According to a July 2016 Yahoo News article, the FBI contacts the DNC in late 2015 and tells their IT (information technology) staffers that there has been a hacking attack on the DNC’s computer network. The FBI provides no details, such as who the hackers might be.

It will later be discovered that a hacker broke into the DNC network in the summer of 2015. Despite the FBI warning, the hacker won’t be ejected from the network until around June 2016. (Yahoo News, 7/29/2016)

“The Ukrainian antipathy for Trump’s team — and alignment with Clinton’s — can be traced back to late 2013. That’s when the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Manafort had been advising, abruptly backed out of a European Union pact linked to anti-corruption reforms. Instead, Yanukovych entered into a multibillion-dollar bailout agreement with Russia, sparking protests across Ukraine and prompting Yanukovych to flee the country to Russia under Putin’s protection.

In the ensuing crisis, Russian troops moved into the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and Manafort dropped off the radar.

Alexandra Chalupa (Credit: Twitter)

Manafort’s work for Yanukovych caught the attention of a veteran Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa, who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration. Chalupa went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant, for Democratic National Committee. The DNC paid her $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records, though she also was paid by other clients during that time, including Democratic campaigns and the DNC’s arm for engaging expatriate Democrats around the world.

A daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who maintains strong ties to the Ukrainian-American diaspora and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, Chalupa, a lawyer by training, in 2014 was doing pro bono work for another client interested in the Ukrainian crisis and began researching Manafort’s role in Yanukovych’s rise, as well as his ties to the pro-Russian oligarchs who funded Yanukovych’s political party.

In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities — including Ukrainian-Americans — she said that, when Trump’s unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump’s ties to Russia, as well.

She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton’s campaign, Chalupa said. In January 2016 — months before Manafort had taken any role in Trump’s campaign — Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump’s campaign, “I felt there was a Russia connection,” Chalupa recalled. “And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved in this election,” said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was “Putin’s political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections.”

Oksana Shulyar, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Ukraine.(r) (Credit: Stephen Bobb/Meridian)

(…) Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said she instructed him to help Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. “Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa,” recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. “They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa,” he said, adding “Oksana was keeping it all quiet,” but “the embassy worked very closely with” Chalupa.

In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide an update on an American media outlet’s ongoing investigation into Manafort.

Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, “If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump’s involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September.”

(…) And in an interview this week, Manafort, who re-emerged as an informal advisor to Trump after Election Day, suggested that the ledgers were inauthentic and called their publication “a politically motivated false attack on me. My role as a paid consultant was public. There was nothing off the books, but the way that this was presented tried to make it look shady.”

He added that he felt particularly wronged by efforts to cast his work in Ukraine as pro-Russian, arguing “all my efforts were focused on helping Ukraine move into Europe and the West.” He specifically cited his work on denuclearizing the country and on the European Union trade and political pact that Yanukovych spurned before fleeing to Russia. “In no case was I ever involved in anything that would be contrary to U.S. interests,” Manafort said.” (Read much more: Politico, 1/11/2017)

John Solomon releases documents that highlight Joe Biden engaging in a pressure and influence campaign on the government of Ukraine. One of the documents is a sworn affidavit by former Ukrainian Prosecutor Viktor Shokin (pdf here). Pages 1-3 of his statement are presented below and describe Arsen Avakov and the ultra-right Azov battalion who are used to intimidate and threaten Ukraine oligarch, Dmitry Firtash (DF), should he decide to return home.

A photograph of armed men at Ukraine’s Borispol airport is posted on Arsen Avakov’s Facebook page.

(Part of the sworn statement of former Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, 9/04/2019)

The audio recording of a conversation between @JohnKerry and @poroshenko on December 3, 2015. Discussion of the replacement of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin.

A few weeks after Burisma’s chairman of the board, Vadym Pozhasrkyi, demanded from Hunter Biden that the cases against Burisma be shut down, then Secretary of State John Kerry gave Ukrainian president Poroshenko a heads up that Joe Biden really needed the prosecutor to be fired. pic.twitter.com/sqI902LiXz

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) June 14, 2023

This is the Google Chrome translation from a Ukrainian perspective on Biden’s demand for Shokin’s termination:

Viktor Shokin (Credit: The Associated Press)

“At a meeting of US Vice President Joe Biden with people’s deputies, the question of the resignation of Attorney General Viktor Shokin was raised. About it wrote on the page on Facebook the people’s deputy from the Block of Petro Poroshenko Svetlana Zalishchuk.

She noted that four key topics were discussed during the meeting: corruption and a reset of the government; Russia’s violation of the Minsk agreements in the context of constitutional reforms and the law on elections in the occupied territories, as well as the annexation of Crimea.

According to her, the issue of corruption became acute, and in order to combat it, Biden said that it was necessary to restart the government and dismiss Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

“Corruption. The new government has not capitulated to it. There is progress – this is key legislation and new bodies whose leadership is chosen through independent commissions. But the two main people play in the giveaway. And the principle lines of defense are lost in the interests of certain well-known close associates. Surnames are named. Attorney General must leave, “the text says.

She added that this meeting was significant because after her Biden will already talk with the president and prime minister.

As reported, US Vice President  Joe Biden arrived in Kiev on a two-day visit late on December 6. (Read more: Korrespondent.net, 12/07/2015)

On January 23, 2018 Joe Biden brags about his efforts behind Viktor Shokin firing:

Catherine Newcombe (Credit: public domain)

“On December 9, 2015, the reported whistleblower Eric Ciaramella held a meeting in Room 236 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center, which was 59%-funded by Barack Obama’s State Department and the International Renaissance Foundation, a George Soros organization.

Also attending that meeting was Catherine Newcombe, an attorney in the Criminal Division, Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, with the U.S. Department of Justice, where, among other duties, she oversaw the Department’s legal assistance programs to Ukraine.” (Read more: American Thinker, 12/06/2019)

This video reveals Daria Kaleniuk leading a protest in Ukraine calling for Victor Shokin’s resignation in March 2016. Shokin was investigating $4.4 million from the U.S. intended for Russia but was diverted into the Soros group AntAC. The Obama administration had the U.S. embassy in Kiev put pressure on Ukraine to drop this investigation, days after Shokin was fired.

“Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, made the baseless insinuation that Donald Trump compromised national security by inviting a man with Russian ties to his intelligence briefing.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (center) sits next to retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn (left), Jill Stein (right) as they attend an exhibition marking the 10th anniversary of RT (Russia Today) television news channel in Moscow, Russia, December 10, 2015. (Credit: Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/Reuters)

Appearing on ABC News’ “This Week,” Mook said Trump was accompanied to his first intelligence briefing on Aug. 17 by “someone who’s on the payroll of the Russia Times, which is a basically a propaganda arm of the Kremlin.” Mook claimed this “gentleman” — whom he did not name — “was sitting two seats away from Vladimir Putin” at RT’s 10th anniversary gala in December, and he demanded that Trump disclose “whether his advisers are having meetings with the Kremlin.”

Who is this mysterious, unnamed gentleman? The Clinton campaign told us Mook was referring to retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who until two years ago was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama.

Flynn is not “on the payroll of the Russia Times.” He was merely one of many speakers at RT’s anniversary conference on Dec. 10, 2015, in Moscow. RT is a Russian government-funded TV station once known as Russia Today.

Mook made his misleading assertion about Flynn shortly after he claimed that “real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin.” Host George Stephanopoulos questioned Mook about that claim — which has been part of the Clinton campaign’s attacks on Trump ever since it was reported that Russia was likely behind the successful attacks on computer servers at the Democratic National Committee and the release of DNC emails.

Stephanopoulos: You’re saying he’s a puppet for the Kremlin?

Mook: Well, real questions are being raised about that. We — again, there’s a web of financial ties to the Russians that he refuses to disclose. We’ve seen over the last few week, him parroted Vladimir Putin in his own remarks. We saw the Republican Party platform changed. She saw Donald Trump talk about leaving NATO and leaving our Eastern European allies vulnerable to a Russian attack. The gentleman he brought with him to his security briefing just last week is someone who’s on the payroll of the Russia Times, which is a basically a propaganda arm of the Kremlin. He was sitting two seats away from Vladimir Putin at their 10th anniversary gala.

There are a lot of questions here. And we need Donald Trump to disclose all of his financial ties and whether his advisers are having meetings with the Kremlin.

However, Paul Manafort, who until last week was Trump’s campaign chairman, did have business dealings with Russian-aligned leaders in Ukraine, as uncovered by the New York Times. With Manafort gone, Mook redirected the campaign’s guilt-by-association attack on Trump by questioning Flynn’s associations with the Kremlin.”

(…) “In an Aug. 15 article, Flynn told the Washington Post that his speaking engagement was arranged by his speaker’s bureau and that he was paid for it. He said he was introduced to Putin, but did not speak to him.

The Clinton campaign provided no evidence that Flynn is “on the payroll” of RT or that he is “having meetings with the Kremlin,” as Mook alleged. It forwarded us a Politico story from May that said Flynn “makes semi-regular appearances on RT as an analyst.” Politico wrote that Flynn is “presumably” paid for those TV appearances, but the retired lieutenant general told the Post that he is not paid by RT or any other TV stations, because “I want to be able to speak freely about what I believe.” (Read more: FactCheck, 8/23/2016)

“President Barack Obama’s Treasury Department regularly surveilled retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn’s financial records and transactions beginning in December 2015 and well into 2017, before, during and after when he served at the White House as President Donald Trump’s National Security Director, a former senior Treasury Department official, and veteran of the intelligence community, told the Star Newspapers.

Richard K. Delmar (Credit: public domain)

(…) In March 2017, she filed a formal whistleblower complaint with Acting Treasury Inspector General Richard K. Delmar, who continues in that office today, she said. Beyond Delmar acknowledging receipt of the complaint, the inspector general never followed up on the matter.

(…) This surveillance program was run out of Treasury’s Office of Intelligence Analysis, which was then under the leadership of S. Leslie Ireland. Ireland came to OIA in 2010 after a long tenure at the Central Intelligence Agency and a one-year stint as Obama’s daily in-person intelligence briefer.

The whistleblower said Treasury should never have been part of the unmasking of Flynn, because its surveillance operation was off-the-books. That is to say, the Justice Department never gave the required approval to the Treasury program, and so there were no guidelines, approvals nor reports that would be associated with a DOJ-sanctioned domestic surveillance operation.

“Accessing this information without approved and signed attorney general guidelines would violate U.S. persons constitutional rights and civil liberties,” she said.

By March 2016, the whistleblower said she and a colleague, who was detailed to Treasury from the intelligence community, became convinced that the surveillance of Flynn was not tied to legitimate criminal or national security concerns, but was straight-up political surveillance among other illegal activity occurring at Treasury.

“When I showed it to her, what she said, ‘Oh, sh%t!’ and I knew right then and there that I was right – this was some shady stuff,” the whistleblower said.

“It wasn’t just him,” the whistleblower said. “They were targeting other U.S. citizens, as well.”

Only two names are listed in the whistleblower’s official paperwork, so the others must remain sealed, she said. The second name is Paul J. Manafort Jr., the one-time chairman of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The other names include: Members of Congress, the most senior staffers on the 2016 Trump campaign and members of Trump’s family, she said.

“Another thing they would do is take targeted names from a certain database – I cannot name, but you can guess – and they were going over to an unclassified database and they were running those names in the unclassified database,” she said.

This ruse was to get around using classified resources to surveil Americans, she said. Once the Treasury personnel had enough information about someone they were targeting from the black box, they would go to the white box for faster and more informed search.

It was routine for these searches that had no criminal nor national security predicate, merely a political predicate, she said.”  (Read more: The Ohio Star, 5/18/2020)  (Archive)

Conservative Treehouse has more to say about this whistleblower complaint:

“This whistleblower complaint simply makes sense.

Jack Lew (Credit: White House Archives)

We know Jack Lew was moved from President Obama’s White House to the position of Treasury Secretary specifically because the IRS targeting became public.   As Treasury Secretary, Mr. Lew was in a position to keep damaging information from surfacing.

Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:

The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)

Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.

The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal.

Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.

(…) The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database.

Sometime around the summer of 2012 the Obama administration shifted from direct searches of the Treasury IRS files, to using contractor access to the NSA database as a way to conduct political surveillance and export search results without any minimization.

The process of exploiting the NSA database continued for years until March 2016 when a severe uptick in activity, coinciding with candidate Donald Trump becoming the presumptive GOP nominee, flagged the NSA database auditor.

Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.

The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.

While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016

It just makes sense the exported contractor results from database access would then transfer to non-classified (Treasury) searches on other networks for more details.   That process is exactly what the Treasury whistleblower is outlining.

Here’s the full background story.

Condoleeza Rice (Credit: Fox News)

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell writes an email to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on this day about the Republican-led House Benghazi Committee investigation. “Benghazi is a stupid witch hunt. Basic fault falls on a courageous ambassador who thoughts [sic] Libyans now love me and I am ok in this very vulnerable place.” He is referring to former ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, who was killed in the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack.

Powell also comments, “But blame also rests on his leaders and supports back here. [Patrick] Kennedy, Intel community, [State Department] and yes HRC,” referring to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“Completely agree,” Rice responds. (Washington Post, 09/14/16)

The hacker website DCLeaks.com will publish Colin Powell’s hacked emails on September 13, 2016.

Wendy Anderson (Credit: public domain)

Wendy Anderson told Abid to get out of the office, the document said. She told Capitol Hill investigators that she soon suspected Clarke’s chief of staff, Shelley Davis, was working with Abid on a theft scheme, multiple House staffers with knowledge of the situation told The Daily Caller News Foundation. They also said that Anderson pushed for Abid’s firing.”

(…) “House Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko testified in a public hearing in April that “the House IG discovered evidence of procurement fraud and irregularities [and] numerous violations of House security policies” by the Awans. The alleged procurement fraud included submitting suspicious invoices to bill equipment to House offices.”

(…) “Speaker of the House Paul Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong told TheDCNF the Capitol Police “requested that the shared employees be allowed to continue to use their IT credentials until February 2017 because they didn’t want to tip off the employees.”

But Anderson soon concluded that the investigation was compromised because another high-level staffer based in New York was feeding information about authorities’ activities to Abid, a House staffer Anderson spoke with in detail about the situation told TheDCNF.

“Her district office chief, a female, was actively going against Wendy,” the staffer said. “She was good friends with Omar and was feeding him information. Clarke would tell this person and the woman was backdooring stuff to Omar. She was undermining the investigation.” Anderson told that to House investigators as well, the staffer said.” (Read more: Daily Caller, 6/24/2018)

Kamran Bajwa (Credit: Kirkland & Ellis)

“An email previously released by WikiLeaks reveals that a Dominion Voting advisor met with John Podesta during Hillary Clinton’s campaign to discuss ways that they could help to defeat Donald Trump.

In 2018, Dominion Voting announced that it had been acquired by its management team and Staple Street Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, who was being advised by Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

During Clinton’s campaign, according to an email chain released by WikiLeaks, Kirkland & Ellis LLP partner Kamran S. Bajwa met with John Podesta while offering “anything” to help defeat Donald Trump.

Podesta, at the time, was chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

On Saturday, December 19, 2015, Bajwa wrote to Podesta:

(Wikileaks 12/19/2015)

(Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 12/05/2020)  (Archive)

Alexandra Chalupa (Credit: public domain)

In late 2015, as the Trump campaign started to become more popular, Alexandra changed gears and focused more on her research, which included an expanse into Trump’s alleged connections with Russia.

On December 19, 2015, Alexandra represented the Ethnic Dems as she hosted a speech in Manchester, NH.

In January 2016, Alexandra informed a senior official at the Democratic National Committee about the potential connections between Trump and Russia, and warned that Paul Manafort may entangle himself in the 2016 election soon as a result. Simultaneously, Alexandra was also warning members of the Ukrainian-American community about Manafort.

On February 27, 2016, Alexandra hosted a discussion about the Ethnic Democrats for the Afric Vision Network.

On March 24, 2016, Alexandra discussed Manafort and his ties with Russian interests during a meeting at the Ukrainian Embassy with Ambassador Valeriy Chaly and his aide, Oksana Shulyar. Ambassador Chaly dismissed the discussion as he expected Trump to lose the nomination. The meeting also discussed a reception in June 2016 at an event featuring Hanna Hopko and Melanne Verveer.

Andrii Telizhenko was then ordered by Shulyar to assist Alexandra in her research of Manafort, Trump and Russia, as the Ukrainian Embassy was coordinating an investigation with the Clinton campaign. Alexandra, at the time, prepared opposition research files on Manafort.

Four days later, on March 29, 2016, the day after the announcement that Trump had hired Manafort to corral the delegates, Alexandra then briefed the communications staff of the Democratic National Committee about Manafort, Trump and Russia.

After this, Alexandra pushed for the Ukrainian Embassy staff — with encouragement from the Democratic National Committee — to arrange an interview with President Poroshenko to discuss Manafort’s ties to Yanukovych, although the Ukrainian Embassy declined the request.

However, at some point, Telizhenko was brought into a meeting with Alexandra by Shulyar as an American media organisation was conducting their own investigation into Manafort, while Alexandra wanted to push for a Congressional hearing on either Manafort or Trump for September 2016.

On March 30, 2016, Ukraine In Washington was hosted at Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, which was attended by Ambassador Chaly and David Kramer.

In the first week of April 2016, Alexandra discussed with a foreign policy legislative assistant who worked in the Office of Representative Marcy Kaptur about the potential of a Congressional investigation into Manafort.

Alexandra also began working with Yahoo! News journalist Michael Isikoff, who had a prior relationship with Glenn Simpson as they considered writing a book together titled “All the President’s Women” in 1997. Alexandra also reached out to her connections in both Washington and Kiev, and circulated memos and e-mails about Manafort across the Democratic National Committee.

On April 20, 2016, Alexandra received messages from the administrators of her Yahoo! e-mail account, which warned that state sponsored actors were attempting to gain access to her account.

Three days later, on April 23, 2016, Alexandra, Nancy DiNardo and Amy Dacey addressed a gathering at the Belvedere Restaurant in New Britain, CT, where she rallied Ukrainian-Americans against Manafort. The same day, EuroMaidan Art & Graphics declared Manafort as “Putin’s Trojan Horse” and called for his dismissal, and arranged a protest of Manafort as New Britain, CT was his hometown for the same day.

On April 25, 2016, Isikoff published the article “Trump’s campaign chief is questioned about ties to Russian billionaire” in Yahoo! News.

On April 27, 2016, Alexandra held a panel at the Library of Congress, where she met with a delegation of 68 Ukrainian investigative journalists in a program sponsored by the Open World Leadership Center. During this time, she discussed her research on Manafort. After the panel, Isikoff then escorted Alexandra to a reception hosted at the Ukrainian Embassy.

Other attendees to the event at the Library of Congress included executive director John O’Keefe, Oksana Syroid, Bohdan Futey, Richard Bennett, Myroslava Gongadze and Ambassador Chaly. The events are commonly connected to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation.

“In his address to the guests of the Embassy Ambassador of Ukraine to the US Valeriy Chaly noted that the meeting was very symbolic when all brunches of power gathered under one roof and felt united by the common goal. He urged Ukrainian delegations to take advantage of their visit to the US and disseminate the information about the situation in Ukraine in the context of counteracting Russian aggression, explore opportunities for the launch of new Ukraine-US projects as well as apply new experience and knowledge in Ukraine, in particular in the areas of reforming the justice sector, fighting corruption and ensuring transparency.” — Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

On May 3, 2016, Alexandra sent an e-mail to Luis Miranda at the Democratic National Committee, where she discussed her panel at the Library of Congress. This was in response to an e-mail from Luis, which featured a link from Politifact: “Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s top adviser, and his ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine” by Aleksandra Kharchenko.

A lot more coming down the pipe. I spoke to a delegation of 68 investigative journalists from Ukraine last Wednesday at the Library of Congress — the Open World Society’s forum — they put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort and I invited Michael Isikoff whom I’ve been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians. More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in the next few weeks and something I’m working on you should be aware of.” — Alexandra Chalupa to Luis Miranda

Alexandra also provided a screenshot of the error to Luis.

The screenshot features two tabs — one of which is “Paul Manafort isn’t a GO…”

This is an article written by Franklin Foer of Slate, which was originally titled “Paul Manafort isn’t a GOP retread. He’s made a career of reinventing tyrants.” The article was published on April 28, 2016, the day after Alexandra’s Library of Congress visit, and its current title is “The Quiet American”.

Shortly after the e-mail was sent, a number of executives at the Democratic National Committee became concerned and concluded that the Russians were the state sponsored actors behind the recent phishing attempts. The executives then ordered for Alexandra to cease her research efforts.

“But Chalupa’s message, which had not been previously reported, stands out: It is the first indication that the reach of the hackers who penetrated the DNC has extended beyond the official accounts of committee officials to include their private email and potentially the content on their smartphones. After Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns within the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. ‘That’s when we knew it was the Russians,’ said a Democratic Party source who has knowledge of an internal probe into the hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, ‘we told her to stop her research.’” — Michael Isikoff

Three days later, on May 6, 2016, John McCarthy sent an e-mail to Alexandra from his personal gmail account to arrange for religious leaders to stage a protest at the Republican National Convention.

On June 20, 2016, Alexandra received her final pay cheque for $25,000.00 from the Democratic National Committee. Coincidentally, this was the same day as the authorship of the first Steele memo.

On July 1, 2016, Rokas Beresniovas tweeted: “Thank you @TheDemocrats @NickSeminerio @AlexandraChalup It was a great event with @Simas44 of the WhiteHouse”.

On July 25, 2016, Isikoff published the article “Exclusive: Suspected Russian hack of DNC widens — includes personal email of staffer researching Manafort” in Yahoo! News, which featured information about Alexandra’s e-mails. The same day, Alexandra was in Philadelphia, where she introduced Senator Amy Klobuchar to the crowd.

In late July 2016, Alexandra left the Democratic National Committee in order to commit full-time to her investigations of Manafort, Trump and Russia, where she became an unofficial source for a number of journalists investigating the three.

On July 31, 2016, Andrea was interviewed by Hromadske’s Nataliya Gumenyuk about Alexandra’s e-mails being hacked.

ANDREA CHALUPA: “Yeah, well, you know, as- as- as, Nataliya, I have friends who are journalists who asked to speak with my sister, and I just keep saying ‘no’ because right now it’s just not a good time for her. Um, she is, you know, working for the DNC right now, and she has a lot on her plate with this election. It’s- it’s- it’s very much an all-hands-on-deck election, things are extremely serious. Things are very, very scary here. Um, so, but what I will say — what I’m allowed to say — because, you know, I can’t speak for my sister, um, she will speak when the time comes, um, but what I can say is that… you know… watching her work tirelessly, tirelessly, from the very beginning, many, many months ago to say: ‘Paul Manafort has just been brought in to run Donald Trump’s campaign. This is a huge deal. This is a very, very, very, very, very serious… warning bell going off, because this is who Paul Manafort is.’ He is a- a- a puppet master of some of the most vile dictators around the world, and of course, we who have focused on Ukraine know the name Paul Manafort increasibly well.”

“So my sister was- was- an instrumental voice inside the Democratic Party as has been reported to say, you know, this is someone we need to research. And she was leading that research. And… here in the U.S., you know, we have a lot of our own issues that we’re focusing on, so foreign affairs is something that is still abstract to many Americans, so doesn’t get prioritised, um, in elections as it should. But I- I just wanted to finish that point by saying it’s hilarious to me — and it’s hilarious to anyone that’s been following the situation that my sister finally got her message out there to the world in a major way thanks to the Russians. Thanks to the Russians hacking the DNC. Now everybody knows just how dangerous Paul Manafort is.”

In August 2016, Chalupa was contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where they imaged both her laptop and her smartphone as part of an investigation into the Russian cyber-attacks.

On August 4, 2016, Ambassador Chaly published the opinion piece “Ukraine’s ambassador: Trump’s comments send wrong message to world” in The Hill.

On August 19, 2016, Andrea Chalupa sent out an e-mail, where she celebrated the dismissal of Paul Manafort from the Trump campaign and the potential investigation into him for FARA violations.

On August 22, 2016, Sheryl Gay Stolberg published the article “Ukrainian-Americans, Long Fond of the G.O.P., Greet Donald Trump With Despair” in The New York Times, which featured some time dedicated to Alexandra.

“Democrats, seizing on a potential vulnerability for Mr. Trump, are increasing their own ethnic outreach this year, an effort that has been caught up in Russian political intrigue.

The personal emails of the woman running the outreach effort, Alexandra Chalupa, were among those hacked at the Democratic National Committee, a breach American intelligence officials attribute to Russian spies. Ms. Chalupa, who is of Ukrainian descent, had been researching Mr. Manafort while consulting for the committee when the hack occurred. She has been traveling the country, talking to Democrats about what she has found.

‘I’d talk about the Russia connection and what we were seeing,’ she said in an interview. ‘People were terrified.’” — The New York Times

Now take note of the various locations she was in, and the EuroMaidan protest that was arranged on the same day she was in town.

On September 9, 2016, Alexandra attended the premiere of the Hollywood film “Snowden”, which was also attended by Bill Binney, Oliver Stone, Michael Isikoff, Representative Alan Grayson and the wife of CNN’s Jake Tapper, Jennifer Tapper.

On October 24, 2016, Isikoff published the article “16 people who shaped the 2016 election”, which included Alexandra.

As Election Day drew nearer, Andrea tweeted: “‘The Kremlin also has both video and audio recordings of Trump in a kompromat file.’ #TrumpSexTape”, in which she quoted an article written by Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald, “Why Vladimir Putin’s Russia Is Backing Donald Trump”.

As noted by user /u/JohnWardCinematics on November 1, 2016 on Reddit’s The_Donald, #TrumpSexTape was trending and the originator was Andrea Chalupa. While he confused Andrea and Alexandra with each other in relation to the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Council, he noted the existence of Digital Maidan’s connection to two “Tweet Storms”, one of which related to #TreasonousTrump.

The website on Google which discussed the hashtag #TreasonousTrump followed the same method of social media integration used previously for Digital Maidan to transform anybody into a Maidan activist, instead this time turning anybody into a Trump resister through two planned Twitter Storms: October 20, 2016 and October 26, 2016.

This did not stop Donald Trump from becoming the next President of the United States.

On November 9, 2016, Alexandra posted a Facebook message in response to Hillary Clinton’s concession, where she discussed Russian interference initiating in May 2016, Russian hacking of election systems in over half the states of America, praise for Robby Mook, an apparent discussion between Trump and Manafort about a ‘rigged election’ talking point and Manafort’s federal investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

During this message, Alexandra also mentioned that an organisation known as “The Protectors” based in Washington, DC actively assisted both the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Department of Justice as they monitored activity on November 8, 2016.

“3) Homeland Security/DOJ teamed up with a group that is part of Anonymous based in Washington, D.C. called ‘The Protectors.’ This group saw a lot of activity during Election Day from the Russians and believe that the voting results projected don’t match the internal and public polls because the voting results were manufactured in favor of Trump in heavily Republican counties in key states, and voting results may have been decreased for Clinton in key Democratic counties via malware that was placed by the Russians when they hacked the election systems of more than half our states.” — Alexandra Chalupa

The day after, on November 10, 2016, Andrea tweeted two follow-ups in response to this:

• “My sister led Trump/Russia research at DNC. US hackers protecting voting systems believe Russia hacked vote tallies.”
• “All election day Anonymous hackers working w/DOJ updated my sister: they were at war w/RU hackers in our systems”.

As such, it can be concluded that “The Protectors” were in touch with Alexandra on November 8, 2016.

“Alexandra Chalupa, a former DNC consultant who during the campaign investigated links between Moscow and Trump’s then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, is also participating in the attempt to secure recounts or audits.

‘The person who received the most votes free from interference or tampering needs to be in the White House,’ said Chalupa. ‘It may well be Donald Trump, but further due diligence is required to ensure that American democracy is not threatened.’” — The Guardian

(Read more: The War Economy, 3/04/2019)  (Archive)

Hillary Clinton meets with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko on September 19, 2016 in New York City. (Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

(…) Back in January of this year, Politico reported that Democratic officials met with Ukrainian officials to get information on the Trump campaign in an effort to boost Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. While it didn’t get nearly the mainstream media scrutiny that Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting is getting, it did prompt President Trump to correctly ask why it was being swept under the rug.

In a tweet last month, Trump said “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump campaign — ‘quietly working to boost Clinton.’ So where is the investigation A.G.” It even prompted a Ukraine member of parliament, Andre Derkah, to send a letter last month to Ukraine’s prosecutor general requesting “that authorities launch a pretrial investigation into ‘illegal interference in the election of President of the United States organized by a criminal investigation.’” It also raised some very serious concerns for our organization, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT).

This month, FACT filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and its Ukrainian-American consultant, Alexandra Chalupa, for knowingly soliciting and accepting illegal, in-kind contributions from the Ukrainian government.

Specifically, the complaint contends that last year, Ukrainian-American operative and DNC consultant, Alexandra Chalupa met with Ukrainian government officials to get information in an effort to expose ties between Trump, his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Russia. As reported, a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy was instructed to help Chalupa conduct research on connections between Trump, Manafort, and Russia. The DNC subsequently acknowledged that it had knowledge of the research.

First, according to federal law, an in-kind contribution consists of “anything of value, including information and leads, the fruits of paid research, or similar investigatory activity, to a political committee.” Second, federal law also prohibits accepting or receiving anything of value from foreign nationals and the Ukrainian government officials are foreign nationals.

Since Chalupa allegedly engaged in both activities as a DNC staffer, this collusion would constitute an illegal, in-kind contribution. And, even though the DNC claimed it “did not incorporate [Chalupa’s] findings in its dossiers on the subjects,” that would be irrelevant as the DNC solicited and received valuable opposition research.

Given what we know today about both situations, it’s clear they both merit serious investigation.” (Read more: The Hill, 8/30/2017)

(…) “The FBI relied in large part on allegations contained in the so-called Steele dossier in obtaining a FISA warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The author of the dossier, former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, as well as the company he was hired by, Fusion GPS, were both feeding information to the FBI through different channels.

A key conduit for Steele to the FBI was high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr.

Asked if he was familiar with Ohr, Priestap told lawmakers, “I think I’ve seen Bruce Ohr, but I don’t think I’ve ever been in a meeting with Bruce Ohr.” Priestap also said he never worked with Ohr on a counterintelligence investigation, which would include the FBI’s investigation into Trump-Russia collusion:

Ms. Shen: So you have never worked with Bruce Ohr on a counterintelligence —

Mr. Priestap: I have not, no.

Priestap appeared to be completely unaware of the role that Ohr played in the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign—or of Ohr’s meetings with the FBI.

On July 30, 2016, Ohr had a breakfast meeting with Steele. In the days immediately following this meeting, Ohr met with McCabe and Page in McCabe’s FBI office.

In either late September or early October 2016, Ohr had another meeting—this time with Strzok, Page, and two or three DOJ career officials from the criminal division: Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad, and Andrew Weissman (Ohr testified that he was unsure whether Weismann was at this or a later meeting).

On Nov. 21, 2016, Ohr had an additional meeting with Strzok and Page where he was introduced to FBI agent Joe Pientka, who would become Ohr’s FBI handler. Pientka was also present with Strzok during the Jan. 24, 2017, interview of then-national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

On the following day, Nov. 22, 2016, Ohr met alone with Pientka. Ohr would continue to relay his communications with Steele to Pientka. Unbeknownst to Ohr, Pientka was transmitting all the information directly to Strzok for use in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation Priestap was overseeing.” (The Epoch Times, 1/31/2019)

(Wikileaks Twitter, 5/18/2017)

“Newly leaked emails show that Hillary Clinton’s campaign team was advised to link Russian President Vladimir Putin with Donald Trump in an apparent bid to distract voters from Clinton’s strategy on Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

The exchange of emails between Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and Clinton ally and columnist Brent Budowsky was among the batch of around 1,000 emails from Podesta’s account released by WikiLeaks on Saturday.

In a December 21, 2015 email, Budowsky slates Clinton’s position on fighting ISIS before advising Podesta to draw Putin into her attacks on US presidential election rival Trump.

Budowsky’s email follows a discussion with Podesta on how to best position the former secretary of state on the issue of tackling ISIS.

Budowsky warns that Clinton is not coming down strongly enough on fighting ISIS and that her support for President Barack Obama’s approach is a potential “death ray to her candidacy in a general election.”

“Walk back and escape from her statement that ‘finally we are where we need to be’ against ISIS. We are not where we need to be, we are far from it, most voters do not believe it, and when the next terror attack comes in America – which it certainly will – she will be branded in hot iron with that statement,” Budowski warns.

“She will never state what I believe we need to do – at least 20,000 ground troops with 3,000 American and at least 10,000 from Sunni Muslim nations – because she is consumed with keeping Obama’s goodwill and afraid of liberal backlash.”

Podesta counters: “Her reference was not to ISIS but to going after Assad diplomatically because of UNSC resolution passed Friday. We will make that clear. She has given two major speeches about how we are NOT where we need to be on ISIS.”

“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.”

Speaking to RT after the emails were released by WikiLeaks on Saturday, Budowsky suggested that parts of the emails had been fabricated, denying that he ever wrote anything about “branding with a hot iron.”

“I don’t talk that way; I wouldn’t say that, and that was not in any of the emails,” he said. “So whoever added that, fabricated that.”

“As far as ‘slaughtering Donald Trump,’ about it, yes, I said that,” Budowsky added. “And the rest of it – fundamentally – does reflect my point of view.”

(Read more: Russia Today, 10/24/2016) (Podesta Email)

Hill columnist, Brent Budowsky, sends an email to John Podesta on December 21, 2015, titled “HRC, Obama and ISIS.” Wikileaks exposes other emails from Budowsky (and dozens of other journalists), in support of Hillary’s candidacy throughout the 2016 Democratic primary and general election.

In this Podesta email released by Wikileaks, Budowsky shares advice for Hillary Clinton on Israel, Syria, Russian president Vladimir Putin, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations and Daesh, also known as ISIL/ISIS. Last but not least, he also mentions “slaughtering Donald for his bromance with Putin.”

(Original copy)

(Credit: Wikileaks)

When Bryan Pagliano, who managed Clinton’s private server, is interviewed by the FBI on this day, he will mentioned that he recalled finding “a virus” on her server at some point. But according to the FBI, he “could provide no additional details, other than it was nothing of great concern. FBI examination of the [server] and available server backups did not reveal any indications of malware.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)

“Newly unredacted text messages, sent between top FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, suggest that the agency initiated an offensive counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign as early as December 2015.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released 500 pages of documents and texts on June 4, the bulk of which consists of messages between Page and Strzok. One message, which was previously redacted, shows that FBI agents were working to recruit double agents as early as Dec. 28, 2015.

According to Chris Farrell, a former counterintelligence officer who ran double-agent operations for the U.S. Army, “oconus” stands for “outside the continental United States,” while “lures” refers to people used as bait to snag a potential double agent.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 6/07/2018)

John Brennan (Credit: Twitter)

“In late 2015, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was involved in collecting information regarding then-candidate Donald Trump and transmitting it to the United States. The GCHQ is the UK equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

Brennan appears to have played an instrumental role in passing on unofficial foreign intelligence—primarily from the UK, but also from other Five Eyes members, such as Australia—to the FBI.

Brennan stated that during a May 23, 2017, congressional testimony:

“I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump campaign, was shared with the [FBI],” Brennan said in his testimony.

Brennan also stated that it was his intelligence that helped establish the FBI investigation:

“I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred,” Brennan said.

According to The NY Times, one area of specific focus for Durham is the Intelligence Community Assessment, or ICA, which was the last of three reports produced by Brennan and Clapper and was released on Jan. 6, 2017.

The final report, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections,” significantly propelled the allegation that Trump had colluded with Russia into the public sphere. Notably, Adm. Mike Rogers, who at the time was director of the National Security Agency, publicly dissented from the findings of the ICA, assigning it only a moderate confidence level.

Justice Department (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz recently determined that, despite repeated assurances by members of the Intelligence Community to the contrary, “unverified information from Steele’s dossier”—referring to the opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee—was used “in an interagency assessment of Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 elections.”

Horowitz did note that the CIA was somewhat reluctant to include Christopher Steele’s reporting in their assessments but that “the FBI, including [Director James] Comey and [Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe, sought to include the reporting in the ICA [intelligence community assessment].”

While Brennan has publicly denied using the dossier for the ICA, he did attach a two-page summary of the dossier to the intelligence community assessment that he, along with Clapper and Comey, delivered to President Barack Obama on Jan. 5, 2017.

According to Horowitz, former FBI Director James Comey said that Brennan and Clapper “thought it was important enough and consistent enough that it ought to be part of the package in some way, and so they had come up with this idea to make an [appendix].”

Brennan has claimed that he didn’t see the dossier until “later” in 2016. He also stated in his congressional testimony that the CIA didn’t rely on the Steele dossier and that it “was not in any way used as a basis for the intelligence community assessment that was done.”

However, this claim was countered during the July 16, 2018 testimony of former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, when the following discussion took place regarding Brennan’s August 2016 briefing of then-Sen. Harry Reid:

Rep. Mark Meadows: “We have documents that would suggest that in that briefing the dossier was mentioned to Harry Reid and then, obviously, we’re going to have to have conversations. Does that surprise you that Director Brennan would be aware of [the dossier]?”

Lisa Page: “Yes, sir. Because with all due honesty, if Director Brennan – so we got that information from our source, right? The FBI got this information from our source. If the CIA had another source of that information, I am neither aware of that nor did the CIA provide it to us if they did.”

(Read more: Jeff Carlson/themarketswork, 2/13/2020)  (Archive)

(…) “The intelligence agencies initiated reports that Donald Trump was colluding with Russia, they nurtured them and helped them grow, and then they spread the word to the press and key government officials.  Reportedly, they even tried to use these reports to force Trump to step down prior to his inauguration.  Although the corporate press accuses Trump of conspiring with Russia to stop Hillary Clinton, the reverse now seems to be the case: the Obama administration intelligence agencies worked with Clinton to block “Siberian candidate” Trump.

Sir Richard Dearlove (Credit: Reuters)

The template was provided by ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove, Halper’s friend and business partner.  Sitting in winged chairs in London’s venerable Garrick Club, according toThe Washington Post, Dearlove told fellow MI6 veteran Christopher Steele, author of the famous “golden showers” opposition research dossier, that Trump “reminded him of a predicament he had faced years earlier, when he was chief of station for British intelligence in Washington and alerted US authorities to British information that a vice presidential hopeful had once been in communication with the Kremlin.”

Apparently, one word from the Brits was enough to make the candidate in question step down.  When that didn’t work with Trump, Dearlove and his colleagues ratcheted up the pressure to make him see the light.  A major scandal was thus born – or, rather, a very questionable scandal.

Former director of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan (Credit: GCHQ)

Besides Dearlove, Steele, and Halper, a bon-vivant known as “The Walrus” for his impressive girth, other participants include:

• Robert Hannigan, former director Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, UK equivalent of the NSA.
• Alexander Downer, top Australian diplomat.
• Andrew Wood, ex-British ambassador to Moscow.
• Joseph Mifsud, Maltese academic.
• James Clapper, ex-US Director of National Intelligence.
• John Brennan, former CIA Director (and now NBC News analyst).

A few things stand out about this august group.  One is its in-bred quality.  After helping to run an annual confab known as the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, Dearlove and Halper are now partners in a private venture calling itself “The Cambridge Security Initiative.”  Both are connected to another London-based intelligence firm known as Hakluyt & Co. Halper is also connected via two books he wrote with Hakluyt representative Jonathan Clarke and Dearlove has a close personal friendship with Hakluyt founder Mike Reynolds, yet another MI6 vet.  Alexander Downer served a half-dozen years on Hakluyt’s international advisory board, while Andrew Wood is linked to Steele via Orbis Business Intelligence, the private research firm that Steele helped found, and which produced the anti-Trump dossier, and where Wood now serves as an unpaid advisor.

CIA director John Brennan, visits Hakluyt’s New York office in January, 2018. Hakluyt retains close ties to the British Intelligence Agencies MI6 and GCHQ, as well as the intelligence agencies of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, also known as the Five-Eyes Alliance. (Credit: public domain)

Everyone, in short, seems to know everyone else.  But another thing that stands out about this group is its incompetence.  Dearlove and Halper appear to be old-school paranoids for whom every Russian is a Boris Badenov or a Natasha Fatale.  In February 2014, Halper notified US intelligence that Mike Flynn, Trump’s future national security adviser, had grown overly chummy with an Anglo-Russian scholar named Svetlana Lokhova whom Halper suspected of being a spy – suspicions that Lokhova convincingly argues are absurd. (Read more: Consortium News, 5/31/2018)

“Although the details remain complex, the structure underlying Spygate—the creation of the false narrative that candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russia, and the spying on his presidential campaign—remains surprisingly simple:

John Brennan (Credit: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

1. CIA Director John Brennan, with some assistance from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, gathered foreign intelligence and fed it throughout our domestic Intelligence Community.

2. The FBI became the handler of Brennan’s intelligence and engaged in the more practical elements of surveillance.

3. The Department of Justice facilitated investigations by the FBI and legal maneuverings, while providing a crucial shield of nondisclosure.

4. The Department of State became a mechanism of information dissemination and leaks.

5. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee provided funding, support, and media collusion.

6. Obama administration officials were complicit, and engaged in unmasking and intelligence gathering and dissemination.

7. The media was the most corrosive element in many respects. None of these events could have transpired without their willing participation. Stories were pushed, facts were ignored, and narratives were promoted.

Let’s start with a simple premise: The candidacy of Trump presented both an opportunity and a threat.

Initially not viewed with any real seriousness, Trump’s campaign was seen as an opportunistic wedge in the election process. At the same time, and particularly as the viability of his candidacy increased, Trump was seen as an existential threat to the established political system.

The sudden legitimacy of Trump’s candidacy was not welcomed by the U.S. political establishment. Here was a true political outsider who held no traditional allegiances. He was brash and boastful, he ignored political correctness, he couldn’t be bought, and he didn’t care what others thought of him—he trusted himself.

Governing bodies in Britain and the European Union were also worried. Candidate Trump was openly challenging monetary policy, regulations, and the power of special interests. He challenged Congress. He challenged the United Nations and the European Union. He questioned everything.

Brennan became the point man in the operation to stop a potential Trump presidency. It remains unclear whether his role was self-appointed or came from above. To embark on such a mission without direct presidential authority seems both a stretch of the imagination and particularly foolhardy.

Brennan took unofficial foreign intelligence compiled by contacts, colleagues, and associates—primarily from the UK, but also from other Five Eyes members, such as Australia.

Individuals in official positions in UK intelligence, such as Robert Hannigan—head of the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the National Security Agency)—partnered with former UK foreign intelligence members. Former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove, former Ambassador Sir Andrew Wood, and private UK intelligence firm Hakluyt all played a role.

Click on the infographic at The Epoch Times to enlarge.

(Read much more: The Epoch Times, 10/12/2018)

(Credit: UncoverDC)

(…) Between November 2015 and December 2015, Butina said that she got word from Aleksandr Torshin (a Russian politician) that four people would be in the running for the White House: Clinton, Trump, Rubio, or Cruz. He allegedly wanted her to focus on them so that she could have contacts in a new administration. Byrne relays that not long after, she mentioned she had made a contact in the Clinton camp and was now actively working on the other 3.

By December 2015 Byrne says he was having regular face-to-face meetings with the FBI to discuss Butina and how he should proceed. In late 2015, two FBI agents that Byrne was familiar with from the Wall Street 2005-2006 case told him, “We need you to shift to working on something more important. The Bureau is setting Hillary Clinton up in a sting. We need you to arrange a bribe for her.” Byrne relays that the FBI told him “There are two groups in the FBI investigating the Clintons. There is a group looking into Hillary’s emails, but we think that is a whitewash. Yet there is a group of agents in New York City looking into her finances, and they want to put her ass in stir.”

According to Byrne, the FBI agents explained, “Comey had been blocking such ‘aggressive investigative techniques’ (e.g., a sting) on Hillary, claiming there was insufficient predicate acts to establish that she had a prior disposition.” Byrne continued, “Recently information had come in, however, that Hillary had accepted a bribe in the low tens of millions of dollars. They told me who it was from (a foreign government) and how it was done. The FBI agents in New York had leveraged that information to force Comey to sign off on setting Hillary up in a bribery sting.” He went on, “Now those New York agents were asking for my help. It was believed that a different foreign government (of a country to which I had never traveled) wanted to pay Hillary a bribe (in the teens-millions) in return for having Hillary privately pledge what one aspect of President Hillary’s policy towards their nation would be. My assignment was to create the following end-state: within two months, Hillary Clinton and that government’s bagman are to be somewhere together alone in a room for 10 minutes. You take it from there, Byrne.”

Byrne says he was asked by New York FBI agents to set up a meeting with Hillary Clinton and a foreign government’s “bagman” to facilitate Hillary pledging one aspect of her presidential policy towards that foreign government. The assignment broke down into Steps A – B – C – D, with “D” being, Hillary Clinton walks into a room alone and spends 10 minutes with a bagman. Within 5 weeks he says he achieved A – B – C. In addition, Hillary was 13 hours away from walking into a room alone (using a method which would keep any record from appearing in Hillary’s schedule) to spend 10 minutes with that government’s bagman, where that government’s desires would be expressed and money offered. Byrne was not in the room when it happened and could not say for sure what happened over the next 13 hours.

Days later, Byrne says he was summoned once more by the FBI and they scrubbed the mission asking that he forget the entire conversation ever took place. “You must erase every second of this from your memory,” they said.

They further explained, “Hillary Clinton is going to be our next president and nothing can stop that now. The day she becomes President, the first thing she is going to do is send her people over to the FBI and find out who was part of investigating her, and we are all going to be destroyed. That includes you, Patrick. This mission has been scrubbed from the highest level.”

Byrne says that after several weeks, he requested another meeting with the FBI. He was unsettled by the last meeting and wanted more clarity. The agents elaborated, “What’s going on, Patrick is that at this point President Obama has his people across the federal bureaucracy, but especially the Department of Justice. Hillary is going to be president for eight years and nothing is going to stop that, but while she’s president the evidence about bribery that you were part of gathering is going to be sitting on a “Bunsen burner” inside the DOJ, and the hand on that Bunsen burner is going to be the hand of one of Barack Obama’s people. If Hillary is a good girl, defends Obamacare, etc., that hand will keep the Bunsen burner on “Low”. If she is a bad girl, starts thinking for herself, that hand [mimes twisting a dial] will turn the Bunsen burner to “High”. That way, for the eight years she is President, Hillary is going to be managed by Barack Obama. Then Hillary is going to step down, and Michelle is going to run… And Patrick, that’s the plan.”

Byrne recounts that he said, “I got it,” to the three federal agents as he thought to himself, “I am going to fuck this program up on a world-historic scale….. the moment I get a kill-shot.” (Read more: UncoverDC, 10/21/2020)  (Archive)

“Luke Harding, a journalist for The Guardian, reported on the early involvement of UK intelligence, noting that Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was engaged in collecting information and transmitting it to the United States beginning in late 2015.

Additionally, in the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, then-head of GCHQ, traveled to Washington to personally meet with then-CIA Director John Brennan. The BBC reported that Brennan’s involvement may have gone back to April 2016.

Robert Hannigan, Richard Dearlove and Andrew Wood

Brennan appears to have used the foreign intelligence to launch an interagency investigation of the Trump campaign. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper personally confirmed foreign intelligence involvement during congressional testimony on May 18, 2017.

Steele reportedly met with a number of UK officials regarding his dossier and investigation of Trump, including former MI6 head Richard Dearlove, who is also Steele’s former boss, and Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Russia.

Chris Burrows, Alex Younger and Andrew Parker

Dearlove advised Steele and his partner, Chris Burrows, to work with a “top British government official” to pass information to the FBI.

The Telegraph reported that Steele met with Charles Farr, the former chairman of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee, on two separate occasions to inform him of the events and information contained within his dossier. The two men, both former MI6 agents, had known each other for decades. The first meeting was reported as being in mid-November 2016, one week after the 2016 presidential election.

Alex Younger, the MI6 chief, and Andrew Parker, the MI5 director general, were then briefed about the dossier—before Trump was made aware of its existence by Comey.

Additionally, Alexander Downer, the Australian diplomat, met with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos in May 2016, in a meeting established through a chain of two intermediaries.

Charles Farr, Christopher Steele and Alexander Downer

Information allegedly relayed by Papadopoulos during the meeting—that the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton—appears nearly identical to information later contained in the first memo from Steele that the FBI obtained in early July 2016.

Downer’s conversation with Papadopoulos was reportedly disclosed to the FBI on July 22, 2016, through channels with the Australian government. Details from the conversation between Downer and Papadopoulos were then used by the FBI to open its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016.” (Read more: themarketswork, 7/06/2019)  (Archive)

Serhiy Leshchenko (Credit: The Associated Press)

“A member of the Ukrainian parliament accused in his home country of interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was identified in congressional testimony in October as a source for opposition research firm Fusion GPS.

Nellie Ohr, a former contractor for the Washington, D.C.-based Fusion GPS, testified on Oct. 19 that Serhiy Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist turned Ukrainian lawmaker, was a source for Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign.

“I recall … they were mentioning someone named Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian,” Ohr said when asked who Fusion GPS’s sources were, according to portions of Ohr’s testimony confirmed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Ohr, whose husband is Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, testified that she was not aware of Leshchenko’s source information, but that she knew he was providing information to Fusion GPS, where she worked between late 2015 and the 2016 election.

(…) Nellie Ohr did not describe the Leshchenko-Fusion GPS source relationship in greater detail, so it is not clear whether the Ukrainian lawmaker was paid, how he transmitted information to Fusion or with whom at the firm he maintained contact.

(…) Nellie Ohr testified that Leshchenko also provided Fusion GPS with information on Manafort.

Leshchenko, a member of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, is widely credited with publishing a so-called “black ledger” that purported to show that Manafort received $12.7 million in illicit cash payments through 2012 from then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Manafort worked as a public relations consultant for Yanukovych and his political party from 2004 through 2014, when Yanukovych was forced out of office.

Leshchenko was a prominent media presence during and after the 2016 campaign, leveling allegations against Manafort and making it clear that he sought to portray Trump as a “pro-Russian candidate.”

“A Trump presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy,” Leshchenko told the Financial Times days after publicizing the black ledger on Aug. 14, 2016. “For me, it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world.”

Ironically, given Fusion GPS’s investigation of Russian meddling in the election, Leshchenko himself was found to have illegally interfered in the 2016 election. (Read more: The Daily Caller, 2/06/2019)

Hillary Clinton (Credit: Saul Loeb/Agence France Presse/Getty Images)

“An irony of the escalating hysteria about the Trump camp’s contacts with Russians is that one presidential campaign in 2016 did exploit political dirt that supposedly came from the Kremlin and other Russian sources. Friends of that political campaign paid for this anonymous hearsay material, shared it with American journalists and urged them to publish it to gain an electoral advantage. But this campaign was not Donald Trump’s; it was Hillary Clinton’s.

And, awareness of this activity doesn’t require you to spin conspiracy theories about what may or may not have been said during some seemingly innocuous conversation. In this case, you have open admissions about how these Russian/Kremlin claims were used.

Indeed, you have the words of Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, in his opening statement at last week’s public hearing on so-called “Russia-gate.” Schiff’s seamless 15-minute narrative of the Trump campaign’s alleged collaboration with Russia followed the script prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele who was hired as an opposition researcher last June to dig up derogatory information on Donald Trump.

Steele, who had worked for Britain’s MI-6 in Russia, said he tapped into ex-colleagues and unnamed sources inside Russia, including leadership figures in the Kremlin, to piece together a series of sensational reports that became the basis of the current congressional and FBI investigations into Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow.

Since he was not able to go to Russia himself, Steele based his reports mostly on multiple hearsay from anonymous Russians who claim to have heard some information from their government contacts before passing it on to Steele’s associates who then gave it to Steele who compiled this mix of rumors and alleged inside dope into “raw” intelligence reports.

Lewd Allegations

The luxury Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow. (Credit: public domain)

Besides the anonymous sourcing and the sources’ financial incentives to dig up dirt, Steele’s reports had numerous other problems, including the inability of a variety of investigators to confirm key elements, such as the salacious claim that several years ago Russian intelligence operatives secretly videotaped Trump having prostitutes urinate on him while he lay in the same bed in Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton used by President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

That tantalizing tidbit was included in Steele’s opening report to his new clients, dated June 20, 2016. Apparently, it proved irresistible in whetting the appetite of Clinton’s mysterious benefactors who were financing Steele’s dirt digging and who have kept their identities (and the amounts paid) hidden. Also in that first report were the basic outlines of what has become the scandal that is now threatening the survival of Trump’s embattled presidency.” (Read more: Consortium News, 3/29/2017)

Ye Jianming, (l) a Chinese oil tycoon, with President Milos Zeman of the Czech Republic in Shanghai in 2015. (Credit: Lucie Mikolaskova/Czech News Agency/The Associated Press)

“The Clinton Foundation accepted a donation from CEFC China Energy Company, the firm [from] which Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter appears to have leveraged his father’s office to gain equity and kickbacks from.

(…) A New York Times article, “A Chinese Tycoon Sought Power and Influence. Washington Responded.”, outlined how Ye sought influence in D.C., attempting to connect with powerful individuals like those from the Biden family.

The Clintons, however, had no qualms about accepting money from Ye, a Chinese Communist Party member with ties to the People’s Liberation Army. The New York Times noted:

“Mr. Ye also further loosened CEFC’s purse strings, donating as much as $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.”

Clinton Foundation records reveal that CEFC China Energy company donated a sum between $50,001 and $100,000 to the foundation, a sizable amount which came in the third quarter of 2015.

The Wall Street Journal described how, in response to Clinton’s 2016 bid for the presidency, donations to the foundation had skyrocketed:

“Some foreign companies were also among the new donors to the foundation. Attijariwafa Bank, a major bank in Morocco in which the holding company controlled by the Moroccan royal family has owned a stake, gave between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative. (The holding company earlier this year indicated it planned to sell its shares in the bank.) CEFC China Energy Company, an energy and financial services firm that is one of the largest private companies in China, gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative.”

(Read more: The National Pulse, 10/22/2020)  (Archive)

(…) “Late 2015: According to several former and current western intelligence sources who spoke to this reporter, the investigations into President Donald Trump and his campaign began much earlier than has been reported and for that matter, it did not begin in the United States but rather across the Atlantic Ocean, in Great Britain.

An aerial view of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), located in the suburbs of Cheltenham, England. (Credit: public domain)

Intelligence community counterparts in Great Britain, specifically GCHQ, which is similar to America’s NSA, had already begun looking into what they alleged was contact between Russians and some members of the Trump campaign and played “an early, prominent role” according to these sources. But whether that information was requested by the U.S. as assistance to an investigation here or whether the British began the investigation on their own is still not clear.

The Guardian reported that British Intelligence sources shared its signals intelligence on people connected to Trump campaign with the United States. However, The Guardian also reports that Germany, Poland, and Estonia also shared communications related to members of the Trump campaign with the United States.  Great Britain, which is part of what is called the “Five-Eyes” alliance includes the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand and the countries often shared signals intelligence, raw communications between targets they were investigating.

If what we are being told is true, who inside the U.S. and British intelligence agencies were aware that members of the Trump campaign had their communications intercepted by British intelligence, purportedly investigating the Russians? Was it the U.S. who asked the British to assist in a counterintelligence investigation or did the British do this on their own as claimed in The Guardian? If this did occur, how directly involved were CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in the information being shared by our allies? And how often had American political communications, unknown to the public, been intercepted by foreign governments for political purposes?

Moreover, if members of an administration collect information from allies based on overseas communications between opposition, what happens to that intelligence? How is it safeguarded from abuse and who or what agency has the oversight authority to ensure it is a legitimate counterintelligence investigation? Congressional oversight is always after-the-fact and lawmakers have been hampered by roadblocks set up by the DOJ, FBI and former senior officials of the Obama administration, who either have withheld documentation, evaded answering questions or lied.

If what the British and western intelligence officials are saying is true, then the investigation into the Trump campaign began much earlier than the FBI’s claims at the end of July 2016. More importantly, our allies may have been collecting more communications than we’re aware of on Trump campaign officials and volunteers. What we do know is that National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn; Carter Page, a short time foreign policy volunteer for the campaign; Paul Manafort, a short-term campaign chair and George Papadopoulos, a young short-term foreign policy advisor were all caught up in the spying dragnet.” (Read more: Sarah Carter, 6/01/2(018) (The Guardian, 4/13/2017)

GCHQ headquarters in Cheltenham (Credit: BBC)

“Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told.

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said.

The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia, a member of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, also relayed material, one source said.

Another source suggested the Dutch and the French spy agency, the General Directorate for External Security or DGSE, were contributors.

(..) “Both US and UK intelligence sources acknowledge that GCHQ played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016.

One source called the British eavesdropping agency the “principal whistleblower.” (Read more: The Guardian, 4/13/2017)