Medal of Freedom (Credit: The White House)

“On Monday, President Donald J. Trump will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Devin Nunes. This prestigious award is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, which is awarded by the President to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

Devin grew up on a farm in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Since his election to Congress in 2002 at the age of 29, he has been a tireless fighter for the farmers of California, waging a long and successful battle to bring water to the Central Valley. In 2014, Devin was selected to chair the House Intelligence Committee. As Chairman, he confronted Russian aggression and opposed the Iran Nuclear Deal. Against fierce opposition, he led the effort to declassify documents seized in the bin Laden raid that showed Al Qaeda’s collaboration with Iran.

In 2017, Congressman Nunes launched an investigation into the Obama-Biden administration’s misconduct during the 2016 election – and began to unearth the crime of the century. As a result of his work, he discovered that the infamous Steele Dossier was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. He found that a senior Justice Department attorney was married to one of the architects of the document. He learned that the Obama-Biden administration had issued Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to spy on President Trump’s campaign and illegitimately unmasked several innocent spying victims for political gain.

Devin Nunes’ courageous actions helped thwart a plot to take down a sitting United States president.  Devin’s efforts led to the firing, demotion, or resignation of over a dozen FBI and DOJ employees.  He also forced the disclosure of documents that proved that a corrupt senior FBI official pursued a vindictive persecution of General Michael Flynn — even after rank and file FBI agents found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Congressman Nunes pursued the Russia Hoax at great personal risk and never stopped standing up for the truth.  He had the fortitude to take on the media, the FBI, the Intelligence Community, the Democrat Party, foreign spies, and the full power of the Deep State. Devin paid a price for his courage. The media smeared him and liberal activists opened a frivolous and unjustified ethics investigation, dragging his name through the mud for eight long months. Two dozen members of his family received threatening phone calls – including his 98 year old grandmother.

Congressman Devin Nunes is a public servant of unmatched talent, unassailable integrity, and unwavering resolve. He uncovered the greatest scandal in American history.”

WhiteHouse.gov

Think back…

While Washington, D.C. was riveted on the events of Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, the FBI quietly released a trove of files ordered released by then President Trump from an “Urgent” — yet seemingly controlled — investigation 60 years ago into Nancy Pelosi’s father who was accused of multiple criminal activities (her brother too, with sex charges involving two girl cousins, one 11 and the other 13 years old, were presented by the grand jury against ten young men from Baltimore, including Nancy’s then 20 year old brother Franklin D. Roosevelt D’Alesandro) and being involved with Communist Party USA a soviet front group, according to the FBI.

Nancy Pelosi ABSOLUTELY HAD to keep control of the narrative of what happened on January 6th. That is why the ‘attack’ on the Capitol will now be investigated by a House select committee after party-line vote.

The truth is that Nancy Pelosi had numerous motivations for the January 6th ‘resurrection’. and she very well likely orchestrated it with the help of the FBI and Capitol Police leadership…

1. To create a smokescreen and distract the news cycle from the release that day of once classified FBI files ordered released by then President Trump on her communist-linked father.

Here are the files.

2. To smear President Trump allowing the House and Senate to impeach him, preventing him from ever holding public office again. This second impeachment failed, like the first one.

3. To create a narrative that conservatives are domestic terrorists and must have their weapons confiscated. All conservatives whether present in Washington, DC on January 6th or not. This is still in motion and they very well may get their domestic terrorism classification against conservatives.

FBI Vault – Thomas D’ Alesandro Jr. , pg 39

Think back…

While Washington, D.C. was riveted on the events of Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, the FBI quietly released a trove of files ordered released by then President Trump from an “Urgent” — yet seemingly controlled — investigation 60 years ago into Nancy Pelosi’s father who… pic.twitter.com/em6ZeXfCMn

— Tony Seruga (@TonySeruga) November 16, 2023

UPDATE: “with the help of the FBI and Capitol Police leadership…” of course we now know that these two truth telling patriots were NOT part of Nancy Pelosi’s scheme and they have been targeted for not lying and following the ‘establishment’ narrative:

@ChiefSund
— a 30-year law enforcement veteran in Washington D.C., and former Chief of Police of the United States Capitol Police

@elleonCEOTK
— former Lieutenant with the U.S. Capitol Police

Please follow and support these heroes targeted by the corrupt, evil globalists in charge.

UPDATE: “with the help of the FBI and Capitol Police leadership…” of course we now know that these two truth telling patriots were NOT part of Nancy Pelosi’s scheme and they have been targeted for not lying and following the ‘establishment’ narrative:@ChiefSund — a 30-year…

— Tony Seruga (@TonySeruga) November 16, 2023

On January 6th, 2021, “insurrectionists attacked the United States Capitol intent on preventing the certification of a democratic election and, apparently, inflicting violence upon elected officials… Several lives were lost, including at least one Capitol Police officer…” wrote Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), then-Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security to Transportation Security Administration Administrator David Pekoske on January 11th, 2021, in a previously unrevealed letter. This committee “focuses on legislation and oversight related to the security of the United States” with the goal of “[ensuring] that the American people were protected from terrorist attacks.”

Clipping from Thompson Letter

Chairman Thompson started his letter with unproven charges and false information in this salacious statement of fiction as he requested an Executive Branch agency ignore due process and deprive thousands of Americans of their Constitutionally protected rights to travel freely within the United States (a right recognized since at least 1870.) Rep. Thompson’s account of the events on January 6th, 2021, could have been lifted directly from a far-left opinion website like HuffPost or ProPublica. While Thompson does not source his wild allegations, he could have easily credited a ProPublica article that made identical claims: law enforcement agencies were “unprepared,” and “the attack was planned largely in open internet forums.” A subsequent article by the same author falsely claimed that “Officer Brian Sicknick died defending the Capitol.”

But Congressman Thompson’s concern was not about how to better protect the U.S. Capitol. His immediate concern, less than a week after the events of January 6th, was punishing those who came to Washington, DC, without trial or investigation. He said the “perpetrators have continued to enjoy freedom of movement throughout the country. Only a fraction of the insurrectionists have been arrested, and many of those arrested have been released pending a future court date. To our knowledge, the Federal government has not prevented a single insurrectionist from boarding an aircraft.” Perhaps the Chairman is less than familiar with the U.S. Constitution to which he was required to swear allegiance in his 15 terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, but the 5^th Amendment is quite clear on the following: “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

Chairman Thompson continued with a statement he attributed to “growing online chatter,” which informed his belief that “many of the same groups that planned and carried out Wednesday’s attack intend to return to Washington, D.C., to cause further disruption and violence in the coming days, including at the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.” Those of us who were working in law enforcement during the inauguration of Joe Biden marveled at the speed and efficiency of locking down Washington DC into a Police State scene out of the Cold War. The anti-scale fencing, which was nowhere to be found during the summer riots of 2020, was installed with an efficiency that shocked the government sensibilities in a place like Washington, DC. But at the bottom of his third paragraph, Rep. Bennie Thompson says the so-called quiet part out loud: “It appears little is being done to disrupt the travel of terrorists who just attacked the seat of the U.S. Government and wish to do so again.” Furthermore:

“Please provide a briefing not later than the end of this week on the following topics:

•       Current efforts to disrupt the travel of white supremacist and other domestic terrorist groups who may be planning further attacks against the U.S. Government and may be targeting the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden;
•       Options available for quickly denying air carrier service to individuals identified as posing a potential threat, including TSA’s authorities to prevent individuals from flying on a temporary or flight-by-flight basis;”

After this letter was received by the top official at the TSA, many Americans who had simply traveled to the National Capitol Region on or around January 6th, 2021, were welcomed to the “Quiet Skies.” These unsuspecting (and unconvicted) American citizens were added to a secretive program known as Quiet Skies—which the TSA claims identifies “international travelers who may require enhanced screening” by a “set of risk-based, intelligence-driven scenario rules.” It further claims that “these rules have strict oversight by the Department of Homeland Security, including the privacy, civil rights and liberties, and general counsel offices.” However, several Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) whistleblowers and retired supervisory FAM Sonya Labosco have blown the lid off some of the abuses of this program in numerous national interviews and a previous article published by UncoverDC. Additional coverage by UncoverDC’s Wendi Mahoney introduced those unfamiliar with Quiet Skies to the “Quad S” designation. (Read more: UncoverDC/FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin, 11/27/2023)  (Archive)

Samantha Power (Credit: The Associated Press)

“The Biden administration’s nomination of Samantha Power to head the United States Agency for International Development is facing congressional scrutiny amid allegations the former Obama administration’s United Nations ambassador personally lobbied to remove a terror-designated group from the U.S. sanctions list.

A series of redacted emails obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) as part of an investigation into a nonprofit group that granted U.S. taxpayer funds to the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), a terror-tied charity sanctioned by the American government, allegedly show that Power was “involved in efforts to delist ISRA from the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list” during her time as the U.N. ambassador, according to a letter Grassley sent last month after Power was nominated for the USAID job.

Jeremy Weinstein, Power’s then-deputy, petitioned top OFAC officials “to initiate a formal review” of the related terror designations “without a formal request” from the charity itself. Initiating a review in this manner is highly unusual, according to current legal statutes. Those familiar with the matter said that under normal circumstances the charity itself would have to petition the U.S. government to review its case.

Delisting ISRA would pave the way for it to again receive U.S. taxpayer dollars from USAID and other government agencies. It also would serve as a sign to the international donor community that it can resume sending ISRA money, despite outstanding concerns it is still working with designated terror organizations, as cited by the U.S government in its original designation.

Grassley demanded that Power provide him with further information about the 2015 emails regarding ISRA’s status and explain “why you would take an interest in advocating on behalf of a foreign sanctioned entity.” The senator asked for this information by March 4, but Power has yet to respond, according to sources familiar with the matter.” (Read more: The Washington Free Beacon, 3/08/2021) (Archive)

Though ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was never charged with conspiring with Russia, he did go to jail for, among other things, failing to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine. The Democratic National Committee operative who helped get him booted from the campaign should be investigated for the same violation, Republican Senators say.

Sen. Chuck Grassley: “At the center of the [Ukraine foreign influence] plan was Alexandra Chalupa.” Nick Rohlman/The Gazette via AP

Former DNC contractor and opposition researcher Alexandra “Ali” Chalupa not only worked closely with the Ukrainian Embassy and Clinton campaign, trading dirt on Manafort and Trump, but also Congress and the Obama White House, State Department and even the FBI. “At the center of the [Ukraine foreign influence] plan was Alexandra Chalupa,” GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Senate Judiciary Committee has asserted.

“Chalupa’s actions appear to show she was simultaneously working on behalf of a foreign government, Ukraine, and on behalf of the DNC and Clinton campaign, in an effort to influence not only the U.S. voting population but U.S. government officials,” Grassley said in a July 2017 letter to then-deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

“Chalupa’s actions implicate the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” he said. “It is imperative that the Justice Department explain why she has not been required to register under FARA.”

(Credit: Facebook)

Chalupa maintained Justice looked into the complaint and cleared her within four months, finding no FARA violations. (Rosenstein at the time had just appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to take over the Russiagate probe after reportedly considering invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.)

Chalupa is an important figure in the anti-Trump conspiracy plot Special Counsel John Durham is investigating, according to sources familiar with his probe. Though she is a material witness in his inquiry, it is not immediately known if she has been interviewed by his investigators. Questions sent to her attorney went unanswered.

Questions are also being raised about how the Federal Election Commission handled her case in an investigation the agency quietly conducted from 2017, when it first received a complaint about her, until it closed it in 2021.

In a little-noticed 2019 letter to Chalupa, the FEC stated that its attorneys “found reason to believe that you violated [the Federal Election Campaign Act] by soliciting, accepting or receiving contributions from foreign nationals,” noting that “the Ukrainian Embassy made in-kind contributions to the DNC by performing opposition research on the Trump campaign at no charge to the DNC.”

In a separate letter to the DNC, the commission found that the Democratic organization “does not directly deny that Chalupa obtained assistance from the Ukrainians nor that she passed on the Ukrainian Embassy’s research to DNC officials.” Further, it stated that DNC officials “may have authorized Chalupa to act as an intermediary [with the Embassy] to solicit and receive negative information about the Trump campaign.”

Ellen Weintraub, Democratic FEC commissioner: Dismissed the Ukraine-DNC collusion allegations as “Russian disinformation.” (Credit: fec.gov)

But on Jan. 13, 2021 – the day the House voted to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot – FEC attorneys suddenly reversed themselves and recommended the commission take no further action against Chalupa or the DNC. In a 4 to 2 vote, FEC commissioners closed the case. Voting with the majority, longtime Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub dismissed the Ukraine-DNC collusion allegations as “Russian disinformation.”

Defending the DNC in the case was Clinton attorney Marc Elias, then of Perkins Coie, which refused to comply with the commission’s subpoenas for DNC depositions and documents, including phone records.

“We attempted to interview several former DNC officials who interacted with Chalupa on the Manafort issue, but each denied our interview request,” acting FEC General Counsel Lisa Stevenson said in a case report.

She said investigators were forced to rely primarily on testimony and documents from Chalupa, even though Chalupa claimed she could not access critical text messages with DNC officials. Stevenson said investigators put more stock in Chalupa’s testimony than that of Andrii Telizhenko, the Ukrainian Embassy official who swore Chalupa coordinated with the Ukrainian government in an election interference plot. Chalupa told investigators she thought Telizhenko might be “a mole for the Russian Federation.” She also suggested he was “mentally unwell.”

Andrii Telizhenko, Ukrainian Embassy official: Swore Chalupa coordinated with the Ukrainian government in an election interference plot. (Credit: LinkedIn/Andrii Telizhenko)

Stevenson also decided not to investigate fresh evidence of potential wrongdoing that surfaced late in the case and cast doubt on Chalupa’s candor in her sworn 2019 statements.

“Chalupa apparently made two other requests of the embassy related to exposing Manafort, which she did not mention but which [senior Ukrainian Embassy official Oksana] Shulyar disclosed in June 2020,” Stevenson said. “Shulyar recalls that Chalupa separately asked for the embassy to talk with a journalist writing a story on Manafort and to approach a member of Congress (unidentified, but most likely [Democratic Rep. Marcy] Kaptur given Shulyar’s description) to initiate a congressional investigation into Manafort.”

Nevertheless, the top FEC attorney claimed investigators didn’t have time to explore the revelations and urged the FEC to button up the case.

“These requests [by Chalupa] could support finding additional violations of the [FEC] Act and commission regulations, but in light of the time remaining within the statute of limitations and the lack of further specific information regarding these requests — the existence of which was not revealed until late in the investigation — we do not recommend that the commission expend further resources in pursuing such a finding,” Stevenson said.

However, the federal statute of limitations on such matters runs five years, which means investigators had another six months to evaluate whether the new information constituted a violation.

Lisa Stevenson, FEC acting general counsel: “We attempted to interview several former DNC officials who interacted with Chalupa on the Manafort issue, but each denied our interview request.” (Credit: LinkedIn)

In addition to omitting critical information from her testimony, Chalupa appears to have made up a story about Telizhenko trying to bribe her friends to collect dirt on her. “Chalupa identified two individuals who she claimed were approached by Telizhenko and offered money in exchange for dirt on her,” Stevenson noted. “However, when we interviewed these individuals, both denied that Telizhenko had made any such overture to them.”

Perkins Coie is now a central target of Durham’s ongoing investigation. Former Perkins lawyer Michael Sussmann faces felony charges related to his work digging up anti-Trump dirt for the Clinton campaign in 2016. And Durham recently brought his former partner Elias before his grand jury to testify under subpoena. Durham also has obtained thousands of pages of subpoenaed documents from Perkins.

While it cannot be determined if Durham has subpoenaed DNC documents, he has received documents from “the Clinton campaign” under subpoena, according to a recent discovery filing in the Sussmann case. And he presumably has access to the cell phone Chalupa used to contact DNC officials in 2016 since the FBI imaged it after she claimed she’d been hacked by the Russians.

Chalupa has denied coordinating DNC opposition research with the Ukrainian Embassy in 2016 or breaking any laws, even though she admits discussing Manafort’s activities in Ukraine with embassy personnel and trying to get then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to issue anti-Manafort statements during the campaign.

The former Clinton White House aide and longtime DNC operative insists she acted out of a sense of patriotism, not politics – a common refrain among officials who fueled the Trump-Russian “collusion” hysteria.

The Ukrainian-American claims she wasn’t just trying to protect her ancestral homeland but also America.

“I was moved to warn Americans out of a sense of duty to our country,” Chalupa said in a statement to the FEC. “Not for a moment did I view that doing so was a partisan issue, but rather was purely out of national security interests. … Again, this was not a political issue, but rather a matter of U.S. national security.”

Kenneth Vogel, journalist: Chalupa speculated that he was used by Trump operatives who “planted” a “counternarrative” to distract attention from Russiagate. (Credit: MSNBC/Wikimedia)

She maintained that an explosive January 2017 Politico exposé by Kenneth Vogel and David Stern – “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire” – that formed the basis for the FEC complaint against her and the DNC was “malicious” and filled with “false accusations” against her. She also speculated that Vogel was used by Trump operatives who “planted” the story with Politico to create a “counternarrative” to distract attention from the Russiagate narrative, which was raging at the time thanks to the January 2017 leaking of the Steele dossier.

“It is worth noting that in late 2017, I met with Ken Vogel for almost two hours and Vogel apologized to me for the Politico article and offered to write another one for the New York Times [where he now works] to clarify the truth,” Chalupa said. However, she said she no longer trusted the award-winning investigative reporter and declined the offer.

Vogel, who now reports for the New York Times, did not respond to requests for comment, but Politico has not retracted its story or appended any corrections to it. And Chalupa has not attempted to sue the news site for libel. That would be difficult since she doesn’t deny telling Vogel that Ukrainian Embassy officials were “helpful” to her crusade to raise the alarm about Manafort and Trump, or that they provided “guidance,” though she contends she was “sleep deprived” when he called and asked her about it. She also doesn’t deny telling Vogel she traded information and leads with the embassy.” (RealClearInvestigations, 3/10/2022)  (Archive)

Fiona Hill testifies to the House Intelligence Committee on November 21, 2019. (Credit: Chip Somodovilla/Getty Images)

“Delivering in his final days on one of his last unfulfilled promises, President Trump is declassifying a massive trove of FBI documents showing the Russia collusion story was leaked in the final weeks of the 2016 election in an effort to counteract Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.

The memos to be released as early as Friday include FBI interviews and human source evaluation reports for two of the main informants in the Russia case, former MI6 agent Christopher Steele and academic Stefan Halper.

(…) The probes found the FBI wrongly continued to rely on the allegations of Russia collusion to target Trump campaign figures for investigation and failed to disclose major flaws in their investigations to the courts that had authorized surveillance warrants.

The investigation also found that Steele’s primary source of Russian intel later disowned or distanced himself from the claims attributed to him in the Steele dossier and that U.S. intelligence had concerns the source was tied to Russian intelligence.

The soon-to-be-released records also expose a tantalizing connection between Steele, his primary source, and one of the Democrats’ key impeachment witnesses in the Ukraine scandal, former Trump National Security Council Russia expert Fiona Hill.

Steele divulged to the FBI that he was introduced by Hill to his primary sub-source of information for his anti-Trump dossier and that he later told Hill that the source had provided information for his now infamous memos. (Read more: JusttheNews, 1/14/2021) (Archive)

Michael Gaeta in Rome. (Credit: public domain)

“The Senate Judiciary Committee interviewed Gaeta on March 3, 2020 as part of a GOP-led investigation into Crossfire Hurricane, the name of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.

(…) Gaeta offered a harsh assessment of Steele in the interview, according to the transcript. Gaeta’s ire stemmed from Steele’s unauthorized contact with a journalist from the liberal magazine Mother Jones, which published details from the dossier in a story on Oct. 31, 2016.

Gaeta testified that he cut Steele off as an FBI confidential human source (CHS) in a conversation after the Mother Jones story was published.

“It told me that he was completely untrustworthy at that point as a source and could not be handled and would not be reliable,” Gaeta testified.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 1/15/2021)

Page 33-35 of Gaeta’s testimony:

(Michael Gaeta Transcript, pg. 33-35, 3/03/2020)

(Senate Judiciary Committee, 1/15/2021) (Gaeta Transcript Archive)

The Senate has released Crossfire Hurricane transcripts.

Excerpt from discussion during Joe Pientka (SSA1) testimony:

The “original Woods file is missing” from the 1st Carter Page FISA application. pic.twitter.com/9nMuXvg2X8

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) January 15, 2021

(Transcripts/Senate Judiciary Committee, 1/15/2021)

(August 27, 2020 – Joe Pientka testimony)

(Archived testimony)

Just so that we’re all clear here. The FBI knew without a doubt that Steele’s info was political in the summer of 2016!

Nevertheless, Mueller was appointed Special Counsel by Rod Rosenstein on May 17th, 2017 (almost a year later).

You want to see a coup? This was a coup. https://t.co/u6LNBth5Eb

— Murray 🇺🇸 (@Rothbard1776) January 15, 2021

(Transcripts/Senate Judiciary Cmte, 1/15/2021)

(Gaeta Transcript Archived)

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee finalizes a report [pdf available here] with evidence of Joe and Hunter Biden conducting financial deals with foreign governments.  The report outlines how the Biden family sold access to government policy for personal financial benefit.

(Embed pdf Below) Considering the scale of evidence showing massive conflicts of interest, it is quite astounding that Joe Biden is currently ‘president-elect’… (Conservative Treehouse, 1/16/2021)

Hsgac Finance Report Final by The Conservative Treehouse

“President Trump declassified a binder on January 19th, 2021 that contains hundreds of pages about the Crossfire Hurricane scandal. It contains damaging information about the corrupt actors involved with our government. Two different DOJ Attorney Generals have defied President Trump’s direct lawful order to publish the binder in the Federal Register. It’s been 19 months as the DOJ defies the order, and every FOIA request to make it public.

The DOJ had already made redactions to protect sources & methods and returned the binder back to the White House. But the corrupt FBI also wanted to hide names. So at the last minute, the DOJ demanded the binder comply with the 1974 Privacy Act. The Act requires any “agency” that releases records to hide personal or identifiable name information. The DOJ knew this Act didn’t apply to the White House, it was a stall tactic. The courts decided 22 years ago that the Privacy Act was based on FOIA requests, and the White House is not an agency.

Hours before Trump left office on January 20th, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows gave the binder back to the DOJ, along with this memo. He asked the DOJ to make any Privacy Act redactions “out of an abundance of caution.” In the memo, he asks they expeditiously release the binder when finished. Meadows foolishly expected this would take 3-4 days. It’s been 19 months and still not released. Just the News recently obtained the Meadows memo from the National Archives, who also denied having a copy of the declassified binder.

Meadows admits in interviews various agency’s often stalled or defied Trump’s orders. Meadows knew better than to rely on the DOJ to release this damaging binder after they left the White House. He should have released the binder to the public himself. But in doing so, there was a chance he would become a target of the DOJ and FBI. The memorandum below is what Mr. Meadows sent to the DOJ Attorney General on January 20^th, 2021.

The binder has intercept transcripts made by the FBI on various Trump staff. It has the tasking orders and debriefings of Christopher Steele and Stefan Halper, the FBI’s main human sources. There is a copy of the final FISA warrant approved by an intelligence court. It also contains details about Fiona Hill, who introduced Steele to the FBI, and much more There is tremendously important information in this binder that has never seen the light of day. Is it possible a copy of this binder was at Mar-a-Lago? (Read more: Gateway Pundit, 8/10/2022)  (Archive)

President Zelensky interview with Axios 1/23/2021

h/t Nikita @lafemme_bambina

Tony Blinken (Credit: Jose Luis Magana/The Associated Press)

“Tony Blinken, the Biden administration’s nominee for Secretary of State, managed a Joe Biden project that received millions of anonymous Chinese donor dollars. Blinken appeared a handful of times in emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop agreeing to advise Hunter Biden when Hunter worked at the scandal-plagued firm Rosemont Seneca Partners. The Obama State Department set up a meeting between Hunter and Blinken which was postponed, and the two met two months later in 2015.

Hunter Biden coordinated introductions between Blinken and his associates and Blinken was named in an email in connection to a shady prospective deal involving the federal government and Amtrak, a company that previously had Hunter Biden on its board. National File, which obtained most of the contents of Hunter’s laptop, features the most relevant Tony Blinken-Hunter Biden emails below.

Will these issues complicate Blinken’s bid to become Joe Biden’s Secretary of State? Blinken sat for his confirmation hearing, where he counted neocon support including from Lindsey Graham. But Blinken has yet to be confirmed by the Senate. Blinken’s nomination heads to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Monday with a confirmation vote this week. Blinken’s link to Biden’s China dealings is especially concerning.

Hunter Biden Received An Email About An Amtrak Deal In 2017 That Named Blinken:

Blinken wrote to Hunter agreeing to a meeting with a Hunter associate, October 3, 2012:

November 2012, Hunter tried to set up a meeting for his associate with Blinken:

Meeting in May 2015: The Obama State Department actually SETS UP the meeting for Hunter with Blinken at the State Department. This meeting reportedly did not occur supposedly due to Beau Biden’s death, even though Beau died three days after the meeting was scheduled, but Hunter met with Blinken in July 2015.

May 2015, Hunter’s assistant at Rosemont Seneca discusses the scheduled Blinken meeting:

Hunter schedules a meeting in July 2015. This meeting did occur.

Naomi Biden Wanted to Go To China for a forum in 2019. Biden thought it was a “great opportunity” but Blinken said no:

July 2011, Hunter Tells An Acquaintance to Inform Blinken That They Are Friends:

(Read more: National File, 1/25/2020)  (Archive)

In addition, Gateway Pundit reports Blinken is connected to the Bidens in Ukraine:

Yaacov Aplebaum shared an email from the Hunter laptop that confirms this:

Even crazy Senator John McCain had problems with Blinken.

In 2014 McCain blocked Blinken’s appointment by Obama over Obama’s Iraq policy:

U.S. Senator John McCain said on Thursday he is blocking President Barack Obama’s nomination of Anthony Blinken as the country’s number two diplomat, citing sharp disagreement with the nominee’s past statements on Iraq. “He’s totally unqualified,” the Republican senator told Reuters, when asked why he was holding up Blinken’s nomination to be deputy Secretary of State. “He’s the guy who said we’re leaving behind the richest, safest Iraq in history. Look it up,” McCain said, referring to Blinken’s reassuring comments two years ago about the decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq.

Blinken’s friends, including Hunter, were appalled that McCain would call Blinken ‘unqualified’ per another email found on Hunter’s laptop:

(Gateway Pundit, 1/25/2021)

The Senate on January 26, 2021, easily confirmed Tony Blinken to be President Biden’s secretary of state.

Blinken won broad bipartisan support in the 78-22 vote. He previously was deputy secretary of state under former President Barack Obama. (New York Post, 1/26/2021)

Kevin Clinesmith (Credit: Facebook)

The former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to altering an email to help obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act wiretap authorization against former Trump campaign associate Carter Page was sentenced to one year of probation and no prison time on Friday.

Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied the Justice Department’s efforts seeking up to six months behind bars, instead giving Kevin Clinesmith probation, 400 hours of community service within a year, and a special assessment of $100 to the court but no fine.

Clinesmith, who worked on the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server and on the FBI’s Trump-Russia inquiry, as well as special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, admitted in August that he falsified a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew FISA surveillance authority against Page, who had been a foreign policy adviser to former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Clinesmith edited a CIA email in 2017 to state that Page was “not a source” for the CIA when it had told the bureau on multiple occasions that Page had been an “operational contact” for the agency.

“Mr. Clinesmith likely believed that what he said was true,” Boasberg concluded on Friday, saying, “I do not believe he was attempting to achieve an end he knew was wrong.” The judge added that “it is not clear to me that the fourth FISA warrant would not have been signed but for this error. … Even if Mr. Clinesmith had been accurate about Mr. Page’s relationship with the other government agency, the warrant may well have been signed and the surveillance authorized.”

U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was elevated to special counsel in October, and Clinesmith dueled in court over how long the lawyer should spend behind bars. Clinesmith’s team has argued for leniency, while the federal prosecutor from Connecticut asked the court to sentence Clinesmith to up to six months in prison.

“As a licensed attorney and an officer of the Court, the defendant took an oath, was bound by professional and ethical obligations, and should have been well-aware of this duty of candor. … His deceptive conduct … was antithetical to the duty of candor and eroded the FISC’s confidence in the accuracy of all previous FISA applications worked on by the defendant,” Durham wrote in December. “The defendant’s conduct also undermined the integrity of the FISA process and struck at the very core of what the FISC fundamentally relies on in reviewing FISA applications.”

Durham said Clinesmith’s deception “fueled public distrust of the FBI and of the entire FISA program itself.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 1/29/2021)  (Archive)

Judge Emmet Sullivan (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/National Law Journal)

“The D.C. District Court judge who presided over the Justice Department’s prosecution of Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn announced on Thursday that he intends to retire.

Judge Emmet Sullivan, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, informed President Biden in a letter that he is moving to senior status, giving Biden the opportunity to select his replacement. Sullivan, in addition to the Flynn case, Sullivan also took charge in keeping alive prosecution of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Sullivan joins a growing list of judges either retiring or moving to senior status as Biden prepares to soften the effects of then-President Donald Trump’s historic number of judicial appointments. Since Biden took office, 11 judges have announced their decision to retire, with the first making her move only hours after his inauguration.

(Read more: Washington Examiner, 2/04/2021)  (Archive)

March Elias (Credit: Robert Willett/The Associated Press)

“Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley is confronting Democrat election lawyer Marc Elias over his dishonesty about his role in funding the fraudulent “Russia dossier” to smear then-candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

Turley, a liberal Democrat who teaches law at George Washington University, is taking on Elias as the latter attempts to have two congressional races overturned in which Republican candidates won by narrow margins.

In one case, in New York’s 22nd congressional district, Elias is using arguments about faulty voting machines similar to those used by President Donald Trump’s campaign — arguments that Elias resisted, and that Democrats otherwise cite as evidence of “insurrection.”

Turley noted last week that Elias had attacked him for referring to Trump’s claims about Dominion voting machines:

Elias attacked me when I raised a controversy related to [a] district using the Dominion system where thousands of Trump votes were initially recorded for Biden.  I noted in the interview that this was purely “human error” and that there is no evidence of system fraud or anything that would change the outcome of the election.  Nevertheless, Elias attacked me for referring the controversy (which was to be raised in court) as outrageous.

Now, Elias is using similar claims, Turley noted, adding that Elias’s hypocrisy recalled his behavior during the investigations into the “Russia dossier” in 2017.

The “dossier” was compiled by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, and alleged that Trump had corrupt ties to Russia. It also suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin had compromising information on Trump, such as a claim that he had paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed on which President Barack Obama had slept.

The “dossier” was given to the FBI, which used it to justify surveillance on the Trump campaign during the investigation into “Russia collusion” that marred the Trump presidency.

Ultimately, the “dossier” was proven to be a forgery, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller would conclude that there was no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. But the conspiracy theory damaged the Trump presidency and divided the country.

Elias’s firm, Perkins Coie, was the conduit for money flowing from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to Fusion GPS — though that fact was hidden from the Federal Election Commission. The Washington Post exposed Elias’s role in October 2017.

Turley noted at the time that Elias had sat next to his client, former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta told Congress that he did not know of any involvement by the Clinton campaign in the “dossier.” Elias knew the truth, but did not say anything.

Turley observed:

No one was charged for making false statements [to Congress] in the interview. Likewise, while legal blogs have called for disbarments of Trump lawyers for making false statements, there is no call to determine if Elias should face similar scrutiny and whether, as alleged, he lied about the funding of the dossier or assisted others in making such false or misleading statements.

In response, Elias attacked Turley on Twitter as a “moron” and said that his students should have their tuition refunded:

Jonathan Turley is a moron and students who get assigned to his class deserve a tuition refund. But my favorite part of his nonsense his suggestion that now I am “back.”

Has he been living under a rock somewhere?https://t.co/cqNSKVazhu

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) February 7, 2021

Turley replies:

…Perkins Coie was also not apparently concerned by his role since he holds the position of “firmwide chair.”  Indeed, Perkins Coie appears entirely satisfied with its firmwide chair engaging in personal and juvenile attacks when confronted on such allegations.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) February 7, 2021

(Read more: Breitbart, 2/08/2021)  (Archive)

Joe Biden, second left, smiles with his wife, Jill, second right, their daughter Ashley, left, and their son-in-law Howard Krein as they stand by a newly unveiled orchid hybrid, the Dendrobium Joe and Jill Biden, named in honor of the couple during a ceremony at the National Orchid Garden in Singapore, July 26, 2013. (Credit: Lau Fook Kong, The Straits Times)

“ABC News confirmed the reporting of Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer, author of the New York Times bestseller Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,  regarding the corruption of the Biden family — specifically the connection between the president and his son-in-law Howard Krein.

Krein serves as StartUp Health’s chief medical officer. He oversees the company’s investments “in hundreds of companies, including some hoping to break through with the federal agencies battling the global coronavirus pandemic,” as ABC reported.

Schweizer has led the charge in unveiling the layers of corruption within the Biden family. While all eyes remained on Hunter Biden and his lucrative business dealings throughout his father’s presidential campaign, the questionable deals and connections extend far beyond the president’s son. The establishment media is beginning to zero in on Howard Krein, a Philadelphia surgeon who is married to Biden’s daughter, Ashley. Krein served as an adviser to Biden’s campaign on the Chinese coronavirus crisis, specifically, and did so “while investing in companies presenting solutions to the coronavirus with his venture capital firm,” as Breitbart News detailed.

With Biden in office and his administration tasked with addressing the coronavirus pandemic, Krein’s status as the chief medical officer at StartUp Health presents a keen conflict of interest. ABC acknowledged this convenient family-to-government connection — one of many Schweizer has routinely laid out over the years — in a February 9 piece titled “As Biden’s son-in-law invests in COVID-19 response, questions of family and ethics could resurface”:

When the boutique tech firm Yosi Health developed software aimed at streamlining the nation’s coronavirus vaccine effort, CEO Hari Prasad sought help from one of its earliest investors — a company with a special government connection.

The investor was StartUp Health, and that special connection came through its chief medical officer, Howard Krein, who is married to President Joe Biden’s daughter.

That detail that was not lost on Yosi’s Prasad, who reached out to StartUp Health in December with a request to introduce their platform to government health officials.

According to ABC News, Prasad bluntly laid out the tech firm’s intentions with StartUp Health, stating their goal as leveraging “their relationships and work with state and federal agencies.”

But Biden’s curious involvement with the company, StartUp Health, spans all the way back to 2011 when he served as vice president. In 2011, Biden assisted in the launching of the company by granting direct access to the White House, arranging a meeting with former President Barack Obama. The company was young — just weeks old — at the time of the meeting.

“Their status as a health care incubator was hardly unique,” Schweizer wrote in Profiles in Corruption. “In fact, there were thirty-one similar companies operating in the state of California alone, and another eleven in the state of New York.”

Krein recalled:

I happened to be talking to my father-in-law that day and I mentioned Steve and Unity were down there [in Washington, DC]. He knew about StartUp Health and was a big fan of it. He asked for Steve’s number and said, ‘I have to get them up here to talk with Barack.’ The Secret Service came and got Steve and Unity and brought them to the Oval Office.

His brother, Steven Krein, is the cofounder and CEO of the company.

Schweizer described the meeting as a “huge hookup.”

“Health Data-Palooza is very prestigious and very hard to get into,” Schweizer explained during an October 2020 appearance on Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow. “They get hooked up and they are put front and center in this very important conference, and that’s the beginning of the favors that happen.”

As Breitbart News detailed:

Krein is now advising Joe Biden’s campaign on coronavirus matters while StartUp Health plans to invest $1 million in companies developing goods and services pertaining to the novel virus. Politico reported, “Krein simultaneously advising the campaign and venturing into Covid investing could pose conflict-of-interest concerns for a Biden administration or simply create the awkward appearance of Krein profiting off his father-in-law’s policies.”

Schweizer credited the Biden family with expanding the frontiers of American political corruption.

In October, Biden campaign spokesman Mike Gwin denied a Politico story that cited Schweizer’s reporting on StartUp Health in his book Profiles on Corruption. (Read more: Breitbart, 3/18/2021)  (Archive)

“Imaad Zuberi hobnobbed for two decades among America’s political elite, raising millions for Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton, texting with kings, princes, presidents and prime ministers and jet-setting with Republican senators like Lindsey Graham and John McCain.

Then Zuberi resisted pressure to cooperate in the investigation of then-President Donald Trump’s inauguration committee, and the California millionaire’s world came crashing down. Late last year, he pleaded guilty to what federal prosecutors said was a “mercenary” scheme to funnel large sums of foreign money into U.S. campaign coffers so Zuberi could gain political influence and build his global business empire.

When Zuberi was sentenced last month to 12 years in prison and more than $18 million in fines — one of the harshest penalties ever meted out for a donor fraud case — it seemed like an open-and-shut case of political corruption. To the news media, it was a made-for-TV tale of greed and graft felling a man whose charity and good nature otherwise endeared him to many from Hollywood to Washington.

But back in the nation’s capital, the U.S. government harbored a deep secret about Zuberi, a Pakistani-American who ran a highly successful venture capital firm with reach across the globe.

Just the News has confirmed from multiple current and former U.S. officials that Zuberi enjoyed a long and complex relationship with U.S. intelligence. His early help to the Drug Enforcement Administration with illegal drug trade and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department in the war on Islamic terrorism in the early 2000s eventually elevated him to becoming a valuable source inside Washington’s security and spy establishment for much of the last two decades, the officials said. They declined to be more specific.

The first hint of that secret emerged recently when U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips ordered the unsealing of court documents, in which the four-letter acronym “CIPA” unexpectedly appeared, with little or no explanation.

 02-09-21_Minute_Order_on_Redactions (1).pdf

CIPA stands for the Classified Information Protection Act, a law that protects the intelligence operations of the United States and shields the release of sensitive information. It’s rare for CIPA to show up in a normal criminal case, let alone one involving political donations. And it signaled that Zuberi may have been much more than just a fundraising, hobnobbing global businessman. Zuberi’s account of his intelligence work is contained in one of the CIPA filings mentioned in the court case.” (Read more: Just the News, 3/16/2021)  (Archive)

Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on May 9, 2012. (Credit: Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press)

“The process, investigative steps, and execution of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation have always been somewhat of a mystery. While the Mueller Report lays out what was done and many of the Special Counsel’s findings, questions still remain on a number of issues, including when Team Mueller knew Carter Page FISA warrants were fraudulent and when they determined there was no criminal conspiracy between the Trump Campaign and Russia.

Not surprisingly, the Department of Justice has not provided adequate answers, even with the occasional release of documents. The DOJ typically doesn’t like to release information on prosecutorial decisions or investigative steps. Try a FOIA request and find out for yourself. Add to this an understandable reluctance to divulge the extent Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the “activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns,” which include but are “not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.”

More specifically, there have been questions of whether Special Counsel Mueller’s team investigated matters outside its known authority. Before we answer that question, let us provide context.

The Scope Memos

Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel by then-Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on May 17, 2017. Rosenstein’s letter set forth the scope of Mueller’s authority, which included:

The May 2017 appointment letter was specifically worded to keep the public in the dark on the extent of Mueller’s investigation (or, perhaps more accurately, the investigation that Mueller inherited). A subsequent memorandum, dated August 2, 2017, revealed that it had been “worded categorically in order to permit its public release without confirming specific investigations involving specific individuals.”In fact, Mueller had been appointed to investigate the following (redacted parts not included):

A few months later, in October 2017, Special Counsel Mueller requested, and was given, the additional authority to investigate Michael Cohen, Richard Gates, Roger Stone, Bijan Rafikian and Ekim Alptekin (a Foreign Agent Registration Act case involving those two members of the Flynn Intel Group) and other unnamed individuals (one of whom is suspected to be Michael Flynn, Jr.).

Scope Memos: Limitation or Suggestion?

As the Special Counsel’s investigation dragged on, and as the allegations of Trump/Russia collusion turned up no criminal activity on the part of Trump (as relayed to Trump lawyer John Dowd by Robert Mueller on March 5, 2018), its team looked elsewhere in search of a crime. Any crime.

According to one former DOJ official, some members of the Special Counsel team began to focus on an inquiry into how members of the Trump administration, current and former, handled classified information. Not whether classified information was shared with Russia or those alleged to have been foreign agents (like Carter Page). Simply whether they had mishandled or leaked classified information.

Mike Cernovich

Their inquiry also looked at the reporting on H.R. McMaster by a name familiar to many readers: Mike Cernovich.

Back in February 2017, President Trump appointed H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser. That summer, Cernovich reported that Eric Ciaramella was appointed to be McMaster’s personal aid. (Ciaramella would later be alleged to have leaked Trump’s call with the Ukrainian President to Alexander Vindman.) Cernovich discussed Ciaramella’s ties to the Obama administration, particularly Susan Rice, and the internal concerns that he had been leaking classified information. He also accused McMaster of trying to purge Trump loyalists from the NSC and orchestrating leaks about Trump to his allies. For this he was an investigative target.

We were further advised that FBI 302s (interview summaries) relating to these matters have been kept under wraps by the DOJ. This checks-out, considering the Special Counsel Office 302s that the DOJ still refuses to release to the public in ongoing FOIA litigation.” (Read more: TechnoFog, 2/11/2021)  (Archive)

Rod Rosenstein (Credit: Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)

“Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is finally opening up about his discussion with a top FBI official concerning the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s potential ties to Russia.

In his first TV interview since leaving the Trump administration in May 2019, Rosenstein told FOX 5 that there was talk of recording the 45th president for the inquiry but denied that he ever intended to wear a “wire” during the turbulent days that followed Trump firing FBI Director James Comey in 2017 before the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel.

“I had a conversation with Andrew McCabe about an investigation that he was conducting involving the president. And there was a discussion about whether or not the president would be recorded in the course of that investigation. I never intended to wear a wire, and I think that if Mr. McCabe asked me to wear a wire, we would’ve had to reconsider the whole thing. Because you can’t run an investigation and serve as a witness,” Rosenstein said in an episode of the Siege on Democracy podcast published last month.

McCabe, Comey’s deputy who became acting FBI director for a couple months after the firing, made headlines in February 2019, when he corroborated reporting that claimed Rosenstein offered to wear a recording device while talking to other officials to tape Trump secretly.

“Well, it depends on what you mean by the word ‘fit,'” Rosenstein said. “There was a lot of talk about whether the president should have been removed under the 25th Amendment. I don’t believe that. I mean, I think the president was capable of doing the job. Doesn’t mean I agree with the way he did it.”

(…) Rosenstein also disputed the report in testimony before Congress.

“I did not suggest or hint at secretly recording Mr. Trump,” Rosenstein told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I have never in any way suggested the president should be removed from office under the 25th Amendment,” he added.

Multiple reports had a source who said Rosenstein was merely being sarcastic in making the remark about secretly recording the president, but McCabe insisted that Rosenstein was “absolutely serious.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 3/03/2021)  (Archive)

Biden’s corrupt Justice Department shut down their ‘investigation’ into the Clinton Foundation in August 2021, according to FOIA documents obtained by the New York Times.

The FBI then ‘returned’ or destroyed all of the evidence!

“The Justice Department kept open the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s family foundation for nearly all of President Donald J. Trump’s administration, with prosecutors closing the case without charges just days before he left office.” The New York Times reported.

The DOJ investigated the Clinton Foundation’s relationships with foreign donors while Hillary Clinton was the head of the Department of State during Obama’s presidency.

(…) “In August 2021, the F.B.I. received what is known as a declination memo from prosecutors and as a result considered the matter closed.” the New York Times reported.

NYT FOIA Doc

And all the evidence is forever destroyed!

The Times reported: “All of the evidence obtained during the course of this investigation has been returned or otherwise destroyed,” according to the FBI.

BREAKING: Biden Justice Department formally shut down Clinton Foundation “investigation” in August, 2021. FBI destroyed all evidence. https://t.co/5reEWbB3tB

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) May 22, 2023

(Read more: TheGateway Pundit, 5/22/2023) (Archive) (New York Times, 5/22/2023) (NYT Docs)

(Timeline editor’s note: The NYT FOIA documents reveal the actual “formal closure” date was February 24, 2021. Also, be sure to check out the CGEP tag that reveals the Clinton Giustra Partnership was about 1,100 secret foreign donors the Clinton Foundation failed to disclose.)

(…) Rather ironically, five days before the 2016 election FBI intelligence agent provocateur Stefan Halper gave an interview to Sputnik News where he outlined his agenda; in hindsight the aggregate agenda of the Obama administration:

“I believe [Hillary] Clinton would be best for US-UK relations and for relations with the European Union. Clinton is well-known, deeply experienced and predictable. US-UK relations will remain steady regardless of the winner although Clinton will be less disruptive over time.”  ~ Stefan Halper

2016 was not CIA/FBI Agent Halper’s first endeavor into manipulating the outcomes of U.S. political elections.  Indeed manipulating elections it is a specific skill-set within his curriculum vitae.   As noted in a New York Times article 35-years ago:

1983 – […] An operation to collect inside information on Carter Administration foreign policy was run in Ronald Reagan’s campaign headquarters in the 1980 Presidential campaign. […]  it involved a number of retired Central Intelligence Agency officials and was highly secretive.

The sources identified Stefan A. Halper, a campaign aide involved in providing 24-hour news updates and policy ideas to the traveling Reagan party, as the person in charge.

[…]  Speaking of Mr. Halper, David Prosperi, a Reagan campaign aide, now with the Superior Oil Company, said, ”He provided us with wire stories and Carter speeches, but people talked about his having a network that was keeping track of things inside the Government, mostly in relation to the October surprise.”  (read more)

Some terrific background research on Stefan Halper was done long before mainstream media picked up on his role as FBI Agent Provocateur.  A 2018 Twitter Thread by TheWarEconomy outlined the scale of Agent Halper’s work weaving intelligence operations and U.S. politics into a deep state career. Including:

♦ Agent Halper worked as an assistant to three Chiefs of Staff – Alexander Haig (until September 21, 1974), then Donald Rumsfeld (from September 21, 1974 to November 20, 1975), and then Dick Cheney (from November 20, 1975 to January 20, 1977). (link)

♦Agent Halper worked as a legislative assistant to Senator William Roth of Delaware holding this position from 1977 to 1979.  Because Halper was working with Senator Roth, he also became a Special Counsel to the United States Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. (link)

♦In 1979, agent Halper left both positions to become the National Director for Policy Development for George H. W. Bush’s Presidential campaign. (link)  Halper then became the National Director of Policy Coordination on the Reagan / Bush Presidential campaign. (link)

♦ On November 4, 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected to become the President of the United States. From 1981 to 1984, agent Halper worked as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. (link)  As such, Halper served under three different Secretaries of State – Alexander Haig (from January 22, 1981 to July 5, 1982), Walter J. Stoessel, Jr. (from July 5, 1982 to July 16, 1982) and George P. Shultz (from July 16, 1982 to 1984).

♦After this, agent Halper became a Senior Advisor to the Department of Defense, and a Senior Advisor to the Department of Justice, positions lasting from 1984 to 2001. (link)

♦Agent Halper’s former father-in-law was Ray Cline, who was the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. (link)  As Chairman of Palmer National Bank, Agent Halper  made loans to customs who then used it to channel the money to a Swiss bank account controlled by Colonel Oliver North, who then used the same bank account to provide military assistance to the contras. (link)

♦Along with Agent Halper, several Central Intelligence Agency related people were on the H. W. Bush campaign, including Ray Cline, Sam Wilson, Howard Aaron, Henry Knoche, Robert Gambino, Bruce Rounds, Jon Thomas, Jack Coackley and Richard Stillwell. All working with agent Halper. (link)

♦Agent Halper was on the Board of Directors at the National Intelligence Study Center, alongside his father-in-law and CIA Director Ray Cline, in 1983.  (link)  Agent Halper and his team of Central Intelligence Agency people during the Reagan / Bush ticket actually collected inside information on the Carter Administration’s foreign policy – with Halper in charge. (link)

Reporters keep asking me about my interactions with Prof. Halper.
I found all our interactions to be cordial.
Like this email I received about a year after I first met him.
He never seemed suspicious.
Just a few scholars exchanging ideas.
He had interests in policy, and politics. pic.twitter.com/D5SKkvN2Bx

— Carter Page, Ph.D. (@carterwpage) May 20, 2018

(Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 2/25/2021)  (Archive)

Stefan Halper (l), Svetlana Lokhova (c), and Lt. General Michael Flynn (Credit: public domain)

“Stefan Halper, a former Cambridge professor who snooped on the Trump campaign for the FBI, told investigators that he witnessed Michael Flynn leave a 2014 event at the British university with a Russian graduate student, a claim that an FBI agent later deemed likely to be false.

The bombshell revelation is contained in a declassified summary of Halper’s meeting with FBI agents in mid-August 2016, shortly after he agreed to serve as a confidential human source (CHS) for the bureau in its investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia.

Halper, a longtime Republican political operative who served in four presidential administrations, met with and secretly recorded three Trump campaign aides, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis, as part of his work for the FBI.

The FBI document, which President Donald Trump ordered declassified at the end of his term, was published by Just the News on Thursday.

Stephan Halper Source Docum… by The Conservative Treehouse

The source for the allegation about Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova, the Russian student, had been a longstanding mystery.

(…) Details from the newly declassified document match up with those found in a memo that FBI special agent William Barnett wrote on Jan. 4, 2017, as part of Crossfire Hurricane, the code name for the investigation of the Trump campaign.

Barnett, who was the lead agent in the investigation of Flynn, wrote in the memo that a CHS had told the FBI about Flynn’s alleged encounter with a “suspicious” person during an overseas trip. Flynn allegedly got into a cab with the person. The memo did not identify the CHS who provided the information to investigators.

Barnett wrote that the FBI investigated the lead by checking travel records and asking around about Flynn and his alleged sidekick. He told federal prosecutors in September 2020 that he believed the tip was probably false.

“BARNETT found the idea FLYNN could leave an event, either by himself or [redacted] without the matter being noted as not plausible,” reads a summary of Barnett’s interview with U.S. attorney Jeff Jensen on Sept. 17. “With nothing to corroborate the story, BARNETT thought the information was not accurate.”

(Read more: The Daily Caller, 2/25/2021)  (Archive)

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

“The goal was to find “anyone” inside GOP campaign tied to Russia who could get dirt “damaging” to Clinton, newly declassified memos reveal.

Once-secret reports show the FBI effort to spy on the Trump campaign was far wider than previously disclosed, as agents directed an undercover informant to make secret recordings, pressed for intelligence on numerous GOP figures, and sought to find “anyone in the Trump campaign” with ties to Russia who could acquire dirt “damaging to Hillary Clinton.”

The now-declassified operational handling reports for FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper — codenamed “Mitch” — provide an unprecedented window both into the tactics used by the bureau to probe the Trump campaign and the wide dragnet that was cast to target numerous high-level officials inside the GOP campaign just weeks before Americans chose their next president in the November 2016 election.

Among the revelations, the memos make clear that:

Almost immediately after the FBI opened a Russia collusion probe on July 31, 2016 narrowly focused on the foreign lobbying of a single Trump campaign aide named George Papadopoulos, agents pressed Halper for information on more than a half dozen other figures, including future Attorney General Jeff Sessions, foreign policy adviser Sam Clovis, campaign chairman Paul Manafort, economic adviser Peter Navarro, future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and campaign adviser Carter Page.

Halper provided significant exculpatory evidence to the FBI — including transcripts of conversations he recorded of targeted Trump advisers providing statements of innocence — that was never disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approved a year of surveillance targeting the Trump campaign, and specifically Page.

While current FBI Director Chris Wray has insisted the bureau did not engage in spying on the Trump campaign, Halper’s taskings include many of the tradecraft tactics of espionage, including the creation of a fake cover story (he wanted a job at the Trump campaign), secret recordings, providing background on targets, suggested questions to ask and even contact information for potential targets.

But the memos’ most explosive revelations are the sheer breadth of the FBI’s insufficiently predicated dragnet targeting the Trump campaign, and the agents’ clearly stated purpose of thwarting any Trump campaign effort to get dirt from Russia that could hurt his Democratic rival.

“The Crossfire Hurricane investigative team is attempting to determine if anyone in the Trump campaign is in a position to have received information either directly or indirectly from the Russian Federation regarding the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton,” one of the early FBI electronic communications (ECs) from Halper’s undercover work stated.

You can read the memos here:
Halper Source Documents_final.pdf

(Read more: JustTheNews, 2/25/2021)  (Archive)

Svetlana Lokhova (Credit: Fox News)

(…) The source for the allegation about Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova, the Russian student, had been a longstanding mystery.

The claim first popped up in news reports from The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian in March 2017. The innuendo-laden stories said that U.S. and British intelligence officers had suspicions about Flynn’s interactions with Lokhova during his visit to the University of Cambridge in February 2014, when he served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Lokhova, who studied Soviet-era history at Cambridge, has emphatically denied having any improper contact with Flynn, or leaving with him from the Cambridge event. She has told The Daily Caller News Foundation that she left the event with her husband, David North. North has also told the DCNF that he picked Lokhova up from the event.

Lokhova has waged a legal battle to find out how the rumor about she and Flynn made its way to press. She has sued The Wall Street Journal and Halper to get to the bottom of the story.

In a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation, Lokhova accused the FBI of “a cover up” by withholding the Halper memos.

Lokhova/Twitter

“These documents should have been released four years ago,” Lokhova said in a phone interview.

Lokhova also said that the documents confirmed her suspicions that Halper, who she referred to as “this man who lied about me,” was the source who provided dirt about her to the FBI.

She said that the FBI, members of Congress and journalists knew the truth about Halper’s allegations, but “sat on this and concealed it from the public.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 2/25/2021)  (Archive)

“Those who have followed all of the internal research will know the name, John Carlin.  As noted in this text message below Carlin has returned to the DOJ and is currently Acting Deputy Attorney General inside Main Justice.  Once again the corrupt DOJ is attempting to secure itself from sunlight upon prior activity, very corrupt activity.

John Carlin was the assistant attorney general and head of the National Security Division inside the DOJ when efforts against the Trump campaign and incoming administration were underway.  John CarIin was previously chief of staff to FBI Director Robert Mueller.

In September of 2016 Carlin manipulated the FISA court by misleading them on the Section 702 certifications.  Carlin never informed the court of FBI contractors having access to the NSA database and exporting the search results to unknown actors. The FBI was using the database to monitor 2016 political campaigns and political opposition.

Carlin announced his resignation Sept 27, 2016, the day after he filed the Government’s proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications. Carlin departed the NSD October 15, 2016, five days before the Carter Page FISA was approved by the FISC.

It was John Carlin who ultimately facilitated the fraudulent FISA application against Carter Page in order to continue surveillance of the risk represented by Donald Trump. John Carlin’s legal counsel in the NSD was Michael Atkinson.

You might remember the name Michael Atkinson from the first impeachment effort against President Trump.  Atkinson became the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) who changed the rules to allow an anonymous complaint (Ciaramella) from inside the CIA and National Security Council member, Alexander Vindman.

The network of the crew is all connected by their efforts.

John Carlin was replaced in the DOJ-NSD (October 2016) by Mary McCord.  You might remember it was Mary McCord who went with Deputy AG Sally Yates to confront White House legal counsel Don McGahn when the January 2017 DOJ and FBI efforts against National Security Advisor Michael Flynn were underway. With the new position Michael Atkinson became the legal counsel for Mary McCord in the NSD.

Mary McCord left the DOJ-NSD and went to work for the democrat party controlled congress after the mid-term election in 2018.

Mary McCord went to work for Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler; she was the lead agent inside the first impeachment effort that used information from her prior legal counsel Michael Atkinson who was now Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG).

Again, the network of the crew is all connected by their efforts.

Now we have a better feel for the role played by John Carlin, it helps to make sense why the Joe Biden administration would bring him back inside the DOJ to control any/all sunlight that might resurface.  Carlin’s prior corrupt activity, fraud to the FISA Court, makes him a willing and vested participant in sunlight avoidance for the Biden team.

Do you really think this crew could allow Donald Trump to have a second term?
(Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 2/27/2021)  (Archive)

Gilbert Chagoury was prevented from boarding a jet at Teterboro airport in New Jersey on Jan. 15, 2010. (Credit: public domain)

“A Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire has resolved and two of his associates have agreed to resolve a federal investigation that they conspired to violate federal election laws by scheming to make illegal campaign contributions to U.S. presidential and congressional candidates, the Department of Justice announced today.

Gilbert Chagoury, 75, who presently resides in Paris, France, paid $1.8 million to resolve allegations that he, with the assistance of others, provided approximately $180,000 to individuals in the United States that was used to make contributions to four different federal political candidates in U.S. elections.

Chagoury, a foreign national prohibited by federal law from contributing to any U.S. elections, admitted he intended these funds to be used to make contributions to these candidates. He further admitted to making illegal conduit contributions – causing campaign contributions to be made in the name of another individual.

According to a deferred prosecution agreement with the government, Chagoury accepted responsibility for his role and conduct that resulted in violations of federal election contribution laws between June 2012 and March 2016 and agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation. Chagoury entered into the agreement on October 19, 2019, and he paid the fine in December 2019.

Federal prosecutors entered into the deferred prosecution agreement considering, among other factors, Chagoury’s unique assistance to the U.S. government, his payment of a fine, Chagoury’s acceptance of responsibility for his actions, and his residence outside the United States.

Relatedly, two Chagoury associates – Joseph Arsan, 68, also of Paris, and Toufic Joseph Baaklini, 58, of Washington, D.C. – agreed to resolve allegations that they violated campaign contribution laws by assisting Chagoury in his illegal contributions. Arsan, a physician who worked as an assistant to Chagoury, admitted helping Chagoury reimburse others for contributions to political candidates. In 2014, Arsan – at Chagoury’s direction – wired $30,000 to a third party and indicated on the wire information form that the funds were for a “wedding gift,” when he knew or should have known that the funds were reimbursement for making a political contribution to a campaign fund for a federal elected official.

Arsan’s deferred prosecution agreement, which took effect in November 2020, also resolves a criminal investigation into his alleged tax violations in the years 2012 to 2016 stemming from his failure to report money he held in foreign bank accounts. Arsan agreed to pay $1.7 million in penalties to resolve the tax probe and to cooperate in the government’s investigation.

In his deferred prosecution agreement signed on March 1, 2021, Baaklini admitted to giving $30,000 in cash provided by Chagoury to an individual at a restaurant in Los Angeles who, along with others, later made campaign contributions to the 2016 campaign of a U.S. congressman. Baaklini also agreed to pay a $90,000 fine as part of his agreement and agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation. (DOJ – Central District of CA, 3/31/2021)  (Archive)

Joe Biden and Susan Rice (Credit: Corbis/Getty Images)

“As Joe Biden constructs his new administration, individuals from the Obama administration are quietly resurfacing in positions of power. Some of these people are well known, others lesser so. But they all played critical roles at various times during the Obama administration.

Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser and now the “top adviser to the president on domestic policy and related decisions,” has admitted to participating in the unmasking of members of the Trump transition team. Unmasking is the process whereby a U.S. citizen’s identity is revealed from collected surveillance.

Initially, Rice publicly denied the allegations, claiming that “I know nothing about this. I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today.” Two weeks later Rice stated that she had not done so for “for any political purposes.” It was later reported that Rice told House investigators that “she unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials to understand why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates was in New York.”

Rice was also a participant in an early January 2017 meeting with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, FBI Director James Comey, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates where President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s call with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak was discussed.

According to a filing in the Flynn legal case, notes from FBI Agent Peter Strzok revealed that “former President Obama, James Comey, Sally Yates, Joe Biden, and apparently Susan Rice discussed the transcripts of Flynn’s calls and how to proceed against him. Mr. Obama himself directed that ‘the right people’ investigate General Flynn.” According to Strzok’s notes, it also appears that “Biden personally raised the idea of the Logan Act” that would initially be used to pursue Flynn.

Rice, whose level of participation in the spying on the Trump 2016 campaign is still not fully known, sent herself an email on Obama’s last day in office detailing events that took place during this meeting. In addition to Flynn, Rice also noted that Obama asked his team to be “mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully [with the incoming Trump team] as it relates to Russia.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 3/08/2021)  (Archive)

Anne Applebaum

“Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev published a piece at The Atlantic [March 8, 2021] arguing that opposing voices must be stamped out in society and on the internet.

Applebaum and Pomerantsev used the infamous works of Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy in America to introduce this most un-American idea.

Applebaum argues, “An internet that promotes democratic values instead of destroying them—that makes conversation better instead of worse—lies within our grasp.”

In a head fake, Applebaum condemns Chinese internet censorship then goes on to promote communist-style regulations on internet free speech to prevent unwanted ideas from taking root.  The ideas Anne does not approve of.  There is nothing democratic about Applebaum’s ideas. Instead, they wreak of the same old authoritarianism of the modern-day left.

What is most astonishing is that Applebaum is a covert intelligence conduit — a spook — who was outed in the “Integrity Initiative” leaks of 2018.

So while she ridicules ANY discussion of election fraud in the 2020 election, she was paid to promote the second greatest political fraud in history, the Russia collusion hoax.

This was all revealed at Revolver News this week:

If all of that was not enough to convince you of a Counter-American, Counterintelligence operation being run by the U.S. national security state to stamp out MAGA, consider the following article last week from Anne Applebaum.

Applebaum’s piece stresses the need for increased China-style Internet censorship to stop the proliferation of dissident political opinions. A sample passage reads:

In the surreal interregnum that followed the 2020 election, the price of America’s refusal to reform its internet suddenly became very high. Then-President Donald Trump and his supporters pushed out an entirely false narrative of electoral fraud. Those claims were reinforced on extreme-right television channels, then repeated and amplified in cyberspace, creating an alternative reality inhabited by millions of people where Trump had indeed won. QAnon—a conspiracy theory that had burst out of the subterranean internet and flooded onto platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, convincing millions that political elites are a cabal of globalist pedophiles—spilled into the real world and helped inspire the mobs that stormed the Capitol. Twitter made the extraordinary decision to ban the U.S. president for encouraging violence; the amount of election disinformation in circulation immediately dropped. [The Atlantic]

(Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 3/27/2021)  (Archive)

Marc Elias (Credit: Fox News)

“The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals imposed sanctions against Perkins Coie partner Marc Elias and other attorneys representing Democrats in a case where they challenged a Texas election law going into the 2020 elections.

The case centers on a state law barring “straight-ticket voting,” a practice that had allowed voters to automatically vote for every member of a particular party who is on the ballot by marking a single box instead of voting for each one individually. On Feb. 10, Elias and other attorneys filed a motion to supplement the record in the case, without mentioning that they had already filed what the court called a “nearly identical” motion in September 2020 that had been denied.

“This inexplicable failure to disclose the earlier denial of their motion violated their duty of candor to the court,” the Fifth Circuit said in an order dated March 11. The court went on to say that “[s]anctions are warranted in this case to deter future violations.”

Those sanctions include paying “reasonable attorney’s fees and court costs” that the other side incurred related to the February motion, as well as “double costs.” The court said that the attorneys are also “encouraged” to review the applicable section of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, and to go through one hour of Continuing Legal Education related to ethics and professionalism, “specifically candor with the court.”

Perkins Coie stood by their attorneys in the face of the sanctions.

“We do not normally respond to requests for comment on pending litigation, but the Firm and the attorneys involved in this matter strongly disagree with the Appellate Court’s ruling and its order of sanctions in this case,” a firm spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News. “The Firm fully and completely supports our attorneys in this case.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the court’s ruling, saying in a statement that “Perkins Coie cannot continue to mislead the Court, especially in a matter as important as election integrity.” (Read more: Fox News, 3/16/2021)  (Archive)

In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Kash Patel, a former Obama-era DOJ prosecutor, who was essential in uncovering the Spygate scandal. Personally recruited by Congressman Devin Nunes, he spearheaded the investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe.

And later as Principal Deputy to the Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, he pushed forward the release of numerous documents, transcripts, and text messages—so the American people could finally see it all for themselves.

What was it like to spearhead this investigation, facing obstacles at every turn?

“A former House Intelligence Committee staffer who helped uncover FBI misdeeds in the Trump-Russia probe said that Republicans lured Rep. Adam Schiff into releasing information that showed the FBI misled Congress about how the bureau used the infamous Steele dossier for its investigation of the Trump campaign.

Kash Patel, who served as a chief investigator for Rep. Devin Nunes, said in a recent interview that Republicans strategized the release of a February 2018 memo regarding the dossier in hopes that Schiff would release a rebuttal memo of his own.

“Adam Schiff took the bait and put so much more information in his memo than we did in ours, because we knew we would be able to use that information later and prove how wrong they were. It would just take a little bit of time,” Patel said in an interview for The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders.”

YouTube

“So that was the strategy behind it.”

In their memo, Republicans said that the FBI failed to verify allegations in the dossier before using the salacious document to obtain spy warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Republicans also accused the FBI of failing to disclose that the Clinton campaign and DNC funded the dossier, which was authored by former British spy Christopher Steele. (Read more: The Daily Caller, 3/23/2021)  (Archive)

“In 2019 Rep. Adam Schiff, Chairman of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, secretly issued congressional subpoenas for phone records as part of his impeachment abuses President Trump.

We filed a FOIA lawsuit, Judicial Watch v. v Adam Schiff and U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (No. 1:19-03790)), requesting the subpoenas issued by the Committee on or about September 30, 2019.

A lower court ruling in our suit upheld the secrecy of the subpoenas. We of course challenged that in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A hearing was held on March 24, and this week we released a transcript of the oral arguments.

Video Update:

Some background:

Our lawsuit sought the controversial impeachment-related subpoenas for phone records, including those of Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s lawyer. (Schiff and the Committee are being represented, using your tax dollars,  by the Office of General Counsel for the House of Representatives.)

The subpoenas led to the publication of the private phone records of Giuliani, Congressman Devin Nunes, journalist John Solomon, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, attorney Victoria Toensing, and other American citizens.

Schiff and the Committee claim “sovereign immunity;” “Speech or Debate Clause” privilege; immunity from FOIA and transparency law; that the records are secret; and that Judicial Watch and public do not need to see them. We are appealing the lower court decision, which suggested that Schiff and the House have “absolute” immunity from inquiries about the subpoenas.

Our senior attorney James Peterson argued to the three-judge panel:

This case is about shedding light on unprecedented and illegitimate congressional subpoenas. The extraordinary subpoenas at issue represent a supposedly unlimited government surveillance power and an unlimited ability by Congress to, at their whim, invade the privacy of any American.

Congressman Schiff secretly subpoenaed the phone records of a number of private citizens from telephone companies. He did not provide notice to these individuals in advance that their phone records were being sought. He did not subpoena the phone records directly from the citizens. Instead, he subpoenaed the phone companies for the records, preventing any opportunity for the private citizens to seek court review, as would happen in any other case in where the government is seeking this kind of information about any citizen.

In response to a House attorney’s argument that the materials be kept secret to protect the privacy of the targets of the subpoenas, one of the appellate judges remarked:

Well, I do think it’s, if not ironic, noteworthy that one of the interests you’ve just put forward is the invasion of privacy when the whole claim of Judicial Watch is that this Committee invaded the privacy of private citizens in the first place.

The Pelosi/Schiff House asserts it has an unlimited government surveillance power and an unlimited ability to invade the privacy of any American with zero accountability and transparency. The courts should reject Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi’s corrupt cover-up of the unconstitutional subpoenas that abused the civil rights of then-President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, journalists, and other American citizens. (Judicial Watch, 4/16/2021)  (Archive)

“The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now getting ready to hire public companies, individual contractors outside government, to scour public data and social media in order to provide information for the new “domestic terror watch lists.”  From the description it appears DHS is going to pay “big tech” (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, etc.), via contracts, to hire and organize internal monitoring teams to assist the government by sending information on citizens they deem “dangerous.”

Gee, what could possibly go wrong with this?…

NBC is reporting on these new developments as the U.S. intelligence apparatus is preparing to go live with the assembly of lists of Americans who “could be” potential threats to the government and need to be watched.

However, even NBC is beginning to realize the consequences: “DHS planning to expand relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence and to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans. The department is also contemplating changes to its terrorist watchlisting process.”

Here’s the article:

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security, created after the 9/11 attacks to protect the country from international terrorism, is moving toward a sweeping set of policy changes aimed at detecting and stopping what intelligence officials say is now a top threat to the homeland: domestic violent extremism.

Two senior Biden administration officials told NBC News that DHS, whose intelligence division did not publish a warning of potential violence before the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, is seeking to improve its ability to collect and analyze data about domestic terrorism — including the sorts of public social media posts that threatened a potential attack on the Capitol, but were not deemed “actionable” by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

DHS is planning to expand its relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence, one of the senior officials said, and also to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans, including travel and commercial data through Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service and other DHS components. (read more)

Expand your thinking to what was initiated with the COVID model for “contact tracing” and you can quickly see how physical proximity to a rogue dissident, a person with wrong thoughts – aka a domestic extremist, can result in you being labeled along with that dissident…. and you are on the list. Then overlay the efforts of Big Tech to assist the administrative state with an electronic trail of your habits, contacts, phone calls, text messages and internet patterns…. and you are on the list.

Remind yourself what FBI “contractors’ with access to the NSA database already did in their quest for political opposition research and surveillance {Go Deep}. Then overlay all of the above and you get an alarming picture that is not something to dispatch. (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 3/25/2021)  (Archive)

“Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton issued the following statement in response to the United States Supreme Court’s refusal to grant cert to Judicial Watch’s challenge to an appeals court decision exempting Hillary Clinton from testifying under oath about her emails and Benghazi attack documents:

Hillary Clinton ignored the law but received special protection from both the courts and law enforcement. For countless Americans, this double standard of justice has destroyed confidence in the fair administration of justice. Americans would never have known about Hillary Clinton’s email and related pay for play scandals but for Judicial Watch’s diligence. We expect that the Biden State and Justice Departments will continue to protect her and cover up their own misconduct as we press for additional accountability through the courts.

Judicial Watch argued that the Supreme Court should hear its case because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit erred in undermining the Freedom of Information Act in giving Clinton unwarranted special treatment that conflicts both with Supreme Court precedent and the precedents of other courts of appeal, including its own.

The cert petition arose from the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242), which led directly to the disclosure of Clinton’s use of a nongovernment email server to conduct government business. On March 2, 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth authorized Judicial Watch to depose Clinton about her emails and the existence of relevant Benghazi attack documents. The court also ordered the deposition of Clinton’s former Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, and two other State Department officials. (Judicial Watch, 3/29/2021)

Brian Auten (Credit: Radaris)

“For the past four years, Democrats and the Washington media have suspended disbelief about the Steele dossier’s credibility by arguing that some Russia allegations against Donald Trump and his advisers have been corroborated and therefore the most explosive charges may also be true. But recently declassified secret testimony by the FBI official in charge of corroborating the dossier blows up that narrative.

The top analyst assigned to the FBI’s Russia “collusion” case, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, admitted under oath that neither he nor his team of half a dozen intelligence analysts could confirm any of the allegations in the dossier — including ones the FBI nonetheless included in several warrant applications as evidence to establish legal grounds to electronically monitor a former Trump adviser for almost a year.

FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten made the admission under questioning by staff investigators for the Senate Judiciary Committee during closed-door testimony in October. The committee only this year declassified the transcript, albeit with a number of redactions including the name of Auten, who was identified by congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“So with respect to the Steele reporting,” Auten told the committee, “the actual allegations and the actions described in those reports could not be corroborated.”

Brian Auten Transcript – October 29, 2020 – pgs. 103-104

After years of digging, Auten conceded that the only material in the dossier that he could verify was information that was already publicly available, such as names, entities, and positions held by persons mentioned in the document.

His testimony, kept secret for several months, is eye-opening because it’s the first time anybody from the FBI has acknowledged headquarters failed to verify any of the dossier evidence supporting the wiretaps as true and correct.

As one of the FBI’s leading experts on Russia, Auten was highly familiar with the subject matter of the dossier and the Russian players it cited. He also had a team of intelligence analysts at his disposal to pore over the material and chase down leads. They even traveled overseas to interview the dossier’s author, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, and other sources.

The FBI  debunked this claim early on about Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, travelling to Prague.

Still, they could not corroborate any of the allegations of Trump-Russia “collusion” in the dossier, and actually debunked many of them — including the rumor, oft-repeated by the media, that Trump attorney Michael Cohen flew to Prague in the summer of 2016 to secretly huddle with Kremlin agents over an alleged Trump-Russia plot to hack the election. They determined that Cohen had never even been to the Czech Republic.

Andrew McCabe (l) and James Comey (Credit: Jahi Chikwendiu/Matt McClain, Getty Images)

Yet Auten and his Crossfire teammates — who referred to the dossier as “Crown material,” as if it were valuable intelligence from America’s closest ally, Britain — never informed a secret surveillance court that the dossier was a bust. Instead, they used it as the basis for all four warrant applications to spy on Carter Page, a tangential 2016 Trump campaign adviser. Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who personally signed and approved the final application, has testified that without the dossier, the warrants could not have been obtained.

Financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 as opposition research against Trump, the dossier was used by the FBI to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to eavesdrop on Page from October 2016 to September 2017. A U.S. citizen, Page was accused of being a Russian agent, even though he previously assisted both the CIA and FBI in their efforts to hold Moscow in check. He was never charged with a crime and at least half the warrants have since been invalidated by the court. Page is now suing the FBI, as well as Auten, among other individual defendants, and is seeking a total of $75 million in damages.

The bureau’s handling of the warrants is part of Special Counsel John Durham’s ongoing investigation into the government’s targeting of Trump and his campaign during the election, and later, the Trump presidency. In January, Durham secured a criminal conviction against top Crossfire lawyer Kevin Clinesmith for falsifying evidence against Page to help justify the last warrant issued in June 2017.

It could not be ascertained whether Durham has interviewed Auten — a spokesman did not return messages — but Auten has hired one of the top white-collar criminal defense lawyers in Washington. And former federal law enforcement officials say Auten is certainly on Durham’s witness list.

“That analyst needs to be investigated,” said former assistant FBI director and prosecutor Chris Swecker, noting that Auten is a central, if overlooked, figure in the FISA abuse scandal — and one who attended several meetings with McCabe in the Durham case. In fact, the 52-year-old analyst shows up at every major juncture in the Crossfire investigation.

Auten, who did not respond to requests for comment directly or through his lawyer, was assigned to the case from its opening in July 2016 and supervised its analytical efforts, including researching other members of the Trump campaign who might serve as possible targets in addition to Page. He played a key supportive role for the agents preparing the FISA applications, including reviewing the probable-cause section of the applications and providing the agents with information about the sub-sources noted in the applications, and even drafting some of the language that ended up in the affidavits to spy on Page. He also helped prepare and review the FISA renewal drafts.

A 15-year FBI veteran, Auten assisted the case agents in providing information on the reliability of FBI informant Steele and his sources and reviewing for accuracy their information cited in the body of the applications, as well as the footnotes. He also sifted through the emails, text messages and phone calls the FBI collected from the wiretaps on Page. He met with top Crossfire officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, briefed McCabe and then-FBI Director James Comey, and even ran meetings with case agents and analysts regarding the election-year investigation, which he testified “was done as a ‘headquarters special.’ ”

Steele primary sub-source Igor Danchenko appears on Russia-language channel RTVi (U.S.-Israel) in July 2016. (Credit: Twitter/@LikesLurks)

In addition, Auten personally met with Steele and his “primary sub-source,” a Russian emigre living in the U.S., as well as former British intelligence colleagues of Steele. Auten also met with former Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and processed the material Ohr fed the FBI from Glenn Simpson, the political opposition research contractor who hired Steele to compile the anti-Trump dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign. He was involved in key source interviews where David Laufman and other top Justice officials were present, and shows up on critical email chains with these officials, who are also subjects of interest in the Durham probe.

Auten also attended meetings of a mysterious top-secret interagency entity, believed to have been overseen and budgeted by then-CIA Director John Brennan, known as the “Crossfire Hurricane Fusion Center,” or the Fusion Cell. Finally, it was Auten who provided analytical support to Special Counsel Robert Mueller when he took over the Crossfire case in May 2017. He brought his team of six analysts with him to Mueller’s office.

Instead of disqualifying the dossier as evidence, Auten let its fictions go into FISA applications. (Credit: The Associated Press)

As early as January 2017, Auten discovered that the dossier was larded with errors, misspellings, factual inaccuracies, conflicting accounts and wild rumors, according to a Justice Department inspector general report on the FISA abuses. Instead of disqualifying the dossier as evidence, the report found he let its unsubstantiated innuendo go into the FISA applications.

Auten gave Steele the benefit of the doubt when sources or developments called into question the reliability of his information or his own credibility, according to the same inspector general’s report. In many cases, he acted more as an advocate than a fact-checker, while turning a blind eye to the dossier’s red flags, the report documented.

For example, when a top Justice national security lawyer initially blocked the Crossfire team’s attempts to obtain a FISA warrant, Auten proactively turned to the dossier to try to push the case over the line. In a September 2016 email to FBI lawyers, he forwarded an unsubstantiated claim from the dossier that Page secretly met with Kremlin-tied official Igor Divyekin in July 2016 and asked, “Does this put us at least *that* much closer to a full FISA on [Carter Page]?” (Asterisks for emphasis in the original.)

Senate investigators grilled Auten about his eager acceptance of the allegation, which Page had denied in secretly recorded conversations with an undercover FBI informant — exculpatory evidence that was withheld from the FISA court. Auten confessed he had no other information to independently verify the dossier’s charge, which was central to the FISA warrants.

In a declassified internal FBI spreadsheet he compiled in January 2017 to try to corroborate the dossier, Auten cited a September 2016 Yahoo News article as possible corroboration of “Page’s alleged meeting with Divyekin” — even though the source of that article was Steele himself.

“So you had no knowledge of a secret meeting between Divyekin and Page, but you thought this information ‘put us at least that much closer to a full FISA’ on Carter Page?” then-chief Senate Judiciary Committee investigative counsel Zach Somers asked Auten, incredulously. “Why does the mention of a meeting with Page and Divyekin move you ‘that much closer’ to a FISA application if you haven’t confirmed the information in the Steele dossier?”

“There was something about Divyekin,” Auten said. “That’s all I can say.”

In the secret informant recordings, which were made before the Crossfire team submitted its first FISA warrant application in October 2016, Page stated he never met with Divyekin or even knew who he was.

“Were you aware of his statements denying knowing who Divyekin was?” Somers asked Auten. “I don’t recall exactly whether or not I knew those statements at the time or whether I learned about those statements subsequent to that time,” Auten replied.

“Do you think you learned about them prior to the first Page FISA application?” Somers persisted. “I’m not sure if I learned them before the first Page application,” Auten answered.

Former FBI Special Agent Michael Biasello, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who spent 10 years in counterintelligence working closely with intelligence analysts, said Auten should be “held accountable” for his role in what he described as FBI headquarters’ blatant disregard for the diligent process FISA warrants demand.

“A FISA warrant must be fully corroborated. Every statement, phrase, paragraph, must be verified in order for the affiant to attest before a judge that the contents are true and correct,” he said. “I remember agents and analysts scouring warrants and affidavits obsessively to make certain the document was meticulous and accurate.”

“To think the Crossfire team signed off on those FISA affidavits knowing the contents were uncorroborated is unconscionable, immoral and also illegal,” Biasello added. “All of them must be prosecuted for perjury, fraud and other federal crimes.” (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 3/30/2021)  (Archive)

David McGee (Credit: public domain)

The father of Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz says that he wore a wire while working with the FBI in an attempt to uncover a purported $25 million extortion plot against his son, related to reported sex-trafficking allegations against the lawmaker.

Don Gaetz, himself a former Florida state senator, backed up his son’s counter-allegation of blackmail in an interview with Politico late Tuesday.

“The FBI asked me to try and get that information for Matt and an indication we would transfer money to Mr. David McGee,” the elder Gaetz told Politico, referring to a former Department of Justice official who Rep. Gaetz claims tried to extort him.

Both Rep. Gaetz and McGee, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in Florida, have strongly denied any wrongdoing.

The dueling allegations began to fly Tuesday, when The New York Times reported that the younger Gaetz, 38, was under investigation by the DOJ for allegedly paying a 17-year-old girl with whom he had a sexual relationship to travel with him across state lines.

Gaetz, a Republican, told The Post that he denied the allegations “in the strongest possible terms” — then, during an appearance on Fox News, accused McGee by name of attempting to extort $25 million from his family to make the sex-trafficking accusations go away.

Gaetz went on to tell Fox that he and his father were working with the FBI on a separate investigation into the purported blackmail, that entailed his dad wearing a wire in an attempt to gather evidence against McGee.

Stephen Alford mugshot (Credit: public domain)

(…)Don Gaetz went on to tell Politico that he was prepared to wear a wire a second time during a Wednesday meeting with Stephen Alford, a Florida developer who he claimed was also part of the alleged extortion scheme.

Gaetz said that that meeting fell apart when news broke of the sex-trafficking probe.

Alford did not respond to Politico’s attempts to reach him for comment.

McGee told The Washington Post on Wednesday that the allegations Rep. Gaetz lodged against him are “completely false,” characterizing them as “a blatant attempt to distract from the fact that he’s under investigation for sex trafficking of minors.”

The DOJ and FBI have not publicly commented on the existence of either investigation.  (Read more: New York Post, 3/31, 2021)  (Archive)

August 31, 2021 –

Stephen Alford, a prominent Fort Walton Beach businessman with a checkered legal history, has been indicted on federal charges stemming from alleged efforts to extort $25 million.

A press release announcing the indictment, which doesn’t name the victim, states Alford offered “to obtain a presidential pardon for a family member” of his victim.

Both former state Sen. Don Gaetz and his son, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, have claimed that Alford was among a group of people who tried to extort millions of dollars from their family.

According to a version of events provided first by Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, Pensacola attorney David McGee and others attempted to extort $25 million from the Gaetz family, and Don Gaetz, a Niceville resident, wore a wire to a meeting to discuss a $5.4 million down payment to allow federal agents to gather evidence about the conspiracy.

Don Gaetz on Tuesday afternoon referred comment to his attorney, Jeff Nieman, who was not available.

Bob Kent (Credit: CNN)

In an April interview, Alford, a twice-convicted felon, did not deny approaching the wealthy Gaetz family for money. He said he, McGee and others were attempting to work through the Gaetzes to rescue Robert Levinson, a CIA operative who disappeared in 2007 and is believed to have been kidnapped by agents of the government of Iran.

(…) Bob Kent, a former Air Force intelligence officer and an alleged Alford co-conspirator, spoke to CNN and said of Congressman Gaetz, “If the allegations are true, he’s in need of some goodwill from the government.”

“I’m in need of a sponsor to fund the rescue project,” Kent continued. “There is no threat. I don’t have anything to do with the (sexual allegations) indictment. I don’t have anything to do with the investigation into Matt Gaetz.” (Read more: NFW Daily News, 8/31/2023)  (Archive) 

David McGee was also involved In 2009 with FBI director Robert Mueller and the bureau asking Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to spend millions of his own dollars funding an FBI-supervised operation to rescue a retired FBI agent, Robert Levinson, captured in Iran while working for the CIA in 2007.

Two of Chagoury’s associates have also been flipped & are cooperating to avoid prison. But there is much more behind this as it exposes corrupt political contributions through straw donations.

DOJ Press Release, 3/31/2021

We will get back to this later, but one of the stipulated crimes was setting up a contribution to a Republican Congressman during the 2016 campaign. The location connects this to other cases too!

If you think this cooperation means little, the cooperation started in Oct. 2019. By Dec. 2019 an Obama cabinet official & former Republican in Congress Ray LaHood was forced to flip & secretly cooperate against the Swamp.

Ray LaHood was a Swampy Republican from Illinois, who endorsed McCain in 2008, yet still was appointed Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury in early 2009. What kind of connections do you need to get a cabinet seat from a President in the opposite party that you campaigned against?

Isn’t it weird that so called conservative media failed to mention that an Obama cabinet official admitted he was guilty of taking foreign cash & concealing that information from his ethics reports?

Open Secrets has cross referenced the illegal donations with the FEC data on donations to identify the 4 campaigns not named in the DOJ information. Mitt Romney’s 2012 Presidential Campaign and 3 Republican Congressmen.

(…) That 2016 donation in Los Angeles, it is likely that it went to California Republican Darrell Issa. The chairman who hunted down the truth on #Benghazi, #IRSTeaParty and #FastAndFurious until Speaker Boehner took the Benghazi case away & gave it to Gowdy.

Open Secrets, 4/01/2021

In June 2018 Rep. Issa made a surprise announcement that he was dropping out of the race for re-election.

Did he drop out because of an investigation into these illegal donations that could be weaponized by oppo research to flip his seat in 2018?

(…) By specifying details of only Republicans, this baits the media into covering the story a little. Had the DOJ mentioned details connecting Chagoury to the Clintons the media would have buried it in an unmarked grave. This gets info on the record around media bias!

(Read more: DOJ Press Release, 3/31/2021)  (@DawsonSField Thread)

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)

“The Trump Justice Department secretly obtained Washington Post journalists’ phone records and tried to obtain their email records over reporting they did in the early months of the Trump administration on Russia’s role in the 2016 election, according to government letters and officials.

In three separate letters dated May 3 and addressed to Post reporters Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, and former Post reporter Adam Entous, the Justice Department wrote they were “hereby notified that pursuant to legal process the United States Department of Justice received toll records associated with the following telephone numbers for the period from April 15, 2017 to July 31, 2017.” The letters listed work, home or cellphone numbers covering that three-and-a-half-month period.

Greg Miller (l), Ellen Nakashima and Adam Entous (Credit: public domain)

(…) The phone records in question include who called whom when, and how long the call lasted, but do not include what was said in those phone calls. Investigators often hope such records will provide clues about possible sources the reporters were in contact with before a particular story published.

(…) The letter does not state the purpose of the phone records seizure, but toward the end of the time period mentioned in the letters, those reporters wrote a story about classified U.S. intelligence intercepts indicating that in 2016, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) had discussed the Trump campaign with Sergey Kislyak, who was Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Justice Department officials would not say if that reporting was the reason for the search of journalists’ phone records. Sessions subsequently became President Donald Trump’s first attorney general and was at the Justice Department when the article appeared.

(Sessions discussed Trump campaign matters with Russian ambassador, according to intercepts)

About a month before that story published, the same three journalists also wrote a detailed story about the Obama administration’s internal struggles to counter Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Read more: Washington Post, 5/07/2021)  (Archive)

“The Biden administration’s newest addition to the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, Susan Hennessey, is a Russia collusion hoaxer who deleted hundreds of tweets boosting lies about the Trump administration before she announced her new position.

I’ll still have this account, in a personal capacity. But things will be a bit quieter around here.

— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) May 10, 2021

Hennessey, who formerly worked for Democrat think tank and Russia collusion hoax organization the Brookings Institution, deleted hundreds of rants peddling lies about Michael Flynn, Carter Page, and FISA, boosting the Steele dossier, and pushing other leftist collusion talking points.

Not only did Hennessey openly adopt and echo corporate media narratives alleging that former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, but she also accused the Republican and his team of lying to the public while encouraging trust in the Intelligence Community that falsified information on spy warrant applications.

“The FBI officials were telling the truth.”

The FISA court said warrants against Carter Page were illegal, and one of Mueller’s FBI lawyers who compiled the FISA applications was convicted of falsifying information in those FISA applications.

This nutjob now works at DOJ. pic.twitter.com/JDgKJikcuK

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) May 10, 2021

(Read more: TheFederalist, 5/10/2021) (Archive)

Saagar Enjeti gives his thoughts on the selection of Susan Hennessey to head the NSA at the Department of Justice.

“Today, the Biden administration announced that CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden has been appointed as senior adviser to President Joe Biden. John Podesta, founder and director of CAP, released the following statement:

Neera Tanden (c), president of the Center for American Progress, with co-founder John Podesta (l), and Hillary Clinton, poses during a gala celebrating the 10th anniversary of the center on October 24, 2013. (Credit: Chip Somodavilla / Getty Images)

Neera’s intellect, tenacity, and political savvy will be an asset to the Biden administration as she assumes a new role as senior adviser to the president. While we will be sorry to lose her considerable policy expertise and leadership at the Center for American Progress—an organization which we founded together in 2003—I am exceptionally thrilled to see her step into a new position serving this White House and the American people.

In a few short months, the White House has made remarkable progress combating numerous once-in-a-generation challenges—from vaccinating millions of Americans, to delivering real economic relief from the coronavirus pandemic, to strengthening the Affordable Care Act,  to tackling climate change, and more. Many of these bold policy solutions, which have bipartisan support from voters across the country, were developed and led by Neera at CAP over many years. The administration’s efforts will be magnified with Neera Tanden on the team, and I am excited to see what she will achieve in the role of senior adviser and in the years to come.

In addition to serving as president and CEO of CAP, Tanden also served as CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. In those roles, she focused on how both organizations can fulfill their missions to expand opportunity for all Americans. Tanden has also served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations as well as on presidential campaigns.” (Read more: American Progress, 5/14/2021)  (Archive)

Glenn Simpson (Credit: New York Times)

“There’s a fight brewing in a DC federal court over Fusion GPS’s internal correspondence and records. And they’re losing.

Background

In 2017, the owners of Alfa Bank (we’ll call them Alfa Bank for the purposes of this article) sued Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson for their publication of false statements accusing Alfa Bank of “bribery, extortion, and interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.”

Now, the Alfa Bank is on offense. They have filed a motion to compel, asking the Court to require Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson to produce nearly 500 critically important documents improperly withheld as privileged.

Fusion/Simpson have fought the production of the documents, arguing that they are subject to the “attorney-client privilege” and otherwise privileged and not subject to production.

These are weak legal arguments – and the attorneys for Alfa Bank recognize it. First, Fusion/Simpson previously admitted the purpose of their work was political, and not for the purposes of any ongoing litigation.

Alfa Bank further observes that Glenn Simpson has even testified that the purpose of his work was pure politics, saying his goal was,  “to expose an opponent’s vulnerabilities, provide source material for the media, and feed attack ads.”

As their motion argues:

Perkins Coie did not engage Defendants to perform legal or litigation-focused work; rather, Defendants have admitted (and publicly boasted) that Perkins Coie engaged Defendants in a “political context” to perform “political work.”

Second, even if these 500 documents were subject to the attorney-client privilege (and they most certainly are not), that privilege was waived when Simpson/Fusion leaked their research to third parties, including the media and government officials.

One has to be curious about exactly why Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson are putting up such a fight to keep these 500 documents hidden. We think it’s because thus far, the public hasn’t seen the communications between Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS/Glenn Simpson or the internal Fusion GPS correspondence.” (Read more: Techno Fog, 5/25/2021)  (Archive)

Jonathan Turley testifies May 15, 2019, before Nadler’s House Judiciary Committee and warns them not to pursue this ridiculous action of trying to hold Barr in contempt via the courts, because they would be heading into a “world of hurt if they do” (Credit: YouTube)

“The long-awaited, though partial, release of a memorandum from the Justice Department this week left many “frustrated,” as predicted by the Washington Post, in Washington. The reason is what it did not contain.  Critics had sought the memo as the “smoking gun” to show how former Attorney General Bill Barr scuttled any obstruction charges against Donald Trump. Instead, the memo showed the opposite. The staff of the OLC actually found that the allegations did not meet the standard of obstruction even without any defenses or privileges related to Trump’s office.

The issue of obstruction of justice ran throughout Barr’s second term as Attorney General. Before his confirmation hearing, a memo was released that Barr wrote to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The memo discussed flaws in the use of the most likely federal provision on obstruction of justice against Trump. Barr was hammered by Democratic senators on his view of obstruction, as was I when I testified the next day as a witness. I agreed with many of the flaws noted by Barr in the memo.

Barr’s more nuanced arguments were drowned out by a long litany of experts like Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe who publicly insisted that obstruction was not only clearly established (with a long litany of other crimes) but that Barr’s rejection of that crime was evidence of his raw partisanship. In a public letter to me, Ralph Nader, Lou Fisher, and Bruce Fein stated that his rejection of obstruction was akin to “a papal encyclical that President Trump was innocent of obstruction of justice” that ignored Mueller’s “chronicle [of] multiple instances of evidence of obstruction.”

Throughout this never-ending barrage, Barr remained largely silent on the internal review of the matter and declined to release the full OLC memo. That only increased speculation that Barr must be hiding countervailing conclusions of legal staff. We know now that (at least the now disclosed portion of) the memo supports Barr’s prior view and, despite that fact, he withheld the information out of concern for the confidentiality of the internal deliberations.

It turns out that the review and debate over the obstruction allegations began before Barr started as Attorney General. The memo also confirms that the Mueller staff was part of that analysis with career prosecutors at Main Justice. The memo states that the prosecutors reviewed the Mueller evidence and concluded that the evidence “examined by the Special Counsel could not, as a matter of law, support an obstruction charge under the circumstances. Accordingly, were there no constitutional barriers, we would recommend, under the Principles of Federal Prosecution, that you decline to commence such a prosecution.” In plain English, that means that the prosecutors came to the same conclusion as Barr that the alleged conduct did not satisfy the elements of this crime. Moreover, it stated that it would reject such a charge even without consideration of any constitutional barriers presented by Trump’s office.” (Read more: Jonathan Turley, 5/26/2021)  (Archive)

Sally Painter (C) Karen Tramontano (R) U.S.-Ukraine Business Council members Greenbrier/Amsted Rail, Deloitte Ukraine, Blue Star Strategies, LLC and others for attending the event. (Credit: Burisma Group)

“A consulting firm linked to Hunter Biden that did work ​for Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that paid the Biden scion $83,000 a month to sit on its board, is under investigation by the Justice Department, according to a report on Thursday.

Blue Star Strategies​ is being probed for potential illegal lobbying after it took on Burisma as a client while Hunter was on its board, Politico reported.

The US Attorney’s Office in Delaware, ​which is already investigating Hunter for possible “tax” violations, is working with lawyers in the Justice Department’s National Security Division in Washington, DC, the report said.

One aspect of the investigation is whether Blue Star failed to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) that requires Americans to disclose lobbying work for foreign entities.

The report noted that there is no indication that Hunter is a target in the investigation, and Karen Tramontano, one of the firm’s co-founders, testified that the president’s son did not direct any of Blue Star’s work on behalf of Burisma.” (Read more: The New York Post, 6/03/2021)  (Archive)

“The plan was perfect. No cameras, no microphones, no prying eyes and plenty of security. The setting for a clandestine meeting could not have been better. Former President Bill Clinton exited Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s private plane 20-minutes after he boarded. Both thought they got away with it. Both were wrong. Amid a heated Presidential race, federal investigations involving emails and Benghazi and society looking for clarity on the future of the country, the secret tarmac meeting would only complicate things. The secret meeting would have never been revealed if it weren’t for a veteran journalist and a trusted source..” (Quote: Christopher Sign/Amazon Books) (Photo credit: The Gateway Pundit)

“Veteran TV newsman and former University of Alabama football player Christopher Sign died Saturday morning in an apparent suicide, according to police.

At 8:13 a.m. Saturday, the Hoover 911 center received a call of a person down at a residence on Scout Trace. Hoover police and fire personnel arrived to find the 45-year-old Sign dead.

Hoover police Lt. Keith Czeskleba said the death is being investigated as a suicide.

(…) While a reporter and morning anchor at ABC affiliate KNXV-TV in Phoenix, Sign broke the story of the June 2016 secret tarmac meeting between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Sign wrote a book about his experience called Secret On The Tarmac.”

Preserved photo of a pinned tweet dated January 29, 2020,  on Christopher Sign’s Twitter page. (Credit: Christopher Sign/Twitter)

(Read more: AL.com, 6/13/2021)  (Archive)

FBI Table

“Attorney Ty Clevenger has been trying for years to get to the bottom of Seth Rich’s death and the Deep State FBI’s actions in response to it.  Yesterday the FBI responded to his recent FOIA request and Clevenger believes based on the response it will be decades until all the requested records are released.

(…) This week Clevenger received a response from the FBI to his latest request.  In his request, Clevenger expanded his scope to include emails with the Awan brothers who may have worked with Seth Rich, emails relating to the supposed hack of the DNC in 2016, and then emails related to the FBI surveilling his client Ed Butowski.  (Butowski claimed Seth Rich was murdered by the Deep State and didn’t die from a robbery.)

The FBI’s response to Clevenger’s request is here:

FBI 2021.06.16 Response Ty … by Jim Hoft

Clevenger believes that according to FBI Section Chief Michael Seidel, the FBI wants to take 26 months in the Texas (Butowski) case to produce records (about Imran Awan and family) that it is already obligated to produce to Judicial Watch in a separate case in D.C. Clevenger says:

After the 26 months is over, it appears that the FBI wants to begin producing 495,862 pages about the hacking of DNC emails. If they’re intending to do that at the standard rate of 500 pages per month, that will take almost 83 years. Maybe they’re saying they could whittle down the 496k records first, then start producing them at 500 pages per month, but we’re still talking about decades.

If I’m understanding the affidavit correctly, the FBI will then produce 3 pages of records about surveillance of Ed Butowsky and Matt Couch (hmm, I wonder why they want to wait decades to produce those 3 pages?). The FBI’s latest response is worse than its 2017 response to my request for records about Hillary Clinton’s secret email server, i.e., when they told me her secret email server was “not a matter of public interest.”

(Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 6/17/2021) (Archive)

“Affidavits filed in a federal court on June 21 raise crucial questions about the FBI’s role in the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign’s efforts to vilify her opponent, Donald Trump, as a Russian agent. The FBI obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on the Trump team based on a dossier of memos alleging Trump’s ties to Russia that was filed by Clinton campaign contractor Christopher Steele.

But the newly released court documents suggest the FBI may have helped shape the anti-Trump plot at its origins.

The affidavits are the latest revelation to come from the ongoing defamation suit that the owners of Alfa-Bank, Russia’s largest commercial bank, have brought against Fusion GPS, the communications firm that hired Steele to compile Trump–Russia reports on behalf of the Clinton campaign. In one of Steele’s memos, Alfa-Bank principals Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan are alleged to have engaged in corrupt practices.

Steele claims that this report and the others are sourced to a Russian national he hired, Igor Danchenko, who, in turn, says his information came from a network of Russia-based sources. The affidavits filed this week were sworn by five Russian nationals who say Danchenko’s allegations that they served as sources for Steele’s reporting are false.

Ivan Vorontsov (Credit: Facebook)

This may put Danchenko in a bind. Finding himself at the mercy of angry billionaires who are eager to clear their names and the reputation of their business, Danchenko’s clearest path out of financial and legal risk may be to reveal everything he knows about the anti-Trump plot.The affidavit signed by Russian financial journalist Ivan Vorontsov is the most significant of the five documents. Vorontsov said that he has been friends with Danchenko since 2013 and met him three times in 2016. According to him, Danchenko said that he was employed by Fusion GPS, and its co-founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch.

This appears to contradict what Danchenko told the FBI in a January 2017 interview. According to the transcript, Danchenko “did not have any visibility into [Steele’s] end clients.” Danchenko’s attorney reaffirmed his client’s claim, “Never asked, and was never told [about final clients].”

Another section from Vorontsov’s affidavit may prove even more significant. He states that during a June 2016 reception at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Moscow, he was “whisked away and invited to have a discussion with representatives of the FBI about Mr. Danchenko.”

Though Vorontsov does not give any more details, the FBI’s interest in him is noteworthy. According to the Department of Justice’s December 2019 inspector general’s report, the FBI claims Steele didn’t provide them with Danchenko’s name. Moreover, the FBI says it didn’t speak with Danchenko until January 2017. And yet seven months earlier, the FBI was seeking information about Danchenko from a man he named as a dossier source.  (Read more: The Epoch Times, 6/23/2021)  (Archive)

Maxwell and Epstein are pictured with Clinton in 1993. (Credit: Clinton Presidential Library)

“A judge has ruled that dozens more documents about Ghislaine Maxwell’s personal affairs should be made public, including some that could reveal more about her finances and her relationship to the Clintons.

Judge Loretta Preska said that unsealing the documents would not impact Maxwell’s right to a fair trial in November as her lawyers have claimed.

Among the documents which will be made public in two weeks’ time will be Maxwell’s efforts to quash requests from Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who sued Maxwell for defamation, to obtain her financial records.

Giuffre’s lawyers demanded a vast array of documents from Maxwell including ‘funding received from the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Foundation,’ according to court filings.

The judge also ruled that documents relating to a request from Giuffre for email accounts that Maxwell allegedly kept secret from the court should also be made public.

They could give an insight into powerful men who Maxwell knew, such and Prince Andrew of the British royal family.

(…) Giuffre’s lawyers sought Maxwell’s tax returns, balance sheets for companies Maxwell controlled and financial statements for companies she controlled among other materials.

One section reads: ‘From January 2012 to the present, produce all documents concerning any source of funding for the TarraMar Project (Maxwell’s nonprofit) or any other not-for-profit entities with which you are associated, including but not limited to, funding received from the Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton Foundation (a/k/a William J. Clinton Foundation, a/k/a/ the Bill, Hilary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation),and the Clinton Foundation Climate Change Initiative’.

While it is unclear if the Clintons will come up in the documents which will be made public, there is considerable back and forth and dozens of documents on this subject that will be unsealed.

Bill Clinton’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell came under intense scrutiny when the financier was arrested in July 2019.

Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane dozens of times and photographs have shown him receiving a neck massage from Chauntae Davies, one of Epstein’s victims who worked as a flight attendant on his private jet, known as the ‘Lolita Express’.

The book ‘A Convenient Death: The Mysterious Demise of Jeffrey Epstein’, by journalists Alana Goodman and Daniel Halper even claimed that Clinton and Maxwell had a secret affair.

Other documents that will be unsealed relate to a request for information from Maxwell regarding what Giuffre’s lawyers called an ‘undisclosed email account’ that she kept secret from the court in breach of an order to hand it over. (Read more: The Daily Mail, 7/01/2021)  (Archive)

The FBI releases several documents related to DNC operative Seth Rich including a few that suggest Robert Mueller and the Clintons were involved in his murder.

Page 137 is dated June 26, 2018, nearly 2 years after Seth Rich was killed:

Page 136 is dated almost a month later on July 22, 2018, and is an FBI document that says the Clintons hired a hitman to kill Seth Rich and Robert Mueller agrees he would have done the same thing and hired a hitman.

Page 135 is a response the following day July 23, 2018, and is mostly redacted.

Page 134: “We think mueller arranged the hit on Seth Rich” – “Who knows hitmen better than Robert Mueller”

Page 133: “We think Mueller planned the execution of Seth Rich…mueller has access to plenty of hit men and who owed him…and ready cash” “And that old bean counter muller is a rabid trump hater…and one of the most despicable human beings”

Page 132: “Muller had Seth Rich murdered”  “he had the means and the motive and intel”

Page 131: “Muellers crooked lawyers investigating judge and jury”  “and their extended families …mueller who arranged the assassination of Seth Rich thru his mafia friends…is a psychopath capable of any crime”

Page 130: “Pedophile Bob Mueller sent Seth Rich hitman after manafort lawyer”  “Pedophile Mueller sent the same hitman he used on Seth Rich to help his friend Hillary…after (redacted)”

Here is the 2021 Grand Jury Subpoena from Special Counsel Durham to Georgia Tech, et al

Demands records re:

1) The Alfa Bank/Trump hoax

2) The purported use of Russian Yotaphones in Trump’s vicinity

HT – follow @UndeadFoia ! pic.twitter.com/1DPSnd45Mg

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) April 21, 2022

Interestingly, in this “flashback” video via @TuckerCarlson that neither Fulton County officials nor @BrianKempGA ever cared to explain, you can see ballots supposedly for Republicans voting for [drumroll] Fani Willis with a single dot in the bubble.

Watch, you’ll see it. https://t.co/sWIFTndCuN

— Rich Baris “The People’s Pundit” (@Peoples_Pundit) August 16, 2023

“Nobody better understands the psychopathic nature of the modern left better than General Michael Flynn. Just days into his tenure as National Security Advisor, Flynn was entrapped by a hostile FBI that wanted him gone for political reasons. Shortly after, the Mueller investigation targeted him, and he spent the next three years battling a relentless effort to send him to prison. Even after DOJ prosecutors attempted to drop Flynn’s case, D.C. Judge Emmet Sullivan frantically tried to keep the case alive, even appointing a “friend of the court” to argue that Flynn was guilty of perjury for trying to withdraw his guilty plea. In the end, a pardon from President Trump was needed to finally end a case that should have never existed in the first place.

But through it all, Gen. Flynn was never defeated.

Gen. Flynn generously agreed to meet with Revolver for a few questions.

In the first segment of our interview, we ask General Flynn why the deep state was so intent on destroying him and having him removed from the Trump Administration. What was it about his background, experience, skillset, and belief system that they found so threatening? In his answer, Flynn offered the disturbing revelation that some very high level members of the Republican establishment were part of the group trying to silence him.

Watch the full first segment for a more elaborate answer as to why the deep state was after General Flynn.

In the second segment of our interview, General Flynn offers his insights on geopolitics. Specifically, we ask the General about the geopolitical costs of the left’s extended Russiagate hoax. The damage the Russiagate hoax did to our domestic politics is well known, and here General Flynn elaborates on the damage it has done to our foreign policy and ability to build important strategic relationships.”

(Credit: John Helmer)

“Investigations by US government officials, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), of Christopher Steele’s (lead image, right) Russiagate dossier have identified Catherine Belton (left) as one of the targets for his fabrications. Belton was herself investigated as one of the journalists Steele recruited to plant his allegations of Russian interference days before the 2016 presidential election.

Catherine Belton is the former Moscow correspondent for Financial Times. (Credit: public domain)

In her book Putin’s People, Belton repeats many of Steele’s allegations but she does not cite him or his consulting company Orbis as her source. Belton adds at the end of the book: “I’ll always be grateful to Chris [Steele] for his moral support.” After Belton’s book appeared in April 2020, Steele admitted to lawyers engaged in a London High Court lawsuit against him that Belton is “a friend, yes, she’s a friend”.

Fresh evidence revealed in the indictment issued by the US Department of Justice on September 16, shows that the FBI has concluded Steele was lying when he and his American accomplices planted false allegations of Russian election interference through several named intermediaries, including a Russian bank and Russian émigrés in the US,. The New York Times and The Atlantic were identified in last month’s US court papers as willing outlets for the fabrications. Earlier litigation by the Alfa Bank group in the US has identified five New York Times reporters and David Corn of Mother Jones as collaborators in the scheme.

Belton’s name, tagged with the note “London meeting”, has also surfaced in meeting notes taken at the State Department on October 11, 2016, when Steele met with Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland and a deputy, Kathleen Kavalec.  Kavalec’s meeting notes, partially declassified, reveal that Steele’s allegations of Russian election interference followed a briefing of the same allegations at the FBI a month earlier, on September 19, 2016,  by Michael Sussmann, a lawyer working in secret for the Democratic National Committee (DNC).  Sussmann is now charged with lying then to the FBI.

The Justice Department’s indictment says Sussmann was one of the plotters with Steele and others, including journalists, university academics, and IT experts in publishing false stories of Russian election interference; their plot aimed at hurting the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, by making it appear he was in cahoots with the Kremlin to hurt the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.

“In or about late October 2016 – approximately one week before the 2016 U.S. Presidential election – multiple media outlets reported that U.S. government authorities had received and were investigating allegations concerning a purported secret channel of communications between the Trump Organization, owned by Donald J. Trump, and a particular Russian bank (‘Russian Bank-I’).”

The Kavalec notebook also reveals that Steele claimed there were “3 distinct channels” for this Russian operation “run by Kremlin, not FSB, Ivanov, Peskov, Putin.”  In addition to accusing Alfa Bank as the first channel “Alfa-Trump-Kremlin-comms”, Steele told Nuland that Serge Millian, a Russian émigré businessman in the US, was the second; Carter Page, a wannabe Trump campaign adviser, was the third.

In the sequence of Kavalec’s notes. Steele told Nuland there were “hackers out of R[ussia] – acting in US – [payments out of the state] pension fund Miami consulate payments – implants. Operations Paige [sic], Millian (émigrés?), Manafort.”  Steele then mentioned the London meeting with Belton whom he identified as “FT [Financial Times]”.

Reporting by Belton in the Financial Times followed days after her meeting was mentioned by Steele to Nuland.  In  Belton’s published report, she named Serge Millian as the channel Steele had alleged at State and the FBI. “Now, “ Belton claimed on November 1, one week before Election Day,  “the US administration has formally accused Russia of attempting to interfere in the US electoral process through the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email servers, Mr Millian’s activities — and his ties to the Republican presidential nominee — are coming under increasing scrutiny.” Belton did not identify her sources for her allegations against Millian. She implied, however, that they were US intelligence agents and the FBI.  “Mr Millian came on to the FBI’s radar”, Belton reported. “The FBI probe was part of a wake-up call for US intelligence over suspicions that Russia was activating networks long thought defunct after the end of the cold war.”

Millian avoided Belton for an interview and she reported. “He declined repeated requests for an interview and left the US for Asia on a business trip in early October.” Two weeks before, Steele had told Nuland, according to Kavalec’s transcript, Millian was “now in China.”

According to Belton, Millian had been a real estate broker for Trump, selling Trump organisation properties to Russians. Steele had told Nuland “real estate entities used for massive set of purchases by Russians. Set up espionage network in FL[orida] – to buy a lot of properties for POTUS [Trump’s] businesses through a R[ussian] brokage. 100’s of real estate transactions.”

Mikhail Fridman (l), Petr Aven (c), and Lord Browne at the L1 Energy launch in New York, May, 2015. (Credit: LetterOne Group)

Two months ago, on July 28, Belton was exposed as a liar and fabricator of her source material by her British publisher, HarperCollins.  Settling the High Court case brought against them both by Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven of Alfa Bank, the publisher said there was “no significant evidence” for Belton’s allegations of KGB connections in the early careers of Fridman and Aven; and that she had failed to check her claims with Fridman and Aven before publishing them. The publisher agreed to delete Belton’s allegations from the book.

The terms of that settlement, and the ongoing High Court case in London, have stopped Macmillan, the US publisher of the book, from issuing the paperback edition, according to industry sources.

Once Belton’s allegations against the Alfa Bank group were abandoned by HarperCollins, lawyers for the remaining plaintiffs – Roman Abramovich, Rosneft and Shalva Chigirinsky – are now focusing on Belton’s acknowledged dependence on Steele – and on the fabrications Steele got Belton to print before the US election.” (Read more: John Helmer, 10/04/2021)  (Archive)

(Republished in part, with permission.)

NEW: The moment @DanielJJonesUS gave up @rodneyjoffe. pic.twitter.com/XNZWv7Bc3O

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) October 15, 2021

Interesting point, in Jones’s meeting with Joffe he was only referred to as “Max”, so Jones had to identify him himself. pic.twitter.com/BT8Q4R5HxD

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) October 15, 2021

@sameerbhalotra new Joffe well and Jones exchanged messages with @ljean. pic.twitter.com/S1iltrw76p

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) October 15, 2021

Alfa mainly interrogates Jones on whether his/Joffe/April/Dagon’s goal was to get another FBI investigation opened. Jones denies this, I don’t really believe him. pic.twitter.com/STNIdRHhQ2

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) October 15, 2021

Here is a link to the depo from @walkafyre https://t.co/6iCK5tKshS

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) October 15, 2021

(Fool Nelson, 10/15/2021)  (Archive)

Merrick Garland, left, administers the oath to Christopher Cooper, right, with wife Amy Jeffress and sons, center, on July 11, 2014. Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/The National Law Journal)

(…) Current and former officials say that federal District Court Judge Christopher Cooper’s professional and personal relationships with top Democrats and figures behind the FBI’s Trump investigation should force his recusal. Cooper’s wife, for instance, represents disgraced FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who oversaw the FBI’s Trump probe.

(…) Appointed to the bench by Obama in 2013, Cooper is well-connected in Democratic party legal circles. Garland officiated his 1999 wedding to Amy Jeffress.

Both Cooper and Jeffress worked at DOJ in the Obama administration. He was part of the 2008 presidential transition team, and she was the national security counselor for Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder.

Recently Jeffress wrote approvingly of Attorney General Garland’s focus on “domestic terrorism.” Many Republicans see the phrase as coded language for targeting Trump supporters.

Her most famous client, former FBI lawyer Page, discussed via text message with her paramour, FBI agent Peter Strzok, how they’d stop Trump from becoming president. Page and Strzok were part of the FBI team that spied on the 2016 Trump campaign.

As evidence to obtain the spy warrant, the FBI used a dossier of memos falsely alleging Trump ties to Russia that was paid for by the Clinton campaign. Sussman and Page then participated in the same Clinton-funded initiative to smear her 2016 opponent and use false evidence to spy on his campaign.

Former U.S. officials say that putting Sussmann in front of Jeffress’ husband represents a clear conflict of interest. (Read more: Just the News, 9/19/2021)  (Archive) 

The Washington Times raises a few good questions about the possible conflict of interest:

(…) The questions that come to mind as to whether Judge Cooper should recuse himself from the Sussmann case are common sense.

Is Lisa Page a witness in the Sussmann case?

Did Ms. Page or Mr. Strzok meet with Mr. Sussmann?

Did Mr. Baker discuss his meeting with Mr. Sussmann with Ms. Page?

Was Ms. Page involved in setting up Mr. Baker’s meeting with Mr. Sussmann?

Has Special Counsel Durham’s office interviewed Ms. Page?

Has Special Counsel Durham reviewed testimony Ms. Page has given in other investigations?

These are all matters that Ms. Page’s attorney would be involved in, and the American people deserve answers. Many believe that if this were a case involving a Republican-appointed judge in a trial concerning a Republican, a recusal would have been demanded and carried out long ago. The corporate mainstream media’s refusal to cover this double standard is just the latest failure in a parade of miscalculations involving their coverage of the Trump-Russia lie.

There should be a public debate about whether it is proper for Judge Cooper to preside in the case of the United States v. Michael Sussmann. To the average American, these connections raise concerns about whether there is one set of rules in our justice system for elitists and another set of rules for everyone else. After everything our country has endured since the 2016 election, all in the name of “getting” Mr. Trump by any means necessary, from the Mueller investigation to the Michael Flynn debacle, to the Carter Page FISA warrants, to Rep. Adam Schiff’s impeachment flop, it’s a good time for some honesty and transparency. That would help restore some trust.

Biden’s appointee as National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, praised the president-elect for his choices on his national security team and noted that he has “tasked us with reimagining our national security” to deal with the nation’s current crises on Nov. 24, 2020. (Credit: NBC News clip)

“White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan figures prominently in a grand jury investigation run by Special Counsel John Durham into an alleged 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign scheme to use both the FBI and CIA to tar Donald Trump as a colluder with Russia, according to people familiar with the criminal probe, which they say has broadened into a conspiracy case.

Sullivan is facing scrutiny, sources say, over potentially false statements he made about his involvement in the effort. As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Last week, Michael A. Sussmann, a partner in Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements to the FBI about his clients and their motives behind planting the rumor, at the highest levels of the FBI, of a secret Trump-Russia server.

The grand jury indicated in its lengthy indictment that several people were involved in the alleged conspiracy to mislead the FBI and trigger an investigation of the Republican presidential candidate — including Sullivan, who was described by his campaign position but not identified by name.

The Clinton campaign project, these sources say, also involved compiling a “digital dossier” on several Trump campaign officials – including Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page. This effort exploited highly sensitive, nonpublic Internet data related to their personal email communications and web-browsing, known as Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses.

General Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page (Credit: public domain)

To mine the data, the Clinton campaign enlisted a team of Beltway computer contractors as well a university researchers with security clearance who often collaborate with the FBI and the intelligence community. They worked from a five-page campaign document called the “Trump Associates List.”

The tech group also pulled logs purportedly from servers for a Russian bank and Trump Tower, and the campaign provided the data to the FBI on two thumb drives, along with three “white papers” that claimed the data indicated the Trump campaign was secretly communicating with Moscow through a server in Trump Tower and the Alfa Bank in Russia. Based on the material, the FBI opened at least one investigation, adding to several others it had already initiated targeting the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016.

One of those campaign agents was Sullivan, according to emails Durham obtained. On Sept. 15, 2016 – just four days before Sussmann handed off the materials to the FBI – Marc Elias, his law partner and fellow Democratic Party operative, “exchanged emails with the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser concerning the Russian bank allegations,” as well as with other top campaign officials, the indictment states.

The sources close to the case confirmed the “foreign policy adviser” referenced by title is Sullivan. They say he was briefed on the development of the opposition-research materials tying Trump to Alfa Bank, and was aware of the participants in the project. These included the Washington opposition-research group Fusion GPS, which worked for the Clinton campaign as a paid agent and helped gather dirt on Alfa Bank and draft the materials Elias discussed with Sullivan, the materials Sussmann would later submit to the FBI. Fusion researchers were in regular contact with both Sussmann and Elias about the project in the summer and fall of 2016. Sullivan also personally met with Elias, who briefed him on Fusion’s opposition research, according to the sources.

Sullivan maintained in congressional testimony in December 2017 that he didn’t know of Fusion’s involvement in the Alfa Bank opposition research. In the same closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, he also denied knowing anything about Fusion in 2016 or who was conducting the opposition research for the campaign.

“Marc [Elias] … would occasionally give us updates on the opposition research they were conducting, but I didn’t know what the nature of that effort was – inside effort, outside effort, who was funding it, who was doing it, anything like that,” Sullivan stated under oath.

Jake Sullivan’s December 2017 House testimony may put him in perjury jeopardy.
(Credit: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence)

Sullivan also testified he didn’t know that Perkins Coie, the law firm where Elias and Sussmann were partners, was working for the Clinton campaign until October 2017, when it was reported in the media as part of stories revealing the campaign’s contract with Fusion, which also produced the so-called Steele dossier. Sullivan maintained he didn’t even know that the politically prominent Elias worked for Perkins Coie, a well-known Democratic law firm. Major media stories from 2016 routinely identified Elias as “general counsel for the Clinton campaign” and a “partner at Perkins Coie.”

“To be honest with you, Marc wears a tremendous number of hats, so I wasn’t sure who he was representing,” Sullivan testified. “I sort of thought he was, you know, just talking to us as, you know, a fellow traveler in this — in this campaign effort.” (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 9/23/2021)  (Archive)

Michael Sussmann (Credit: public domain)

“…The entire exchange raises the question: Who, very precisely, is the “client” that Sussmann refers to? His billing for the described activities—which include his meeting with the FBI’s Baker—went to the Clinton Campaign. But the Clinton Campaign can’t engage in conversations with Sussmann. So who was the person he spoke with? Was it Marc Elias, the General Counsel for the Clinton Campaign? But Elias would not strictly speaking have been his “client”. He would have been his client’s lawyer. Which leads to the question, When Sussmann refers to his “client”, is he referring to Hillary Clinton in person?

Notice that at the beginning Sussmann openly states that his meeting with Baker was at the direction of his “client”. Later he tries to qualify that, but only in the sense that he and his “client” are on the same page so “direction” wasn’t really necessary.

Q: When you decided to engage the two principals, one [the FBI’s Baker] in September, [2016] and the general counsel of “Agency-2” in December, you were doing that on your own volition, based on information another client provided you. Is that correct?

A: No. [ He was not simply acting on his own.]

Q: So what was — so did your client direct you to have those conversations?

A: Yes. [He was acting at the explicit direction of his client in contacting Baker.]

Q: Okay. And your client also was witting of you going to [Agency-2] in February to disclose the information that individual had provided you?

A: Yes. [In February, 2017, with Trump in the WH, Sussmann is still working the Alfa Bank hoax at the direction of this client.]

…

Q: Okay. I want to ask you, so you mentioned that your client directed you to have these engagements with the FBI and [redacted] and to disseminate the information that client provided you. Is that correct?

A: Well, I apologize for the double negative. It isn’t not correct, but when you say my client directed me, we had a conversation, as lawyers do with their clients, about client needs and objectives and the best course to take for a client. And so it may have been a decision that we came to together. I mean, I don’t want to imply that I was sort of directed to do something against my better judgment or that we were in any sort of conflict, but this was — I think it’s most accurate to say it was done on behalf of my client.

Unfortunately, Durham only presents this tantalizing exchange as evidence that Sussmann directly contradicted—to Congress—what he had said to Baker.” (Read more: Meaning In History, 9/16/2021)  (Archive)

Michael Sussmann (Credit: Chalet Reports)

“A grand jury has indicted Michael Sussmann, the lawyer accused of making false statements during the 2016 presidential campaign to slander then-candidate Donald Trump in the final months of the election.

Sussmann, the indictment charges, “lied about the capacity in which he was providing … allegations to the FBI” of potential cyber links between a Russian bank and a company owned by former president Donald Trump.

Durham is pursuing a prosecutorial theory that Sussmann was secretly representing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, which was a client of Sussmann’s firm, these people said. –Washington Post

Notably, this is far from over as Special Counsel Durham’s office pointed out in the statement that the investigation is “ongoing.” (Read more: Zero Hedge, 9/16/2021) (Archive)

Highlights from the Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross (and others):

There it is https://t.co/90U6YqQUrf

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) September 16, 2021

The FBI opened an investigation of Alfa Bank based on the info that Michael Sussmann gave to James Baker, even though Sussmann knew the info was bogus. As Durham notes, the FBI wasted its time and resources chasing that false lead pic.twitter.com/r5zcURtwKO

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) September 16, 2021

I should stop here but this is a damning indictment of FBI, not Sussmann. Sussmann is a Perkins Coie lawyer. We expect this behavior. It does not matter who hands the evidence to FBI. FBI should have asked where did you get this from so they can verify it. Looks like they didn’t. pic.twitter.com/43d03Be5zc

— Nerd Immunity (@wakeywakey16) September 16, 2021

Sussmann billed the Clinton campaign for the time he spent meeting with reporters to plant the phony Alfa Bank story pic.twitter.com/npUvss9vVT

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) September 16, 2021

(Timeline editor’s note: We will be creating several timeline entries to cover the wealth of information in the 27-page indictment. You can save Michael Sussmann’s tag to keep up with what is added.)

A close-up of Clinton is captured during the second 2016 presidential debate on October 9, 2016. (Credit: public domain)

“The Indictment of Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman for allegedly lying to the FBI has a lot of people grumbling about how long it took prosecutor John Durham to finally come up with an indictment of someone with regard to the Russia collusion hoax. And even then, while Sussman was an important lawyer at an important Democrat operative law firm, his indictment has a “that’s it?” feel to it.

But, the 27-page Indictment is a wealth of information, and hopefully a roadmap to wider and more substantial prosecutions (you can’t take my hope away!). What the indictment demonstrates is that the Russia collusion claim leveled against Donald Trump and the Trump campaign was a fabrication of Hillary Clinton operatives who peddled the fraud to the media and FBI, allowing Clinton to use the media reports in the campaign against Trump.

Much like the fabricated Steele Dossier, also paid for and arranged by Clinton operatives, Hillary Clinton and Clintonworld perpetrated a massive fraud on the American public which not only manipulated the election process but also froze the Trump presidency and nearly paralyzed the nation politically for years.

We have had some pretty terrible politicians in our lifetime, and it’s always dangerous to say “the worst” — but the Russia collusion hoax fabricated by Hillary Clinton operatives proves beyond little doubt that Hillary Clinton is the most systemically manipulative politician of our lifetime. (Read more: Legal Insurrection, 9/16/2021) (Archive)

(…) the indictment alleges, Sussmann was working for the Clinton campaign and another client — an unidentified cyber expert and executive (Tech Executive-1) — who was expecting to get an important government cybersecurity job if Clinton was elected. (The executive made clear that he — the indictment describes a he — had no interest in working for Trump.)

What Durham describes in the indictment will confirm many people in their most cynical perceptions of a sinister Washington deep state. Tech Executive-1 owned Internet companies that offered Domain Name Service “resolution services.” The indictment explains that these involve the lucrative business of translating recognizable Internet domain names (e.g., http://www.google.com) to numerical IP addresses (e.g. 123.456.7.89.). These private companies have arrangements with the government that provide them with access to a great deal of nonpublic information about Internet traffic.

The government provides this privileged access because the companies are supposed to help with cybersecurity. But Tech Executive-1 and Perkins Coie are said to have exploited this access for political purposes.

Marc Elias (Credit: Getty Images)

Tech Executive-1 was having contact with Sussmann and another Perkins Coie lawyer (who is not identified in the indictment, but appears to be Marc Elias, who was the main lawyer at the firm for Clinton and the DNC), and with what is identified as a “U.S. investigative firm.” That firm appears to be Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson’s oppo-research outfit that was retained by Perkins Coie, on behalf of the Clinton campaign, to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump — the exercise that resulted in the farcical “Steele Dossier,” generated principally by Christopher Steele, the former British spy recruited by Simpson for that purpose.

In a nutshell, then, people closely connected to the Clinton campaign use privileged access to nonpublic information for political purposes. They concoct it into a political narrative that they know is baseless but can be convincingly spun to suggest Trump is in cahoots with Putin. They then simultaneously peddle that story line to the media and the FBI — the latter of which opens an investigation of Trump because the Clinton team, in this instance Sussmann, misrepresents its intentions. Sussmann was supposedly bringing this alarming “evidence” to the FBI not for political purposes but because he and his associates were well-meaning citizens concerned about national security. Naturally in this cozy world, Sussmann is a former Department of Justice cybersecurity official who traded on his long-standing professional relationship with Baker, the Bureau’s lawyer.

The indictment details that researchers at Tech Executive-1’s companies were very uncomfortable being tasked to run extensive queries about Trump and his campaign in their databases, but they did it because Tech Executive-1 was a powerful person. The researchers also highlighted significant weaknesses in the Trump–Russia narrative that they were being asked to weave, to the point that even Tech Executive-1 acknowledged it was a “red herring.” But because the objective was to craft a political theme that would damage Trump, rather than to prove an actual national-security peril, this information was kept from the government.” (Read more: The National Review, 9/16/2021)  (Archive)

Researcher @FOOL_NELSON tweets compelling information that suggest who Tech Executive 1 could be:

NEW: McCain’s committee enlisted Dan Jones to examine the Trump-Alfa server connection… Furthermore, on August 18, 2021 Alfa deposed Jones and he is now trying to seek a declaratory judgement that exhibits for the deposition are confidential. (H/t @walkafyre and @joyofsiam2) https://t.co/eflgMMNU9G pic.twitter.com/LfHsSpCteT

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) September 15, 2021

3/ Given “Max/@michaelsuss‘s client” was a “John McCain Republican”, Joffe is a good candidate given he donated to a Republican while living in Arizona and his company @Neustar has been represented by Perkins Coie. https://t.co/CfvZA1tgdi https://t.co/mGc8GqYXAc pic.twitter.com/AtJvkbwobL

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) September 15, 2021

5/ @Neustar just got sold https://t.co/gWulSyWQDa

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) September 16, 2021

7/ Rodney Joffe is hypothetically Tech executive-1 in the #Durham indictment.

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) September 17, 2021

Rodney Joffe (Credit: Neustar)

9/ And @mgEyesOpen ends the Tech executive-1 discussion Max Joffe. https://t.co/mSMKpV8glA https://t.co/kuNs7uywzo

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) September 17, 2021

11/ Hey @FranklinFoer, who did you get the Manafort emails from? https://t.co/AorLkugvWC pic.twitter.com/GgyE2qM1KA

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) September 17, 2021

13/ https://t.co/G5aeS589Pq

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) September 17, 2021

On pages 6 and 7 of the Sussmann indictment,  “Tech Executive-1” is most likely Rodney Joffe of Neustar and is now a target of the investigation.  “Campaign Lawyer-1” is Marc Elias who until recently was a partner with Perkins Coie. The “U.S. Investigative Firm” is probably Fusion GPS.

Sussman Indictment, paragraph 20, page 6

Sussmann indictment, page 7

From the Sussmann indictment, pages 16 and 17 (paragraph e in particular),  Hillary’s campaign manager was Robby Mook. Jennifer Palmieri was Hillary’s communications director, and Jake Sullivan was Hillary’s foreign policy advisor.

Sussman Indictment, page 16

Sussman indictment, page 17

Franklin Foer (Credit: Curtis Brown)

“I have a column today in the Hill on the indictment of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann by Special Counsel John Durham. The indictment fills in a great number of gaps on one of the Russian collusion allegations pushed by the Clinton campaign: Alpha bank. Sussman and others reportedly pushed the implausible claim that the Russian bank served as a conduit for communications between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. The indictment removes the identity of key actors like a “Tech Executive” who used his connections with an Internet company to help the Clinton campaign (and said he was promised a top cyber security position in the widely anticipated Clinton Administration). One of those figures however may have been identified: “Reporter-2.” Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer wrote an article for Slate that seems to track the account of the indictment and, as such, raises questions over his role as a conduit for the Clinton campaign’s effort to spread the false story.

The indictment discusses how Fusion GPS pushed for the publication of the story, telling Foer that it was “time to hurry” on the story.:

“The Investigative Firm Employee’s email stated, ‘time to hurry’ suggesting that Reporter-2 should hurry to publish an article regarding the Russian Bank-1 allegations. In response, Reporter-2 emailed to the Investigative Firm Employee a draft article regarding the Russian Bank-1 allegations, along with the cover message: ‘Here’s the first 2500 words.’”

The indictment states Reporter-2 published the article “on or about the following day, October, 31, 2016.” That is when Slate published a piece written by Foer headlined, “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?”  The story then was pushed by the Clinton campaign.

Foer has not addressed this close coordination with Fusion, including the showing of an advanced copy of his article. He later stated the following in the Atlantic:

“Every article is an exercise in cost-benefit analysis; each act of publication entails a risk of getting it wrong, and sometimes events force journalists to assume greater risk than they would in other circumstances. Before I published the server story, I asked myself a fairly corny question: How would I sleep the next week if Donald Trump were elected president, knowing that I had sat on a potentially important piece of information? In the end, Trump was elected president, and I still slept badly.” 

(Read more: Jonathan Turley, 9/18/2021)  (Archive)

We won’t speculate who the other government agency is but will note this sentence in the Sussmann indictment:

“Sussmann met with two “Agency-2” employees (“Employee-1” and “Employee-2″) at a location outside the District of Columbia.” …and he again falsely claimed that, “he was not representing a particular client.”

Sussmann indictment, Page 23

Sussman indictment, Page 24

Sussmann indictment, Pages 24-25

Michael Sussmann, Clinton campaign lawyer: John Durham’s indictment against him cites eight who allegedly conspired with him.
(Credit: Perkins Coie)

Cybersecurity experts who held lucrative Pentagon and homeland security contracts and high-level security clearances are under investigation for potentially abusing their government privileges to aid a 2016 Clinton campaign plot to falsely link Donald Trump to Russia and trigger an FBI investigation of him and his campaign, according to several sources familiar with the work of Special Counsel John Durham.

Durham is investigating whether they were involved in a scheme to misuse sensitive, nonpublic Internet data, which they had access to through their government contracts, to dredge up derogatory information on Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign in 2016 and again in 2017, sources say — political dirt that sent FBI investigators on a wild goose chase. Prosecutors are also investigating whether some of the data presented to the FBI was faked or forged.

These sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive law enforcement matter, said Durham’s investigators have subpoenaed the contractors to turn over documents and testify before a federal grand jury hearing the case. The investigators are exploring potential criminal charges including giving false information to federal agents and defrauding the government, the sources said.

(…) The sources familiar with the probe have confirmed that the leader of the team of contractors was Rodney L. Joffe, who has regularly advised the Biden White House on cybersecurity and infrastructure policies. Until last month he was the chief cybersecurity officer at Washington tech contractor Neustar Inc., which federal civil court records show was a longtime client of Sussmann at Perkins Coie, a prominent Democratic law firm recently subpoenaed by Durham. Joffe, 66, has not been charged with a crime.

Neustar has removed Joffe’s blog posts from its website. “He no longer works for us,” a spokeswoman said.

A powerful and influential player in the tech world, Joffe tasked a group of computer contractors connected to the Georgia Institute of Technology with finding “anything” in Internet data that would link Trump to Russia and make Democratic “VIPs happy,” according to an August 2016 email Joffe sent to the researchers. The next month, the group accused Trump of maintaining secret backchannel communications to the Kremlin through the email servers of Russia-based Alfa Bank. Those accusations were later determined to be false by the FBI, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Justice Department inspector general and a Senate intelligence panel.

Joffe’s lawyer has described his client as “apolitical.” He said Joffe brought Sussmann information about Trump he believed to be true out of concern for the nation.

Steven Tyrrell, a white-collar criminal defense attorney specializing in fraud cases, has confirmed that his client Joffe is the person referred to as “Tech Executive-1” throughout the Sussmann indictment. “Tech Executive-1 exploited his access to nonpublic data at multiple Internet companies to conduct opposition research concerning Trump,” Durham’s grand jury stated. “In furtherance of these efforts, [Joffe] had enlisted, and was continuing to enlist, the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university [Georgia Tech] who were receiving and analyzing Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract.”

Georgia Institute of Technology (Credit: Georgia Tech University)

The indictment also alleges that the computer scientists knew the Internet data they compiled was innocuous but sent it to the FBI anyway, sending agents down a dead end: “Sussmann, [Joffe] and [Perkins Coie] had coordinated, and were continuing to coordinate, with representatives and agents of the Clinton campaign with regard to the data and written materials that Sussmann gave to the FBI and the media.”

Maggie Goodlander: Jake Sullivan’s wife worked for Attorney General Merrick Garland as a law clerk when he was a federal judge. That could create a conflict for Garland, who controls the purse strings to Durham’s investigation. (Credit: LinkedIn)

One of the campaign representatives with whom Joffe coordinated was Jake Sullivan, who was acting as Clinton’s foreign policy adviser, as RealClearInvestigations first reported. Now serving in the White House as President Biden’s national security adviser, Sullivan is under scrutiny for statements he made under oath to Congress about his knowledge of the Trump-Alfa research project. In a potential conflict of interest, Attorney General Merrick Garland employed Sullivan’s wife Maggie as a law clerk when he was a federal judge. Garland controls the purse strings to Durham’s investigation and whether his final report will be released to the public.

At the time, Joffe was advising President Obama on security matters and positioning himself for a top cybersecurity post in an anticipated Clinton administration. “I was tentatively offered the top [cybersecurity] job by the Democrats when it looked like they’d win,” he revealed in a November 2016 email obtained by prosecutors.

Meanwhile, the Georgia Tech researchers were vying for a $17 million Pentagon contract to research cybersecurity, which they landed in November 2016, federal documents show.

Government funding in hand, they continued mining nonpublic data on Trump after he took office in 2017 — as Sussmann, Sullivan and other former Clinton campaign officials renewed their effort to connect Trump to Alfa Bank. This time, they enlisted former FBI analyst-turned-Democratic-operative, Dan Jones, to re-engage the FBI, while Sussmann attempted to get the CIA interested in the Internet data, as RCI first reported. Investigators have also subpoenaed Jones, who did not respond to requests for comment.

(…) Tyrrell insisted that Joffe had “no idea [Sussmann’s] firm represented the Clinton campaign,” even though he worked closely with Sussmann and another well-known campaign lawyer, Marc Elias — as well as with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, an opposition-research firm hired by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump in 2016. He added that his client “felt it was his patriotic duty to share [the report on Trump] with the FBI.”

However, Durham’s investigation uncovered emails revealing that Joffe knew the narrative they were creating about Trump having a secret hotline to Russian President Vladimir Putin was tenuous at best. In fact, Joffe himself called the data used to back up the narrative a “red herring.” In another email, Joffe said he had been promised a high post if Clinton were elected, suggesting he may have had a personal motivation to make a sinister connection between Russia and Trump. He added that he had no interest working for Trump: “I definitely would not take the job under Trump.”

“Joffe was doing what he was doing to get that plum job,” former FBI counterintelligence official Mark Wauck said in an interview. “And Sussmann was working with Joffe because Joffe was needed for the Clinton campaign’s ‘confidential project,’ ” which was the term Sussman used to describe their data research in billing records.

Joffe advised President Obama on security matters and was positioning himself for a top cybersecurity post in an anticipated Clinton administration. (Credit: Messaging Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group)

At the time, Joffe was a volunteer cybersecurity adviser to Obama and visited the White House several times during his administration, Secret Service entrance logs show. In 2013, then-FBI Director James Comey gave him an award recognizing his work helping agents investigate a major cybersecurity case.

Joffe is the “Max” quoted in media articles promoting the secret cyber plot targeting Trump, a code name likely given him by Simpson, who has a son named Max. The stories described “Max” as a “John McCain Republican.” In 2017, Joffe, who spent much of his career in the late McCain’s home state of Arizona before moving to Washington, helped rekindle the Trump-Alfa tale by plumbing more data and helping feed the information to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which McCain chaired.

Joffe’s boss during the 2016 campaign was then-Neustar President Lisa Hook, a major Democratic Party donor who publicly endorsed Clinton and contributed to her campaigns. Records show her contributions to Democrats, including Joe Biden and Obama, total more than $249,000. In 2011, Obama appointed Hook to his National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.

April Lorenzen, aka “Tea Leaves”: Emails Durham uncovered reveal that she actually discussed “faking” Internet traffic. (Credit: AprilLorenzen.com)

(…) Joffe worked closely with another top computer scientist assigned to the Alfa project, who has used the pseudonym “Tea Leaves,” as well as masculine pronouns, in media stories to disguise her identity. The operative has been identified by her attorney as April D. Lorenzen, who supplied so-called Domain Name System (or DNS) logs from proprietary holdings — the foundation for the whole conspiracy charge — and helped compile them for the spurious report that was fed to the FBI, according to the indictment.

A registered Democrat, Lorenzen was tasked by Joffe with making a Trump connection from the data along with the researchers from Georgia Tech, where she has worked as a guest researcher since 2007.

Identified as “Originator-1” in the Durham indictment, she, like her colleague Joffe, is a key subject of the investigation and faces a host of legal issues, the sources close to the case said. Emails the investigators uncovered reveal that Lorenzen discussed “faking” Internet traffic with the Georgia Tech researchers, although the context of her remarks are unclear.

Prosecutors suggested Lorenzen was trying to create an “inference” of Trump-Russia communications from DNS data that wasn’t there.

The DNS system acts as the phonebook of the Internet, translating domain names for emails and websites into IP (Internet Protocol) addresses in order for Web browsers to easily interact. The traffic leaves a record known as DNS “lookups,” which is basically the pinging back and forth between computer servers.

Lorenzen has retained white-collar criminal defense lawyer Michael J. Connolly of Boston, who said in a statement that Lorenzen was acting in the interest of national security, not politics, and “any suggestion that she engaged in wrongdoing is unequivocally false.”

She specializes in identifying “spoofed domains” used for email phishing scams.

In her bio, Lorenzen also said she currently serves “as the principal investigator for a critical infrastructure supply-chain cybersecurity notification research project.” She did not provide further details about the project. However, she regularly trains and briefs federal law enforcement agencies about cybersecurity issues.

L. Jean Camp, computer science professor: Helped propagate the Trump-Alfa Bank conspiracy theory in the media. (Credit: Indiana.edu)

A colleague of Lorenzen who features prominently in the project to link Trump to the Russian bank, but who is not referenced in the indictment, is L. Jean Camp, an Indiana University computer science professor who posted the dodgy data on her website and helped propagate the conspiracy theory in the media. “This person has technical authority and access to data,” she said of “Tea Leaves,” the originator of the data, vouching for her friend Lorenzen while hiding her identity.

Camp is a Democratic activist and major Hillary Clinton booster and donor. Federal campaign records show she contributed at least $5,910 to Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 campaigns, including thousands of dollars in donations around the time she and the Clinton campaign were peddling the Trump-Alfa conspiracy theory.

Camp called for a full-blown FBI investigation into the data she pushed in the media. When the FBI dropped the case in February 2017, Camp lashed out at the bureau for closing the Trump email probe after reopening the Clinton email case. In a March 2017 tweet, she fumed, “Why did FBI kill this story before election to focus on Her Emails?” She also called for people to “join the resistance” against Trump.

Paul Vixie (Credit: Medium)

Another “computer scientist” tied to the project was Paul Vixie, a colleague of Joffe who, like Joffe, gave $250 in 2000 to Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico, who was close to the late Sen. John McCain, who feuded with Trump, federal campaign records show. Vixie, who reviewed the DNS logs and suggested in the media that Trump and Alfa Bank were engaged in a “criminal syndicate,” supported Clinton’s run for president and bashed Trump on Twitter.

“Hillary presented herself as an experienced politician who is prepared to assume the presidency,” he tweeted in 2016. He called Trump a “fake Republican” who “will finish out his life in prison,” he asserted in a 2020 tweet.

Faked Evidence?

The sources familiar with the investigation note that Durham is also using the grand jury to probe whether some of the Internet data files the Clinton campaign shopped to the FBI were forged or fabricated to create the appearance of suspicious Internet communications between the Russian bank and Trump.

Providing the FBI false evidence is a crime. Former assistant FBI director Chris Swecker told RCI that statutes enforcing mail and wire fraud may be invoked as part of the “criminal conspiracy case” Durham is building.

The materials Sussmann provided bureau headquarters in September 2016, in the heat of the presidential race, included two thumb drives containing DNS logs that Sussmann and Joffe claimed showed patterns of covert email communications between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, according to the indictment.

The authenticity of the DNS lookup records Sussmann presented to the FBI in the electronic files, along with three “white papers” portraying innocuous marketing pinging between Alfa and Trump servers as a nefarious Russian backchannel, has been called into question by several sources.

Alfa Bank, which also operates in the U.S., commissioned two studies that found the DNS data compiled by Joffe and his computer operatives were formatted differently than the bank server’s DNS logs, and one study posited that the DNS activity may have been “artificially created.”

Manos Antonakakis: One of two Georgia Tech researchers cited by Durham in his indictment. (Credit: gatech.edu)

Also, independent cyber forensics experts found that the emails released by researchers bore timestamps that did not match up with actual activity on the servers, suggesting they may have been altered. The Florida-based marketing firm Cendyn, which administered the alleged Trump server (which was owned by a third-party tech firm and housed in Pennsylvania, not New York), reported its device sent its last marketing email in March 2016, but the DNS logs provided by computer researchers claimed to show a May-September window of high-volume traffic.

Experts have also noted that the DNS logs Sussmann and his group presented as evidence to the FBI had been pasted into a text file, where they could have been edited.

In the Sussmann indictment, the grand jury described the DNS logs as appearing to be real, but not necessarily so. For instance, it noted that one of the computer researchers — cited as “Tea Leaves,” or Lorenzen — had “assembled purported DNS data reflecting apparent DNS lookups between [the] Russian bank and [a Trump] email domain.” The caveats “purported” and “apparent” indicate Durham and his investigators may be skeptical the data are real.

Also, the indictment stated that Joffe “shared certain results of these data searches and analysis” with Sussmann for the FBI to investigate, suggesting he may have cherry-picked the data to fit a preconceived “narrative,” – or “storyline,” as the computer researchers also referred to it in emails obtained by Durham.

Emails the independent prosecutor uncovered reveal that Joffe and the research team he recruited actually discussed “faking” Internet traffic.

“It would be possible to ‘fill out a sales form on two websites, faking the other company’s email address in each form,’ and thereby cause them ‘to appear to communicate with each other in DNS,’ ” Lorenzen suggested.

One Georgia Tech researcher warned Joffe in mid-2016, in the middle of their fishing expedition, of the lack of evidence: “We cannot technically make any claims that would fly public scrutiny. The only thing that drives us at this point is that we just do not like [Trump].”

Tyrrell asserted that his client Joffe “stands behind the rigorous research and analysis that was conducted, culminating in the report he felt was his patriotic duty to share with the FBI.”

Using nonpublic data from a federal research contract to bait the FBI into investigating Trump could constitute a breach of contract and nondisclosure agreements. Swecker, who has worked with Durham on past white-collar criminal cases, said the special prosecutor may be seeking further indictments on government grant and contract fraud charges.

Washington agencies provide such tech contractors privileged access to massive caches of sensitive, nonpublic information about Internet traffic to help combat cyber-crimes.

In ancient Greek religion, Nemesis, also called Rhamnousia or Rhamnusia, is the goddess who enacts retribution against those who succumb to hubris, arrogance before the gods. (Credit: Wikipedia)

On Nov. 17, 2016, the Pentagon awarded Georgia Tech a cybersecurity research contract worth more than $17 million. The project, dubbed “Rhamnousia,” would allow researchers to “sift through existing and new data sets” to find “bad actors” on the Internet. The indictment said the researchers had been provided “early access to Internet data in order to establish a ‘proof of concept’ for work under the contract.” Of course, the government did not pay the researchers to look for dirt on Trump in the sensitive DNS databases.

“The primary purpose of the contract,” the indictment noted, “was for researchers to receive and analyze large quantities of DNS data in order to identify the perpetrators of malicious cyber-attacks and protect U.S. national security.”

Instead, the scientists took the political fishing expedition. According to the indictment, Joffe directed Lorenzen and the two university researchers to “search broadly through Internet data for any information about Trump’s potential ties to Russia.”

The Georgia Tech researchers named as “investigators” on the project included David Dagon and Manos Antonakakis, who the sources confirmed are the two university researchers cited by Durham in his indictment. Antonakakis is the “Researcher-1” referenced in the indictment whom the grand jury said remarked in an email that “the only thing that drives us is that we just do not like [Trump.].”

The original $17 million Rhamnousia contract was approved for five years, federal contracting records show. But the program was recently renewed and has grown into a more than $25 million Defense Department contract — led by the same Georgia Tech research team.” (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 10/07/2021)  (Archive)

(…) According to the sources, Durham also has found evidence Sussmann misled the CIA, another front in the scandal being reported here for the first time. In December 2016, the sources say Sussmann phoned the general counsel at the agency and told her the same story about the supposed secret server – at the same time the CIA was compiling a national intelligence report that accused Putin of meddling in the election to help Trump win.

Caroline Krass (Credit: CIA Wikipedia)

Sussmann told Caroline Krass, then the agency’s top attorney, that he had information that may help her with a review President Obama had ordered of all intelligence related to the election and Russia, known as the Intelligence Community Assessment. The review ended up including an annex with several unfounded and since-debunked allegations against Trump developed by the Clinton campaign.

It’s not clear if the two-page annex, which claimed the allegations were “consistent with the judgments in this assessment,” included the Alfa Bank canard. Before it was made public, several sections had been redacted. But after Sussmann conveyed the information to Krass, an Obama appointee, she told him she would consider it for the intelligence review of Russian interference, which tracks with Sussmann’s 2017 closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. (Krass’ name is blacked out in the declassified transcript, but sources familiar with Sussmann’s testimony confirmed that he identified her as his CIA contact.)

“We’re interested,” said Krass, who left the agency several months later. “We’re doing this review and I’ll speak to someone here.”

It’s not known if Sussmann failed to inform the top CIA lawyer that he was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign, as he’s alleged to have done at the FBI. Attempts to reach Krass, who now serves as Biden’s top lawyer at the Pentagon, were unsuccessful.

But in his return trip to the CIA after the election, Sussmann “stated falsely – as he previously had stated to the FBI general counsel – that he was ‘not representing a particular client,’ ” according to the Durham indictment, which cites a contemporaneous memo drafted by two agency officials with whom Sussmann met that memorializes their meeting. (The document refers to the CIA by the pseudonym “Agency-2.” Sources confirm Agency-2 is the CIA.)

Remarkably, the CIA did not ask for the source of Sussmann’s walk-in tip, including where he got several data files he gave the agency. The FBI exhibited a similar lack of curiosity when Sussmann told it about the false Trump/Alfa Bank connection.  (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 9/23/2021)  (Archive)

Revelations from the #SussmanIndictment led me to info that exposes a much bigger conspiracy!

I’ve found information that connects the Huber investigation into theft of @NSA data to Durham’s investigation of the Clinton Campaign!

It’s worse than we thought!
#ButNothingsHappening

Yesterday @musescry mentioned my 1st thread on Twitter in May 2018, where I laid out the case that from at least 2015, Hillary Clinton & her oppo research team (Cody Shearer & Sid Blumenthal) were under investigation for having illegal access to NSA data.

1) It seemed obvious from the start that the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was being played to lose. What if there was a second investigation designed to approach it from the bottom up? pic.twitter.com/bcQLhlFf0F

— DawsonSField (@DawsonSField) May 23, 2018

To sum up, Blumenthal was emailing HRC NSA intercepted data & reports until he got hacked by Guccifer.

State Dept released 1 of these emails publicly, not knowing it was NSA reporting. NSA & FBI began an investigation into how Hillary was getting NSA intercepts in private emails.

That investigation led to the FBI’s WFO where it was discovered that contractors had been given illegal access to raw NSA data. Triggering an NSA investigation of all “About Queries” on NSA data.

Same day this was discovered, McCabe & Page were trying to ‘fix’ this issue!

That access was closed on 04/18/16 so another method of spying had to be conducted. While the hunt was on for the “About Query” spies…

Much of this was exposed with the declassification of this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order!

On 10/21/16, the day @carterwpage’s FISA was signed, NSA notified the FIS Court that DOJ National Security Division had failed to mention the contractor access in their annual report of minimization violations filed in Sept. 2016 to renew FISA access for 2017.

My theory is that Page joined the Trump campaign as bait for Spygate to catch those conducting the About Queries. He joined soon after the access was discovered & 3 weeks before it was closed. This stolen intel was then laundered into the Steele Dossier & used to get the FISA.

Now we get back to the current story, Sussmann’s indictment details that the data spying on Trump was run from 05/04/16 – 7/29/16.

So Tea Leaves was spying 2 weeks after that contractor access to about queries was ended. There were likely multiple unauthorized accesses though.

I have a very detailed thread on the indictment. One error though, I thought FBI was Agency 1. It looks like it was Department of Defense, specifically the National Security Agency. This is the new info in this thread.

Perkins Coie lawyer who billed Hillary Clinton’s campaign for creating fake report framing Trump for Russian Collusion is indicted by a federal grand jury under Special Counsel John Durham.#ButNothingsHappening https://t.co/bn2UcdDCB4

— DawsonSField (@DawsonSField) September 16, 2021

Sussman enlisted his client at Neustar to help the DNC & HRC portray Trump as a Russian agent to influence the 2016 election.

TE-1 likely Rodney Joffe participated in that effort days after his company lost a $453M FCC contract, did he hope to get it back?

Regaining a $453M a year contract would be a powerful motive
7/22/16 Neustar loses FCC contract
Late July TE-1 tells Sussmann about the data
7/26/16 HRC approves the plan
7/29/16 PC, FGPS, & Hillary’s staff meet
7/29/16 Sussmann briefs Steele on Alfa
7/29/16 Last date in the data pic.twitter.com/EosJ97j8qg

— DawsonSField (@DawsonSField) September 19, 2021

TE-1 ordered employees of one of his companies to illegally search data that Neustar held as part of a sensitive relationship with NSA.

#Spygate was not FBI spying on Trump, it is an NSA contractor offered a job by the Clinton Campaign spying upon Trump & his associates!

Since 1977, Neustar has had access to the metadata of almost every mobile phone call & text in the US & Canada. They also provided law enforcement with subpoenaed phone records, XXX million times a year. Letting them know who every detective & agent in America was investigating…

That is the contract they were officially notified that they were losing! Half of their revenue & part of their ability to spy on law enforcement…

Seems like a motive to hope a friendly regime would cancel that deal before it was implemented in 2018.

Yahoo!News

What other business was Neustar doing? Providing data & services for the NSA & their surveillance programs.

Access that was given to university researchers to query information about Trump & his associates.

ZDNet

A great thread on Neustar & their connections:

Who is Tech Executive-1?

Feb 2015 (aprox.)
TE-1 retains Sussmann for assistance with a USG agency

Internet Company-1 used Sussmann as outside council and was a significant source of income for [Perkins Coie]

H/T @DawsonSField @FOOL_NELSON pic.twitter.com/fbr5TWqkaC

— Fisher Ames (@nimkef) September 18, 2021

Neustar was hiring a wide variety of Swampy players to lobby the FCC & lawmakers to block the contract change to Ericsson. Approaching both sides of the Swamp in hiring Chertoff & Sussmann.

Neustar focused it’s opposition to Ericsson’s bid on the grounds that they were a foreign company & a threat to US cybersecurity with access to that data.
Intelligence & cyber officials started their Swampy campaign in favor of Neustar keeping the contract https://t.co/dHrHTvAyzE

— DawsonSField (@DawsonSField) September 18, 2021

Neustar was billed as the most powerful company that you have never heard of!

The New American

In fact, Shane Harris a reporter rumored to have Fusion GPS contacts, was pushing a Joffe sourced story in 2014 lobbying for Neustar to be given control of ALL of NSA’s phone data so they could claim the govt didn’t possess it. To violate FISA.

Foreign Policy

An investigation of illegal about queries almost certainly lead to the NSA’s data center in Utah, where federal crimes are investigated by US Attorney John Huber. Huber’s work in early 2017 was considered important, he was an Obama USA’s reappointed by Trump to continue his work.

Huber was assigned the investigation into spying upon the Trump campaign because NSA’s data center was built in Camp Williams, Utah from 2011-2013.

Guess who was NSA’s contractor for that data center? Neustar!

Utah Data Center – Wikipedia

In Nuestar’s 2011 SEC report submitted in early 2012, they report that they now lease 8000 sqft of office space in Utah. It was not in their previous year’s report so it is opened in 2011.

But where in Utah?

I found them in a technology park in Orem, Utah!

Located about 7 miles from the NSA’s Data Center, I won’t share the address. Again that doxing thing.
I also found employees on networking sites who went to work for Neustar in Nov. of 2011 as the data center was being constructed!

In July 2017, Neustar withdrew all of it’s stock offerings as part of a merger & removed the requirement to file public data with SEC so the report from early 2016 shows the office still on their books. Searches show that they may still rent that office today.

So USA Huber was investigating the leaks of data from NSA’s Utah center where TE-1 was giving access to researchsers spying on Trump.

In 2018, USA Durham was investigating FBI personnel for leaks to reporters of classified information about NSA & Yahoo!

Emptywheel

This leak investigation exonerated Baker of the leak accusations but left an ‘inference’ that he was a leaker about NSA programs.

Durham was then tasked with investigating Baker for Russian Collusion leaks of NSA data.

Baker knew it was unusual for an attorney to bring him evidence for a case. Yet that is what Sussmann did in Sept of 2016 while he was trying to falsely accuse Trump of being a Russian agent & get the press to cover FBI involvement.

Then Republicans get news they did not expect, that Baker was being investigated by Durham.

Since he has not been charged with this second leak either, it is unlikely that he is guilty & I’ll explain why!

So who is Baker accused of leaking NSA information to? Reporters who claimed they got information from a senior FBI official. BUT who actually got the info from Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS, & Chris Steele!
So Baker was accused of leaks the HRC frame-up team coordinated!

It’s obvious this info was given to Baker instead of CH agents, because Baker was authorized to speak to the press.

Then when provided with the documents by HRC’s team, they called Baker in a planned effort to claim he was the source! All to conceal that Fusion GPS was the source.

This is one of the reporters @Jim_Jordan asked Baker about.

Now imagine if the FBI was running a reporter’s phone records & Neustar is the company providing them to FBI & warning their co-conspirators!

Slate

Imagine when Durham realized that the NSA data used to set up the Russian Collusion narrative, was provided to the reporters by Rodney Joffe of Neustar the suspects in Huber’s investigation of providing researchers access to NSA data & ordering them to illegally spy on Trump!

Other researchers including @walkafyre, @FOOL_NELSON, @ClimateAudit, & @codyave, did great work identify many of the players in this case from Alfa Bank court documents & other sources of evidence.

There is solid attribution that the Univesity involved is Georgia Tech!

Individual researchers have been questioned by Alfa Bank in their lawsuit. But I want to connect a few dots from higher in the thread.

IC-1Neustar, gave Uni-1 Georgia Tech, access to Agency-1s data that it had access to due to a sensitive relationship with the US government.

Originator 1 (Tea Leaves) & Researchers 1 & 2 accessed NSA’s data being provided to them by Neustar to spy on Trump & his associates from July 2016 until February 2017.

Durham claims that had FBI known Sussmann was working for Hillary’s campaign to frame Trump, they would have more quickly identified that these researchers were using NSA data to spy on Trump, even AFTER he became President!

Georgia Tech was in the process of finalizing a contract with NSA to access their data to help identify & attribute cyberattacks against the United States.

I missed this in my first read-through. Tea Leaves was planning to sell this data to Georgia Tech to complete the NSA contract.

But Neustar & & Joffe actually got the contract to sell NSA’s data to Georgia Tech. Giving them early access in exchange for spying upon Trump.

Here is the connecting detail. NSA did not sign the contract with Georgia Tech to perform the work until November 2016.

In 11/29/16, Georgia Tech announced that they had received the contract from NSA, an agency of the Department of Defense.

Georgia Tech

Details from the announcement. $17M to fund the very program described in the indictment. A program used as an excuse & cover to spy not only upon a Presidential campaign, but upon the President of the United States.

I suspect we will find these same researchers & PR specialists leaked President Trump’s phone calls with the leaders of Mexico & Australia in early 2017, damaging our relations with those nations!

Comey even wrote a memo in February 2017 to document that there was illegal spying against the President. Though this NSA revelation probably means that there was no FISA on Flynn, just researchers spying on the National Security Advisor to the President!

In this memo, Comey discusses a FISA on @GenFlynn with Priebus. Then discusses leaks of classified secure phone calls with President of Mexico & PM of Australia. Leaks that probably occurred because of spying upon the White House using the FISA on Page or one on Flynn. pic.twitter.com/kk50MxWd2P

— DawsonSField (@DawsonSField) August 29, 2019

President Trump even took the opportunity to inform Time Magazine in May 2017 that the White House had been spied upon. And did it the night before Comey was fired to make sure it was on the record!

What if I told you the White House was bugged? What if @realDonaldTrump publicized it 15 months ago? What if Mueller is investigating those who bugged the White House? Why are people still ignoring it! #Spygate #MuellerInvestigation pic.twitter.com/vci3oFNCV3

— DawsonSField (@DawsonSField) August 24, 2018

There were likely surveillance devices in the White House too!

Trump took time to point out the secure phone system where the foreign calls were intercepted from.
He also made a big deal about his TiVo & TV, a common compromised spy tool!

19) The President then starts a tour of the private residence portion of the White House. The key feature he shows off? A supposedly encrypted secure telephone! Wonder why that features on a tour where he keeps talking about wiretapping? pic.twitter.com/lBRSSCsi6b

— DawsonSField (@DawsonSField) August 24, 2018

(@DawsonSField/threadreaderapp, 9/23/20201)  (Archive)

(Republished with permission.) 

George Soros contributed $1 million to TDIP. Fund for a Better Future (FBF) donated $2,065,000 in 2017.

“Armed Services panel secretly fought court battle this summer to quash subpoena seeking records of contacts with ex-FBI official Daniel Jones and liberal-funded The Democracy Integrity Project nonprofit.

The efforts to disseminate a now-discredited theory that the Trump campaign had secret computer communications with the Kremlin extended beyond the FBI, CIA, and State Department to the U.S. Senate.

Under the late Sen. John McCain, the Armed Services Committee engaged a former FBI official and his progressive-funded nonprofit to produce a report on the matter, according to court records obtained by Just the News.

The Senate committee, now under Democrats’ control, successfully waged a secret federal court battle this summer to quash a subpoena that would have forced one of its staffers, Thomas Kirk McConnell, to turn over documents and testify about his dealings with former FBI analyst Dan Jones and his nonprofit, The Democracy Integrity Project, the records show.

A spokesman for George Soros confirms the progressive megadonor was one of the financial backers of The Democracy Integrity Project. Tax records show the group raised more than $7 million in donations in 2017 and hired Fusion GPS — the same firm that produced the debunked Steele dossier for Hillary Clinton’s campaign — to pursue allegations of foreign interference in elections.

The episode, recounted in hundreds of pages of federal and D.C. Superior court records, provides extraordinary insight into how current and former government officials in multiple branches of government were able to sustain a Russia collusion theory on artificial life support for years after the FBI first dispelled it.

The legal skirmish with the Senate also provides new context to allegations filed last week by Special Counsel John Durham, who indicted a former DOJ lawyer named Michael Sussmann for lying to the FBI during his efforts to peddle the same debunked story about the Trump campaign, a computer server at the Alfa Bank in Moscow and the Kremlin. Sussmann was being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign when he pitched the allegations to the bureau, court records show. He has pleaded not guilty.” (Read much more: JustTheNews, 9/24/2021)  (Archive)

(Transcript provided by RealClearPolitics)

PETER SCHWEIZER, PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY INSTITUTE: Well, it’s another example, Maria, of basically a strategic retreat by the Biden administration.

I mean, they talk tough. They claim that they’re serious about the challenge represented by China. But what you basically get is retreat. And you saw that enunciated by Joe Biden in his speech to the United Nations earlier in this week in New York, where he basically said, yes, we might have some disagreements with China, but all of that is trumped by these other issues we have to work with them on.

So, the bottom line is, China has said consistently they seek to surpass the United States in political and strategic capabilities. And their goal is to be the supreme power on the globe over the next couple of decades. And the Biden administration says, they’re not a competitor, and they basically are backing down on so many positions that were staked out by the Trump administration.

BARTIROMO: What is this about?

I mean, is this about the current leadership in Washington not wanting to upset China? Or is this about conflicts of interest that the Biden family has with China?

SCHWEIZER: Well, I think it’s probably both.

There’s no question those conflicts exist. Joe Biden himself, two of his family members, his son Hunter Biden, of course, and his brother James Biden, have received millions of dollars from politically connected Chinese interests.

We also know, by the way, Maria, that Joe Biden has been a beneficiary. I mean, the Hunter Biden e-mails show that Hunter Biden was paying some of his dad’s bills while he was vice president of the United States. So you have the conflicts with the Bidens.

If you look at Tony Blinken, if you look at some of the other senior people in this administration, they too have financial conflicts of interest as it relates to China. So, my view is, why is this not being scrutinized by the media?

Certainly, if you were talking about Wall Street money or big oil, they’d be talking about conflicts of interests.

SCHWEIZER: But, for some reason, when it comes to China, they don’t seem to discuss it…

I mean, you have to basically stake this out to genius level corruption. And what I mean, Maria, is that Hunter Biden previously was going around the world striking business deals. That required a certain level of transparency. If you’re sitting on a corporate board, that gets disclosed.

The art world is very, very hard-to-trace money. In fact, the Senate did an investigation in 2019, and concluded that the art world was rife with money laundering, oligarchs moving money around.

So, going into the art world, Hunter Biden has created a circumstance whereby he can collect half-a-million dollars at pop — at a pop for a piece of work, and there’s going to be no paper trail.

And the White House says the ethics solution here — I will put that in quotation marks, Maria — is that nobody’s going to know anything about anyone involved.

Well, that’s absurd. We know that these art deals, these art shows, Hunter Biden’s going to be there schmoozing with people. We know that the man holding these art deals and showing Hunter’s art has said China is a growth market, where he really wants to go.

And we know that this is what the Bidens have done for decades. It’s really not in dispute. So, this is a new avenue for corruption. The money is going to give an opportunity for foreign corrupt intermediaries who want to curry favor with this administration.

And Jill Biden is displaying this artwork in the White House, which is a really nice gallery for foreign dignitaries to see the work.

“Today, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a new report on the FBI’s “Execution of its Woods Procedures for Applications Filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Relating to US Persons.” It’s damning for the FBI.

(…) Last year, IG Horowitz reviewed 29 random FISA applications. He found “that the FBI was not meeting the expectations of its own protocols.” As he reported in March 2020:

“We identified numerous instances of non-compliance with the Woods Procedures in the 25 Woods Files that were made available to us to review; and we reported that the FBI was unable to produce the original version of the remaining 4 Woods Files we requested.”

More concerning are the latest discoveries after an audit of more FISA applications. These include:

“over 400 instances of non-compliance with the Woods Procedures in connection with those 29 FISA applications”

“over 7,000 FISA applications authorized between January 2015 and March 2020, there were at least 179 instances in which the Woods File required by FBI policy was missing in whole or in part”

The more material errors (aside from losing their own files) included:

To put this into context, in December 2019, after IG Horowitz detailed substantial issues with the Carter Page FISA applications, the FISA Court noted that the misconduct was serious and ordered the FBI to conduct remedial measures to fix the problems of the FBI’s own creation. The FBI promised to take corrective action.

One can’t help but speculate that the FISA Court won’t do much about these latest issues, aside from ordering the FBI to conduct more training. After all, the then-presiding judge of the FISA Court, Judge Boasberg, refused jail time for FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith after he altered an e-mail and lied about Carter Page’s relationship with the CIA.

Knowing the history of the FISA Court excusing government misconduct, we present the same question now that we did after the Clinesmith sentencing: What does it say about the FISA Court’s “heightened duty of candor” if there aren’t heightened punishments for violating that duty?

And we have one final question – one that has applied to Director Wray for the last few years: how could the FBI Director allow these abuses to continue?” (Read more: Techno Fog/Substack, 9/30/2020)  (Archive)

(Credit: Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

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)

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)

(…) 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.

Source: https://www.scribd.com/

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.”

Kathleen Kavalec (l) of the State Department’s Russia desk and Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs and Stephen Laycock (r) head of Russian counter-intelligence at the FBI. (Credit: public domain)

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.”

Shalva Chigirinsky (Credit: public domain)

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.)

Bennie Thompson defends the RNA  in a 1971 press conference. (Credit: Mississippi Department of Archives and History)

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)

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?

1. “Political organizations” likely refer to the DNC and the Hillary Clinton Campaign/Hillary for America.
2. “A university” = Georgia Tech.
3. “University Researchers” = the team involved in the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax.
4. “An investigative firm” = Fusion GPS.
5. “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:

1. E-mail records from Joffe, the research group, and Sussmann/Perkins Coie.
2. Perkins Coie billing records.
3. Perkins Coie records (notes, etc.) relating to calls and meetings re: Alfa Bank.
4. 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)

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)

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)

Aaron Stevenson (Credit: Project Veritas)

• 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)

“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.

Earlier: The special counsel’s indictment last month of a lawyer for Hillary Clinton — implicating the present national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, right — doesn’t tell the entire story of the Clinton campaign’s orchestration of Russiagate. (Credit: Ng Han Guan/The Associated Press)

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.”

Dec. 2017: CrowdStrike CEO Henry testifies he worked for the now-indicted Clinton lawyer Sussmann. (Credit: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence)

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.

Shawn Henry Transcript (Credit: Fox News graphic)

“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.

Dec. 2016: An FBI-DHS report hedges by claiming Russian hackers “likely” exfiltrated DNC data. (Credit: FBI/Department of Homeland Security)

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.)

April 2019: Still hedging, the Mueller Report says Russian intel “appears” to have exfiltrated DNC data. (Credit: Mueller Report, Page 40)

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.”

Shawn Henry, CrowdStrike CEO: His firm’s reports on the DNC server breach have never been publicly released. (Credit: Crowdstrike)

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.”

Jessie Liu, federal prosecutor: Told court the government “does not possess” CrowdStrike’s unredacted reports. (Credit: Department of Justice/Wikimedia)

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.

May 2016: The Sussmann-CrowdStrike contract exploits the secrecy of attorney-client privilege.
(Credit: CrowdStrike-Perkins Coie contract)

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.

Glenn Simpson, Fusion GPS: an “extraordinary coincidence.” (Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)

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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(Credit: Sky News)

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)

“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)

Virginia gubernatorial candidate ​Terry McAuliffe campaigns in Arlington, Virginia on October 26, 2021. (Credit: Reuters)

“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)

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

Federal authorities on Tuesday arrested Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, a Russian national who was the primary researcher for the so-called Steele Dossier – a compendium of opposition research funded by the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and used to smear Donald Trump as a Russian operative. It was also used as justification for an FBI wiretap application targeting former Trump adviser Carter Page.

According to the New York Times, the arrest of Danchenko is part of John Durham’s special counsel investigation into wrongdoing connected to the Obama administration’s Russia investigation.

Special Counsel John Durham has now alleged in a federal indictment that Clinton paid shill Steele’s primary and only real “source” *fabricated* that Trump, Carter Page and Paul Manafort were involved in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” with Russia

THREAD

— Undercover Huber (@JohnWHuber) November 4, 2021

The FBI then redacted the “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” wording from the FISAs when they were released. Because by this time, they’d interviewed Steele’s “source” & *knew he was lying*. And wanted to protect the lie they’d sworn to in a secret court. Let that sink in

— Undercover Huber (@JohnWHuber) November 4, 2021

If Durham wants to look into a “conspiracy” that actually exists – there is one right there.

Between an FBI protecting fabricators because they’d used their lies in court, and folks like Schiff desperate to help hide the truth – all to keep the Russian Collusion Big Lie going.

— Undercover Huber (@JohnWHuber) November 4, 2021

Steele’s 🤡 source ALSO attributed “confirmation” of the “pee tape” crap to “Source E” as well. So like we knew all along, but the entire media pretended not to know, that was always straight up made up. The guys been arrested for fabricating this stuff & lying about it guys

— Undercover Huber (@JohnWHuber) November 4, 2021

EYE ON THE BALL: Steele was the guy who paid this fabricator & had him on payroll.

But he was just the cutout.

It was Clinton’s campaign that paid Steele for the fabricated Collusion Hoax

This *all* goes back to Clinton, and always did.

/ENDS

— Undercover Huber (@JohnWHuber) November 4, 2021

My full exoneration, folks‼️ pic.twitter.com/YFvNr2TPo9

— Chamber President-1 (@SergeiMillian) November 4, 2021

(Danchenko Indictment, 11/03/2021)

“I discussed the Igor Danchenko indictment here, laying out some of the more eye-raising parts of the facts and charges against Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source.

Taking a closer look at the Danchenko indictment, there is a curious question presented by the FBI to Danchenko in June 2017. A question that indicates the FBI might have known more about the true sources to the Steele Dossiers sooner than they have let on.

FBI Questions about Danchenko source Charles Dolan:

On June 15, 2017, the FBI interviewed Danchenko regarding the Dossiers (labeled “Company Reports” in the indictment). Here’s the line of questioning from the indictment:

Clipping of Danchenko/FBI interview on June 15, 2017.

These FBI questions – asking Danchenko specific questions about Dolan and his interactions with Dolan – are significant for a number of reasons:

• It indicates the FBI had specific information linking Dolan to Danchenko. It is quite possible the FBI knew on June 15, 2017 that Dolan was a source for Danchenko.
• The suspicion that Dolan was a source is explained by the FBI Agent stating that he thinks there are other Dossier sources, immediately followed by a question about Dolan.
• If that is the case, then the FBI would have known that Danchenko lied about his communications with Dolan.

Olga Galkina (Credit: The Daily Mail)

• This information may have come from surveillance on Danchenko source Olga Galkina. As observed by Chuck Ross: “The IG report indicates that the FBI had Section 702 coverage on Galkina, which would have allowed the agency to surveil her communications.”
• If the FBI had Section 702 coverage on Galkina, it would have swept up the communications of Dolan and Danchenko – providing them with knowledge that a Hillary Clinton supporter was a source for the Dossiers.

Again, the dates are important. The Danchenko interview where he was questioned about Dolan took place on June 15, 2017, before the 4th FISA warrant on Carter Page, which was submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on June 29, 2017.

Let us assume for a moment the FBI questioned Danchenko about Dolan based on information from the Galkina surveillance (the 702). What types of information might they have had? Looking at the Danchenko indictment, they might have possessed:

1. Dolan/Danchenko e-mails.
2. Dolan e-mails referencing Danchenko.
3. Communications between Dolan and Olga Galkina (Russian Sub-Source 1), including social media messages, e-mails, and likely messaging apps.
4. Communications from Olga Galkina to her associates.

Reporting suggests the FBI had this information by June 2017 – by the time of the Danchenko interview. If that is the case, the FBI would likely have had their hands on this e-mail from Galkina to Dolan, stating that she was feeding him information on former USSR/UIC countries – and indicating her suspicion that Danchenko had informed Dolan of this.

It also means that the FBI likely possessed this information that Danchenko’s source was a huge Hillary Clinton fan and hoping for a job in the Clinton State Department.

(Read more: Techno Fog, 11/7/2021)  (Archive)

Charles Dolan (Credit: public domain)

(…) Count One of Durham’s indictment relates to denials from Danchenko to FBI agents that he had spoken with “PR-Executive-1,” now identified as Charles Dolan, about any material contained in Steele’s dossier. As Durham’s indictment lays out, Dolan, described as a “long-time participant in Democrat party politics,” was actually Danchenko’s source for many of the allegations within Steele’s dossier. Dolan’s role in the creation of the dossier was not known publicly until yesterday.

Dolan’s identity as PR Executive-1 has been confirmed through a brief statement from his lawyer, who also noted that Dolan was a “witness” in Durham’s ongoing case.

Danchenko, who had worked at the left-leaning think tank Brookings Institute from 2005 to 2010, was introduced to Dolan in February 2016 by another Brookings employee, Fiona Hill, who had previously introduced Danchenko to Steele in late 2010. Following this introduction Danchenko began working for Steele in 2011. Hill would later become known to the public in 2019 during her testimony at the impeachment hearings of then-President Trump.

Durham notes in the indictment that Dolan’s role was “highly relevant and material” to the FBI’s review of Steele’s allegations because Dolan “maintained pre-existing and ongoing relationships with numerous persons” named in Steele’s dossier.

Additionally, as Durham’s indictment notes, “allegations sourced to [Dolan] by Danchenko formed the basis of a [dossier] report that, in turn, underpinned” the FISA applications made by the FBI on Trump campaign adviser Page.

Durham repeatedly notes that if Danchenko had not lied to the FBI regarding Dolan’s role, the FBI might have taken further investigative steps, including interviewing Dolan. While this assertion may be accurate, it also appears that the FBI failed repeatedly to investigate specific details or events that could have been easily verified or disproven.

Dolan and the Clintons have a lengthy history that dates back to the 1990s. In 2008, Dolan served as an adviser to then-Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign and he “actively campaigned” on behalf of Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 11/04/2021)

Igor Danchenko (l) and Sergei Millian (Credit: Chip Somodavilla/Getty, ABC screenshot)

(…) Although Steele named Millian as one of his sources to the media, State Department officials, and the FBI, he was more guarded when it came to his other alleged sources. Their identities were only uncovered last year after internet sleuths extrapolated information from Danchenko’s interview notes with the FBI. These individuals, friends and acquaintances of Danchenko, did not have any pertinent information about Putin’s thoughts or intentions, nor were they in a position to obtain any such information.

All six of these alleged sources have recently come forward and signed affidavits denying having ever told Steele or Danchenko anything in relation to the dossier.

While some commentators, including ex-FBI agent Peter Strozk, are now suggesting that the FBI was duped by Danchenko, that is categorically not the case. Durham’s revelations with respect to Millian were known to the FBI by late January 2017 as they knew that Steele had attributed information in early dossier reports to Millian. At the same time, the FBI also knew that Danchenko had not yet reached out to Millian at that point. Similarly, Millian’s alleged phone call could have been easily investigated and shown to have been fabricated by Danchenko.

However, instead of taking these simple investigative steps, the FBI forged on with their investigation, a process that tied up the Trump administration for the next three years.

One important question remains. When Danchenko was interviewed by the FBI in January 2017, he was given what is known as a ‘queen for a day’ immunity deal, which gave him the opportunity to walk away from the entire dossier affair, provided he told the FBI the truth. Danchenko had every incentive to tell the FBI the truth, but for reasons that remain unknown he chose not to do so.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 11/5/2021)

Dolan appears on CSpan July 2002 to talk about Bush’s efforts to improve the U.S. image abroad through the proposed creation of the Office of Global Communication. (Credit: CSpan)

(…) From 2006 to 2014, Dolan handled public relations for the Russian government and a state-owned energy firm. According to Durham, Dolan maintained relationships with the then-Russian Ambassador to the United States and the head of the Russian Embassy’s Economic Section in Washington. As Durham notes, both men would later appear by name in Steele’s dossier.

Durham’s indictment details Dolan’s communication’s with a number of high level Russian officials that took place at the same time that Clinton was accusing Trump of communicating with the Kremlin. Dolan’s ongoing work for Russia makes it likely that he should have been required to register with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, but Durham’s indictment does not address this matter.

Information from Dolan was featured in an Aug. 22, 2016, dossier report from Steele that ostensibly described the reasons behind the departure of Paul Manafort from the Trump campaign. Dolan told Danchenko that he had received this information from a “GOP friend.” But Dolan later acknowledged to the FBI that he had “fabricated” the meeting and instead relayed information he had obtained from public reporting.

It also appears that Dolan may have played a role, unknowingly or otherwise, in some of the more salacious aspects of Steele’s dossier. In what was described as a “June 2016 Planning Trip,” Dolan stayed at a Moscow hotel. As Durham’s indictment notes, Dolan was given a “tour” of the hotel’s presidential suite, and met with the manager and other staff of the hotel. During the tour, it was mentioned to Dolan that Trump had stayed in the presidential suite, but Durham notes that Dolan claims there was no mention of “any sexual or salacious activity.”

Allegations of a “pee tape” made at the hotel’s presidential suite during Trump’s stay were contained in Steele’s June 20, 2016, report. Steele’s dossier falsely attributed the story to American businessman Sergei Millian–but Danchenko later claimed that he had characterized the alleged activity to Steele as “rumor and speculation.” Danchenko, who initially told the FBI he was at the hotel in June with Dolan, later admitted that he had not visited the hotel until October 2016.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 11/05/2021)

Sergei Millian (YouTube clipping)

(…) The remaining four charges laid out in Durham’s indictment of Danchenko relate to Sergei Millian, an American national of Belarus descent. Many of the details behind these charges were already known to those who had been investigating the Russia-Collusion stories.

Durham’s indictment alleges that Danchenko lied to the FBI on four separate occasions, each time claiming that he’d had a phone conversation in the summer of 2016 with someone he believed to have been Millian. For his part, Millian has always stated that he never met Danchenko, in person or by phone. Millian’s assertions are emphatically proven in Durham’s indictment of Danchenko where it is repeatedly stated that “Danchenko never spoke to Chamber President-1 [Millian].”

Millian differed from all of Steele’s other purported sources in that he had no actual contact with anyone within Steele’s orbit—including Danchenko. Steele has demonstrated a preference for his targets to be physically present with his operatives. And indeed, Steele told the FBI that he believed Danchenko had met with Millian on “two or three separate occasions.”

The allegations attributed to Millian are crucial to the Steele dossier. Steele used Millian as the supposed source for his allegations of a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was foundational to the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Steele further attributed Millian as the source for allegations regarding secret communications between Russian Alfa Bank and Trump. Also ascribed to Millian were the Wikileaks email dump and the salacious “pee tape” story. All from a person whom neither Steele nor Danchenko had ever met with or spoken to.

Danchenko admitted to the FBI that his first outreach to Millian was on July 22, 2016, via email, which is cited in Durham’s indictment. But by this point, Steele, apparently believing that Danchenko had actually met Millian, had already published two reports in his dossier that attributed specific allegations to Millian. As Danchenko admitted to the FBI in a November 2017 follow-up interview, Steele erroneously believed that there had been in-person meetings between Danchenko and Millian, a belief which Danchenko did not correct.

It is unlikely that Steele would have placed so much emphasis on Millian as a major source without a plausible scenario for how these stories were obtained. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 11/05/2021)

Devon Archer

(…) The permission for [Devon] Archer’s globetrotting was revealed in a Nov. 12, 2021 letter from his defense lawyers, who asked and received permission from U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams, an appointee of President Barack Obama, for his 41st trip since he was first charged by federal prosecutors.

“I write to respectfully request the Court’s permission for Mr. Archer to travel on vacation with his family from November 23 to November 28, 2021, to Jamaica for the Thanksgiving holiday,” defense attorney Craig Wenner wrote. He added for good measure: “The Court previously approved the same trip this time last year.”

You can read the letter here:

Judge Abrams — whose elite liberal family in New York includes famous First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams and TV legal analyst Dan Abrams — obliged once again by affixing her signature approving the request.

Dan Abrams and his sister, Judge Ronnie Abrams (Credit: public domain)

Remarkably, Abram’s husband was a federal prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and part of the team that seized passports and restricted travel for high-profile defendants like Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates.

Archer did not face the same restrictions. As he awaited trial since summer 2016 and since his conviction in summer 2018, Archer has been allowed to travel freely across the globe.

His travel log, enumerated in the court documents, reads like the travels of an American secretary of state: Russia, Mexico, China, Spain, Italy, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Ukraine, the money laundering capital of Latvia, Hong Kong, London, Singapore and the French Antilles, to name a few.

You can see the travel approvals here:

File
 DevonArcherTravelOrder11-15-21.pdf

Archer’s lead defense attorney, Matthew Schwartz, works at the same Boies Schiller Flexner law firm where Hunter Biden also once practiced law. Schwartz did not return a call seeking comment Thursday. (Read more: JusttheNews, 2/03/2022)  (Archive) (Devon Archer tag)

“…former Rep. Doug Collins, the former ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, joined Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures.

During their discussion, they revealed that then CIA Director John Brennan gave then President Barack Obama a private briefing on Hillary Clinton’s efforts to paint Donald Trump as a Russian operative.

Doug Collins: I’m going to say, not only the FBI, Comey and Strzok and McCabe ought to be very worried about Durham’s investigation. I’m going to say Brennan and Clapper, remember they were the ones that actually briefed Obama about the entire plot from Hillary Clinton to try and paint Donald Trump with Russia. There’s got to be some accountability.

Maria Bartiromo: Yeah, we got a picture of John Brennan in the Oval Office with President Obama, explaining, and we know now the notes because John Ratcliffe exposed those notes showing that Brennan told Obama that Hillary Clinton was cooking up this idea to tie Donald Trump. So they all knew, they all were aware of what was going on.”

(The Gateway Pundit, 11/14/2021)

New York Attorney General Tish James threatened doctors that were writing out prescriptions for ivermectin to treat Covid patients.

How do I know?

I have the letter that was sent to a doctor.@TishJames needs to be dragged out in front of Congress. pic.twitter.com/0Pv0TFHvAr

— Breanna Morello (@BreannaMorello) June 13, 2024

is that the letter they sent to me OR was it sent to someone else??? pic.twitter.com/AVjvB6NwMd

— BenMarbleMD (@MarbleBenjamin) June 13, 2024

Wow. Sent to someone else. That’s why the date is blocked out.

— Breanna Morello (@BreannaMorello) June 13, 2024

Glenn Simpson (Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)

Back in May, we reported on the fight brewing in a DC federal court, where Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson were trying to keep secret their internal correspondence and records relating to their role in pushing the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax. New court filings indicate Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson improperly failed to disclose some of their most damning e-mails.

Overview

For background, the fight arises out of a lawsuit – Fridman, et al. (Alfa Bank) v. Bean LLC a/k/a Fusion GPS, and Glenn Simpson, where the owners of Alfa Bank have sued Fusion GPS and Simpson for falsely accusing “the Plaintiffs—and Alfa (“Alfa”), a consortium in which the Plaintiffs are investors—of criminal conduct and alleged cooperation with the ‘Kremlin’ to influence the 2016 presidential election.”

The case was filed in October 2017. Litigation has been ongoing for over four years – with Alfa Bank still fighting to obtain written discovery from Fusion GPS that is material to its case. Our previous report had to do with that very discovery dispute. Back in May, Alfa Bank “filed a motion to compel, asking the Court to require Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson to produce nearly 500 critically important documents improperly withheld as privileged.” (More background here.)

These documents included e-mail correspondence within Fusion GPS regarding the “Alfa Playbook” and showed the early development of the Fusion GPS/Simpson work on Trump/Russia. One would assume this entails the early or emerging thought process of the “intelligence” group as they sought to falsely accuse the Trump campaign of colluding with Russia.

(…) The Latest Developments

Today, the attorneys for Alfa Bank filed this, their “Supplement to Plaintiffs’ Second Motion to Compel Defendants to Produce Documents Improperly Withheld as Privileged.” The motion was filed to inform the court that Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson (and/or their attorneys) “possess numerous documents responsive to Plaintiffs’ RFPs [requests for production] that [Fusion/Simpson] neither produced nor included in their privilege log.”

Alfa v Fusion – PL Third Mo… by Techno Fog

(Brief interlude: generally, the parties request and exchange documents in a federal civil case like this. A party can avoid producing documents where they claim a privilege – they just need to typically submit a “privilege log” to the other side. This doesn’t mean the privilege will ultimately prevail.)

What does the latest filing by Alfa Bank reveal?

Fusion GPS/Glenn Simpson (or their attorneys) failed to submit in the privilege log certain communications ultimately uncovered by Special Counsel John Durham. I’ll let the Alfa Bank motion explain:

(Read more: Techno Fog, 12/03/2021)  (Archive)

FAILED presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shared the victory speech she thought she would deliver on November 8, 2016.

(…) Hillary will share the full speech during her MasterClass on Thursday. She shared parts on The Today Show:

“Today with your children on your shoulders, your neighbors at your side, friends old and new standing as one, you renewed our democracy,” she says. “And because of the honor you have given me, you have changed its face forever. I’ve met women who were born before women had the right to vote. They’ve been waiting a hundred years for tonight.

“I’ve met little boys and girls who didn’t understand why a woman has never been president before. Now they know, and the world knows, that in America, every boy and every girl can grow up to be whatever they dream — even president of the United States.

“This is a victory for all Americans. Men and women. Boys and girls. Because as our country has proven once again, when there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit.”

She also addresses the deep partisan divide in the country.

“If you dig deep enough through all the mud of politics, eventually you hit something hard and true,” she says. “A foundation of fundamental values that unite us as Americans. You proved that today.

“In a country divided by race and religion, class and culture, and often paralyzing partisanship, a broad coalition of Americans embraced a shared vision of a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America.

“An America where women are respected and immigrants are welcomed. Where veterans are honored, parents are supported, and workers are paid fairly. An America where we believe in science, where we look beyond people’s disabilities and see their possibilities, where marriage is a right and discrimination is wrong. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, or who you love.

(Read more: Legal Insurrection, 12/08/2021)  (Archive)

(…)”In parts of the speech shared with TODAY, Clinton shares the remarks she had prepared if she had won the contentious election against Trump.

“My fellow Americans, today you sent a message to the whole world,” she says. “Our values endure. Our democracy stands strong. And our motto remains: e pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

“We will not be defined only by our differences. We will not be an us versus them country. The American dream is big enough for everyone. Through a long, hard campaign, we were challenged to choose between two very different visions for America. How we grow together, how we live together, and how we face a world full of peril and promise together.

“Fundamentally, this election challenged us to decide what it means to be an American in the 21st century. And for reaching for a unity, decency, and what President Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature.’ We met that challenge.”

Clinton then talks about the significance of what becoming the first female president in U.S. history would have meant. (Read more: Today, 12/08/2021)  (Archive)

David Corn and Michael Isikoff in a 2018 interview for their book “Russian Roulette.” (Credit: BUILD Series/YouTube)

(…) In the wake of the Durham revelations, the Washington Post has retracted or corrected sections of no fewer than 14 stories about Millian and the dossier. The Wall Street Journal, which first made the connection based on a single anonymous source in a January 2017 story by Pulitzer-winning reporter Mark Maremont, now concedes that the indictment raises “serious questions” about its reporting. ABC News, which aired a January 2017 story by former correspondent Brian Ross and producer Matthew Mosk identifying Millian as a key dossier source, said it is “reviewing” its reporting “in light of new developments.”

Igor Danchenko: His fabrications left egg on a lot of journalists’ faces. (Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)

Corn, the Washington bureau chief for the leftist political magazine Mother Jones, and Isikoff, the chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, were among the first journalists to press the Steele dossier in the media, starting in the fall of 2016. Answering critics on Twitter last month, Isikoff claimed he had disavowed the dossier years ago: “I already did, some time ago (before [Justice Department IG Michael] Horowitz and Durham),” referring to remarks he made to USA Today in 2018.

In that interview, Isikoff indicated blandly that some of the information he was fed was wrong, stating that some of the dossier’s “more sensational allegations are likely false.” He summed up the dossier as a “mixed record.” Now he knows for certain what he reported was incorrect and yet he has issued no corrections or mea culpas.

Isikoff once tweeted a link to his book “Russian Roulette” to President Trump, arguing “here is what is true, Mr. President.” Currently atop his Twitter page, Isikoff still has a pinned 2018 tweet thanking MSNBC host Rachel Maddow for helping propel the book to No. 1 on Amazon.

The e-book was updated for the first Trump impeachment but remains uncorrected in light of the Danchenko indictment. (Credit:Twelve Books)

In an attempt to face up to his own part in pushing the dossier fables, Corn last month penned a lengthy piece in Mother Jones arguing that just because the dossier turned out to be fiction doesn’t mean the Russiagate narrative is a hoax. He insisted Trump is still “guilty” of betraying America by cozying up to Russia.

Corn avoided mentioning Millian a single time in his 4,000-word essay and even cited “Russian Roulette” in his defense. In his telling, the fact that he and Isikoff showed some skepticism by reporting that the Justice Department watchdog revealed Steele may have exaggerated his most sensational allegations, makes up for repeating those stories in their book. Corn also continues to feature “Russian Roulette” as the backdrop to his Twitter page.

Corn admits he “chased after some of the allegations” but “couldn’t nail anything down.” Even so, he called on the FBI to investigate Millian in a Jan. 19, 2017, Mother Jones story. Months earlier, Corn gave a copy of the dossier to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker, whom he knows socially. (The magazine has appended an editor’s note to that article, stating: “Earlier Mother Jones reporting noted that Sergei Millian was reportedly a source for the Steele dossier … Content making reference to Millian has been appropriately updated.”)

In an RCI interview, Millian said that in addition to correcting the record, both men owe him an apology.

“Isikoff and Corn played a role in spreading evil rumors and gossip about innocent American citizens,” Millian said, noting he’s retained a libel attorney. “Now they are simply ducking reasonable questions about their role, as if they were not a part of harming people.”

Neither Corn nor Isikoff responded to requests for comment. (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 12/09/2021)  (Archive)

Business Insider graphic (Credit: Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty; Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call; Marie Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call; Skye Gould/Insider)

(…) At a time when millions of Americans are struggling financially, members of Congress have traded extraordinarily well during the pandemic. This juxtaposition has led directly to the public sentiment that the trading activity of Congress must be curbed. The problem lies in the fact that members of Congress typically possess information that the public does not. The pandemic highlighted this issue, as Congress was briefed on the risks of COVID-19 before the public and before the March 2020 market crash.

Lawmakers were likely aware of the FDA’s approval of the COVID-19 vaccine before the news broke to the public. Approximately 93 senators and representatives held stock in Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer stock once the pandemic broke out in March 2020. Several spouses of these lawmakers held stock in Moderna in 2020 as well and traded thousands of dollars worth of company stock throughout the pandemic. Moderna and Pfizer stocks typically tended to fluctuate throughout the pandemic, but when talk of vaccine approval began, these stocks rose exponentially. In January 2020, Moderna stock sold for roughly $20 a share; in September 2021, the stock hit $455.

In March of 2020, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into the trading activity of Senators Richard Burr, and Kelly Loeffler, among others. While those investigations are now closed, and no charges were initiated against any lawmaker, the issues raised are troubling, to say the least. For example, Senator Burr and his wife traded between $628,000 and $1.7 million worth of stock in thirty-three transactions while at the same time stating to the public that the government had the coronavirus pandemic under control. At a minimum, signaling to the public that all is well while trading on the information in his possession raises ethical issues.

Ending Trading for Congress

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (whose stock trading, along with her husband, has come under scrutiny), initially opposed (I know, shocking) a stock trading ban, citing that the market is a “free market economy” and lawmakers “should be able to participate,” in trading on the market. She has since reversed her position on the issue — it appears that public sentiment is putting pressure on the hypocrisy of Congress to act on a long overdue issue.

While the Ethics Reform Act continues to collect dust, only time will tell if we see a long overdue change to the status quo, which has allowed members of Congress to enrich themselves while simultaneously undermining the trust of the American people. (Read more: Warren Law, 8/23/2024)  (Archive)

This video can be viewed on X but is private on YouTube:

Watch the full show HERE:https://t.co/veXCxi0Jr9

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) April 11, 2024

CLAY: We’re joined now by Miranda Devine, who has got a fantastic book out. She writes at the New York Post. The book is called Laptop from Hell, and, Miranda, thanks for taking the time to join us here. I believe in the years ahead the collusion to cover up the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop is going to be seen as one of the greatest failures in the history of independent American media. Do you agree based on all the things that you’ve seen inside of this laptop and that was covered up? How massive was this story, and maybe more wildly, how massive was most of the media’s cover-up for this story?

DEVINE: You’re absolutely right. And thank you very much for having me on, both of you, Clay and Buck. Look, I think we understood that three weeks before the election when we published the first of the emails from the laptop that were so damning of Joe Biden, we knew it was a bombshell. And we expected that the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN and all this sort of media organizations that were in the tank for Joe Biden that just would do anything to get rid of Donald Trump.

We knew that they would ignore it, but what was so shocking was the power of social media, of the Big Tech oligopolies, Facebook and Twitter. And within a couple of hours of our story going online at 5 a.m. October 14, Facebook had come out and said that they were blocking it pending a fact check, which still — more than a year later — has never happened. And then Twitter followed suit and locked the New York Post’s account the next two weeks until a few days before the election and people couldn’t even share the story in true and correct message.

Kayleigh McEnany was the then president’s press secretary. She was canceled or suspended from Twitter for trying to share the story. It was really sort of lost at the time, but when you look back now, it was such a display of power and such an intervention into the election by these faceless, unaccountable, global corporatists that it’s really frightening. And, you know, shortly after that, of course, they de-platformed the sitting president of the United States.

And that prompted even Emmanuel Macron from France to say, “Whoa, this is rather frightening for all of us.” The whole world should realize that these companies have become more powerful than the leaders of countries, and they are still the same. I mean, nothing’s changed since then. And we know from polls taken after the election that almost half of Biden voters knew nothing about the scandal that was on the laptop.

The evidence of the influence peddling that was going on with Joe Biden, the evidence that Joe Biden had met with Hunter Biden’s business partners from overseas was compromised, in China and Russia and elsewhere. If they had known that, about one-tenth of Biden voters would have changed their vote. And so in an election that was won by 45,000 votes across a handful of battleground states, the censorship of our story could have made a difference.

BUCK: Absolutely. Miranda Devine, everybody. Laptop from Hell is her book. Miranda, it’s Buck. I want you to… I was at TheHill.com when a lot of stories were being broken about the relationship with Hunter Biden and Ukraine, and this has been around for a while. We didn’t have the laptop. We didn’t have the Laptop from Hell. What should people know?

Because the suppression story which Clay started out with is enormous and may very well have — likely did, I believe — change the trajectory of the election, and it was dishonest and a disgrace what the Big Tech and media did together. What do people need to know about the corruption aspect of it? We always say if this were Donald Trump Jr., they might actually cover this more than the January 6 insurrection at CNN. What did Hunter Biden actually do, and where is the real corruption that we know of from this laptop?

DEVINE: Look, the importance of the laptop is really not Hunter Biden, who is this sort of tragic figure: Drug addicted for most of the nine years the laptop covered, crackhead. The story is actually about Joe Biden and what the laptop tells you about his involvement in not just Hunter’s about his younger brother Jim’s scheme around the world to monetize his power, Joe Biden’s power, and what Joe Biden did in return for that money and how he financially benefited.

So we know that for the last two years of his vice presidency, Hunter Biden and his partners and Jim Biden were doing work overseas around the world using Joe Biden’s name to open doors. And we know that that was being done with Joe Biden’s OK, imprimatur, full involvement. The money, however, was going to come after Joe Biden left office. And this was why Tony Bobulinski was brought in to become CEO of their latest joint venture with China and sort of regularize and make everything, you know, squeaky clean.

Because by that stage, Joe Biden was a private citizen, future president. And, you know, it wasn’t just that the Bidens were doing business or had a joint venture with someone in China. They were in partnership with a company called CEXE, which is the capitalist arm of President Xi’s belt-and-road initiative. And this is the imperialist push by China into corrupting, buying up, paying off, putting into servitude poorer countries around the world — and the Bidens were involved.

They were using Joe Biden’s name to help the Chinese Communist Party push into the rest of the world at great expense to the United States, to America’s national interests, to America’s national security. And the other element, I think, is there is some evidence to show that Joe Biden financially benefited. We know Hunter Biden had been complaining about having to give half his salary to his dad.

We know about an email saying 10% of equity in this private venture was going to be held by Hunter Biden for “The Big Guy,” which Tony Bobulinski says is Joe Biden, and other documents on the laptop show was Joe Biden. But there’s also evidence of commingling of finances between Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, shared bank accounts, shared debit cards. Also, there’s a little bit of evidence — just a tip of the iceberg, I imagine, but it is there — showing that Hunter Biden was paying regular household bills for Joe Biden. (Read more: The Clay Travis & Bud Sexton Show, 12/14/2021)  (Archive)

George Nader and Hillary Clinton (Credit: Zero Hedge)

“Convicted pedophile, UAE adviser and central witness in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, George Nader, has pleaded guilty to his role in helping the UAE funnel millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions into US campaigns during the 2016 presidential election, according to The Intercept, citing federal court documents filed last month.

In a December sentencing memo, federal prosecutors disclosed that Nader had agreed months early to plead guilty to a single count of felony conspiracy to defraud the US government by pumping millions in donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign – concealing the foreign origin of the funds.

Nader conspired to hide the funds “out of a desire to lobby on behalf and advance the interests of his client, the government of the United Arab Emirates,” according to the prosecutors’ sentencing memo. Nader received the money for the illegal donations from the UAE government, the memo said. The filing marks the first time that the U.S. government has explicitly accused the UAE, a close ally, of illegally seeking to buy access to candidates during a presidential election.

Nader’s guilty plea opens a new window into the efforts of the United Arab Emirates and its de facto ruler, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and shape subsequent U.S. policy in the Gulf. The government’s memo notes that Nader and Los Angeles businessperson Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja also sought to cultivate “key figures” in the Trump campaign and that Khawaja donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. It is unclear where that money came from. – The Intercept

Nader is accused of taking instructions from UAE Crown Prince MBZ, and gave regular updates on his efforts to get close to Clinton.

In total, Nader transferred nearly $5 million from his UAE business to Khawaja – CEO of a Los Angeles-based payment processing company. According to prosecutors, the funds were disguised as a routine business contract between the two men. Of the total transferred, more than $3.5 million came from the UAE government and was given to pro-Clinton Democratic political committees. Prosecutors have yet to publicly identify what happened to the remaining $1.4 million Nader transferred to Khawaja.

In 2016, Khawaja co-hosted an August fundraiser for Clinton which included a laundry list of high-profile guests, including Univision owner Haim Saban, movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and basketball legend Magic Johnson, according to the report. According to the indictment, Khawaja conspired with six other individuals to conceal his excessive contributions. Others who were indicted were also linked to donations to Clinton and other Democrats.

The indictment quotes an alleged encrypted message that Nader sent an official from Foreign Country A via WhatsApp after Khawaja contributed $275,000 and invited Nader to attend and April 16, 2016, event for presidential Candidate 1.

Wonderful meeting with the Big Lady . . . Cant wait to tell you about it, Nader allegedly wrote, in an apparent reference to Clinton.

The indictment noted that political committees that received funding unwittingly submitted false disclosure reports and were presumably victims of the plot. Still, Hillary Clinton apparently attended numerous events, including small gatherings, with Nader, who on July 19, 2016, messaged the foreign official a photograph of him with Candidate 1s spouse an apparent reference to Bill Clinton at Khawajas home. –Washington Post

Prosecutors have sought a five-year sentence for Nader – after he completes the 10-year sentence he’s currently serving for possessing child pornography, and for sex-trafficking a minor to the US “for the purpose of engaging in criminal sexual activity.” (Read more: Zero Hedge, 1/17/2022)  (Archive) (Nader Sentencing Memo)

By: Paul Sperry

RealClearInvestigations, 12/16/2021

A former senior FBI lawyer who falsified a surveillance document in the Trump-Russia investigation has been restored as a member in “good standing” by the District of Columbia Bar Association even though he has yet to finish serving out his probation as a convicted felon, according to disciplinary records obtained by RealClearInvestigations.

Kevin Clinesmith (Credit: Facebook)

The move is the latest in a series of exceptions the bar has made for Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty in August 2020 to doctoring an email used to justify a surveillance warrant targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Clinesmith was sentenced to 12 months probation last January. But the D.C. Bar did not seek his disbarment, as is customary after lawyers are convicted of serious crimes involving the administration of justice. In this case, it did not even initiate disciplinary proceedings against him until February of this year — five months after he pleaded guilty and four days after RealClearInvestigations first reported he had not been disciplined. After the negative publicity, the bar temporarily suspended Clinesmith pending a review and hearing. Then in September, the court that oversees the bar and imposes sanctions agreed with its recommendation to let Clinesmith off suspension with time served; the bar, in turn, restored his status to “active member” in “good standing.”

Before quietly making that decision, however, records indicate the bar did not check with his probation officer to see if he had violated the terms of his sentence or if he had completed the community service requirement of volunteering 400 hours.

To fulfill the terms of his probation, Clinesmith volunteered at Street Sense Media in Washington but stopped working at the nonprofit group last summer, which has not been previously reported. “I can confirm he was a volunteer here,” Street Sense editorial director Eric Falquero told RCI, without elaborating about how many hours he worked. Clinesmith had helped edit and research articles for the weekly newspaper, which coaches the homeless on how to “sleep on the streets” and calls for a “universal living wage” and prison reform.

From the records, it also appears bar officials did not consult with the FBI’s Inspection Division, which has been debriefing Clinesmith to determine if he was involved in any other surveillance abuses tied to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, in addition to the one used against Page. Clinesmith’s cooperation was one of the conditions of the plea deal he struck with Special Counsel John Durham. If he fails to fully cooperate, including turning over any relevant materials or records in his possession, he could be subject to perjury or obstruction charges.

Clinesmith — who was assigned to some of the FBI’s most sensitive and high-profile investigations — may still be in Durham’s sights regarding other areas of his wide-ranging probe.

The scope of his mandate as special counsel is broader than commonly understood: In addition to examining the legal justification for the FBI’s “Russiagate” probe, it also includes examining the bureau’s handling of the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured email server, which she set up in her basement to send and receive classified information, and her destruction of more than 30,000 subpoenaed emails she generated while running the State Department. As assistant FBI general counsel in the bureau’s national security branch, Clinesmith played an instrumental role in that investigation, which was widely criticized by FBI and Justice Department veterans, along with ethics watchdogs, as fraught with suspicious irregularities.

Clinesmith also worked on former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the 2016 Trump campaign as the key attorney linking his office to the FBI. He was the only headquarters lawyer assigned to Mueller. Durham’s investigators are said to be looking into the Mueller team’s actions as well.

The D.C. Bar’s treatment of Clinesmith, a registered Democrat who sent anti-Trump rants to FBI colleagues after the Republican was elected, has raised questions from the start. Normally the bar automatically suspends the license of members who plead guilty to a felony. But in Clinesmith’s case, it delayed suspending him on even an interim basis for several months and only acted after RCI revealed the break Clinesmith was given, records confirm.

It then allowed him to negotiate his fate, which is rarely done in any misconduct investigation, let alone one involving a serious crime, according to a review of past cases. It also overlooked violations of its own rules: Clinesmith apparently broke the bar’s rule requiring reporting his guilty plea “promptly” to the court — within 10 days of entering it — and failed to do so for five months, reveal transcripts of a July disciplinary hearing obtained by RCI.

“I did not see evidence that you informed the court,” Rebecca Smith, the chairwoman of the D.C. Bar panel conducting the hearing, admonished Clinesmith.

“[T]hat was frankly just an error,” Clinesmith’s lawyer stepped in to explain.

Smith also scolded the bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel for the “delay” in reporting the offense, since it negotiated the deal with Clinesmith, pointing out: “Disciplinary counsel did not report the plea to the court and initiate a disciplinary proceeding.” Bill Ross, the assistant disciplinary counsel who represented the office at the hearing, argued Clinesmith shouldn’t be held responsible and blamed the oversight on the COVID pandemic.

Hamilton “Phil” Fox: Disciplinary counsel who handled Clinesmith is a major donor to Democrats. (Credit: Facebook/D.C. Bar)

The Democrat-controlled panel, known as the Board on Professional Responsibility, nonetheless gave Clinesmith a pass, rubberstamping the light sentence he negotiated with the bar’s chief prosecutor, Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton “Phil” Fox, while admitting it was “unusual.” Federal Election Commission records show Fox, a former Watergate prosecutor, is a major donor to Democrats, including former President Obama. All three members of the board also are Democratic donors, FEC data reveal.

While the D.C. Bar delayed taking any action against Clinesmith, the Michigan Bar, where he is also licensed, automatically suspended him the day he pleaded guilty. And on Sept. 30, records show, the Michigan Bar’s attorney discipline board suspended Clinesmith for two years, from the date of his guilty plea through Aug. 19, 2022, and fined him $1,037.

“[T]he panel found that respondent engaged in conduct that was prejudicial to the proper administration of justice [and] exposed the legal profession or the courts to obloquy, contempt, censure or reproach,” the board ruled against Clinesmith, adding that his misconduct “was contrary to justice, ethics, honesty or good morals; violated the standards or rules of professional conduct adopted by the Supreme Court; and violated a criminal law of the United States.”

Normally, bars arrange what’s called “reciprocal discipline” for unethical attorneys licensed in their jurisdictions. But this was not done in the case of Clinesmith. The D.C. Bar decided to go much easier on the former FBI attorney, further raising suspicions the anti-Trump felon was given favorable treatment.

In making the bar’s case not to strip Clinesmith of his license or effectively punish him going forward, Fox disregarded key findings by Durham about Clinesmith’s intent to deceive the FISA court as a government attorney who held a position of trust.

Clinesmith confessed to creating a false document by changing the wording in a June 2017 CIA email to state Page was “not a source” for the CIA when in fact the agency had told Clinesmith and the FBI on multiple occasions Page had been providing information about Russia to it for years — a revelation that, if disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, would have undercut the FBI’s case for electronically monitoring Page as a supposed Russian agent and something that Durham noted Clinesmith understood all too well.

Bar records show Fox simply took Clinesmith’s word that he believed the change in wording was accurate and that in making it, he mistakenly took a “shortcut” to save time and had no intent to deceive the court or the case agents preparing the application for the warrant.

Durham demonstrated that Clinesmith certainly did intend to mislead the FISA court. “By his own words, it appears that the defendant falsified the email in order to conceal [Page’s] former status as a source and to avoid making an embarrassing disclosure to the FISC,” the special prosecutor asserted in his 20-page memo to the sentencing judge, in which he urged a prison term of up to six months for Clinesmith. “Such a disclosure would have drawn a strong and hostile response from the FISC for not disclosing it sooner [in earlier warrant applications].”

As proof of Clinesmith’s intent to deceive, Durham cited an internal message Clinesmith sent the FBI agent preparing the application, who relied on Clinesmith to tell him what the CIA said about Page. “At least we don’t have to have a terrible footnote” explaining that Page was a source for the CIA in the application, Clinesmith wrote.

The FBI lawyer also removed the initial email he sent to the CIA inquiring about Page’s status as a source before forwarding the CIA email to another FBI agent, blinding him to the context of the exchange about Page.

Durham also noted that Clinesmith repeatedly changed his story after the Justice Department’s watchdog first confronted him with the altered email during an internal 2019 investigation. What’s more, he falsely claimed his CIA contact told him in phone calls that Page was not a source, conversations the contact swore never happened.

Fox also maintained that Clinesmith had no personal motive in forging the document. But Durham cited virulently anti-Trump political messages Clinesmith sent to other FBI employees after Trump won in 2016 – including a battle cry to “fight” Trump and his policies – and argued that his clear political bias may have led to his criminal misconduct.

“It is plausible that his strong political views and/or personal dislike of [Trump] made him more willing to engage in the fraudulent and unethical conduct to which he has pled guilty,” Durham told U.S. District Judge Jeb Boasberg.

Boasberg, a Democrat appointed by President Obama, spared Clinesmith jail time and let him serve out his probation from home. Fox and the D.C. Bar sided with Boasberg, who accepted Clinesmith’s claim he did not intentionally deceive the FISA court, which Boasberg happens to preside over, and even offered an excuse for his criminal conduct.

“My view of the evidence is that Mr. Clinesmith likely believed that what he said about Mr. Page was true,” Boasberg said. “By altering the email, he was saving himself some work and taking an inappropriate shortcut.”

Fox echoed the judge’s reasoning in essentially letting Clinesmith off the hook. (The deal they struck, which the U.S. District Court of Appeals that oversees the bar approved in September, called for a one-year suspension, but the suspension began retroactively in August 2020, which made it meaningless.) Boasberg opined that Clinesmith had “already suffered” punishment by losing his FBI job and $150,000 salary.

But, Boasberg assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that Clinesmith also faced possible disbarment. “And who knows where his earnings go now,” the judge sympathized. “He may be disbarred or suspended from the practice of law.”

Anticipating such a punishment, Boasberg waived a recommended fine of up to $10,000, arguing that Clinesmith couldn’t afford it. He also waived the regular drug testing usually required during probation, while returning Clinesmith’s passport. And he gave his blessing to Clinesmith’s request to serve out his probation as a volunteer journalist, before wishing him well: “Mr. Clinesmith, best of luck to you.”

Fox did not respond to requests for comment. But he argued in a petition to the board that his deal with Clinesmith was “not unduly lenient,” because it was comparable to sanctions imposed in similar cases. However, none of the cases he cited involved the FBI, Justice Department or FISA court. One case involved a lawyer who made false statements to obtain construction permits, while another made false statements to help a client become a naturalized citizen – a far cry from falsifying evidence to spy on an American citizen.

Durham noted that in providing the legal support for a warrant application to the secret FISA court, Clinesmith had “a heightened duty of candor,” since FISA targets do not have legal representation before the court.

He argued Clinesmith’s offense was “a very serious crime with significant repercussions” and suggested it made him unfit to practice law.

“An attorney – particularly an attorney in the FBI’s Office of General Counsel – is the last person that FBI agents or this court should expect to create a false document,” Durham said.

The warrant Clinesmith helped obtain has since been deemed invalid and the surveillance of Page illegal. Never charged with a crime, Page is now suing the FBI and Justice Department for $75 million for violating his constitutional rights against improper searches and seizures.

Explaining the D.C. Bar’s disciplinary process in a 2019 interview with Washington Lawyer magazine, Fox said that “the lawyer has the burden of proving they are fit to practice again. Have they accepted responsibility for their conduct?” His office’s website said a core function is to “deter attorneys from engaging in misconduct.”

In the same interview, Fox maintained that he tries to insulate his investigative decisions from political bias. “I try to make sure our office is not used as a political tool,” he said. “We don’t want to be a political tool for the Democrats or Republicans.”

Bar records from the Clinesmith case show Fox suggested the now-discredited Trump-Russia “collusion” investigation was “a legitimate and highly important investigation.”

One longstanding member of the D.C. Bar with direct knowledge of Clinesmith’s case before the bar suspects its predominantly Democratic board went soft on him due to partisan politics. “The District of Columbia is a very liberal bar,” he said. “Basically, they went light on him because he’s also a Democrat who hated Trump.”

Meanwhile, the D.C. Bar has not initiated disciplinary proceedings against Michael Sussmann, another Washington attorney charged by Durham. Records show Sussmann remains an “active member” of the bar in “good standing,” which also has not been previously reported. The former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer, who recently resigned from Washington-based Perkins Coie LLP, is accused of lying to federal investigators about his client while passing off a report falsely linking Trump to the Kremlin.

While Sussmann has pleaded not guilty and has yet to face trial, criminal grand jury indictments usually prompt disciplinary proceedings and interim suspensions.

Paul Kamenar of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government ethics watchdog, has called for the disbarment of both Clinesmith and Sussmann. He noted that the D.C. Court of Appeals must automatically disbar an attorney who commits a crime of moral turpitude, which includes crimes involving the “administration of justice.”

“Clinesmith pled guilty to a felony. The only appropriate sanction for committing a serious felony that also interfered with the proper administration of justice and constituted misrepresentation, fraud and moral turpitude, is disbarment,” he said. “Anything less would minimize the seriousness of the misconduct” and fail to deter other offenders.

Disciplinary Counsel Fox appears to go tougher on Republican bar members. For example, he recently opened a formal investigation of former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who records show Fox put under “temporary disciplinary suspension” pending the outcome of the ethics probe, which is separate from the one being conducted by the New York bar. In July, the New York Bar also suspended the former GOP mayor on an interim basis.

Giuliani has not been convicted of a crime or even charged with one. (RealClearInvestigations, 12/16/2021)  (Archive)

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“The Ukrainian vote against the U.N. resolution against Nazism was motivated by sympathy for the ideology of historic, genocidal active Nazis. It is as simple as that, writes Craig Murray.

This is verbatim from the official report of the U.N. General Assembly plenary of Dec. 16:

“The Assembly next took up the report on ‘Elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,’ containing two draft resolutions.

“By a recorded vote of 130 in favour to2 against (Ukraine, United States), with 49 abstentions, the Assembly then adopted draft resolution I, ‘Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance’.

By its terms, the Assembly expressed deep concern about the glorification of the Nazi movement, neo-Nazism and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials, holding public demonstrations in the name of the glorification of the Nazi past, the Nazi movement and neo-Nazism, and declaring or attempting to declare such members and those who fought against the anti-Hitler coalition, collaborated with the Nazi movement and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity ‘participants in national liberation movements’.”

Members of the special Ukrainian neo-Nazi police regiment Azov in 2014. (Credit: My News24, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

(…) In Ukraine, support for the Ukrainian nationalist divisions who fought alongside the Nazis has become, over the last eight years, the founding ideology of the modern post-2013 Ukrainian state (which is very different from the diverse Ukrainian state which briefly existed 1991-2013). The full resolution on Nazism and racism passed by the General Assembly is lengthy,  but these provisions in particular were voted against by the United States and by Ukraine: