Hillary Clinton attends the “Suffs” Broadway opening night performance at the Music Box Theatre on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (Credit: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

A progressive group founded by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cut a large check recently to a climate change activist hub financing organizations behind disruptive anti-oil protests, bringing the total cash transfers to at least $500,000, records show.

Onward Together, which Clinton launched after losing the 2016 election, says it’s “committed to lifting up emerging organizations and leaders who are fighting for our shared progressive values and defending our democracy.” That pledge apparently includes funding Climate Emergency Fund, a charity backing groups leading demonstrations to bring awareness to climate change by vandalizing fine art, blocking major roads, gluing themselves to sports cars, and engaging in other extremist forms of protest.

Between April 2022 and March 2023, the nonprofit advocacy arm of Onward Together granted $200,000 to Climate Emergency Fund, according to Onward Together’s tax forms filed in 2024.

CEF, which during the preceding fiscal year received $300,000 from the Clinton-tied group, is based in Beverly Hills and props up activists at groups like Just Stop Oil that, in 2022, splattered tomato soup on a Vincent Van Gogh painting at London’s National Gallery estimated to be worth $84 million. In March 2024, activists for Declare Emergency, which along with Just Stop Oil is part of a coalition primarily funded by CEF called A22 Network, were charged with vandalizing the display of the U.S. Constitution at the National Archives.

Moreover, CEF funds the Washington, D.C.-based Climate Defiance, the activists of which have also been arrested for unorthodox protests. This upcoming Tuesday, Climate Defiance will host an event in the district for its one-year “birthday” alongside progressive Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), according to an event invitation.

“Anyone who cares about public safety and preventing vandalism should be deeply concerned that money connected to Hillary Clinton is propping up these radicalized eco activists,” said Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of the Power the Future energy advocacy group. (Read more: Washington Examiner, 5/03/2024)  (Archive)

(…) Notes (produced by Durham) taken by Assistant FBI Director Bill Priestap and former FBI Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson – taken in their conversation with Baker after his Sussmann meeting – help corroborate Baker’s recollection of Sussmann’s lies:

Bill Priestap (Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

In this filing, Sussmann seeks to preclude the use of these notes, arguing they are hearsay not subject to an exception. (It also confirms that Priestap has testified before a grand jury – something we posited back in January.) Durham disagrees and argues they are admissible, and Durham likely wins this dispute.

Sussmann also asks the Court to order the Special Counsel to give Rodney Joffe immunity for his testimony – or have the case dismissed.

Of course, Joffe (Tech Executive-1 in the Sussmann indictment) is the Sussmann client who helped lead the effort to manufacture the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax. Sussmann maintains that Joffe would “offer critical exculpatory testimony on behalf of Mr. Sussmann” – but cannot because Durham is “manufacturing incredible claims of continuing criminal liability for Mr. Joffe that are forcing Mr. Joffe to assert his Fifth Amendment right.”

Trisha Anderson (Credit: public domain)

That’s a long way of saying that Joffe faces real (and perhaps imminent) criminal exposure. Let’s talk about that for a moment. The bad news for Joffe is good reading for us.

The April 1, 2022 letter from Joffe’s attorney to Sussmann’s attorney. In this letter (available here – with my highlights), Joffe’s counsel confirmed that Joffe “remains a subject” of the Special Counsel’s investigation. According to Andrew DeFilippis (from the Office of the Special Counsel), Joffe’s “status in the investigation was sufficient to establish a good faith basis to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination.”

To this statement, Joffe’s attorney responded that the statute of limitations had run since the events described in the Sussmann indictment. The Special Counsel disagreed, stating that “certain fraud statutes have longer than a five-year limitations period,” and the Russian Yota phone-related allegations (given to the CIA in February 2017) “percolated through various branches of the government and around the private sector after that date, in various forms.”

Sussmann’s attorney argues that Joffe would provide favorable testimony, including:

1. Sussmann and Joffe agreed that the information should be conveyed to the FBI and the CIA to help the government.
2. The information was conveyed to the FBI to provide a heads-up that newspaper outlets were going to publish a story about links between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.
3. The researchers and Mr. Joffe himself held a good faith belief in the analysis that was shared with the FBI, and Mr. Sussmann accordingly and reasonably believed the data and analysis were accurate.

Again, Sussmann likely loses on this front.   (Read more: Techno Fog/Substack, 4/05/2022)    (Archive) (Court Transcript, 4/04/2022)

The luxury yacht ‘Tango’, owned by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. (Credit: ADN America)

“Spanish law enforcement today executed a Spanish court order freezing the Motor Yacht (M/Y) Tango (the Tango), a 255-foot luxury yacht owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. Spanish authorities acted pursuant to a request from the U.S. Department of Justice for assistance following the issuance of a seizure warrant, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which alleged that the Tango was subject to forfeiture based on violation of U.S. bank fraud, money laundering, and sanction statutes.

According to documents filed in this case, the U.S. investigation alleges that Vekselberg bought the Tango in 2011 and has owned it continuously since that time. It further alleges that Vekselberg used shell companies to obfuscate his interest in the Tango to avoid bank oversight into U.S. dollar transactions related thereto. Additionally, after Vekselberg was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department on April 6, 2018, the warrant alleges that Vekselberg and those working on his behalf continued to make U.S. dollar payments through U.S. banks for the support and maintenance of the Tango and its owners, including a payment for a December 2020 stay at a luxury water villa resort in the Maldives and mooring fees for the yacht. Vekselberg had an interest in these payments and therefore a license was required from the Treasury Department, which was not obtained.

“Today marks our taskforce’s first seizure of an asset belonging to a sanctioned individual with close ties to the Russian regime. It will not be the last.” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “Together, with our international partners, we will do everything possible to hold accountable any individual whose criminal acts enable the Russian government to continue its unjust war.”

“Today’s action makes clear that corrupt Russian oligarchs cannot evade sanctions to live a life of luxury as innocent Ukrainians are suffering,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco. “Today the Department of Justice delivers on our commitment to hold accountable those whose criminal activity strengthens the Russian government as it continues to wage its unjust war in Ukraine. That commitment is one we are not finished honoring.” (The Department of Justice, 4/4/2022)  (Archive)

Dan Bongino reminds us of the history between Vekselberg and the Clintons.

Bongino mentions this article by Diane West:

Hillary’s Hypersonic Missile Gap

“Starting in May 2010, The Washington Examiner reported, drawing on emails obtained by Citizens United, “Clinton Foundation staff pushed Hillary Clinton’s State Department to approve a meeting between Bill Clinton and a powerful Russian oligarch as her agency lined up investors for a project under his purview.”

His name was Viktor Vekselberg of Renova (a Clinton Foundation donor) and the project under his purview was the Skolkovo Innovation Center, which is being built near Moscow. The following month, Bill Clinton would receive $500,000 for a speech in Moscow from Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin, a Clinton Foundation donor, a Skolkovo executive, and which talked up Uranium One, whose sale the Clinton State Department would approve, and whose executives together contributed $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.

This shocking set of emails that the Examiner reported on shows the nexus of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s foundation, Hillary Clinton’s State Department, Bill Clinton, Russian oligarch Vekselberg, and Skolkovo, “Russia’s Silicon Valley,” the Putin project to transfer Western technology to Russia that was championed and driven by Mrs. Clinton — and, what do you know, 17 out of 28 tech companies that hitched up with Skolkovo also contributed to the Clinton Foundation? What a coincidence. Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s support for Russian WTO membership made the whole global flow so much easier.

No wonder Herd Media, the Uniparty Congress and FBI Director James Comey never noticed a thing. Oh, except that Putin “hated” Hillary Clinton, “wanted to do her harm,” as Comey told Congress this week. Grrr. Maybe hypersonic technology wasn’t enough. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

Let’s pick up with an Army report on Skolkovo written in 2012 (released in 2013) to assess “the implications … for U.S. policymakers.”

Although military activities are not an official cluster of activity, the Skolkovo Foundation has, in fact, been involved in defense-related activities since December 2011, when it approved the first weapons-related project—the development of a hypersonic cruise missile engine. The project is a response to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, part of the Prompt Global Strike program.

Fast forward to November 2016, shortly after Donald Trump was elected president when the US Air Force released a report on — no way — the Russian and Chinese hypersonic missile threat to the United States.

The United States is vulnerable to future attack by hypersonic missiles from China and Russia and is falling behind in the technology race to develop both defensive and offensive high-speed maneuvering arms, according to a new Air Force study.

“The People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation are already flight-testing high-speed maneuvering weapons (HSMWs) that may endanger both forward deployed U.S. forces and even the continental United States itself,” an executive summary of the report says.

“These weapons appear to operate in regimes of speed and altitude, with maneuverability that could frustrate existing missile defense constructs and weapon capabilities.”

In a functioning democratic republic, the executive branch decisions and procedures and corruption that led to this defense cataclysm would actually alarm security officials, lawmakers, and even arouse media curiosity, if nothing else. But Skolkovo, the money, the corruption, the treachery, the danger, inspire no reaction at all.

Not even this plain, shocking language, from the Army, circa 2012:

Skolkovo is an ambitious enterprise, aiming to promote technology transfer generally, by inbound direct investment, and occasionally, through selected acquisitions. As such, Skolkovo is arguably an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage—with the additional distinction that it can achieve such a transfer on a much larger scale and more efficiently.

Hillary Clinton, her State Department, the Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton did much to make Skolkovo possible — did much to activate what was, according to the Army report, “arguably” a massive “clandestine industrial espionage” operation. Not that any of this is in the past. This plain-sight-“research”-cum-collusion with the Russian government goes on, and goes on unchecked — and despite the Obama administration’s supposedly hard-as-nails, cold-as-ice, tough-on-Russia finish.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 3/21/2017)  (Archive)

The Alfa Gang – Left to Right: Andrew Sullivan, Hillary Clinton, John Durham, Michael Sussmann, Mark Elias

“Special Counsel John Durham is revealing new smoking gun evidence, a text message  that shows a Clinton campaign lawyer lied to the FBI, while putting the courts on notice he is prepared to show the effort to smear Donald Trump with now-disproven Russia collusion allegations  was a “conspiracy.”

In a bombshell court filing late Monday night, Durham for the first time suggested Hillary Clinton’s campaign, her researchers and others formed a “joint venture or conspiracy” for the purpose of weaving the collusion story to harm Trump’s election chances and then the start of his presidency.

“These parties acted as ‘joint venturer[s]’ and therefore should be ‘considered as co-conspirator[s],'” he wrote.

Durham also revealed he has unearthed a text message showing Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann falsely told the FBI he was not working on behalf of any client when he delivered now discredited anti-Trump research in the lead-up to the 2016 election. In fact, he was working for the Clinton campaign and another client, prosecutors say.

The existence of the text message between Sussmann and then-FBI General Counsel James Baker was revealed in a court filing late Monday night by Durham’s team. Prosecutors said they intend to show Sussmann gave a false story to the FBI but then told the truth about working on behalf of the Clinton campaign when he later testified to Congress.

“Jim – it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss,” Sussmann texted Baker on Sept. 18, 2016, according to the new court filing. “Do you have availibilty for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own – not on behalf of a client or company – want to help the Bureau. Thanks.”

Prosecutors said the text message will become essential evidence at trial to show Sussmann lied to the FBI.

“The defendant lied in that meeting, falsely stating to the General Counsel that he was not providing the allegations to the FBI on behalf of any client,” Durham’s motion said. “In fact, the defendant had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including (i) a technology executive (“Tech Executive-1”) at a U.S.-based Internet company (“Internet Company-1”), and (ii) the Clinton Campaign.” (Read more: JustTheNews, 4/05/2022)  (Archive) (Court Transcript, 4/04/2022)

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

“A federal appeals court has breathed new life into a lawsuit brought by a London-based academic against one of the FBI’s confidential informants during the Russia collusion probe, litigation that is likely to focus new attention on the quality of evidence that led the bureau to investigate former President Donald Trump and his cohorts during the 2016 election.

Judge Leoni Brinkema (Credit: public domain)

There has been a flurry of new legal activity this month in Svetlana Lokhova’s lawsuit in federal court in Virginia against former FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper since the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema abused her authority in dismissing the lawsuit a year ago.

“We conclude that the court could not have properly concluded that Lokhova’s complaint … had absolutely no chance of success,” the appeals court ruled in April in a unanimous 3-0 decision that reversed Brinkema’s dismissal of the case and her order of a penalty against Lokhova for filing an allegedly frivolous lawsuit.

“We conclude that the district court abused its discretion in finding Lokhova’s complaint frivolous and concluding on that basis that its filing violated Rule 11,” the appeals court ruled. “The judgment of the district court — as reflected in its orders of May 5, 2021, and July 9, 2021 — is therefore reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings.”

Lokhova Reverse Remand Opinion/File

The decision revives a years-long dispute between Lokhova, a Russian-born, London-based academic, and Halper, a Cambridge academic who served as one of the two primary confidential human sources, along with former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, in the FBI’s now-discredited Crossfire Hurricane investigation of alleged collusion between Trump and the Kremlin.” (Read more: JusttheNews, 6/28/2022)  (Archive)

(Timeline editor’s note: We are thrilled to learn Ms. Lokhova’s defamation lawsuit will move forward and share in her new hope for justice. Her story has always stuck in our craw, knowing how crudely a handful of men plotted against her, and until now, seemed to have gotten away with their crimes. We admire Ms. Lokhova’s grit and determination to defend her honor and restore her damaged reputation by these unsavory men.)

John Durham says in new court filing that Clinton campaign, DNC and Fusion GPS are withholding documents pertinent to Sussmann case by citing a dubious attorney-client privilege claim.

Fusion GPS withheld 1,455 docs, but only 18 involved a lawyer. https://t.co/rGWMnL4QPA pic.twitter.com/UPNYtfxL0q

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) April 7, 2022

New filing highlights Special Counsel John Durham’s focus on the Hillary Clinton campaign –

John Podesta and high ranking Hillary for America officials have been interviewed

The DNC and Clinton Campaign/HFA have been producing documents after receiving grand jury subpoenas.

👀 pic.twitter.com/g9OeeC9cPe

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) April 7, 2022

Top lawmakers in US Congress hosted Mamuka Mamulashvili, an infamous Georgian Legion warlord who has boasted of authorizing field executions of captive Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

Georgian Legion warlord Mamuka Mamulashvili (center) visits Rep. Eliot Engel in 2017. (Credit: public domain)

Having taken up arms against Russia for a fifth time, Georgian Legion commander Mamuka Mamulashvili has bragged on video about his unit carrying out field executions of captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

While Western media pundits howled about images of dead bodies in the city of Bucha, echoing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy’s accusation that Russia is guilty of “genocide,” they have largely overlooked the apparent admission of atrocities by an avowed ally of the United States who was welcomed on Capitol Hill by senior lawmakers overseeing congressional foreign policy committees.

Having fought in four wars against Russia, and despite allegations that he played a leading role in the massacre of 49 protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014, Mamulashvili has taken multiple trips to the United States, where he received a warm welcome from members of Congress, the New York Police Department, and Ukrainian diaspora community.

In an interview this April, Mamulashvili, was asked about a video showing Russian fighters who had been extrajudicially executed in Dmitrovka, a town just five miles from Bucha. Mamulashvili was candid about his unit’s take-no-prisoners tactics, though he has denied involvement in the specific crimes depicted.

“We will not take Russian soldiers, as well as Kadyrovites [Chechnyan fighters]; in any case, we will not take prisoners, not a single person will be captured,” Mamulashvili said, implying that his fighters execute POWs.

The warlord’s battle dress shirt was emblazoned with a patch reading, “Mama says I’m special.”

Mamuka Mamulashvili, commander of the “Georgian National Legion” in Ukraine: “Yes, we tie their hands and feet sometimes. I speak for the Georgian Legion, we will never take Russian soldiers prisoner. Not a single one of them will be taken prisoner.” pic.twitter.com/4GM9nHsOMo

— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) April 6, 2022

“Yes, we tie their hands and feet sometimes. I speak for the Georgian Legion, we will never take Russian soldiers prisoner. Not a single one of them will be taken prisoner,” Mamulashvili emphasized

Executions of enemy combatants are considered war crimes under the Geneva Convention.

Ukrainian and Georgian Legion fighters celebrate after executing captive Russian soldiers on video. (Credit: public domain)

Western governments continue to block a Russian request for a United Nations investigation into alleged massacres in Bucha, where scores of corpses were photographed following the Russian withdrawal from the city, some with hands bound and shot execution style – as Mamulashvili described doing to prisoners.

While the events in Bucha have become a source of outrage and heated contention, a clear case of war crimes by Ukrainian forces which took place just five miles down the road on March 30 as Russian troops withdrew has received a more muted response despite coverage by the New York Times.

The macabre footage shows Russian paratroopers dead or bleeding out in the road, some with their hands clearly bound — reportedly the handiwork of the Georgian Legion. (Read more: The Grayzone, 4/08/2022) (Archive)

Jonathan Su (Credit: law.com)

“Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive privilege, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.

The machinations are summarized in several memos and emails exchanged between the various agencies in spring 2022, months before the FBI took the added unprecedented step of raiding Trump’s Florida compound with a court-issued search warrant.

Debra Steidel Wall assumes the office of acting Archivist of the United States on May 1, 2022. (Credit: Wikipedia)

The most complete summary was contained in a lengthy letter dated May 10 that acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent Trump’s lawyers summarizing the White House’s involvement.

“On April 11, 2022, the White House Counsel’s Office — affirming a request from the Department of Justice supported by an FBI letterhead memorandum — formally transmitted a request that NARA provide the FBI access to the 15 boxes for its review within seven days, with the possibility that the FBI might request copies of specific documents following its review of the boxes,” Wall wrote Trump defense attorney Evan Corcoran.

That letter revealed Biden empowered the National Archives and Records Administration to waive any claims to executive privilege that Trump might assert to block DOJ from gaining access to the documents.

“The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, [Christopher H. Schroeder] regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported ‘protective assertion of executive privilege,'” Wall wrote. “… I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege.”

The memos provide the most definitive evidence to date of the current White House’s effort to facilitate a criminal probe of the man Joe Biden beat in the 2020 election and may face again as a challenger in 2024. That involvement included eliminating one of the legal defenses Trump might use to fight the FBI over access to his documents.” (Read more: JusttheNews, 8/22/2022)  (Archive)

THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms.

The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board”: a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate — the war on terror — has been wound down.

Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.

Matt Masterson (Credit: Stanford University)

“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February.

In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government. Dehmlow, according to notes of the discussion attended by senior executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase, stressed that “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.”

FBI Foreign Influence Task Force Chief Laura Dehmlow is tied to the Twitter decision to suppress the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story. (Credit: TCB conference)

“We do not coordinate with other entities when making content moderation decisions, and we independently evaluate content in line with the Twitter Rules,” a spokesperson for Twitter wrote in a statement to The Intercept.

There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time of writing, the “content request system” at facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live. DHS and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.

DHS’s mission to fight disinformation, stemming from concerns around Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election, began taking shape during the 2020 election and over efforts to shape discussions around vaccine policy during the coronavirus pandemic. Documents collected by The Intercept from a variety of sources, including current officials and publicly available reports, reveal the evolution of more active measures by DHS.

According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

“The challenge is particularly acute in marginalized communities,” the report states, “which are often the targets of false or misleading information, such as false information on voting procedures targeting people of color.”

The inclusion of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is particularly noteworthy, given that House Republicans, should they take the majority in the midterms, have vowed to investigate. “This makes Benghazi look like a much smaller issue,” said Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., a member of the Armed Services Committee, adding that finding answers “will be a top priority.”

How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech. (Read more: The Intercept, 10/31/2022)  (Archive)

Hillary Clinton uses her power and connections to gaslight the American public with Russiagate only to then lose the 2016 presidential election. (Credit: clipping from video of Clinton concession speech, Nov 2016)

“Five associates of Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign are invoking their Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to cooperate with Special Counsel John H. Durham, according to a filing in federal court revealed later Friday in Washington, DC.

The revelation emerged in a motion filed by Durham to oppose the efforts of defendant Michael Sussmann and the Clinton campaign to withhold some documents from evidence by asserting attorney-client privilege.

(…) In the filing, Durham noted that while one witness, identified as “Researcher-2,” was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony, “at least five other witnesses who conducted work relating to the Russian Bank-1 allegations invoked (or indicated their intent to invoke) their right against self-incrimination.”

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley noted in a commentary on the filing:

Durham is now moving to give immunity to a key witness while revealing that the claims made by the Clinton campaign were viewed by the CIA as “not technically plausible” and “user created.” He also revealed that at least five of the former Clinton campaign contractors/researchers have invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to cooperate in fear that they might incriminate themselves in criminal conduct.

Turley also noted that Durham’s filing “also detailed how the false Russian collusion claims related to Alfa Bank involved Clinton General Counsel Marc Elias and Christopher Steele.” (Read more: Breitbart, 4/18/2022)  (Archive)

Rodney Joffe, John Durham, and Michael Sussmann (Credit: public domain)

“Newly released CIA memoranda suggest the tech gurus behind the Alfa Bank hoax also tracked Donald Trump’s movements to devise another collusion conspiracy theory. While smaller in scale than other aspects of Spygate, the Yotaphone hoax represents an equally serious scandal because it involved both the mining of proprietary information and sensitive data from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and the apparent surveillance of Trump’s physical movements.

(   ) …two months ago, as part of the government’s “Motion to Inquire Into Potential Conflicts of Interest,” Durham’s team revealed for the first time that when Sussmann met with the CIA in early 2017, he provided agents with internet data beyond the Alfa Bank conspiracy theory. This data, Sussmann claimed, “demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.”

The “supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones” were “Yotaphones.” Following Durham’s filing of the conflicts of interest motion, it appeared Sussmann bore responsibility for peddling a second conspiracy theory to the CIA. But the details contained in the government’s motion proved insufficient to understand the Yotaphone angle to Spygate. That all changed on Friday, when the special counsel filed two CIA memoranda memorializing what Sussmann said about the Yotaphones and the data Joffe and his tech experts had compiled.

The first memorandum, dated January 31, 2017, summarized what Sussmann told a former CIA employee in hopes of scoring a meeting with the CIA. Sussmann said his client “had some interesting information about the presence and activity of a unique Russian-made phone around President Trump.” Sussmann claimed the activity started in April 2016 when Trump was working out of the Trump Tower on its Wi-Fi network. That phone was also used on the “Wi-Fi at Trump’s apartment at Grand Central Park West,” according to Sussmann.

The memorandum then noted that “when Trump traveled to Michigan to interview a cabinet secretary, the phone appeared with Trump in Michigan.” The unnamed cabinet secretary apparently refers to Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, whose husband Richard DeVos was chairman of the Michigan-based Spectrum Health in 2016.

According to the notes, Sussmann also told his contact that “the phone was never noticed in two places at once” and was seen “only around the President’s movement.” The memo noted that once, when Trump was not in Trump Tower, the phone was active on the Trump Tower WiFi network. Then, “in December 2016, the phone disappeared from Trump Tower Wi Fi network and surfaced on [the Executive Office Building] network,” the memorandum said, with Sussmann claiming it was the same Yotaphone and that it “surfaced” at the Executive Office Building after Trump moved to the White House.

The Yotaphone is rare, Sussmann told his contact, with only about a dozen or so present in the United States, and Russian government officials often receive a high-end version of the phone as a gift. According to Sussmann, the Yotaphone connected to Trump made a number of WiFi calls to Moscow and St. Petersburg from April 2016 until February 2017.

(…) During Sussmann’s February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA, the memorandum notes that Sussmann provided the agency thumb drives with separate data files for the Yotaphone by the location of the “domain name system” or DNS lookups, including one for Trump’s Central Park apartment, one for the EOP, one for Spectrum Health Care, and one for the Trump Tower. That data, Sussmann told the CIA agents, related to DNS information, “indicat[ed] that a Russian-made Yota-phone had been seen by [Sussmann’s contacts] connecting to the WiFi from the Trump Tower in New York, as well as a from a location in Michigan, at the same time that then-candidate Trump was believed to be at these locations.”

(…) The data included in those files, however, reflected but a segment of the DNS lookups by the Yotaphones. The special counsel discovered that fact when it obtained more complete DNS data from a company that assisted Joffe in assembling the Yotaphone allegations. For instance, the more complete data assembled by Joffe and his associates showed the DNS lookups involving the EOP began at least as early as 2014, but Sussmann omitted that detail when providing the material to the CIA.

That Joffe and his associates had assembled more complete DNS data related to the Yotaphones than that provided to the CIA—data that disproves the Trump-Russia collusion theory—is a huge scandal: Those allegations indicate an intent to deceive by omission.” (Read more: The Federalist, 4/20/2022)  (Archive)

“The Democratic cybersecurity lawyer charged with concealing his work for the Clinton campaign from the FBI doesn’t want special counsel John Durham to be able to use Hillary Clinton’s tweet touting the Trump-Russia collusion claims he was pushing as evidence at trial.

(…) Durham told the federal court last week he wanted an October 2016 tweet from the Clinton campaign promoting the Alfa-Bank claims to be admitted as evidence at the May trial.

The special counsel argued the tweet is not inadmissible hearsay “because it is not being offered for its truth” — emphasizing that the prosecutors actually believe its claims were false. Durham said he instead wanted to present the tweet to “show the existence of the defendant’s attorney-client relationship with the Clinton Campaign, which is directly relevant to the false statement charge.”

On Halloween 2016, Clinton tweeted, “Donald Trump has a secret server … It was set up to communicate privately with a Putin-tied Russian bank.”

Clinton Twitter

Clinton later tweeted, “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”

She also shared a lengthy statement by then-Clinton campaign adviser and current Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Clinton Twitter

The FBI, CIA, special counsel Robert Mueller, a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, and Durham’s team have all cast doubt on or shot down the Alfa-Bank claims.

Sussmann’s lawyers argued the Clinton tweet sharing Sullivan’s statement and touting the story, which originally appeared in Slate, should be considered “inadmissible” for two “fundamental” reasons.

The defense attorneys said, “First, contrary to the Special Counsel’s misleading statement of the law, the Tweet is hearsay and it is plainly being offered for the truth: so that the Special Counsel can argue that the Campaign’s plan all along was to make a public statement about ‘federal authorities’ looking into the ‘direct connection between Trump and Russia.’ Second, the Tweet — which Mr. Sussmann did not author, issue, authorize, or even know about — is irrelevant, prejudicial, and would only confuse and distract the jury from the single false statement charge it must decide.”

Sussman’s lawyers wrote, “The Tweet, which was posted on October 31, 2016, does not reveal anything about Mr. Sussmann’s state of mind over a month earlier when he purportedly made the alleged false statement.”

“There is no evidence that Mr. Sussmann’s meeting with Mr. Baker had anything to do with the Clinton Campaign’s broader media strategy.”

But Durham wrote, “In the months prior to the publication of these articles, the defendant had communicated with the media and provided them with the Russian Bank-1 data and allegations” and had kept Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias “apprised of his efforts” while Elias “communicated with the Clinton Campaign’s leadership about potential media coverage of these issues.

The special counsel says the evidence at trial would show that beginning in late July and early August 2016, Sussmann, Joffe, and “agents of the Clinton campaign” were “assembling and disseminating the Russian Bank-1 allegations and other derogatory information about Trump and his associates to the media and the U.S. government.” The special counsel said evidence will “establish that these efforts amounted to a joint venture.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 4/19/2022)  (Archive)

“CTH begins every outline of the ongoing Durham investigation with the following disclaimer:  How is John Durham going to reveal everything that is possible about the deep state Trump targeting operation, and simultaneously handle the involvement of Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, and the Special Counsel team who were specifically appointed to cover it up?

Thanks to a more detailed filing by John Durham last night {pdf here, h/t Techno}, we can now see the guardrails, rules, and general direction the prosecution is taking.

In essence, the underlying Trump-Russia conspiracy theory material from the Clinton campaign, via Rodney Joffe to Michael Sussmann, was fabricated – likely for a dual purpose:

(A) to cover up and make excuses for the stunningly embarrassing, potentially unlawful and politically terrible April 2016 DNC email leaks, which showed the DNC Club internally working to secure the nomination for Hillary Clinton, while trying to destroy her primary opponent, Bernie Sanders.

and

(B) to create the political Russia narrative against Trump, to be deployed later in the general election.

Within the general direction Durham is following, the FBI was duped by a purposeful and manipulative intent from the Clinton campaign.  Meanwhile, the CIA [Agency-2] did not buy into the technological evidence saying it was not “technically plausible” and was “user-created and not machine/tool generated.”  

For a complete breakdown of the legal filings and what they mean on a detailed level –

–Read Techno Fog Substack Here.

The prosecutorial approach by John Durham positions all of the corruption outside the institutions of government, thereby protecting them.

The bad guys, the corrupt lawbreakers, are the people directly connected to the Clinton Campaign and all of the political and legal agents in/around the Clinton political machine.

As the prosecutorial narrative is unfolding, the institutions of government were victims of the horrible, terrible activity by the Clinton outsiders.

Pay no attention to the aligned politics and weaponization of the White House, DOJ, DOJ-NSD, FBI main, FBI-CoIntel, CIA, Senate Intelligence Committee, or memberships therein.  The entire apparatus of the most robust, capable, excellent, and diligent intelligence apparatus in the history of all mankind, along with all the oversight mechanisms that exist to support that apparatus, was duped by Hillary Clinton’s team.

That’s John Durham’s investigative thesis, and the court filings show he’s sticking to it.”

(Read: Conservative Treehouse, 4/16/2022)  (Archive)

Trump Fulton County prosecutor, Nathan Wade (Credit: Campbell and Wade)

Georgia prosecutors working for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis secretly met with January 6 Committee investigators in April 2022 before a special grand jury was convened to investigate Trump’s effort to challenge the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia.

Recall that it was reported in early May 2022 that Fani Willis convened a special grand jury to investigate Trump.

According to Politico, Fani Willis’s prosecutors secretly met with January 6 Committee investigators to review evidence.

“Committee staff quietly met with lawyers and agents working for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in mid-April 2022, just as she prepared to convene a special grand jury investigation. In the previously unreported meeting, the Jan. 6 committee aides let the district attorney’s team review — but not keep — a limited set of evidence they had gathered.” Politico reported.

“Over the next few months, committee staff also had a series of phone calls with Willis’ team. They answered the prosecutors’ questions and shared insight on matters like Trump’s false electors gambit and his efforts to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Both of those ploys ultimately featured prominently in the criminal charges that Willis brought against Trump and his allies last summer.” Politico reported.

Let me make something very clear. When they say the J6 “committee staff” coordinated with Fani Willis, that committee staff is a person, Mary McCord. https://t.co/1Okg83wc6n pic.twitter.com/JtfG9dRx5Y

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) January 11, 2024

In December, House Judiciary Committee Republicans launched an investigation into Fani Willis colluding with the January 6 Committee.

🚨 #BREAKING: @Jim_Jordan and @RepLoudermilk Launch Inquiry into Fani Willis Colluding with the January 6 Committee.

We have learned that Willis’s office coordinated its investigative actions with the partisan Select Committee.

📍 DA Fani Willis: https://t.co/J3VqWmz6vQ

📍…

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) December 5, 2023

In December 2023, House Judiciary Republicans unearthed a December 17, 2021 letter between Fani Willis and January 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson.

Fani Willis refused to cooperate with Jim Jordan’s request to disclose details about her team’s contact with the January 6 Committee. (Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 1/11/2024)  (Archive)

Via Techno Fog:

The CIA Notes Part 1: January 31, 2017

Durham provided to the Court two sets of notes related to Sussmann’s representations to the CIA. The first was from Sussmann’s January 31, 2017 contacts with a CIA employee where Sussmann discussed wanting to provide to the CIA data on “the presence and activity of a unique Russian made phone around President Trump.” It was said that this secret activity started in April 2016 and continued after Trump’s “move to the White House.”

Sussmann alleged the Russian phone (YotaPhone) was always close to Trump (“only around the President’s Movements”), surfacing at his Trump Tower Network in April 2016 and being used through Wi-Fi at Trump’s Grand Central West apartment. The phone even “appeared with Trump in Michigan” when he was interviewing a Cabinet Secretary.

At a minimum, this confirms what we reported nearly two months ago: that the Trump transition data was passed to the CIA. Yet it’s also more than that. The CIA was provided with data all the way back from April 2016.

Why does April 2016 matter? Because Russia was alleged to have hacked “the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and DNC networks in April 2016.” Recall that “Crowdstrike was contacted on April 30, 2016 to respond to a suspected breach” of the DNC.

(…) The CIA Notes Part 2: Sussmann’s February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA

That January 31, 2017 conference was used to schedule the February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA. At that meeting, Sussmann repeated his allegations that a “Russian-made Yota-phone” had been seen at Trump properties and had traveled with Trump to Michigan. He further alleged that “In December 2016, the Yota-phone was seen connecting to WIFI from the Executive Office of the President (the White House).”

Michael Sussmann (Credit: CNN screenshot)

On Feb. 9, 2017, Sussman met with CIA officers—where he also made false statements, according to the new filings.

A memorandum introduced by the special counsel’s team and penned by a CIA official said that Sussman provided documents and thumb drives that he claimed contained data related to potential Russian activities linked with Trump.

Sussman “advised that he was not representing a particular client,” according to the notes. Instead, he said he was conveying information from “contacts” who he believed “were acting in good faith and out of a sense of loyalty to the USG,” or U.S. government.

That contradicts how Sussman told a former CIA employee, who was said to have helped set up the February meeting, that he “represents a client who does not want to be known,” according to notes of the meeting taken by the former employee.

It also contradicts testimony Sussman delivered to the House Intelligence Committee. Under oath, Sussman said (pdf) he received the information “from a client of mine.”

Sussman said he learned of the information by the summer of 2016 but only came forward months later because President Barack Obama ordered an intelligence review of possible Russian interference in elections.

“This information seemed to fall roughly within that, and so I thought that might be—or my client thought that that might be something that was relevant for those that were gathering information regarding foreign-based actors,” Sussman said. (Read more: Zero Hedge, 4/16/2022)  (Archive)

In 2012, Obama told Medvedev in Russia to tell Putin that he would be more flexible after the election.

In a debate with Romney, he laughed at Romney for remarking how dangerous Putin and Russia were, saying the ’80s called and wanted their foreign policy back:

Now, Obama says Putin was always dangerous,  though he did nothing in his eight years to rein Putin in.

Barack Obama and Fareed Zakaria, 2/15/2015 (Credit: CNN)

Putin Has Always Been a Threat and Ruthless: Obama

Former President Barack Obama said Russian President Vladimir Putin has always been a threat on the world stage. He described him as ruthless against his own people and others.

“He has always been somebody who’s wrapped up in this twisted, distorted sense of grievance and ethnic nationalism. That part of Putin, I think has always been there,” Obama told Al Roker on NBC’s “Today.”

Mitt Romney finally gets credit years later for his warnings on Russia

Last week, Obama lied through his teeth when he said he had been tough on Russia after they invaded Crimea. He said he had to drag Europe in to be tough.

Barack Obama Rewrites His Russia History

His claim that he was tough on Putin is contradicted by his eight-year record.

(Read more: American Thinker, 4/15/2022)  (Archive)

Robby Mook (Credit: Douglas Graham/Getty Images)

“The battle over documents and e-mails in the Michael Sussmann case just got hotter.

Back in August 2017, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee, explaining how his firm was retained to gather “lots of facts about Donald Trump.” He admitted that Fusion GPS met with reporters leading up to the 2016 election to spread opposition research against then-candidate Trump.

The context of Perkins Coie’s retention of Fusion GPS was further explained in a book co-authored by Simpson and Fusion GPS co-founder Peter Fritsch. They documented an April 20, 2016 meeting with Mark Elias (Perkins Coie partner and counsel for the DNC/Clinton Campaign), where Elias requested their services for opposition research:

Now the stories have changed.

Fusion GPS is no longer an opposition research firm, and they weren’t hired to dig-up dirt against Trump. Instead, they would have you believe, after the phony dossier and the Alfa Bank hoax, that Fusion GPS was retained to provide legal advice to the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Remarkable.

Background

On April 6, Durham filed this motion to compel in the Michael Sussmann case, requesting the court require the production of “emails and attachments between and among” Perkins Coie, Rodney Joffe, and Fusion GPS. These emails and documents, according to Durham, “appear or involve or relate to” Fusion GPS’s provision of research and media services to Hillary for America, the DNC, and Perkins Coie. (Some documents had been produced pursuant to grand jury subpoenas dating back to the 2021.)

(Read more: Techno Fog/substack, 4/20/2022)  (Archive)

Hillary For America now intervenes in the Michael Sussmann case-

Says the Perkins Coie/Fusion GPS communications and work product is “privileged”

In support, Robby Mook swears under penalty of perjury that Fusion GPS was retained to provide “legal services and legal advice”

👀 pic.twitter.com/R6mOMeSfbM

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) April 19, 2022

(Credit: Wall Street Journal)

“Hillary Clinton asked a federal court Wednesday to throw out a lawsuit from former President Donald Trump that accuses her and the Democratic National Committee of conspiring against him to smear his 2016 campaign.

Clinton’s attorneys said Trump’s $24 million lawsuit that claims an “unthinkable plot” to “cripple” his bid for the presidency and paint his campaign as colluding with Russia had no legal basis, according to a motion filed in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

“Whatever the utility of Plaintiff’s Complaint as a fundraising tool, a press release, or a list of political grievances, it has no merit as a lawsuit and should be dismissed with prejudice,” the 22-page court filing said.

In a 108-page complaint filed last month, Trump claimed Clinton and others orchestrated a plan to manufacture the Russia scandal to ruin his candidacy in 2016 when he was running as a Republican candidate against Clinton.

Clinton, the former Secretary of State and first lady, worked with others as the then-Democratic nominee for president to allegedly falsify evidence to spark federal investigations in a ploy he called “so outrageous, subversive and incendiary that even the events of Watergate pale in comparison,” Trump’s suit says.” (Read more: New York Post, 4/20/2022)  (Archive)

“Over the last 24 hours, former President Barack Obama and twice-failed presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton have come out against free speech – calling for big tech to go further to censor views they disagree with.

On Thursday, Obama told an audience at Stanford University that tech companies are “turbo-charging some of humanity’s worst impulses,” adding “One of the biggest reasons for the weakening of democracy is the profound change that’s taken place in how we communicate and consume information.”

He then said that people are ‘dying because of disinformation.’

Obama goes on psychotic rant, claims people are dying because of “misinformation”. pic.twitter.com/uHBeKpT7rI

— Real Mac Report (@RealMacReport) April 21, 2022

Obama’s ‘misinformation’ shtick was largely a repeat of a speech he gave two weeks ago in Chicago, when he claimed “You have to fight to provide people [with] the information they need to be free and self-governing.” In other words, government-approved narratives.

As The Federalist noted, however, Obama “Spied on the Donald Trump campaign with a secret court warrant backed by the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded Christopher Steele dossier which, in an ironic twist, was the product of Russian disinformation. Democrats used this disinformation to repeatedly smear President Trump and undermine the integrity of the 2016 election.”

Hillary Clinton joined the fray on Thursday, tweeting “For too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability,” and called on “our transatlantic allies to push the Digital Services Act,” aimed at regulating online platforms.

Clinton Twitter

Of course, Hillary Clinton funded the Russian disinfo dossier that Obama’s administration used against Trump, and the former British spy that was paid to fabricate it pushed it to major news outlets which peddled the misinformation as long as they could squeeze blood from that stone.

What was that about misinformation, Hillary? (Read more: Zero Hedge, 4/22/2022)  (Archive)

FISA Court rubber stamps FBI warrant applications to spy on Americans. (Credit: River City Reader)

The FBI repeatedly misused a surveillance tool in searching for foreign intelligence to use in cases pertaining to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and 2020 racial justice protests, according to an April 2022 court order publicly released Friday.

The order, which was released by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, is significantly redacted but reveals thousands of violations of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the federal government to collect communications between certain targeted foreign individuals outside the U.S.

The court has legal oversight of the U.S. government’s espionage activities.

FBI officials said the violations came before corrective measures the agency took starting in summer 2021 and continuing into last year.

(…) The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the report Friday to promote transparency, but members of Congress originally received the order last year.

The FBI’s program maintains a database of intelligence that U.S. agencies can search, but the FBI must have a foreign intelligence purpose or be looking for evidence of a crime to conduct a search.

The order shows the FBI turned to the database to look into someone it believed was present at the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, an inquiry that did not have any “analytical, investigative or evidentiary” purpose.

An analyst conducted 13 searches of people who were suspected of participating in the riot to see whether they had any foreign ties, but the Justice Department later determined that it did not meet the standard required for a search. (Read more: The Hill, 5/19/2023)  (Archive)

This problem existed eight years ago and any ‘corrective measure’ the court took to safeguard our First and Fourth Amendment rights, hasn’t worked.

(…)  The FISA court found that the government had been engaging in a long pattern of significant abuses that were revealed to the court by then-National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers.

“On October 24, 2016, the government orally apprised the Court of significant non-compliance with the NSA’s minimization procedures involving queries of data acquired under Section 702 using U.S. person identifiers. The full scope of non-compliant querying practices had not been previously disclosed to the Court,” the FISC ruling read.

The court noted the government’s failure to previously notify the court of these issues, referring to the government’s actions as exhibiting an institutional “lack of candor” while emphasizing that “this is a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”

April 26, 2017 – An unsealed FISC Report reveals systematic abuses in accessing 702 data

(   ) …an email obtained by The Federalist indicates Georgia Tech researchers drafted a series of white papers for DARPA, including on the “DNC attack attribution,” and on what they called a “Mueller List” of “domains and indicators related” to DNC hackers.

The email dated July 23, 2021 followed Durham dropping a second subpoena on Georgia Tech for more documents related to its investigation of the Alfa Bank hoax and other related issues. (More on that subpoena below). In that email, a lawyer representing David Dagon, the second Georgia Tech researcher involved in the Alfa Bank hoax who also worked on the DARPA Enhanced Attribution program, shared a list of “documents/data sources” Dagon believed would be responsive to the subpoena of Georgia Tech documents.

Listed under the heading of “DARPA whitepapers” were four documents, including “Whitepaper on DNC attack attribution”; Analysis of attacks of EOP (Executive Office of the President) networks”; “Whitepaper for DOJ on APT-29 related hackers, crypto coin transactions, and analysis that includes Yota-related domains”; and “‘Mueller List’—list of domains and indicator related to APT-28.”

Of these DARPA whitepapers, the first and fourth both relate to the DNC hack, with the final paper also connecting to the Mueller investigation. APT-28 is the more formal name for the Russian intelligence group of hackers known colloquially as Fancy Bear. As part of his investigation, Mueller charged 12 Russian intelligence agents allegedly working as Fancy Bear with crimes related to the DNC hack.

This email represents the latest evidence suggesting Georgia Tech and DARPA assisted in the DNC hack investigation and Mueller’s investigation, notwithstanding DARPA’s strident denials.” (Read more: The Federalist, 4/22/2022)  (Archive)

The Coolidge Reagan Foundation logo. (Credit: public domain)

(…)  After the Hillary for America and the DNC’s motions to intervene hit the Sussmann docket, The Coolidge Reagan Foundation penned a three-page letter to Durham and Assistant Special Counsel Jonathan Algor. That letter alerted the special counsel’s office to key facts about the FEC’s recent decision to fine the political groups in relation to a complaint the foundation had filed with the FEC. That complaint charged Hillary for America and the DNC with using the “law firm, Perkins Coie, to hire and funnel over $1 million to ‘outside research firms’ such as Fusion GPS ‘to perform potentially sensitive, controversial, or politically embarrassing’ opposition research into Donald Trump.”

Coolidge Reagan Foundation … by The Federalist

The FEC complaint, filed in 2018, alleged that “the research was not ‘for the purpose of assisting Perkins Coie in providing legal advice,’” but to further the “political and campaign-related goals” of the organizations. The foundation also claimed in its FEC complaint that because the work was not “for the purpose of providing legal advice or assisting with impending or potential litigation, it was not covered by attorney-client, work-product, or other privileges.”

Significantly, as the foundation noted in its April 22, 2022 letter to the special counsel’s office, the FEC had “found probable cause to believe” the political organizations had misreported the purpose of certain disbursements. The FEC reached that conclusion based on a memorandum prepared by the FEC’s Office of General Counsel, but under controlling regulations that memorandum “will not be made public for another week,” the letter explained.

Foundation counsel Dan Backer added that while the memorandum is not yet public, the special counsel’s office would likely be able to obtain it directly from the FEC. That memorandum also will provide Durham’s team further details on the FEC’s investigation and fact-finding that may be useful to the special counsel in the Sussmann litigation, noted the letter.

In Friday’s letter, Backer also highlighted Hillary for America and the DNC’s commitment in their settlement agreement with the FEC to “not further contest the Commission’s finding of probable cause to believe” that the political organizations had “falsely reported their payments through Perkins Coie to Fusion GPS as being for legal services.” In contrast, in the Sussmann case, Hillary for America and the DNC “ are nevertheless asserting materials generated by Fusion GPS and provided to Perkins Coie are protected by attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine,” the letter stressed.

“The Government should not permit HFA and the DNC to adopt conflicting positions in different proceedings, depending on the federal agency against which they are litigating,” the foundation’s letter concluded, suggesting the trial court may find those breaches of the settlement agreement “material in ruling on any privilege claims.” (Read more: The Federalist, 4/25/2022)  (Archive)

Peter Fritsch (l) and Glenn Simpson, founders of Fusion GPS,  join Meet The Press on November 24, 2019, for an exclusive interview to discuss their work on the Steele Dossier. (Credit: Meet the Press/YouTube)

Paul Sperry/RealClearInvestigations

“The FBI decision to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser hinged on an unsubstantiated rumor from a Clinton campaign-paid dossier that the Washington Post’s Moscow sources had quickly shot down as “bullshit” and “impossible,” according to emails disclosed last week to a D.C. court hearing the criminal case of a Clinton lawyer accused of lying to the FBI.

Though the FBI presumably had access to better sources than the newspaper, agents did little to verify the rumor that Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page had secretly met with sanctioned Kremlin officials in Moscow. Instead, the bureau pounced on the dossier report the day it received it, immediately plugging the rumor into an application under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to wiretap Page as a suspected Russian agent.

The allegation, peddled to both the press and FBI in the summer of 2016 by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to dig up dirt on Trump during the presidential race, proved to be the linchpin in winning approval for the 2016 warrant, which was renewed three times in 2017 – even though the FBI learned there were serious holes in the story and had failed to independently corroborate it.

The revelations of early media skepticism about the Trump-Russia narrative before journalists embraced it are included in a 62-page batch of emails between Fusion and prominent Beltway reporters released by Special Counsel John Durham, who is scouring the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign for evidence of abuse and criminal wrongdoing.

The documents suggest that some journalists, as keen as they were to report dirt on Trump, were nevertheless more cautious than FBI investigators about embracing hearsay information served up by Clinton agents. (The FBI declined comment.) The new material also offers a look at the lengths to which those working on Clinton’s behalf went in order to seed the government with unverified rumors about Trump and Russia that amounted to a disinformation campaign. Among those targeted were powerful Democratic members of Congress, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who proved to be a willing collaborator.

Trump as ‘Manchurian Candidate’

The story of high-level Kremlin meetings didn’t ring true with some in the press, who checked with sources in Moscow and pushed back on Fusion GPS. But journalists’ interest in the story remained high during the campaign.

In an interview, Page said he was flooded with calls during the summer of 2016 from Washington journalists, including veteran reporters from the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He said Fusion had misled them into believing they were working on the story of their lifetimes – that a real-life “Manchurian candidate,” or Russian sleeper agent, was running for president.

“Each news outlet kept calling me,” he said. “One by one.”

Page said he strenuously denied the accusations.

“It was B.S.,” he said. “I tried to warn them.”

“As eager as journalists may have been to make Trump appear to be a Kremlin operative, some were skeptical about what Fusion was telling them about Page. Among those were now former Wall Street Journal foreign affairs correspondent Jay Solomon, who used “Manchurian candidate” in a July 2016 email exchange with Fusion, expressing his doubt.

“Everyone wants shit on this,” insisted Fusion co-founder Peter Fritsch, a former Journal reporter himself, in an attempt to coax his old colleague Solomon into covering the story.

Fritsch then outlined the rumors Fusion had just received from Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer his firm had hired to help tie Trump to Russia as part of its contract with the Clinton campaign. Those rumors, contained in a series of memos known as the Steele dossier, were shared with the FBI, including “Intelligence Report 94” dated July 19, 2016. It claimed that during a July 2016 trip to Moscow, Page attended a “secret meeting” with Putin crony Igor Sechin to discuss lifting Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia. The dossier also alleged that Page met with Kremlin official Igor Divyekin to share compromising information about Clinton with the Trump campaign.

An ‘Easy Scoop,’ Said GPS

“The easy scoop waiting for confirmation: that dude carter page met with igor sechin when he went to moscow earlier this month,” Fritsch stated in a July 26, 2016, email pitching the story to Solomon. “sechin discussed energy deals and possible lifting of sanctions on himself et al. he also met with a senior kremlin official called divyekin, who told page they have good kompromat on hillary and offered to help. he also warned page they have good kompromat on the donald.” (“Kompromat” is compromising information typically used in blackmail.)

Rep. Adam Schiff: A Fusion GPS-recommended source for a skeptical journalist. (Credit: Scott Applewhite)

Added Fritsch, referring in part to the mass leak of Democratic emails by WikiLeaks before the 2016 Democratic National Convention in late July: “needless to say, a senior trump advisor meeting with a former kgb official close to putin, who is on a treasury sanctions list, days before the republican convention and a big russian-backed wikileak would be huge news.”

Indeed it would be – if it were true. “Thanks for this,” Solomon said. “Will run down.”

But later that day, Solomon reported back that “Page is neither confirming nor denying,” so Fritsch suggested he “call adam schiff or difi,” referring to the then-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is not clear what information Fritsch expected the two Democrats to provide. (Schiff would later read the same raw dossier rumors about Page into the congressional record during a public hearing about Trump’s alleged Russian ties.)

Tom Hamburger (Credit: Twitter/@thamburger)

Three days later, Fusion’s attempts to plant their rumor in influential media outlets hit more resistance. Another Journal alumnus, Tom Hamburger, said he was “getting kick back” while trying to confirm the rumor for the Washington Post, where he worked on the paper’s national desk.

“That Page met with Sechin or Ivanov. ‘Its [sic] bullshit. Impossible,’ said one of our Moscow sources,” Hamburger reported back to Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson, who also previously worked for the Journal. (The rumor included Sergei Ivanov, a top Putin aide.) The Post’s Moscow bureau chief at the time was David Filipov. Hamburger added that another reporter he knew “doesn’t like this story” and was passing on it.

“No worries, I don’t expect lots of people to believe it,” Simpson replied. “It is, indeed, hard to believe.”

As Fusion was pushing the rumors to reporters that July, its subcontractor Steele was pushing them to FBI agents, who received copies of his dossier earlier in the month. Steele also briefed a top Justice Department official, Bruce Ohr, on the Carter Page rumors on July 30 during a breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel in D.C., and asked Ohr to relay them to FBI brass. The next day, the FBI officially opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation targeting Trump advisers – though the bureau says this decision was based on a tip it had received from an Australian diplomat.

For his part, Hamburger still pursued the story, asking for documents on Page later that month; and Fusion recycled the false rumor in an internal report, separate from the Steele dossier, which it emailed to Hamburger and another Post reporter in September.

President Obama’s appearance at the New Economic School in Moscow, 2009, brought none of the suspicions that Carter Page created years later. (Credit: Euractiv/YouTube)

The report, which Fritsch claimed that “one of our [research] associates wrote,” went beyond even the dossier. It asserted that Page’s July 8 speech at the New Economic School in Moscow (where President Obama had also once spoken) was “concocted to give Page a public explanation for his trip to Moscow, which sources say included secret meetings with top Kremlin officials, where the American presidential campaign and U.S. sanctions against Russia were both discussed.”

Fritsch did not say who the Fusion “sources” were. But around the same time, he and Simpson brought Steele to Washington to brief journalists from the Post, the New York Times, CNN, and Yahoo News on Page in a private room at the Tabard Inn, a hotel-bar long a favorite of Washington scribes.

Glen Caplin (Credit: Twitter)

Fusion had finally found a media outlet to take the bait it had been chumming out to reporters for months. After meeting with Steele for about an hour, Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff ran with the rumors in a September 23 online article, which the FBI then used to corroborate the dossier in its initial October 2016 FISA application, even though the supposed corroboration was redundant: Steele and his dossier were Isikoff’s source for the story. (Isikoff, who did not respond to requests for comment, would later write in a 2018 book he co-authored, “Russian Roulette,” that the rumors about Page were just “pillow talk.”)

The Clinton campaign jumped on what it called Isikoff’s “bombshell report” and heavily promoted it on social media. Clinton campaign official Glen Caplin issued a statement republishing the Yahoo piece in full and proclaiming: “It’s chilling to learn that U.S. intelligence officials are conducting a probe into suspected meetings between Trump’s foreign policy adviser Carter Page and members of Putin’s inner circle while in Moscow … [T]his report suggests Page met with a sanctioned top Russian official to discuss the possibility of ending U.S. sanctions against Russia under a Trump presidency – an action that could directly enrich both Trump and Page while undermining American interests.”

Added Caplin: “This is serious business and voters deserve the facts before election day.”

But the media never reported the real facts behind the story – that it was all based on Clinton campaign opposition research – which allowed the rumors to survive without any real scrutiny for years.

Sergei Millian: He wasn’t the source of the Trump sex-tape story, and the Washington Post had to retract. (Credit: Twitter)

The Washington Post eventually stopped paying attention to the red flags surrounding the dossier. The newspaper seized on other rumors Fusion fed reporters from the Clinton-paid document.

Hamburger, for one, later bit on a tip that the source for the most explosive allegations in the dossier was a Trump supporter with Kremlin ties. He reported in 2017 that Sergei Millian was behind the claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin had compromising sex tapes of Trump and that he and Trump were engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy” to steal the 2016 election.

However, the Post had to retract his stories after Special Counsel John Durham last year disclosed that Millian was fabricated as a source. The prosecutor indicted Steele’s “primary subsource,” Igor Danchenko, for lying to the FBI when he told agents that Millian was a source for the dossier. Millian had nothing to do with the dossier, as RCI reported. Danchenko, who awaits trial, apparently made it all up.

Hamburger did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

‘Pushed It Over’ the Line

Carter Page, who is suing the former corporate parent of Yahoo News for defamation, suggested anti-Trump bias blinded the media to glaring problems with the dossier. But even more alarming, he said, is how FBI leaders, whose text messages reveal that they shared the media’s hatred for Trump, were even more reckless in gunning for him. Page said it’s outrageous that, at least initially, the press seemed to have “higher ethical standards” than FBI headquarters.

On Sept. 19, 2016, the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team formally received Steele’s dossier Report 94 alleging Page’s secret Kremlin meetings, according to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who detailed the FBI’s handling of the rumors in a 2019 report. That same day, the team began discussions with department lawyers “to consider Steele’s reporting as part of a FISA application targeting Carter Page.”

Brian Auten, FBI supervisor: The Steele dossier’s bogus “Report 94,” alleging secret Page-Russia meetings, helped make the case for spying on him. (Credit: Twitter)

In an email to attorneys, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten forwarded an excerpt from Steele’s report and asked, “Does this put us at least *that* much closer to a full FISA on [Carter Page]?” The FBI agent handling the case said the rumors from Steele “supplied missing information in terms of what Page may have been doing during his July 2016 visit to Moscow.”

The attorneys thought it was a “close call” when they first discussed a FISA targeting Page in early August, Horowitz relayed in his report, but the Steele reporting in September “pushed it over” the line in terms of establishing probable cause.

In the run-up to the FBI securing approval for the FISA request in late October 2016, the bureau tasked an undercover informant, Stefan Halper, to question Page about the alleged meetings with Kremlin officials. Halper struck out. In a conversation Halper recorded surreptitiously, Page not only denied huddling with Sechin and Divyekin but said he had never even heard of Divyekin. The FBI decided not to include these inconvenient facts in its FISA warrant application, an omission the Justice Department’s inspector general found striking.

“The application did not contain these denials even though the application relied upon the allegations in Report 94 that Page had secret meetings with both Sechin and Divyekin,” the Horowitz report noted.

It wasn’t the only exculpatory evidence the FBI left out of its FISA applications. It also omitted information it possessed showing that Page, who had once worked in Moscow as a Merrill Lynch investment banker, had earlier assisted the FBI in catching a Russian spy, as RealClearInvestigations first reported. The former Navy lieutenant also previously helped the CIA monitor Russia, something an FBI attorney deliberately hid from the FISA court. (The lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, was recently convicted of charges related to his doctoring of a government email documenting Page’s role as a CIA source.)

In early 2017, as the FBI was preparing to reapply for wiretaps on Page, Steele’s primary subsource Danchenko told Auten and other FBI officials that he had made it clear to Steele that he had only heard a rumor that such clandestine meetings might take place but not that they actually occurred as Steele wrote in his dossier. The FBI nonetheless omitted from subsequent FISA renewal applications the revelation of Danchenko backing away from the critical piece of information supporting probable cause and admitting it was merely hearsay.

In the end, “The FBI was unable to determine whether a meeting between Sechin and Page took place,” Horowitz wrote in his report.

Page said it’s “chilling” that the nation’s most powerful police force could act so cavalierly, disregarding basic investigative procedures like verifying tips and rumors before obtaining wiretaps on a U.S. citizen.

Worse, he said, is how the FBI misled the secret FISA court. In a 2020 review of the applications, the powerful court determined that at least two of the surveillance warrants were invalid and therefore illegal. Page is now suing both the FBI and Justice Department for $75 million for violating his constitutional rights. (RealClearInvestigations, 5/4/2022)  (Archive)

This and all other original articles created by RealClearInvestigations may be republished for free with attribution. (These terms do not apply to outside articles linked on the site.)

“Special Counsel John Durham just filed this motion in response to the efforts of Hillary for America, Fusion GPS, et al. to keep secret (by use of the attorney-client and work product privileges) communications involving Fusion GPS. You can read it here.

Durham states the “purported privilege holders who have intervened do so in a case in which the defendant has denied representing any client when he brought the Russian Bank-1 allegations to the FBI.” The privilege controversy thus entraps Sussmann to a certain extent, seemingly precluding his denial that he was working on behalf of a client. Brilliant.

Additionally, Durham casts doubt on the declaration of Marc Elias that Fusion GPS was retained to provide “legal advice.” Here he makes a key point:

”…if rendering such advice was truly the intended purpose of Fusion GPS’s retention, one would also expect the investigative firm to seek permission and/or guidance from [Hillary for America] or its counsel before sharing such derogatory materials with the media or otherwise placing them into the public domain.”

(Credit: New York Post)

In support of that point, Durham states he is in possession of “hundreds of emails in which Fusion GPS employees shared raw, unverified, and uncorroborated information – including their own draft research and work product – with reporters.” (He even filed them under seal with the court.) These include:

• Emails with Slate’s Franklin Foer from May 14, 2016 in which Fusion GPS conveys information on a Trump advisor and Alfa Bank.
• July 26, 2016 e-mails from Fusion GPS to the Wall Street Journal communicating allegations from Christopher Steele stating “a Trump advisor meeting with a former KGB official close to Putin … would be huge news.”
• July 29 and July 31, 2016 emails with a reporter (Washington Post’s Tom Hamburger) concerning Carter Page’s investments and meetings with Russians – of which the reporter said “Its bullshit.”

• July 27, 2016 e-mails between an ABC News reporter (Matthew Mosk) and Fusion GPS concerning Sergei Millian. Fusion GPS responded with a “comprehensive report” regarding Millian.
• Fusion GPS communications with NY Times reporters pushing more dirt on Millian.
• This e-mail from a Fusion GPS co-founder to the New York Times – dated October 31, 2016 – pushing the Alfa Bank allegations and stating the US Government is investigating. (Timeline editor’s note: this date is also the first time Hillary and Podesta tweet about Trump Russia collusion.)

Here are e-mails between Franklin Foer and Fusion GPS, in which they discuss going after Carter Page in May 2016.

As Durham makes clear, no lawyers are copied in these e-mails and this doesn’t have anything to do with legal advice. And even if there were some type of privilege or work product, it was waived when Fusion GPS distributed the info to the press.” (Read more: Techno Fog/Substack, 4/25/2022)  (Archive)

(…) And here is Fusion GPS telling a WSJ reporter to call Adam Schiff or Diane Feinstein about Carter Page. This is solid evidence that Fusion GPS, by July 26, 2016, had briefed Schiff and Feinstein (and their staffers – including Daniel Jones, a person of interest in the Durham investigation) about their Trump/Russia “research.” (Techno Fog, 4/25/2022)  (Archive)

(…) The Fusion GPS witness who will testify is the “tech maven” referenced in their e-mails with the New York Times. This appears to be confirmation that Laura Seago will be the Fusion GPS employee to testify.

Here’s more on the Fusion Witness and her knowledge of what went down leading up to the 2016 election:

(Read more: Techno Fog/Substack, 4/25/2022)  (Archive)

(…) The Sussmann indictment mentions “non-public Internet data” that was exploited by Joffe, et al, for the purposes of their political hit-job. This information was provided to Georgia Tech as part of a prospective contract with DARPA to “identify the perpetrators of malicious cyber-attacks and protect U.S. national security.” (More details here.) After the indictment, it was revealed that Durham’s team has interviewed former DARPA employees.

Based on this information, we hinted that “there might be charges relating to the misuse of classified government data from DARPA.”

We now have confirmation that this contract included classified information.

Take a look at this e-mail (obtained by Twitter sleuth UndeadFOIA) where Andrew DeFilippis, who is part of Special Counsel Durham’s team, states that “DARPA has no objections to Georgia Tech’s provision of any records or information (both classified and unclassified) to our team and to the grand jury.”

Evelyn Farkas was forced to admit under oath before Congress that despite what she claimed on MSNBC, she never had evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. (Credit: MSNBC)

“The McCain Institute at Arizona State University (ASU) and ASU President Michael M. Crow are proud to announce Dr. Evelyn Farkas has been named the McCain Institute’s new executive director. Dr. Farkas will begin her new position at the Washington, D.C.-based McCain Institute on May 2, 2022.

“I am humbled and grateful to ASU and to the McCain Institute Board of Trustees for this opportunity. American leadership and a commitment to furthering human rights and democracy in the spirit of Senator John McCain is needed now more than ever, and I am excited to get to work alongside the McCain Institute’s talented and determined staff,” said Dr. Evelyn Farkas. “This is a critical time in our country’s history that calls on us to be unequivocal about the differences between democracy and autocracy. I look forward to helping advance character-driven leadership around the world.”

Dr. Farkas brings decades of American foreign policymaking to the McCain Institute. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, and executive director of the congressional Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, among many other senior national security positions in the U.S. government.

“We’re proud to welcome Evelyn Farkas to the McCain Institute and to Arizona State University,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow. “Her area of expertise could not be more appropriate for this moment in time and the possibilities for this new chapter of the McCain Institute at ASU are truly exciting.” (Read more: The McCain Institute, 4/26/2022)  (Archive)

(   ) …there was a pre-trial hearing in the Michael Sussmann case relating to various evidentiary issues. For the uninitiated, Sussmann a former Perkins Coie partner, and former attorney for the DNC/Clinton Campaign (and Rodney Joffe), has been charged by Special Counsel John Durham with providing false statements to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in the fall of 2016. Here is more background on his indictment.

We have the full transcript of yesterday’s hearing. Here are some of the most notable disclosures:

More info on the investigation into Rodney Joffe.

(…) Rodney Joffe’s exposure and 18 U.S.C. 1031. The Special Counsel was understandably hesitant to get too deep into what they have on Rodney Joffe. However, when Sussmann’s attorneys brought up the fact that Joffe couldn’t be charged due to the 5-year statute of limitations, the Special Counsel responded that “certain statutes of limitations are longer than five years.”

The court asked for an example, and the Special Counsel referenced 18 U.S.C. 1031, “which involves defrauding the government in connection with procurement and contract matters.” This has to do with the Georgia Tech/DARPA contract. In the Special Counsel’s own words:

Laura Seago from Fusion GPS will (likely) testify at trial. We previously reported that Seago was identified as the “tech maven” the government expected to call at trial. At this hearing was the first time we saw Seago’s name explicitly mentioned as the Fusion GPS witness.

Christopher Steele will not be a witness. Sussmann’s lawyer informed the court that the Special Counsel stated on April 26 that Steele is “out of the country and isn’t likely to be a witness.”

In fact, Steele is not cooperating with the Special Counsel.

Finally, this statement from the Special Counsel relating to how “the VIPs, meaning Perkins Coie and the [Clinton] campaign” wanted the “Internet data” to be pulled for purposes of digging up information to damage Trump.

(Read more: Techno Fog, 4/28/2022)  (Archive)

EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and Elon Musk (Credit: Zero Hedge)

“We have been discussing how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign companies to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. The EU has responded aggressively to warn Musk not to allow greater free speech or face crippling fines and even potential criminal enforcement. After years of using censorship by surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) declared Musk’s pledge to restore free speech values on social media as threatening Democracy itself. She has promised that “there are going to be rules” to block such changes. She is not alone. Former President Obama has declared “regulation has to be part of the answer” to disinformation.

For her part, Hillary Clinton is looking to Europe to fill the vacuum and called upon her European counterparts to pass a massive censorship law to “bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”

(…) EU censors have assured Democratic leaders that they will not allow free speech to break out on Twitter regardless of the wishes of its owner and customers.

One of the most anti-free speech figures in the West, EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has been raising the alarm that Twitter users might be able to read uncensored material or hear unauthorized views.

Breton himself threatened that Twitter must “fly by [the European Union’s] rules” in censoring views deemed misleading or harmful by EU bureaucrats. Breton has been moving publicly to warn Musk not to try to reintroduce protections that go beyond the tolerance of the EU for free speech. Musk is planning to meet with the EU censors and has conceded that he may not be able resist such mandatory censorship rules.

The hope of leaders like Clinton is the anti-free speech measure recently passed by EU countries, the Digital Services Act. The DSA contains mandatory “disinformation” rules for censoring “harmful” thoughts or views.

(Read more: Zero Hedge/Jonathan Turley, 11/02/2022)  (Archive)

April 2022 – (…) As is often the case, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stripped away any niceties or nuance. Clinton called for the European Union to pass the Digital Services Act (DSA), a measure widely denounced by free speech advocates as a massive censorship measure. Clinton warned that governments need to act now because “for too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability. The EU is poised to do something about it.”

Clinton’s call for censoring disinformation was breathtakingly hypocritical. President Obama was briefed by his CIA Director John Brennan on “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016, of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” The intelligence suggested it was “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”

Moreover, her call for censorship came just weeks after special counsel John Durham offered more details about the accusation that her campaign manufactured a false Russian collusion theory. One of Clinton’s former lawyers is under indictment for the effort. Clinton personally tweeted out the disinformation that is the subject of the federal prosecution. And the Federal Election Commission recently fined her campaign for hiding the funding of the Steele dossier.

Given that history, it would be easy to dismiss Clinton’s calls as almost comically self-serving. However, the 27-nation EU just did what she demanded. It gave preliminary approval to the act, which would subject companies to censorship standards at the risk of punitive financial or even criminal measures.

If implemented, it might not matter if Musk seeks to restore free speech values at Twitter. Figures like Clinton are now going to the EU to effectively force companies to continue to censor users.

Faced with liability across Europe, the companies could be forced to base their policies on the lowest common denominator for free speech.

Countries like Germany and France have spent decades criminalizing speech and imposing speech controls on their populations. That is why the premise of the DSA is so menacing.

European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager was ecstatic in declaring that it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”

Sound familiar? Freedom is tyranny, and democracy demands speech controls. (Jonathan Turley, 4/29/2022)  (Archive)