Guest post by Bob Bishop 

The Clinton Foundation is America’s largest unprosecuted racketeering and charity fraud case. Investigations of the Clinton Foundation, shelved by the corrupt and partisan DOJ, FBI, and IRS leadership, demonstrate a two-tier justice system with exemptions for the political elite.

The only remaining pathway for due process was petitioning the Arkansas State Board of Public Accountancy to enforce AICPA professional standards against the Foundation’s former national audit firm BKD, LLP (BKD has since merged with another national firm forming Forvis, LLP).

BKD issued slapdash audits and tax returns (under penalties of perjury) for 13 years.  By dismissing AICPA professional standards and IRS compliance, the firm created a veneer of legitimacy for the Clinton Foundation.  BKD’s main fiduciary obligation is to serve and protect the public interest, not the Clinton Foundation.

I filed a complaint with the Arkansas Board against BKD, LLP. The complaint (59 allegations), relying on public documents, charged BKD with professional misconduct and failure to comply with the following AICPA standards and the IRS Code. The complaint’s primary focus is the Clinton Foundation’s 2011 amended IRS Form 990 tax return dated November 16, 2015, and the underlying 2011 audited financial statements.

The firm filed a condescending and indefensible response dismissing the allegations and smearing me as a “conspiracy theorist.”  The reply crossed a bright line including a veiled threat of AICPA disciplinary action against me.  BKD’s Chief Operating Officer Eric Hansen served at the time as the AICPA Chairman.

Eric Hansen has worked 33 years for BKD CPAs and Advisors. (Credit: Journal of Accountancy)

Rampant Irregularities

The complaint covered substantial irregularities and documented a culture of deceit, with the more flagrant irregularities abstracted below.

Trustee Oversight & Control Failures

The Foundation’s Board of Trustees engaged Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, LLP, to review its “decadal” (Or is it decadent?) governance. Their report was issued in late December 2011. WikiLeaks released the draft document widely covered in media outlets.  The governance review found severe organizational and internal control weaknesses jeopardizing the Foundation’s tax-exempt status.  Why did BKD ignore the flashing warning signals?

Material Errors and Omissions in 990 Tax Returns

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential run caused the Foundation to evaluate, amend, and refile its tax filings for 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 on November 16, 2015.  The justification was to disclose foreign government grants and the Clintons’ paid speeches on behalf of the Foundation because the few lines on the returns were previously left blank.  Foundation President Dr. Donna Shalala’s issued a logic-defying press release that the Foundation exceeded all legal tax requirements and “that the errors did not require us to amend our returns.”  The accounting fees for 2015 were a staggering $2.7 million suggest otherwise.

I compared the original returns line-by-line to the amended returns.  The reconciliations found extensive and material revisions of over 200 items each year.  Substantial changes occurred in the reporting categories in the Balance Sheet, Statement of Functional Expenses, and Revenue Statement.  These changes required the Foundation to reissue the consolidated financial statements or compulsory for BKD to rescind its audit opinions; however, neither happened.  The Foundation routinely restated its financial statements; for instance, the re-issuance of 2010 due to offsetting marginal errors of just 2.2% of revenue and expense.

“Attorneys and accountants should be the pillars of our system of taxation, not the architects of its circumvention” – Former IRS Commissioner Mark Everson

(Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 9/25/2022)  (Archive)

“Federal Election Commission election lawyers sought an investigation into whether the Democratic National Committee and a consultant colluded with the Ukrainian government to hurt the 2016 Trump campaign, but the effort was defeated by three GOP-appointed commission members, according to documents unsealed this week.

The decision not to pursue a probable cause probe into possible collusion by the DNC and consultant Alexandra Chalupa was rejected in April in a 4-2 vote, with the three GOP appointees siding with commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat, according to documents unsealed Wednesday.

The request for a probe was based on a complaint by Matthew Whittaker, a former federal prosecutor and strong President Trump supporter who later became acting Attorney General in the Trump administration.

Alexandra Chalupa (Credit: public domain)

The complaint argues Chalupa in August 2017 broke federal law prohibiting on foreign donations by soliciting damaging information and statements from Ukrainian government officials about Paul Manafort, who was Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman at the time, according to The New York Times.

Manafort was an adviser to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych before joining the campaign, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

Chalupa acknowledged that she researched Manafort but denied receiving information from the Ukrainian government.

The three Republican commissioners said in a statement they voted against the probe over “grave constitutional and prudential concerns,” the FEC general counsel’s reading of campaign contribution law.

They also wrote that Chalupa’s communication with the embassy “did not ask that Ukrainian officials convey a thing of value within the meaning of a ‘contribution’ to the DNC.” (Just the News, 6/17/2021)  (Archive)

The New York Times writes a story about John Durham issuing subpoenas to the Brookings Institute for records of Igor Danchenko’s work there.   Danchenko was Chris Steele’s primary sub-source for the infamous Steele Dossier.

The material provided by Danchenko to Steele was described as unsubstantiated “gossip”, “rumor”, “hearsay” and innuendo by Danchenko himself after he was questioned by the FBI.

New York Times – […] Mr. Durham has keyed in on the F.B.I.’s handling of a notorious dossier of political opposition research both before and after the bureau started using it to obtain court permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser in 2016 and 2017 and questioned witnesses who may have insight into the matter.

In particular, Mr. Durham has obtained documents from the Brookings Institution related to Igor Danchenko, a Russia researcher who worked there a decade ago and later helped gather rumors about Mr. Trump and Russia for that research, known as the Steele dossier, according to people familiar with the request.

By asking about the dossier, Mr. Durham has come to focus at least in part on re-scrutinizing an aspect of the investigation that was already exposed as problematic by a 2019 Justice Department inspector general report…. (read more)

The Backstory is…in essence Chris Steele put a bunch of garbage inside his dossier, and his dossier was used to get the Carter Page FISA warrant to conduct surveillance against the Trump campaign (October 21, 2016).  Danchenko then disavowed the veracity of all the information he provided during FBI interviews in January, February and March 2017; but the FBI ignored the Danchenko discussion and used the dossier for two more FISA renewals in April and June 2017.

The issue of import with the story today is not about the content of the Danchenko work while inside the Brookings group, but rather how the leak from Brookings to the New York Times about the subpoena begins to unravel the Lawfare network.

The Lawfare group is largely funded by The Brookings Institute.  Brookings is largely funded by the Chinese.  As we pointed out during our research, essentially when you follow the trail you realize the Chinese Communist Government was financing the information that went into the Steele Dossier.  But wait, it gets better….

The Lawfare group is also the “beach friends” group.  The Lawfare group includes James Baker, Lisa Page, Benjamin Wittes, and Daniel Richman.  Once you realize who Lawfare consists of; and then you realize The Brookings Institute is behind Lawfare; you then realize the Lawfare group was likely feeding the opposition research into Danchenko while he worked for Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson who actually contracted Chris Steele for his dossier.

The FBI and DOJ officials working with Lawfare essentially provided raw information to Danchenko, who then packaged it and sent it to Chris Steele.  Steele then puts the Danchenko package in his dossier and that is sent back to the FBI and DOJ for use in their FISA application.  It is a laundry of weaponized political opposition research.

• FBI/DOJ extracted intelligence to Lawfare.
• Lawfare sends to Brookings (Danchenko)
• Danchenko sends to Chris Steele (dossier).
• Chris Steele sends Dossier back to FBI/DOJ.
• FBI/DOJ use dossier in FISA application.

See the laundry?

The Brookings institute tipping off the New York Times about the Durham subpoena is actually more telling than the content of the subpoena itself.

Brookings is Lawfare.  Benjamin Wittes runs Lawfare. He is personal friends with James Comey.

Benjamin Wittes is also personal friends with another Lawfare colleague Daniel Richman:

Daniel Richman is also personal friends with James Comey.

James Comey used Richman to leak his memo content to the New York Times:

China is Funding the Brookings Institute.

The Brookings Institute is funding Lawfare.

Lawfare is a group of current and former DOJ and FBI officials.

As a consequence, China funded the attack position of Lawfare and the DOJ/FBI against the Trump administration.

(Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 4/12/2021)  (Archive)

Imaad Zuberi and Hillary Clinton (Credit: public domain)

“Imaad Zuberi, a major Democratic fundraiser facing 12 years in prison, has filed an extraordinary complaint with the CIA’s chief watchdog alleging he witnessed “flagrant problems, abuses, violations of law” while working as an asset for U.S. intelligence, according to documents and interviews.

Zuberi, of Los Angeles, recently hired the CIA’s retired acting general counsel Robert J. Eatinger Jr. to review his case and help to appeal his conviction on a plea deal with federal prosecutors.

Imaad Zuberi and Barack Obama (Credit: public domain)

After reviewing evidence, including secret communications between Zuberi and his alleged CIA handlers that were enumerated in a secret Classified Information Protection Act filing in his criminal case, Eatinger prepared and delivered two complaints to the CIA inspector general earlier this month.

(…) According to multiple sources familiar with the complaints, Eatinger alleged to the inspector general that Zuberi:

• was instructed at times by U.S. intelligence to glean information from or try to achieve certain tasks with select members of Congress, including one prominent Republican U.S. senator. The CIA is not supposed to target, spy on or influence members of Congress.

Imaad Zuberi and Joe Biden (Credit: public domain)

• was involved in a clandestine operation that used an American journalism organization to carry out countermeasures and influence operations in a foreign country. The CIA is not supposed to use journalism organizations or journalists for operational cover.
• was asked by a senior CIA officer to make a private investment in an American drone company even as Zuberi was under criminal investigation by the Justice Department.
• observed what he believed was a U.S. intelligence asset become involved in Zuberi’s lobbying project in Sri Lanka, a project that resulted in criminal charges against Zuberi involving the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
• was asked by U.S. intelligence to allow a scrub team to delete emails, documents and other evidence of his intelligence work from his computer only later to be accused by the U.S. Justice Department of obstructing justice with the deletion.

( Read more: Just the News, 4/15/2021)  (Archive) 

Devin Nunes (Credit: Greg Nash)

“Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California slammed Democrats and the Intelligence Community on Thursday for engaging in and focusing on partisan actions against U.S. citizens instead of bigger threats around the world.

In the press release announcing the hearing, Democratic Chairman Adam Schiff claimed the Trump administration “discarded the tradition of open hearings on World Wide Threats, when it displeased the former president to have his preferred views of rival nations contradicted by agency heads.” Nunes, however, said this characterization is not only false but purposefully misleading.

“The real reason Trump officials didn’t want to participate is that, for years, the committee’s Democrats hijacked our open hearings to advance conspiracy theories on the Trump administration being filled with Russian agents who colluded with Putin in the 2016 election, among many other issues,” Nunes explained.

This hijacking for political gain, the Republican said, continues as Democrats engage in the “weaponization of intelligence community against so-called domestic extremists” and undermines the committee’s purpose.

“Democrats see political benefits in characterizing wide swaths of American citizens, particularly Republicans and conservatives, as politically suspect, politically violent, and deserving of government surveillance,” Nunes explained. “However, I remind those assembled here today that our intelligence community exists solely to counteract foreign threats. History shows that major abuses occur when our intelligence capabilities are turned inward to spy on our own citizens, from the FBI spying on Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950s and ’60s to its surveillance of Republican Party members in 2016. This is a red line that simply cannot be crossed. In fact, this committee was created in large part to ensure that that line should not be crossed.”

Nunes also said it is “concerning” and “worrying” that the director of national intelligence is heading up a report on domestic violent extremism and that the National Counterterrorism Center is “focused on U.S.-based individuals with no foreign influence or connection.”

“At a time when the Intelligence Committee directors appear reluctant to even name Islamic extremists as a terrorism threat and when they spend so much time virtue signaling on Democrat priorities such as global warming, I’m concerned about specific sets of issues that include terrorist networks are continuing to spread. International drug cartels and human traffickers are crossing our borders as we speak,” Nunes explained. “Foreign cyber criminals are penetrating our digital infrastructure, and we still can’t get answers about the true origins of the coronavirus in China.”

Shifting focus away from real threats, Nunes warned, is not only partisan but dangerous for the nation.

“When our nation’s leaders don’t pay proper attention to these issues and instead focus on targeting their political opponents, real threats to American national security do not evaporate,” Nunes concluded. “To the contrary, our enemies who pay close attention to our domestic political affairs become emboldened, and we end up with dangerous developments among rogue states.” (The Federalist, 4/15/2021)  (Archive)

(Video cued to Nunes opening statement)

Caity Johnstone

“Back in the good old days, when things were more innocent and simple, the psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency had to covertly infiltrate the news media to manipulate the information Americans were consuming about their nation and the world. Nowadays, there is no meaningful separation between the news media and the CIA at all.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald just highlighted an interesting point about the reporting by The New York Times on the so-called “Bountygate” story the outlet broke in June of last year about the Russian government trying to pay Taliban-linked fighters to attack US soldiers in Afghanistan.

“One of the NYT reporters who originally broke the Russia bounty story (originally attributed to unnamed ‘intelligence officials’) say today that it was a CIA claim,” Greenwald tweeted. “So media outlets — again — repeated CIA stories with no questioning: congrats to all.”

Indeed, NYT’s original story made no mention of CIA involvement in the narrative, citing only “officials,” yet this latest article speaks as though it had been informing its readers of the story’s roots in the lying, torturing, drug-running, warmongering Central Intelligence Agency from the very beginning. The author even writes “The New York Times first reported last summer the existence of the C.I.A.’s assessment,” with the hyperlink leading to the initial article which made no mention of the CIA. It wasn’t until later that The New York Times began reporting that the CIA was looking into the Russian bounties allegations at all.

This would be the same “Russian bounties” narrative which was discredited all the way back in September when the top US military official in Afghanistan said no satisfactory evidence had surfaced for the allegations, which was further discredited today with a new article by The Daily Beast titled “U.S. Intel Walks Back Claim Russians Put Bounties on American Troops”.

The Daily Beast, which has itself uncritically published many articles promoting the CIA “Bountygate” narrative, reports the following:

It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.

But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven — and possibly untrue.

So the mass media aggressively promoted a CIA narrative that none of them ever saw proof of, because there was no proof, because it was an entirely unfounded claim from the very beginning. They quite literally ran a CIA press release and disguised it as a news story.

This allowed the CIA to throw shade and inertia on Trump’s proposed troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Germany, and to continue ramping up anti-Russia sentiments on the world stage, and may well have contributed to the fact that the agency will officially be among those who are exempt from Biden’s performative Afghanistan “withdrawal”.
In totalitarian dictatorships, the government spy agency tells the news media what stories to run, and the news media unquestioningly publish it. In free democracies, the government spy agency says “Hoo buddy, have I got a scoop for you!” and the news media unquestioningly publish it.

In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “The CIA and the Media” reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird. It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media is meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits. The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor, and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.

This isn’t Operation Mockingbird. It’s so much worse. Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something to the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting as the media. Any separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even any pretence of separation, has been dropped.

This is bad. This is very, very bad. Democracy has no meaningful existence if people’s votes aren’t being cast with a clear understanding of what’s happening in their nation and their world, and if their understanding is being shaped to suit the agendas of the very government they’re meant to be influencing with their votes, what you have is the most powerful military and economic force in the history of civilization with no accountability to the electorate whatsoever.

It’s just an immense globe-spanning power structure, doing whatever it wants to whoever it wants. A totalitarian dictatorship in disguise.

And the CIA is the very worst institution that could possibly be spearheading the movements of that dictatorship. A little research into the many, many horrific things the CIA has done over the years will quickly show you that this is true; hell, just a glance at what the CIA was up to with the Phoenix Program in Vietnam will.

There’s a common delusion in our society that depraved government agencies who are known to have done evil things in the past have simply stopped doing evil things for some reason. This belief is backed by zero evidence, and is contradicted by mountains of evidence to the contrary. It’s believed because it is comfortable, and for literally no other reason.

The CIA should not exist at all, let alone control the news media, much less the movements of the US empire. May we one day know a humanity that is entirely free from the rule of psychopaths, from our total planetary behavior as a collective, all the way down to the thoughts we think in our own heads.

May we extract their horrible fingers from every aspect of our being. (Caity Johnstone, 4/16/2021)
____________________
(The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. – Caity Johnstone)

Rep. Devin Nunes asked FNC’s Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” why intelligence agencies like the NSA are focusing on “Republican Naval officers” and politicizing domestic surveillance rather than Russian or Chinese espionage.

“We have lots of problems out there. What in the hell are they doing spying on American citizens?” blasted Nunes.

“But, Congressman, that’s because there was no accountability. We know what took place, of all the spying in 2016 on Trump and his associates. That was never — there was never accountability for this. First, it was the FBI. Then, it was the CIA politicized. The IRS was politicized under Obama. And now we have got the politicization going into our military,” Bartiromo said. “This is outrageous!”

“Yes,” Nunes said. “If they don’t respond to our questions, we will be putting subpoenas together that we can issue in 2023 — assuming the American people reward us in the election cycle.”

BARTIROMO: In an Intelligence Committee hearing, you blasted FBI Director Christopher Wray for weaponizing the Department of Justice and the FBI against Republicans.

Is this still happening? What can you tell us about surveillance of regular Americans right now, Congressman?

NUNES: Well, the big concern with the FBI is, is that they were very critical of our investigation, accusing us of things like material omissions.

But because it was the first time that Director Wray was in front of the committee, I had to make sure that Director Wray understood the material omissions that the FBI was failing to give to Congress. So, that was the purpose of that.

But what should be troubling all of us is, is that the national intelligence, our agencies put out a report on domestic surveillance. So, at a time — we just walked through the Russia problem, the China problem, Iran problem, Afghanistan. We have lots of problems out there.

What in the hell are they doing spying on American citizens? And so I have warned all of these leaders, this is a very slippery slope to begin to turn these surveillance activities — we already know the FBI and DOJ did it back in 2015 and ’16. And they were investigating President Trump for the entire four years he was in office.

But now we have the NSA, part of our military, where they’re actually targeting Naval officers, Republican Naval officers. They’re killing — they’re putting them under phony investigations in order to kick Republicans out of the military. That’s effectively what happened.

So, I asked General Nakasone this. And his answers are pretty muddy. And I think a lot of the American people already know that the surveillance powers of the United States of America have been out of control. And now you have politicization, where you’re targeting Republicans and removing them from being able to even work at the National Security Agency?

I think it raises real questions. If they’re able to stop Republicans from working, what are they able to do that we don’t know about, where we have caught them in the past willing to reverse-target American citizens?

And then you have this report that comes out on domestic extremism. What on earth? We’re supposed to be looking at foreign threats. We’re not supposed to be using our intelligence services against our own people, specifically Republicans and conservatives. It’s what happens in Third World countries and banana republics. And we have to expose this for the American people to know.

BARTIROMO: But, Congressman, that’s because there was no accountability.

We know what took place, of all the spying in 2016 on Trump and his associates. That was never — there was never accountability for this. First, it was the FBI. Then, it was the CIA politicized. The IRS was politicized under Obama. And now we have got the politicization going into our military.

This is outrageous.

NUNES: Yes. And, look, and this is why we’re going to have to — we’re going to submit a lot of questions for the record to try to build the case and build evidence. And this is why it’s so critical that we don’t have subpoena power. But we will — if they don’t respond to our questions, we will be putting subpoenas together that we can issue in 2023, assuming the American people reward us in the election cycle.

(Video – RealClearPolitics, 4/19/2021)  (Archive)

“We just won big in court. We’ve been fighting for five years regarding the Obama-Biden Administration censoring an official State Department press briefing video to delete an embarrassing admission that the Administration lied about its Iran deal negotiations. The Administration initially claimed the deletion was a “glitch,” but after receiving our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, they admitted it was deliberate. But they refused to provide us any further information, claiming presidential privilege for redacting a key email.

Through our FOIA lawsuit, we discovered an email sent by Jen Psaki – who is now President Biden’s White House Press Secretary, regarding the secret Obama-Biden Administration meeting with Iran. We have the email, but of course, it is missing key information, completely redacted. In a major breakthrough in our case, the federal court ordered the Biden Deep State to produce this email unredacted for court review.

On Friday evening, after reviewing the document itself, the court agreed with our arguments and ordered the Biden State Department to hand over this key email to the ACLJ – now with no redactions – between none other than President Biden’s own White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and other Obama-Biden officials.” (Read more: ACLJ.org)  (Archive)

“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s presiding judge signed off on the sweeping surveillance powers held by federal spy agencies, a newly declassified yearly report shows, despite finding “widespread violations” of the FBI’s rules related to handling and searching the massive number of emails and other intercepts collected without a warrant.

Judge James Boasberg (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM/The Associated Press)

Judge James Boasberg, the top judge on the FISA court, issued a 67-page ruling in November, which was made public on Monday, dealing with FBI analyst searches of information on U.S. citizens in emails and other data sources that the National Security Agency has collected. Despite a number of problems highlighted by the judge, similar to those highlighted in a December 2019 ruling by the FISA court, Boasberg gave the green light to the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program, authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, for another year.

The program stems from U.S. tech companies assisting the NSA overseas with intercepting the communications of foreign targets — some of whom are communicating with U.S. citizens. Despite improper searches by the bureau, the judge largely gave the FBI a pass, arguing many of the violations occurred before newly implemented reforms from the bureau were put in place.

“While the Court is concerned about the apparent widespread violations of the querying standard … it lacks sufficient information at this time to assess the adequacy of the FBI system changes and training, post-implementation,” Boasberg concluded. “Under these unique circumstances, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the Court is willing to again conclude that the improper queries described above do not undermine it’s prior determination that, with implementation of the documentation requirement, the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”

The judge said that during an oversight review of a redacted FBI program, the government “discovered 40 queries that had been conducted in support of predicated criminal investigations relating to healthcare fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism involving racially motivated violent extremists, as well as investigations relating to public corruption and bribery [redacted].” The judge said that “none of these queries was related to national security.”

Boasberg also said, “Another analyst ran a ‘batch query’ using [redacted] accounts as query terms in connection with predicated criminal investigations relating to domestic terrorism that returned 33 Section 702-acquired products,” but the FBI was “unable to confirm whether any products were opened.” (Read more: The Washington Examiner, 4/27/2021)  (Archive)

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

“A FISA Court opinion and order declassified today reveals continued FBI abuses of “raw FISA-acquired information.” After a DOJ National Security Division review, the FISA Court noted “the FBI’s failure to properly apply its querying standard when searching Section 702-acquired information was more pervasive than was previously believed.”

This opinion includes these findings:

1. One FBI intelligence analyst “conducted 110 queries for analytic paper.”
2. Another analyst conducted improper queries for “ongoing vetting of confidential human sources” as well as “overly broad queries” and “mistakenly failed to opt out of querying against raw FISA-acquired information.”

Judge James Boasberg, who presides over the FISA Court, found little issue with these abuses. In fact, Boasberg concluded:

“[T]he Court is willing to again conclude that the improper queries described above do not undermine its prior determination that, with implementation of the documentation requirement, the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”

HOWEVER – Boasberg then concludes that the government has reported numerous incidents involving searches of FISA information without warrants.

In other words, the FBI is using FISA acquired information to investigate domestic crimes – not matters of foreign intelligence. These included investigations of “health-care fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism involving racially motivated violent extremists, as well as investigations relating to public corruption and bribery.”

“Public corruption and bribery.” I highlight that last part because it means the FBI continued to improperly use FISA-acquired information to spy on government officials.

(Techno Fog, 4/26/2021)  (Archive)