Sen. Ron Johnson: "We have the evidence that Hunter Biden paid tens of thousands of dollars for prostitutes that were sex trafficked through an international sex trafficking ring." pic.twitter.com/Ja3gcBDsu3

— Becker News (@NewsBecker) May 9, 2023

NEW – House Oversight reveals the nine Biden family members that received wire transfers from foreign nationals via shell companies.

1. Hunter Biden
2. James Biden
3. Sara Biden
4. Hallie Biden
5. Kathleen Biden
6. Melissa Biden
7. Niece/nephew
8. Niece/nephew
9. Grandchild pic.twitter.com/tEer3O1e4E

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) May 10, 2023

Yes, the Biden family business is foreign kickbacks, money laundering, and organized crime. For example, on January 3, 2019, Hunter Biden told his daughter that he gave half of his salary for the last thirty years to Joe Biden. pic.twitter.com/A2MdFpmOPj

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) May 10, 2023

(…) The House Oversight Committee spoke at length about the Biden family’s damning ties to an alleged Romania bribery scandal during today’s press conference.

Rep. Byron Donalds describes the Biden family’s influence-peddling scheme, the web of shell companies, and the millions that poured in from foreign nations while Joe Biden was Vice President:

Rep. Byron Donalds describes the Biden family’s influence-peddling scheme, the web of shell companies, and the millions that poured in from foreign nations while Joe Biden was Vice President:

“The Biden’s associates created at least 16 companies while Joe Biden was Vice President. Now, the list is 20, and as we continue our investigation, that list is growing. To serve what purpose? And the purpose of all these companies being created is to conceal money that the Biden family has been gaining because Joe Biden has been sitting at the upper echelon of our politics for almost five decades…

Here’s an example of what I mean, you have Rosemont Seneca Partners, Rosemont Seneca Advisers, Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, RSP Holdings, RSTP II Alpha, RSTP II Bravo, Rosemont Seneca Thorton, Rosemont Seneca Bohai, and the list goes on. Cycling through this many companies serves no purpose… The only logical conclusion of a financial professional is that you are concealing money from either the IRS, credit agencies, or from other people in general…

It’s interesting that the Department of Justice has been investigating Hunter Biden for quite some time, and we seem to never get anywhere. I wonder what’s going on at the Department of Justice. The bottom line is there is no real business here. None. Many in this room wanted to go down all the various schemes our colleagues from the other side of the aisle accused the former president of.

To be very clear, the former president actually had a business… A very big business and legitimate business that everybody in this room cleary knows and can point to. Joe Biden has no business except for his position in politics, and it is the requirement of this committee to investigate that. We are going to continue to do that, and we are going to let the facts speak for themselves.”

Rep. Byron Donalds describes the Biden family’s influence-peddling scheme, the web of shell companies, and the millions that poured in from foreign nations while Joe Biden was Vice President:

“The Biden’s associates created at least 16 companies while Joe Biden was Vice… pic.twitter.com/xHOfpXFNxA

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) May 10, 2023

(Read more: Revolver, 5/10/2023)  (Archive)

Christopher Wray (Credit: Andrew Harnik/The Associated Press)

During all of my research and discoveries about the DOJ and FBI, the one constant from everyone with a specific and granular knowledge of how the silo information operations are conducted is that the FBI is comprehensively and institutionally corrupt at every level.

Let us not pretend with each other. As an outcome of President Obama and Eric Holder’s specific actions, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was weaponized (top to bottom) as an enforcement mechanism to protect the interests of the DC democrats.   Top to bottom the FBI is a fully weaponized federal police agency with the primary mission to target political opposition.  In the modern political era, this is the sole purpose of the FBI – nothing more, nothing less.

Congress has specific knowledge of an investigative document inside the FBI known as an FD-1023.  The FD-1023 details the evidence delivered by confidential human sources to investigators.  The specific FD-1023 is a multi-page document outlining the entire bribery scheme used by Joe Biden and his family.  The person who helped detail the FD-1023 documents has informed Congress of its existence.

Because this unclassified FD-1023 outlines the details of how Joe Biden used his office to accept bribes from foreign officials, the FBI is refusing to release it. Instead, the FBI is telling Congress they have no right to see it [LETTER to Congress Here].

The FBI is claiming that reports from Confidential Human Sources (CHSs) cannot be released, regardless of classification status.  Further, what you will note in the claims of the FBI and DOJ is essentially what we have been talking about on these pages for several years.  Information is intentionally put into institutional silos that keep the information hidden and protected.  The silo use is everywhere in Washington DC.

WASHINGTON DC – House Oversight: […] “It’s clear from the FBI’s response that the unclassified record the Oversight Committee subpoenaed exists, but they are refusing to provide it to the Committee. We’ve asked the FBI to not only provide this record, but to also inform us what it did to investigate these allegations. The FBI has failed to do both. The FBI’s position is ‘trust, but you aren’t allowed to verify.’ That is unacceptable. We plan to follow up with the FBI and expect compliance with the subpoena,” said Chairman Comer.

“While the FBI has failed to produce the specific document by the subpoena deadline, their offer to provide an accommodation process in response to our legitimate request indicates the document is real. So the question remains, what did the FBI do to investigate very serious allegations from an apparent trusted FBI source implicating then-Vice President Biden? Today’s letter from the FBI raises additional questions, including whether the FBI has an open investigation based on these allegations. The American people pay the FBI’s salaries, and they’re entitled to a fulsome response,” Senator Grassley said.

Based on whistleblower disclosures, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation possess an unclassified FD-1023 form that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions. It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose. (read more)

The only way through this issue is to defund and dismantle the FBI. (Conservative Treehouse, 5/10/2023)  (Archive)

Some House Republicans Call for Holding FBI Director in Contempt of Congress for Failing to Comply With Subpoena

Illustration: mrmooremedia.com

Introduction by Matt Taibbi

(…) The “Censorship-Industrial Complex” is just the Military-Industrial Complex reborn for the “hybrid warfare” age.

Much like the war industry, pleased to call itself the “defense” sector, the “anti-disinformation” complex markets itself as merely defensive, designed to fend off the hostile attacks of foreign cyber-adversaries who unlike us have “military limitations.” The CIC, however, is neither wholly about defense, nor even mostly focused on foreign “disinformation.” It’s become instead a relentless, unified messaging system aimed primarily at domestic populations, who are told that political discord at home aids the enemy’s undeclared hybrid assault on democracy.

They suggest we must rethink old conceptions about rights, and give ourselves over to new surveillance techniques like “toxicity monitoring,” replace the musty old free press with editors claiming a “nose for news” with an updated model that uses automated assignment tools like “newsworthy claim extraction,” and submit to frank thought-policing mechanisms like the “redirect method,” which sends ads at online browsers of dangerous content, pushing them toward “constructive alternative messages.”

Binding all this is a commitment to a new homogeneous politics, which the complex of public and private agencies listed below seeks to capture in something like a Unified Field Theory of neoliberal narrative, which can be perpetually tweaked and amplified online via algorithm and machine learning. This is what some of the organizations on this list mean when they talk about coming up with a “shared vocabulary” of information disorder, or “credibility,” or “media literacy.”

Anti-disinformation groups talk endlessly about building “resilience” to disinformation (which in practice means making sure the public hears approved narratives so often that anything else seems frightening or repellent), and audiences are trained to question not only the need for checks and balances, but competition. Competition is increasingly frowned upon not just in the “marketplace of ideas” (an idea itself more and more often described as outdated), but in the traditional capitalist sense. In the Twitter Files we repeatedly find documents like this unsigned “Sphere of Influence” review circulated by the Carnegie Endowment that wonders aloud if tech companies really need to be competing to “get it right”:

In place of competition, the groups we’ve been tracking favor the concept of the “shared endeavor” (one British group has even started a “Shared Endeavour” program), in which key “stakeholders” hash out their disagreements in private, but present a unified front.

Who are the leaders of these messaging campaigns? If you care to ask, the groups below are a good place to start.

“The Top 50 List” is intended as a resource for reporters and researchers beginning their journey toward learning the scale and ambition of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.” Written like a magazine feature, it tries to answer a few basic questions about funding, organization type, history, and especially, methodology. Many anti-disinformation groups adhere to the same formulaic approach to research, often using the same “hate-mapping,” guilt-by-association-type analysis to identify wrong-thinkers and suppressive persons. There is even a tendency to use what one Twitter Files source described as the same “hairball” graphs.

Where they compete, often, is in the area of gibberish verbiage describing their respective analytical methods. My favorite came from the Public Good Projects, which in a display of predictive skills reminiscent of the “unsinkable Titanic” described itself as the “Buzzfeed of public health.”

Together, these groups are fast achieving what Eisenhower feared: the elimination of “balance” between the democratic need for liberalizing laws and institutions, and the vigilance required for military preparation. Democratic society requires the nourishment of free debate, disagreement, and intellectual tension, but the groups below seek instead that “shared vocabulary” to deploy on the hybrid battlefield. They propose to serve as the guardians of that “vocabulary,” which sounds very like the scenario Ike outlined in 1961, in which “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific and technological elite.”

Without further ado, an introduction to the main players in this “CIC”:

(Read more: Racket News, 5/10/2023)  (Archive)

Republicans are digging in on over $10 million received by Biden family members from foreign actors, including previously undisclosed $1 million in Romanian-linked payments, and a ‘web’ of 20 companies created while President Joe Biden was vice president and pushing anti-corruption efforts abroad.

On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Republicans led by Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., released a ‘Second Records Memorandum’ that expands on information it received from subpoena returns as the committee continues its investigation into the Biden family’s business practices.

The memo specifically outlines the Biden family’s ties to Romanian ‘influence peddling’ and a web of LLCs created while Biden was vice president. It also accuses President Biden for a ‘lack of transparency’ regarding his family’s receipt of funds from China, which he has said are ‘not true.’

It details the efforts by the family to hide, conceal and confuse sources of money – including more China money, according to a committee aide.

‘The White House refuses to correct the president’s statement. The president is now using the federal government to run interference for his family and his own role in these schemes,’ said Comer during a press conference announcing the memo Wednesday.

During Biden’s time as vice president, there were 20 companies affiliated with certain Biden family members created intentionally with a ‘complicated corporate structure’ the memo states.

Hunter Biden and his associates, including Rob Walker, formed ‘at least 15’ of those companies, after Biden took the office of the vice president in 2009.

Several of those entities including Owasco P.C. – which Hunter owned – Hudson West III, LLC, Robinson Walker, LLC, and Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC, accepted funds from foreign companies ranging from $5,000 to $3 million, the committee says.

During Biden’s time as vice president, there were 20 companies affiliated with certain Biden family members created intentionally with a ‘complicated corporate structure’ the memo states.

The Romanian transactions outlined in the bank records released by the committee were from Cypriot – a company controlled by Gabriel Popoviciu, who was at the time under investigation for criminal corruption in Romania and later convicted for bribery-related offenses.

This specifically is ‘evidence of influence peddling and a correlation between Biden family and their business associates’ work, allege the Republicans who point to multiple anti-corruption speeches and meetings with Romanian leaders then-Vice President Biden engaged in between 2014 and 2015.

Biden, pictured in 2014, condemned corruption during a speech in Romania before his family allegedly received a $ 1 million payment from a real estate tycoon convicted of bribery. (Credit: The Associated Press)

The Romanian transactions outlined in the bank records released by the committee were from Cypriot – a company controlled by Gabriel Popoviciu, who was at the time under investigation for criminal corruption in Romania and later convicted for bribery-related offenses.

Between 2015 and 2017, Robinson Walker, LLC received $3 million from Bladon Enterprises Limited – Popoviciu’s Cypriot company – which was then paid out to Biden family members in a total sum of over $1 million.

The first payments were received by the LLC just weeks after then-Vice President Biden hosted Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to the White House and they discussed anti-corruption policies.

Biden family accounts gained $1.038 million from Robinson Walker, LLC in a series of 17 deposits, 16 of which were made while Biden was still in the White House. The payments went to associate James Gilliar, Hunter Biden, Hallie Biden, Owasco LLC and an ‘unknown Biden bank account.’

‘It appears from bank records the Bidens were using Robinson Walker, LLC to conceal that the source of these payments was Popovici,’ the memo says.

According to emails from Hunter’s laptop obtained by DailyMail.com, Popoviciu hired the president’s son in 2016 as part of an influence campaign to persuade anti-corruption prosecutors to cut a deal or drop the case – all while his father was sitting vice president.

(Read more: Daily Mail, 5/10/2023) (Archive)

Peter Strzok and Lisa Page (Credit: public domain)

The Department of Justice (DOJ) last week secured a court order to block former President Donald Trump from a deposition appearance in connection with lawsuits filed by former FBI officials Peter Strzok an

d Lisa Page.

“The deposition of former President Donald Trump is hereby stayed until the deposition of [F.B.I. Director] Christopher Wray and any ensuing motion practice as to the remaining necessity of the former president’s deposition have been completed,” the order reads in part. It was issued by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Thursday, May 11.

(…) Previously, Jackson had ruled that Wray and Trump could be deposed in connection to the lawsuits, according to court documents. U.S. DOJ lawyers had argued that Wray should be deposed first because he was ranked lower than Trump and that any information that he provided in the suit could mean that Trump would not have to testify.

“The Court is somewhat surprised to learn that since then, the parties have done nothing more than wrangle over the order of the two depositions,” Berman Jackson wrote. “The government seems chagrined that the Court did not order that the deposition of the FBI Director be completed first, but it may recall that it was the Court’s view that it was Director Wray, the only current high-ranking public official in the group of proposed deponents, whose ongoing essential duties fell most squarely under the protection of the doctrine in question.”

(…) Strzok has alleged that the FBI had caved to “unrelenting pressure” from Trump when it fired him and that he was unfairly terminated for expressing his political opinions. As part of the lawsuit, Strzok’s lawyers have said they want to question Trump about whether he met with and pressured FBI and DOJ officials to fire him.

But the DOJ says that the former FBI deputy director, David Bowdich, has already said that he made the decision to fire Strzok on his own, and that he did not recall Wray ever telling him about any meeting in which the president pressured him about Strzok.

“These circumstances do not rise to the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ necessary to authorize the deposition of a current or former high-ranking government official, much less a former President,” the DOJ also wrote. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 5/14/2023)  (Archive)

During Trump’s Town Hall in New Hampshire, CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins interrupts and attempts to fact check him when he asked why Biden can store 9 boxes in Chinatown while taking a lot of money from China.

Biden’s OWN ASSISTANT Kathy Chung said in an interview with Congress that he stored boxes of classified documents IN CHINATOWN.

“Today we learned that when Joe Biden left the vice presidency, boxes containing classified documents, vice presidential records, and other items were… pic.twitter.com/y18yQk3ARE

— CannCon (@CannConActual) May 11, 2023

Bruce and Nellie Ohr (Credit: public domain)

While it’s bad enough the debunked dossier the FBI used to spy on the Trump campaign was paid for by the Clinton campaign and authored by a foreign FBI informant and his carousing researcher, the newly released report of Special Counsel John Durham strongly suggests a top Justice Department official and his wife had an early hand in shaping the political rumor sheet.

According to the 306-page report, former Justice

Sergei Millian (Credit: Twitter)

Department prosecutor Bruce Ohr’s wife Nellie Ohr first plowed the ground for the dossier with a series of research reports she wrote for Fusion GPS, the D.C.-based opposition research firm the Clinton campaign commissioned to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia.

Obtained by Durham, her reports zeroed in on Sergei Millian and his connections to Russia and Trump, falsely portraying him as a key intermediary between the Kremlin and the Republican candidate. They would later provide the foundation for the dossier’s many fictions.

“Fusion GPS records demonstrate that Nellie Ohr first identified Millian,” Durham states in his report. “All told, Ohr prepared at least 12 reports that discussed Sergei Millian.”

(Glenn Simpson (l) and Christopher Steele (Credit: Neil King and public domain)

She wrote her first Millian report in April 2016, the month before Fusion GPS hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to put his imprimatur as a supposed former “spy” and “Russian insider” on the dossier.

“This report was prepared just ten days after Fusion GPS was retained by [Clinton campaign law firm] Perkins Coie to conduct opposition research on Trump,” the Durham Report states, “and prior to Steele being retained by Fusion GPS.”

Durham suggests Nellie Ohr planted the seeds of sourcing for the most explosive allegations leveled by the dossier against Trump, including the oft-cited notion that he and his campaign were engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” with the Kremlin. The dossier attributed this, falsely, to Millian. Durham found that the Belarusian-American realtor was never a source for the dossier and was simply invented as one, along with the allegations attributed to him.

Igor Danchenko (Credit: public domain)

In fact, Durham says that Millian initially wasn’t even on the radar of Steele and his dossier “collector” Igor Danchenko, a former Brookings Institution analyst who’s admitted much of the information he provided Steele was alcohol-lubricated gossip. Millian was called to their attention by Nellie Ohr, who the prosecutor said “implicated” Millian through her own reports. Durham suggests Steele and Danchenko merely followed her leads. circular

Meanwhile, the prosecutor added, Bruce Ohr, an anti-Trump Democrat, pushed his wife’s reports that cited Millian — 12 in all — onto the Crossfire Hurricane team at FBI headquarters that was investigating Trump and his campaign for possible espionage. Agents used her reports as a source of corroboration for the Steele reports they received in the summer and fall of 2016, even though it was circular reporting.

“The reports prepared by Ohr and others at Fusion GPS were ultimately provided to Crossfire Hurricane investigators by Ohr’s husband, Bruce Ohr,” according to the Durham Report.

Durham notes that Danchenko was tracking leads on Millian from Nellie Ohr within “approximately one week” of Fusion GPS retaining Steele to compile the dossier. He concludes that this “strongly supports the inference that Fusion GPS directed Steele to pursue Millian.”

In other words, Steele was not the catalyst behind the dossier’s central claims. Rather, it was Clinton’s contractor Fusion GPS — but more specifically, the wife of a senior DOJ official who worked for Fusion. So the FBI wasn’t really investigating “Crown reporting,” as officials referred to Steele’s dossier, implying it was British intelligence. More accurately, it was investigating information from inside its own department that was laundered through Steele and his dossier.

Michael Gaeta in Rome. (Credit: public domain)

On page 97 of their book, “Crime in Progress,” Fusion GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch maintained that it was Steele who identified Millian as “one of the key intermediaries between Trump and the Russians.” Durham’s report shatters their claim.

The special counsel also found that Simpson worked with Bruce Ohr to pressure the FBI to investigate the dossier allegations.

On Aug. 22, 2016, Simpson asked Ohr to call him. About an hour later, Ohr emailed the FBI agent handling Steele as an informant to, as he said, “check in.” Ohr and the agent, Michael Gaeta, spoke over the phone on Aug. 24. During their call, Ohr inquired if the FBI was going to do anything with the dossier reports that Steele had passed along to Gaeta in July. In response, Gaeta “told Ohr that a group at FBI headquarters was working on them,” according to the Durham report. This undercuts the official FBI timeline of when HQ first received the dossier. For years, the bureau has insisted it did not receive the reports until a month later — Sept. 19, 2016.

(L–R) Former FBI agent Peter Strzok; former FBI Director James Comey; and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. (Credit: Getty Images/Illustration by Epoch Times)

The Ohrs also appear to have directly influenced the dossier and the FBI’s investigation. Both Bruce and Nellie Ohr, who previously worked for the CIA, met with Steele in Washington at a critical time. Emails reveal that on July 30, 2016 — the day before the FBI formally opened its overarching case against Trump, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane” — the couple sat down with Steele and an unidentified “associate” of his at the Mayflower Hotel in D.C. to compare notes — Nellie and Steele literally passed pieces of papers back and forth — regarding their research into “suspicions that Russian government figures were supporting the candidacy of Donald Trump.” After their breakfast, Bruce Ohr reportedly contacted then-deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe to relay their concerns.

Rodney Joffe (Credit: New York Post)

Throughout the summer and fall of 2016, Fusion GPS also promoted to the Washington media the false allegation the Trump campaign maintained a secret hotline to Moscow through Russia-based Alfa Bank. In an attempt to tie Millian to the Alfa Bank allegations, Durham found that Fusion GPS sought the assistance of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who in turn contacted D.C. tech executive Rodney Joffe to determine if Millian had any ties to Alfa Bank.

On Aug. 20, 2016, Joffe emailed federal computer contractors at Georgia Tech a document titled “birdsnest-1.pdf’ that contained “known associates” of Trump. Included in the attached document was a description of Millian along with his past mailing addresses; various email addresses; websites; and IP addresses that were associated with him. Joffe, who was recently fired as an FBI informant, described Millian as “the most likely intermediary” between Trump and Russia.

On Sept. 27, 2016, Simpson and Fritsch emailed IP “look-up” information for one of Millian’s websites to then-New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau, whom Fusion was pressuring to write a story about the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations. In the email, Fritsch pointed out that “Alfa” was the website service provider for Millian’s website. However, Durham determined that the relevant IP information did not indicate that “Alfa Bank” was the service provider, but rather Alfa Telecom — a Lebanese-based telecom company, which appears to have no affiliation with Alfa Bank.

Fusion GPS and Steele also provided the substance of the Alfa Bank allegations to Bruce Ohr, the DOJ official, who passed the false tip on to the FBI. The Crossfire Hurricane team used Ohr as a conduit to continue to receive information from Steele about Trump throughout 2017, even after the FBI had to terminate Steele as an informant for leaking information about its investigation to the media. (RealClearInvestigations, 5/16/2023)  (Archive)

I’m going to go into the deep weeds on this story, because many people are missing a key facet.  The names behind the Trump targeting operation are included, along with citations for independent checks by House congressional investigators.

Inside the recently released report by John Durham [CITATION], the special counsel outlines how former FBI Director James Comey was intimately involved in the creation of the Carter Page FISA application.  Durham notes that Comey kept asking the DOJ National Security Division and FBI counterintelligence investigators, “Where’s the FISA, we need the FISA.”  However, John Durham never interviewed James Comey or Andrew McCabe.  The former FBI Director and Deputy refused to cooperate or give testimony to John Durham.  So, how did John Durham have details about the demands of Comey?

The answer is found in the footnotes.  Durham reviewed transcripts of interviews given by Andrew McCabe to the Office of the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, who previously investigated FBI conduct in the origin of the Carter Page FISA.  Durham pulled quotes from that transcript. [Footnote #1207, page 199 – Durham Report]

♦QUESTION: If Andrew McCabe gave testimony to the OIG about the motives and impetus of FBI Director James Comey in pushing for the Carter Page FISA application, why did the OIG report never outline those transcribed interviews?  Why was the interview transcript never included in the 2019 OIG report?

(NOTE to Congress.  Now that you know a transcribed interview of Andrew McCabe exists in the OIG office, request the transcription and release it to the public.)

Let me answer those questions without the customary pretending from the DC professional political class.  The short version is that OIG Michael Horowitz was trying to protect the DOJ and FBI. The longer version is a coverup that includes Rod Rosenstein, Bill Barr and yes, John Durham.  I will share that story below.

“Where’s the FISA?  We need the FISA?” ~ James Comey

The DOJ-NSD and FBI CoIntel needed to find a safe and legal way to spy on the Trump campaign. The 2016 FISA Title 1 surveillance of former FBI employee Carter Page became the fraudulent justification for that intent.

Because “FISA Title I” surveillance authority against a U.S. citizen is so serious (the U.S. government is essentially calling the target a spy), only a few people are authorized to even apply for such surveillance warrants.  One of the four people authorized to make such a Search Warrant request is the Asst. Attorney General as head of the National Security Division of the DOJ.

In September and October of 2016, at the same time the DOJ was putting the finishing touches on the FISA Court application to be used against Carter Page, Asst. Attorney General John P Carlin resigned as head of the DOJ-NSD. [CITATION] Did Carlin resign in protest or fear?

Here’s context:

Carter Page was used as a UCE (FBI undercover employee), responsible for the bust of a high-level Russian agent in 2013 – and remained a UCE – throughout the court case of Evgeny Buryakov, a Russian citizen who U.S. prosecutors say posed as a banker while participating in a Cold War-style spy ring. [CITATION]

Carter Page was an FBI undercover source for the FBI UP TO May of 2016.   How was it possible that on October 21st, 2016, Carter Page is put under a FISA Title 1 surveillance warrant as an alleged Russian agent?  Conclusion: Carter Page wasn’t a Russian agent. The DOJ National Security Division and the FBI Counterintelligence Division knew he wasn’t.

In order to manufacture the justification for the Carter Page FISA warrant, the DOJ-NSD and the FBI flat-out lied to the FISA Court.  Remember, IG Horowitz said there was no ‘Woods File’ in the Carter Page FISA application. Instead of the required section substantiating and citing all the claims in the application, the FBI used the Chris Steele Dossier.

However, as to the motive of John Carlin resigning before the application was completed and submitted, we look back to the March 2016 DOJ Press Release of the guilty pleading in the Evgeny Buryakov case as announced from the New York office:

…”Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and John P. Carlin, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, announced”…  (link)

DOJ-NSD head John Carlin obviously could not submit a FISA application against Carter Page, accusing him of being an “agent of a foreign government,” when just a few months earlier he used Carter Page as a witness and FBI UCE source in the case against Buryakov.

As James Comey is demanding that Andrew McCabe and his FBI counterintelligence agents get the FISA warrant, likely an ass covering necessity, the person responsible to get the warrant from the court, John Carlin, quits the DOJ.  Considering all the facets outlined above, this cannot be accidental.

Here’s where it gets SERIOUSLY sketchy.

The next in line person, who can fulfill the DOJ/FBI goal of getting the fraudulent application through the FISA court, is Mary McCord.  Put into the position as Acting Asst. Attorney General for the National Security Division, the job of submitting the FISA application now falls upon Mary McCord.

On October 21, 2016, When the FISA application was finally submitted, signed by DAG Sally Yates and FBI Director James Comey, it was Mary McCord who did the actual process of filing the application and gaining the Title-1 surveillance warrant.

At the time the Carter Page application was filed (October 21, 2016), Mary McCord’s chief legal counsel inside the office was a DOJ-NSD lawyer named Michael Atkinson.  In his role as the legal counsel for the DOJ-NSD, it was Atkinson’s job to review and audit all FISA applications submitted from inside the DOJ.  Essentially, Atkinson was the DOJ internal compliance officer in charge of making sure all FISA applications were correctly assembled and documented.

Obviously, with the background and context of the entirely fraudulent Carter Page FISA application, a government surveillance warrant using a Clinton-funded political opposition research file known as the Steele Dossier to support the warrant, both Mary McCord and Michael Atkinson would know they were directly involved in an intentional effort to weaponize the mechanisms of the justice department against a political candidate.

While James Comey and Sally Yates’ signatures were on the FISA application falsely vouching for it, the attestations of legal compliance fall upon DOJ-NSD head Mary McCord and her top legal advisor Michael Atkinson.  McCord and Atkinson are doing, in October of 2016, what former DOJ-NSD head John Carlin refused to do.

WATCH WHAT COMES NEXT: Mary McCord then resigns from her position in the DOJ, and Michael Atkinson is left, as lawyer for the DOJ-NSD, to become Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.

♦ The Impeachment Effort – Do you remember how the impeachment effort against President Donald Trump was created?  Do you remember Alexander Vindman, the claims about Ukraine; the statements of hearing from a CIA whistleblower about the content of a phone call between President Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky?

When the anonymous CIA whistleblower complaint was filed against President Trump for the issues of the Ukraine call with President Zelensky, the Intelligence Community Inspector General had to change the rules for the complaint to allow an anonymous submission.  Prior to this change, all intelligence whistleblowers had to put their name on the complaint.  It was this 2019 IGIC who changed the rules.

Who was the Intelligence Community Inspector General?  Michael Atkinson.

When ICIG Michael Atkinson turned over the newly authorized anonymous whistleblower complaint to the joint House Intelligence and Judiciary Committee (Schiff and Nadler chairs), who did Michael Atkinson give the complaint to?  Mary McCord.

Yes, after she left main justice, Mary McCord took the job of working for Chairman Jerry Nadler and Chairman Adam Schiff as the chief legal advisor inside the investigation that led to the construction of articles of impeachment.   As a consequence, Mary McCord received the newly permitted anonymous whistleblower complaint from her old office colleague Michael Atkinson.

Can you see how Atkinson and McCord are working together, both connected to the fraud behind the false FISA application used in the Trump-Russia narrative in 2016 and 2017, now both working together on a 2019 impeachment effort against President Trump holding an identical motive?  Can you see the stunning conflicts of interest and the coordination?

The weaponized FISA surveillance of the Trump administration doesn’t exist without Mary McCord and Michael Atkinson creating the surveillance mechanism.  The weaponized impeachment origin doesn’t exist without McCord – now in congress working for Nadler/Schiff – and Atkinson changing rules as CIA Inspector General, to create the baseline of a fraudulent whistleblower complaint.   Can you see it? 

But wait…. It gets worse.

♦ Chief Justice John Roberts – As if things could not possibly be more corrupt, now we have the construct of Atkinson and McCord forming the predicate for the impeachment effort.  To wit, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts now becomes the presiding judge over the impeachment trial of President Trump.

Mary McCord is married to a fellow traveler named Sheldon L. Snook.

From 2014 though 2020, not coincidentally the timeline of the Trump targeting and administration in office, Mary McCord’s husband, Sheldon Snook, was the special assistant to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s counselor. [CITATION]

As noted by the Washington Post in discussing both McCord and Snook, “The counselor’s office advises the chief justice not only on the management and budget of the Supreme Court but also on his interactions with the executive and legislative branches, along with numerous other public roles in which Roberts serves.” [CITATION]

From 2014 through 2020, Sheldon Snook was responsible for running the office of the lawyer legally advising and counseling John Roberts.

Let me put this another way.  The most important guy in the judicial branch, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, has a lawyer to advise and construct the responsibilities of the SCOTUS chief judge, which includes the construct of the FISA court and appointment of judges therein.

As Chief Justice, John Roberts is in charge of everything to do with the FISA court.  The guy running the office of the lawyer doing the counseling of Roberts, is Mary McCord’s husband.

Mary McCord, knowingly and with specific intent, lied to the FISA court to support the FBI targeting of Trump.  Mary McCord’s husband runs the office which would intercept any communication from the FISA court to the Chief Justice if the FISC had any concerns about the false FBI application.  See the problem?

♦ SUMMARY – Now, we go back to where we came in.

Why did the Office of the Inspector General never publish the interview transcript about Andrew McCabe talking about how desperate FBI Director James Comey was to get a FISA warrant?

Why did John Durham never publish those same interview transcripts, but instead simply referenced the existence of the transcript in a footnote?

Follow these questions to their logical conclusion, and you will discover that all of the participants including Rod Rosenstein, Bill Barr, James Baker, Dana Boente, Michael Horowitz and John Durham are trying to protect bureaucrats, who did criminal acts, and preserve institutions from collapse that sunlight would create.

Sunlight…

… The best disinfectant.

(Support CTH HERE)

(Conservative Treehouse, 6/04/2023)  (Archive)

(Credit: Win McNamee/AFP/Getty Images)

Special Counsel John Durham’s highly-anticipated report on the origins of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016 revealed that top leaders at the Bureau shut down four criminal investigations into Hillary and Bill Clinton.

In 2014, the FBI investigated a “well-placed” confidential source’s claims that an unnamed foreign government intended to “contribute to Hillary Clinton’s anticipated presidential campaign, as a way to gain influence with Clinton should she win the presidency,” the report said.

The field office investigating these claims “almost immediately” sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, but it remained “in limbo” for approximately four months, primarily due to Clinton’s then-expected presidential campaign.

As stated in Durham’s report:

According to another agent, the application lingered because “everyone was ‘super more careful’” and “scared with the big name [Clinton]” involved. 321 “[T]hey were pretty “tippy-toeing’ around HRC because there was a chance she would be the next President.”

Durham’s report also revealed that three separate FBI field offices in Washington, DC; Little Rock, Arkansas; and New York City, New York, opened investigations into “possibly criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation” less than one year before the November 2016 presidential election.

One of these investigations was spawned by Breitbart News contributor Peter Schweizer’s book, Clinton Cash, which exposed the Clinton Foundation’s global nexus of influence peddling.

As Durham’s report detailed:

Beginning in January 2016, three different FBI field offices, the New York Field Office (“NYFO*), the Washington Field Office (“WFO*), and the Little Rock Field Office (“LRFO**), opened investigations into possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation. The IRFO case opening communication referred to an intelligence product and corroborating financial reporting that a particular commercial “industry likely engaged a federal public official in a flow of benefits scheme, namely, large monetary contributions were made to a non-profit, under both direct and indirect control of the federal public official, in exchange for favorable government action and/or influence.” The WFO investigation was opened as a preliminary investigation, because the Case Agent wanted to determine if he could develop additional information to corroborate the allegations in a recently-published book, Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer, before seeking to convert the matter to a full investigation. Additionally, the LRFO and NYFO investigations included predication based on source reporting that identified foreign governments that had made, or offered to make, contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment from Clinton.

Speaking with the DailyMail, Schweizer said he received “a call from somebody from the New York FBI office after the book came out.”

“There was a New York Times piece on Uranium One. It was kind of confirming what we had in the book. That’s what I think triggered the interest,” Schweizer said. “With the Clinton Foundation, you have the transfer of large sums of money, you had policy positions that were affected, and you had certifiable evidence.”

“I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t say what was illegal. But there was definitely a there there, with all the speeches, donations, and policy effects, and nobody’s ever really disputed that,” he added.

Ultimately, FBI leadership held a joint meeting with the three field offices, FBI Headquarters, and appropriate United States Attorney’s offices. The first joint meeting occurred on February 1, 2016. However, the Department of Justice Public Integrity Section Chief, Ray Hulser, said the FBI briefing at that meeting was “poorly presented,” and saw “insufficient predication for at least one of the investigations.”

A second joint meeting occurred on February 22, 2016, which former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe chaired.

McCabe “initially directed the field offices to close their cases,” but later agreed to “reconsider the final disposition of the cases,” Durham’s report noted.

Paul Abbate, who was the FBI Washington Field Office’s Assistant Director-in-Charge at the time, described McCabe’s demeanor during the joint meeting as “negative,” “annoyed,” and “angry.”

As the report detailed:

According to Abbate, McCabe stated “they [the Department] say there’s nothing here” and “why are we even doing this?” At the close of the meeting, Campbell directed that for any overt investigative steps to be taken, the Deputy Director’s approval would be required.

Durham’s report also revealed that former FBI Director James Comey demanded, through an intermediary, the New York Field Office “cease and desist” their Clinton Foundation investigation.

Earlier in the week, McCabe claimed the Durham report was “never a legitimate investigation.”

Andrew McCabe — a former FBI official who was fired by Donald Trump in 2018 — said that he stood by the original Russia investigation into Trump even after the Durham report revealed evidence that the probe had no serious basis. ((Credit: Screenshot / CNN)

“We knew from the very beginning exactly what John Durham was going to conclude, and that’s what we saw today. We knew from the very beginning this was never a legitimate investigation,” McCabe said. “This was a political errand to exact some sort of retribution on Donald Trump’s perceived enemies and the FBI.”

Durham’s report highlighted the FBI’s different approaches regarding their investigations into Clinton and former President Donald Trump.

“The use of defensive briefings in 2015 contrasts with the FBI’s failure to provide a defensive briefing to the Trump campaign approximately one year later when Australia shared the information from Papadopoulos,” the report stated. (Read more: Breitbart, 5/18/2023)  (Archive)

Hunter Biden gives journalists a thumbs-up on May 15, 2023, during the college graduation of his daughter Maisy. (Credit: AFP via Getty Images)

The IRS on Monday removed the “entire investigative team” from its long-running tax fraud probe of first son Hunter Biden in alleged retaliation against the whistleblower who recently contacted Congress to allege a cover-up in the case, The Post has learned.

The purge allegedly was done on the orders of the Justice Department, the whistleblower’s attorneys informed congressional leaders in a letter.

“Today the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Supervisory Special Agent we represent was informed that he and his entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress. He was informed the change was at the request of the Department of Justice,” Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt wrote.

The whistleblower, who supervised the Hunter Biden probe since early 2020, hasn’t publicly identified the first son as the subject of the case that he says is being brushed under the rug, but congressional sources confirmed it.

“On April 27, 2023, IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel appeared before the House Committee on Ways and Means. He testified: ‘I can say without any hesitation there will be no retaliation for anyone making an allegation or a call to a whistleblower hotline.’ However, this move is clearly retaliatory and may also constitute obstruction of a congressional inquiry,” the lawyers went on.

“Our client has a right to make disclosures to Congress … He is protected by 5 U.S.C. § 2302 from retaliatory personnel actions — including receiving a ‘significant change in duties, responsibilities, or working conditions’ (which this clearly is) because of his disclosures to Congress.

“Any attempt by any government official to prevent a federal employee from furnishing information to Congress is also a direct violation of longstanding appropriations restriction. Furthermore, 18 U.S.C. § 1505 makes it a crime to obstruct an investigation of Congress,” Lytle and Leavitt wrote.

The whistleblower’s team added: “We respectfully request that you give this matter your prompt attention. Removing the experienced investigators who have worked this case for years and are now the subject-matter experts is exactly the sort of issue our client intended to blow the whistle on to begin with.” (Read more: New York Post, 5/16/2023)  (Archive)

Why no Durham review of the DNC hack attribution?

Because that was outside the bounds of his appointment order from AG Barr.

Durham explains in general terms how he stayed within the order. pic.twitter.com/ADnk1tAxOc

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) May 16, 2023

The limited scope is on Barr.

Not buying that Durham is scared of the FBI. (See Boston FBI for that.)

Durham was responsible for perhaps the most important disclosure in the FBI’s history: that Director Hoover framed innocent men for murder 🤷‍♂️

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) May 16, 2023

Hillary Clinton reacts to FBI finding no criminality re her emails, before boarding her campaign plane at Miami airport October 26, 2016. (Credit: Carlos Barria/Reuters)

The FBI didn’t open any inquiry into an alleged Hillary Clinton campaign election interference plan even after the CIA director briefed then-president Barack Obama and other senior administration officials, Special Counsel John Durham’s report noted.

The FBI received Russian intelligence analysis in July 2016 alleging that Clinton’s campaign cooked up a scheme to divert attention away from “her use of a private email server,” the Durham report stated.

The alleged scheme, dubbed the “Clinton Plan,” showed that the Clinton campaign “had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal” against Trump “by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee,” the Durham report reads.

The intelligence community didn’t know the accuracy of the Russian intelligence, but the findings were notable enough for then-CIA Director John Brennan to inform the Obama administration “within days” of learning about it.

Brennan briefed President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey about the Clinton campaign’s plan, the Durham report says.

The findings also prompted the CIA to send “a formal written referral memorandum” to Comey and “the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, Peter Strzok, for their consideration and action.”

In contrast to the speed at which the FBI opened a full investigation into Trump “on raw, uncorroborated information,” the FBI “never opened any type of inquiry, issued any taskings, employed any analytical personnel, or produced any analytical products in connection with the information,” Durham wrote. (Read more: The Daily Caller, 5/16/2023)  (Archive)

Good Morning !

Durham: Obama & Biden sat in that August 3, 2016 Situation Room briefing almost 7 years ago now and said, yeah, let’s let the highest officials in our administration fabricate evidence to frame the opposing party political candidate Donald Trump as a traitor. https://t.co/ZGpeBvXZCN pic.twitter.com/FMaQ1nsO8c

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) June 23, 2023

Durham Report – Page 85-86

Durham Report/Justice Department PDF

Archive)

Failed Prosecutor John Durham’s report on the Hillary Clinton campaign plot to convince the American electorate and U.S. allies that Donald Trump was a stooge of Russia totally ignores the role that intelligence operatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Israel played in helping set the stage to provide the FBI with the pretext of predication for launching its now discredited Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump Campaign.

Let me take you back to an article I wrote in May 2019. John Durham and his team failed to address any of the issues and leads I raised:

Do not focus on July 2016 as the so-called start of the counter intelligence investigation of Donald Trump. That is a lie. We know, thanks to the work of Judicial Watch, that the FBI had signed up Christopher Steele as a Confidential Human Source (aka CHS) by February of 2016. It is incumbent on Attorney General Barr to examine the contact reports filed by Steele’s FBI handler (those reports are known as FD-1023s). He also, as I have noted in a previous post, needs to look at the FD-1023s for Felix Sater and Henry Greenberg. But these will only tell a small part of the story. There is a massive intelligence side to this story.

The CIA, with the knowledge of the Director of National Intelligence, worked with British counterparts starting in the summer of 2015 to collect intelligence on Republican and at least one Democrat candidate. John Brennan was probably hoping that his proactive steps to help the Hillary Clinton campaign would ensure him taking over as DNI in the new Clinton Administration. Regardless of motives, the CIA enlisted the British intelligence community to start gathering intelligence on most major Republican candidates and on Bernie Sanders. This initial phase of intelligence gathering goes beyond opposition research. The information being gathered identified the key personnel in each campaign and identified the people outside the United States receiving their calls, texts and emails. This information was turned into intelligence reports that then were passed back to the United States intel community as “liaison reporting.” This was not put into normal classified channels. This intelligence was put into a SAP, i.e. a Special Access Program.

One person who needs to be called on the carpet and asked some hard questions is current CIA Director Gina Haspel. She was CIA Chief of Station in London at the time and was a regular attendee at the meeting of the Brit’s Joint Intelligence Committee aka the JIC. I suppose it is possible she was cut out of the process, but I believe that is unlikely.

This initial phase of intelligence collection produced a great volume of intelligence that allowed analysts to identify key personnel and the people they were communicating with overseas. You don’t have to have access to intelligence information to understand this. For example, you simply have to ask the question, “how did George Papadopoulos get on the radar.” I am confident that a survey of NSA and CIA liaison reporting will show that George Papadopoulos was identified as a possible target by the fall of 2015. Initially, his name was “masked.” But we now know that many people on the Trump campaign had their names “unmasked.” You cannot unmask someone unless their name is in an intelligence report.

We also know that Felix Sater, a longtime business associate of Donald Trump and an FBI informant since December 1998 (he was signed up by Andrew Weismann), initiated the proposal to do a Trump Tower in Moscow. Don’t take my word for it, that’s what Robert Mueller reported:

In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted Cohen (i.e., Michael Cohen) on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert), a Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov. Sater had known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov’s purchase of a building in New York City. Sater later contacted Rozov and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would license the name and brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee of I.C. Expert. (see page 69 of the Mueller Report).

Sater’s communication with Rozov were intercepted by western intelligence agencies–GCHQ and NSA. I do not know which agency put it into an intel report, but it was put into the system. The Sater FD-1023 will tell us whether or not Sater did this at the direction of the FBI or acted on his own initiative. The key point is that the “bait” to do something with the Russians came from a registered FBI informant.

By December of 2015, the Hillary Campaign decided to use the Russian angle on Donald Trump. Thanks to Wikileaks we have Campaign Manager John Podesta’s email exchange in December 2015 with Democratic operative Brent Budowsky:

“That’s good, sooner it’s clarified the better, and the stronger the better,” Budowski replies, later adding: “Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria.”

The program to slaughter Donald Trump using Russia as the hatchet was already underway.

This was more the opposition research. This was the weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence assets to attack political opponents. Hillary had covered the opposition research angle in London by hiring a firm comprised of former MI6 assets–Hakluyt:

there was a second, even more powerful and mysterious opposition research and intelligence firm lurking about with significant political and financial links to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign for president against Donald Trump.

Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co., founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums. . . .

Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Henry Williams as “one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world” and as “a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking … ”

I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, was the one credited by the FBI for launching the investigation into George Papadopoulos:

It was Downer who told the FBI of Papadopoulos’ comments, which became one of the “driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired,” The Times reported.

Trending: BREAKING: Texas RINOs and Democrats Vote to Impeach Highly Popular Attorney General Ken Paxton on Holiday Weekend – Here is the Vote Sheet

Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt’s advisory board since 2008. Officially, he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network reported in a January 2016 exclusive:

But it can be revealed Mr. Downer has still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group, including a client cocktail soirée at the Orangery at Kensington Palace a few months ago.

His attendance at that event is understood to have come days after he also attended a two-day country retreat at the invitation of the group, which has been involved in a number of corporate spy scandals in recent times.

Much remains to be uncovered in this plot. But this much is certain–there is an extensive documentary record, including TOP SECRET intelligence reports (SIGINT and HUMINT) and emails and phone calls that will show there was a concerted covert action operation mounted against Donald Trump and his campaign. Those documents will tell the story. This cannot be allowed to happen again.

The program to slaughter Donald Trump using Russia as the hatchet was already underway.

This was more than opposition research. This was the weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence assets to attack political opponents. Hillary had covered the opposition research angle in London by hiring a firm comprised of former MI6 assets–Hakluyt:

there was a second, even more powerful and mysterious opposition research and intelligence firm lurking about with significant political and financial links to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign for president against Donald Trump.

Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co., founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums. . . .

Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Henry Williams as “one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world” and as “a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking … ”

I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, was the one credited by the FBI for launching the investigation into George Papadopoulos:

It was Downer who told the FBI of Papadopoulos’ comments, which became one of the “driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired,” The Times reported.

Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt’s advisory board since 2008. Officially, he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network reported in a January 2016 exclusive:

But it can be revealed Mr. Downer has still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group, including a client cocktail soirée at the Orangery at Kensington Palace a few months ago.

His attendance at that event is understood to have come days after he also attended a two-day country retreat at the invitation of the group, which has been involved in a number of corporate spy scandals in recent times.

Much remains to be uncovered in this plot. But this much is certain–there is an extensive documentary record, including TOP SECRET intelligence reports (SIGINT and HUMINT) and emails and phone calls that will show there was a concerted covert action operation mounted against Donald Trump and his campaign. Those documents will tell the story. This cannot be allowed to happen again.

But no steps are being taken to hold the intelligence operatives accountable for their role in helping portray George Papadopoulos, a Trump foreign policy advisor, as someone compromised by the Russians.

Let me give you the timeline for Papadopoulos:

1. Starting in August of 2015, George Papadopoulos, who lived in London at the time, sent emails to Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s Campaign Manger at the time. Those emails were intercepted by the United Kingdom’s GCHQ, which is the British version of the National Security Agency.
2. Papadopoulos is working for Energy Stream in October 2015 and helps put on the “London Oil and Gas Forum, a two-day conference at the Rag Army & Navy Club.”
3. Within a month of that Conference, Papadopoulos is approached by Nagi Khalid Idris who offers George a position at the London Centre of International Law Practice. George defers the offer and starts working for the Ben Carson for President Campaign.
4. November 2015, alleged diplomat Joseph Mifsud joins the Board of the London Centre of International Law Practice aka LCILP. In my opinion, the LCILP is the kind of organization used by British Intelligence to identify potential assets and to plant stories in the public domain.
5. January 2016, George Papadopoulos joins the LCILP as Director of the Centre’s International Energy and Natural Resources Division.
6. Early March 2016 Papadopoulos’s offer to join the Trump Campaign is accepted via email and phone conversations with Michael Glassner, executive director of the Trump Campaign, and Sam Clovis. Remember, Papadopoulos is living in London and all of these communications are intercepted by British Intelligence.
7. Papadopoulos notifies Nagi that he will be joining the Trump Campaign and Nagi reacts with anger.
8. The next day Papadopoulos has a productive phone call with Sam Clovis. Calls like these are routinely collected by GCHQ, according to information revealed by Edward Snowden.
9. The next day Nagi does an about face. Papadopoulos writes, ““Then Nagi comes by my office again. His attitude has suddenly changed. It’s a night-and-day difference. He starts telling me that there is someone I have to meet, a very important person who will be very useful to me during my time with Trump. I remember Nagi telling me, “He’s a man who knows many people.” Then he insists I join him at a conference at Link Campus University in Rome.”
10. March 12, 2016 — George is introduced to Joseph Mifsud by Nagi at the Link Campus. Papadopoulos and Mifsud meet for dinner that night. During the dinner Mifsud says, “I’m going introduce you to everyone and set up a meeting between Trump and Putin.”
11. March 14, 2016 — Nagi Idris informs George that Mifsud will introduce him to “Putins niece”. (NOTE — Putin does not have a niece).
12. March 22, 2016 — Washington Post names Papadopoulos as one of Trump’s foreign policy advisors. He is now on the public radar.
13. March 24, 2016 — Papadopoulos meets Mifsud and Olga Vinogradova (allegedly Putin’s niece) at the Grange Holborn Hotel. George writes in his book that Mifsud talked up a variety of potential deals and interactions with Russia. When lunch is over, Papadopoulos sends an email to Clovis at the Trump Campaign describing the meeting and mentioning “Putin’s niece.” That conversation as well was captured by GCHQ. The phrase, “Putin’s niece” is a red flag.
14. March 31, 2016 — Papadopoulos attends the meeting of Trump’s “foreign policy” advisors at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
15. April 1, 2016 — Papadopoulos flies to Israel where he is slated to speak at an energy conference and meets his “old friend” Eli Groner, the director general for the Office of Prime Minister Netanyahu.
16. Early April 2016 — Papadopoulos cuts ties with LCILP and contacts Olga Vinogradova and Joseph Mifsud to discuss arranging a possible foreign policy trip to Russia for Trump.
17. April 18, 2016 — Mifsud introduce Papadopoulos to Ivan Timofeev, who is the program director at the Russian International Affairs Council and claims to have high level contacts at the Russian Foreign Ministry.
18. April 26, 2016 — Mifsud returns from Valdai Conference, meets with Papadopoulos and tells him, “The Russians have “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, he tells me. “Emails of Clinton,” he says. “They have thousands of emails.”
19. May 3, 2016 — This is two days after Trump’s controversial foreign policy speech, which Papadopoulos claims he helped draft. Papadopoulos is contacted by Christian Cantor, an Israeli Embassy official in London, because he wants to introduce George to his girlfriend, Erika Thompson. Erika is an Australian “diplomat” and berates Papadopoulos throughout the meeting at a pub for working for the menace, Donald Trump.
20. May 5, 2016 — Papadopoulos writes, “two military attachés at the US embassy in London, Terrence Dudley and Gregory Baker, reach out to me to set up a meeting.”
21. May 6, 2016 — Erika Thompson, Australian “diplomat” and “girlfriend” of an Israeli Embassy in London officer, contacts Papadopoulos to arrange a lunch with her boss, Alexander Downer, Australia’s former top diplomat in London.
22. May 10, 2016 — Papadopoulos and Downer meet for lunch and Downer gives George a verbal beat down. Here is Papadopoulos account of that exchange:

“Downer starts talking: He tells me he’s connected to a British security firm called Hakluyt. He boasts about being a board member and that the firm has a great presence in London and close ties to the Obama administration. “We advise many governments,” he says.
I nod. I’m not sure what to say about this. He shifts gears:
“George, I used to be the UN envoy to Cyprus, and what you are talking about in Cyprus is wrong, and it’s a threat to British interests.”

And the rest is history. Downer used that meeting to claim in a subsequent report made to the FBI two months later that Papadopoulos said, “the Russians have a surprise or some damaging material related to Hillary Clinton.” Papadopoulos denies ever saying this, so it is his word against that of the esteemed, well-connected Australian diplomat. It is important to note that Downer’s claim mirrors what Mifsud told Papadopoulos a month earlier.

If you take time to read the Durham report regarding the Downer information you will see that Durham correctly notes that it lacked the substance to be used as a predicate to open Operation Crossfire Hurricane. That is the positive. The negative is that Durham did not devote any of the report to the circumstantial evidence that Papadopoulos was targeted by British, U.S., Australian and Israeli intelligence operatives and “diplomats” in creating evidence that could be used to suggest that there were some Russian shenanigans underway in the Trump campaign.

Why would the Brits, the Aussies and the Israelis agree to participate in such a scheme? They all feared that Trump would damage their national security interests, particularly in the Middle East. The Wikileaks publication of the purloined DNC emails was an unexpected curveball that was used to produce another “anti-Russian” narrative pinning the blame on Putin for exposing Hillary Clinton’s perfidy rather than holding her accountable for her misuse of classified material. I believe that Georg Papadopoulos was an unwitting pawn in a massive information operation designed to handcuff Donald Trump (figuratively and, if possible, literally) and prevent him from becoming President.

That operation failed, spectacularly so, but it provided a narrative that is still being used effectively to attack Donald Trump and eliminate any possibility of having normal, peaceful relations with Russia. (Gateway Pundit/Larry Johnson, 5/22/2023)  (Archive)

They lied.

They deceived the public for years, alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. President Trump and his advisors, the agents of Russia, were guilty of treason. The FBI investigation was above reproach, led by career agents and civil servants, and insulated from politics or influence from FBI leadership.

Their sources, anonymous to the public and known to only them, were from within the US intelligence and law enforcement communities. These were the originators of the falsehoods; the journalists were merely vessels. In return for this cynical tradecraft, the media protected – and continues to protect – high ranking current and former US government officials. Anything to keep the information flowing.

The list of publications and “journalists” (for purposes of this exercise, any of these other terms might apply: stenographers or adulators or parasitic hosts) who put out the now-discredit claims of the Trump-Russia hoax is long and distinguished. They were nearly all guilty; the skeptics were few. The volume of lies, spread in print and on TV and on social media, would take months, if not years, to compile. The Columbia Journalism Review’s “The press versus the president”, a thorough analysis of some of the worst Trump-Russia era reporting (including stories from The New York Times and The Washington Post), was a four-part series that only touched the surface.

Jim Sciutto and Evan Perez of CNN, citing “multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials,” said US investigators “corroborated some of the communications.” Jake Tapper, the face of CNN, was more than happy to use his primetime slot to spread these lies and others involving allegations of “collusion”. Marshall Cohen and Jeremy Herb of CNN made similar claims: “many of the allegations that form the bulk of the [Steele] intelligence memos have held up over time, or have proven to be at least partially true.” Durham would disagree: “not a single substantive allegation pulled from the Steele Reports and used in the initial Page FISA application had been corroborated at the time of the FISA submission -or indeed, to our knowledge, has ever been corroborated by the FBI.”1

CNN’s Jake Tapper, Evan Perez, and Jim Sciutto accept the Merriman Smith Award from ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C., April 28, 2018. (Credit: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

Natasha Bertrand was perhaps the most notoriously wrong reporter during the Trump-Russia hysteria. She spread the lies of the US intelligence community through various national platforms (Business Insider, The Atlantic, Politico, etc.): that the Steele Dossier had been corroborated, that the Horowitz probe would be of questionable quality, that it was “much more plausible that Trump did go to Russia and he did have these kinds of sexual escapades with prostitutes.”

By reporting these falsehoods as truth, Bertrand gave legitimacy to an improper and unlawful investigation. She also served the purposes of her sources – to slice through the hamstring of the Trump Administration, to put it on the defensive, to help influence elections. Her reward was professional advancement from near obscurity to her current position as National Security Reporter for CNN. No doubt her anonymous sources, which probably continue to enjoy their quid pro quo with Bertrand, are pleased with their investment.

Numerous reporters from The New York Times were guilty of similar offenses. The day before Trump’s 2017 inauguration, for example, The Times reported this bombshell from current and former senior American officials: “American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump.” This was followed by The New York Times’ articles in February and March of 2017 pushing allegations of Trump-Russian Intelligence connections.

Peter Strzok (Credit: public domain)

What we didn’t know at the time was that high ranking FBI officials disagreed with The Times’ reporting. Internal FBI communications from Trump Russia collusion Peter Strzok himself said of The Times’ articles: “no substance and largely wrong.” Durham puts the FBI’s discussions of The Times reporting into context:

based on declassified documents from early 2017, the quid pro quo own records show that reports published by The New York Times in February and March 2017 concerning what four unnamed current and former U.S. intelligence officials claimed about Trump campaign personnel being in touch with any Russian intelligence officers was untrue. 2

While the reporting itself is part of the story, there’s something else here: the identity of the sources.

(Read more: Techno Fog/The Reactionary/Substack, 5/21/2023)  (Archive)

(Part One, understanding how the silos are used to deflect accountability.)  In this Part 2 outline we give specific background examples of how weaponized Trump-Russia fraud worked and calling out names with examples of what they did.

On March 15, 2017, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes held a press conference announcing there was no specific evidence of “wiretaps” at Trump Tower {HERE}.  However, on March 22, 2017, Nunes held another press conference saying information was brought forth to the HPSCI showing the Trump campaign was under Title-1 surveillance by the FBI and former Obama administration {SEE HERE}.  In between those critical six days, something happened that was important.

(Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

With the full backdrop of the Durham report as the baseline, we now know there was zero evidence of any Russian interference effort in the 2016 election.

The Trump-Russia narrative was created by the Clinton campaign, promoted by the FBI and Main justice and advanced in narrative construction by the Obama administration.

On March 17, 2017, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman Mark Warner asked the FISA court for a copy of the FISA application used against Trump campaign official Carter Page.

This is not in doubt and was evidenced in DC USAO court records related to SSCI security director James Wolfe who was initially indicted for leaking that specific copy of the FISA application.  The FISC stamp is also visible on the copy of the FISA that was eventually released.

QUESTION:  Why did Mark Warner request a copy of the FISA application from the FISA COURT and not from DOJ Main Justice?  The answer to that question falls into how insiders played the silo game against the Trump administration.

Warner didn’t request the FISA application from Main Justice because (1) the DOJ insiders were going to fight the release of any toxic information that proved the Trump campaign was under active Title-1 surveillance; they were going to fight release to Devin Nunes. And (2) the legislative branch was part of the Trump-Russia attack construct and the SSCI membership were active participants with the DOJ and FBI (executive branch).

To weaponize the FISA in the effort to get a special counsel appointed, Mark Warner needed to work around the system that was being discussed in the media.  Warner asked the FISA Court for their copy of the application.  On March 17, 2017, a copy of that application was delivered by FBI agent Brian Dugan from the FISC to the SSCI.  It was classified a ‘read and return’ Top Secret product with NO FOReign National access allowed.

Most people are unaware the declassified public version of the FISA application released by the DOJ was this Mark Warner copy.   We know it was this copy again due to the FISC stamp on the document that eventually became declassified and public.

QUESTION:  If the original FISA copy originated from the FISA Court, read and return, how did it end up in Main Justice as part of the eventual July 21, 2018, public release of the Carter Page FISA application?

Put another way, how did the 2017 physical copy go from the FISC to the SSCI and then end up at Main Justice for a 2018 release?

These are the awkward questions that cut through the use of the silo defense mechanisms.

The March 17, FISC copy ended up at Main Justice because the Washington Field Office case file against the leaker, SSCI Security Director James Wolfe, along with all the other evidence therein (which included text messages from Mark Warner), went back through the Mueller special counsel before Wolfe’s eventual indictment.  This is when the Mueller team had to make a decision about releasing it to the public.

Weissmann freaked out when he saw the Dugan file against James Wolfe, and the looming probability that Senator Mark Warner would be caught as the person who told Wolfe to leak the FISA.

The FISA application was leaked. Mueller, Weissmann and Mark Warner knew that back in 2017, but what they didn’t know until the evidence file came in 2018 was that the FBI had proof the FISA was leaked.

Oh snap!

How to dilute that catastrophic issue?

The Weissmann team released the FISA application to the public on July 21, 2018.

Now…. Remember, both Michael Horowitz and John Durham destroyed the DOJ position on the predicate for the FISA application.  In December 2019, IG Horowitz pointed out the missing ‘Woods File’ and 33 material issues with the application (one of which led to the criminal conviction of Kevin Clinesmith).   Three years later, John Durham completely destroys the justification for the Trump-Russia premise behind it.

Notice how no one in the executive branch DOJ, FBI, ODNI, ever criticized Robert Mueller, yet we know to a demonstrable certainty the Mueller special counsel was likely more corrupt than the originating DOJ/FBI corruption the special counsel was protecting.

The origin of ‘Spygate’ was bad, but the totality of the cover-up effort in the Mueller-Weissmann special counsel was exponentially worse.  More actual laws and policies within the justice department were broken by Robert Mueller than any preceding corrupt official.

♦ Amid a series of documents released by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020 [SEE HERE] there was a rather alarming letter from the DOJ to the FISA Court in July 2018 that pointed out the DC agenda, the “institutional cover-up.” [Link to Letter]

Before getting to the substance of the letter, it’s important to put the release in context. After the FISA Court reviewed the DOJ inspector general report (Dec 2019), the FISC ordered the DOJ-NSD to declassify and release documents related to the Carter Page FISA application.

In the cover letter for this specific release to the Senate Judiciary and Senate Intelligence committees, the DOJ cited the January 7, 2020, FISA court order:

Keep in mind that prior to this release only the FISA court had seen this letter from the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD).

As we walk through the alarming content of this letter, I think you’ll identify the motive behind the FISC order to release it.

First, the letter in question was sent by the DOJ-NSD to the FISA Court on July 12, 2018. It is critical to keep the date of the letter in mind as we review the content. This letter to the FISA Court was sent nine days before the DOJ released the FISA application to the public.

Aside from the date, the important part of the first page is the motive for sending it.

The DOJ is telling the FISA court in July 2018: based on what they know the FISA application still contains “sufficient predication for the Court to have found probable cause” to approve the application.

In essence, in July 2018 the DOJ (now with Mueller in place) is defending the Carter Page FISA application as still valid.

However, it is within the justification of the application that alarm bells are found. On page six the letter identifies the primary participants behind the FISA redactions:

As you can see: Christopher Steele is noted as “Source #1”. Glenn Simpson of Fusion-GPS is noted as “identified U.S. person” or “business associate”, and Perkins Coie is the “U.S-based law firm.”

Now things get very interesting.

On page #8 when discussing Christopher Steele’s sub-source, the DOJ notes the FBI found him to be truthful and cooperative.

This is an incredibly misleading statement from Main Justice to the FISA court, because what the letter doesn’t say is that 18-months earlier the sub-source, also known in the IG report as the “primary sub-source”, informed the FBI that the material attributed to him in the dossier was essentially junk.

Let’s look at how IG Michael Horowitz framed the primary sub-source Igor Danchenko, and specifically notice the FBI contact and questioning took place in January 2017 (we now know that date to be January 12, 2017):

Those interviews with Steele’s primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko, took place in January, March and May of 2017, and clearly the sub-source debunked the content of the dossier itself.  In May of 2017, Weissmann and Mueller were in charge.   This is when the special counsel attempted to pay Danchenko $300k to throw a bag over him.

Those Danchenko interviews were 18-months, 16-months and 14-months ahead of the July 2018 DOJ letter to the FISC. The DOJ-NSD, with the instructions from the Mueller Special Counsel, says the sub-source was “truthful and cooperative” but the DOJ doesn’t tell the court the content of the truthfulness and cooperation. Why?

Keep in mind, this letter to the court was written by AAG John Demers in July 2018. Jeff Sessions was Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein was Deputy AG, Christopher Wray was FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy, and Dana Boente is FBI chief-legal-counsel.  Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann were at their apex.

Why would the DOJ-NSD not be forthcoming with the FISA court about the primary sub-source? This level of disingenuous withholding of information speaks to an institutional motive.

As noted by Durham, from the outset the FBI and DOJ knew the Trump-Russia stuff was nonsense.  By July 2018, the DOJ clearly knew the Steele dossier was full of fabrications, yet they withheld that information from the FISA Court and said the predicate was still valid. Why?

It doesn’t take a deep-weeds-walker to identify the DOJ motive.

In July 2018 Robert Mueller’s investigation was at its apex.

This letter, justifying the application and claiming the current information, would still be a valid predicate therein, speaks to the 2018 DOJ needing to retain the validity of the FISA warrant.  The DOJ needed to protect evidence Mueller & Weissmann had already extracted from the fraudulent FISA authority. That’s the silo motive.

In July 2018, if the DOJ-NSD had admitted the FISA application and all renewals were fatally flawed, Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann would have needed to withdraw any evidence gathered as a result of its exploitation.  In essence, Main Justice in 2018 was protecting Mueller’s poisoned fruit.

If the DOJ had been honest with the court, there’s a strong possibility some, perhaps much, of Mueller evidence gathering would have been invalidated… and cases were pending. The solution: mislead the court and claim the predication was still valid.

That motive clarifies why the FISC would order the 2020 DOJ, now headed by Bill Barr, to release the letter they received from Main Justice.

Remember, in December 2019 the FISC received the IG Horowitz report, and they would have immediately noted the disparity between what IG Horowitz outlined about the FBI investigating Steele’s sub-source, as contrast against what the DOJ told them in July 2018.

The DOJ letter is a transparent misrepresentation when compared to the information in the Horowitz report. Hence, the FISC orders the DOJ to release the July ’18 letter so that everyone, including congressional oversight and the public can see the misrepresentation.

The NSD silo inside Main Justice wrote this letter to the FISC silo – never intending for it to become public.

The court was misled.  Everyone can clearly see it. However, no one in the legislative or executive branch touched it because the court was misled by Robert Mueller.

The court was misled by the special counsel.  Reflect on this for a moment.

The content of that DOJ-NSD letter, and the subsequent disparity, points to an institutional cover-up; and as a consequence the FISC also ordered the DOJ to begin an immediate sequestration effort to find all the evidence from the fraudulent FISA application – the proverbial fruit from the poisonous tree.  In hindsight, the FISC was covering their own ass.

Two more big misstatements within the July 2018 letter appear on page #9. The first is the DOJ claiming that only after the application was filed did they become aware of Christopher Steele working for Fusion-GPS and knowing his intent was to create opposition research for the Hillary Clinton campaign. See the top of the page.

According to the DOJ-NSD claim, the number four ranking official in the DOJ, Bruce Ohr, never told them he was acting as a conduit for Christopher Steele to the FBI. While that claim is hard to believe, in essence what the DOJ-NSD is saying in that paragraph is that the FBI hoodwinked the DOJ-NSD by not telling them where the information for the FISA application was coming from. The DOJ, via John Demers, is blaming the FBI.

The second statement, equally as incredulous, is at the bottom of page nine where the DOJ claims they had no idea Bruce Ohr was talking to the FBI throughout the entire time any of the FISA applications were being submitted – October 2016 through June 2017.

In essence, the claim there is that Bruce Ohr was working with the FBI and never told anyone in the DOJ throughout 2016 and all the way past June 29th of 2017. That denial seems rather unlikely; however, once again the DOJ-NSD (Weissmann) is putting the FBI in the crosshairs and claiming they, the special counsel, knew nothing about the information pipeline.

Bruce Ohr, whose wife was working for Fusion-GPS and assisting Christopher Steele with information, was interviewed by the FBI over a dozen times as he communicated with Steele and fed his information to the FBI. Yet the DOJ claims they knew nothing about it.

Again, just keep in mind this claim by the DOJ-NSD is being made in July 2018, six months after Bruce Ohr was demoted twice (December 2017 and January 2018). If what the DOJ is saying was true (it wasn’t), well, the FBI was completely off-the-rails and rogue.

The DOJ was claiming in the July 2018 letter the FISA application predication was still valid.  However, if the DOJ-NSD (Mueller team) genuinely didn’t know about the FBI manipulation, they would be informing the court in 2018 the DOJ no longer supported the FISA application due to new information. They did not do that. Instead, in July 2018, they specifically told the court the predicate was valid, yet the DOJ-NSD knew it was not.

The last point about the July 2018 letter is perhaps the most jarring. Again, keep in mind when it was written; Chris Wray is FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy and Dana Boente is FBI chief legal counsel.

Their own FBI reports, by three different INSD and IG investigations, had turned up seriously alarming evidence going back to the early 2017 time-frame; the results of which ultimately led to the DC FBI office losing all of their top officials; and knowing the letter itself was full of misleading and false information about FBI knowledge in/around Christopher Steele – this particular sentence is alarming:

“The FBI has reviewed this letter and confirmed its factual accuracy?”

Really?

As we have just shared, the July 2018 letter itself is filled with factual inaccuracies, misstatements and intentional omissions. So who exactly did the “reviewing”?

This declassification release raised more questions than any other; and yet no one, not a single investigative body, asked questions about it.

Why?…

Because the letter itself was prima-facie evidence of lies directly from the special counsel of Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann.

No one in the executive branch, legislative branch or even judicial branch wanted to highlight the corruption of the special counsel.

Here’s the Full Letter. I strongly suggest everyone read the 14-pages slowly. If you know the background, this letter is infuriating…  AND keep in mind, every single staff member in the House and Senate (those investigating the issue) said they never saw it.  Why, because the DOJ was using silos to hide information.

That’s how badly broken the system of justice, and the system of checks-and-balances in Washington DC, really is.  What we are seeing in the blatant targeting, silencing, and outright in-your-face behavior is a downstream result of the system knowing everyone involved is part of the corrupt operation.

We need to break through these created silo walls by questioning the participants together.

(Conservative Treehouse, 5/22/2023)  (Archive) [Support Conservative Treehouse HERE]

Few other officials in government had such a large hand in establishing and promoting the Russia-Collusion Hoax as did former CIA Director John Brennan.

Brennan admitted during congressional testimony that he “made sure that anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump campaign was shared with the FBI.” And by his own admission, Brennan even used likely illegal incidental collection of U.S. citizens in the process, telling Rachel Maddow, “Any time we would incidentally collect information on a U.S. person, we would hand that over to the FBI.”

Now, we know beyond any doubt that Brennan knew the entire Russia-Collusion narrative was a hoax. And, as we shall see, Brennan knew this in July 2016—before the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation was even opened.

But, of course, it never was an investigation. It was a political operation.

The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election.  This DNC hack claim is the fulcrum issue structurally underpinning the Russian election interference narrative pushed by the Weissmann and Muller Special Counsel.  However, this essential claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as outlined during a Dana Rohrabacher interview and by Julian Assange’s own on-the-record statements.

Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London immediately after the Weissmann/Muller report was released to Bill Barr.  Despite investigating the background of the Trump-Russia nonsense, John Durham never touched the DNC hacking claim – the core of the Mueller report.  Why? Because Durham knew the U.S. Government threw a bag over Assange to protect the fraudulent Trump-Russia and Russian interference claims.

Again, this reality speaks to the corruption within the John Durham investigation.  Durham was protecting Weissmann, Mueller and the core of their justification for a 2-year investigation.   Durham knows why Assange was arrested.  Durham stayed away from it, intentionally.

The Russians HAD TO have made efforts to interfere in the election, or else the factual basis for the surveillance operation against candidate Donald Trump is naked to the world.

That’s why so much DOJ, FBI and Mueller special counsel energy was exhausted framing the predicate.

“Seventeen intelligence agencies,” the December 29th Joint Analysis Report, the expulsion of the Russian diplomats which was an outcropping of the JAR, the rushed January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, shoving microphones in everyone’s faces and demanding they answer if they believed Russia interfered – all of it, and I do mean every bit of it, is predicated on an absolute DC need to establish that Russia Attempted to Interfere in the 2016 election.

The “Russian Malicious Cyber Activity – Joint Analysis Report” (full pdf) is pure nonsense.  It outlines nothing more than vague and disingenuous typical hacking activity that is no more substantive than any other hacking report on any other foreign actor. However, it was needed to help frame the Russian interference narrative.

There were no Russian diplomats involved; there was no Russian election interference; there was no Russian hacking of the DNC; it was all a fraud created by the intelligence community (IC), FBI and Main Justice to support Hillary Clinton’s lies and then cover their own targeting tracks.

On September 26, 2021, Yahoo News published an extensive article about the CIA targeting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2017 and the extreme conversations that were taking place at the highest levels of the U.S. government about how to control him.

There is a much bigger story transparently obvious when overlapped with CTH research files on the Mueller investigation and the U.S. intelligence community.  Specifically, the motive intentionally not outlined by Yahoo News.

What I am going to share is a deep dive using the resources and timeline from within that Yahoo article and the specific details we have assembled that paints a clear picture about what interests existed for the Deep State, the Intelligence apparatus and the Mueller-Weissmann special counsel.

This fully cited review is not for the faint of heart. This is a journey that could shock many; it could alarm more and will likely force more than a few to reevaluate just what the purpose was for Mike Pompeo within the Donald Trump administration.

As the Yahoo News article begins, they outline how those within the Trump administration viewed Assange as a risk in 2017.

Here it is critical to accept that many people inside the Trump administration were there to control events, not to facilitate a policy agenda from a political outsider.   In the example of Assange, the information he carried was a risk to those who attempted and failed to stop Trump from winning the 2016 election.

Julian Assange was not a threat to Donald Trump, but he was a threat to those who attempted to stop Donald Trump.  In 2017, the DC system was reacting to a presidency they did not control.  As an outcome, the Office of the President was being managed and influenced by some with ulterior motives.

Yahoo, via Michael Isikoff, puts it this way: “Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.”

As we overlay the timeline, it is prudent to pause and remember some hindsight details.  According to reports in November of 2019, U.S. Attorney John Durham and U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr were spending time looking carefully at CIA activity in the 2016 presidential election. One quote from a media-voice increasingly sympathetic to a political deep-state noted:

“One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that, “It is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services”“. (Link)

It is interesting that quote came from a British intelligence official, as there was extensive pre-2016 election evidence of an FBI/CIA counterintelligence operation that also involved U.K. intelligence services. There was an aspect to the FBI/CIA operation that overlaps with both a U.S. and U.K. need to keep Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under tight control.

To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to FBI/CIA interests, and effectively the Mueller special counsel, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016. It is within this network of foreign and domestic operations where FBI Agent Peter Strzok was clearly working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI operations.

By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. {Go Deep}  John Durham ignored him.

Criminal cartel. Center: HILLARY CLINTON and BARACK OBAMA, ringleaders. Counterclockwise from top left: JOSEPH MIFSUD, Maltese professor linked to Russian intelligence and UK intelligence; STEFAN HALPER, academic and CIA operative since 1970s; GLENN SIMPSON, founder of Fusion GPS; CHRISTOPHER STEELE, MI6 agent working undercover as private contractor; BRUCE OHR, then-top-level DOJ executive who conspired with Brennan, Simpson, Steele, and his wife Nellie; NELLIE OHR, CIA asset who covertly passed along fictional dirt on Trump from Simpson, Steele, and her husband Bruce to Brennan; MARC ELIAS, Deep-State lawyer for Obama, Clinton, and the DNC, laundering money from them to Simpson; JAMES COMEY, then-Director of FBI; JOHN BRENNAN, then-Director of CIA; LISA PAGE, FBI counsel and secret lover of Peter Strzok; SENATOR HARRY REID, then-Democratic Leader; PETER STRZOK, CIA/FBI liaison, who secretly worked with Carter Page since at least 2013; GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS, Brennan tool planted inside the Trump campaign; CARTER PAGE, admitted operative for the FBI and CIA, and a Brennan plant inside the Trump presidential campaign to manufacture phony “connections” to Russia; BILL PRIESTAP, head of FBI Counterintelligence, also with long-time ties to Carter Page (Credit: Chalet Reports)

In a similar fashion, the FBI tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor, Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent, under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos.  Again, John Durham ignored it.

The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets legal and much easier.  If Durham went into this intelligence rabbit hole, there would be a paper trail that leads back to Robert Mueller.  Durham didn’t go there.

John Durham and IG Michael Horowitz both outlined how very specific exculpatory evidence was known to the FBI and Main Justice, yet that evidence was withheld from the FISA application used against Carter Page and/or it was ignored.  The FBI fabricated information in the FISA and removed evidence that Carter Page was previously working for the CIA.  This is what FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was indicted and convicted for doing.

One week after the FBI and DOJ filed the second renewal for the Carter Page FISA [April 7, 2017], Yahoo News notes how Mike Pompeo delivered his first remarks as CIA Director:

[…] On April 13, 2017, wearing a U.S. flag pin on the left lapel of his dark gray suit, Pompeo strode to the podium at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, to deliver to a standing-room-only crowd his first public remarks as Trump’s CIA director.

Rather than use the platform to give an overview of global challenges or to lay out any bureaucratic changes he was planning to make at the agency, Pompeo devoted much of his speech to the threat posed by WikiLeaks. (link)

Why would CIA Director Mike Pompeo be so concerned about Julian Assange and Wikileaks in April 2017?

In April of 2017 Pompeo’s boss, President Donald Trump, was under assault from the intelligence community writ large, and every deep state actor was leaking to the media in a frenzied effort to continue the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy.

The Trump-Russia effort was so all consuming that FBI Director James Comey was even keeping a diary of engagement with President Trump in order to support an ongoing investigation built on fraud – yet, Mike Pompeo is worried about Julian Assange.

Again, here it is important to put yourself back into the time of reference.  Remember, it’s clear in the text messages between FBI Agent Strzok and Lisa Page that Peter Strzok had a working relationship with what he called their “sister agency”, the CIA.

♦ Former CIA Director John Brennan admitted Peter Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which outlines the Russia narrative; and it was also Peter Strzok who authored the July 31st, 2016, “Electronic Communication” from the CIA to the FBI that originated FBI operation “Crossfire Hurricane.”  Strzok immediately used that EC to travel to London to debrief intelligence officials around Australian Ambassador to the U.K. Alexander Downer.

In short, Peter Strzok was a profoundly overzealous James Bond wannabe who acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for 2016’s CIA Director John Brennan to utilize.

Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson hired CIA Open-Source analyst Nellie Ohr toward the end of 2015, at appropriately the same time as “FBI Contractors” were identified exploiting the NSA database and extracting information on a specific set of U.S. persons.  One, if not the primary extractors, has now been identified as Rodney Joffe at Neustar.   “The campaign plot was outlined by Durham in a 27-page indictment charging former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann with making a false report to the FBI.  The plot was also outlined in the finished Durham report.  Eight individuals who allegedly conspired with Sussmann but does not identify them by name. The sources familiar with the probe confirmed that the leader of the team of contractors was Rodney L. Joffe.” {Go Deep}

It was also Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskaya. A little reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working as a double agent for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S as part of his Trump-Russia creation.

Glenn Simpson managed Veselnitskaya through the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. However, once the CIA/Fusion GPS operation using Veselnitskaya started to unravel with public reporting, back in Russia Deputy AG Karapetyan died in a helicopter crash.

Simultaneously timed in late 2015 through mid 2016, there was a domestic FBI operation using a young Russian named Maria Butina tasked to run up against Republican presidential candidates. According to Patrick Byrne, Butina’s handler, was FBI agent Peter Strzok who was giving Byrne the instructions on where to send her. {Go Deep}

All of this context outlines the extent to which the FBI/CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump’s orbit.  A large international operation directed by the FBI/CIA and domestic operations seemingly directed by Peter Strzok operating with a foot in both agencies. [Strzok gets CIA service coin]  Durham eviscerated the predicate for all of this in his report, yet stayed away from the part that leads to Robert Mueller in 2017.

Recap: ♦Mifsud tasked against Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Halper tasked against Flynn (CIA), Page (CIA) and Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Azra Turk, pretending to be Halper asst, tasked against Papadopoulos (FBI). ♦Veselnitskaya tasked against Donald Trump Jr. (CIA, Fusion GPS). ♦Butina tasked against Trump and Donald Trump Jr (FBI).

Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer hired by Fusion GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. Deripaska refused to participate.

All of this engagement directly controlled by U.S. intelligence, and all of this intended to give a specific Russia impression. This predicate was what John Durham was reviewing in November of 2019, and then released in his final report – while whitewashing the parts that led to the Mueller silo.

The key point of all that contextual background is to see how committed the CIA and FBI were to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ and a multitude of political operatives, put a hell of a lot of work into it.

We know John Durham looked at the construct of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA); and talking to CIA analysts who participated in the construct of the January 2017 report that bolstered the false appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This context is important, because it ties in to the next part that involves Julian Assange and Wikileaks.This is where the motives of Mike Pompeo in mid/late 2017 come into play.

[…] By the summer of 2017, the CIA’s proposals were setting off alarm bells at the National Security Council. “WikiLeaks was a complete obsession of Pompeo’s,” said a former Trump administration national security official. (link)

On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA). From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018:

On Tuesday April 15, 2019, more investigative material was released. Again, note the dates: Grand Jury, *December of 2017* This means FBI investigation prior to….

The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation, April 2019.

Why the delay?

What exactly was the DOJ waiting for from March 2018 to April 2019?

This timeframe is the peak of the Robert Mueller/Andrew Weissmann special counsel investigation.

Here’s where it gets interesting….

The Yahoo article outlines, “There was an inappropriate level of attention to Assange“, by the CIA according to a national security council official.  However, if you consider the larger ramifications of what Julian Assange represented to all of those people inside and outside government interests who created the Trump-Russia collusion/conspiracy, well, there was actually a serious risk.

Remember, in May 2017 Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann effectively took over the DOJ.  The purpose of the Mueller investigation was to cover up the illegal operation that took place in the preceding year.   The people exposed in the Trump-Russia targeting operation included all of those intelligence operatives previously outlined in the CIA, FBI and DOJ operations.  These are the people John Durham did not indict.

The FBI submission to the Eastern District of Virginia Grand Jury in December of 2017 was four months after congressman Dana Rohrabacher talked to Julian Assange in August of 2017: “Assange told a U.S. congressman … he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents … did not come from Russia.”

(August 2017, The Hill Via John Solomon) Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year’s election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is friendly to Russia and chairs an important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, became the first American congressman to meet with Assange during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for years.

Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill.

“Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year’s presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”

Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Trump. (read more)

Dana Rohrabacher later published this account of the events:

Knowing how much effort the CIA and FBI put into the Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative; and knowing that Assange could essentially destroy the baseline predicate for the entire Trump-Russia investigation – which included the use of Robert Mueller; it would make sense for corrupt government officials to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange.

That contact between Rohrabacher and Assange explains why those same government officials would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and cover) for a grand jury by December 2017.

Within three months of the grand jury seating (Nov/Dec 2017), the DOJ generated an indictment and sealed it in March 2018.

The EDVA then sat on the Julian Assange indictment while the Mueller/Weissman probe was ongoing.

As soon as the Mueller probe ended, on April 11th, 2019, a planned and coordinated effort between the U.K. and U.S. was executed; Julian Assange was forcibly arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and the EDVA indictment was unsealed (link).

As a person who researched this fiasco, including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: “17 intelligence agencies”, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for cover’s anti-Russia narrative in December ’16, and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January ’17, this timing against Assange is not coincidental.

It doesn’t take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange, because the Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes, and that narrative is contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.  Again, John Durham stayed away from it!

♦ This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election.

This claim is the fulcrum underpinning the Russia election interference narrative.  However, this core and essential claim is directly disputed by Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange’s on-the-record statements.

The predicate for Robert Mueller’s investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Shawn Henry (Credit: Chip Somodeville/Getty Images)

The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment (Peter Strzok); and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from another Michael Sussmann partner, Shawn Henry at Crowdstrike, yes another DNC contractor and collaborator with the Clinton campaign.

The CIA held a massive conflict of self-interest problem surrounding the Russian hacking claim as it pertained to their own activity in 2016. The FBI and DOJ always held a massive interest in maintaining the Russian hacking claim.  Robert Mueller and Andrew Weismann did everything they could to support that predicate; and all of those foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also carried a self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative.

Julian Assange was/is the only person with direct knowledge of how Wikileaks gained custody of the DNC emails; and Assange claimed he has evidence it was from an inside DNC leak, not from a DNC hack.

The Russian “hacking” claim was ultimately so important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K Intelligence apparatus.  Well, right there is the obvious motive to shut Assange down as soon as intelligence officials knew the Mueller report was going to be public.  And that is exactly what Main Justice and the U.S. intelligence community did.

This is why John Durham never touched it.

All of them know what happened.

All of them know why Julian Assange was taken from the Embassy in London.  A bag had to be thrown over Assange in order to retain the justification for the Weissmann/Mueller special counsel and the larger Russian election interference claims.  None of them do not know this.  They all know.

Put the panel of Barr, Rosenstein, Horowitz, Mueller, Weissmann, Durham and Wray in front of congress.  Ask each one: “Who is Seth Rich?”

Then start asking the right questions about the timeline of Assange being arrested.  Ask them about the DNC hack and Russian provenance according to Crowdstrike.  Ask them key and specific questions about the FBI working with Crowdstrike and about the DOJ and EDVA case against Assange.  Watch them squirm.

They all know what happened.  SO DO WE!

Ask them questions about it in public.  Watch them squirm.

(Conservative Treehouse, 5/23/2023)  (Archive)

I am going to be outlining some details for those of you who walk the deep weeds of understanding on behalf of our nation.

If you are a “tldr” person, this effort is not for you; feel free to continue sitting on the back bench and complaining about stuff. However, if you are a person who absorbs information so that you can confront our ‘representatives‘, then these articles and points are arrows in your quiver.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board is finally starting to get it.  They wrote an article this weekend recognizing how the Durham report totally eviscerates the foundation of the Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann special counsel investigation [SEE HERE].  The conclusion they reach is accurate:

… “All of this suggests that the Mueller probe was as much a cover-up as an attempt to find evidence of collusion.” (link)

Welcome to the party WSJ, nice of you to join us.  But it’s worse.  Much worse.

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

Keep in mind that John Durham has laid the Mueller/Weissmann probe naked to their enemies. Unfortunately, Weissmann and Mueller don’t have any enemies in Washington DC amid any party {Go Deep to 2021}. Our representatives are not representing. The true DC enemy is ‘We The People‘ – and I choose to fight them.

How entrenched is the defense mechanism? Well, consider a few things:

♦ First, John Durham clearly shows in his 306-page report with a 48-page classified appendix, that Russia did nothing to interfere in the 2016 election. The entire Russian Interference operation was a Clinton fabrication, later enhanced by a Federal Bureau of Investigation who used the fabrication as a cover-up justification to hide their surveillance of the Trump campaign.

♦ Second, accepting the empirical, factual, and inherently true reality of the first point – consider that President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats to retain the Clinton fabrication and FBI lies. Think about this one carefully, the Obama administration expelled Russian diplomats in order to retain a domestic political ruse! President Obama did this *after* CIA Director John Brennan briefed him about the Clinton fabrication.

There were no Russian diplomats involved; there was no Russian election interference; there was no Russian hacking of the DNC; it was all a fraud created by the intelligence community (IC), FBI and Main Justice to support Hillary Clinton’s lies and then cover their own targeting tracks.

♦ Third, Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, with the full support of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, indicted 14 Russian entities under completely bogus pretenses. All of that effort was done to assist the Clinton narrative, cover for Obama and then use the special counsel to cover up the Trump targeting operation. The totally bogus construct explains why the fabricated indictments were sealed in the DOJ National Security Division in perpetuity, thereby keeping the fraudulent construct hidden from public review forever.

♦ Fourth, the only Russian entity who choose to push back against the Mueller/Weissmann fraud was the Russian Concord catering company – literally a ham sandwich operation. The outcome of that Russian confrontation was Weissmann/Mueller telling the DC judge they had to drop the case because any effort to prosecute the nonsense would create a risk to “national security.” Nice escape hatch from righteous sunlight on a case that was founded in nonsense.

Why do I bring these four points up? Because not a single person in Washington DC will mention it, and it’s the reality of the thing. I am committed to fighting this crap, and if the Wall Street editorial page is going to finally join the fight, that’s good. Let’s keep pushing.

The next post is going to showcase another very granular example of the silo system in operation. However, the prior discussion about silos carries forward as the baseline to understand, so here’s that reminder once again.

CURRENT STATUS – Let me uncomplicate the complex, and more importantly, let me propose the outline of a solution.

Michael Horowitz (Credit: public domain)

♦ SILO #1 – Inspector General Michael Horowitz was given instructions by outgoing President Barack Obama to review the internal decision-making inside the FBI, Main Justice and DOJ-NSD as it pertained to the Hillary Clinton classified document scandal.

In early January 2017, IG Horowitz was tasked to review the FBI decisions during the Clinton exoneration and deliver a report on his findings.

First, it is important to remember the DOJ inspector general can only review internal government conduct. The IG does not review or investigate outside involvement and has no authority to compel investigative compliance from outside parties. The Office of Inspector General is an internal review agency.

Second, it is important to remember the DOJ inspector general was not authorized to conduct any oversight of the Dept of Justice National Security Division, DOJ-NSD. During the Obama era, when the DOJ-NSD was created by Attorney General Eric Holder, through the entirety of the Obama era, there was no inspector general oversight into any operations conducted by the DOJ-NSD – that included the FISA process. It was not until later in 2017 when the Trump administration granted the OIG authority to conduct oversight into the DOJ National Security Division.

Think of IG Michael Horowitz as an investigative silo. You will see why this matters.

♦ SILO #2 – Robert Mueller (truthfully Andrew Weissmann) was appointed in May of 2017 by Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, as Special Counsel to investigate Trump-Russia and the reports of prior Russian influence in the 2016 election.  Robert Mueller was a figurehead – a person in name only to give credibility to the purpose and intent of the group who assembled under his shingle.  Andrew Weissmann was the actual manager of the investigation, events and details of the Mueller probe.

On the outward face, in the aftermath of FBI Director James Comey being fired, the Mueller investigation was created to look at Russian interference in the 2016 election – against the background that Comey’s firing by President Trump was related to an intent to impede the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation.  However, on the internal dynamic, inside the mechanics of how DC silos are created, the Mueller probe existed to hide the DOJ and FBI weaponization of government that was deployed under the justification of the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Sometime around June of 2017, while conducting his review of the FBI conduct in the Clinton investigation, Inspector General Michael Horowitz discovered troubling internal communications between FBI agent Peter Strzok and DOJ-NSD assigned lawyer to the FBI, Lisa Page.  Silo #1 now intersects Silo #2.

Lisa Page was the DOJ lawyer advising FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.  Peter Strzok was the lead FBI counterintelligence agent working on the Clinton email investigation.  Lisa Page, Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe were the core of the Clinton investigation and intrinsically linked to the Clinton exoneration as announced by FBI Director James Comey.

IG Horowitz knew of the Clinton investigation and was investigating the details therein.  Horowitz did not initially know about the Crossfire Hurricane investigation which, by June of 2017, had subsequently morphed into the Special Counsel Mueller investigation.

Horowitz’s 2017 task only pertained to the Clinton classified documents and decision-making. However, it was the exact same FBI and DOJ people who investigated then exonerated Hillary Clinton, who then opened an investigation of Trump, who then transferred into an expanded Robert Mueller probe.

Horowitz (Silo 1) was bound by requirements of his office to inform Robert Mueller that individuals inside his investigation (Silo 2) were under investigation.

This presented a problem for Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann who were conducting a coverup and targeting operation.

Essentially, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were a threat, as they were bringing an IG review into the security of the Mueller silo.  Almost immediately, Strzok and Page were removed by Mueller/Weissmann to purge the problematic window they represented.

Mueller and Weismann then continued their operation, absorbing any Main Justice information that had anything to do with Trump-Russia.  Simultaneous to their unilateral empowerment, Weissmann and Mueller continued to fabricate a false premise of Russian interference in the 2016 election.  This ‘Russia narrative’ was supported as the justification for their continued operation throughout 2017, 2018 and into 2019.

It is important to remember that Mueller/Weissmann had full control over everything that had anything to do with the Russian interference narrative or the Trump-Russia narrative.  Any ancillary investigation from any government office that touched on these issues was subsequently absorbed by Weissmann and team.

As an example, this Weissmann/Mueller absorption and control included the FBI case against SSCI Security Director James Wolfe, the man who leaked the Title-1 surveillance warrant (FISA application) deployed by the Crossfire Hurricane team against Carter Page.  The Wolfe investigation (April ’17 through January ’18) was conducted by FBI Washington Field Office agent Brian Dugan. James Wolfe was indicted by USAO Jessie Liu for leaking the FISA application to journalist Ali Watkins.  However, the evidence file was reviewed by the special counsel, and after threats by the defense team to subpoena Senate Intelligence Committee members, the specific charge of leaking the FISA was dropped from the criminal case.

Because Weissmann/Mueller controlled everything that touched the Trump-Russia issues, in June of 2018 when the Carter Page FISA application was made public, it came from the Weissmann/Mueller team release.  This was one of the lesser discussed revelations from the Rod Rosenstein June 2020 testimony about the Mueller probe.

♦ SILO #3 – After taking office in February of 2019, Attorney General Bill Barr received the Mueller report in March, and a debate with Mueller/Weissmann about the content and report release began.  In May 2019, AG Barr appointed Special Counsel John Durham to review the FBI operations that initiated the Trump-Russia probe.

It is important to note that John Durham was appointed *after* Bill Barr received the Mueller report from Andrew Weissmann. It is also important to note that despite the originating mandate of Weissmann/Mueller being predicated on their obligation to look into the accusations of Trump-Russia, the Clinton campaign organization of the Trump-Russia narrative does not appear in the Mueller report.

There is nothing about Clinton’s work with the Perkins Coie law firm and lawyer Michael Sussmann to work as a cut-out for the Clinton campaign contacts with Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, Glenn Simpson, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr or any other substantively manufactured system that was used to create the illusion of the Trump-Russia connections.  The absence of that information inside the Mueller report begged the obvious question:

How could Mueller investigate Trump-Russia for two years and never find the origin of Trump-Russia?

After realizing the Mueller report contained none of this information, in May of 2019 Bill Barr appointed John Durham and Silo #3 was created.

Each of the silos, purposefully created by those who operate within the DC systems of political power, were created to have specific usefulness and function.  This is how the system operates.

We hear things like “ongoing investigation” as sunlight blocks, or “potential interfering with an investigation” as another technique.  Each time a silo is created, the purpose of the silo is to control information and isolate the larger system from scrutiny.

When Robert Mueller (silo 2) appeared before a congressional committee in June 2019 to answer questions about his report, he was asked about the origination of Trump-Russia.  Mueller’s jaw-dropping response was, “That was not in my purview.”

Wait, how can your existence be predicated on investigating Trump-Russia, and yet the origin of Trump-Russia is not in your “purview”?  See the problem.

Unfortunately, and not accidentally, Robert Mueller was able to avoid scrutiny of never having investigated the origin of Trump-Russia because there was another silo, John Durham (silo 3), to take the heat off him.  Each silo is sequentially created to deflect and distract from questioning that surrounds the originating corruption. Attorney General Bill Barr created Silo #3 (Durham), for exactly this reason.  Bill Barr was the Bondo, John Durham the spray paint.

John Durham finishes up Silo-3 operations, delivers a report, and now we have a Silo #4 in operation via the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith.

As you can see, each silo creates an internal defense system which also allows media to deflect, ignore and distract.  However, in the Trump-Russia story you will note there is a flow to how the silos are sequenced.  The silos are designed to absorb information, deflect sunlight and keep accountability away.  The silos are constructs, preservation systems, for the DC administrative state.

Ultimately, each silo is created to stop seeing the larger picture – the unlawful targeting of a presidential candidate, and then a subsequent coup against that candidate after the election.   The evidence of the weaponized government is in the full story that resides, compartmented, inside purposefully constructed containment silos; each intended to block sunlight upon specific components of the evidence.

♦ SOLUTION – There is a way to bring the sunlight and destroy the silo system.  The method is to use the inertia of the construct against itself.

Obviously, I hope you can understand why it would be imprudent to go too deep into this right now.  However, suffice to say – here are the broad strokes.

In front of you sits a panel of SEVEN people:

Barr, Rosenstein, Horowitz, Mueller, Weissmann, Durham and Wray.

You do not deconstruct the silos by questioning them separately. Each silo will avoid sunlight by deflecting inquiry to the mechanism of the other.

Instead, you rain sunlight down upon the silos by questioning each of the participants individually while located together.

All prior guidelines remain valid.

You use very granular and specific questions that pertain to the flow-through details that each silo was created to hide.

The usefulness of the silo process is dependent on its ability to stand alone.

When you put direct questions to the assembly of silos, there is nowhere to deflect.

Two days. Eight hours each day. Five rounds of questions. No one reading statements – only questions.

Very, very specific questions.

The goal is sunlight. Rip the Band-Aid off, call the baby ugly, and start the process to fix this crap by exposing it. Restore the First and Fourth Amendments and heal the injury. What we need is a full, uncensored, brutally honest expose’ of how bad things have become and how that system can be dismantled.  The existing constitution is the protection; just remove the stuff that is violating it.

(Conservative Treehouse, 5/22/2023)  (Archive)

[Support CTH Here]

Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation – an inquiry into government corruption, lies to secret courts, the weaponization of the US intelligence apparatus, the FBI’s attempt to take down a sitting president – has concluded.

The Durham Report has been released.

Here are some of the main findings:

• “The FBI discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia.”
• Crossfire Hurricane “was opened as a full investigation without [the FBI] ever having spoken to the persons who provided that information.” Days after it was opened, Peter Strzok was telling a London FBI employee that “there’s nothing to this.”
• Internal FBI communications discussing the Crossfire Hurricane during its early stages: it’s “thin” and “it sucks”.
• British Intelligence pushed back on Mueller requests for assistance: “[a British Intelligence person] basically said there was no [expletive] way in hell they were going to do it.”
• Durham documents TWO investigations into Hillary Clinton – one involving the Clinton Foundation and one involving illegal foreign contributions to Clinton’s Campaign.
• In one Clinton Campaign investigation, an FBI confidential human source (CHS) had offered an illegal foreign contribution to the campaign through an intermediary. The Clinton Campaign was “okay with it” and “were fully aware”. The CHS offered the FBI a copy of the credit card charge; the FBI never got receipts. In fact, the FBI handling agent told the CHS “to stay away from all events relating to Clinton’s campaign.”

• In February 2016, FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe directed the Clinton Foundation investigation to be shut down. He walked that back after receiving push-back, but McCabe made sure that his approval was required for any further investigative steps.
• The New York Field Office was called on behalf of FBI Director Comey and informed to “cease and desist” from the Clinton Foundation investigation.
• The FBI and DOJ restricted both of those Clinton investigations, making sure that “essentially no investigative activities occurred for months leading up to the election.” In comparison, the FBI opened a full investigation into the Trump Campaign based on unvetted “intelligence”.
• The CIA had direct knowledge of the Clinton plan (“Clinton Plan”) to vilify Trump by linking him to Putin and Russia. On August 3, 2016, CIA Director John Brennon met with President Obama, VP Biden, and other senior Administration officials, including but not limited to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey. At that meeting, Brennan informed them of the Clinton Plan:

• In September 2016, the CIA sent the FBI this information on the Clinton Plan to link Trump and Russia:

• Somehow, the FBI did nothing to vet or investigate the Clinton Plan – even though they were using parts of the Clinton Plan (the Steele Reports) – to investigate the Trump Campaign. Durham writes: “No FBI personnel who were interviewed by the Office recalled Crossfire Hurricane personnel taking any action to vet the Clinton Plan intelligence.”
• In fact, it was as if the CIA’s Clinton Plan memo was somehow buried within the FBI. Most members of Crossfire Hurricane “had never seen the intelligence before”. And, as we have previously discussed, it was never disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in contravention to that court’s local rules.
• FBI Director James Comey was deeply interested in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and micromanaged it, demanding the Carter Page FISA warrant, telling Assistant Director Andrew McCabe: “Where is the FISA, where is the FISA?”

• 

  Dina Corsi (Credit: FBI)

  The FBI knew, relatively early, that its Carter Page FISA warrants were dubious. That FBI knowledge only intensified by 2018, as FBI analysts discussed how “Steele’s subsources could have been compromised by the Russians.” They were going to prepare their findings in a memorandum. FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, Dina Corsi, met with the review team and directed them not to document any recommendations, context, or analysis in the memorandum they were preparing.” An FBI attorney was at that meeting. “He confirmed that the team was told not to write any more memoranda or analytical pieces and to provide their findings orally.” Corsi’s demands, according to one FBI Attorney, were “the most inappropriate operational or professional statement he had ever heard at the FBI.”

• Igor Danchenko, the Steele primary subsource charged with (and acquitted of) lying to the FBI, was paid $220K by the FBI as a confidential human source. This was paid after the FBI knew Danchenko lied to them. As the Durham Investigation proceeded, Durham learned “the FBI proposed making continued future payments to Danchenko, totaling more than $300,000, while [Durham] was actively investigating this matter.” The FBI, in effect, was seeking to influence a key witness who would later face criminal charges.
• The FBI’s reasons for paying Danchenko were certainly curious. Interviews with Durham’s office revealed: “the FBI’s Executive Assistant Director for National Security, made clear that they were not even able to accurately describe the value or contributions of Danchenko that would justify keeping him open, much less making hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to him.”

We’ll follow this up with a much deeper analysis hopefully by tomorrow. Part of that story is the problem with the Durham investigation: the fact that its scope didn’t include the attribution of the DNC hack. (The Reactionary/Substack, 5/15/2023)  (Archive)

Barack Obama meets with John Brennan, Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security, in the Oval Office, on January 4, 2010. (Credit: Pete Souza/White House)

The just-released Durham report confirmed that the FBI not only failed to corroborate the Steele dossier, Hillary Clinton’s oppo-doc against Donald Trump, but it regularly ignored existing, sometimes dispositive, evidence to keep the investigation alive. Some officials were credulous. Others were devious. But no one “stole” our democracy — other than perhaps intelligence officials and the journalists who helped feed the collective hysteria over Russia.

John Brennan, Hamas-loving authoritarian and partisan propagandist, almost surely knew it was a con from the start. Yet he spent four years on television sounding like a deranged subreddit commenter. Even after privately admitting he knew there was no collusion, Brennan kept lying and using his credentials to mislead the public.

From Durham’s report:

CIA Director John Brennan and Deputy Director David Cohen were interviewed by the Office and were asked about their knowledge of any actual evidence of members of the Trump campaign conspiring or colluding with Russian officials. When Brennan was provided with an overview of the origins of the Attorney General’s Review after Special Counsel Mueller finding a lack of evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian authorities, Brennan offered that “they found no conspiracy.”

As Durham points out, even after Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered his report, and after Brennan admitted no one found a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, the former head of the CIA went on with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, another all-star election “denier,” and claimed that he “suspected there was more” to collusion between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin than Mueller had let on.

Did I mention this was the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency?

Brennan must have been relying on that same gut instinct that led him to sign a letter asserting that the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop scoop, a journalistic effort with more corroboration than virtually anything connected to Trump’s alleged “collusion,” had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

(…) The House Judiciary Committee recently uncovered a Oct. 19, 2020, email from CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who was working with the Biden campaign to concoct “a talking point” to “push back on Trump” during the final presidential debates, asking Brennan to sign on to the “disinformation” letter. “Ok, Michael, add my name to the list. Good initiative. Thanks for asking me to sign on,” was Brennan’s reply.

That’s all it takes for the former CIA director, a man who was given immense unchecked power — a man who oversaw secret kill lists and was the driving force behind drone strikes on civilians (including an American citizen) — to sign a letter he knew would obstruct the workings of “democracy” and the free press.

This is a man who still has access to classified documents. You might remember all the hand-wringing over broken norms when Trump allegedly barred intelligence agencies from sharing classified information with Brennan. The New York Times even gave him a column to argue that Trump’s claims of “no collusion” were “why the president revoked my security clearance,” which, again, he almost certainly knew was a lie. (Read more: The Federalist, 5/15/2023)  (Archive)

Adam Schiff (Credit: public domain)

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif), the past chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence who now hopes to be California’s next Democratic senator, remains unswayed by the newly released Durham Report in his conviction that members of former President Donald Trump’s campaign conspired with Russian intelligence operatives to steal the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton.

When asked by The Epoch Times about the Durham Report’s conclusion of no collusion between Trump and Russia and whether the lawmaker stood by his claims to the contrary, Schiff replied, “If you read Mr. Durham’s report, what he said is that there wasn’t evidence of collusion before they began the investigation. That’s obviously a very important distinction.”

The California Democrat then pointed to what he described as “secret meetings” between Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian intelligence agent. Schiff accused Manafort of “providing that agent with internal polling data with their strategy for key battleground states, while that unit of Russian intelligence was engaged in trying to help Donald Trump win.”

Schiff said that for “most Americans that looks like plain collusion.”

But the Durham Report described the FBI’s top expert on Russian intelligence as finding no such evidence.

“The FBI Intelligence Analyst who had perhaps the most in-depth knowledge of particularly sensitive Russian intelligence information in FBI holdings during the relevant time period disclosed that she never saw anything regarding any Trump election campaign conspiracy with the Russians, nor did she see anything in FBI holdings regarding Carter Page, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, or Paul Manafort engaging in any type of conspiracy with the Russians regarding the election,” the report said.

(…) Schiff further claimed that Donald Trump Jr. was closely connected with Russian intelligence.

“But you also had the Russians reaching out through an intermediary to Donald Trump’s son, offering dirt on the Democratic candidate for president as part of what was described as the Russian government’s effort to help elect Donald Trump. And rather than refuse it, Don Jr. said that [if] it’s what was represented, they would love it,” Schiff told The Epoch Times.

(…) Finally, Schiff said former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was involved in the campaign’s collusion.

“Let me just add that the President’s National Security Adviser, Mike Flynn, [was meeting] secretly with the Russian ambassador; they were having conversations secretly with the Russian ambassador to undermine bipartisan sanctions on Russia for its interference in the election. And then lying about it. Most Americans again, [would say] this is collusion,” Schiff said.

The conversations between Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak regarding U.S. sanctions, however, took place weeks after Trump was declared the winner of the 2016 presidential election and as part of Flynn’s preparation for taking over his White House duties following the inauguration of the new Chief Executive. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 5/16/2023)  (Archive)

During Monday’s interview on Jesse Waters’ show, Senator Hawley passionately expressed his belief that there must be consequences for the actions revealed in the Durham Report, urging for prosecutions of the Clinton campaign and Hillary Clinton herself.

Hawley emphasized the alarming connection between Clinton’s public statements on collusion and her campaign’s alleged involvement in feeding misinformation to the FBI.

“People need to be prosecuted for this. The Clinton campaign and Hillary Clinton herself, is it any coincidence that she is tweeting about collusion at exactly the same time her campaign operatives are feeding this BS to the FBI? I don’t think so,” stated Hawley firmly during the interview. (Read more: Trending Politics, 5/16/2023) (Archive)

“Over an 11-year period, Hunter’s firm paid over $25k for Joe’s second iPhone (1-302-377-xxxx), which circumvented White House security protocols, along with ‘most lines’ on a ‘Wells Fargo credit line’ that Joe utilized. These phone, banking, and other financial records must be… https://t.co/k3aKuyvBTa pic.twitter.com/RhdTqJeJKh

— Marco Polo (@MarcoPolo501c3) May 18, 2023

(Archive)

The physical copy of the dossier: https://t.co/3zBtHzR6gD

— Marco Polo (@MarcoPolo501c3) May 18, 2023

Their foreign-born house maid.

Page 232 in our dossier: https://t.co/Z0Ki3cMShT pic.twitter.com/aPiRWoSp5I

— Marco Polo (@MarcoPolo501c3) May 19, 2023

Oversight Committee Has Subpoenaed Phone Records for Joe Biden Phone Paid by Hunter Biden https://t.co/anhbiWrAKv

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) May 17, 2023

(Archive)

Schweizer: Oversight Committee Has Subpoenaed Phone Records for Joe Biden Phone Paid by Hunter Biden

Mila Antonova discussed playing bridge with Bill Gates in a video that was posted online in 2010. (Credit: video screenshot)

Jeffrey Epstein discovered that Bill Gates had an affair with a Russian bridge player and later appeared to use his knowledge to threaten one of the world’s richest men, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Microsoft co-founder met the woman around 2010, when she was in her 20s. Epstein met her in 2013 and later paid for her to attend software coding school. In 2017, Epstein emailed Gates and asked to be reimbursed for the cost of the course, according to the people familiar with the matter.

The email came after the convicted sex offender had struggled and failed to convince Gates to participate in a multibillion-dollar charitable fund that Epstein tried to establish with JPMorgan Chase. The implication behind the message, according to people who have viewed it, was that Epstein could reveal the affair if Gates didn’t keep up an association between the two men.

“Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes. Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates,” said a spokeswoman for Gates. (Read more: The Wall Street Journal, 5/21/2023)

FBI agents Garrett O’Boyle (l), Steve Friend (c), and Marcus Allen (r) were suspended for questioning the agency’s handling of the January 6 case and stating their beliefs that the FBI has been weaponized against conservatives. (Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP)

House Republicans joined FBI whistleblowers in alleging “retaliation” for exposing political “rot” within the bureau, while the FBI revoked some of their security clearances and Democrats accused them of being a “national security threat.”

The controversy spilled out as the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), released a report on what they called the “politically weaponized” FBI and held a whistleblower hearing on Thursday. Meantime, the FBI pushed out a letter criticizing some of the witnesses testifying to counter their allegations.

“The FBI’s mission is to uphold the Constitution and protect the American people,” an FBI spokesperson told the Washington Examiner late Thursday. “The FBI has not and will not retaliate against individuals who make protected whistleblower disclosures.”

Jordan called the whistleblowers “brave” for speaking out and said they suffered backlash from the FBI as a result.

“They came forward, and I want to thank them for doing it. But because they did, man oh man, have they faced retaliation,” Jordan said.

The new House Republican report blasted improper “retaliation” by the FBI against the whistleblowers who testified on Thursday: FBI special agent Stephen Friend, FBI special agent Garret O’Boyle, and FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen.

“Whistleblower testimony makes clear that the FBI rid itself of employees who dared to speak out against FBI leadership or to raise good faith concerns about FBI operations,” the report states. “The FBI has taken personnel actions against whistleblowers who raised concerns within the Bureau and, later, to Congress. In several instances — Friend, O’Boyle, and Allen — the FBI weaponized the security clearance adjudication process to silence employees who fight against the politicized ‘rot’ within the FBI leadership.”

The GOP report added that “because a security clearance is necessary to work at the FBI, revoking or suspending an agent’s security clearance effectively indefinitely suspends the agent and leaves the agent to languish in an unpaid purgatory.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 5/19/2023)  (Archive)

Peter Strzok (l) (Credit: Saul Loeb/Getty Images) and Peter Schweizer (Credit: public domain)

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok, a key figure in the “Russia collusion” hoax, attacked Breitbart News contributor Peter Schweizer on Thursday for his work on alleged corruption by Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.

If you have the slightest concern about the FBI’s relationship with Christopher Steele, you should be losing your mind about the FBI’s relationship with Peter Schweizer.

New reporting from the NY Times.

Gift link:https://t.co/pcf0XHPwl8 pic.twitter.com/w0FVWukee3

— Pete Strzok (@petestrzok) May 18, 2023

Stzrok linked to a New York Times article published Thursday about Republicans’ interest in investigating another FBI agent, Timothy R. Thibault. The Times noted that the FBI had once approached Schweizer for documents and information relating to his own investigations into Hunter Biden’s business dealings:

Before the [2020] election, two agents contacted Peter Schweizer, who is the president of the Government Accountability Institute, which has received millions of dollars from prominent conservative donors. Mr. Schweizer also writes for Breitbart, a right-wing news outlet, and had ties to Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House strategist for Mr. Trump.

In an interview, Mr. Schweizer confirmed that the two sought information about Hunter Biden, the president’s son, whose foreign business dealings have been the subject of intense Republican scrutiny for years.

Mr. Schweizer had recently published a book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” delving into the financial dealings of the Biden family. The agents, Mr. Schweizer said, wanted to know if he could share documents related to Hunter Biden’s foreign business ties that he might have gathered for his work. Mr. Schweizer said he passed on corporate records and other files.

Schweizer told the Times that the FBI did not contact him for more help after Hunter Biden’s laptop emerged in 2020, even though he reached out to the agency to inform it that he had a copy of the contents of the laptop.

.@petestrzok How ironic that someone who peddled the Steele D. which was based on anonymous unverified info, and proven to be FALSE, would wrongly attack me and not @me.

Coward move. My reporting, including Clinton Cash is based on corp and tax records, court docs, etc. and… https://t.co/GSaJl9aHxT

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) May 19, 2023

Schweizer noted that the Times had verified his reporting, including that which was published in Clinton Cash, an exposé that apparently prompted the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign to commission the false dossier on Trump and Russia — which was fed to the FBI and formed the basis for its subsequent “collusion” inquiry. (Breitbart News, 5/19/2023) (Archive)

(…) The FISA Court’s report detailed the nearly 300,000 abuses logged between 2020 and early 2021.

For instance: After the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, an FBI employee ran a whopping 23,132 separate queries of Americans “to find evidence of possible foreign influence, although the analyst conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence related to the query term used,” Contreras found. Justice Department officials “concluded there was no specific factual basis to think the searches would turn up foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime” and the court opinion found that “no raw Section 702 information was accessed as a result of these queries.”

In June 2020, the FBI searched for digital data and communications of 133 people arrested “in connection with civil unrests and protests between approximately May 30, and June 18, 2020,” when protests and riots erupted across the country over George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

That search was done, officials said, to see if there was counter-terrorism information about those individuals. When questioned about the searches later, FBI officials said it was reasonable for agents to think the searches would return foreign intelligence. The court opinion describing that effort has significant redactions, making it unclear why the FBI developed its theory.

Incredibly, the Court also found a long pattern between 2016 and 2020 in which the FBI conducted FISA searches targeting “individuals listed in police homicide reports, including victims, next-of-kin, witnesses, and suspects,” according to the court opinion. The Justice Department found these searches violated the rules “because there was no reasonable basis to expect they would return foreign intelligence or evidence of crime.”

In its defense, the FBI argued “that querying FISA information using identifiers of the victims — simply because they were homicide victims — was reasonably likely to retrieve evidence of crime.”

Even more egregiously, an FBI analyst “conducted a batch query for over 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign” because the campaign was supposedly “a target of foreign influence,” the opinion said.

Justice Department officials found that “only eight identifiers used in the query”—such as a name, phone number or an email address—”had sufficient ties to foreign influence activities” that complied with the FISA standards.

Officials said lawmakers who were briefed months ago about the problems have been pushing authorities to make them public. The delay in doing so was due to discussions of redactions of a separate part of the opinion, which described a novel application of surveillance techniques, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters.

Senior law enforcement officials said Friday that the problems in the report do not represent FBI’s current practices. The problems were discovered largely due to Justice Department audits, they said, and have been remedied.

“We’re not trying to hide from this stuff, but this type of non-compliance is unacceptable,” a senior FBI official said. “There was confusion historically about what the query standard was,” said another senior law enforcement official.

The FBI has rolled out a host of changes to how agents and analysts use the Section 702 database. While a previous version of the system automatically included it in a list of areas that agents could search for information, agents and analysts must now specifically seek and choose to search 702 information. FBI users of the database are also required to write, in their own words, why they think their search will return foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime, and an attorney must approve any “batch” searches involving large numbers of people.

In recent months, authorities have touted that the number of 702 searches conducted that involve U.S. residents or companies has dropped dramatically — more than 90 percent last year. Officials said Friday that the dropoff was largely the result of the Justice Department audit having found significant compliance failures by the FBI.

The problems identified by the court and the Justice Department are separate from criticism lodged against the FBI in 2019 by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and again this week by special counsel John Durham, over the FBI’s use of a different kind of foreign intelligence surveillance court order, which specifically targeted a former Trump adviser in 2016 and 2017 based on faulty and incomplete FBI applications.

In 2021, a follow-up report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz found “widespread” failures by the FBI to follow one of the key rules of FISA surveillance, indicating that the problems went far beyond the FBI’s investigation of former Trump adviser Carter Page.

Additionally, the court opinion included information regarding what officials called a “highly sensitive” surveillance technique, and a court debate about the novel use of that technique. Details about the technique are redacted, making it difficult to determine the purpose and scope of the controversial surveillance.

In a statement to American Greatness, Jordan said: “Chris Wray told us we can sleep well at night because of the FBI’s so-called Fisa reforms. But it just keeps getting worse.” (Read more: American Greatness, 5/19/2023)  (Archive)

The FBI’s Illegal Surveillance Is Not New, but the Magnitude of the Problem Has Never Been Fully Disclosed—Until Now – Video

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday said Russian President Vladimir Putin told her a story about his parents that, at the time, had been unknown, even to the CIA.

Speaking at a wide-ranging interview at the FT Weekend Festival, Clinton said Putin shared with her how his father, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, rescued his mother, Maria Ivanovna Putina, from a pile of bodies during a war and nursed her back to health prior to his birth.

“He said, ‘You know, my father was on the frontlines during the siege [of Leningrad]. And he would have to be there for three days. There was no food. There were rats everywhere. He was trudging back to the apartment where he lived with my mother and as he’s walking down the street, there’s a huge pile of bodies. As my father was walking by the pile of bodies, he looks down and he sees my mother’s foot. He ran over and he was pulling what he thought to be the body of his wife,'” Clinton shared in the interview.

“So his father took the woman’s body and she wasn’t dead. He took her back to the apartment and nursed her back to health. And then after the war, Putin was born,” she continued.

Clinton later said she shared Putin’s story with her team and found out that no one, not even the CIA and U.S. Ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul, knew about the incident between the Russian leader’s parents.

“After it was over, I got my team and told my team. We had people from the CIA with us. We had the whole entourage. I told them the story and no one has ever heard it before,” she said.

(…) That being said, the tale Clinton included in her memoir is different from the story Putin told in his 2000 autobiography, “First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President.” In it, Putin said his mother was laid to rest near a pile of bodies after she fainted due to starvation. She later “woke up in time.” He also noted that his father was at war the whole time and had no chance to look for his mother. In another anecdote, Putin said it was his mother who later found his father in a hospital. (Read more: IB Times, 5/22/2023)  (Archive)

Recently the Plaintiffs filed their motion to support the temporary injunction – a hearing we have been waiting on for nearly a year because of the government’s delays and obfuscations. It was 1,200 FACTS about government-coordinated censorship.

The government responded with a 1200-page monstrosity arguing they did it all – but because of foreign actors and the “safety” of the American people – lest they be exposed to harmful “misinformation.” Then they asked the judge to give them another week and postpone this hearing – again, arguing they wouldn’t have time to digest the Plaintiff’s response to their last filing.

The judge told them he wouldn’t be postponing this hearing again. A few days ago, the Plaintiffs filed their response – and it is an encyclopedia of their expedited and limited discovery so far. I want to explain why this case is NOT like any other we have seen.

This isn’t what we are used to — a weak judge capitulating to the government. In fact, the judge hasn’t capitulated ONCE. Neither has the appellate court, and neither has a DC court.

What is the remedy sought? Well, if the temporary injunction is granted (I am nearly certain it will be), the remedy is to bar the government from working with social media companies to flag and censor posts. They will also be barred from working through NGOs to do the same. (Here’s looking at you, EIP and Stanford internet observatory, and Atlantic Council) – no FBI task force inside Facebook or Twitter, no emails back and forth about “vaccine misinfo” and how to stop it. The government has to Cease.

What follows will be a detailed breakdown of the latest filing,  an answer to the government’s excuses for why:

A. What they did isn’t really censorship (mainly that they didn’t *force* the social media companies to take action)

B. Why what they did is “OK.” The guise of national security and “safety” and protecting Americans from “Mis, dis, and Malinformation.”

They begin with a hypothetical. They do this because the government tried to make all this behavior “Ok” by claiming that the Trump administration did the same thing.

That is an exercise in futility- the plaintiffs don’t care WHAT administration did it, only that it happened, and besides- the Trump White House directed NONE of this activity.

As an added zing, they used book burning as their hypothetical- appeals directly to the left angry that we don’t want pornographic books in kids’ libraries.

In the very first sentence of the brief, the government filed to argue why there should NOT be a temporary injunction halting their communication and threats to social media companies- they hide behind the “Foreign” assaults on critical election infrastructure.

However, evidence obtained in this case demonstrates that the Federal government overwhelmingly targets DOMESTIC speech by American citizens.

Depositions and evidence obtained in the case prove that actors responsible for censorship admit that most of what they consider “misinformation” was DOMESTIC in nature, including from the EIP (Keep the EIP front of mind). (Read more: DC Undercover, 5/24/2023) (Archive)

Chuck Grassley (Credit: Getty Images)

A top Senate Republican with a long history of advocating whistleblowers is being shut out from the Hunter Biden IRS whistleblower investigation by a Democratic Senate chairman despite the whistleblower wanting the GOP senator on the case.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a member of the Senate Finance Committee and a co-chairman of the Whistleblower Protection Caucus, is being denied access to the investigation by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the Washington Examiner has learned.

Lawyers for the IRS whistleblower sent letters to Congress on April 19 and May 15 providing details about their client’s protected disclosures alleging wrongdoing related to the federal investigation into President Joe Biden’s son. The attorneys have gone out of their way in both letters to include Grassley despite the Iowa Republican not being a current chairman or ranking member for a committee with specific jurisdiction regarding the tax code, but he is a leader of a Senate caucus dedicated to protecting whistleblowers.

The IRS whistleblower’s legal team told the Washington Examiner on Monday, “Naturally, we addressed letters to Sen. Grassley because he is co-chair with Sen. Wyden of the Whistleblower Protection Caucus as well as a senior member and past chair of both the Finance and Judiciary committees. Also important, though, is that he is more trusted than any other public official by whistleblowers to give them air cover regardless of the political implications and keep fighting to protect them when others cut and run. What whistleblower wouldn’t want Chuck Grassley in on their case?”

Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code requires the chairman of congressional tax committees to grant access to sensitive tax return information, and Wyden has refused to provide that access to Grassley or his team.

Grassley spokesman Taylor Foy told the Washington Examiner the IRS whistleblower’s lawyers had “specifically included” Grassley “in their communications with Congress, so there’s no legitimate reason to exclude Grassley’s staff from participating in this investigation.”

The Grassley spokesman said that “Grassley and his investigations unit are subject matter experts on both whistleblower protections and the Biden family business controversies” and that “they also happen to be very familiar with the specific statutes protecting sensitive tax information.”

Grassley and Wyden are co-founders of the Whistleblower Protection Caucus, and the whistleblower’s attorneys are warning about “clearly retaliatory” action against their client.

The whistleblower’s attorneys said Wyden and Grassley have historically had a good relationship and should be able to cooperate — “unless partisanship is getting in the way.”

“Although our client is an IRS supervisor, his protected disclosures implicate the Justice Department, so the Judiciary Committees and others in Congress will need to have access to some version of the disclosures in order to give the Justice Department’s conduct in this case the public scrutiny that it deserves,” the legal team said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Our client’s interests and the country’s interests would be best served if Congress would resist the urge to be distracted by jurisdictional turf wars or playing partisan defense and offense.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 5/26/2023)  (Archive)

(Credit: John Hinman, Director, IRS Whistleblower Office)

A second IRS whistleblower in the criminal investigation of first son Hunter Biden emerged Monday in documents sent to Congress following the purge of the entire investigatory team looking into President Biden’s son for tax fraud and related crimes.

The new whistleblower is a special agent in the IRS’s international tax and financial crimes group and worked on the Hunter Biden case since it was opened in 2018 — until he was ousted without explanation last week.

The agent joins his supervisor, who plans to testify behind closed doors before the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday, in publicly registering concerns about how the Justice Department has handled the investigation.

Both IRS whistleblowers expressed concerns internally for years about the case being swept under the rug but got nowhere, and they lay out extensive claims of retaliation in new disclosures to Congress.

Hunter, 53, allegedly failed to pay taxes on millions of dollars he received from foreign associates who in some instances interacted with then-Vice President Joe Biden.

Hunter wrote in communications retrieved from his abandoned laptop that he had to share “half” of his income with his father.

The IRS supervisor, who oversaw the probe since January 2020, and his 12 subordinates were removed from the case — allegedly on Justice Department orders — after he contacted Congress on April 19 to allege “preferential treatment” and false testimony to Congress by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

(Read more: New York Post, 5/22/2023)  (Archive)

U. S. Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett (Credit: public domain)

Democratic Del. Stacey Plaskett, a representative of the U.S. Virgin Islands in Congress, has distanced herself from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, claiming she was completely “unaware” of his donations. However, recent court filings shed light on a much closer relationship between Plaskett and Epstein than previously known.

The unsealed documents outline a decade-long association involving direct solicitations for money, personal meetings, and employment at a law firm deeply connected to Epstein’s shadowy network.

Plaskett not only repeatedly sought financial contributions from Epstein and had multiple face-to-face encounters with him, but she also worked directly for a St. Thomas-based law firm that played a role in cultivating influence for Epstein’s clandestine activities.

In a deposition last month, Plaskett disclosed that she was introduced to Epstein by Erika Kellerhals, an attorney who lobbied on his behalf and represented his business and philanthropic ventures. Kellerhals’s significance goes beyond a casual connection. Before Plaskett’s congressional tenure, she worked at Kellerhals Ferguson Kroblin PLLC, the boutique tax firm in the Virgin Islands from 2013 to 2014, a period in which Epstein was a major client.

Plaskett’s involvement with Epstein may extend further back, as she previously served as counsel on the Virgin Islands Economic Development Authority (EDA), which granted Epstein $300 million in allegedly improperly obtained tax exemptions over the course of two decades.

Asked during her deposition if she worked for Epstein or any Epstein-linked businesses while serving at the Kellerhals law firm, which specializes in EDA assistance, Plasket responded, “I don’t recall.”

The two years during which she worked for Epstein’s lawyer are notably missing from Plaskett’s LinkedIn account, with a two-year gap between 2012 and when she entered Congress in 2015.

Emails and testimony, however, closely link Plaskett’s rapid political rise with Epstein’s deep pockets. (Read more: Lee Fang, 6/27/2023)  (Archive)

“Inside With Jen Psaki” at the NBC News bureau in Washington, D.C.((Credit: William B. Plowman / MSNBC)

Missouri v. Biden was filed on May 5, 2022. Since it was initially filed, it has taken quite a trip through the court system. The complaint has been amended 3 times, with the most recent Amendment being to transform the case into a class suit – due to the overwhelming evidence of broad harm to the constitutional rights of all Americans. You can view the docket by using this link. Part I:

It alleged that topics surrounding COVID-19, the origins of COVID, the Great Barrington Declaration, election integrity concerns, the COVID shot, the Hunter Biden laptop story (and more) were under scrutiny by the White House and other government agencies – and that the government had very publicly threatened to take action against social media companies should they not act to censor viewpoints on those topics that were disfavored by the government.

The Plaintiffs in the case (the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with several other private plaintiffs) moved for expedited discovery to be able to obtain a limited set of evidence as well as depositions of certain officials. They argued that this evidence would allow them to make the case for a temporary injunction to stop the government from infringing on the first amendment rights of Plaintiffs and their citizens.

Mueller special counsel team members Jeannie Rhee (l) with  Andrew Weissmann (r) and Rush Atkinson(c).  (Credit: Tom Brenner/The New York Times).

Unlike what many have come to expect, the judge GRANTED the motion for expedited discovery and depositions. A struggle ensued between the Government and the Plaintiffs, with the government fighting against the judge in this case (Judge Terry Doughty) to stop discovery and certain plaintiffs from being deposed. They took those complaints to the 5th Circuit of Appeals and a court in Virginia – a court that *usually* is friendly to the government.

At the appellate court level, the government argued that NO ONE should have to leave their government jobs to sit for lengthy depositions in this case, but certainly not the HEAD of CISA, for example.

The appellate court wouldn’t play ball with the government and remanded the case back to Louisiana with some guidance on how the judge should proceed. If memory serves me right, this happened three times.

One particularly interesting exchange came with the deposition of former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. She made threats to social media companies from the podium. They sought to depose her about those threats. She left the office. The government said they had no responsive documents to explain her comments. So Missouri and Louisiana said, “Then we have to depose Jen Psaki.”

The court agreed and ruled that now private citizen Psaki needed to testify. The government and Psaki- represented by Rhee – went to a court in Virginia to try to get THAT judge to stop the deposition.

The judge, in that case, laid into both the government and Psaki. It was so stunning I literally read the transcript of the hearing as its own video.

This went back to Louisiana after the Virginia judge said, “You won’t like how I rule on this, and your argument is terrible, so I’m sending it back to the judge who SHOULD be making this decision. The judge in Louisiana again decided Psaki should be deposed IF the government didn’t have any responsive docs from the press office. Somehow, those docs must’ve appeared.

All along the way, the government has lost- over and over again. They were also caught hiding discovery materials – the judge rapped them and ordered them to produce or else – which they did. (Read more: UncoverDC, 5/24/2023)  (Archive)

https://t.co/o281XqgFjB

— CitizenLenz (@CitizenLenz) May 24, 2023

(Credit: Glenn Greenwald)

Bellingcat presents itself as an independent “fact-checking” organization. But there’s a lot more to this group than meets the eye. Some believe that Bellingcat is just another left-wing activist group masquerading as a “fact-checker.” Bellingcat’s reporting and political narratives reinforce those beliefs. Recently, Bellingcat came under intense scrutiny when they shared a manipulated image of a Hispanic shooter, casting him as a right-wing extremist and a so-called “white nationalist.” This incident wasn’t just a slip-up but a glimpse into their broader strategy of manipulation and propaganda.

Elon Musk actually called out Bellingcat recently over that ridiculously fake-looking propaganda picture.

Elon on the media’s “Texas murderer is a white supremacist” narrative:

Musk: Ascribing it to white supremacy was bullsh*t. The information came from an obscure Russian website and was somehow magically found by Bellingcat, a company that does psyops.

CNBC’s David Faber: And… pic.twitter.com/YL283zvqea

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 17, 2023

Elon isn’t the only one calling out Bellingcat. In a thought-provoking exposé, Glenn Greenwald — an award-winning independent journalist known for his critical views on media — examined the financial ties Bellingcat shares with various entities. Greenwald’s research shows a web of funding from organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S.-based non-profit that supposedly spreads “democracy” in foreign countries. While NED claims its mission is to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through non-governmental efforts, some critics argue that its involvement with Bellingcat raises questions about both groups objectivity and goals. Clearly, the government has a vested interest in what Belligcat has to say.

Critics of Bellingcat also believe that this funding relationship has severe implications for journalistic integrity, which is Glenn’s area of expertise. He examines what’s really going on with Bellingcat in this informative and compelling exposé that explores their possible funding ties to the US government.

We compiled all of the evidence showing who funds @Bellingcat, what the stated agenda of their government and private-sector funders are, and what those funders get in return.

Find out what the National Endowment for Democracy is. Decide for yourself.https://t.co/8WIxP90E5d

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 20, 2023

Watch the show here:

(Read more: Revolver News, 5/25/2023)  (Archive)

(…) The entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative was a lie.  The Democrats and media knew it was a lie.  We now know that the Hillary Clinton Campaign was behind the entire narrative.  Democrats used this in their attempted coup of the sitting president.  They jailed and bankrupted innocent men in their coup attempt.

It was all a lie and Hillary hatched the lie and then later promoted the lie.

James Comey knew this all along and yet pushed an intelligence investigation against candidate and president-elect Trump and President Trump knowing the entire investigation was based on lies concocted by the Hillary Campaign.

(…) On Tuesday morning disgraced FBI Director James Comey joined MSNBC and had the gall to accuse President Trump of being a threat to America. This man is devoid of a conscience.

James Comey: “I think he poses a near existential threat to the rule of law. He will do everything he can in a new term to try to tear down the institutions that he sees as threats and dismantle them and the people who occupy them.” (The Gateway Pundit, 5/30/2023)  (Archive)

(Credit: Judicial Watch)

(…) This month, significant new evidence comes to correct the historical record—and prove Tom right. The new evidence comes from the report of Special Counsel John Durham.

Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham in April 2019 to get to the bottom of the Russia mess. Barr told Congress he wanted a review of “the genesis and conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016.”

Durham’s prosecution record is a bust—two failed court cases and one low-level plea deal—but his 300-page, highly detailed final report is sensational.

Durham’s central mandate was to investigate the opening and conduct of the Crossfire Hurricane probe into possible Trump collusion with elements of the Russian government, particularly whether “any person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaign.”

“Our findings,” the Durham Report notes, “…are sobering.”

Finding: at the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, there was no evidence of collusion.

 “Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the Durham Report noted. [Italics added].

 Durham goes into stunning detail. He notes that Crossfire Hurricane “was opened as a full investigation without [the FBI] ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information…without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (iii) interviews of witnesses essential to understand the information it had received, (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence. Had it done so…the FBI would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials, nor were others in sensitive positions at the CIA, the NSA, and the State Department aware of such evidence.”

Finding: Obama and Biden knew about Clinton plans to link Trump to Russia.

Durham reports that  top Obama administration officials—including the president, Vice President Biden, the FBI director, the Attorney General and others—were briefed by CIA Director John Brennan on reports of a plan by the Clinton campaign to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.”

Elements of the Clinton Plan were disclosed in 2020 when the Director of National Intelligence reported it in a declassified letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Durham adds significant new context—and hints there is more hidden behind the walls of government secrecy. In a classified appendix to the report, Durham notes, there are “specific indications and additional facts that heightened the potential relevance of [the Clinton Plan intelligence] to the Office’s inquiry.”

In an interview with the special counsel, Durham notes, Hillary Clinton dodged questions about “her alleged plan to stir up a scandal between Trump and the Russians. Clinton stated it was ‘really sad,’ but ‘I get it, you have to go down every rabbit hole.’”

Finding: the Steele Dossier was a slanderous Clinton campaign creation devoid of real evidence and used by the FBI to target Carter Page.

 Durham devotes more than 150 pages of his report to the Steele Dossier and its devastating ramifications.

“Perkins Coie, a law firm acting as counsel to the Clinton campaign…retained Fusion GPS…to conduct opposition research on Trump and his associates.” Fusion GPS hired Steele. From July through December 2016, Durham wrote, “Steele and Fusion GPS prepared a series of reports containing derogatory information about purported ties between Trump and Russia. According to the reports, important connections between Trump and Russia ran through campaign manager Paul Manafort and foreign policy advisor Carter Page.”

Durham details at length how the Steele reports “played an important role in [FBI] applications to the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] targeting Page, a U.S. person. The FBI relied substantially on the [Steele] reports to assert probable cause that Page was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Russia.”

The problem with the FBI’s assertion? Durham notes: “the FBI was not able to corroborate a single substantive allegation contained in the Steele reports, despite protracted efforts to do so.” [Italics added.]

Finding: Clinton good—Trump bad—the FBI repeatedly gave all things Clinton a pass while hitting Trump hard.

 In the course of his investigation, Durham learned of three attempts by foreign governments to funnel money to the Clintons or otherwise buy influence. Durham is measured, but it’s easy to read between the lines on the double standard. “The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign,” Durham noted.

In the eighteen months leading up to the 2016 election, “the FBI was required to deal with a number of proposed [Clinton] investigations that had the potential of affecting the election. In each of those instances, the FBI moved with considerable caution.”

In one instance, the FBI ended the case after its confidential source was found to be funneling money to the Clintons. In a second case, the FBI placed so many restrictions on how matters were to be handled that “essentially no investigative activities occurred for months leading up to the election.” In the third case, the FBI elected to give “defensive briefings” to Clinton and others. No such briefings, Durham notes, were offered at any time to the Trump campaign.

Finding: Investigations into the Clinton Foundation were killed by top Justice Department and FBI officials.

 Durham notes that beginning in January 2016, three different FBI field offices—Little Rock, New York, and Washington—“opened investigations into possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation.” Foreign governments were suspected of making, or planning to make, “contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment” from Hillary Clinton.

Top Washington officials opposed the probes, Durham reports. One Justice Department section chief interviewed by Durham recalled the department’s reaction to a Clinton Foundation briefing as “hostile.”

At a February 2016 meeting about possibly closing the Clinton Foundation cases, a participant told Durham that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was “negative” and “annoyed” and “angry,” wanting to close the probes. “Why are we even doing this?” McCabe is reported to have said. Judicial Watch has reported extensively on McCabe and his Democratic Party ties.

FBI field officials prevailed on McCabe at that meeting to keep the investigations open, but six months later the inquiries were dead in the water, Durham reports. The Washington and Little Rock field office probes were folded into the New York investigation. But the New York investigation went nowhere because Justice Department branches in New York declined to issue subpoenas.

Last week, the New York Times added new twists to the Clinton Foundation story, noting that after prosecutors in New York declined to issue subpoenas, the case moved back to Little Rock. Prosecutors in Little Rock closed the case in January 2021 but not without protest from line FBI agents in Arkansas. The “top agent in Little Rock,” the Times reported, “wanted it known that career prosecutors, not FBI officials, were behind the decision” to close the case.

The Times reported that the FBI received an official “declination memo” closing the case in August 2021—effectively making the decision to stop investigating the Clinton Foundation a move by the Biden Administration.

That’s a move worth a closer look. So is the FBI claim, according to the Times, that all of the evidence developed during the investigation “has been returned or otherwise destroyed.”

After all the revelations about misconduct at the highest levels of government in the Trump Russia saga, it’s impossible to take FBI assertions at face value—as John Durham has proved, and as Tom Fitton presciently recognized so long ago. (Read more: Judicial Watch, 5/31/2023)  (Archive)

Chuck Grassley (Credit: Getty Images)

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today issued the following statements after their discussion with FBI Director Christopher Wray about producing to Congress the unclassified, FBI-generated record alleging a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national.

Christopher Wray (Credit: public domain)

“Today, FBI Director Wray confirmed the existence of the FD-1023 form alleging then-Vice President Biden engaged in a criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national. However, Director Wray did not commit to producing the documents subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee.

While Director Wray – after a month of refusing to even acknowledge that the form existed – has offered to allow us to see the documents in person at FBI

James Comer (Credit: public domain)

headquarters, we have been clear that anything short of producing these documents to the House Oversight Committee is not in compliance with the subpoena. If the FBI fails to hand over the FD-1023 form as required by the subpoena, the House Oversight Committee will begin contempt of Congress proceedings,” said Chairman Comer.

“While the FBI has apparently leaked classified information to the news media in recent weeks, jeopardizing its own human sources, it continues to treat Congress like second class citizens by refusing to provide a specific unclassified record. Director Wray confirmed what my whistleblowers have told me pursuant to legally protected disclosures: the FBI-generated document is real, but the bureau has yet to provide it to Congress in defiance of a legitimate congressional subpoena. This failure comes with consequences,” Senator Grassley said. (House Oversight Committee, 5/31/2023) (Archive)

Read More:

Grassley, Comer Demand FBI Record Alleging Criminal Scheme Involving Then-VP Biden

Comer and Grassley on FBI Failing to Comply with Subpoena Deadline

Comer: FBI’s Delay in Producing Unclassified Record is Unacceptable

Comer & Grassley Blast FBI for Refusing to Provide Subpoenaed Record Alleging Then-VP Biden Engaged in a Bribery Scheme

Comer Statement on FBI’s Refusal to Comply with Congressional Subpoena

Update June 2 2023:

BREAKING: FBI Chief Chris Wray Caves to Comer – Agrees to Hand Over Damning Document Detailing China’s $5 Million Bribe to Joe Biden!