lodged against a Russian company operated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Bloomberg.

Concord Management and Consulting, LLC. – one of three businesses indicted by Mueller in February along with 13 individuals for election meddling, surprised the special counsel in April when they actually showed up in court to fight the charges. Mueller’s team tried to delay Concord from entering the case, arguing that the Russian company not been properly served, however Judge Dabney Friedrich denied the request – effectively telling prosecutors ‘well, they’re here.’

Concord was accused in the indictment of supporting the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian ‘troll farm’ accused of trying to influence the 2016 US election.

On Thursday, Judge Freidrich asked Mueller’s prosecutors if she should assume they aren’t accusing Concord of violating US laws applicable to election expenditures and failure to register as a foreign agent.

Concord has asked Dabney to throw out the charges – claiming that Mueller’s office fabricated a crime, and that there is no law against interfering in elections.

According to the judge’s request for clarification, the Justice Department has argued that it doesn’t have to show that Concord had a legal duty to report its expenditures to the Federal Election Commission. Rather, the allegation is that the company knowingly engaged in deceptive acts that precluded the FEC, or the Justice Department, from ascertaining whether they had broken the law. –Bloomberg

On Monday, Friedrich raised questions over whether the special counsel’s office could prove a key element of their case – saying that it was “hard to see” how allegations of Russian influence were intended to interfere with US government operations vs. simply “confusing voters,” reports law.com.

During a 90-minute hearing, Friedrich questioned prosecutor Jonathan Kravis about how the government would be able to show the Russian defendants were aware of the Justice Department and FEC’s functions and then deliberately sought to skirt them.

“You still have to show knowledge of the agencies and what they do. How do you do that?” Friedrich asked.

Kravis, a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, argued that the government needed only to show that Concord Management and the other defendants were generally aware that the U.S. government “regulates and monitors” foreign participation in American politics. That awareness, Kravis said, could be inferred from the Russians’ alleged creation of fake social media accounts that appeared to be run by U.S. citizens and “computer infrastructure” intended to mask the Russian origin of the influence operation.

“That is deception that is directed at a higher level,” Kravis said. Kravis appeared in court with Michael Dreeben, a top Justice Department appellate lawyer on detail to the special counsel’s office. –law.com

(Read more: Zero Hedge, 10/20/2018)

Carter Page (Credit: Wall Street Journal)

“The U.S. government revealed in court filings Friday that the FBI used multiple confidential informants, including some who were paid for their information, as part of its investigation into former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

“The FBI has protected information that would identify the identities of other confidential sources who provided information or intelligence to the FBI” as well as “information provided by those sources,” wrote David M. Hardy, the head of the FBI’s Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS), in court papers submitted Friday.

Hardy and Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys submitted the filings in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for the FBI’s four applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Page. The DOJ released heavily redacted copies of the four FISA warrant applications on June 20, but USA Today reporter Brad Heath has sued for full copies of the documents.

Hardy’s declaration acknowledged that the confidential sources used by the FBI were in addition to Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the infamous anti-Trump dossier.

“This includes nonpublic information about and provided by Christopher Steele, as well as information about and provided by other confidential sources, all of whom were provided express assurances of confidentiality,” Hardy wrote, referring to information disclosed in the four FISA applications.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 10/20/2018)

Nellie Ohr and Serhiy Leshchenko (Credit: public domain)

“Eight months before Fusion GPS hired Steele, Simpson had hired Nellie Ohr to work for his firm as a researcher in October 2015.

Nellie Ohr told congressional investigators that part of her work for Fusion GPS was to research the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, including campaign associate Carter Page, early campaign supporter Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and campaign manager Paul Manafort, as well as Trump’s family members, including some of his children.

Email communications between her and her husband, Bruce, show that she routinely sent him and several other DOJ officials articles on Russia. The emails continued through the duration of Nellie’s employment with Fusion GPS.

Nellie Ohr told congressional investigators that Serhiy Leshchenko, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, served as “a source of information” and acknowledged that she then used that information in following up and formulating her opposition research.

Leshchenko, along with Artem Sytnyk, the director of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, was responsible for publicly disclosing the contents of the Ukrainian “black ledger,” which implicated Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, to the media.

Leshchenko also served as a source for various individuals, including journalist Michael Isikoff and DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa.” (Read more: themarketswork, 7/06/2019)  (Archive)

Nellie Ohr arrives for a closed door hearing before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees on October 19, 2018. (Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

(..) “According to a transcript of an Oct. 19, 2018, closed-door testimony, which was reviewed by The Epoch Times, Ohr acknowledged to congressional investigators that she worked as an independent contractor for “various agencies in the United States Government.”

Ohr testified that she worked for the CIA’s Open Source Works (OSW) division. She also revealed that prior to her work for the CIA, she worked for Mitre, which is funded by the U.S. government and interacts with various intelligence agencies.

Ms. Ohr: Starting in 2000, I did some part-time contracting for Mitre, which is a contract —

Rep. Jordan: I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.

Ms. Ohr: Mitre. Mitre Corporation, which in turn had contracts with U.S. Government clients.

Rep. Jordan: Got it.

Ms. Ohr: Through most of 2008. And then starting in 2008, I worked for Open Source Works.

Mitre Corporation is a “not-for-profit company that operates multiple federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs).” In other words, Mitre is a government-funded enterprise that conducts research for the U.S. government.

Of greater interest was Ohr’s employment as an independent contractor for OSW, the CIA’s internal open source division.

Ohr’s Work for the CIA

The CIA describes OSW as a division that uses open-source information to produce intelligence products.

“[Open Source Works] was charged by the Director for Intelligence with drawing on language-trained analysts to mine open-source information for new or alternative insights on intelligence issues,” states an unclassified Nov. 16, 2010, CIA report headlined “Russia: Security Concerns About Iran’s Space Program Growing.”

Ohr told congressional investigators that she began working for Open Source Works in 2008, but provided no time-frame for her end date. Her profile on LinkedIn, however, provides some indication that she may have remained employed with Open Source Works through 2014.

From 2000 to 2014, Ohr lists herself on her resume as a “Linguist/Research Analyst – Self-employed.” But she also concurrently lists her 2013-2015 employment with Plessas Experts’ Networks as an “Expert/Content Creator.”

Ohr told congressional investigators that she intentionally did not list any agencies on her resume when working as an independent contractor for the U.S. government:

Rep. Meadows: So I have one follow-up. Have you ever submitted a resume that would list any of those agencies on that resume?

Ms. Ohr: No.

Rep. Meadows: So no resume that would indicate that you did work for those agencies on a resume?

Ms. Ohr: My resume stated that I was an independent contractor doing work in support of U.S. Government.

Rep. Meadows: But normally there is a sentence or two right after it on what they did. And so what I’m saying is, did — in those resumes, and for example, like with Mitre, we do work with the CIA, NSA whoever —

Ms. Ohr: I do not explicitly name those agencies in a resume.

(Read much more: The Epoch Times, 3/14/2019)

Nellie Ohr (Credit: Getty Images)

“The wife of a Justice Department official who worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign told Congress in 2018 that one of her tasks at the opposition research firm was to research President Donald Trump’s children, including their business activities and travel.

(…) Ohr, a trained Russian linguist, also detailed some of the topics she worked on for Fusion GPS, which was hired by the law firm that represented the Clinton campaign and DNC to investigate Trump.

One area of focus was Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s two oldest children.

“But in terms of actually performing research, did you begin to break out President Trump’s family in terms of Melania Trump, all of his children? Were you doing independent research based off of each family member?” one lawmaker asked Ohr.

“I did some,” Ohr said. “As I recall, I did some research on all of them, but not into much depth.”

“How about Donald Trump Jr.? Did you do more in-depth research on Donald Trump Jr. than some of the others?” she was asked.

“I’m afraid it was relatively superficial. It was,” adding that, “I looked into some of his travels and you know not sure how much detail I remember, at this point.”

“Ivanka Trump?”

“I looked into some of her travels,” said Ohr.

The goal was “to see whether they were involved in dealings and transactions with people who had had suspicious pasts.”

Nellie Ohr also testified that she investigated any links between Russian oligarchs and the Trump real estate empire.

It is unclear whether Ohr shared any information that she gathered working for Fusion GPS with her husband, who served as associate deputy attorney general until he was reassigned in December 2017. There is also no indication that Ohr’s research of the Trump children wound up in the dossier, which the FBI used to obtain surveillance warrants against Carter Page.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 1/30/2019)

“According to a recent FBI indictment, several American white supremacists were allegedly radicalized by and received training from Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which receives funding from the current government of Ukraine as well as the U.S. government. The group has also received weapons from the Israeli government.

FBI affidavit, 10/20/2018, pg. 9

In an undated photo posted to their since-deleted Instagram account, RAM members pose in skull masks. (Credit: ProPublica)

The indictment, filed in Los Angeles, California last month, asserts that four American members of the “Rise Above Movement” (RAM) — RAM co-founder Robert Rundo as well as Robert Boman, Tyler Laube and Aaron Eason — had “violently attacked and assaulted counter-protestors” at several white nationalist and white supremacist events throughout the U.S., including the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville last year.

The named individuals are alleged to have “used the Internet to coordinate combat training in preparation for the events” and to have celebrated “their acts of violence in order to recruit members for future events.”

Court documents refer to RAM as a “white supremacy extremist group” while the group self-represents as “a combat-ready, militant group of a new nationalist white supremacy/identity movement.”

The recent indictment gives special attention to Rundo’s more recent activities, particularly his trip to Europe earlier this year where he traveled to Germany, Ukraine, and Italy “to meet with members of European white supremacy extremist groups.” The FBI became aware that one of the individuals with whom Rundo had met during this trip was Olena Semenyaka, a leader of the International Department for the National Corps, a Ukrainian political party that was formed as an offshoot of the Azov Battalion in 2016.

The affidavit detailing Rundo’s meeting with Semenyaka, signed by FBI agent Scott Bierwirth, states that “the Azov Battalion is a paramilitary unit of the Ukrainian National Guard which is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology and use of Nazi symbolism.” It then adds that Azov Battalion “is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations,” such as RAM.

Olena Semenyaka, (top left) and on the right in an interview with UATV. (Credit: public domain)

In other words, the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion is suspected by the U.S. government of both training and radicalizing violent white supremacist groups based in America. This is particularly troubling when one considers the fact that the U.S. government directly enabled the Azov Battalion’s growth and prominence. Now, it seems that those actions have translated into troubling domestic consequences for the United States.” (Read more: “FBI: Neo-Nazi Militia Trained by US Military in Ukraine, Now Training US White Supremacists/Whitney Webb, 11/09/2018)  (Archive)

At the same time the FBI learned of American white supremacists traveling to Ukraine and training with the neo-nazi Azov Battalion, the American Foreign Policy Society hosted neo-nazi, Andriy Parubiy, inside the U.S. Senate on July 2, 2018.

Max Blumenthal visits The American Foreign Policy Society while they were hosting neo-nazi Andriy Parubiy inside the Senate on July 2, 2018, as Nazi violence rages in Ukraine. (Credit: Max Blumenthal/Mint Press News)

A year later in October 2019, US Ambassador to Ukraine  Marie Yovanovitch testifies about her long relationship with Ukrainian neo-nazi official, Arsen Avakov.

Avakov (left center) tweets on March 21, 2019: “Meeting with US Ambassador Marie Yovanovich (right center) discussed urgent issues of ensuring fair and transparent elections, security and preventing provocations at polling stations during voting.” (Credit: Yulia Babich/Twitter)

(Sally Moyer transcript, 10/23/2018)

Hunter Biden (Credit: clipping from video found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.)

“The Secret Service allegedly tried to intervene in a 2018 incident where President Joe Biden’s daughter-in-law Hallie Biden threw Hunter Biden’s gun in a trash can near a high-end grocery store and it briefly disappeared, according to a report from Politico.

Amid the incident, which occurred on Oct. 23, 2018, Secret Service agents allegedly tried to obtain the paperwork involving the gun sale from the owner of the store that Hunter bought the item from, Politico wrote, citing two sources.

The store owner, Ron Palmieri, reportedly refused to give the paperwork over. Palmieri was allegedly worried that the agents wanted the paperwork so they could hide Hunter’s ownership information in case the missing weapon was used in a crime, Politico noted.

He eventually gave the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, And Explosives (ATF), as it oversees federal gun laws.

“Palmieri refused to hand over the transaction record to the Secret Service agents because such records fall under the purview of the ATF,” Politico noted. “The Secret Service agents left without the records, according to the people familiar with the case. Later that day, the ATF arrived at the store to inspect the records.”

Prior to the Secret Service’s alleged involvement, Hallie told Hunter that she tossed the gun, prompting him to demand she return for it. Upon returning, Hallie realized the gun was missing from the trash can, according to Politico. She told the grocery store, who then contacted police.

Delaware police began investigating because the grocery store was across from a high school. The FBI also arrived on scene as it was – and still is – investigating Hunter, according to Politico.

(…) Eventually, the .38 revolver was returned by an elderly man who often looked through garbages to collect recyclables. No one was charged in the incident, Politico noted.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 3/25/2021)  (Archive)

Twitter sleuth @FOOL_NELSON adds another interesting perspective to this story:

“Look man, it’s like they say, guns don’t kill people, people do . . . One time I popped a whole rock of crack in my mouth and started to chew it because it was sitting next to a piece of trident” – Hunter Biden one month before buying a gun (9/3/18) https://t.co/thxmeDJEIb pic.twitter.com/aYIpbTE8Gn

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) March 25, 2021

I’ve seen Hunter commit and admit to more crimes than anyone on Earth. https://t.co/0EgEITl3HS

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) March 25, 2021

“Sally Moyer was FBI unit chief in the Office of General Counsel (counterintelligence legal unit within the FBI Office of General Counsel). Moyer reported to an unnamed section chief, who reported to Trisha Beth Anderson, who was deputy legal counsel to James Baker.

Ms. Moyer is responsible for the legal compliance within the FBI counterintelligence operations that generated FISA applications:

(Sally Moyer Transcript)

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

A review of the transcript clarifies a few aspects:

First, the DOJ/FBI team, “the small group”, specifically the legal officials who were ultimately participating in the process that permits politicization and weaponization of government intelligence systems, was also the exact same legal group who reviewed (and approved) the internal inspector general report which outlined their activity.

In essence, the DOJ/FBI bureaucratic corruption is so widespread, the corrupt officials involved are the same people who are the decision-makers in the amount of sunlight the Office of Inspect General is allowed to put forth.  Now the disconnect between the OIG executive summary and the body of content material makes sense:” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 5/21/2019)

Robert Mueller (Credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

“Special counsel Robert Mueller appears to be locked in a dispute with a mystery grand jury witness resisting giving up information sought in the ongoing probe into alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

It’s unclear exactly what the two sides are fighting over, but the case appears to resemble a separate legal battle involving an associate of Trump ally Roger Stone, Andrew Miller, who is fighting a Mueller subpoena. Miller’s lawyers are using the case, slated to be argued at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals early next month, to mount a broad legal assault on Mueller’s authority as special counsel.

In the more shadowy case, which involves an unknown person summoned before a grand jury this summer, the D.C. Circuit on Monday set a separate round of arguments for Dec. 14.

The case traveled in recent months from U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, back down to Howell and back up again to the appeals court with most details shrouded in secrecy, another indication that much of Mueller’s activity is taking place behind the scenes and is rarely glimpsed by the press or public.” (Read more: Politico, 10/24/2018)

The recently released redacted version of the Mueller Report. (Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

“A former FBI attorney who worked on the Russia investigation told Congress last year the bureau learned information about dossier author Christopher Steele “that might bear on his credibility as a source.”

Trisha Anderson, the former principal deputy general counsel, said in a closed-door interview that meetings were held at the FBI with then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and the team working on the investigation to discuss Steele, a former MI6 officer who investigated President Donald Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC.

Steele provided information from his dossier to the FBI, State Department and members of the press.

“There were meetings with Mr. McCabe about the Russia investigation that involved discussions of the various reports that were generated by Chris Steele that we had received, both with respect to the content of the reports as well as what we had learned about Christopher — we, I’m sorry — the FBI investigative team had learned about facts that might bear on his credibility as a source,” Anderson said in the Oct. 31, 2018 interview, a transcript of which was obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“And what were those facts? You had mentioned the contents. More specifically, what were these discussions about? But start with the credibility issues,” a congressional staffer asked Anderson.

Anderson did not say when the meetings occurred. Nor did she say what the possible credibility issues might have been.

When asked for further details, an FBI attorney intervened to say that Anderson could not answer more questions because they “pertain to matters that are being looked at by the special counsel and its investigation.”

At some point after relying on Steele as a confidential source, FBI officials were told that Steele was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC to investigate Trump. The former British spy had been hired in June 2016 by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm.

(…) The Justice Department’s office of the inspector general is reportedly investigating the FBI’s use of Steele as a source as part of a broader probe into possible abuse of the FISA system. The New York Times reported on Friday that intelligence community officials determined at some point in 2017 that some of Steele’s allegations were either likely wrong, or based on exaggeration by Steele’s sub-sources.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 4/26/2019)