Email/Dossier/Govt Corruption Investigations
October 1, 2021 – Durham reportedly issues subpoenas to Perkins Coie
Special Counsel John Durham reportedly issued subpoenas to Perkins Coie, a law firm tied to the Steele Dossier, the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The subpoenas are part of Durham’s probe into the origins of the investigation into allegations that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia, CNN reported.
(Read more: The Daily Caller, 9/30/2021) (Archive)
Mark Wauck is a retired FBI agent who blogs and has been following Russiagate closely. He offers some interesting thoughts on what the subpoenas could be about.
(…) Yesterday I suggested that, as a result of Perkins Coie contesting Durham’s original subpoenas, a judge may have limited the scope of those subpoenas to those documents that the judge believed Durham had offered the best case as being relevant to his investigation. The relevance to a criminal investigation would form the basis of the crime or fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege that would normally apply to an attorney’s communications regarding a client.
Under this reasoning on my part, the original subpoenas may have sought emails and billing records not only for Sussmann but also for Elias—and potentially others. The judges, as I speculated, may have told Durham, in effect: Look, you can get the Sussmann docs because you’ve shown Sussmann’s links to persons of interest by other means, but hold off on the Elias docs—depending on your results you can always ask for those again at a later date.
Now, we know from the Sussmann indictment that Durham was, in fact, able to link Elias to Sussmann’s conspiratorial activities based on the emails and billing records. For that reason I want to be cautious regarding SWC’s idea that Sussmann is cooperating with Durham. Sussmann’s cooperation probably is not necessary for purposes of obtaining Elias’ records from Perkins Coie—although SWC is undoubtedly correct that Sussmann is under enormous pressure to cooperate and that the focus of that cooperation would include Elias. The positive results from the first round of subpoenas to Perkins Coie are almost certainly sufficient for those purposes, regardless of whether Sussmann is cooperating at this point. Sussmann may have begun cooperating, but we can’t be certain. Let’s not get too far out in front with speculation.
Before offering SWC’s tweets for your consideration, I want to return to what I’ve previously said about Elias—that he’s too major a player to be an initial target for cooperation by Durham. Elias is too close to Hillary and to all things legal as regards the Dem party—it’s difficult for me to believe that he would have led the race to cooperate. As SWC observes: “Elias takes you on a lot of directions other than just Alfa Bank.” Precisely.
Durham is well known for being a methodical investigator and prosecutor. My view remains that before attempting to turn the screws on Elias he’ll first want to build air tight cases against targets for whom he has hard evidence. Further, Sussmann is by no means a minor player—he’s just not as big as Elias. I believe Durham would prefer to obtain subpoenas targeting Elias’ records on his (Durham’s) own terms, based on his own investigative results, rather than based on cooperation from Sussmann. That would allow Durham to drive a harder bargain with Sussmann if it comes to a plea deal. By limiting Sussmann’s ability to say, Hey, I helped you with this, that, or the other thing, so gimme a break, Durham gains leverage over Sussmann and may be able to extract even greater cooperation. All that’s a maybe—it may not turn out that way, but the methodical Durham will surely want to put himself in the strongest possible position well ahead of any turn of events. (Read more: MeaningInHistory, 10/01/2021) (Archive)
October 3, 2021 – Kash Patel predicts the Durham probe will lead to indictments ‘at the top’
Former Pentagon chief of staff Kash Patel discusses the Durham investigation with Maria Bartiromo.
Retired FBI, Mark Wauck, is kind enough to create a partial rough transcript of what Patel said and then shares a few thoughts:
“Below is a transcript of Patel’s statements to Maria Bartiromo this morning. I’ve paraphrased Maria’s questions, but this is as exact a transcript as I can manage of what Patel had to say about the Russia Hoax and where Durham is headed. I’ll add some of my own remarks, but let’s start with Patel:
MB: When do you think the FBI figured out this was the Clinton Campaign trying to take down Trump?
KP: I think they knew right away, and the documents we put out in the Nunes investigation and the Nunes memo and the HPSCI report on Russian active measures show that the FBI knew right away, because the FISA abuse process, now that declassification is complete. And your viewers can read it, that the FBI knew the evidence was fraudulent, they knew the credibility problems with Christopher Steele and they knew the DNC through Fusion GPS and Perkins Coie were piping in tens of millions of dollars into the machine so that they could get up a FISA warrant into President Trump. I think they knew right away which is why I think the individuals at the FBI need to be held accountable.
MB: Will John Durham reel in any big fish?
KP: I believe so. Let me just put this in perspective. When I was running large scale conspiracy and fraud investigations, they took me three, four, five years to prosecute. John Durham is in only his second year of the most political scandal in US history. So I believe in the next 6 months look out for indictments against the folks like Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson for helping to perpetuate this fraud. And look out for individuals like Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. I believe they’re already helping John Durham and they’re cooperating with him to get the bigger fish, like Andy McCabe who is the biggest fraudster next to James Comey. I think you’re gonna see these indictments come out on these individuals at the top. It’s just gonna take a few more months, but I remind your viewers that it takes a little time to work these matters.
MB: No surprise the MSM gave them all jobs.
In a sense this isn’t big news, because we saw the shape of this in Durham’s indictment of Michael Sussmann. In particular the references in the indictment to Fusion GPS (“investigative firm”) and Perkins Coie left no doubt that Durham saw Fusion GPS as key to the actual implementation of the Russia Hoax conspiracy. However, Patel says two things openly that are of bombshell quality.
First, while we knew that the money for the Fusion GPS operation was laundered through Perkins Coie, Patel openly states that the amounts ran to “tens of millions of dollars”. That’s real money in US political campaigns, even in these days. It’s also real money in the world of major law firms, so you can see why Durham has been so focused on Perkins Coie as well as why Perkins Coie is experiencing real difficulty in persuading Durham that they didn’t know what was going on—remember, this money laundering op was almost certainly a violation of campaign finance laws. Who believes nobody at a major law firm noticed the flow of that amount of money through their accounts? Not me and, it seems, not Durham. If Perkins Coie wants to somehow get through this without indictments they’ll need to be very cooperative with Durham.
Fusion GPS, of course, is no more than an organizational euphemism for Glenn Simpson and, most likely, Nellie Ohr. Nellie has, quite likely, been cooperating with regard to Simpson. Simpson, in his turn, will have a lot to offer Durham with regard to the Clinton legal operatives—Sussmann and Elias. Both. This is another reason why I want to wait before jumping to any conclusions about Sussmann cooperating against Elias. Both of these guys are very major players, and Durham won’t be over quick to offer them deals unless he has to.
Second, I was gratified to see Patel confirm my assessment, which I offered quite recently. I stated that, while Page and Strzok may have been big fish within the FBI, in the big scheme of this conspiracy they weren’t truly major players. At the FBI the major players—people who controlled the switches—were: Comey (Director), McCabe (Deputy Director), and James Baker (General Counsel). We’re pretty certain that Baker is cooperating. I doubt that Durham has even sought cooperation from Comey and McCabe. I think they’re major targets—they either go down or they get away with what they did, but their responsibility was too great for them to get a plea deal. Page and Strzok may be able to get some sort of a deal, but in my view they’ll also have to pay a price.
Now, extrapolating a bit from what Patel said …
(Read more: MeaningInHistory, 10/3/2021) (Archive)
- Andy McCabe
- Christopher Steele
- Clinton campaign
- Durham indictment
- false information
- Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)
- FISA Abuse
- Fusion GPS
- Glenn Simpson
- indictment
- James Baker
- James Comey
- Kash Patel
- Lisa Page
- Marc Elias
- Maria Bartiromo
- Mark Wauck
- Michael Sussmann
- money laundering
- Nunes memo
- October 2021
- Perkins Coie
- Peter Strzok
- Russiagate
- video
October 4, 2021 – More on Alfa Bank lawsuit; Steele; Nuland; Kavalec notes; Stephen Laycock; and the Russiagate fabrications in Belton’s book
(…) In a report commissioned by Alfa Bank and released by the Ankura Consulting Group in April 2020, the technical methods were exposed by which Sussmann and his Democratic National Committee clients had fabricated the evidence of the Russian “channel” to Trump. For the full Anura report, click to read.
In reporting this and the Sussmann indictment last month, it is now clear in retrospect that [Catherine] Belton was on the end of the chain of lying which started with Sussmann and Steele. Sussmann first provided the Alfa channel fabrication to Steele on July 29, 2016; Steele admitted this to a lawyer for Alfa in London in March 2017. Sussmann repeated the lie to the FBI on September 29, 2016. Steele then repeated it at the State Department on October 11, 2016. Hillary Clinton repeated it in a public tweet on November 1, 2016. Steele has admitted some of the journalist names to whom he had repeated the Alfa lie in this UK court record; he has not admitted what he told Belton.
Belton did not admit her Alfa fabrications to HarperCollins in March of 2021, when the publisher issued a statement claiming the book was “an authoritative, important and conscientiously sourced work.” Four months later, on July 28, The Bookseller printed a fresh statement from HarperCollins repeating the same endorsement and adding: “HarperCollins will robustly defend this acclaimed and groundbreaking book and the right to report on matters of considerable public interest.” Hours later that day in court, the publisher contradicted itself and withdrew its defence of Belton’s Alfa claims.
To this day, the Financial Times website version of Belton’s November 1, 2016, story of the “second channel” shows no correction. Steele’s allegations at the State Department Belton repeated as innuendo: “questions are mounting over whether Mr Millian was one of a number of people who could have acted as intermediaries to build ties between Moscow and Mr Trump.”
In fact, the questions which started mounting immediately after Steele had met Nuland and Kavalec were immediately relayed to the FBI with warnings from both of them that they suspected Steele of faking.
By May 2019, a year before Belton’s book was due to be published, the first reports were surfacing in the Washington press revealing that Nuland and Kavalec had suspected Steele. Belton then erased Steele from the book as her source for the allegations she had already printed in the Financial Times on Millian’s Florida real estate schemes.
But into the book Belton kept up the same allegation, turning the innuendo into fact with a change of source: “Money then flowed into real estate in Miami, New York and London,” Belton alleged, ascribing this to Jack Blum, whom she reported as “a Washington lawyer specialising in white-collar financial crime”. Blum is also the treasurer of an anti-Russia think tank in Washington funded in part by George Soros. “Real estate was exempt from any kind of reporting of suspicious activity,” Belton says she was told at an “author interview with Blum, December 2018. Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization, did not respond to a request for comment.”
In Belton’s book, she continued to parrot Steele. “In total,” she wrote, “more than $98.4 million worth of property in south Florida was bought by Russians in seven Trump-branded luxury towers.” Kavalec’s notes reveal that Steele had told Nuland “$98M in 7 towers”.
Kavalec’s records reveal that at the October 11, 2016, meeting with Nuland, Steele spent most of his time promoting his claim that the Millian “channel” and the “émigré network” were responsible for “domestic espionage”. Money to pay for this, he claimed, came from a Russian state “pension fund Miami consulate payments”. Steele also claimed Millian and others used real estate transactions because there was “no due diligence”. He named two of the alleged fronts as “Global Group” and “Florida Best Realty – Marat Zitsman – located in Trump Towers. 12s [dozens] of Russians.”
Source: this and also as a typed transcript, dated May 19, 2019. This version reports Belton’s first name as “Chasenual[sp?]! and “meeting” as “wre[?]ly” Another source, with commentary, can be read here. The reference to “Winer” above Belton’s name identifies Jonathan Winer, a State Department official at the time who was also part of the Russian allegation chain between Sussman, Steele, and Belton. In her book, Belton reports interviewing Winer in December 2018. Winer is reportedly the source for the claim of “an alliance of the KGB working with organised crime.” For more on Winer’s role as go-between Steele and Nuland, read this.
Kavalec’s subsequent reporting to the FBI casts doubt on Steele’s truthfulness and motive. In her written report to Nuland and the FBI, Kavalec wrote: “It is important to note that there is no Russian consulate in Miami.” Nuland also issued a warning to cut off contact with Steele because “this is about U.S. politics, and not the work of — not the business of the State Department, and certainly not the business of a career employee who is subject to the Hatch Act.” For more details, click to read.
FBI officials have confirmed that Kavelec sent the FBI a report of these concerns by email; she also spoke directly to Stephen Laycock, then the FBI’s section chief for Russian and Eurasian counter-intelligence and later one of the bureau’s top executives as assistant director for intelligence. In the pre-election period Laycock was also a member of the inter-agency “Russian Malign Influence Group”, together with Kavalec and Justice Department officials. Laycock was also aware that FBI agents reporting to him had met in July in Rome with Steele.
The email to Laycock from Kavalec arrived on October 13, eight days before the FBI swore to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that it had no negative information on Steele’s credibility; the FBI used his anti-Trump dossier to secure secret surveillance warrants to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Moscow. The publicly disclosed version of Kavalec’s email to Laycock has been heavily redacted on the grounds of national security.
The manipulation of some agents and groups inside the FBI was under investigation by others at the FBI in the days leading up to the presidential election. This resulted in the FBI sacking Steele as a confidential source on November 1, 2016.
On the same day, Belton repeated in the Financial Times word for word what Steele had told her about the Millian “channel” and “espionage network”.
By then Laycock was about to move up from the Russian section of the Agency’s counter-intelligence division to take charge of counter-intelligence at the FBI’s Washington field office. The following year he was promoted again, this time to assistant director of the intelligence directorate. He continued at the top of the Bureau until his retirement in 2020 when he went to work for the computer security firm KACE, a unit of Dell, and SCL Risk Management. SCL are Laycock’s name initials; the firm is registered at his home address in Burke, Virginia.
Laycock prospered during the Russiagate affair; looking back, he has told others “that of all the characteristics of a successful leader that come to mind…there is one word that I think about a lot in looking back on my FBI career regarding leadership roles and success, and that is to be Thankful…being thankful and appreciating opportunity is what, again in my opinion, got me to where I ended in my incredible FBI career.”
Forgetful was the term Laycock relied on when he was interviewed under oath at the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 15, 2020. He was repeatedly asked what he knew of Steele and his claims about Russian operations in the US. According to Laycock, he had “heard the name before [October 2016]”. Asked whether he or his staff had checked Steele’s claims Laycock testified he was “not aware”, “I don’t know”, “I can’t remember”. Asked what Kavalec had told him about Steele after the October 11 meeting with Nuland, Laycock said: “I don’t remember exactly what she said.”
Asked whether Steele’s credibility had been called into question, Laycock told the Senate investigation: “I don’t recall that.” Asked again if he was present at meetings of his staff when Steele’s credibility had been examined, Laycock said: “I don’t recall any.” Had there been any verification of Steele’s allegations? “I don’t recall specifically any steps. It was more just status updates of kind of where things were.”
In her book Belton says that in July 2019 she interviewed Frank Montoya, head of the FBI’s counter-intelligence division between 2012 and 2014, before he was reassigned to Seattle. He then retired and went to work for StrikeForce Technologies — https://strikesource.com/team-member/frank-montoya-jr/ StrikeForce is one of the promoters of the Russia hacking allegations which Steele had started with Nuland.
STRIKE FORCE TECHNOLOGIES – RUSSIAGATE PLOT WAS SHARE PRICE BOOSTER FROM ELECTION DAY 2016 TO THE TRUMP-PUTIN MEETING IN JULY 2018
StrikeForce remains very small, with a current market capitalization of $70 million. Source: https://markets.ft.com/ CrowdStrike, the company which initially reported the allegation of Russian hacking of the DNC, did not list on the Nasdaq exchange until 2019. Its share price has moved steadily upwards; its current market cap is $57 billion. Shawn Henry, the second ranked executive at CrowdStrike, is an ex-FBI agent.
The only American reporter to have identified Belton’s reporting in the Financial Times as tied to Steele and the Sussmann plot is Matt Taibbi. He reported on September 22 “a long list of press figures “from [Brian] Stelter’s own CNN colleague and shameless intelligence community spokesclown Natasha Bertrand, to reporters from The New Yorker, Time, MSNBC, Fortune, the Financial Times, and especially Slate and The Atlantic — were witting or unwitting pawns in a scheme to sell the public on a transparently moronic hoax, i.e. that Donald Trump’s campaign was communicating mysterious digital treason to Russia’s Alfa Bank via a secret computer server.” Taibbi did not mention Belton by name.
It is not yet clear if FBI agents met with Belton at the time of her Millian story, or later. Belton refuses to respond to a request to confirm meetings she has had with FBI agents before her book was published. The FBI was asked to clarify its contacts with Belton and to say if its agents had been the ones identified at the London meeting with Belton which Steele had mentioned to Nuland. The FBI replied: “we will decline comment.”
Sources who are familiar with FBI investigations of Russian money-laundering and US organized crime suspect that Steele, then Belton, were manipulated by the FBI counter-intelligence division trying to score personal and bureaucratic points against their traditional rivals, the organized crime division of the Bureau and the CIA’s counter-intelligence division. The FBI’s counter-intelligence division had been discredited in 2001 when Robert Hanssen, one of the division’s supervisors, had been convicted of spying for the Russians for many years. His exposure followed the disgrace of the parallel operation at the CIA after the FBI arrested Aldrich Ames.
In her book, Belton has parroted the Montoya-Laycock script from the counter-intelligence division without checking with the FBI’s organised crime division. “It is a comic-book version of the facts”, says a source familiar with the Russian evidence and the FBI’s investigations of American crime gangs. “Some things are funny, like her spelling of the Genovese crime family.” The source says Belton misreports most of the details in her book about Jewish-Russian émigrés whom she calls “mobsters” and accuses of “network funnelling money from the former Soviet Union into America, including – indirectly – into the business empire of Donald Trump.”
“They,” Belton’s book claims, “were part of an interconnecting web of figures that became testimony to the enduring power of the black-cash networks created in the final years of the Communist regime. Some of them later joined Trump in real-estate ventures, helping bail him out when he fell into financial difficulty, offering the prospect of lucrative construction deals in Moscow… The money flows that went through part of this network to Trump’s business operations are yet to be fully uncovered – they remain at the centre of a legal standoff between the Trump Organization and Congress over what records can be disclosed. But some of the contours of Moscow’s influence over Trump can be traced.”
This was the Steele fabrication which the FBI counter-intelligence division and its Crossfire Hurricane group turned into a weapon in support of the Clinton campaign against Trump. Named seventeen times in Belton’s book, Sam Kislin, says a source directly involved in their business, “was partners with Misha Chernoy in Trans-CIS Commodities, starting off as trading in pig iron, not chrome. Sam had nothing to do with TransWorld, especially when Misha left. They also ran Blond Management together. Arik Kislin was the runner and gofer. Sam and Semyon [Mogilevich] were substantial contributors to the Democrats, not the Republicans. Yaponchik [Vyacheslav Ivankov] was sent to the U.S. to put down the warfare in Little Odessa [Brighton Beach, Brooklyn] because the American Mob was getting a lot of heat from the NYPD [New York Police Department] about the violence of the Russian gangsters in NY.”
Belton’s version of the Yaponchik story was sourced to court testimony by an FBI organised crime division agent, Lester McNulty. McNulty’s affidavit of 1995 makes no reference to Trump or to Trump businesses.
Belton, however, links Yaponchik to Trump by reporting: “Agents eventually tracked him [Yaponchik] down to a luxury condo in Trump Tower in Manhattan, and then to the Taj Mahal [casino], to which he made nineteen visits while under surveillance between March and April 1993, gambling $250,000 there. Trump had survived his first threat of bankruptcy, and the Russians were among those who had helped him do so. The Taj Mahal became such a popular spot for Russian émigrés that part of a Russian movie was filmed there, a comedy that featured a casino owned by the Russian mob.”
“This”, said the source familiar with Belton’s “network”, “is a myopic view of the situation without any understanding of what was happening in the US from a US point of view. Donald Trump’s father owed the Mob a lot of money (some said $58 million). When Biff Halloran of Transit-Mix went to prison the Mob turned to [Donald] Trump to help reduce his father’s debt. Trump was building hotels, partially financed by the Mob, but using cement and building materials provided by the Colombo, Lucchese and Genovese families. The Teamsters got to do all the trucking; the Westies got the Irish construction jobs, the ILA got the dock jobs on the stevedoring at the piers where the cement was imported. It was a money machine.”
“The Russians had nothing to do with it. They only bought space in the buildings as a wash for the cash they were bringing into the country; hotel rooms and golf clubs. With all that, Trump still managed to fail. When they started up Atlantic City, the Mob used Trump as a front to get the licenses and took a hefty cut of the winnings and the skim. This was to reduce the father’s debt and the new debt run up by the Donald. The problem was that Atlantic City was run by the Philly Mob which was having a small war between Angelo Bruno, Phil Testa and Little Nicky Scarfo. It all fell apart. What is important about this is that this was all American greed and corruption. We did not need Russian adventurers to show us how it was done. The Russians brought their cash to the laundry but we didn’t ask them how to run a laundromat.”
“With all the book’s references to leading Russians coming to the US, the influence of the Solntsevskaya and Izamailova groups, [Belton’s book] pretends that the Russians were running things. They were providing hot money which got cooled down by passing through the NY building trades. Fat Tony Salerno, Paulie Castellano, Ralphie Scapo, Jimmy Blue-Eyes of the Westies did not take orders and advice from Russians. They took the money and gave them a fair return.”
“Pezzo Novantas [Sicilian slang for bigshot] like Trump just made it harder because they were ignorant and without power. Frankly, I was insulted by this book and its underlying premise that the Russian bad guys came to the US and corrupted the US with their evil ways.”
A Russian émigré Belton interviewed four times in 2018 and 2019 and cites as her source for evidence of money links between Russian intelligence and Trump is Shalva Chigirinsky; Belton spells his name Tchigirinsky and cites him 64 times in the book. “In 2015, when Trump decided to run for the US presidency, Shalva Tchigirinsky was close by. He told me he was with Trump’s close friend and ally Steve Wynn, the casino owner who was to become a major donor for the Trump election campaign and subsequently the Republican Party’s finance chairman, soon after the decision was announced.” When she met Chigirinsky (right), she described him as“an ethnic Georgian with a thick mane of dark hair”. In fact, Chigirinsky is a Mingrelian Jew and from 2016 his hair was grey.
“What’s clear,” according to Belton, “is that ever since Tchigirinsky first appeared at the Taj Mahal in 1990, a network of Moscow/Solntsevskaya money men and intelligence operatives surrounded him, and that they stepped up the business connection after 2000”.
By the time Chigirinsky agreed to talk to Belton in 2018, his veracity had been called into doubt by court rulings on corporate fraud and wife beating in the UK and US. Belton omitted them in her footnotes. “Whether Tchigirinsky was involved in the Taj Mahal bondholders’ pact we may never know. He insisted he’d never invested in the Taj Mahal, but at one point when we were speaking of the financial difficulties that were facing the casino at that time, he spoke of the business almost as if it were his own.”
Chigirinsky is now suing Belton and HarperCollins in the High Court for libel. He filed on April 16, 2021. Two weeks later, the Financial Times reported the litigation with an attempt to discredit it. “Chigirinsky could not immediately be reached for comment through his lawyers,” the newspaper claimed, adding: “Jessica Ní Mhainín at the Index on Censorship, a group that campaigns for free expression, said London’s courts were becoming the venue of choice for legal action designed to ‘quash critical journalism, not only in the UK, but around the world’ . She added that the UK is harbouring a global industry that profits from such lawsuits against journalists, and called for the introduction of reforms.”
At her new post in Bosnia-Herzogovina, Kavalevec [sic] was asked to clarify what her note of the Steele-Nuland meeting meant in referring to Belton and the London meeting. She did not respond.
Belton’s book does not mention the CIA in the text or index; she cites no CIA source of support for her allegations.” (Read more: John Helmer, 10/04/2021) (Archive)
(Republished in part, with permission.)
- Alfa Bank
- Ankura Consulting Group
- Catherine Belton
- Christopher Steele
- Clinton campaign
- Department of State
- false media narrative
- Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)
- Financial Times
- FISA Abuse
- Florida Best Realty
- Fortune
- Frank Montoya
- Global Group
- HarperCollins
- Hillary Clinton
- Jack Blum
- KACE
- Kathleen Kavalec
- Kavalec notes
- London meeting
- lying to FISC
- Marat Zitsman
- media collusion
- media manipulation
- media retraction
- Michael Sussmann
- MSNBC
- Natasha Bertrand
- Russiagate
- SCL Risk Management
- Sergei Millian
- Slate
- Stephen Laycock
- StrikeForce Technologies
- Sussmann indictment
- The Atlantic
- The New Yorker
- Time
- Trump Russia collusion
- Trump Russia collusion narrative
- Trump Towers
- Victoria Nuland
October 4, 2021 – Former separatist sympathizer and now chairman of January 6 committee, defended secessionist group that killed a police officer and wounded an FBI agent
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the congressional commission investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, has been a vocal critic of an event he deems an insurrection and offered his sympathy to the police officers injured that day. He’s even gone as far as to sue former President Donald Trump for responsibility for the melee.
But as a young African-American alderman in a small Mississippi community in 1971, Thompson placed himself on the opposite side, openly sympathizing with a secessionist group known as the Republic of New Africa and participating in a news conference blaming law enforcement for instigating clashes with the group that led to the killings of a police officer and the wounding of an FBI agent. Thompson’s official biography makes no reference to the separatist RNA.
Thompson’s affection for the RNA and its members — which FBI counterintelligence memos from the 1970s warned were threatening “guerrilla warfare” against the United States — was still intact as recently as 2013, when he openly campaigned on behalf of the group’s former vice president to be mayor of Mississippi’s largest city.
The congressman’s advocacy on behalf of RNA — captured in documents, newspaper clippings and video footage retrieved from state, FBI and local law enforcement agency archives — is a pointed reminder that some of the far-left figures of a half century ago are now the Democratic Party’s establishment leaders, their pasts now a fleeting footnote in the frenzied vitriol of modern-day Washington.
For instance, Thompson’s Democratic colleague in Congress and the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, famously cofounded the extremist Black Panthers chapter in Illinois in 1968 before he entered politics. Both the RNA and the Black Panthers were avowed supporters of insurrection, and at one point in 1967, armed Black Panthers stormed the state capitol in California.
Thompson, an affable, silver-haired politician known today simply as “Bennie,” is one of Mississippi’s longest serving congressmen and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He dropped his NAACP-sponsored suit against Trump when he was appointed to lead the Jan. 6 commission.
The congressman had a much lower national profile back in 1971, when newspapers referred to him simply as Alderman B.G. Thompson from the community of Bolton, Miss., where he became acquainted with the RNA. He was never charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the group but on multiple occasions publicly sided with RNA members, even as law enforcement documented how the group had engaged in violence and was training for possible warfare.
Just the News was alerted to Thompson’s embrace of the RNA by former federal law enforcement officials and Mississippi state officials who remembered his advocacy for the group and criticism of police. Just the News obtained video footage, newspaper clippings and law enforcement documents from historical archives and the FBI that validate their story. (Read more: JustTheNews, 10/01/2021) (Archive)
- @January6thCmte
- Bennie Thompson
- Black Panthers
- Bobby Rush
- Congressional Black Caucus
- domestic terrorism
- domestic violent extremism
- FBI counterintelligence investigation
- Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)
- guerrilla warfare
- House Homeland Security Committee
- hypocrit
- insurrectionists
- January 6 "insurrection"
- January 6 Committee
- October 2021
- projection
- Republic of New Africa (RNA)
- secessionist group
October 07, 2021 – John Durham provides 81k pages of documents to Sussmann
There is more to be produced to Sussmann:
Grand jury testimony from multiple witnesses
Notes re: Sussmann’s meeting w/ CIA
The FBI’s Alfa Bank “case file” pic.twitter.com/DA8BL3OxwT
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) October 20, 2021
Techno_Fog continues on his Substack page:
Let’s decipher that last sentence. Who has received a subpoena from Durham?
- “Political organizations” likely refer to the DNC and the Hillary Clinton Campaign/Hillary for America.
- “A university” = Georgia Tech.
- “University Researchers” = the team involved in the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax.
- “An investigative firm” = Fusion GPS.
- “Numerous companies” = the companies involved with Rodney Joffe (named Tech Executive-1 in the Sussmann indictment).
As we have previously observed, Durham was already in possession of:
- E-mail records from Joffe, the research group, and Sussmann/Perkins Coie.
- Perkins Coie billing records.
- Perkins Coie records (notes, etc.) relating to calls and meetings re: Alfa Bank.
- Grand jury testimony.
And that’s just on the Alfa Bank issue. (Durham apparently remains focused on the broader FISA issues as well as other matters.) The filing also notes that Durham is “working expeditiously to declassify large volumes of materials to provide to the defense.” This includes:
But there’s still more. Durham states after the production of these records, “the government expects to produce additional materials in subsequent productions, which will include additional interview memoranda, emails, and other records.”
Why this matters.
We anticipate that Durham is gearing-up to charge the group that created and pushed the Trump/Alfa Bank hoax. This is based on the volume of information Durham possesses on this issue, which reflects substantial expenditures of time and energy and resources to put all this together. In other words, you don’t call the grand jury on this issue – and pursue this matter this far – if the Alfa Bank researchers acted properly. (Read more: Techno_Fog/Substack, 10/20/2021) (Archive)
October 12, 2021 – General Flynn was the largest target of the Fourth Branch of government
General Michael Flynn was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. Many CTH readers are well versed in the fraudulent case manufactured by corrupt DOJ and FBI officials against Flynn. This extensive interview allows Flynn to describe what was happening in his own words.
General Flynn describes the “security state” that runs government. However, we have defined it as…The Fourth Branch of Government
(Conservative Treehouse, 10/12/2021)
- Andrew Weissmann
- Department of Justice (DOJ)
- Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)
- Flynn interview
- Fourth Branch of Government
- illegal spying
- illegal surveillance
- Lt. General Michael Flynn
- Mueller Special Counsel Investigation
- Mueller team
- October 2021
- Rod Rosenstein
- Russiagate
- security state
- Spygate
- Tucker Carlson
- video
October 17, 2021 – Christopher Steele appears with Stephanopoulos and insists Michael Cohen really went to Prague and that he’s covering for Trump
Christopher Steele, the author of the Russian collusion dossier, gave an extraordinary interview to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos this week where he stood by claims long debunked by past investigations. What was most striking about the interview was Steele effectively claiming that Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s most fierce critics, is still covering for Trump in denying a critical conspiratorial meeting with Russian intelligence.
The dossier alleged Cohen had “secret meeting/s with Kremlin officials in August 2016” in Prague. Cohen testified before the House Oversight Committee in 2019 that he had never been to Prague. The Special Counsel and the Justice Department were unable to confirm Steele’s claim despite exhaustive investigation. Indeed, American intelligence believed that Russian intelligence used Steele to pass along disinformation, including the use of a long suspected Russian agent as one of his critical sources.
On April 13, 2018, Chris Matthews breathlessly introduces Peter Stone who then breaks down his latest that Robert Mueller has evidence of Michael Cohen traveling to Prague in 2016. In the end, Michael Horowitz, Robert Mueller, and Michael Cohen debunk the lie, yet mainstream media and guilty parties continue to repeat it as truth. (Credit: MSNBC)
In the interview, Stephanopoulos noted that “one big claim the dossier, the FBI, according to the Inspector General’s report … is not true, is the claim that Michael Cohen had a meeting with Russians in Prague.” He then asked “do you accept that finding that it didn’t happen?” Steele responded that he rejects the findings of Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz.
Now stop for a second and think about that. Cohen was given a deal by prosecutors and worked tirelessly to incriminate Trump in any way that he could. He even shilled for contributions based on that promise. This included an admission that he lied when he was still Trump’s lawyer. As part of his deal, Cohen could have easily confirmed the Prague allegation and said that he did meet with Russians. It would have been devastating to Trump. Instead, he continued to deny that it ever happened. He later wrote a book that called Trump every name in the book and said that he lied for him. However, he continued to maintain his long-standing denial that he has ever been to Prague or ever met with the Russians as alleged by Steele.” (Read more: Jonathan Turley, 10/20/2021) (Archive)
October 18, 2021 – DHS whistleblower Aaron Stevenson exposes migrant asylum rule change that shifts the decision of ‘reasonable fear’ away from immigration judges
- Aaron Stevenson, DHS Insider and Intelligence Research Specialist for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: “An email sent out by the Director of USCIS, which notified us about a rule change coming forward, is going to shift the adjudicative authority of defensive asylum away from immigration judges and giving it to asylum officers, which are USCIS.”
- Ur Jaddou, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: “The proposed system seeks to reduce processing times by transferring the initial responsibility for adjudicating certain protection claims from immigration judges to USCIS asylum officers. This rule would simplify the adjudication process for certain individuals who are encountered at or near the border, placed into expedited removal proceedings, and determined to have a credible fear of persecution or torture.”
- Stevenson: “This is going to be the biggest change to immigration policy in my lifetime. It’s being done without anybody knowing what’s going on about it and there’s been no coverage for the American people to know what’s going on.”
- Stevenson: “[This new policy] leaves very little accountability to the public when this kind of operation exists. And when you couple that with giving the adjudicative authority away from an immigration judge to an asylum officer, you are removing any type of public pressure that they could apply on policies that they’re creating.”
- Stevenson: “If the asylum officers get this ability, I will say it’s going to be a rubber stamp of immediately getting ‘credible fear’ or ‘reasonable fear’ [asylum seekers] to be able to stay in the country if they’re going to be deported…also their path to citizenship.”
- Stevenson: “I will lose my job” for going public.
Project Veritas released a new video today featuring an interview with current U.S. Department of Homeland Security [DHS] insider Aaron Stevenson, who serves as an Intelligence Research Specialist for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS]. (Read more: Project Veritas, 10/18/2021) (Archive)
October 19, 2021 – Aaron Maté hones in on the Perkins Coie contracts with Sussmann-Crowdstrike-Henry and Elias-Fusion GPS-Simpson
“The indictment of Hillary Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann for allegedly lying to the FBI sheds new light on the pivotal role of Democratic operatives in the Russiagate affair. The emerging picture shows Sussmann and his Perkins Coie colleague Marc Elias, the chief counsel for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, proceeding on parallel, coordinated tracks to solicit and spread disinformation tying Donald Trump to the Kremlin.
In a detailed charging document last month, Special Counsel John Durham accused Sussmann of concealing his work for the Clinton campaign while trying to sell the FBI on the false claim of a secret Trump backchannel to Russia’s Alfa Bank. But Sussmann’s alleged false statement to the FBI in September 2016 wasn’t all. Just months before, he helped generate an even more consequential Russia allegation that he also brought to the FBI. In April of that year, Sussmann hired CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that publicly triggered the Russiagate saga by lodging the still unproven claim that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic National Committee emails released by WikiLeaks.
At the time, CrowdStrike was not the only Clinton campaign contractor focusing on Russia. Just days before Sussmann hired CrowdStrike in April, his partner Elias retained the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump and the Kremlin.
These two Clinton campaign contractors, working directly for two Clinton campaign attorneys, would go on to play highly consequential roles in the ensuing multi-year Russia investigation.
Working secretly for the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS planted Trump-Russia conspiracy theories in the FBI and US media via its subcontractor, former British spy Christopher Steele. The FBI used the Fusion GPS’s now-debunked “Steele dossier” for investigative leads and multiple surveillance applications putatively targeting Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.
CrowdStrike, reporting to Sussmann, also proved critical to the FBI’s work. Rather than examine the DNC servers for itself, the FBI relied on CrowdStrike’s forensics as mediated by Sussmann.
The FBI’s odd relationship with the two Democratic Party contractors gave Sussmann and Elias unprecedented influence over a high-stakes national security scandal that upended U.S. politics and ensnared their political opponents. By hiring CrowdStrike and Fusion GPS, the Perkins Coie lawyers helped define the Trump-Russia narrative and impact the flow of information to the highest reaches of U.S. intelligence agencies.
The established Trump-Russia timeline and the public record, including overlooked sworn testimony, congressional and Justice Department reports, as well as news accounts from the principal recipients of government leaks in the affair, the Washington Post and the New York Times, help to fill in the picture.
‘We Need to Tell the American Public’
In late April 2016, after being informed by Graham Wilson, a Perkins Coie colleague, that the DNC server had been breached, Michael Sussmann immediately turned to CrowdStrike. As Sussmann recalled in December 2017 testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the cyber firm was hired based on his “recommendation.”
Although it is widely believed that CrowdStrike worked for the DNC, the firm in fact was retained by Sussmann and his Clinton campaign law firm. As CrowdStrike CEO Shawn Henry told the House committee, his contract was not with the DNC, but instead “with Michael Sussmann from Perkins Coie.”
And it was Sussmann who controlled what the FBI was allowed to see. After bringing CrowdStrike on board, Sussmann pushed aggressively to publicize the firm’s conclusion that Russian government hackers had attacked the DNC server, according to a December 2016 account in the New York Times.
“Within a day, CrowdStrike confirmed that the intrusion had originated in Russia,” the Times reported, citing Sussmann’s recollection. Sussmann and DNC executives had their first formal meeting with senior FBI officials in June 2016, where they encouraged the bureau to publicly endorse CrowdStrike’s findings:
Among the early requests at that meeting, according to participants: that the federal government make a quick “attribution” formally blaming actors with ties to Russian government for the attack to make clear that it was not routine hacking but foreign espionage.
“You have a presidential election underway here and you know that the Russians have hacked into the D.N.C.,” Mr. Sussmann said, recalling the message to the F.B.I. “We need to tell the American public that. And soon.”
But the FBI was not ready to point the finger at Russia. As the Senate Intelligence Committee later reported, “CrowdStrike still had not provided the FBI with forensic images nor an unredacted copy of their [CrowdStrike’s] report.”
Instead of waiting for the FBI, the DNC went public with the Russian hacking allegation on its own. On June 14, 2016, the Washington Post broke the news that CrowdStrike was accusing Russian hackers of infiltrating the DNC’s computer network and stealing data. Sussmann and Henry were quoted as sources. According to the Times’ account, the DNC approached the Post “on Mr. Sussmann’s advice.”
‘We Just Don’t Have the Evidence’
The Washington Post’s June 2016 story, generated by Sussmann, was the opening public salvo in the Russiagate saga.
But it was not until nearly four years later that the public learned that CrowdStrike was not as confident about the Russian hacking allegation that it had publicly lodged. In December 2017 testimony that was declassified only in May 2020, Henry admitted that his firm was akin to a bank examiner who believes the vault has been robbed – but has no proof of how. CrowdStrike, Henry disclosed, “did not have concrete evidence” that alleged Russian hackers removed any data from the DNC servers.
“There’s circumstantial evidence, but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated,” Henry told the House Intelligence Committee. “There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.”
Read in retrospect, public statements from U.S. intelligence officials indicate that they knew of this crucial gap early on, and used qualified language to gloss it over.
A joint FBI-DHS report in December 2016 – the first time the US government attempted to present evidence that Russia hacked the DNC – describes the alleged Russian hacking effort as “likely leading to the exfiltration of information” from Democratic Party networks. (Emphasis added.)
The report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of April 2019, which found no Trump-Russia collusion, likewise stated that Russian intelligence “appears to have compressed and exfiltrated over 70 gigabytes of data” and “appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments” from Democratic Party servers. (Emphasis added.)
These qualifiers – “likely” and “appear” – signaled that U.S. intelligence officials lacked concrete evidence for their Russian hacking claims, a major evidentiary hole confirmed by Henry’s buried testimony.
CrowdStrike’s admission that it lacked evidence of exfiltration was not its first such embarrassment. Just months after it accused Russia of hacking the DNC in June 2016, CrowdStrike was forced to retract a similar accusation that Russia had hacked the Ukrainian military. The firm’s debunked Ukrainian allegation was based on it claiming to have identified the same malware in Ukraine that it had found inside the DNC server.
Conflicting Accounts on DNC Server Access
The FBI relied on CrowdStrike’s forensics of the DNC servers, but both sides have given conflicting accounts as to why. The FBI claims that the DNC denied it direct access to its computer network, while the DNC claims that the FBI never sought such access. Once again, Sussmann was in the middle of this, and his sworn testimony is at odds with other accounts.
In their December 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, both Sussmann and CrowdStrike’s Henry claimed that the FBI did not try to conduct its own independent investigation of the DNC servers.
“I recall offering, or asking or offering to the FBI to come on premises, and they were not interested in coming on premises at the time,” Sussmann said. Instead, he recalled, “we told them they could have access to everything that CrowdStrike was developing in the course of its investigation.” Asked directly if the FBI sought access to the DNC servers, Sussmann replied: “No, they did not.” He then added: “Excuse me, not to my knowledge.”
Henry also told the committee that he was “not aware” of the FBI ever asking for access to the server or being denied it.
In 2017 congressional testimony, however, then-FBI Director James Comey recalled that the FBI made “multiple requests at different levels,” to access the DNC servers, but was denied. Asked why FBI access was rejected, Comey replied: “I don’t know for sure.” According to Comey, the FBI would have preferred direct access to the server, but “ultimately it was agreed to… [CrowdStrike] would share with us what they saw.”
And while Sussmann testified that Perkins Coie offered the FBI “access to everything that CrowdStrike was developing,” FBI officials and federal prosecutors tell a different story.
According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, CrowdStrike delivered a draft report to the FBI on Aug. 31, 2016 that an unidentified FBI official described as “heavily redacted.” James Trainor, then-assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, told the committee that he was “frustrated” with the CrowdStrike report and “doubted its completeness” because “outside counsel” – i.e. Sussmann – “had reviewed it.” According to Trainor, the DNC’s cooperation was “moderate” overall and “slow and laborious in many respects.” Trainor singled out the fact that Perkins Coie – and specifically, Sussmann – “scrubbed” the CrowdStrike information before it was delivered to the FBI, resulting in a “stripped-down version” that was “not optimal.”
In court filings during the prosecution of Trump associate Roger Stone, the Justice Department revealed that Sussmann, as the DNC’s attorney, submitted three CrowdStrike reports to the FBI in draft, redacted form. According to prosecutor Jessie Liu, the government “does not possess” CrowdStrike’s unredacted reports. It instead relied on Sussmann’s assurances “that the redacted material concerned steps taken to remediate the attack and to harden the DNC and DCCC systems against future attack,” and that “no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.”
In short, the FBI failed to conduct its own examination of the DNC server, and instead relied on CrowdStrike’s forensics. It also allowed Sussmann – now indicted for lying as part of an effort to spread the Russiagate conspiracy theory – to decide what it could and could not see in CrowdStrike’s reports on Russian hacking. The government also took Sussmann’s word that the redacted information did not concern “the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.”
CrowdStrike’s reports on the DNC server breach have never been publicly released. RealClearInvestigations has sought to obtain them under the Freedom of Information Act, but that request remains pending.
One source, who was able to review some of the redacted CrowdStrike reports and requested anonymity because this person is not authorized to publicly discuss them, said that they were unconvincing. “My impression was that CrowdStrike was trying very, very hard to make a case that this was Russia,” the source told RCI. “Their case, to me, was weak.”
Although Special Counsel Durham has recently subpoenaed Perkins Coie for documents, there are no indications that CrowdStrike’s work for the firm is a focus of his inquiry. A CrowdStrike spokesperson told RealClearInvestigations that the company has not heard from Durham’s office.
In response to questions about CrowdStrike, an attorney for Sussmann told RealClearInvestigations: “Mr. Sussmann is not answering questions at this time.”
Henry Struggles, Perkins Coie Intervenes
In addition to revealing a major evidentiary gap regarding alleged Russian hacking, Henry’s December 2017 testimony revealed that Sussmann’s law firm exerted significant influence over the flow of information in CrowdStrike’s handling of it.
Joining Henry at the deposition was Sussmann’s Perkins Coie partner, Graham Wilson, who represented the DNC, and David Lashway, who represented CrowdStrike.
Henry’s acknowledgment that CrowdStrike did not have “concrete evidence” of exfiltration came only after he was interrupted and prodded by his attorneys to correct an initial answer. After claiming that he knew when Russian hackers exfiltrated data from the DNC, Henry offered a sharp correction: “Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated. We do not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated.”
In another exchange, Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah pressed Henry to explain why the FBI relied on CrowdStrike. “I don’t understand why the FBI wouldn’t lead or at least have some role in investigating the evidence,” Stewart said. “…Could they [the FBI] conduct their own investigation in a thorough fashion without access to the actual hardware?”
Henry struggled to respond to Stewart’s queries, before finally answering: “You’re asking me to speculate. I don’t know the answer.”
At this point, Stewart noted that Henry had been actively consulting with his Perkins Coie attorney. “By the way, you need to pay him [Henry’s attorney] well, because he’s obviously serving you well today as you guys have your conversations back and forth together,” Stewart quipped.
Shortly after that exchange, the attorney present for CrowdStrike, Lashway, stressed that Henry’s testimony was subject to Perkins Coie’s discretion. Henry was discussing “work that was performed at the behest of counsel, Perkins Coie, Mr. Sussmann’s law firm,” Lashway said. Accordingly, he added, “we would turn to Perkins Coie, as counsel to the DNC, to ensure that Mr. Henry can actually answer some of these questions.”
An ‘Extraordinary Coincidence’
The CrowdStrike-Perkins Coie contract, signed in early May 2016, ensured that Sussmann and his firm would oversee the cyber firm’s work product, and subject it to the secrecy of attorney-client privilege.
The Perkins Coie-CrowdStrike contract is similar to the arrangement between the firm and another contractor pivotal to the Trump-Russia investigation, Fusion GPS. In their 2019 book, Fusion GPS founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch wrote that Sussmann’s colleague Elias “wanted it that way for legal reasons: If Fusion’s communications were with a lawyer, they could be considered privileged and kept confidential.”
After being hired in the same month of April, the two firms also lodged their respective Russia-related allegations within days of each other two months later in June. Just six days after CrowdStrike went public with the allegation that Russia had hacked the DNC on June 14, Christopher Steele produced the first report in what came to be known as the Steele dossier.
Over the ensuing months, the two firms and their Democratic clients actively spread their claims to the FBI and media. Steele and Fusion GPS, backed by their Perkins Coie client Elias, shared the fabricated dossier claims with eager FBI agents and credulous journalists, all while hiding that the Clinton campaign and DNC were footing the bill. “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year,” the New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman commented when Elias’ secret payments to Fusion GPS were revealed in October 2017.
After going public with its Russian hacking allegation in June, CrowdStrike had contact with the FBI “over a hundred times in the course of many months,” CEO Henry recalled. This included sharing with the FBI its redacted reports, and providing it with “a couple of actual digital images” of DNC hard drives, out of a total number of “in excess of 10, I think,” Henry testified. When Wikileaks released stolen DNC emails on the eve of the Democratic convention in July, senior Clinton campaign officials doggedly promoted CrowdStrike’s claim that Russia had hacked them.
In congressional testimony, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson said that it was an “extraordinary coincidence” that the Russian hacking allegation (by fellow Clinton/Perkins Coie contractor CrowdStrike) overlapped with his firm’s Trump-Russia collusion hunt (while working for Clinton/Perkins Coie).
Coincidence is one possibility. Another is that the roles of Sussman and Elias behind CrowdStrike and Fusion GPS’s highly consequential claims about Russia and the 2016 election could be pillars of the same deception.
Whatever additional scrutiny they may face, it will no longer be as partners at Perkins Coie. Elias, who was also the Democrats’ leading election law attorney opposing Trump challenges to the 2020 vote, resigned in August to launch a new firm, taking 13 colleagues with him. Upon his indictment by Durham three weeks later, Sussmann stepped down as well to focus, he said, on his legal defense. (Aaron Maté/RealClearInvestigations, 10/19/2021) (Archive)
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- Alfa Bank
- Carter Page
- Christopher Steele
- Clinton campaign
- Clinton/DNC/Steele Dossier
- CrowdStrike
- David Lashway
- DNC server
- false media narrative
- FBI Cybersecurity Division
- Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)
- Fusion GPS
- Glenn Simpson
- Graham Wilson
- House Intelligence Committee
- James Comey
- James Trainor
- Jessie Liu
- John Durham
- Marc Elias
- media collusion
- Michael Sussmann
- Mueller Report
- October 2021
- Perkins Coie
- Peter Fritsch
- Robert Mueller
- Roger Stone
- Russiagate
- Senate Intelligence Committee
- Shawn Henry
- Sussmann indictment
- transcript
- Trump Russia collusion
- Trump Russia collusion narrative
- Trump Russia Investigation
- Wikileaks
October 23, 2021 – Christopher Steele tells Sky News that Theresa May rebuffed the Clinton/DNC/Steele dossier after it went public
A former British spy who wrote a dossier on Donald Trump said he once spent hours with then, home secretary Theresa May, briefing her on the Russia threat.
Christopher Steele also revealed he had been asked by a UK official to review sensitive government documents on Russia just days before his dossier, which alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow in the 2016 US election, became public.
It meant he was left feeling “surprised and disappointed”, he said, when Mrs May, as prime minister, then appeared to play down his links to the government.
“It was quite galling to have announcements made… to the effect that this was nothing, we were nothing to do with the government, we hadn’t worked with or for the government for years and so on,” the former senior MI6 officer said in an exclusive Sky News interview.
He was referring to remarks by Mrs May in January 2017 after the dosser ignited a political firestorm in the United States, drawing furious denials from then, president-elect Trump.
“It is absolutely clear that the individual who produced this dossier has not worked for the UK government for years,” she said at the time.” (Read more: Sky News, 10/22/2021) (Archive)
October 28, 2021 – Kash Patel and Aaron Maté discuss the overlooked role of Crowdstrike and Sussmann overseeing their contract
“Former Congressional investigator Kash Patel, who helped expose the Steele dossier fraud, on the overlooked, suspicious role of another Clinton campaign contractor, CrowdStrike, which accused Russia of hacking the DNC.
As a top investigator on the House Intelligence Committee, Kash Patel helped uncover the Clinton campaign’s funding of the Steele dossier and the FBI’s extensive and deceptive reliance on it.
Patel joins Aaron Maté to discuss Steele’s new attempt to defend his discredited work via a softball interview with ABC News. Patel also addresses the key role of newly indicted Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann in hiring and overseeing another heavily influential Clinton campaign contractor, CrowdStrike, the cyber-firm behind the foundational allegation that Russia hacked the DNC. “CrowdStrike is one of the biggest culprits of the Russia fraud,” Patel says.
“For some reason, for the only time in FBI history that I can think of, they allowed an outside non-government entity to referee. That is, to go in and seize the servers of a target of an investigation and let a third party, CrowdStrike, referee what the FBI could and could not have access to.” (The GrayZone, 10/30/2021) (Archive)
October 28, 2021 – Longtime Clinton friend and VA gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe, hires Marc Elias for his services
“As a long-standing associate of the Clintons, Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has long ties with the Democratic establishment. That history was placed into sharp relief this week when he made a hefty down payment on the services of former Clinton counsel Marc Elias. Elias is a critical figure in the ongoing Durham investigation and has been accused of lying to the media to hide the role of the Clinton campaign in funding the Steele dossier. His former law partner Michael Sussmann at Perkins Coie was recently indicted by Durham. Elias has also led efforts to challenge Democratic losses, even as he denounces Republicans for such election challenges. Elias has been sanctioned in past litigation.
Like Sussmann, Elias has left Perkins Coie. He ironically created a law firm specializing in campaign ethics. McAuliffe may be preparing to challenge any win by Republican Glenn Youngkin. He has given $53,680 to the Elias Law Group. McAuliffe does not appear disturbed by Elias’ highly controversial career or his possible exposure in the Durham investigation.
I previously described news accounts linking the firm and Elias to the dossier scandal:
Throughout the campaign, the Clinton campaign denied any involvement in the creation of the so-called Steele dossier’s allegations of Trump-Russia connections. However, weeks after the election, journalists discovered that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the dossier made to a research firm, Fusion GPS, as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to the campaign’s law firm. New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Clinton lawyer Marc Elias, with the law firm of Perkins Coie, denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”
It was not just reporters who asked the Clinton campaign about its role in the Steele dossier. John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.
The Washington Post also reported that “Elias drew from funds that both the Clinton campaign and the DNC were paying Perkins Coie.”
That makes the choice of counsel astonishing given these allegations from reporters and McAuliffe’s previous assertion that “someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.” (Read more: Jonathan Turley, 10/28/2021) (Archive)
October 29, 2021 – Fiona Hill testified she didn’t know about or support Trump’s call with Ukraine president Zelensky; an email proves she helped set it up
She said she didn’t know of the call and didn’t support the call.
Yet we see not only did she know but she helped to schedule the call. pic.twitter.com/Rp6jnC8Lzz— JaeBell (@WakeHill) November 21, 2021