Bernard Sansaricq (Credit: Fox News)

Bernard Sansaricq is no ordinary man, who once held the position of president of the senate of Haiti in 1994, as well as the former senator of the republic of Haiti in both 1991, and 1997. He is a man of honor, courage, and loyalty, supercharged with the fiery of a lion, in his fight for justice. Not only has Bernard spent the better part of his life fighting for the people of Haiti, he spent tireless months campaigning for President Trump, while exposing what the Clintons have done to his native country.

(…) Bernard has one of the most remarkable stories, and is a true living testament to what the Clintons are capable of. In this 48-min interview, Bernard speaks about his native land, what it has evolved into throughout the years, those involved in the corruption, what is happening in Haiti today, and closes with a special message to President Trump, who is the one person Bernard believes can help to dismantle the corruption. Anyone who listens to him speak, will feel his heart, his soul, and his fight for justice.

This is the first in a series of upcoming interviews with Bernard, as the people of Haiti continue their fight to remove President Jovenel Moise, their corrupt officials, and get justice for what the Clintons have done, and continue to do. (Corey’s Digs, 12/5/2018)  (Archive) (Corey’s Digs Haiti Archive)

(Timeline editor’s note: The original video in this article was removed by YouTube but a copy is archived that won’t appear for us so we are leaving the archive link for you to copy and paste. Remove spaces between hyphens then copy and paste.)

https:/ /ia902906.us.archive.org/9/items/youtube-IINUitfH5NA/EXCLUSIVE_Interview_-_Bernard_Sansaricq_fmr._President_of_Haitian_Senate-IINUitfH5NA.mp4

408,567 views Oct 12, 2016
Former Haitian Senate President Bernard Sansaricq weighs in on the Clinton Foundation’s Haitian relief effort controversy.

h/t @seacaptim

Pembroke Pines, Florida

Bernard Sansaricq Obituary

Obituary published on Legacy.com by Boyd-Panciera Family Funeral Care – Pembroke Pines Chapel on Aug. 4, 2023.

Broward County, Florida resident, Bernard Sansaricq, 79, passed away on July 11, 2023, due to complications with his liver, with his beloved family by his side.
Bernard was born May 17, 1944, in Les Cayes, Haiti, to Louis A. Sansaricq and Marie Anne Odette De Catalogne. After graduating from Bordentown Military Institute in 1963, he went on to study business administration at Pace University in New York. Bernard was a passionate advocate for human rights and an experienced politician on the international stage. He rose to become one of Haiti’s top leaders and President of the Haitian Senate. In 2010, he ran for U.S. Congress in Florida’s 23rd congressional district. Even in his later years, he remained very active in the political scene. Aside from his devotion to family and politics, Bernard was an animal lover and consistently donated to the ASPCA.
He is predeceased by his parents and his brother, Robert. Bernard is survived by his two daughters from his first marriage, Pascale Wilder (husband Todd) and Sandra Lynch (husband Tom); his current wife of 37 years, Alejandra Sansaricq, as well as his step-children, Jean-Pierre, Monique, and Nicole Mouakar (husband Elvis). In total, he had six grandchildren, Brittany, Alexa, Shane, Brooke, Natalia and Sofia, and two-great-grandchildren, Monaco and Milan. He is also survived by his siblings, Gerard and Michele, and many other nephews, nieces, cousins, and loving relatives of the Sansaricq and De Catalogne family.

“Today on Face The Nation Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) Vice-Chairman Mark Warner describes how his committee is working with Robert Mueller; including: (a) several criminal referrals (Cohen was one); and (b) the sharing of congressional transcripts so Mueller (the team, not the person) can cross reference statements given to him with testimony given to the SSCI.

Tell me again how letting SSCI Security Director, James Wolfe, off the hook for leaking classified intelligence to the media, including the Carter Page FISA application, was not to cover for SSCI members instructing Mr. Wolfe to carry out those leaks.

For several years, and with increased urgency at each discovery/admission, CTH has been highlighting how the SSCI was part of the 2015, 2016, 2017 plan to eliminate Donald Trump (Spygate), and later remove President Trump (insurance policy).

The most recent series of events by Robert Mueller is a quid-pro-quo to cover for the SSCI involvement. This is not confirmational bias against the SSCI; this is factual evidence of the SSCI’s corruption. Please understand the basic issue here. The SSCI is complicit with the overall scheme – and Robert Mueller, via a plan of mutual benefit and coordination, is trying to protect that from surfacing.

(…) “Remember, those SSCI Senators (Vice-Chair Mark Warner, Dianne Feinstein and senior staffer Dan Jones etc.) were coordinating with Fusion GPS and the Clinton campaign allies; and were direct participants in “Spygate” and the insurance policy known as the special counsel.

This is one of the reasons why it is likely, damned near certain, that senior SSCI senators instructed James Wolfe to leak information, including the March 17th copy of the Carter Page FISA application, and that is why Rosenstein and Mueller let James Wolfe plea to a much lesser one-count crime of lying.

Remember when SSCI senator Dianne Feinstein released the transcript of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s testimony so that all of downstream participants could coordinate their stories? Oh, how quickly we forget.

It is near certain that Feinstein gave up her Senate Intelligence Vice-Chair position following the 2016 presidential election because there was an inherent political risk for any intelligence-oversight Democrat in relation to the FBI’s Trump operation, “spygate”. Feinstein’s staffer, Dan Jones, then paid Fusion-GPS $50 million to continue the efforts.

Remember Oleg Deripaska’s lawyer/lobbyist Adam Waldman having secret text messages with new SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner relaying communication from Christopher Steele that Senator Warner wanted to keep quiet?

Adam Waldman texting Senator Warner about Chris Steele and outlining how Feinstein’s former senior staffer Dan Jones was coming to see him.

(link)

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is as corrupt and complicit within the entire Spygate fiasco as the DOJ and FBI. That’s why Mueller and Rosenstein (small group) are working to protect the Senators and staff just like they protect the corrupt officials in the DOJ and FBI. Mueller’s entire operation is structured around this type of scheming cover-up.

This is Deep State (via Mueller/Rosenstein) fighting President Trump; and trying to blunt the declassification weapon he holds. Nothing more.

(Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 12/03/2018)

Michael Sussmann (l) and James Baker (Credit: Perkins Coie/public domain)

“Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice seeking records of all meetings in 2016 between former FBI General Counsel James Baker and the Perkins Coie law firm. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reportedly paid Fusion GPS to create the “salacious and unverified” Clinton-DNC anti-Trump dossier.

The lawsuit cites a specific media report that FBI top lawyer Baker met with Perkins Coie lawyers to discuss allegations of collusion between Donald Trump and Russia. The meeting reportedly took place weeks before the 2016 election and before the FBI secured a controversial FISA spy warrant targeting then-candidate Trump’s campaign.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the DOJ failed to respond to an October 9, 2018, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-02617)) seeking:

All records concerning any and all meetings between former FBI general counsel James Baker and one or more attorneys from Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee’s private law firm during 2016.

On October 4, 2018, Fox News reported that Baker told congressional investigators that Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann “initiated contact with him and provided documents and computer storage devices on Russian hacking.” The contact was made in late 2016 as federal investigators prepared a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

At the time, Perkins Coie had hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig into President Trump’s background. Fusion GPS paid British ex-spy Christopher Steele to compile the anti-Trump dossier, memos from which were shared with the FBI in the summer of 2016.

The DNC and Clinton campaign’s funding of the unverified dossier was revealed in a memo from House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes which was disclosed publicly on February 2, 2018.

According to an October 24, 2017, report, Perkins Coie lawyer Marc E. Elias retained Fusion GPS in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC: “The Clinton campaign and DNC, through the law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS’s research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day.” Fusion GPS gave Steele’s dossier and other research documents to Elias.

“The real collusion scandal is the hand-in-hand effort by the Clinton campaign and the Obama DOJ/FBI to spy upon and destroy Donald J. Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “The FBI, pulled by the troika of Comey/McCabe/Strzok, became an arm of the Clinton campaign. And our new lawsuit aims to get to the bottom of the massive scandal.” (Judicial Watch, 12/03/2018)

Glenn Simpson (l) and Chuck Grassley (Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)

“Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is drawing parallels between the false testimony that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen gave to Congress in 2017 and the “extremely misleading” statements made by the founder of the firm that commissioned the infamous Steele dossier.

“I hope that the Justice Department is handling all these instances of false statements to Congress with the same level of seriousness they treated Mr. Cohen’s,” Grassley, an Iowa Republican, wrote Monday in a letter to Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

Cohen pleaded guilty on Nov. 29 in the special counsel’s investigation to lying to Congress in 2017 about the extent of his attempts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen admitted he lied about how long he worked on the project, which was ultimately scuttled in June 2016.

Grassley accused Glenn Simpson, a co-founder of Fusion GPS, of possibly lying during his Aug. 22, 2017 testimony when he claimed that his firm was not working for a client to investigate President Donald Trump after the 2016 election.

“So you didn’t do any work on the Trump matter after the election date, that was the end of your work?” Simpson was asked in his deposition.

“I had no client after the election,” said Simpson.

“As we now know, that was extremely misleading, if not an outright lie,” Grassley asserted in his letter to Blumenthal.

Grassley noted that a former Senate staffer named Daniel Jones told the FBI in March 2017 that he hired Fusion GPS and former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, after the election to continue an investigation into Trump’s possible ties to Russia. (Read more: Daily Caller, 12/04/2018)

“The only remaining FBI counterintelligence official at the center of all Spygate and Clinton investigation issues is departing. The enigma man, E.W. “Bill” Piestap is retiring from the FBI.  Bill Priestap is the FBI Asst. Director in charge of all counterintelligence operations.  Priestap was FBI Agent Peter Strzok’s boss; he was also at the epicenter of the story surrounding every action taken by the FBI in the Clinton investigation and the Trump campaign investigation.

Bill Priestap (Credit: public domain)

Bill Priestap was copied on every email of consequence including the writing of the Clinton exoneration talking points delivered by FBI Director James Comey.  Priestap was the central figure on the FBI side of both Clinton and Trump operations.  “Bill” is mentioned in hundreds of text messages sent by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

In short, Bill Priestap was everywhere – except where you would most likely expect to find him, in media discussion.  The timing seems curious though the Wall Street Journal goes to great lengths to describe the timing as a mere happenstance due to his 20-year service anniversary and the opportunity to retire with full benefits:

WASHINGTON—A top FBI official who helped oversee two politically sensitive investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign is retiring from government service.

Bill Priestap, who currently serves as assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counterintelligence division, will leave his post by the end of the year. Mr. Priestap, a 20-year veteran of the bureau, worked on organized crime and drug cases in Chicago before rising through the national security ranks of the agency after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Priestap’s retirement is unrelated to the controversies over the handling of the 2016 investigations, according to a person familiar with the matter. He “became eligible to retire and has chosen to do so after 20 years of service,” the FBI said in a statement.

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

(…) Priestap was so important that during FBI Director James Comey’s March 20th, 2017 congressional testimony Director Comey told congress it was Bill Priestap who recommended that congressional oversight should not be notified of the ongoing counterintelligence operations.  Priestap’s instruction was so important that despite the  rules violation FBI Director Comey followed his recommendation and kept congress in the dark.

On June 5th, 2018, FBI Director of Counterintelligence E.W. “Bill” Priestap testified to a joint session of the House Judiciary and House Oversight committees.

The hearing was a matter of strong public interest.  Mr. Priestap was questioned for approximately seven hours.  However, journalist Olivia Beavers covering for The Hill dropped a detail that seemed rather curious:

(…) Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), however, said he felt that Priestap didn’t say anything that would indicate there was “political bias that motivated the Hillary Clinton email investigation.”

Priestap “completely” backed up everything that Comey said, according to a source familiar with his testimony.

Only three lawmakers — Jordan, Meadows and Krishnamoorthi — attended the hearing, which took place on the first day after a week-long recess.

Priestap’s interview comes after the joint House investigation stalled for months after being first announced.  (more)

On the home-front: FBI Director of Counterintelligence Bill Priestap is married to Sabina Menshell a self-employed “consultant” with a history of donations to Democrat candidates, specifically to Hillary Clinton.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 12/04/2018)

BREAKING: Joe Biden unwittingly financed Hunter Biden’s participation in an escort ring tied to Russia.

Joe Biden wired $100,000 to Hunter from Dec. 2018 through Jan. 2019, the same timeframe he spent 30k on escorts tied to .ru email addresses.https://t.co/HI1t8ndDB6

— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) June 27, 2022

A whole lot more on this in the story below:

w/ @JerryDunleavy @dcexaminer https://t.co/HI1t8ndDB6

— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) June 27, 2022

https://t.co/41Z5nwkPM5

— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) June 27, 2022

From the Washington Examiner:

(…) “What’s wrong with you?” Hunter told the Washington Examiner shortly after this story was published.

There is no suggestion in these messages that Joe Biden knew what his son was spending his support payments on.

Hunter Biden disclosed in text messages with a woman named Eva, the go-between who served as his primary point of contact for UberGFE, that his accounts were temporarily frozen at one point because his attempted payments to her “girls” with Russian email accounts were too much of a “red flag” for his bank. Eva refers to him as Robert in the messages, which is his birth name.

Hunter Biden’s text exchange with “Eva,” his primary point of contact for the Russian-linked escort agency UberGFE on Feb. 27, 2019. (Credit: Washington Examiner)

A 2020 Senate report by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) said: “Hunter Biden paid nonresident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries,” and records note some of these transactions are linked to what “appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.”

The report said Hunter Biden “sent thousands of dollars” to people either involved in “transactions consistent with possible human trafficking” or “potential association with prostitution.” Some of the women “subsequently wired funds they have received from Hunter Biden to individuals located in Russia and Ukraine.”

Grassley and Johnson sent a 2019 letter to the director of the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network requesting “all Suspicious Activity Reports” tied to Hunter Biden and his businesses. (Read more: Washington Examiner, 6/27/2022)  (Archive)

Judge Royce C. Lambert (Credit: public domain)

“Judicial Watch announced today that, in a ruling excoriating both the U.S. Departments of State and Justice, U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth has ordered both agencies to join Judicial Watch in submitting a proposed schedule for discovery into whether Hillary Clinton sought to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a private email system and whether the State Department acted in “bad faith” by failing to disclose knowledge of the email system.  The decision comes in a FOIA lawsuit related to the Benghazi terrorist attack.

Lamberth ruled:

“… the Court ORDERS the parties to meet and confer to plan discovery into (a) whether Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email while Secretary of State was an intentional attempt to evade FOIA; (b) whether the State Department’s attempts to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and (c) whether State has adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s requests.”

Terming Clinton’s use of her private email system, “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency,” Lamberth wrote in his MEMORANDUM OPINION:

“… his [President Barack Obama’s] State and Justice Departments fell far short. So far short that the court questions, even now, whether they are acting in good faith. Did Hillary Clinton use her private email as Secretary of State to thwart this lofty goal [Obama announced standard for transparency]? Was the State Department’s attempt to settle this FOIA case in 2014 an effort to avoid searching – and disclosing the existence of – Clinton’s missing emails? And has State ever adequately searched for records in this case?”

***

At best, State’s attempt to pass-off its deficient search as legally adequate during settlement negotiations was negligence born out of incompetence. At worst, career employees in the State and Justice Departments colluded to scuttle public scrutiny of Clinton, skirt FOIA, and hoodwink this Court.

Turning his attention to the Department of Justice, Lamberth wrote:

“The current Justice Department made things worse. When the government last appeared before the Court, counsel claimed, ‘it is not true to say we misled either Judicial Watch or the Court.’ When accused of ‘doublespeak,’ counsel denied vehemently, feigned offense, and averred complete candor. When asked why State masked the inadequacy of its initial search, counsel claimed that the officials who initially responded to Judicial Watch’s request didn’t realize Clinton’s emails were missing, and that it took them two months to ‘figure [ ] out what was going on’… Counsel’s responses strain credulity.” [citations omitted]

The Court granted discovery because the government’s response to the Judicial Watch Benghazi FOIA request for Clinton emails “smacks of outrageous conduct.”

Citing an email (uncovered as a result of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit) that Hillary Clinton acknowledged that Benghazi was a terrorist attack immediately after it happened, Judge Lamberth asked:

Did State know Clinton deemed the Benghazi attack terrorism hours after it happened, contradicting the Obama Administration’s subsequent claim of a protest-gone-awry?”

(Read more: Judicial Watch, 12/06/2018)

(Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)

“A controversial and classified document, alleging potential misconduct by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, resurfaced on December 7, suggesting lawmakers may press Lynch about the memo during her own deposition.

While the contents of the document remain classified, media leaks suggest it includes an email from the then-chair of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz to Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations, the nonprofit organization run by billionaire Democratic fundraiser George Soros. The email shows Lynch assured Clinton-campaign staffer Amanda Renteria that the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized access to the private email server would not “go too far.”

(…) Comey said the document was one of the factors that led him to break from established protocol and announce the exoneration of Clinton in a press conference. During his transcribed deposition (pdf) on Capitol Hill on Dec. 9, Comey answered questions about the document to both a Democrat and a Republican.

“[I’ve] tried to be very careful in public comments about this. There was material that had not been verified that I believed if it became public, would be used to cast doubt on whether the Attorney General had acted appropriately with respect to the investigation,” Comey said in response to a question from Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) about the document on Dec. 9. “I don’t think I’m allowed to go beyond that in characterizing that material.”

“So far as I knew at the time, and still think, the material itself was genuine, which is a separate question, though, from whether it was what it said was accurate,” Comey added in response to a question from Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.).

Comey had previously written about the document in his book, explaining that he made the exoneration announcement because of a “development still unknown to the American public” that “cast serious doubt” on Lynch.

During his testimony, Comey agreed disclosing information in the document to the public would “have caused some to question the objectivity of the Department of Justice (DOJ).”

According to Comey, Lynch and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates were briefed on the contents of the document. The FBI then interviewed Lynch about the matter, although he was not present, Comey said.

If, since last year, the FBI or lawmakers had found a way to verify the accuracy of the document, it would prove that Obama administration officials at the highest level were using their power to further a political agenda. The finding could be especially devastating since it could implicate the head of the Justice Department, an entity traditionally independent of The White House and politics.

Lynch’s actions are behind three of the main reasons that Comey cites for announcing that no charges will be brought against Clinton. The usual protocol is for the Justice Department, not the FBI, to make a determination about bringing charges. Neither the FBI nor the DOJ announces details of investigations that do not result in prosecution.

Comey said he decided to make the announcement because of the way Lynch’s tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton could be perceived. Lynch had also told Comey to refer to the Clinton investigation as a matter.

The FBI would go on to interview Clinton on July 2, five days after the tarmac meeting. According to Ratcliffe, Clinton was never asked about the tarmac meeting during the FBI interview.”  (Read more: The Epoch Times, 12/09/2018)

Jimmy Dore explains how the Democratic National Committee’s lawsuit against Wikileaks, is a threat against freedom of the press and our First Amendment rights.

The Department of Justice files a sentencing memo in the case against the Security Director of the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Wolfe. Wolfe pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his media leaks and frequent contacts with journalists. The DOJ did not charge Wolfe with leaking classified intelligence despite their initial charging documents that outlined evidence therein.

James Wolfe DOJ Sentencing … by The Conservative Treehouse on Scribd

Chairman Richard Burr speaks while flanked by ranking member Sen. Mark Warner and Sen. Dianne Feinstein during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on August 1, 2018. (Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

“Three current or former leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee are urging that one of the panel’s former aides escape prison time for lying amid an investigation into leaks related to the ongoing probe of the Trump campaign and possible collusion with Russia.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) and former Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) are encouraging a federal judge not to put the committee’s former security director, James Wolfe, behind bars for a series of false statements he admitted giving to the FBI during the leak investigation.

“Jim has already lost much through these events, to include his career and reputation, and we do not believe there is any public utility in depriving him of his freedom,” Burr, Warner and Feinstein wrote in a letter Wolfe’s defense attorneys submitted Tuesday to U.S. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The request could expose all three senators to criticism because they have been harsh critics of leaks of classified information and are now seeking leniency for a former colleague who pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his contacts with reporters.” (Read more: Politico, 12/11/2018)  (Archive)

(Credit: public domain)

“Department of Justice investigators were unable to recover text messages Peter Strzok and Lisa Page sent during their short tenure on the special counsel’s investigation, according to a report released Thursday by the DOJ’s office of the inspector general (OIG).

(…) The new OIG report focuses mostly on a five-month gap in messages between Strzok and Page. When investigators began looking at Strzok and Page’s FBI-issued phones, they found no messages from Dec. 13, 2016, to May 17, 2017, the same day Mueller was appointed special counsel.

The FBI chalked the missing text messages up to a glitch that affected the message retention system on many FBI-issued phones. Government forensic analysts were able to recover many texts from the missing period. The OIG did not dispute the FBI’s claims about why the messages were missing from the phones.

The phone Strzok used while he was on the Mueller team was inspected by a records officer with the special counsel, who found no “substantive” messages on the device. Page’s device was only recovered by the inspector general in September. It had been reset to factory settings July 31, 2017.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 12/13/2018)   (OIG Report, December 2018)

Petr Aven (rt) and Mikhail Fridman file a defamation suit in the United States on October 3, 2017. (Credit: Reuters)

“There is an ongoing defamation lawsuit between Alfa Bank principals Mikhail Fridman, Peter Aven, German Khan, and FusionGPS. The three allege that FusionGPS defamed and harmed them in commissioning “Memo 112” of the now infamous Steele dossier, which purports that the three were collaborating with Vladimir Putin, and accuses another lower level Alfa bank employee of criminal misconduct at the behest of Putin.

Within a filing in the FusionGPS case, is an attachment from a related appeal that Fridman, Aven, and Khan filed in litigation they also brought against Orbis (Steele’s company). The filing includes written answers provided by Orbis in matters before the court in the UK. On page 76, is a courtesy copy of a British High Court Filing involving Christopher Steele and Orbis.

Orbis is asked why Perkins Coie needed the information in the memo about Alfa Bank. The response is quite alarming. Orbis answers (emphasis ours) “Fusion’s immediate client was law firm Perkins Coie, LLP. It engaged Fusion to obtain information necessary for Perkins Coie, LLP to provide legal advice on the potential impact of Russian involvement on the legal validity of the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential Election. Based on that advice, parties such as the Democratic National Committee and HFACC Inc. (also known as “Hillary for America”) could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of the election.”

There are serious implications to the testimony. What Orbis is certifying to the UK court, is that when Perkins Coie hired FusionGPS in June of 2016, they did so with the expectation that FusionGPS would provide the information they would need to challenge the validity of the 2016 election, based on Russian interference. The only problem is that FusionGPS was retained by Perkins Coie much earlier than what is purportedly the start date of the now infamous Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation. The FBI asserts that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation began in late July of 2016, based on a tip about George Papadopoulos meeting with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. The entire premise of that investigation is now under its own scrutiny in the John Durham probe.

Marc Elias addresses the media outside the U.S. Supreme Court Dec. 5, 2016. (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

As UncoverDC will detail in a moment, there was near-constant communication between Elias and FusionGPS principals throughout the duration of the engagement. Marc Elias, when questioned in front of the HPSCI in December of 2017, never mentions a word about Russian interference as he is probed about the odd retention of FusionGPS. From the transcript, we learn that Elias was initially approached by FusionGPS. FusionGPS told Elias that they had done research into candidate Trump for another client, and would be able to assist Perkins Coie in providing information that would be beneficial to the Clinton campaign and DNC. As the questioning continues, Trey Gowdy asks Elias specifically whether Simpson told him that there was information pertaining to Russia. Elias leaves his answer somewhat open-ended:

Excerpt from HPSCI testimony of Marc Elias

(Read more: UndercoverDC, 6/14/2020)  (Archive)

By: John Solomon

“When confronted by detractors, the Clinton Foundation often uses a common line of defense: The charity is one of the most scrutinized in history and no one has found anything wrong with it.

But state regulatory filings suggest that may not be true.

In December 2005, for example, the Utah Division of Consumer Protection flagged missing information in the Clinton Foundation’s federal tax filing with the IRS, known as a form 990. The state regulator specifically flagged money spent on professional fundraisers and consultants that were excluded from the required section of the filing.

The state regulator urged the charity to file “an amended IRS form 990 reporting professional fundraising/consultant fees on line 30.” In particular, officials questioned nearly a half-million dollars in consultant fees about which it wanted more detail.

The foundation’s tax filing for the year in question, 2004, showed zero dollars spent on the required line for fundraising consulting expenses, even though other documents filed with the IRS identified more than $400,000.

The review was standard for a charity seeking a license to operate in Utah. The response regulators got back, however, was not so standard: Former President Clinton’s charity declined to make the change, even though Utah was suggesting the foundation’s federal tax form was incomplete or misleading.

“The problem that the Foundation faces is the enormous expenses and undertaking it would be to amend its 990,” a law firm representing the Clinton Foundation wrote back.

“Given that obstacle, the Foundation has no choice but to withdraw its application to register to solicit the public in Utah.”

In lay words, the cost of properly informing the IRS and complying with federal tax law was too much, so the foundation just ditched its Utah licensing request. There is no record of amended 2004 tax form by the charity, which means Utah’s concerns about possible missing information for the IRS wasn’t addressed at the federal level.

Foundation officials confirm the episode but said they believed they did not mislead the IRS because other parts of their submission included fundraising consulting expenses in a category called “Other Expenses.” “Our 2004 Form 990 is complete by IRS standards as we fully disclose fundraising expenditures in Part II – Other Expenses,” the foundation said in a statement emailed to me.

The Utah episode, though a decade old, and other state regulatory issues involving the Clinton Foundation are gaining new attraction because they are included in thousands of pages of documents gathered in a whistleblower submission filed last year by a firm composed of former federal law enforcement investigators, called MDA Analytics LLC.

That submission made with the IRS and eventually provided to the Justice Department in Washington and to the FBI in Little Rock, Ark., alleges there is “probable cause” to believe the Clinton Foundation broke federal tax law and possibly owes millions of dollars in tax penalties. That submission and its supporting evidence will be one focus of a GOP-led congressional hearing Thursday in the House.

The foundation strongly denies any wrongdoing. But it acknowledges its own internal legal reviews in 2008 and 2011 cited employee concerns ranging from quid pro quo promises to donors, to improper commingling of personal and charity business.

Another of the issues the foundation’s own lawyers flagged: a culture of noncompliance.

Some issues with compliance are clear in a review of more than 2,000 pages of state regulatory filings and actions involving the foundation that were included in the whistleblower submission.

For example, the foundation entered into a consent decree in 2002 in Mississippi in which it admitted it had raised money in the state without a proper license. The foundation says it was simply an oversight, paying a small fine in the hundreds of dollars.

But the charity potentially engaged in false statements for years later, inaccurately declaring in numerous states that it had never been subject to an adverse regulatory action — while failing to disclose the Mississippi violation.

The whistleblower submission to the IRS identified more than 100 state forms in which the foundation inaccurately answered. The foundation conceded the errors to me but suggested they were akin to minor traffic violations, pointing to a column by a tax expert two years ago that made such a case.

Likewise, in 2008, the Clinton Foundation’s AIDs charitable arm had its license to collect donations in Massachusetts involuntarily revoked for failure to file the necessary paperwork.

Foundation officials blamed that action on paperwork failing to keep up with changes in the group, which altered its name and eventually spun off from the foundation. State regulators weren’t told the old group’s name had been allowed to expire.

The records also show the foundation received multiple deficiency notifications and had its license expire once in the state of Georgia, usually because of late paperwork. (Read more: The Hill, 12/06/2018)

Joe Biden called Hunter in December 2018 saying he wanted to talk to him after reading a New York Times story about Hunter’s dealings with the Chinese oil giant CEFC

Files on Hunter’s abandoned laptop previously disclosed by DailyMail.com show that he struck a deal with the Chinese company worth millions of dollars

The Times’ 2018 story pointed out CEFC’s chairman Ye Jianming had been arrested in China and his lieutenant Patrick Ho had been convicted of bribery

Hunter accidentally recorded himself referring to Ho as the ‘spy chief of China’

After seeing the story online, Joe called Hunter and left a voicemail

‘I thought the article released online, it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good. I think you’re clear,’ Joe said in the voicemail

The message flies in the face of the president’s repeated denials that he ever discussed Hunter’s overseas business dealings with his son

(Read more: The Daily Mail, 6/27/2022) (Archive)

Artem Sytnik (Credit: Oleksandr Stashevskyi/The Associated Press)

“A court in Ukraine has ruled that officials in the country violated the law by revealing, during the 2016 presidential election in the United States, details of suspected illegal payments to Paul Manafort.

2016, while Mr. Manafort was chairman of the Trump campaign, anti-corruption prosecutors in Ukraine disclosed that a pro-Russian political party had earmarked payments for Mr. Manafort from an illegal slush fund. Mr. Manafort resigned from the campaign a week later.

The court’s ruling that what the prosecutors did was illegal comes as the Ukrainian government, which is deeply reliant on the United States for financial and military aid, has sought to distance itself from matters related to the special counsel’s investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential race.

(…) After President Trump’s victory, some politicians in Ukraine criticized the public release by prosecutors of the slush fund records, saying the move would complicate Ukraine’s relations with the Trump administration.

In Ukraine, investigations into the payments marked for Mr. Manafort were halted for a time and never led to indictments. Mr. Manafort’s conviction in the United States on financial fraud charges related to his work in Ukraine was not based on any known legal assistance from Ukraine.

Serhiy Leshchenko (Credit: Efrem Lukatsky/The Associated Press)

Two Ukrainian members of Parliament had pressed for investigations into whether the prosecutors’ revelation of the payment records, which were first published in The New York Times, had violated Ukrainian laws that, in some cases, prohibit prosecutors from revealing evidence before a trial.

Both lawmakers asserted that if the release of the slush fund information broke the law, then it should be viewed as an illegal effort to influence the United States presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton by damaging the Trump campaign.

The Kiev District Administrative Court, in a statement issued Wednesday, said that Artem Sytnik, the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the agency that had released information about the payments, had violated the law. The court’s statement said this violation “resulted in meddling in the electoral process of the United States in 2016 and damaged the national interests of Ukraine.”

The court also faulted a member of Ukraine’s Parliament, Serhiy A. Leshchenko, who had commented on Mr. Manafort’s case and publicized at a news conference materials that the anti-corruption bureau had already posted on its website.

Mr. Leshchenko said he would appeal the ruling, and that the court was not independent and was doing the bidding of the Ukrainian government as it sought to curry favor with the Trump administration.” (Read more: The New York Times, 12/12/2018)  (Archive)

(Judge Rudolph Contreras suddenly recuses himself from the Flynn case on December 7, 2017. (Credit: public domain)

“A federal judge overseeing the case of Former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is demanding to see the FBI’s first interviews with the retired three-star general after explosive information contained in a sentencing memo released Tuesday night revealed that senior FBI leadership suggested he not have a lawyer present, nor warn him that his interview was subject to penalties if he failed to provide all the answers, according to the 178 page Defendants memorandum submitted to the court.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office Wednesday night to turn over all the government’s documents by mid-day Friday. The exculpatory documents requested by Sullivan include any memorandums regarding Flynn’s case because of the extraordinary circumstances of the information, according to Sullivan’s request. Further, Sullivan is also requesting any documentation regarding the first interviews conducted by former anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok and FBI Agent Joe Pientka -known by the FBI as 302s- which were found to be dated more than seven months after the interviews were conducted on Jan. 24, 2017, a violation of FBI policy, say current and former FBI officials familiar with the process. According to information contained in Flynn’s memorandum, the interviews were dated Aug. 22, 2017.

FBI Supervisory Agent Jeff Danik told SaraACarter.com Sullivan must also request all the communications between the two agents, as well as their supervisors around the August 2017 time-frame in order to get a complete and accurate picture of what transpired. Danik, who is an expert in FBI policy, says it is imperative that Sullivan also request “the workflow chart, which would show one-hundred percent, when the 302s were created when they were sent to a supervisor and who approved them.”

“The bureau policy – the absolute FBI policy – is that the notes must be placed in the system in a 1-A file within five days of the interview,” said Danik, who added that handwritten notes get placed into the FBI Sentinel System, which is the FBI’s main record keeping system. “Anything beyond five business days is a problem, eight months is a disaster.”

“In a case of this magnitude there is no question what is going on,” said Danik. “These agents went in the White House and had a case with a possible witness of his stature and didn’t write it up until almost eight months later? That is is unconscionable – it’s not fair to the defendant and absolutely goes against FBI policy.” (Read more: Sara Carter, 12/13 2018)

Lawrence Doyle (l) and John Moynihan testify to the House Oversight Committee on December 13, 2018. (Credit: CSpan)

December 13, 2018 was a day of anticipation for many that were waiting to hear from US Attorney John Huber about his findings on the Clinton Foundation. However, US Representative Mark Meadows, and financial analysts John Moynihan, and Larry Doyle all suggested he was not present at the hearing due to ongoing investigations into the Clinton Foundation. Interestingly, Moynihan and Doyle stated they sent documents to Huber’s office three times because his office stated they “misplaced” the documents. Meanwhile, they are confident that the FBI in Little Rock is in fact investigating the Clintons, and even have photos of the IRS and FBI loading a 757 plane with boxes of Clinton Foundation documents. When taking all of this information into consideration, it suggests that the investigation into the Clinton Foundation may have always resided with the FBI in Little Rock, and Huber may not even be involved in those specific investigations. It’s difficult to say at this point. One thing is for certain, it has been kept very quiet and without leaks.

On the same day as the hearing, It was later reported that Huber had been attending a media round table in Utah with FBI Special Agent in Charge Eric Barnhart, to alert the public to victims of child exploitation, and discussed other topics on gangs, drug activity, and violent crimes. Both Barnhart and Huber reported that offenders are likely to commit the same crimes after being released from even lengthy prison terms and the best treatment efforts. Huber stated that his office takes on some of the worst cases you can imagine, and one particular case involved 600 images of child pornography. He had this to say about it:

600 images of child pornography translate to 600 victims who have been raped, sodomized, and otherwise exploited for sexual gratification. That’s why these crimes are serious… this isn’t looking at a dirty magazine… this is harming children, exploiting them and passing on those images and videos.

It’s supply and demand, and there’s a great demand. I don’t know what we do as a society to cure that problem, to lessen that problem, but it is a growing demand and it’s ever present, and our children are, unfortunately, the fodder and the currency in that world.

The House Oversight Subcommittee hearing on the Clinton Foundation proceeded without Huber. Tom Fitton from Judicial Watch, Associate Professor of Law Phillip Hackney, and outside whistleblowers and financial analysts Larry Doyle and John Moynihan, were all in attendance to testify. Doyle and Moynihan had been meticulously working on the Clinton Foundation financials and taxes for three years, and had submitted documents to the FBI in Little Rock, as well as several jurisdictions on both local and state levels. Their testimony provided some key information. As of December 20^th, the transcript and video currently remain on c-span, but may one day be scrubbed. Corey’s Digs has preserved the video, should it ever need to be resurrected.

Key takeaways from the testimony of Moynihan and Doyle, per c-span transcript (type errors included):

• “We sent our appeal in with a FOE COE – photo copy of the FBI and IRS removing boxes from the Clinton Foundation after they brought a 757 down and taken the materials out of the Clinton Foundation in Little Rock, Arkansas. We sent that to demonstrate that your letter coming from Atlanta doesn’t reconcile with what’s going on in Little Rock.”

• “It was an open and ongoing investigation he couldn’t comment on. That would indeed indicate there’s an investigation.”

• “He stated (Clinton Foundation CFO Andrew Kessel) very specifically, and it took us both off guard, I’ve been doing this a long time, but when someone says, I know where all the bodies are buried.”

• “Overall it might have been 40% by our calculations, ended up going to programs, and 60% was administrative.” (This refers to the amount of CF funds that went to administrative, which is generally 15% for non-profits.)

• “Mr. Doyle, you said from $400 million to $2.5 billion might be subject to taxation. So you’re saying, worst case is in your opinion $400 million were improperly used in a charitable foundation named the ‘Clinton Foundation’, is that correct?” Doyle: “Yes.”

• “They were brokering money and brokering pharmaceuticals. They were an agent of money through these donors. They would take a fee, and broker the money and broker relationships with pharmaceutical companies. By the same token, they were brokering the pharmaceuticals and taking some.”

• “Our conclusions, in the interest of time, are this – foreign agent. The Foundation began acting as an agent of foreign governments throughout its life and continues to do so. As such, they should have registered under FARWA. The auditors acknowledged this fact and conceded in formal submissions that it did not operate as an agent.”

• Meadows: All right, so who approved the 501-C-3 status for the Foundation? Moynihan: Would have been the IRS. Meadows: Do you have the document? Moynihan: We have it. We’ve got the determination letters. Meadows: It was approved for what? Building a library or? Moynihan: The initial approval was simply for library. Meadows: Who modified it? Moynihan: We saw no modifications to the articles of incorporation. …. In order to go forward the application has a schedule G that asks you if CHAI is a successor organization to a previous one, so you have the library, then you have this CHAI running unapproved. You gotta get approved….. They go and make an application, and on the form schedule G, when it’s asked, is this a successor operation, they specifically and affirmatively answered no. That is a misrepresentation because it’s the same people doing the same thing.”

(Read more: Corey’s Digs, 12/20/2018)

Hillary Clinton (Credit: Getty Images)

“The Clinton Foundation operated as a foreign agent ‘early in its life’ and ‘throughout it’s existence’ and did not operate as a 501c3 charitable foundation as required by its and is not entitled to its status as a nonprofit, alleged two highly qualified forensic investigators, accompanied by three other investigators, said in explosive testimony Thursday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

John Moynihan and Lawerence W. Doyle, both graduates of the Catholic Jesuit College of the Holy Cross and former expert forensic government investigators, gave their shocking testimony before congress based on a nearly two-year investigation into the foundation’s work both nationally and internationally. They were assisted by three other highly trained experts in taxation law and financial forensic investigations. The forensic investigators stressed that they obtained all the documentation on the foundation legally and through Freedom of Information Request Acts from the IRS and other agencies.

(…) Doyle and Moynihan have amassed 6,000 documents in their nearly two-year investigation through their private firm MDA Analytics LLC. The documents were turned over more than a year and a half ago to the IRS, according to John Solomon, who first published the report last week in The Hill.

“The investigation clearly demonstrates that the foundation was not a charitable organization per se, but in point of fact was a closely held family partnership,” said Doyle, who formerly worked on Wall Street and has been involved with finance for the last ten years conducting investigations. “As such, it was governed in a fashion in which it sought in large measure to advance the personal interests of its principles as detailed within the financial analysis of this submission and further confirmed within the supporting documentation and evidence section.”

(…) The Clinton Foundation “began acting as an agent of foreign governments ‘early in its life’ and throughout its existence. As such, the foundation should’ve registered under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act),” he said. “Ultimately, the Foundation and its auditors conceded in formal submissions that it did operate as a (foreign) agent, therefore the foundation is not entitled to its 501c3 tax-exempt privileges as outlined in IRS 170 (c)2.”

Doyle, who was also outlining a litany of violations by the foundation, noted that currently there are approximately 1.75 million nonprofits in the United States that annually generate nearly 2 trillion dollars, which is 9 percent of the U.S. GDP.

“Who’s minding the store, looking out for the donors and minding the rule of law,” said Doyle.

“On that note, we followed the money so we made extensive spreadsheets of their revenues and expenses, we analyzed their income statements and we did a macro-review of all the donors, which is a very (jumbled) sort of foundation,” said Doyle. “Less than 1/10th of one percent of the donors gave 80 percent of the money. So we follow the money.”

Moynihan added that the foundation “did pursue programs and activities for which it had neither sought nor achieved permission to undertake.”

Particularly, he noted the case of the Clinton Presidential Library in 2004. He noted that the foundation’s role before and after the library was built was a misrepresentation to donors “of the approval organizational tax status to raise funds for the presidential library programs therein. In these pursuits, the foundation failed the organizational and operational task 501c3 internal revenue code 7.25.3.” 

Additionally, Doyle stated that the foundation’s intentional “misuse of donated public funds.” He stated that the foundation “falsely attested that it received funds and used them for charitable purposes which were in fact not the case. Rather the foundation pursued in an array of activities both domestically and abroad.” 

“Some may be deemed philanthropic, albeit unimproved, while other much larger in scope are properly characterized as profit-oriented and taxable undertakings of private enterprise again failing the operational tests philanthropy referenced above,” Doyle said.” (Read more: Sara Carter, 12/14/2018)

The U.S. Department of Justice files a response to the defense sentencing memo of James Wolfe; the indicted security director of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Govt. Exhibit #13 is critical (scroll to the bottom of the document).

Wolfe Case – DOJ Response t… by The Conservative Treehouse on Scribd

Michael Flynn arrives at Trump Tower for meetings with President-elect Donald Trump January 4, 2017 in New York. (Credit: Timothy A. Clary/Agence France Presse/Getty Images)

“The Special Counsel’s Office released key documents related to former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn Friday. Robert Mueller’s office had until 3 p.m. to get the documents to Judge Emmet Sullivan, who demanded information Wednesday after bombshell information surfaced in a memorandum submitted by Flynn’s attorney’s that led to serious concerns regarding the FBI’s initial questioning of the retired three-star general.

The highly redacted documents included notes from former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe regarding his conversation with Flynn about arranging the interview with the FBI. The initial interview took place at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017.

The documents also include the FBI’s  “302” report regarding Flynn’s interview with anti-Trump former FBI Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Agent Joe Pientka when they met with him at the White House. It is not, however, the 302 document from the actual January, 2017 interview but an August, 2017 report of Strzok’s recollections of the interview.

Flynn’s attorney’s had noted in their memorandum to the courts that the documents revealed that FBI officials made the decision not to provide Flynn with his Miranda Rights, which would’ve have warned him of penalties for making false statements.

“The agents did not provide Gen. Flynn with a warning of the penalties for making a false statement under 18 U.S.C. 1001 before, during, or after the interview,” the Flynn memo says. According to the 302, before the interview, McCabe and other FBI officials “decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted Flynn to be relaxed, and they were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely affect the rapport.”

The July 2017 report, however, was the interview with Strzok. It described his interview with Flynn but was not the original Flynn interview.

Apparent discrepancies within the 302 documents are being questioned by many former senior FBI officials, who state that there are stringent policies in place to ensure that the documents are guarded against tampering.

(…) In the redacted 302 report Strzok and Pientka said they “both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying.” Information that Flynn was not lying was first published and reported by SaraACarter.com. (Read more: SaraACarter, 12/14/2018)

After the 2018 mid-terms, and in preparation for the “impeachment” strategy, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler hired Lawfare group members to become House committee staff.

Chairman Schiff hired former SDNY U.S. Attorney Daniel Goldman (link), and Chairman Nadler hired  Obama Administration lawyer Norm Eisen and criminal defense attorney Barry Berke (link).  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi then hired Douglas Letter as House General Counsel – all are within the Lawfare network.

Nancy Pelosi announces Douglas N. Letter to be the new General Counsel of the House of Representatives on December 28, 2018. (Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

After Goldman, Eisen, Berke and Letter were hired in late 2018, Pelosi then went about changing the Rules of the House in January ’19.  Few were paying attention until recently.

Barry Berke, left and Norm Eisen, right – pictured exiting the HSCI scif with Jerry Nadler on the same day Pelosi’s “Impeachment Inquiry” Resolution was released on October 29, 2019.

In the last month many people have surmised that Pelosi and Schiff moved to utilize the Ukraine/NSC impeachment angle *after* the Mueller angle for impeachment ran into trouble. However, CTH research (widely criticized in 2018) doesn’t reflect the Whistle-blower impeachment plan as an ‘add-on’.  Instead, what we see is the use of the HPSCI; and the use of embeds within National Security Council staff; by design.  The Schiff events of today were always part of a prior planned design.

Daniel Goldman (Credit: MSNBC)

Only two committees hired Lawfare staff in 2018: Judiciary (Eisen & Berke) and HPSCI (Goldman).  This evidences a 2018 plan to use the Judiciary and HPSCI for the impeachment process as designed by the Lawfare contractors.  This design is also outlined in the year of public advice from the mother-ship, Lawfare.

They impeachment crew always planned to use the House Intelligence Committee; and they always planned to use activated sleeper cells within the National Security Staff.  None of this is organic; none of this current action was contingent upon a Trump phone call.  The whistle-blower approach was always going to be used; the only issue was: ‘how’?

That sets the context for the slick moves by Pelosi and Schiff’s Lawfare team.  The contracted legal staff within House Intelligence Committee produced a House “Impeachment Inquiry” resolution to be voted on tomorrow.

By all appearances, the impeachment crew is following a legal strategy.  Leading with Nadler (Mueller) in the HJC was part of that forethought.  Berke and Eisen would then go after the Mueller evidence (grand jury, 6e material).   Whether Judge Beryl Howell was/is in-on-it; and whether the DOJ staff tanked the oral arguments on purpose; is up for debate… but the plan was always thus.

Once, Barry Berke and Norm Eisen gained Judicial impeachment validation from a federal judge, that’s where Chairman Schiff and Daniel Goldman come in.  Goldman is the Lawfare contractor leading the questioning and framing the House impeachment inquiry approach through the use of the HPSCI rules that are useful in their secrecy.

The primary point is: none of this process-flow is accidental.  There is a design evident in an activity that is only visible in hindsight.

Why does this matter?

Because if we can see the visible House plan; and if we accept the deliberate process it has taken to carry it out; then why would we assume there isn’t a similar plan for the Senate?” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, October 30, 2019)

Michael Isikoff (Credit: public domain)

The investigative reporter who broke the first story based on allegations from Christopher Steele offered a surprising assessment of the former British spy’s infamous dossier, which alleges a vast conspiracy of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

“Would you agree that a lot of what’s in the Steele dossier has been somewhat vindicated?” Mediaite columnist John Ziegler asked Michael Isikoff, a co-author of the book “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story on Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.”

“No,” Isikoff responded in an interview released Saturday.

“You would not?” asked Ziegler.

“No,” Isikoff repeated.

Isikoff’s views about the dossier are significant because of his central role in advancing the narrative that the Russian government conspired with Trump associates.

Isikoff is the journalist who wrote the Sept. 23, 2016 article at Yahoo! News laying out Steele’s allegations that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page met secretly in Moscow with two Kremlin insiders. Isikoff’s co-author, David Corn, is the only other reporter to have written about Steele’s claims prior to the 2016 election.

Isikoff and Corn are two of a small handful of reporters who met during the campaign with Steele. The former British spy put the dossier together while working for Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that investigated Trump on behalf of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

The FBI cited both the dossier and Isikoff’s article in four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to spy on Page. Republicans have accused the FBI of abusing the FISA process by relying heavily on the unverified Steele dossier and failing to reveal that the Clinton team and DNC funded the salacious report.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 12/17/2018)

“Prosecutor Brandon Van Grack filed a cover letter attempting to explain the reason for the Flynn interview on January 24th, and the official filing of the interview notes (FD-302) on February 15th, and then again on May 31st.  To explain the delay, he claims the report “inadvertently” had a header saying “DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL”  (screen grab)

What the special counsel appears to be obfuscating to the court is that there was factually a process of deliberation within the investigative unit, headed by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, surrounding the specific wording of the 302 report on the interview.

Prosecutor Brandon Van Grack is attempting to hide the length of the small group deliberations. It seems he doesn’t want the court to know Andrew McCabe was involved in shaping how the fd-302 was written.

We know there was a deliberative process in place, seemingly all about how to best position the narrative, because we can see the deliberations in text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok:  See below (note the dates):

The text message conversation above is February 14th, 2017.   The Michael Flynn FD-302 was officially entered into the record on February 15th, 2017, per the report:

Obviously the interview took place on January 24th, 2017.  The FD-302 was drafted on January 24th, and then later edited, shaped, and ultimately approved by McCabe, on February 14th, then entered into the official record on February 15th.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 12/17/2018)

(…) “The continued and proven failures of the Steele dossier matter. Not only was it used in obtaining the Page FISA warrant, but was also used in intelligence-community documents provided to Obama and his administration.

Former CIA Director John Brennan has claimed he never used the dossier in the Intelligence Community assessment. That claim was later disputed by his co-author, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who said on CNN that “some of the substantive content, not all of it, but some of the substantive content of the dossier, we were able to corroborate in our Intelligence Community assessment from other sources in which we had very high confidence to it.”

Former NSA Director Mike Rogers was more specific:

“In a March 5, 2018, letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, Adm. Rogers informed the committee that a two-page summary of the dossier—described as ‘the Christopher Steele information’—was ‘added’ as an ‘appendix to the ICA [Intelligence Community Assessment] draft,’ and that consideration of that appendix was ‘part of the overall ICA review/approval process.’”

In August, Brennan did an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that was discussed in an Epoch Times article, “Did Brennan Admit to Using Reverse Targeting to Spy on the Trump Campaign?” During that interview, Brennan repeatedly stated his knowledge of Russian contacts with U.S. citizens. Maddow pursued his conclusions from those contacts:

Maddow: While you were in office as CIA director, before you left on inauguration day, did you conclude that U.S. persons were successfully leveraged in that effort?

Brennan: No.

The look of shocked surprise on Maddow’s face was notable at Brennan’s denial that the Russians had successfully engaged Americans to obtain their goals.

The Steele dossier, written by a British national and former MI6 agent, was used by both the FBI and the CIA and a summary of the document was provided directly to Obama. And yet, for all the weight attached to this document, most of its assertions have never been proven to be factual, many have been proven to be false and it remains unverified to this day.

Which is perhaps fitting for a document that had its origination as something to be used by Hillary Clinton to challenge the election in the then-unlikely event she lost.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 12/18/2018)

(Loretta Lynch Transcript, 12/19/2018)

“While testifying last year at a closed-door House Oversight Committee hearing last June, Comey said Lynch had pressured him to minimize the significance of the Clinton email probe – an encounter which he says left him questioning her impartiality, and – along with Lynch’s clandestine tarmac meeting on a hot summer’s day in 2016 – contributed to his decision to hold a July 2016 press conference announcing the FBI’s conclusions.

“The attorney general had directed me not to call it an investigation, but instead to call it a matter, which confused me and concerned me,” said Comey. “That was one of the bricks in the load that led me to conclude, ‘I have to step away from the department if we’re to close this case credibly.'”

Lynch, meanwhile, told congressional House Oversight and Judiciary committees on December 19: “I did not. I have never instructed a witness as to what to say specifically. Never have, never will.”

“I didn’t direct anyone to use specific phraseology.When the Director asked me how to best to handle that, I said: What I have been saying is we have received a referral and we are working on the matter, working on the issue, or we have all the resources we need to handle the matter, handle the issue. So that was the suggestion that I made to him,” Lynch added – telling lawmakers that she was “quite surprised” to hear how Comey would later describe the conversation “because that was not how it was conveyed to him, certainly not how it was intended.”

A transcript of Lynch’s interview was released Monday evening by House Judiciary ranking member Doug Collins (R-GA) which reveals the conflicting testimonies. (Read more: Zero Hedge, 5/21/2019) (Lynch Transcript, 12/19/2018)

Former attorney general Loretta Lynch stonewalled Congress July 12, 2016, on the details of the Hillary Clinton email case, refusing to get into the specifics of her decision not to prosecute for mishandling classified material. (Credit: CSpan)

“Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch told Congressional lawmakers in closed door testimony that despite the DOJ having approved the FBI warrant and renewals to spy on Carter Page, she did not recall the applications, did not remember the details contained in the applications or the circumstances surrounding conversations about the warrant, according to testimony reviewed by SaraACarter.com.

Lynch “appeared to have amnesia” during her testimony that she delivered in December before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, said one congressional official, who had knowledge of the hearing. The official said Lynch’s closed-door testimony on Page, a former Trump campaign volunteer, left lawmakers with more questions than answers.

(…) Goodlatte Questions Lynch on Carter Page

…under questioning from House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, she listed the standard detailed procedures of what is required from the Attorney General when the FBI files for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Warrant to spy on an American.

“US cyber-security experts have blamed Russia for meddling in American elections since 2016. Now it has emerged that authors of a Senate report on ‘Russian’ meddling actually ran a “false flag” meddling operation themselves.

A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its authors, New Knowledge, quickly became a household name.

Jonathon Morgan (l) and Ryan Fox (Credit: Medium/New Knowledge)

Described by the New York Times as a group of “tech specialists who lean Democratic,” New Knowledge has ties to both the US military and intelligence agencies. Its CEO and co-founder Jonathon Morgan previously worked for DARPA, the US military’s advanced research agency. His partner, Ryan Fox, is a 15-year veteran of the National Security Agency who also worked as a computer analyst for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Their unique skill sets have managed to attract the eye of investors, who pumped $11 million into the company in 2018 alone.

Morgan and Fox have struck gold in the “Russiagate” racket, which sprung into being after Hillary Clinton blamed Moscow for Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016. Morgan, for example, is one of the developers of the Hamilton 68 Dashboard, the online tool that purports to monitor and expose narratives being pushed by the Kremlin on Twitter. The dashboard is bankrolled by the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy – a collection of Democrats and neoconservatives funded in part by NATO and USAID.

It is worth noting that the 600 “Russia-linked” Twitter accounts monitored by the dashboard are not disclosed to the public, making it impossible to verify its claims. This inconvenience has not stopped Hamilton 68 from becoming a go-to source for hysteria-hungry journalists, however…

New Knowledge’s victory lap was short-lived. On December 19, a New York Times story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created a fake army of Russian bots, as well as fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama’s 2017 special election for the US Senate.

Judge Roy Moore (Credit: public domain)

Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to support a write-in candidate instead.

In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had “orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.”

It worked. The botnet claim made a splash on social media and was further amplified by Mother Jones, which based its story on expert opinion from Morgan’s other dubious creation, Hamilton 68.

Scott Shane (Credit: public domain)

Ultimately, Moore ended up losing the race by a miniscule 1.5 percentage points – making his opponent Doug Jones the first Democrat to represent Alabama in the US Senate in over 25 years.

Things got even weirder when it turned out that Scott Shane, the author of the Times piece, had known about the meddling for months, because he spoke at an event where the organizers boasted about it!

Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement Technologies, a group run by Mikey Dickerson, President Barack Obama’s former tech czar. Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge’s campaign to suppress Republican votes, “enrage” Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a “false flag” to hurt Moore. He dubbed it “Project Birmingham.”

Reid Hoffman (Credit: Wikipedia)

The money for the venture came from a $750,000 contribution to AET by Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and a big Democrat donor. Once that emerged, Hoffman offered a public apology for his connection to the shady operation, but insisted that he didn’t know what his money was going towards.

“I find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing,” Hoffman said in a statement.

“For that reason, I am embarrassed by my failure to track AET — the organization I did support — more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that I would reject.”

As for Shane, he told BuzzFeed that he was “shocked” by the revelations, but had signed a nondisclosure agreement at the request of AET, so he could not talk about it further.” (Read more: Russia Today, 12/29/2018)

Loretta Lynch (Credit: Moriah Ratner/The Hill)

“The defensive briefing, after all, is a procedure that is often given to presidential candidates, elected officials and even U.S. businesses that have either been unwittingly approached by foreign actors attempting to gain trust and befriend those in position of influence.

The briefing allows the government to protect the candidates, specifically if there is substantial information or knowledge to suggest that someone has targeted an unwitting American for information. If the FBI or intelligence agencies suspect foreign adversaries may be trying to penetrate a presidential campaign, as those FBI and DOJ sources suggested in testimony to lawmakers, it would then be required to warn those affected, a senior former intelligence official told SaraACarter.com.

Why? Because foreign adversaries like China and Russia for example, and even allies, will attempt to glean information – or favor – from unwitting persons with access to senior level officials. The access can assist those nation’s own national interest or provide access for intelligence collection.

In the case of Trump, the FBI gave only a general counterintelligence briefing but did not provide information to the campaign that the FBI believed there were specific counterintelligence threats. For example, the FBI’s concern over campaign advisors George Papadopolous, Carter Page and then concerns over former national security advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.“It is an essential task of the FBI and the intelligence community to give a defensive briefing to a presidential candidate when a foreign adversary is attempting to penetrate or make contact with someone in the campaign,” said a former senior intelligence official. “If the FBI and DOJ were so concerned about Carter Page and (George) Papadopolous why didn’t they brief Trump when he became a candidate? The fact that they didn’t is very revealing. If they gave defensive briefing to the Clinton campaign then I think we have the answer.

Bruce Ohr’s 268-page testimony, released last week by Georgia Rep. Doug Collins reveals the machinations of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign and the players involved. Ohr’s testimony coupled with testimony provided by former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, which has not been released but reviewed by this reporter, along with former FBI General Counsel James Baker’s testimony reveals a startling fact: everyone appeared to say they were concerned the Russian’s were penetrating the Trump campaign but no one at the DOJ or FBI authorized a defensive briefing.” (Read more: Sarah Carter, 3/14/2019)

BuzzFeed Editor in Chief Ben Smith at a 2012 event with The Guardian. (Credit: Thos Robinson/Getty Images)

“A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday ruled in favor of BuzzFeed News in a defamation lawsuit over the outlet’s publication of the infamous and unverified Steele dossier.

The defamation lawsuit, filed Feb. 2, 2017, focused on allegations made in the final memo against Alexis Gubarev, a Russian tech executive with companies in Cyprus.

In a memo dated Dec. 13, 2016, Steele alleged Gubarev used his web hosting companies to hack into Democrats’ computer networks using viruses, bots and malware.

Gubarev vehemently denied the allegation, and after filing his lawsuit, BuzzFeed issued an apology and scrubbed his name from the version of the dossier published online.

Ben Smith, the editor of BuzzFeed, issued a statement claiming vindication in the case.

“As Judge Ungaro affirmed in her ruling, a key principle underlying the First Amendment is that the public has a right to know about actions taken by its government,” Smith said. “As we have said from the start, a document that had been circulating at the highest levels of government, under active investigation by the FBI, and briefed to two successive presidents, is clearly the subject of ‘official action.’” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 12/19/2018)

During a break in the testimony of Christine Blasey-Ford, Sheila Jackson Lee discretely passes along an envelope to Ford’s attorney, Michael Bromwich on September 28, 2018. (Credit: public domain)

“Multiple Trump campaign officials were the subjects of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigations, a Democratic lawmaker said in a closed-door hearing late last year.

If what Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, says is true, the scope of the FBI’s FISA efforts for its counterintelligence investigation into President Trump’s 2016 campaign and its ties to Russia span far wider than previously known. So far, it is only confirmed that the FBI obtained FISA warrants targeting onetime Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

During a hearing on Dec. 19 with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the transcript of which was released on Monday, Jackson Lee mentioned three other individuals.

“I want to talk about the spring, summer, and autumn of 2016. Carter Page, at the time, was suspected of being a Russian asset; George Papadopoulos had told the Australian ambassador that Russians had Hillary [Clinton] emails; Paul Manafort had been named Trump campaign manager; Michael Flynn was Trump’s chief national security adviser and foreign policy adviser and, just yesterday, had a continuance in his sentencing,” Jackson Lee said. “One thing that all of these persons had in common was that each was the subject of a FISA Court investigation, which we now know, and all were directly connected to Trump. As attorney general, you had the authority to oversee FISA application process. Is that correct?”

Lynch replied “yes,” after which Justice Department lawyer Bradley Weinsheimer cut in to say Jackson Lee’s question “potentially gets into possibly classified information and also equities in an ongoing investigation.

(…) There has been talk in recent weeks about further steps taken to record members of Trump’s campaign, including Papadopoulos. Former Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said on Sunday that the FBI withheld “game changer” transcript material about Papadopoulos from the surveillance court when filing applications targeting Page.

In an interview Friday, former FBI general counsel James Baker, who claims to have taken a leading role in overseeing the Page FISA warrant applications, was asked point-blank if the bureau used an unverified dossier to surveil anyone else. Claiming to be unfamiliar with what the government has revealed, Baker opted not to confirm nor deny it.

“I don’t think I should comment on that. I don’t know what else the government has confirmed,” Baker said on MSNBC. “I don’t want to confirm or deny anything about other potential FISA applications.”  (Read more: Washington Examiner, 5/21/2019) 

“A federal court refused to unseal government documents that permitted the FBI to raid the home of a reportedly recognized whistleblower who, according to his lawyer, delivered documents pertaining to the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One to a presidentially appointed watchdog.

The U.S. District Court of Maryland’s Chief Magistrate Judge Beth P. Gesner, a Clinton appointee, also sealed her justification for keeping the documents secret in a single-page Dec. 20 order.

On Nov. 15, federal Magistrate Judge Stephanie Gallagher authorized the raid on Dennis Cain’s Union Bridge, Maryland, home. She sealed the government documents justifying it.

The Daily Caller News Foundation asked Gallagher on Nov. 29 to unseal the documents, noting that Cain’s attorney has said his client, a former employee of an FBI contractor, is a recognized whistleblower. The documents should be released in light of “an urgent public interest” surrounding the case, TheDCNF wrote.

Attorneys and experts who defend government whistleblowers told TheDCNF the court should disclose whether prosecutors told Gallagher that Cain was a protected whistleblower under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act.

Cain enjoyed his whistleblower status as early as last summer when he handed over documents to Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, according to Cain’s lawyer, Michael Socarras. Horowitz instructed a top aide to personally hand-deliver the documents to the House and Senate intelligence committees, the attorney said.

The documents reportedly show that federal officials failed to investigate potential criminal activity regarding the Clinton Foundation and Rosatom, the Russian company that purchased Uranium One. (Read more: The Daily Caller, 1/27/2019)

“In one text to his late brother Beau’s widow, Hallie, – with whom he was romantically involved at the time – Hunter referred to Jill as a “selfish silly entitled c**t.”

He also admitted he had told the now-First Lady to “go f**k yourself” and ridiculed her teaching skills during a row just after Christmas in 2018.

The bitter showdown came as Hunter’s penchant for crack cocaine and wild sex sessions with call girls was reportedly spiraling out of control.

Text messages appear to show that Jill, 71, supported Hallie, 47, in pushing for him to seek inpatient rehab treatment.

Hunter Biden is seen smoking drugs while on a detox in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in January 2019. (Credit: Biden laptop/The Sun)

Most of the texts were found on a bombshell Apple iPhone backup found on Hunter’s infamous “laptop from hell.”

They were handed to The Sun by Marco Polo, an organization led by a former White House staffer, which is investigating the laptop.

(…) In one of many toxic texts he sent her in 2018 as their relationship crumbled, Hunter told Hallie: “F**k my step mother for always being as much of a selfish silly entitled c**t as you.”

But despite their rocky relationship, at times Hunter did have positive things to say about Jill.

In a text sent to his dad on the evening of December 26, 2018, he wrote: “Love you dad it’s my fault mom is right I over react and she is only worried about me and I promise to try to be more understanding I love you tell mom I love her and I’m sorry I say mean things I don’t mean them.” (Read more: The Sun, 7/8/2022)  (Archive)

Clinton and Kerry: Architects of chaos in Syria. (Credit: Department of State)

“In 2012, the CIA initiated a one billion dollar arm-and-equip operation to fund the so-called “moderate rebels” united under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). A classified Defense Intelligence Agency memo distributed across Obama administration channels in August of that year warned that jihadist forces emanating from Iraq aimed to exploit the security vacuum opened up by the US-backed proxy war to establish a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria” — an “Islamic State,” in the exact words of the memo.

Referring to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s Syrian affiliate by its name, Jabhat al-Nusra, before Western media ever had, the DIA emphasized the close ties the group had fostered with Syria’s “moderate rebels”: “AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media. AQI declared its opposition to Assad’s regime from the beginning because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis.”

The memo was authored under the watch of then-Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was convicted this year of failing to register as a foreign agent of Turkey — an extremely ironic development considering Turkey’s role in fueling the Syrian insurgency. Predictably, the document was ignored across the board by the Obama administration. Meanwhile, heavy weapons were flowing out of the U.S. Incirlik air base in Turkey and into the hands of anyone who could grab them across the Syrian border.

As early as February 2013, a United Nations independent inquiry report concluded, “The FSA has remained a brand name only.” The UN further issued a damning assessment of the role of the United States, UK and their Gulf allies in fueling extremism across Syria. “The intervention of external sponsors has contributed to the radicalization of the insurgency as it has favored Salafi armed groups such as the al-Nusra Front, and even encouraged mainstream insurgents to join them owing to their superior logistical and operational capabilities,” the report stated.

How ISIS overran large swaths of territory in northeastern Syria and established its de facto capital Raqqa is scarcely understood, let alone discussed by Western media. That is partly because the real story is so inconvenient to the established narrative of the Syrian conflict, which blames Assad for every atrocity that has ever occurred in his country, and for some horrors that may not have ever taken place. Echoing the Bush administration’s discredited attempts to link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda, some neoconservative pundits hatched a conspiracy theory that accused Assad of covertly orchestrating the rise of ISIS in order to curry support from the West. But the documented evidence firmly established the success of ISIS as a byproduct of the semi-covert American program to arm Assad’s supposedly moderate opposition.” (Read more: Consortium News, 12/27/2018)

Bob Goodlatte and Trey Gowdy recommended a second special counsel to continue their work in March 2018. (Credit: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg)

“The outgoing Republican committee chairmen in charge of a year-long probe of how the FBI and Justice Department handled investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged Russia ties and Hillary Clinton’s emails once again called for a second special counsel to look into such matters in a letter to top administration and congressional officials summing up their work.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., sent their letter to acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. In it, they encouraged them to pick up where the House panels left off and “continue to identify and eliminate bias” at the federal law enforcement agencies “so the public can trust the institutions to make decisions solely on the facts and the law and totally devoid of political bias or consideration.”

“Our 2016 presidential candidates were not treated equally,” Goodlatte and Gowdy wrote in a statement accompanying the release of the letter. “The investigators in both investigations were biased against President Trump.”

The House GOP leaned heavily on details in an inspector general report released earlier this year to make their arguments about bias having infected the FBI and DOJ’s proceedings. The IG’s report found that while certain individuals, such as former top FBI counterintelligence officer Peter Strzok, displayed clear personal bias against Trump, there was no evidence that the conclusions of the investigations themselves were biased.” (Read more: Chicago Tribune, 12/28/2018)