The Clinton campaign logo superimposed over the FBI logo. (Credit: public domain)

This is according to what two unnamed “sources who have been briefed on the matter” will tell Yahoo News in July 2016. FBI officials privately meet with senior Clinton campaign officials and express concern that hackers are using “spear phishing” techniques to access the campaign’s computers. They ask the campaign to turn over internal computer logs and the personal email addresses of top campaign staffers to help the FBI’s investigation. But the campaign declines to do so after deciding the request for personal data is too broad and intrusive. The FBI doesn’t give any mention as to who the hackers might be.

One month later, the campaign will learn on its own that its computers have been hacked and they will use a private cybersecurity company to combat the hackers.

Yahoo News will comment that the FBI’s “warning also could raise new questions about why the campaign and the DNC didn’t take the matter more seriously.”

At the time, the FBI has an active investigation into Clinton’s email usage while she was secretary of state, and Clinton’s campaign isn’t sure how extensive that inquiry is. There have been media reports that the investigation extended into unethical practices at the Clinton Foundation, which could theoretically include interest in more recent communications.

Yahoo News will report that, according to an unnamed internal source, “Campaign officials had reason to fear that any production of campaign computer logs and personal email accounts could be used to further such a probe.” But the FBI insists that its request for data to combat the hacking has no connection to any other investigation, and since there is no subpoena forcing the issue, the Clinton campaign turns down the request. (Yahoo News, 7/29/2016)

Beth Wilkinson and Cheryl Mills briefly walk out of their interview with the FBI on May 10, 2016. (Credit: Getty Images)

“Judicial Watch announced today it received 35 pages of records of communications between former FBI official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page that show the attorney representing three of Hillary Clinton’s aides met with senior FBI officials.

(…) On March 1, 2016 an unidentified official from the FBI Office of General Counsel asks Baker if he’d had a chance to speak with Wilkinson, noting “CES [Counterespionage Section] wants to reach out to discuss scheduling additional interviews but wanted some feedback from you first.” Baker replies, “Just did… She appreciated the heads up about the pending press articles. She wants to meet with the DD [Deputy Director] but can only meet on the weekends right now. I will check his availability tomorrow.”

In a follow-up email thread on March 4, Wilkinson tells Baker that she would be able to do the meeting with McCabe that day. Baker forwards the note to McCabe, saying “Andy, do you want to try to do this today?”, and copies numerous top FBI officials, including Michael Steinbach, Bill Priestap, Trisha Anderson, and Page. Page forwards the note to Strzok. Strzok then tells Page that he’s been “Talking to DOJ, they ([George] Toscas and CES) have strong opinions about it. Call me.” Page replies, “He’s not calling. Don’t worry about it.” Strzok then adds, “Also you need to know what [redacted] and she discussed. I can tell you over lunch…”

In a March 4, 2016, email with the subject line “Interview,” Baker emails the same top FBI officials, saying that he’s just spoken with Wilkinson and “I think we are now back on track. She is going to call [redacted] today or tomorrow about scheduling the next interview. Given the witness’s personal schedule, Beth said that it may not happen for a few weeks but she will work that out with [redacted].  We also discussed making sure that this is done in a secure location in a discreet way; she will work with [redacted] and the FBI team on that as well but I said that we will make sure that it happens in a high-quality way.”

In a follow-up email sent only to Strzok, Baker writes, “She understands that it needs to be in a SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility]. She seems more comfortable with NYFO [New York Field Office], but I think would be open to WFO [Washington Field Office] if she can get in and out in a discreet manner (i.e., no chance of a press stakeout or too many people in the office seeing them and having awareness of what is going on). Is there an offsite somewhere in the DC area that might be better? If so, don’t tell me where it is.”

On March 20, 2016, Strzok emails FBI Deputy Assistant Director Moffa, writing: “Big news of the day? Beth [presumably Wilkinson] said none of the laptops we have had the original 60k [presumably Hillary’s 60,000 emails]. The two that did were – and are – the personal laptops of Cheryl [Mills] and Heather [Samuelson]. [Redacted] That they are still using now. Funny that never cane [sic] up before now.” Strzok forwards this email with Moffa on to Page with the note: “My frustration.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 11/22/2019)  (Archive)

“In the midst of the 2016 presidential primary season, the FBI received what was described as a Russian intelligence document claiming a tacit understanding between the Clinton campaign and the Justice Department over the inquiry into whether she intentionally revealed classified information through her use of a private email server.

Leonardo Bernardo (Credit: Open Society Foundations)

The Russian document cited a supposed email describing how then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch had privately assured someone in the Clinton campaign that the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter. If true, the revelation of such an understanding would have undermined the integrity of the FBI’s investigation.

Current and former officials have said that Comey relied on the document in making his July decision to announce on his own, without Justice Department involvement, that the investigation was over. That public announcement — in which he criticized Clinton and made extensive comments about the evidence — set in motion a chain of other FBI moves that Democrats now say helped Trump win the presidential election.

(…) The document, obtained by the FBI, was a piece of purported analysis by Russian intelligence, the people said. It referred to an email supposedly written by the then-chair of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), and sent to Leonard Benardo, an official with the Open Society Foundations, an organization founded by billionaire George Soros and dedicated to promoting democracy.

The Russian document did not contain a copy of the email, but it described some of the contents of the purported message.

Amanda Renteria (Credit: Jahz Tello/GVWire)

In the supposed email, Wasserman Schultz claimed Lynch had been in private communication with a senior Clinton campaign staffer named Amanda Renteria during the campaign. The document indicated Lynch had told Renteria that she would not let the FBI investigation into Clinton go too far, according to people familiar with it.

Current and former officials have argued that the secret document gave Comey good reason to take the extraordinary step over the summer of announcing the findings of the Clinton investigation himself without Justice Department involvement.

From the moment the bureau received the document from a source in early March 2016, its veracity was the subject of an internal debate at the FBI. Several people familiar with the matter said the bureau’s doubts about the document hardened in August when officials became more certain that there was nothing to substantiate the claims in the Russian document. FBI officials knew the bureau never had the underlying email with the explosive allegation if it ever existed. (Read more: The New York Times, 5/24/2017)

Devon Archer and John Kerry (Credit: Fox News)

(…) Archer was scheduled to meet with Kerry on March 2, 2016, weeks before the Ukrainian parliament removed Shokin from his position, a redacted State Department email reported on by Fox News shows.

The new evidence that Hunter’s partner Devin Archer met with then Secretary of State John Kerry is particularly concerning due to the date after Biden forcing the Ukrainians to fire Shokin. https://t.co/enxG83BvLr It also again raises the continued absence of FARA charges.…

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) August 27, 2023

“Devon Archer coming to see S today at 3:00pm – need someone to meet/greet him at C Street,” the March 2, 2016, email says, according to a screenshot shared by Fox. The “S” referred to in the email is a shorthand for Kerry, the outlet concluded based on additional email communications.

The email was first released in 2019 and it resulted in a records request from Republican Sens. Grassley of Iowa and Johnson of Wisconsin, sent to Trump administration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Ukrainian parliament relieved Shokin of his duties in March 2016, a month after Shokin filed his letter of resignation at the request of then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Then-Vice President Joe Biden bragged in September 2016 about how he used a $1 billion loan guarantee to pressure Ukraine into firing Shokin.

“You remember last year I was authorized to say we’d do the second tranche of a billion dollars,” Joe Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations. “And [Poroshenko] didn’t fire his chief prosecutor. And because I have the confidence of the president, I was there, and I said: ‘I’m not signing it. Until you fire him, we’re not signing, man. Get it straight. We’re not doing it.’”

Archer testified before the House Oversight Committee in July, saying the Biden family “brand” protected Burisma and kept the firm in business. He said Joe Biden spoke with his son’s business associates over 20 times and specifically recalled a spring 2014 dinner with Russian oligarch Elena Baturina, as well as a spring 2015 dinner with Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi.

Archer also testified that Hunter Biden “called D.C.” in December 2015 because of pressure from Pozharskyi and Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky. It’s unclear if Joe Biden was on the other end of the phone call.

Devon Archer to Tucker Carlson: “Shokin was considered a threat to the business…. I think anyone in government is always a threat and always trying to shake down these businesses that were highly successful…And so at the end of the day, Shokin was taking a look” @DailyCaller https://t.co/LNhZnzMwAO

— James Lynch (@jameslynch32) August 4, 2023

(Read more: The Daily Caller, 8/28/2023))  (Archive)

From Jonathan Turley’s Fox News link above:

(…) In 2013, Archer exchanged emails with Kerry’s then-chief of staff at the State Department, David Wade, organizing a call between Kerry and then-Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Yerlan Idrisov.

“Devon: understand you spoke to the Secretary re having him call Foreign Minister Idrisov today, can you let me know topics Idrisov wants to talk about/any requests he’ll have of the boss, so we can get paper prepared for a call,” Wade wrote.

Archer told Wade that Idrisov wanted to speak with Kerry about keeping open a direct line of communication between the two of them as well as brief him on a “subject as it relates to Afghanistan.”

Wade went on to advise Hunter on rapid response related to Burisma after leaving the State Department in June 2015, Fox News Digital previously reported.

Archer exchanged emails with Kerry’s then-chief of staff to organize a call between Kerry and then-Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Yerlan Idrisov. (Credit: Fox News)

Archer co-founded Rosemont Seneca Partners with Hunter and Kerry’s stepson, Christopher Heinz, his Yale roommate, in 2009.

In a 2012 email chain, when then-Sen. Kerry was serving as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Archer listed him as one of his top references for Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) after one of the firm’s partners told Archer and Hunter they needed their “bazooka references.”

An individual with knowledge of the reference list told Fox News Digital they were not aware of Kerry ever vouching for RSTP or its clients. The individual, who requested anonymity, went on to say that Hunter and Archer’s role was to help navigate Washington but also said they would sever ties with Hunter after he was kicked out of the Navy Reserve for cocaine in late 2014 and that Archer’s position was cut the following year because he wasn’t doing any work for RSTP.

The State Department and Archer’s lawyer did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment. (Fox News, 8/28/2023)

(Timeline editor’s note: According to our timeline, Shokin turned in his resignation to Poroshenko on February 19, 2016 and he was officially removed by the Ukrainian Parliament on March 29, 2016. The meeting between John Kerry and Devon Archer occurred after  Shokin had resigned and before Hunter Biden friendly Yuriy Lutsenko replaces Shokin .)

John Podesta, left, and Robby Mook meet at campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, NY. (Credit: Brooks Kraft / Getty Images)

On March 2, 2015, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta emails Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, and asks him, “Did you have any idea of the depth of this story?” He is referring to the New York Times front page story from earlier in the day about Clinton exclusively using a private email account while secretary of state.

Mook replies, “Nope. We brought up the existence of emails in research this summer but were told that everything was taken care of.”

The emails will be released by WikiLeaks in October 2016. (WikiLeaks, 10/27/2016)

“FBI agent Peter Strzok praised Hillary Clinton and said he would vote for her for president while also leading the investigation into her possible mishandling of classified information.

In March 2016, Strzok sent his mistress Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, text messages saying that “Hillary should win 100,000,000 – 0.”

And asked who he would vote for in the election, Strzok told Page: “I suppose Hillary.”

Strzok and Page also sent messages disparaging Trump, calling him an “idiot.”

(…) “Strzok and Page’s politically-charged texts continued as he transitioned from the Clinton investigation to the Russia probe.

On July 27, 2016, Page wrote of Clinton, “She just has to to win now.”

“I’m not going to lie, I got a flash of nervousness yesterday about Trump,” she said.

According to various news reports, Strzok was picked to lead the Russia investigation at around the time that message was sent.

It was revealed earlier this month that Strzok is the FBI official who watered down the language in a statement prepared for Comey. Instead of using the legal term “grossly negligent” to describe Clinton’s email activities, Strzok inserted the phrase “extremely careless.”

Strzok also appears to have gone much easier on Clinton aides that he interviewed in the email probe than he did on Trump associates he met with during the Russia investigation.

Abedin and Mills, the two Clinton aides, appear to have given misleading statements in their interviews about what they knew about Clinton’s use of a private email server. But neither faced charges for the false statements.

In contrast, former national security adviser Michael Flynn was charged for lying to the FBI during an interview in January. Strzok was one of the agents who conducted the interview.” (Read more: Daily Caller, 12/12/2016) (Strzok/Page Text Documents)

The records show that Fusion was also paid $523,651 by the law firm BakerHostetler between March 7, 2016 and Oct. 31, 2016.

Fusion worked for BakerHostetler to investigate Bill Browder, a London-based banker who helped push through the Magnitsky Act, a sanctions law vehemently opposed by the Kremlin.

Denis Katsyv (Credit: public domain)

BakerHostetler represented Prevezon Holdings and its owner, a Russian businessman named Denis Katsyv.

Katsyv and Prevezon sought to limit the impact of the Magnitsky sanctions.

Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and Fusion GPS founding partner, compiled the research for the anti-Browder project. He worked closely with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who also showed up at the infamous Trump Tower meeting held on June 9, 2016.

Simpson’s research ended up in the Trump Tower meeting in the form of a four-page memo carried by Veselnitskaya. She also shared Simpson’s work with Yuri Chaika, the prosecutor general of Russia.

Simpson told the House Intelligence Committee earlier this week that he did not know that Veselnitskaya provided the Browder information to Chaika or to Donald Trump Jr., the Trump campaign’s point-man in the Trump Tower meeting.

Simpson testified that he did not know that Veselnitskaya had visited Trump Tower until it was reported in the press earlier this year.

(Read more: The Daily Caller, 11/21/2017)

Admiral Mike Rogers (Credit: public domain)

“November 2015 through April 2016 FISA-702(17) “About Queries”, returns from searches, were identified by NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers, being conducted by the intelligence community (FBI), by “contractors” and “individuals” for reasons that:

• were unauthorized;
• were directly related to U.S. persons;
• and had nothing to do with National Security;
• and were conducted by people who did not request FISA Court Approval.

Director Mike Rogers discovered FBI contractors doing FISA-702 “About Searches” that resulted in returns providing information on Americans.  Those results were passed on to people outside government.

Pg 83. “FBI gave raw Section 702–acquired information to a private entity that was not a federal agency and whose personnel were not sufficiently supervised by a federal agency for compliance minimization procedures.” (2017 FISA Court Opinion)

Someone inside the FBI was giving FISA-702 search results on U.S. individuals to a private entity that had nothing to do with government.   Those 702 (American Citizen) results were not “minimized” and exposed the private data of the American citizen(s).

In addition, NSA Director Mike Rogers, who is also in charge of Cyber Command, discovered people within the intelligence community were doing “searches” of the NSA and FBI database that were returning information that had nothing to do with “Foreign Individuals”.

Rogers requested a full FISA-702 Compliance Review.

As an outcome of that review, the DOJ/FBI compliance officer noted FISA violations. Again, the FISA Court (page 84):

We do not know how many FISA-702 violations took place prior to NSA Mike Rogers initiating the full FISA-702 review in April 2016. Nor do we know who the insider FBI individuals were; or what results were passed on; or what was done with the results.

However, given the nature of what was taking place at the time (March, April, May, 2016) it appears likely this was part of the DOJ/FBI/Fusion-GPS collision to gather information on the candidacy of Donald Trump.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 1/14/2018)

Clinton pays an official visit to King Abdullah, in Saudi Arabia, on March 30, 2012. (Credit: Reuters)

If I told you that Democratic Party lobbyist Tony Podesta, whose brother John Podesta chairs Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, is a registered foreign agent on the Saudi government’s payroll, you’d probably think I was a Trump-thumping, conspiratorial nutcase. But it’s true.

The lobby firm created by both Tony and John Podesta in 1988 receives $140,000 a month from the Saudi government, a government that beheads nonviolent dissidents, uses torture to extract forced confessions, doesn’t allow women to drive, and bombs schools, hospitals and residential neighborhoods in neighboring Yemen.

The Podesta Group’s March 2016 filing, required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, shows that Tony Podesta himself oversees the Saudi account. At the same time, Tony Podesta is also a top campaign contributor and bundler for Hillary Clinton. So while one brother runs the campaign, the other brother funds it with earnings that come, in part, from the Saudis.

John and Tony Podesta have been heavyweights in DC insider politics for decades. John Podesta served as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, founded the influential DC think tank Center for American Progress (which regularly touts Saudi “reforms”), and was counselor to President Obama. Tony Podesta was dubbed by the New York Times as “one of Washington’s biggest players” whose clients “are going to get a blueprint for how to succeed in official Washington.”

The brothers seem to have no problem mixing their roles into the same pot. Tony Podesta held a Clinton campaign fundraiser at his home featuring gourmet Italian food cooked by himself and his brother, the campaign chairman. The fundraiser, by the way, came just days after Tony Podesta filed his Saudi contract with the Justice Department, a contract that included an initial “project fee” payment of $200,000.

The Saudis hired the Podesta Group in 2015 because it was getting hammered in the press over civilian casualties from its airstrikes in Yemen and its crackdown on political dissidents at home, including sentencing blogger Raif Badawi to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam.” Since then, Tony Podesta’s fingerprints have been all over Saudi Arabia’s advocacy efforts in Washington DC. When Saudi Arabia executed the prominent nonviolent Shia dissident Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, causing protests throughout the Shia world and inflaming sectarian divisions, The New York Times noted that the Podesta Group provided the newspaper with a Saudi commentator who defended the execution.

The Podesta-Clinton-Saudi connection should be seen in light of the recent media exposes revealing the taudry pay-to-play nature of the Clinton Foundation. Top on the list of foreign donors to the foundation is Saudi Arabia, which contributed between $10 million and $25 million.

What did the Saudis get for their largesse and access? Wikileaks revealed a 2009 cable by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying: “More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar e-Tayyiba and other terrorist groups.” Instead of sanctioning the Saudis, Clinton did the opposite: She authorized enormous quantities of weapons to be sold to them. On Christmas Eve in 2011, Hillary Clinton and her closest aides celebrated a massive $29.4 billion sale to the Saudis of over 80 F-15 fighter jets, manufactured by Boeing, a company which coincidentally contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation. In a chain of enthusiastic emails, an aide exclaimed that it was “not a bad Christmas present.” I’m sure the Yemenis at the receiving end of the Saudi bombings would not be so enthusiastic.

The Clintons have said that if Hillary Clinton gets elected, the foundation will stop taking foreign donations. But what about no longer taking campaign contributions from people who are paid by the Saudi government to whitewash its image? The Podesta Group should be blacklisted from contributing to Clinton’s campaign until they drop the monarchy as a client and return their ill-gotten gains. If Hillary Clinton wants to be a meaningful symbol for human rights and women’s empowerment, her campaign must live up to the values she claims to represent, and this would be one step in the right direction. (Huffington Post/Medea Benjamin, 8/31/2016)  (Archive)

“According to an interview granted by the lawyer for intelligence asset Joseph Mifsud to journalist John Solomon, professor Mifsud admitted to being a western intelligence asset who was part of a CIA intelligence “operation” against candidate Donald Trump in March 2016.

Solomon notes that an audio-taped deposition exists from Joseph Mifsud prior to going into hiding after the 2016 Presidential election.  From the description it sounds like Mifsud anticipated his assisted suicide and recorded a deposition as leverage against his unwanted demise.

What Solomon describes would align with the CIA purposefully leaking the details about Mifsud to the Washington Post on July 1st, 2019.

In the synergy between the U.S. intelligence apparatus and their media agents, the CIA, DOJ and State Department have specific outlets assigned to public relations.

A long-tracked pattern reflects the DOJ and FBI leak their needs to the New York Times. The preferred outlet for the U.S. State Department is CNN; and the Washington Post generally comes out first with leaks in defense of the CIA agenda.

This pattern has been remarkably consistent for years.

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

So against a backdrop of looming revelations about the intelligence community and their activity in the 2016 election; suddenly The Washington Post, seemingly out of nowhere, pushed an article intended to diffuse the issues around western intelligence asset Joseph Mifsud.

As we noted in July, we can reasonably assume something is happening in the background that has officials in the CIA worried about exposure and their image.  From the WaPo introduction we can see what part of “spygate” the CIA is concerned about:

(Wa Po) […] The Maltese-born academic has not surfaced publicly since that October 2017 interview, days after Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about details of their interactions. Among them, Papadopoulos told investigators, was an April 2016 meeting in which Mifsud alerted him that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”

The conversation between Mifsud and Papadopoulos, eventually relayed by an Australian diplomat to U.S. government officials, was cited by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as the event that set in motion the FBI probe into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

With Attorney General William P. Barr’s review of the counterintelligence investigation underway,the origins of the inquiry itself are now in the spotlight — and with them, the role of Mifsud, a little-known figure. (more)

The entire WaPo article is fraught with highly manipulated narrative engineering intended to cloud the fact that clear evidence exists that Professor Mifsud’s engagement with George Papadopoulos was directed by some entity other than Mifsud.

It would be intellectually dishonest not to see some other purpose and intent beyond an academic wanting to build a relationship with some obscure policy staffer for the Trump campaign.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 8/18/2019)

The Foreign Affairs Committee has published a report examining the intervention and subsequent collapse of Libya.

• Read the report summary
• Read the report conclusion and recommendations
• Read the full report: Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK’s future policy options

2011 intervention

In March 2011, the UK and France led the international community to support an intervention in Libya to protect civilians from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.

The inquiry, which took evidence from key figures including Lord Hague, Dr Liam Fox, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, military chiefs and academics, concludes that decisions were not based on accurate intelligence. In particular, the Government failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element.

A policy which had intended to protect civilians drifted towards regime change and was not underpinned by strategy to support and shape post-Gaddafi Libya. The consequence was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal welfare [sic], humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations and the growth of ISIL in North Africa.

National Security Council

Libya was the first test of the National Security Council (NSC), a Cabinet Committee established by David Cameron to oversee national security, intelligence co-ordination and defence strategy and intended to provide a formal mechanism to shape foreign policy decision making. In contrast to the relatively informal process used during Tony Blair’s Premiership, since criticised by Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry, every NSC meeting on Libya was minuted, documenting David Cameron’s decision-making process.

Chair’s comment

Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Crispin Blunt MP, commented:

“This report determines that UK policy in Libya before and since the intervention of March 2011 was founded on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the country and the situation.

Other political options were available. Political engagement might have delivered civilian protection, regime change and reform at a lesser cost to the UK and Libya. The UK would have lost nothing by trying these instead of focusing exclusively on regime change by military means.

Having led the intervention with France, we had a responsibility to support Libyan economic and political reconstruction. But our lack of understanding of the institutional capacity of the country stymied Libya’s progress in establishing security on the ground and absorbing financial and other resources from the international community.

The UK’s actions in Libya were part of an ill-conceived intervention, the results of which are still playing out today. The United Nations has brokered an inclusive Government of National Accord. If it fails, the danger is that Libya will sink into a full scale civil war to control territory and oil resources. The GNA is the only game in town and the international community has a responsibility to unite behind it.”

(House of Commons, 9/14/2016)  (Archive)

John Brennan (Credit: Alex Brandon/The Associated Press)

“John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), made a secret visit to Moscow in March, according to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov. The visit, he said, had nothing to do with Russia’s decision two weeks ago to begin withdrawing from Syria.

“It’s no secret that Brennan was here,” Syromolotov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying Monday. “But he didn’t visit the Foreign Ministry. I know for sure that he met with the Federal Security Service (the successor agency to the Soviet KGB), and someone else.”

It wasn’t clear why Brennan visited Moscow, but the trip appears to have coincided with President Vladimir Putin’s surprise March 14 announcement that Russia’s combat operation in Syria was ending, and Moscow would soon withdraw a portion of its forces from the country after conducting 167 air strikes.

The decision to withdraw was followed by a visit of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow last week. While in Russia, Kerry met personally with Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.” (Moscow Times, 3/28/2016)

Sputnik News, quotes CIA Director of Public Affairs, Dean Boyd, as affirming that Brennan did discuss Syria during the visit. “Director Brennan,” he allegedly said, “reiterated the US government’s consistent support for a genuine political transition in Syria, and the need for Assad’s departure in order to facilitate a transition that reflects the will of the Syrian people.” (Read more: Sputnik News, 3/28/2016)

“The recently released transcript of George Papadopoulos’s congressional testimony reveals a significant fact: Papadopoulos’s introduction to Joseph Mifsud—the source of the “Russia has Hillary’s emails” tip that purportedly prompted the FBI to launch an investigation into the Trump campaign—was arranged mere days after Papadopoulos announced he was joining the Trump campaign.

Saturday evening, Papadopoulos rocked Twitter with claims that “a woman in London, who was the FBI’s legal attaché in the U.K.” encouraged him “to meet Joseph Mifsud in Rome in March 2016.” These new revelations raise fresh concerns that, with the approval of the FBI, foreign governments were meddling in the 2016 election.

Mifsud has long been a focal point of those on the right attempting to disembowel the Russia collusion hoax. The basics have been known for some time.

From court documents filed in connection to Papadopoulos’s guilty plea for lying to the FBI and from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s (HPSCI) report on “Russian Active Measures,” we know that “on March 14, 2016, George met London-based college Professor Joseph Mifsud while traveling in Italy.” During that meeting, “Mifsud, then director of the London Academy of Diplomacy, claimed connections to the Russian Government.”

A week later, on March 21, 2016, Trump publicly identified Papadopoulos as one of his foreign policy advisors. Then on March 24, 2016, Mifsud traveled to London, “where he introduced George to a young woman named Olga,” telling the newly named Trump advisor that Olga was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s niece and suggesting they could arrange meetings with high-level Russian officials.

Then, continuing throughout the summer of 2016, Papadopoulos attempted “to arrange meetings between the Russian government and campaign officials,” working with Mifsud and Mifsud’s supposed Russian connections.

On April 26, 2016, Mifsud also shared a tip with Papadopoulos over a breakfast meeting in London: Mifsud told Papadopoulos “that he had just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with high-level Russian government officials,” and had learned that “the Russians had obtained ‘dirt’ on candidate Clinton,” namely thousands of Clinton’s emails.

Papadopoulos would later repeat this conversation to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer over drinks in a London bar in May. In late July, after WikiLeaks published a trove of stolen Democratic National Committee emails, agents at the FBI’s D.C. headquarters supposedly first learned of Papadopoulos’s statement to Downer, although it remains unclear how details of the conversation made it from Downer to the FBI.

Then, on July 31, 2016, purportedly on the basis of Papadopoulos’s advanced knowledge of Russia’s possession of the stolen emails, Peter Strzok initiated the Crossfire Hurricane federal investigation of the Trump campaign. The DOJ and FBI would later seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order to surveil another Trump foreign policy advisor, Carter Page, and the FISA application reiterated the FBI’s claim that it had launched a counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, after learning of Papadopoulos’s conversation with Downer. (Read more: The Federalist, 4/01/2019)

The US C-17 Globemaster sits at Wellington Airport on March 15, 2016, while James Clapper meets with Prime Minister John Key ahead of a Five Eyes meeting in Australia. (Credit: Cameron Burnell)

“America’s top spy, the US Director of National Intelligence, is on a secret visit to Australia,  ABC has learned.

James Robert Clapper Jr directs the US National Intelligence Program and reports directly to President Barack Obama.

So far the Federal Government is refusing to give any details of his activities and meetings while in Australia, but the United States embassy in Canberra has confirmed Mr. Clapper’s visit.

“As allies, the United States and Australia cooperate closely on a wide range of issues,” an embassy spokeswoman told ABC.

“It is not uncommon that senior US Government officials visit Australia and engage in high-level consultations.”

Before flying to Australia Mr. Clapper stopped over in New Zealand where he met with Prime Minister John Key.

“I’ve met General Clapper on a couple of occasions. He’s obviously got great insight into intelligence and what’s happening around the world,” Mr Key said.

The US intelligence chief is believed to be traveling on board a US military C-17 Globemaster.

Last week the Australian Federal Police hosted the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James B Comey on a two-day visit to Australia.

Mr Comey also met with Attorney-General George Brandis and Justice Minister Michael Keenan. (ABC News, 3/16/2016)  (Archive)

Newt Gingrich (Credit: Nicholas Kamm/Agence France Presse/Getty Images)

“In the summer of 2016, the FBI interview report noted, the interviewee reported that a senior staff member of the US Senate Judiciary Committee contacted him “out of concerns data from Clinton’s e-mail server might end up overseas. Specifically [name redacted] wanted to determine if there was an intrusion into Clinton’s server and, if so, whether exfiltrated data fell into the hands of a foreign power”—and whether that data could endanger the Senate staffer’s sons, who were in the military.

The interviewee told FBI investigators that he had told the Senate staffer that he would have to look for data that was “genuine, authentic and relevant” to determine that there had been a breach. But the staffer had no money to fund the research, so the project was brought to Newt Gingrich—who obtained funding for the investigation from Judicial Watch.

In March of 2016, Judicial Watch paid the contractor’s side company $32,000 for the first phase of the project—determining whether Clinton’s server had been directly attacked. “Judicial Watch awarded the contract to [name redacted] because they were confident he understood both the Deep Web and the Dark Web,” the interviewee told the FBI. The investigation also targeted data from Sidney Blumenthal’s e-mail account, but Clinton’s and Blumenthal’s actual e-mail services were off-limits for the search.

Some of Blumenthal’s files—but no e-mails—were found on a server in Romania, according to the FBI interview. The investigation also found an Excel file listing names of known or suspected jihadists in Libya—but part of that file was in Russian. “The file did not come from Blumenthal’s server, but contained a reference to an IP address range that included the IP address of Clinton’s server,” the FBI report recounts. “Upon viewing this file, [name redacted] became concerned he had found a classified document and stopped the project.”

” (Read more: Ars Technica, 10/17/2016)

Igor Danchenko (Credit: public domain)

“The mysterious “Primary Subsource” that Christopher Steele has long hidden behind to defend his discredited Trump-Russia dossier is former Brookings Institution analyst — Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, a Russian national whose past includes criminal convictions and other personal baggage ignored by the FBI in vetting him and the information he fed to Steele, according to congressional sources and records obtained by RealClearInvestigations. Agents continued to use the dossier as grounds to investigate President Trump and put his advisers under counter-espionage surveillance.

The 42-year-old Danchenko, who was hired by Steele in 2016 to deploy a network of sources to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was arrested, jailed and convicted years earlier on multiple public drunkenness and disorderly conduct charges in the Washington area and ordered to undergo substance-abuse and mental-health counseling, according to criminal records.

Fiona Hill: She worked at the Brookings Institution with dossier “Primary Subsource” Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, and testified against President Trump last year during impeachment hearings. (Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

In an odd twist, a 2013 federal case against Danchenko was prosecuted by then-U.S Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who ended up signing one of the FBI’s dossier-based wiretap warrants as deputy attorney general in 2017.

Danchenko first ran into trouble with the law as he began working for Brookings — the preeminent Democratic think tank in Washington — where he struck up a friendship with Fiona Hill, the White House adviser who testified against Trump during last year’s impeachment hearings. Danchenko has described Hill as a mentor, while Hill has sung his praises as a “creative” researcher.

Hill is also close to his boss Steele, who she’d known since 2006. She met with the former British intelligence officer during the 2016 campaign and later received a raw, unpublished copy of the now-debunked dossier.

It does not appear the FBI asked Danchenko about his criminal past or state of sobriety when they interviewed him in January 2017 in a failed attempt to verify the accuracy of the dossier, which it did only after agents used it to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The opposition research was farmed out by Steele, working for Clinton’s campaign, to Danchenko, who was paid for the information he provided.

A newly declassified FBI summary of the FBI-Danchenko meeting reveals agents learned that key allegations in the dossier, which claimed Trump engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” with the Kremlin against Clinton, were largely inspired by gossip and bar talk among Danchenko and his drinking buddies, most of whom were childhood friends from Russia.

The FBI memo is heavily redacted and blacks out the name of Steele’s Primary Subsource. But public records and congressional sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirm the identity of the source as Danchenko.

In the memo, the FBI notes that Danchenko said that he and one of his dossier sources “drink heavily together.” But there is no apparent indication the FBI followed up by asking Danchenko if he had an alcohol problem, which would cast further doubt on his reliability as a source for one of the most important and sensitive investigations in FBI history.

The FBI declined comment. Attempts to reach Danchenko by both email and phone were unsuccessful.

The Justice Department’s watchdog recently debunked the dossier’s most outrageous accusations against Trump, and faulted the FBI for relying on it to obtain secret wiretaps. The bureau’s actions, which originated under the Obama administration, are now the subject of a sprawling criminal investigation led by special prosecutor John Durham.

Rod Rosenstein: In an odd twist, a 2013 federal case against Danchenko was prosecuted by then-U.S Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who ended up signing one of the FBI’s dossier-based wiretap warrants as deputy attorney general in 2017. (Credit: Greg Nash/Pool via AP)

One of the wiretap warrants was signed in 2017 by Rosenstein, who also that year appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller and signed a “scope” memo giving him wide latitude to investigate Trump and his surrogates. Mueller relied on the dossier too. As it happens, Rosenstein also signed motions filed in one of Danchenko’s public intoxication cases, according to the documents obtained by RCI.

In March 2013 — three years before Danchenko began working on the dossier — federal authorities in Greenbelt, Md., arrested and charged him with several misdemeanors, including “drunk in public, disorderly conduct, and failure to have his [2-year-old] child in a safety seat,” according to a court filing. The U.S. prosecutor for Maryland at the time was Rosenstein, whose name appears in the docket filings.

The Russian-born Danchenko, who was living in the U.S. on a work visa, was released from jail on the condition he undergo drug testing and “participate in a program of substance abuse therapy and counseling,” as well as “mental health counseling,” the records show. His lawyer asked the court to postpone his trial and let him travel to Moscow “as a condition of his employment.” The Russian trips were granted without objection from Rosenstein. Danchenko ended up several months later entering into a plea agreement and paying fines.

In 2006, Danchenko was arrested in Fairfax, Va., on similar offenses, including “public swearing and intoxication,” criminal records show. The case was disposed after he paid a fine.

At the time, Danchenko worked as a research analyst for the Brookings Institution, where he became a protégé of Hill. He collaborated with her on at least two Russian policy papers during his five-year stint at the think tank and worked with another Brookings scholar on a project to uncover alleged plagiarism in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ph.D dissertation — something Danchenko and his lawyer boasted about during their meeting with FBI agents. (Like Hill, the other scholar, Clifford Gaddy, was a Russia hawk. He and Hill in 2015 authored “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin,” a book strTalboongly endorsed by Joe Biden at the time.)

“Igor is a highly accomplished analyst and researcher,” Hill noted on his LinkedIn page in 2011. “He is very creative in pursuing the most relevant of information and detail to support his research.”

Strobe Talbott of Brookings with  Hillary  Clinton:  He connected with Christopher Steele and passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Fiona Hill in January 2017. (Credit: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Hill also vouched for Steele, an old friend and British intelligence counterpart. The two reunited in 2016, sitting down for at least one meeting. Her boss at the time, Brookings President Strobe Talbott, also connected with Steele and passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Hill. A tough Trump critic, Talbott previously worked in the Clinton administration and rallied the think tank behind Hillary.

Talbott’s brother-in-law is Cody Shearer, another old Clinton hand who disseminated his own dossier in 2016 that echoed many of the same lurid and unsubstantiated claims against Trump. Through a mutual friend at the State Department, Steele obtained a copy of Shearer’s dossier and reportedly submitted it to the FBI to help corroborate his own.

In August 2016, Talbott personally called Steele, based in London, to offer his own input on the dossier he was compiling from Danchenko’s feeds. Steele phoned Talbott just before the November election, during which Talbott asked for the latest dossier memos to distribute to top officials at the State Department. After Trump’s surprise win, the mood at Brookings turned funereal and Talbott and Steele strategized about how they “should handle” the dossier going forward.

During the Trump transition, Talbott encouraged Hill to leave Brookings and take a job in the White House so she could be “one of the adults in the room” when Russia and Putin came up. She served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019.

She left the White House just before a National Security Council detailee who’d worked with her, Eric Ciaramella, secretly huddled with Democrats in Congress and alleged Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to launch an investigation of Biden and his son in exchange for military aid. Democrats soon held hearings to impeach Trump, calling Hill as one of their star witnesses.

Congressional investigators are taking a closer look at tax-exempt Brookings, which has emerged as a nexus in the dossier scandal. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the liberal think tank is prohibited from lobbying or engaging in political campaigns. (Credit: Gryffindor/Wikimedia)

Under questioning by Republican staff, Hill disclosed that Steele reached out to her for information about a mysterious individual, but she claimed she could not recall his name. She also said she couldn’t remember the month she and Steele met.

“He had contacted me because he wanted to see if I could give him a contact to some other individual, who actually I don’t even recall now, who he could approach about some business issues,” Hill told the House last year in an Oct. 14 deposition taken behind closed doors.

Congressional investigators are reviewing her testimony while taking a closer look at tax-exempt Brookings, which has emerged as a nexus in the dossier scandal.

Registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the liberal think tank is prohibited from lobbying or engaging in political campaigns. Specifically, investigators want to know if Brookings played any role in the development of the dossier.

“Their 501(c)(3) status should be audited because they are a major player in the dossier deal,” said a congressional staffer who has worked on the investigation into alleged Russian influence.

Hill, who returned to Brookings as a senior fellow in January, could not be reached for comment. Brookings did not respond to inquiries.

Ghost Employee

As a former member of Britain’s secret intelligence service, Steele hadn’t traveled to Russia in decades and had no real contacts there. So he relied entirely on Danchenko and his supposed “network of subsources,” which to its chagrin, the FBI discovered was nothing more than a “social circle.”

It soon became clear over their three days of debriefing him at the FBI’s Washington field office — held just days after Trump was sworn into office — that any Russian insights he may have had were strictly academic.

Danchenko confessed he had no inside line to the Kremlin and was “clueless” when Steele hired him in March 2016 to investigate ties between Russia and Trump and his campaign manager.

Christopher Steele, former British spy, leaving a London court this week in a libel case brought against him by a Russian businessman. Dossier source Danchenko’s drinking pals fed him a tissue of false “rumor and speculation” for pay— which Steele, in turn, further embellished with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as “intelligence.” (Credit: Victoria Jones/PA via AP)

“Christopher Steele, a former British spy who wrote a 2016 dossier about alleged links between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, leaves the High Court in London following a hearing in the libel case brought against him by Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev, Wednesday July 22, 2020. Gubarev took legal action against Steele after Buzzfeed published the” data-feed-caption=”(Victoria Jones/PA via AP)” data-feed-photo=”http://assets.realclear.com/images/51/516702_5_.jpg”>

Desperate for leads, he turned to a ragtag group of Russian and American journalists, drinking buddies (including one who’d been arrested on pornography charges) and even an old girlfriend to scare up information for his London paymaster, according to the FBI’s January 2017 interview memo, which runs 57 pages. Like him, his friends made a living hustling gossip for cash, and they fed him a tissue of false “rumor and speculation” — which Steele, in turn, further embellished with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as “intelligence.”

Instead of closing its case against Trump, however, the FBI continued to rely on the information Danchenko dictated to Steele for the dossier, even swearing to a secret court that it was credible enough to renew wiretaps for another nine months.

One of Danchenko’s sources was nothing more than an anonymous voice on the other end of a phone call that lasted 10-15 minutes.

Danchenko told the FBI he figured out later that the call-in tipster, who he said did not identify himself, was Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-born realtor in New York. In the dossier, Steele labeled this source “an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump,” and attributed Trump-Russia conspiracy revelations to him that the FBI relied on to support probable cause in all four FISA applications for warrants to spy on Trump adviser Carter Page — including the Mueller-debunked myth that he and the campaign were involved in “the DNC email hacking operation.”

Danchenko explained to agents the call came after he solicited Millian by email in late July 2016 for information for his assignment from Steele. Millian told RCI that though he did receive an email from Danchenko on July 21, he ignored the message and never called him.

“There was not any verbal communications with him,” he insisted. “I’m positive, 100%, nothing what is claimed in whatever call they invented I could have said.”

Millian provided RCI part of the email, which was written mostly in Russian. Contact information at the bottom of the email reads:

Igor Danchenko
Business Analyst
Target Labs Inc.
8320 Old Courthouse Rd, Suite 200
Vienna, VA 22182
+1-202-679-5323

At the time, Danchenko listed Target Labs, an IT recruiter run by ethnic-Russians, as an employer on his resumé. But technically, he was not a paid employee there. Thanks to a highly unusual deal Steele arranged with the company, Danchenko was able to use Target Labs as an employment front.

It turns out that in 2014, when Danchenko first started freelancing regularly for Steele after losing his job at a Washington strategic advisory firm, he set out to get a security clearance to start his own company. But drawing income from a foreign entity like Steele’s London-based company, Orbis Business Intelligence, would hurt his chances. He was desperate to find a salaried position with a U.S.-based firm.

So Steele agreed to help him broker a special “arrangement” with Target Labs, where a Russian friend of Danchenko’s worked as an executive, in which the company would bring Danchenko on board as an employee but not put him officially on the payroll. Danchenko would continue working for Steele and getting paid by Orbis with payments funneled through Target Labs. In effect, Target Labs served as the “contract vehicle” through which Danchenko was paid a monthly salary for his work for Orbis, the FBI memo reveals.

Though Danchenko had a desk available to use at Target Labs, he did most of his work for Orbis from home and did not take direction from the firm. Steele continued to give him assignments and direct his travel. Danchenko essentially worked as a ghost employee at Target Labs.

Asked about it, a Target Labs spokesman would only say that Danchenko “does not work with us anymore.”

Some veteran FBI officials worry Moscow’s foreign intelligence service may have planted disinformation with Danchenko and his network of sources in Russia. At least one of them, identified only as “Source 5” in the FBI memo, was described as having a Russian “kurator,” or handler.

“There are legions of ‘connected’ Russians purveying second- and third-hand — and often made-up — due diligence reports and private intelligence,” said former FBI assistant director Chris Swecker. “Putin’s intelligence minions use these people well to plant information.”

Danchenko has scrubbed his social media account. He told the FBI he deleted all his dossier-related electronic communications, including texts and emails, and threw out his handwritten notes from conversations with his sub-sources.

In the end, Steele walked away from the dossier debacle with at least $168,000, and Danchenko earned a large undisclosed sum.

The FBI interview memo, which is silent about Danchenko’s criminal record, was written by FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, who was called out in the Justice inspector general report for ignoring inconsistencies, contradictions, errors and outright falsehoods in the dossier he was supposed to verify.

It was also Auten’s duty to vet Steele and his sources. Auten sat in on the meetings with Danchenko and also separate ones with Steele. He witnessed firsthand the countless red flags that popped up from their testimony. Yet Auten continued to tout their reliability as sources, and give his blessing to agents to use their dossier as probable cause to renew FISA surveillance warrants to spy on Page.

As RCI first reported, Auten teaches a national security course at a Washington-area college on the ethics of such spying. (RealClearInvestigations, 7/24/2020)  (Archive)

“This appears to be the phishing email that hacked Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account. Further, The Clinton campaign’s own computer help desk thought it was real email sent by Google, even though the email address had a suspicious “googlemail.com” extension.”

The email, with the subject line “*Someone has your password,*” greeted Podesta, “Hi John” and then said, “Someone just used your password to try to sign into your Google Account john.podesta@gmail.com.” Then it offered a time stamp and an IP address in “Location: Ukraine.”

“Google stopped this sign-in attempt. You should change your password immediately.” And it then offered a link to change his password.

“This is a legitimate email,” Charles Delevan at the HFA help desk wrote to Podesta’s chief of staff, Sara Latham. “John needs to change his password immediately, and ensure that two-factor authentication is turned on his account.”

Delevan included the Gmail link that would be used to change a user’s password, but whoever changed Podesta’s password instead clicked on the shortened URL that was in the original phishing email. This is the same technique used to hack Colin Powell’s emails and the Democratic National Committee emails, according to the website Motherboard.” (Read more: CBS News, 10/28/2016) (Wikileaks – Podesta Emails)

“The Clinton campaign privately worried about the optics of having Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes host a fundraiser at their headquarters, but opted to go ahead with the event anyway after a change of venue.

At the time, Theranos and Holmes were in the process of being exposed for having faked lab results for blood tests of thousands of Americans, risking their health and lives. The venue was ultimately changed from their headquarters to a private home, but Holmes remained as host.

The worry, exposed in an email released by Wikileaks, started with a tweet by liberal activist Ezra Klein:

This seems like a bad idea: https://t.co/upXHogybhC

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) March 14, 2016

(The tweet has since been removed.)

That tweet was emailed to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta by Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden.

Podesta replied, “Great minds think alike.” He also sent the email to someone at the liberal Sandler Foundation with the email hms@sandlerfoundation.org, possibly founders Herbert and Marion Sandler, billionaire liberal donors.

That person replied, calling the event a “Big mistake,” adding, “I was at dinner tonight with someone far more knowledgeable than I am, who is certain she’s a fraud.”

The Sandler emailer continued, “The question is whether it’s possible to get out of it without creating a worse problem. The fact that the event is in Theranos HQs is much worse than if it was at her home. Someone did not do their homework.”

The venue for the event was ultimately moved out of Theranos HQ to a private home, but Holmes remained as host.

Twitter/Ruby Cramer

Theranos has since crumbled and Holmes is under investigation by the federal government for defrauding investors. (Read more: The Daily Caller, 11/08/2016)  (Archive)

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

“In a newly sworn affidavit prepared for a European court, Shokin testified that when he was fired March 2016, he was told the reason was that Biden was unhappy about the Burisma investigation. “The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified.

“On several occasions, President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company but I refused to close this investigation,” Shokin added.

Shokin certainly would have reason to hold a grudge over his firing. But his account is supported by documents from Burisma’s legal team in America, which appeared to be moving into Ukraine with intensity as Biden’s effort to fire Shokin picked up steam.

Burisma’s own accounting records show that it paid tens of thousands of dollars while Hunter Biden served on the board of an American lobbying and public relations firm, Blue Star Strategies, run by Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, who both served in President Bill Clinton’s administration.

Just days before Biden forced Shokin’s firing, Painter met with the No. 2 official at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington and asked to meet officials in Kiev around the same time that Joe Biden visited there. Ukrainian embassy employee Oksana Shulyar emailed Painter afterward: “With regards to the meetings in Kiev, I suggest that you wait until the next week when there is an expected vote of the government’s reshuffle.”

Ukraine Embassy, Washington, D.C. (Credit: public domain)

Ukraine’s Washington embassy confirmed the conversations between Shulyar and Painter but said the reference to a shakeup in the Ukrainian government was not specifically referring to Shokin’s firing or anything to do with Burisma.

Painter then asked one of the Ukraine embassy’s workers to open the door for meetings with Ukraine’s prosecutors about the Burisma investigation, the memos show. Eventually, Blue Star would pay that Ukrainian official money for his help with the prosecutor’s office.” (The Hill, 9/26/2019)  (Archive)

On [March] 23, 2016, DOJ prosecutor Lisa Holtyn emails Bruce Ohr to see if he could connect her as well as prosecutors Joe Wheatley and Ivana Nizich with his wife, Nellie Ohr, as she could be a “great resource” for them. He replies, “I’m sure Nellie would be delighted to speak with them. I’m pretty sure there is no conflict of interest since they aren’t paying her or anything like that.” Congressman Mark Meadows suggested this email shows that Nellie Ohr “knowingly provided false testimony” to Congress she had no role in DOJ investigations.

(A snippet of Lisa Holtyn’s email and Bruce Ohr’s response)

(Judicial Watch, 8/14/2019)

“Should the American public be allowed to view the draft indictment of Hillary Clinton over the Whitewater case? Judicial Watch, the organization founded to promote transparency in government, has sued to make the allegations against her public.

According to Judicial Watch:

The draft indictments relate to allegations that Clinton provided false information and withheld evidence from federal investigators to conceal her involvement with the defunct Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, the collapse of which lead to multiple criminal convictions. Clinton provided legal representation to Madison Guaranty as an attorney at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas. Clinton’s Rose Law Firm billing records, long sought by prosecutors, were found in the private quarters of the White House shortly after an important statute of limitations had expired.

But the National Archives argues that Clinton’s privacy must be protected in this instance.

“While there may be a scintilla of public interest in these documents since Mrs. Clinton is presently a Democratic presidential candidate, that fact alone is not a cognizable public interest under FOIA, as disclosure of the draft indictments would not shed light on what the government is up to,” a statement from the organization read.

The draft indictment would open up new questions about the Whitewater case, which dogged the Clintons in the 1990’s and again remind the public of Hillary’s scandalous efforts to cover up politically damaging stories. Judicial Watch has sued the National Archives for the documents, filing a brief in February. The organization has already forced the release 246 pages of previously undisclosed Office of Independent Counsel internal memos related to the case.

“It is absurd for the Obama administration to argue that Hillary Clinton’s privacy would keep a draft indictment from the American public,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “One can’t help but conclude that the Obama administration is doing a political favor for Hillary Clinton at the expense of the public’s right to know about whether prosecutors believed she may have committed federal crimes.” (Breitbart, 3/28/2016)  (Archive)

Ukraine Parliament (Credit: public domain)

“Bowing to pressure from international donors, the Ukrainian Parliament voted on Tuesday to remove a prosecutor general who had clung to power for months despite visible signs of corruption.

But in a be-careful-what-you-wish-for moment, veteran observers of Ukrainian politics said that the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, had played an important role in balancing competing political interests, helping maintain stability during a treacherous era in the divided country’s history.

The United States and other Western nations had for months called for the ousting of Mr. Shokin, who was widely criticized for turning a blind eye to corrupt practices and for defending the interests of a venal and entrenched elite. He was one of several political figures in Kiev whom reformers and Western diplomats saw as a worrying indicator of a return to past corrupt practices, two years after a revolution that was supposed to put a stop to self-dealing by those in power.” (Read more: The New York Times, 3/29/2016)  (Archive)

Paul Manafort (Credit: ABC News)

“The Trump campaign announced it had brought on Manafort, a veteran political strategist, to help the real estate mogul prevent delegates from bolting and choosing another nominee at the Republican National Convention in July. Although Trump led the Republican field in both votes and delegates, he was still unpopular among many Republicans, and it was unclear if he would end up with the necessary delegates to prevent a floor fight at the convention. Manafort was picked in part because he was instrumental in Gerald Ford’s successful floor fight at the 1976 convention.

“Paul is a great asset and an important addition as we consolidate the tremendous support we have received in the primaries,” Trump said in a statement on March 29, 2016.

Manafort quickly got to work, ensuring the Trump campaign had a presence during the selection process and showing up to the Republican National Committee’s spring meeting in April.”

(…) “Manafort was later promoted from convention manager to campaign chairman and chief strategist. Manafort told ABC News that the Republican establishment was gathering behind Trump and acknowledging his likely nomination. “There’s a growing number of people supporting us,” he said. “They all recognize now that we definitely can win.”

One month later, Manafort’s influence within the campaign appeared even more cemented after Trump fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, with whom Manafort had a well-documented power struggle.” (Fortune, 3/22/2017)

“In a March 8, 2018, op-ed for The Daily Caller titled “The Ever-Changing ‘Russia Narrative’ Is False Public Manipulation,” Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska noted how “the disintegration of evidence-based journalism permits a surprisingly small number of individuals to destroy bilateral or multilateral relations.”

Daniel Jones appears in an interview with the Guardian on September 9, 2016. (Credit: The Guardian)

Deripaska then described an unusual meeting that took place on March 16, 2017, between his lawyer and a former intelligence staffer for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) named Dan Jones:

“Daniel Jones—himself a team member of Fusion GPS, self-described former FBI agent and, as we now know from the media, an ex-Feinstein staffer—met with my lawyer, Adam Waldman, and described Fusion as a ‘shadow media organization helping the government,’ funded by a ‘group of Silicon Valley billionaires and George Soros.’”

At the time, Deripaska’s op-ed was largely ignored, or at least not viewed with great sincerity. Political commentary from Russian oligarchs isn’t in the greatest demand, domestically.

But just one week later, the House final report on Russia was made public. On page 112 of the report, there is a reference to “post-election anti-Trump research by Steele and/or Fusion GPS” along with a footnote. Contained in the footnote on page 113, is the following:

“In late March 2017, Jones met with FBI regarding PQG [Penn Quarter Group], which he described as ‘exposing foreign influence in Western elections.’ [redacted—likely Jones] told FBI that PQG was being funded by 7 to 10 wealthy donors located primarily in New York and California, who provided approximately $50 million. [redacted—likely Jones] further stated that PQG had secured the services of Steele, his associate [redacted—likely Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson], and Fusion GPS to continue exposing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.”

This footnote, and its potential significance, was first highlighted in an April 27 article by The Federalist.

Jones, who had previously worked as a senior intelligence staffer for Feinstein, founded PQG in the spring of 2016.

In his interview with the FBI, Jones made mention of “7 to 10 wealthy donors located primarily in New York and California, who provided approximately $50 million” in funding to PQG. But unlike Deripaska, Jones makes no known reference to financial involvement from George Soros.

However, a recent article in the Washington Post revealed that at least some of the money received by Jones’ PQG did come from Soros through an intermediary. Michael Vachon, a spokesman for Soros, disclosed to Washington Post reporter David Ignatius that Soros had made a grant to the Democracy Integrity Project which, in turn, used Fusion GPS as a contractor.

Jones isn’t referred to by name in the article—he is described only as “an associate of Fusion.” Nor is the underlying identity of Democracy Integrity Project disclosed in the Washington Post article.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 10/01/2018)