Email/Dossier/Govt Corruption Investigations

September 2021 – Judge assigned to Sussmann case is married to Lisa Page’s attorney

Merrick Garland, left, administers the oath to Christopher Cooper, right, with wife Amy Jeffress and sons, center, on July 11, 2014. Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/The National Law Journal)

(…) Current and former officials say that federal District Court Judge Christopher Cooper’s professional and personal relationships with top Democrats and figures behind the FBI’s Trump investigation should force his recusal. Cooper’s wife, for instance, represents disgraced FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who oversaw the FBI’s Trump probe.

(…) Appointed to the bench by Obama in 2013, Cooper is well-connected in Democratic party legal circles. Garland officiated his 1999 wedding to Amy Jeffress.

Both Cooper and Jeffress worked at DOJ in the Obama administration. He was part of the 2008 presidential transition team, and she was the national security counselor for Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder.

Recently Jeffress wrote approvingly of Attorney General Garland’s focus on “domestic terrorism.” Many Republicans see the phrase as coded language for targeting Trump supporters.

Her most famous client, former FBI lawyer Page, discussed via text message with her paramour, FBI agent Peter Strzok, how they’d stop Trump from becoming president. Page and Strzok were part of the FBI team that spied on the 2016 Trump campaign.

As evidence to obtain the spy warrant, the FBI used a dossier of memos falsely alleging Trump ties to Russia that was paid for by the Clinton campaign. Sussman and Page then participated in the same Clinton-funded initiative to smear her 2016 opponent and use false evidence to spy on his campaign.

Former U.S. officials say that putting Sussmann in front of Jeffress’ husband represents a clear conflict of interest. (Read more: Just the News, 9/19/2021)  (Archive) 

The Washington Times raises a few good questions about the possible conflict of interest:

(…) The questions that come to mind as to whether Judge Cooper should recuse himself from the Sussmann case are common sense.

Is Lisa Page a witness in the Sussmann case?

Did Ms. Page or Mr. Strzok meet with Mr. Sussmann?

Did Mr. Baker discuss his meeting with Mr. Sussmann with Ms. Page?

Was Ms. Page involved in setting up Mr. Baker’s meeting with Mr. Sussmann?

Has Special Counsel Durham’s office interviewed Ms. Page?

Has Special Counsel Durham reviewed testimony Ms. Page has given in other investigations?

These are all matters that Ms. Page’s attorney would be involved in, and the American people deserve answers. Many believe that if this were a case involving a Republican-appointed judge in a trial concerning a Republican, a recusal would have been demanded and carried out long ago. The corporate mainstream media’s refusal to cover this double standard is just the latest failure in a parade of miscalculations involving their coverage of the Trump-Russia lie.

There should be a public debate about whether it is proper for Judge Cooper to preside in the case of the United States v. Michael Sussmann. To the average American, these connections raise concerns about whether there is one set of rules in our justice system for elitists and another set of rules for everyone else. After everything our country has endured since the 2016 election, all in the name of “getting” Mr. Trump by any means necessary, from the Mueller investigation to the Michael Flynn debacle, to the Carter Page FISA warrants, to Rep. Adam Schiff’s impeachment flop, it’s a good time for some honesty and transparency. That would help restore some trust.

September 16, 2021 – Jake Sullivan figures prominently in Durham’s investigation re an alleged 2016 campaign scheme to use FBI and CIA against Trump

Biden’s appointee as National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, praised the president-elect for his choices on his national security team and noted that he has “tasked us with reimagining our national security” to deal with the nation’s current crises on Nov. 24, 2020. (Credit: NBC News clip)

“White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan figures prominently in a grand jury investigation run by Special Counsel John Durham into an alleged 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign scheme to use both the FBI and CIA to tar Donald Trump as a colluder with Russia, according to people familiar with the criminal probe, which they say has broadened into a conspiracy case.

Sullivan is facing scrutiny, sources say, over potentially false statements he made about his involvement in the effort. As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Last week, Michael A. Sussmann, a partner in Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements to the FBI about his clients and their motives behind planting the rumor, at the highest levels of the FBI, of a secret Trump-Russia server.

The grand jury indicated in its lengthy indictment that several people were involved in the alleged conspiracy to mislead the FBI and trigger an investigation of the Republican presidential candidate — including Sullivan, who was described by his campaign position but not identified by name.

The Clinton campaign project, these sources say, also involved compiling a “digital dossier” on several Trump campaign officials – including Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page. This effort exploited highly sensitive, nonpublic Internet data related to their personal email communications and web-browsing, known as Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses.

General Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page (Credit: public domain)

To mine the data, the Clinton campaign enlisted a team of Beltway computer contractors as well a university researchers with security clearance who often collaborate with the FBI and the intelligence community. They worked from a five-page campaign document called the “Trump Associates List.”

The tech group also pulled logs purportedly from servers for a Russian bank and Trump Tower, and the campaign provided the data to the FBI on two thumb drives, along with three “white papers” that claimed the data indicated the Trump campaign was secretly communicating with Moscow through a server in Trump Tower and the Alfa Bank in Russia. Based on the material, the FBI opened at least one investigation, adding to several others it had already initiated targeting the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016.

The indictment states that Sussmann, as well as the cyber experts recruited for the operation, “coordinated with representatives and agents of the Clinton campaign with regard to the data and written materials that Sussmann gave to the FBI and the media.”

One of those campaign agents was Sullivan, according to emails Durham obtained. On Sept. 15, 2016 – just four days before Sussmann handed off the materials to the FBI – Marc Elias, his law partner and fellow Democratic Party operative, “exchanged emails with the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser concerning the Russian bank allegations,” as well as with other top campaign officials, the indictment states.

The sources close to the case confirmed the “foreign policy adviser” referenced by title is Sullivan. They say he was briefed on the development of the opposition-research materials tying Trump to Alfa Bank, and was aware of the participants in the project. These included the Washington opposition-research group Fusion GPS, which worked for the Clinton campaign as a paid agent and helped gather dirt on Alfa Bank and draft the materials Elias discussed with Sullivan, the materials Sussmann would later submit to the FBI. Fusion researchers were in regular contact with both Sussmann and Elias about the project in the summer and fall of 2016. Sullivan also personally met with Elias, who briefed him on Fusion’s opposition research, according to the sources.

Sullivan maintained in congressional testimony in December 2017 that he didn’t know of Fusion’s involvement in the Alfa Bank opposition research. In the same closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, he also denied knowing anything about Fusion in 2016 or who was conducting the opposition research for the campaign.

“Marc [Elias] … would occasionally give us updates on the opposition research they were conducting, but I didn’t know what the nature of that effort was – inside effort, outside effort, who was funding it, who was doing it, anything like that,” Sullivan stated under oath.

Jake Sullivan’s December 2017 House testimony may put him in perjury jeopardy.
(Credit: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence)

Sullivan also testified he didn’t know that Perkins Coie, the law firm where Elias and Sussmann were partners, was working for the Clinton campaign until October 2017, when it was reported in the media as part of stories revealing the campaign’s contract with Fusion, which also produced the so-called Steele dossier. Sullivan maintained he didn’t even know that the politically prominent Elias worked for Perkins Coie, a well-known Democratic law firm. Major media stories from 2016 routinely identified Elias as “general counsel for the Clinton campaign” and a “partner at Perkins Coie.”

“To be honest with you, Marc wears a tremendous number of hats, so I wasn’t sure who he was representing,” Sullivan testified. “I sort of thought he was, you know, just talking to us as, you know, a fellow traveler in this — in this campaign effort.” (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 9/23/2021)  (Archive)

September 16, 2021 – Durham includes a teasing excerpt from Sussmann’s December 2017 Congressional testimony regarding “the client”…who is it?

Michael Sussmann (Credit: public domain)

“…The entire exchange raises the question: Who, very precisely, is the “client” that Sussmann refers to? His billing for the described activities—which include his meeting with the FBI’s Baker—went to the Clinton Campaign. But the Clinton Campaign can’t engage in conversations with Sussmann. So who was the person he spoke with? Was it Marc Elias, the General Counsel for the Clinton Campaign? But Elias would not strictly speaking have been his “client”. He would have been his client’s lawyer. Which leads to the question, When Sussmann refers to his “client”, is he referring to Hillary Clinton in person?

Notice that at the beginning Sussmann openly states that his meeting with Baker was at the direction of his “client”. Later he tries to qualify that, but only in the sense that he and his “client” are on the same page so “direction” wasn’t really necessary.

Q: When you decided to engage the two principals, one [the FBI’s Baker] in September, [2016] and the general counsel of “Agency-2” in December, you were doing that on your own volition, based on information another client provided you. Is that correct?

A: No. [ He was not simply acting on his own.]

Q: So what was — so did your client direct you to have those conversations?

A: Yes. [He was acting at the explicit direction of his client in contacting Baker.]

Q: Okay. And your client also was witting of you going to [Agency-2] in February to disclose the information that individual had provided you?

A: Yes. [In February, 2017, with Trump in the WH, Sussmann is still working the Alfa Bank hoax at the direction of this client.]

…

Q: Okay. I want to ask you, so you mentioned that your client directed you to have these engagements with the FBI and [redacted] and to disseminate the information that client provided you. Is that correct?

A: Well, I apologize for the double negative. It isn’t not correct, but when you say my client directed me, we had a conversation, as lawyers do with their clients, about client needs and objectives and the best course to take for a client. And so it may have been a decision that we came to together. I mean, I don’t want to imply that I was sort of directed to do something against my better judgment or that we were in any sort of conflict, but this was — I think it’s most accurate to say it was done on behalf of my client.

Unfortunately, Durham only presents this tantalizing exchange as evidence that Sussmann directly contradicted—to Congress—what he had said to Baker.” (Read more: Meaning In History, 9/16/2021)  (Archive)

September 16, 2021 – John Durham indicts Clinton attorney, Michael Sussmann, for lying to the FBI

Michael Sussmann (Credit: Chalet Reports)

“A grand jury has indicted Michael Sussmann, the lawyer accused of making false statements during the 2016 presidential campaign to slander then-candidate Donald Trump in the final months of the election.

Sussmann, the indictment charges, “lied about the capacity in which he was providing … allegations to the FBI” of potential cyber links between a Russian bank and a company owned by former president Donald Trump.

Durham is pursuing a prosecutorial theory that Sussmann was secretly representing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, which was a client of Sussmann’s firm, these people said. –Washington Post

Notably, this is far from over as Special Counsel Durham’s office pointed out in the statement that the investigation is “ongoing.” (Read more: Zero Hedge, 9/16/2021) (Archive)

Highlights from the Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross (and others):

(Timeline editor’s note: We will be creating several timeline entries to cover the wealth of information in the 27-page indictment. You can save Michael Sussmann’s tag to keep up with what is added.)

September 16, 2021 – Opinion: Sussman’s indictment demonstrates how Hillary Clinton is the most systemically manipulative politician of our lifetime

A close-up of Clinton is captured during the second 2016 presidential debate on October 9, 2016. (Credit: public domain)

“The Indictment of Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman for allegedly lying to the FBI has a lot of people grumbling about how long it took prosecutor John Durham to finally come up with an indictment of someone with regard to the Russia collusion hoax. And even then, while Sussman was an important lawyer at an important Democrat operative law firm, his indictment has a “that’s it?” feel to it.

But, the 27-page Indictment is a wealth of information, and hopefully a roadmap to wider and more substantial prosecutions (you can’t take my hope away!). What the indictment demonstrates is that the Russia collusion claim leveled against Donald Trump and the Trump campaign was a fabrication of Hillary Clinton operatives who peddled the fraud to the media and FBI, allowing Clinton to use the media reports in the campaign against Trump.

Much like the fabricated Steele Dossier, also paid for and arranged by Clinton operatives, Hillary Clinton and Clintonworld perpetrated a massive fraud on the American public which not only manipulated the election process but also froze the Trump presidency and nearly paralyzed the nation politically for years.

We have had some pretty terrible politicians in our lifetime, and it’s always dangerous to say “the worst” — but the Russia collusion hoax fabricated by Hillary Clinton operatives proves beyond little doubt that Hillary Clinton is the most systemically manipulative politician of our lifetime. (Read more: Legal Insurrection, 9/16/2021) (Archive)

September 16, 2021 – A look at Tech Executive 1 mentioned in Durham’s indictment of Michael Sussmann

(…) the indictment alleges, Sussmann was working for the Clinton campaign and another client — an unidentified cyber expert and executive (Tech Executive-1) — who was expecting to get an important government cybersecurity job if Clinton was elected. (The executive made clear that he — the indictment describes a he — had no interest in working for Trump.)

What Durham describes in the indictment will confirm many people in their most cynical perceptions of a sinister Washington deep state. Tech Executive-1 owned Internet companies that offered Domain Name Service “resolution services.” The indictment explains that these involve the lucrative business of translating recognizable Internet domain names (e.g., http://www.google.com) to numerical IP addresses (e.g. 123.456.7.89.). These private companies have arrangements with the government that provide them with access to a great deal of nonpublic information about Internet traffic.

The government provides this privileged access because the companies are supposed to help with cybersecurity. But Tech Executive-1 and Perkins Coie are said to have exploited this access for political purposes.

Marc Elias (Credit: Getty Images)

Tech Executive-1 was having contact with Sussmann and another Perkins Coie lawyer (who is not identified in the indictment, but appears to be Marc Elias, who was the main lawyer at the firm for Clinton and the DNC), and with what is identified as a “U.S. investigative firm.” That firm appears to be Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson’s oppo-research outfit that was retained by Perkins Coie, on behalf of the Clinton campaign, to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump — the exercise that resulted in the farcical “Steele Dossier,” generated principally by Christopher Steele, the former British spy recruited by Simpson for that purpose.

In a nutshell, then, people closely connected to the Clinton campaign use privileged access to nonpublic information for political purposes. They concoct it into a political narrative that they know is baseless but can be convincingly spun to suggest Trump is in cahoots with Putin. They then simultaneously peddle that story line to the media and the FBI — the latter of which opens an investigation of Trump because the Clinton team, in this instance Sussmann, misrepresents its intentions. Sussmann was supposedly bringing this alarming “evidence” to the FBI not for political purposes but because he and his associates were well-meaning citizens concerned about national security. Naturally in this cozy world, Sussmann is a former Department of Justice cybersecurity official who traded on his long-standing professional relationship with Baker, the Bureau’s lawyer.

The indictment details that researchers at Tech Executive-1’s companies were very uncomfortable being tasked to run extensive queries about Trump and his campaign in their databases, but they did it because Tech Executive-1 was a powerful person. The researchers also highlighted significant weaknesses in the Trump–Russia narrative that they were being asked to weave, to the point that even Tech Executive-1 acknowledged it was a “red herring.” But because the objective was to craft a political theme that would damage Trump, rather than to prove an actual national-security peril, this information was kept from the government.” (Read more: The National Review, 9/16/2021)  (Archive)

Researcher @FOOL_NELSON tweets compelling information that suggest who Tech Executive 1 could be:

Rodney Joffe (Credit: Neustar)

September 16, 2021 – Sussmann billed the Clinton campaign for coordinating and communicating Alfa Bank allegations

On pages 6 and 7 of the Sussmann indictment,  “Tech Executive-1” is most likely Rodney Joffe of Neustar and is now a target of the investigation.  “Campaign Lawyer-1” is Marc Elias who until recently was a partner with Perkins Coie. The “U.S. Investigative Firm” is probably Fusion GPS.

Sussman Indictment, paragraph 20, page 6

Sussmann indictment, page 7

September 16, 2021 – Sussmann’s indictment names members of the Clinton campaign staff involved in Alfa Bank allegations

From the Sussmann indictment, pages 16 and 17 (paragraph e in particular),  Hillary’s campaign manager was Robby Mook. Jennifer Palmieri was Hillary’s communications director, and Jake Sullivan was Hillary’s foreign policy advisor.

Sussman Indictment, page 16

Sussman indictment, page 17

September 16, 2021 – The Atlantic’s Franklin Foer allegedly identified as “Reporter-2” in the Sussmann indictment

Franklin Foer (Credit: Curtis Brown)

“I have a column today in the Hill on the indictment of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann by Special Counsel John Durham. The indictment fills in a great number of gaps on one of the Russian collusion allegations pushed by the Clinton campaign: Alpha bank. Sussman and others reportedly pushed the implausible claim that the Russian bank served as a conduit for communications between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. The indictment removes the identity of key actors like a “Tech Executive” who used his connections with an Internet company to help the Clinton campaign (and said he was promised a top cyber security position in the widely anticipated Clinton Administration). One of those figures however may have been identified: “Reporter-2.” Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer wrote an article for Slate that seems to track the account of the indictment and, as such, raises questions over his role as a conduit for the Clinton campaign’s effort to spread the false story.

The indictment discusses how Fusion GPS pushed for the publication of the story, telling Foer that it was “time to hurry” on the story.:

“The Investigative Firm Employee’s email stated, ‘time to hurry’ suggesting that Reporter-2 should hurry to publish an article regarding the Russian Bank-1 allegations. In response, Reporter-2 emailed to the Investigative Firm Employee a draft article regarding the Russian Bank-1 allegations, along with the cover message: ‘Here’s the first 2500 words.’”

The indictment states Reporter-2 published the article “on or about the following day, October, 31, 2016.” That is when Slate published a piece written by Foer headlined, “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?”  The story then was pushed by the Clinton campaign.

Foer has not addressed this close coordination with Fusion, including the showing of an advanced copy of his article. He later stated the following in the Atlantic:

“Every article is an exercise in cost-benefit analysis; each act of publication entails a risk of getting it wrong, and sometimes events force journalists to assume greater risk than they would in other circumstances. Before I published the server story, I asked myself a fairly corny question: How would I sleep the next week if Donald Trump were elected president, knowing that I had sat on a potentially important piece of information? In the end, Trump was elected president, and I still slept badly.” 

(Read more: Jonathan Turley, 9/18/2021)  (Archive)

September 16, 2021 – Sussmann indictment states he repeated his false statement to another government agency outside of DC

We won’t speculate who the other government agency is but will note this sentence in the Sussmann indictment:

“Sussmann met with two “Agency-2” employees (“Employee-1” and “Employee-2″) at a location outside the District of Columbia.” …and he again falsely claimed that, “he was not representing a particular client.”

Sussmann indictment, Page 23

Sussman indictment, Page 24

Sussmann indictment, Pages 24-25

September 16, 2021 – Durham probes pentagon computer contractors in anti-Trump conspiracy

Michael Sussmann, Clinton campaign lawyer: John Durham’s indictment against him cites eight who allegedly conspired with him.
(Credit: Perkins Coie)

Cybersecurity experts who held lucrative Pentagon and homeland security contracts and high-level security clearances are under investigation for potentially abusing their government privileges to aid a 2016 Clinton campaign plot to falsely link Donald Trump to Russia and trigger an FBI investigation of him and his campaign, according to several sources familiar with the work of Special Counsel John Durham.

Durham is investigating whether they were involved in a scheme to misuse sensitive, nonpublic Internet data, which they had access to through their government contracts, to dredge up derogatory information on Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign in 2016 and again in 2017, sources say — political dirt that sent FBI investigators on a wild goose chase. Prosecutors are also investigating whether some of the data presented to the FBI was faked or forged.

These sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive law enforcement matter, said Durham’s investigators have subpoenaed the contractors to turn over documents and testify before a federal grand jury hearing the case. The investigators are exploring potential criminal charges including giving false information to federal agents and defrauding the government, the sources said.

(…) The sources familiar with the probe have confirmed that the leader of the team of contractors was Rodney L. Joffe, who has regularly advised the Biden White House on cybersecurity and infrastructure policies. Until last month he was the chief cybersecurity officer at Washington tech contractor Neustar Inc., which federal civil court records show was a longtime client of Sussmann at Perkins Coie, a prominent Democratic law firm recently subpoenaed by Durham. Joffe, 66, has not been charged with a crime.

Neustar has removed Joffe’s blog posts from its website. “He no longer works for us,” a spokeswoman said.

A powerful and influential player in the tech world, Joffe tasked a group of computer contractors connected to the Georgia Institute of Technology with finding “anything” in Internet data that would link Trump to Russia and make Democratic “VIPs happy,” according to an August 2016 email Joffe sent to the researchers. The next month, the group accused Trump of maintaining secret backchannel communications to the Kremlin through the email servers of Russia-based Alfa Bank. Those accusations were later determined to be false by the FBI, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Justice Department inspector general and a Senate intelligence panel.

Joffe’s lawyer has described his client as “apolitical.” He said Joffe brought Sussmann information about Trump he believed to be true out of concern for the nation.

Steven Tyrrell, a white-collar criminal defense attorney specializing in fraud cases, has confirmed that his client Joffe is the person referred to as “Tech Executive-1” throughout the Sussmann indictment. “Tech Executive-1 exploited his access to nonpublic data at multiple Internet companies to conduct opposition research concerning Trump,” Durham’s grand jury stated. “In furtherance of these efforts, [Joffe] had enlisted, and was continuing to enlist, the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university [Georgia Tech] who were receiving and analyzing Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract.”

Georgia Institute of Technology (Credit: Georgia Tech University)

The indictment also alleges that the computer scientists knew the Internet data they compiled was innocuous but sent it to the FBI anyway, sending agents down a dead end: “Sussmann, [Joffe] and [Perkins Coie] had coordinated, and were continuing to coordinate, with representatives and agents of the Clinton campaign with regard to the data and written materials that Sussmann gave to the FBI and the media.”

Maggie Goodlander: Jake Sullivan’s wife worked for Attorney General Merrick Garland as a law clerk when he was a federal judge. That could create a conflict for Garland, who controls the purse strings to Durham’s investigation. (Credit: LinkedIn)

One of the campaign representatives with whom Joffe coordinated was Jake Sullivan, who was acting as Clinton’s foreign policy adviser, as RealClearInvestigations first reported. Now serving in the White House as President Biden’s national security adviser, Sullivan is under scrutiny for statements he made under oath to Congress about his knowledge of the Trump-Alfa research project. In a potential conflict of interest, Attorney General Merrick Garland employed Sullivan’s wife Maggie as a law clerk when he was a federal judge. Garland controls the purse strings to Durham’s investigation and whether his final report will be released to the public.

At the time, Joffe was advising President Obama on security matters and positioning himself for a top cybersecurity post in an anticipated Clinton administration. “I was tentatively offered the top [cybersecurity] job by the Democrats when it looked like they’d win,” he revealed in a November 2016 email obtained by prosecutors.

Meanwhile, the Georgia Tech researchers were vying for a $17 million Pentagon contract to research cybersecurity, which they landed in November 2016, federal documents show.

Government funding in hand, they continued mining nonpublic data on Trump after he took office in 2017 — as Sussmann, Sullivan and other former Clinton campaign officials renewed their effort to connect Trump to Alfa Bank. This time, they enlisted former FBI analyst-turned-Democratic-operative, Dan Jones, to re-engage the FBI, while Sussmann attempted to get the CIA interested in the Internet data, as RCI first reported. Investigators have also subpoenaed Jones, who did not respond to requests for comment.

(…) Tyrrell insisted that Joffe had “no idea [Sussmann’s] firm represented the Clinton campaign,” even though he worked closely with Sussmann and another well-known campaign lawyer, Marc Elias — as well as with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, an opposition-research firm hired by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump in 2016. He added that his client “felt it was his patriotic duty to share [the report on Trump] with the FBI.”

However, Durham’s investigation uncovered emails revealing that Joffe knew the narrative they were creating about Trump having a secret hotline to Russian President Vladimir Putin was tenuous at best. In fact, Joffe himself called the data used to back up the narrative a “red herring.” In another email, Joffe said he had been promised a high post if Clinton were elected, suggesting he may have had a personal motivation to make a sinister connection between Russia and Trump. He added that he had no interest working for Trump: “I definitely would not take the job under Trump.”

“Joffe was doing what he was doing to get that plum job,” former FBI counterintelligence official Mark Wauck said in an interview. “And Sussmann was working with Joffe because Joffe was needed for the Clinton campaign’s ‘confidential project,’ ” which was the term Sussman used to describe their data research in billing records.

Joffe advised President Obama on security matters and was positioning himself for a top cybersecurity post in an anticipated Clinton administration. (Credit: Messaging Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group)

At the time, Joffe was a volunteer cybersecurity adviser to Obama and visited the White House several times during his administration, Secret Service entrance logs show. In 2013, then-FBI Director James Comey gave him an award recognizing his work helping agents investigate a major cybersecurity case.

Joffe is the “Max” quoted in media articles promoting the secret cyber plot targeting Trump, a code name likely given him by Simpson, who has a son named Max. The stories described “Max” as a “John McCain Republican.” In 2017, Joffe, who spent much of his career in the late McCain’s home state of Arizona before moving to Washington, helped rekindle the Trump-Alfa tale by plumbing more data and helping feed the information to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which McCain chaired.

Joffe’s boss during the 2016 campaign was then-Neustar President Lisa Hook, a major Democratic Party donor who publicly endorsed Clinton and contributed to her campaigns. Records show her contributions to Democrats, including Joe Biden and Obama, total more than $249,000. In 2011, Obama appointed Hook to his National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.

April Lorenzen, aka “Tea Leaves”: Emails Durham uncovered reveal that she actually discussed “faking” Internet traffic. (Credit: AprilLorenzen.com)

(…) Joffe worked closely with another top computer scientist assigned to the Alfa project, who has used the pseudonym “Tea Leaves,” as well as masculine pronouns, in media stories to disguise her identity. The operative has been identified by her attorney as April D. Lorenzen, who supplied so-called Domain Name System (or DNS) logs from proprietary holdings — the foundation for the whole conspiracy charge — and helped compile them for the spurious report that was fed to the FBI, according to the indictment.

A registered Democrat, Lorenzen was tasked by Joffe with making a Trump connection from the data along with the researchers from Georgia Tech, where she has worked as a guest researcher since 2007.

Identified as “Originator-1” in the Durham indictment, she, like her colleague Joffe, is a key subject of the investigation and faces a host of legal issues, the sources close to the case said. Emails the investigators uncovered reveal that Lorenzen discussed “faking” Internet traffic with the Georgia Tech researchers, although the context of her remarks are unclear.

Prosecutors suggested Lorenzen was trying to create an “inference” of Trump-Russia communications from DNS data that wasn’t there.

The DNS system acts as the phonebook of the Internet, translating domain names for emails and websites into IP (Internet Protocol) addresses in order for Web browsers to easily interact. The traffic leaves a record known as DNS “lookups,” which is basically the pinging back and forth between computer servers.

Lorenzen has retained white-collar criminal defense lawyer Michael J. Connolly of Boston, who said in a statement that Lorenzen was acting in the interest of national security, not politics, and “any suggestion that she engaged in wrongdoing is unequivocally false.”

She specializes in identifying “spoofed domains” used for email phishing scams.

In her bio, Lorenzen also said she currently serves “as the principal investigator for a critical infrastructure supply-chain cybersecurity notification research project.” She did not provide further details about the project. However, she regularly trains and briefs federal law enforcement agencies about cybersecurity issues.

L. Jean Camp, computer science professor: Helped propagate the Trump-Alfa Bank conspiracy theory in the media. (Credit: Indiana.edu)

A colleague of Lorenzen who features prominently in the project to link Trump to the Russian bank, but who is not referenced in the indictment, is L. Jean Camp, an Indiana University computer science professor who posted the dodgy data on her website and helped propagate the conspiracy theory in the media. “This person has technical authority and access to data,” she said of “Tea Leaves,” the originator of the data, vouching for her friend Lorenzen while hiding her identity.

Camp is a Democratic activist and major Hillary Clinton booster and donor. Federal campaign records show she contributed at least $5,910 to Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 campaigns, including thousands of dollars in donations around the time she and the Clinton campaign were peddling the Trump-Alfa conspiracy theory.

Camp called for a full-blown FBI investigation into the data she pushed in the media. When the FBI dropped the case in February 2017, Camp lashed out at the bureau for closing the Trump email probe after reopening the Clinton email case. In a March 2017 tweet, she fumed, “Why did FBI kill this story before election to focus on Her Emails?” She also called for people to “join the resistance” against Trump.

Paul Vixie (Credit: Medium)

Another “computer scientist” tied to the project was Paul Vixie, a colleague of Joffe who, like Joffe, gave $250 in 2000 to Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico, who was close to the late Sen. John McCain, who feuded with Trump, federal campaign records show. Vixie, who reviewed the DNS logs and suggested in the media that Trump and Alfa Bank were engaged in a “criminal syndicate,” supported Clinton’s run for president and bashed Trump on Twitter.

“Hillary presented herself as an experienced politician who is prepared to assume the presidency,” he tweeted in 2016. He called Trump a “fake Republican” who “will finish out his life in prison,” he asserted in a 2020 tweet.

Faked Evidence?

The sources familiar with the investigation note that Durham is also using the grand jury to probe whether some of the Internet data files the Clinton campaign shopped to the FBI were forged or fabricated to create the appearance of suspicious Internet communications between the Russian bank and Trump.

Providing the FBI false evidence is a crime. Former assistant FBI director Chris Swecker told RCI that statutes enforcing mail and wire fraud may be invoked as part of the “criminal conspiracy case” Durham is building.

The materials Sussmann provided bureau headquarters in September 2016, in the heat of the presidential race, included two thumb drives containing DNS logs that Sussmann and Joffe claimed showed patterns of covert email communications between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, according to the indictment.

The authenticity of the DNS lookup records Sussmann presented to the FBI in the electronic files, along with three “white papers” portraying innocuous marketing pinging between Alfa and Trump servers as a nefarious Russian backchannel, has been called into question by several sources.

Alfa Bank, which also operates in the U.S., commissioned two studies that found the DNS data compiled by Joffe and his computer operatives were formatted differently than the bank server’s DNS logs, and one study posited that the DNS activity may have been “artificially created.”

gatech,edu

Manos Antonakakis: One of two Georgia Tech researchers cited by Durham in his indictment. (Credit: gatech.edu)

Also, independent cyber forensics experts found that the emails released by researchers bore timestamps that did not match up with actual activity on the servers, suggesting they may have been altered. The Florida-based marketing firm Cendyn, which administered the alleged Trump server (which was owned by a third-party tech firm and housed in Pennsylvania, not New York), reported its device sent its last marketing email in March 2016, but the DNS logs provided by computer researchers claimed to show a May-September window of high-volume traffic.

Experts have also noted that the DNS logs Sussmann and his group presented as evidence to the FBI had been pasted into a text file, where they could have been edited.

In the Sussmann indictment, the grand jury described the DNS logs as appearing to be real, but not necessarily so. For instance, it noted that one of the computer researchers — cited as “Tea Leaves,” or Lorenzen — had “assembled purported DNS data reflecting apparent DNS lookups between [the] Russian bank and [a Trump] email domain.” The caveats “purported” and “apparent” indicate Durham and his investigators may be skeptical the data are real.

Also, the indictment stated that Joffe “shared certain results of these data searches and analysis” with Sussmann for the FBI to investigate, suggesting he may have cherry-picked the data to fit a preconceived “narrative,” – or “storyline,” as the computer researchers also referred to it in emails obtained by Durham.

Emails the independent prosecutor uncovered reveal that Joffe and the research team he recruited actually discussed “faking” Internet traffic.

“It would be possible to ‘fill out a sales form on two websites, faking the other company’s email address in each form,’ and thereby cause them ‘to appear to communicate with each other in DNS,’ ” Lorenzen suggested.

One Georgia Tech researcher warned Joffe in mid-2016, in the middle of their fishing expedition, of the lack of evidence: “We cannot technically make any claims that would fly public scrutiny. The only thing that drives us at this point is that we just do not like [Trump].”

Tyrrell asserted that his client Joffe “stands behind the rigorous research and analysis that was conducted, culminating in the report he felt was his patriotic duty to share with the FBI.”

Using nonpublic data from a federal research contract to bait the FBI into investigating Trump could constitute a breach of contract and nondisclosure agreements. Swecker, who has worked with Durham on past white-collar criminal cases, said the special prosecutor may be seeking further indictments on government grant and contract fraud charges.

Washington agencies provide such tech contractors privileged access to massive caches of sensitive, nonpublic information about Internet traffic to help combat cyber-crimes.

In ancient Greek religion, Nemesis, also called Rhamnousia or Rhamnusia, is the goddess who enacts retribution against those who succumb to hubris, arrogance before the gods. (Credit: Wikipedia)

On Nov. 17, 2016, the Pentagon awarded Georgia Tech a cybersecurity research contract worth more than $17 million. The project, dubbed “Rhamnousia,” would allow researchers to “sift through existing and new data sets” to find “bad actors” on the Internet. The indictment said the researchers had been provided “early access to Internet data in order to establish a ‘proof of concept’ for work under the contract.” Of course, the government did not pay the researchers to look for dirt on Trump in the sensitive DNS databases.

“The primary purpose of the contract,” the indictment noted, “was for researchers to receive and analyze large quantities of DNS data in order to identify the perpetrators of malicious cyber-attacks and protect U.S. national security.”

Instead, the scientists took the political fishing expedition. According to the indictment, Joffe directed Lorenzen and the two university researchers to “search broadly through Internet data for any information about Trump’s potential ties to Russia.”

The Georgia Tech researchers named as “investigators” on the project included David Dagon and Manos Antonakakis, who the sources confirmed are the two university researchers cited by Durham in his indictment. Antonakakis is the “Researcher-1” referenced in the indictment whom the grand jury said remarked in an email that “the only thing that drives us is that we just do not like [Trump.].”

The original $17 million Rhamnousia contract was approved for five years, federal contracting records show. But the program was recently renewed and has grown into a more than $25 million Defense Department contract — led by the same Georgia Tech research team.” (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 10/07/2021)  (Archive)

September 16, 2021 – Sources say Durham found evidence of Sussmann misleading the CIA

(…) According to the sources, Durham also has found evidence Sussmann misled the CIA, another front in the scandal being reported here for the first time. In December 2016, the sources say Sussmann phoned the general counsel at the agency and told her the same story about the supposed secret server – at the same time the CIA was compiling a national intelligence report that accused Putin of meddling in the election to help Trump win.

Caroline Krass (Credit: CIA Wikipedia)

Sussmann told Caroline Krass, then the agency’s top attorney, that he had information that may help her with a review President Obama had ordered of all intelligence related to the election and Russia, known as the Intelligence Community Assessment. The review ended up including an annex with several unfounded and since-debunked allegations against Trump developed by the Clinton campaign.

It’s not clear if the two-page annex, which claimed the allegations were “consistent with the judgments in this assessment,” included the Alfa Bank canard. Before it was made public, several sections had been redacted. But after Sussmann conveyed the information to Krass, an Obama appointee, she told him she would consider it for the intelligence review of Russian interference, which tracks with Sussmann’s 2017 closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. (Krass’ name is blacked out in the declassified transcript, but sources familiar with Sussmann’s testimony confirmed that he identified her as his CIA contact.)

“We’re interested,” said Krass, who left the agency several months later. “We’re doing this review and I’ll speak to someone here.”

It’s not known if Sussmann failed to inform the top CIA lawyer that he was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign, as he’s alleged to have done at the FBI. Attempts to reach Krass, who now serves as Biden’s top lawyer at the Pentagon, were unsuccessful.

But in his return trip to the CIA after the election, Sussmann “stated falsely – as he previously had stated to the FBI general counsel – that he was ‘not representing a particular client,’ ” according to the Durham indictment, which cites a contemporaneous memo drafted by two agency officials with whom Sussmann met that memorializes their meeting. (The document refers to the CIA by the pseudonym “Agency-2.” Sources confirm Agency-2 is the CIA.)

Remarkably, the CIA did not ask for the source of Sussmann’s walk-in tip, including where he got several data files he gave the agency. The FBI exhibited a similar lack of curiosity when Sussmann told it about the false Trump/Alfa Bank connection.  (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 9/23/2021)  (Archive)

September 23, 2021 – Sussmann indictment reveals Huber’s investigation of NSA data mining is connected to Durham’s investigation of Clinton campaign

Revelations from the #SussmanIndictment led me to info that exposes a much bigger conspiracy!

I’ve found information that connects the Huber investigation into theft of @NSA data to Durham’s investigation of the Clinton Campaign!

It’s worse than we thought!
#ButNothingsHappening

Yesterday @musescry mentioned my 1st thread on Twitter in May 2018, where I laid out the case that from at least 2015, Hillary Clinton & her oppo research team (Cody Shearer & Sid Blumenthal) were under investigation for having illegal access to NSA data.

To sum up, Blumenthal was emailing HRC NSA intercepted data & reports until he got hacked by Guccifer.

State Dept released 1 of these emails publicly, not knowing it was NSA reporting. NSA & FBI began an investigation into how Hillary was getting NSA intercepts in private emails.

That investigation led to the FBI’s WFO where it was discovered that contractors had been given illegal access to raw NSA data. Triggering an NSA investigation of all “About Queries” on NSA data.

Same day this was discovered, McCabe & Page were trying to ‘fix’ this issue!

That access was closed on 04/18/16 so another method of spying had to be conducted. While the hunt was on for the “About Query” spies…

Much of this was exposed with the declassification of this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order!

On 10/21/16, the day @carterwpage’s FISA was signed, NSA notified the FIS Court that DOJ National Security Division had failed to mention the contractor access in their annual report of minimization violations filed in Sept. 2016 to renew FISA access for 2017.

My theory is that Page joined the Trump campaign as bait for Spygate to catch those conducting the About Queries. He joined soon after the access was discovered & 3 weeks before it was closed. This stolen intel was then laundered into the Steele Dossier & used to get the FISA.

Now we get back to the current story, Sussmann’s indictment details that the data spying on Trump was run from 05/04/16 – 7/29/16.

So Tea Leaves was spying 2 weeks after that contractor access to about queries was ended. There were likely multiple unauthorized accesses though.

I have a very detailed thread on the indictment. One error though, I thought FBI was Agency 1. It looks like it was Department of Defense, specifically the National Security Agency. This is the new info in this thread.

Sussman enlisted his client at Neustar to help the DNC & HRC portray Trump as a Russian agent to influence the 2016 election.

TE-1 likely Rodney Joffe participated in that effort days after his company lost a $453M FCC contract, did he hope to get it back?

TE-1 ordered employees of one of his companies to illegally search data that Neustar held as part of a sensitive relationship with NSA.

#Spygate was not FBI spying on Trump, it is an NSA contractor offered a job by the Clinton Campaign spying upon Trump & his associates!

Since 1977, Neustar has had access to the metadata of almost every mobile phone call & text in the US & Canada. They also provided law enforcement with subpoenaed phone records, XXX million times a year. Letting them know who every detective & agent in America was investigating…

That is the contract they were officially notified that they were losing! Half of their revenue & part of their ability to spy on law enforcement…

Seems like a motive to hope a friendly regime would cancel that deal before it was implemented in 2018.

What other business was Neustar doing? Providing data & services for the NSA & their surveillance programs.

Access that was given to university researchers to query information about Trump & his associates.

A great thread on Neustar & their connections:

Neustar was hiring a wide variety of Swampy players to lobby the FCC & lawmakers to block the contract change to Ericsson. Approaching both sides of the Swamp in hiring Chertoff & Sussmann.

Neustar was billed as the most powerful company that you have never heard of!

In fact, Shane Harris a reporter rumored to have Fusion GPS contacts, was pushing a Joffe sourced story in 2014 lobbying for Neustar to be given control of ALL of NSA’s phone data so they could claim the govt didn’t possess it. To violate FISA.

An investigation of illegal about queries almost certainly lead to the NSA’s data center in Utah, where federal crimes are investigated by US Attorney John Huber. Huber’s work in early 2017 was considered important, he was an Obama USA’s reappointed by Trump to continue his work.

Huber was assigned the investigation into spying upon the Trump campaign because NSA’s data center was built in Camp Williams, Utah from 2011-2013.

Guess who was NSA’s contractor for that data center? Neustar!

In Nuestar’s 2011 SEC report submitted in early 2012, they report that they now lease 8000 sqft of office space in Utah. It was not in their previous year’s report so it is opened in 2011.

But where in Utah?

I found them in a technology park in Orem, Utah!

Located about 7 miles from the NSA’s Data Center, I won’t share the address. Again that doxing thing.
I also found employees on networking sites who went to work for Neustar in Nov. of 2011 as the data center was being constructed!

In July 2017, Neustar withdrew all of it’s stock offerings as part of a merger & removed the requirement to file public data with SEC so the report from early 2016 shows the office still on their books. Searches show that they may still rent that office today.

So USA Huber was investigating the leaks of data from NSA’s Utah center where TE-1 was giving access to researchsers spying on Trump.

In 2018, USA Durham was investigating FBI personnel for leaks to reporters of classified information about NSA & Yahoo!

This leak investigation exonerated Baker of the leak accusations but left an ‘inference’ that he was a leaker about NSA programs.

Durham was then tasked with investigating Baker for Russian Collusion leaks of NSA data.

Baker knew it was unusual for an attorney to bring him evidence for a case. Yet that is what Sussmann did in Sept of 2016 while he was trying to falsely accuse Trump of being a Russian agent & get the press to cover FBI involvement.

Then Republicans get news they did not expect, that Baker was being investigated by Durham.

Since he has not been charged with this second leak either, it is unlikely that he is guilty & I’ll explain why!

So who is Baker accused of leaking NSA information to? Reporters who claimed they got information from a senior FBI official. BUT who actually got the info from Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS, & Chris Steele!
So Baker was accused of leaks the HRC frame-up team coordinated!

It’s obvious this info was given to Baker instead of CH agents, because Baker was authorized to speak to the press.

Then when provided with the documents by HRC’s team, they called Baker in a planned effort to claim he was the source! All to conceal that Fusion GPS was the source.

This is one of the reporters @Jim_Jordan asked Baker about.

Now imagine if the FBI was running a reporter’s phone records & Neustar is the company providing them to FBI & warning their co-conspirators!

Imagine when Durham realized that the NSA data used to set up the Russian Collusion narrative, was provided to the reporters by Rodney Joffe of Neustar the suspects in Huber’s investigation of providing researchers access to NSA data & ordering them to illegally spy on Trump!

Other researchers including @walkafyre, @FOOL_NELSON, @ClimateAudit, & @codyave, did great work identify many of the players in this case from Alfa Bank court documents & other sources of evidence.

There is solid attribution that the Univesity involved is Georgia Tech!

Individual researchers have been questioned by Alfa Bank in their lawsuit. But I want to connect a few dots from higher in the thread.

IC-1Neustar, gave Uni-1 Georgia Tech, access to Agency-1s data that it had access to due to a sensitive relationship with the US government.

Originator 1 (Tea Leaves) & Researchers 1 & 2 accessed NSA’s data being provided to them by Neustar to spy on Trump & his associates from July 2016 until February 2017.

Durham claims that had FBI known Sussmann was working for Hillary’s campaign to frame Trump, they would have more quickly identified that these researchers were using NSA data to spy on Trump, even AFTER he became President!

Georgia Tech was in the process of finalizing a contract with NSA to access their data to help identify & attribute cyberattacks against the United States.

I missed this in my first read-through. Tea Leaves was planning to sell this data to Georgia Tech to complete the NSA contract.

But Neustar & & Joffe actually got the contract to sell NSA’s data to Georgia Tech. Giving them early access in exchange for spying upon Trump.

Here is the connecting detail. NSA did not sign the contract with Georgia Tech to perform the work until November 2016.

In 11/29/16, Georgia Tech announced that they had received the contract from NSA, an agency of the Department of Defense.

Details from the announcement. $17M to fund the very program described in the indictment. A program used as an excuse & cover to spy not only upon a Presidential campaign, but upon the President of the United States.

I suspect we will find these same researchers & PR specialists leaked President Trump’s phone calls with the leaders of Mexico & Australia in early 2017, damaging our relations with those nations!

Comey even wrote a memo in February 2017 to document that there was illegal spying against the President. Though this NSA revelation probably means that there was no FISA on Flynn, just researchers spying on the National Security Advisor to the President!

President Trump even took the opportunity to inform Time Magazine in May 2017 that the White House had been spied upon. And did it the night before Comey was fired to make sure it was on the record!

There were likely surveillance devices in the White House too!

Trump took time to point out the secure phone system where the foreign calls were intercepted from.
He also made a big deal about his TiVo & TV, a common compromised spy tool!

 

(@DawsonSField/threadreaderapp, 9/23/20201)  (Archive)

(Republished with permission.) 

September 24, 2021 – The Armed Services Cmte. tries to quash a subpoena seeking records of contacts with Dan Jones and his group that promoted the Russiagate narrative

George Soros contributed $1 million to TDIP. Fund for a Better Future (FBF) donated $2,065,000 in 2017.

“Armed Services panel secretly fought court battle this summer to quash subpoena seeking records of contacts with ex-FBI official Daniel Jones and liberal-funded The Democracy Integrity Project nonprofit.

The efforts to disseminate a now-discredited theory that the Trump campaign had secret computer communications with the Kremlin extended beyond the FBI, CIA, and State Department to the U.S. Senate.

Under the late Sen. John McCain, the Armed Services Committee engaged a former FBI official and his progressive-funded nonprofit to produce a report on the matter, according to court records obtained by Just the News.

The Senate committee, now under Democrats’ control, successfully waged a secret federal court battle this summer to quash a subpoena that would have forced one of its staffers, Thomas Kirk McConnell, to turn over documents and testify about his dealings with former FBI analyst Dan Jones and his nonprofit, The Democracy Integrity Project, the records show.

A spokesman for George Soros confirms the progressive megadonor was one of the financial backers of The Democracy Integrity Project. Tax records show the group raised more than $7 million in donations in 2017 and hired Fusion GPS — the same firm that produced the debunked Steele dossier for Hillary Clinton’s campaign — to pursue allegations of foreign interference in elections.

The episode, recounted in hundreds of pages of federal and D.C. Superior court records, provides extraordinary insight into how current and former government officials in multiple branches of government were able to sustain a Russia collusion theory on artificial life support for years after the FBI first dispelled it.

The legal skirmish with the Senate also provides new context to allegations filed last week by Special Counsel John Durham, who indicted a former DOJ lawyer named Michael Sussmann for lying to the FBI during his efforts to peddle the same debunked story about the Trump campaign, a computer server at the Alfa Bank in Moscow and the Kremlin. Sussmann was being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign when he pitched the allegations to the bureau, court records show. He has pleaded not guilty.” (Read much more: JustTheNews, 9/24/2021)  (Archive)

September 26, 2021 – Maria Bartiromo discusses Biden’s ties to China with Peter Schweitzer and Durham’s probe with Devin Nunes

(Transcript provided by RealClearPolitics)

PETER SCHWEIZER, PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY INSTITUTE: Well, it’s another example, Maria, of basically a strategic retreat by the Biden administration.

I mean, they talk tough. They claim that they’re serious about the challenge represented by China. But what you basically get is retreat. And you saw that enunciated by Joe Biden in his speech to the United Nations earlier in this week in New York, where he basically said, yes, we might have some disagreements with China, but all of that is trumped by these other issues we have to work with them on.

So, the bottom line is, China has said consistently they seek to surpass the United States in political and strategic capabilities. And their goal is to be the supreme power on the globe over the next couple of decades. And the Biden administration says, they’re not a competitor, and they basically are backing down on so many positions that were staked out by the Trump administration.

BARTIROMO: What is this about?

I mean, is this about the current leadership in Washington not wanting to upset China? Or is this about conflicts of interest that the Biden family has with China?

SCHWEIZER: Well, I think it’s probably both.

There’s no question those conflicts exist. Joe Biden himself, two of his family members, his son Hunter Biden, of course, and his brother James Biden, have received millions of dollars from politically connected Chinese interests.

We also know, by the way, Maria, that Joe Biden has been a beneficiary. I mean, the Hunter Biden e-mails show that Hunter Biden was paying some of his dad’s bills while he was vice president of the United States. So you have the conflicts with the Bidens.

If you look at Tony Blinken, if you look at some of the other senior people in this administration, they too have financial conflicts of interest as it relates to China. So, my view is, why is this not being scrutinized by the media?

Certainly, if you were talking about Wall Street money or big oil, they’d be talking about conflicts of interests.

SCHWEIZER: But, for some reason, when it comes to China, they don’t seem to discuss it…

I mean, you have to basically stake this out to genius level corruption. And what I mean, Maria, is that Hunter Biden previously was going around the world striking business deals. That required a certain level of transparency. If you’re sitting on a corporate board, that gets disclosed.

The art world is very, very hard-to-trace money. In fact, the Senate did an investigation in 2019, and concluded that the art world was rife with money laundering, oligarchs moving money around.

So, going into the art world, Hunter Biden has created a circumstance whereby he can collect half-a-million dollars at pop — at a pop for a piece of work, and there’s going to be no paper trail.

And the White House says the ethics solution here — I will put that in quotation marks, Maria — is that nobody’s going to know anything about anyone involved.

Well, that’s absurd. We know that these art deals, these art shows, Hunter Biden’s going to be there schmoozing with people. We know that the man holding these art deals and showing Hunter’s art has said China is a growth market, where he really wants to go.

And we know that this is what the Bidens have done for decades. It’s really not in dispute. So, this is a new avenue for corruption. The money is going to give an opportunity for foreign corrupt intermediaries who want to curry favor with this administration.

And Jill Biden is displaying this artwork in the White House, which is a really nice gallery for foreign dignitaries to see the work.

September 30, 2021 – A new IG Horowitz report reveals more FBI abuses of the FISA process

“Today, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a new report on the FBI’s “Execution of its Woods Procedures for Applications Filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Relating to US Persons.” It’s damning for the FBI.

(…) Last year, IG Horowitz reviewed 29 random FISA applications. He found “that the FBI was not meeting the expectations of its own protocols.” As he reported in March 2020:

“We identified numerous instances of non-compliance with the Woods Procedures in the 25 Woods Files that were made available to us to review; and we reported that the FBI was unable to produce the original version of the remaining 4 Woods Files we requested.”

More concerning are the latest discoveries after an audit of more FISA applications. These include:

“over 400 instances of non-compliance with the Woods Procedures in connection with those 29 FISA applications”

“over 7,000 FISA applications authorized between January 2015 and March 2020, there were at least 179 instances in which the Woods File required by FBI policy was missing in whole or in part”

The more material errors (aside from losing their own files) included:

To put this into context, in December 2019, after IG Horowitz detailed substantial issues with the Carter Page FISA applications, the FISA Court noted that the misconduct was serious and ordered the FBI to conduct remedial measures to fix the problems of the FBI’s own creation. The FBI promised to take corrective action.

One can’t help but speculate that the FISA Court won’t do much about these latest issues, aside from ordering the FBI to conduct more training. After all, the then-presiding judge of the FISA Court, Judge Boasberg, refused jail time for FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith after he altered an e-mail and lied about Carter Page’s relationship with the CIA.

Knowing the history of the FISA Court excusing government misconduct, we present the same question now that we did after the Clinesmith sentencing: What does it say about the FISA Court’s “heightened duty of candor” if there aren’t heightened punishments for violating that duty?

And we have one final question – one that has applied to Director Wray for the last few years: how could the FBI Director allow these abuses to continue?” (Read more: Techno Fog/Substack, 9/30/2020)  (Archive)